My Husband Is on Loan from the Afterlife

How it begins

The registrar asked whether either of us had been married before.

"Once," I said.

"Not since the invention of paperwork," said Lucian.

She looked over her glasses. His outline trembled in the heat from her desk lamp. Outside, a bus reversed into the square with the same three notes I had played at yesterday's funeral.

"And you understand," she told me, "that this is a loan, not a resurrection?"

I nodded. I had read the conditions twice, including the paragraph about mirrors. Marriage to a deceased property owner would suspend the sale of his school for ninety days. It would not give him a pulse, an appetite, or permission to alter the weather.

Lucian had already asked about all three.

The registrar slid the certificate toward me. His signature appeared first, elegant and slightly scorched. I wrote mine beneath it with the pen chained to her desk.

"You may exchange rings."

My ring cost twelve pounds. His cost nothing because he could not keep it on. It fell through his hand, struck the floor, and rolled beneath a cabinet.

We both bent for it.

For a moment his face was level with mine. The famous portrait at the school had made him look stern. Up close, he looked embarrassed.

"I'm usually better at ceremonies," he said.

"I usually play them from the back."

The registrar fetched a ruler. While she searched beneath the cabinet, my phone vibrated with a message from the school caretaker.

THE BUYER'S PEOPLE ARE HERE. THEY'RE MEASURING THE PIANO.

Lucian read the screen over my shoulder. His expression changed so quickly that I understood something the contract had not explained.

He had not returned for the building.

He had returned for the sound inside it.

I took the rescued ring and threaded it onto the chain around my neck.

"Come on, husband," I said. "We have ninety days to learn what we're saving."