The first ghost I saw was that of my four-year-old daughter. Her pale image sat in the old tire swing I'd hung for her. I stared out the window, transfixed by the vision, as my heart was pierced with a scalding sliver of sorrow. Sharp enough to be felt, hot enough to be agonized over, but not deadly enough to stop that organ from beating and end the suffering.

Jasmine glanced up, caught sight of me in the kitchen window, and smiled. She took one small hand from the thick rope to wave. Then the hand faltered and her smile drooped to become a confused frown. Her eyebrows, so blonde they were barely visible even at close range, knitted together as her sneakered feet stopped kicking in their attempt to make her go higher.

Disjointed images forced their way into my mind. I wanted them to go away, to leave me with this wonderful portrait of my little girl, but they refused my entreaty. I watched helplessly as Jasmine's quiet surprise was superimposed with harsh flashes of savagery. Our Ford Contour traversing the four-way. The faded blue truck speeding through the red light to some destination it would never reach. Crumpled metal. Shattered glass. Broken lives.

It was then, as I forced these hopelessly cyclical thoughts away, that I caught sight of my second ghost. It appeared behind Jasmine in that old Goodyear. Her eyes were fixed on my image beyond the glass so she never saw it. It formed from the dappled shadows beneath the umbrella of that oak in the backyard. Or rather—and this still gets an icy finger tracing my spine—it seemed to gather up those bits of shade and forge a body for itself from that darkness.

"No!" I screamed, not certain why I did. What harm could one ghost possibly do to another? But there was something wrong with this new visitor. Some reason I had to keep it away from my Jasmine, who remained oblivious to its presence as she squinted at me.

I rushed outside, heart pounding in my chest, lungs pulling at air like they'd been deprived of it for hours. I was too late. They were gone. Both of them. Yet the tire swing still swung gently in the warm, early summer breeze. I looked for her everywhere after that. As I rounded every corner, as I opened every door, as I glanced out every window. But she didn't return. Not yet. I saw her mother before I saw her again.

Rachel sat in her Comfy Chair, the one wide enough for her to pull her legs up onto. She was crying. Not sobbing—she was never a plaintive crier, my Rachel—but rather her placid face was wet with tears. She looked almost beautiful in her sadness, but I resolved to find no peace or elegance in the loveliness of her ghostly expression. Why was she crying? Had Jasmine been stolen from even her embrace by that dark figure I'd spied with our daughter? Was she mourning the loss of our child's ghost, or her own life?

I rushed to her, reached out a hand to her alabaster face, eager to wipe away her phantom tears, to console her, but I felt only a gentle tingling against my palm as it passed over the image of my wife. Rachel started, and her trembling hand brushed against the place where I had tried to touch her.

The Ford. The truck. Screaming brakes. Whining cries of metal struggling against metal. The images and sounds came more forcefully now, with a more feral intensity than they'd had when I'd seen Jasmine.

I backed away from my wife, sensing the approach of something. And dreading it.

The thing coalesced out of the shadows in the corner of the room. A nondescript figure, all shade and no light, I could nevertheless tell its head was bowed to look upon the ghost of my wife. And I knew when it lifted its face to stare at me.

Mommy! Around the floral-print couch Jasmine came running, transparent arms outstretched as she lunged into the chair. Don't cry, Mommy. I wanted to go to them, to get them out from under the shadow of that other ghost but I couldn't move. Not even when it walked through the Comfy Chair, through my wife and daughter, and stopped in front of me. Or when it reached out for me.

I screamed, falling back onto the couch and shielding my eyes with crossed arms. As long as I didn't look at it, as long as it stayed in the shadows, I would be fine. Cold clamps encased my wrists, my straining arms being forced away from my eyes. A quick glimpse of green eyes and golden hair. I forced my eyelids shut.

Car. Truck. Collision. Blood. Wet crimson sprayed across glass as the windshield shattered before me. Bitter blood in my mouth. It spewed from my lips. It drooled down my chin, saturated my clothes, and take my life as it flowed from my many wounds.

I opened my eyes and found myself staring up into my own unshadowed face. The face of my own ghost, the part of me which had already accepted the truth. Beyond this patient figure, my wife and daughter sat, mourning me together.
A hand rose, more solid now, obscuring their ghostly images, imploring me to take hold of it, asking me in that simple gesture to accept the reality of my death, leave Rachel and Jasmine alone with their grief, assuring me I would never be too far away from them. I needed only to accept what had happened to me on that street when that truck had run that red light.

I stood, no longer cowering from the now shining vision of myself. One last glance at my wife and daughter in each other's arms. And I took my hand.