After my husband died I decided I'd keep myself locked up in my home, only coming out when it was truly necessary.

A week before Halloween I started finding a flower outside my doorstep every day and I couldn't help but remember the thing I made Richard promise me so many years before on our wedding day.

"Send me flowers, at least once a week, so I know you still love me."

At first I thought the flower thing was a joke. I thought that if I threw them away then maybe whoever was leaving them would leave me alone.

What I wasn't expecting was to turn around on October 31st and find my deceased husband blankly staring at me, completely oblivious that he was about to give me the best night of my life.

"Why did you throw away the flowers?"

I stared dumbfounded at the young man in front of me. He looked like Richard, talked like Richard and even moved like Richard. But he couldn't be, Richard died the year before on October 31st in a car crash. It was simply impossible.

"Who are you?"

He stared at me, confused.

"Who are you?" I said, this time louder, with more power in my voice.

"What do you mean?" He said with pleading eyes. "It's me, Richard, your husband."

I shook my head. "No, Richard died a year ago."

He smiled his crooked smile, the one I'd fallen for in my crazy years of college. "That's the thing, Tina, I'm alive! At least, I think so. Or well, for a week. I've been alive this whole week. I don't know how it happened, I remember being somewhere and thinking of how I wanted you to know that I'd never stop loving you. And there I was, in a cemetery with a flower in my hand. I was very confused so I did the first thing that came to my mind; I put the flower on your doorstep."

I shook my head and stepped back. I sat on my bed with my head in my hands. This couldn't be happening. It was impossible.

"You died beside me; I saw your lifeless body being pulled out of the wrecked car. I saw them bury you; I helped them put the dirt in your hole. I went to your funeral; I read a speech I didn't finish because I couldn't stop crying. You're not real, I'm dreaming. Yes, that's it. My nightmares of you coming back are becoming real."

He walked towards me but stopped when he saw the fear in my eyes. "Tina, I'm so sorry. I remember your speech, somehow, and it was beautiful. Thank you. And I'm sorry for making you go through so much pain in the past year, but please, can you make my last night alive worth living?"

I considered my options. Either I was dreaming, which wasn't an unusual thing for me in the past year, or I was being pranked by some idiot.

Or well, my dead husband was now alive, but I refused to believe that.

"Tell me something only Richard would know."

His eyebrows scrunched together in the way Richard's did when he was thinking.

"When you were nine you had a goldfish named Mr. Bob and even though you told everyone he died of a heart attack he actually died because you took him out of the water thinking he wanted to explore nature."

I thought about another way to put him to the test. I decided to do the next best thing, question him.

"What's my favorite color?"

"Gray."

"Favorite food?"

"My mom's spaghetti."

"Favorite dessert?"

"Cookie dough and ice cream."

"Favorite movie?"

"Star Wars episode IV."

"What's my favorite thing to do?"

"On cold and rainy days you like to make a fort as if you were a child and go inside it to drink hot chocolate and watch Netflix."

"What's the last thing I said to you?"

"You said, "You'll love me forever, right?""

"And what did you answer?"

""Even from the grave.""

I stared at him in awe. He knew the things no one did, the things I kept locked up in order to not be laughed up. He even knew our last conversation, one that he wouldn't be able to know unless it was really him.

And it was.

He was Richard.

My Richard.

It took some seconds for the thoughts to sink in. Richard was somehow alive for one night and for some reason the thought of me having lost my mind was way beyond reason. This was real, it was no nightmare.

I tried to keep calm; I tried not to go all crazy but all rational thought gone out the window the moment my dead husband walked into my bedroom.

"So you're alive until tonight?"

He opened his mouth to respond but then closed it. He thought about it for a few more seconds and talked.

"If my understanding of my current situation is correct, then yes. I have until tonight."

I nodded slowly. This was a situation I never pictured being in.

"I'm a little bit freaked out right now, but since this may be my last chance of seeing you then tell me. What do you want to do?"

How was I so calm in such a situation? I have no idea. But did I care? Not one ounce.

He smirked in the way only Richard knew how and I couldn't help but feel excited when I his eyes lit up. Was it weird I felt excited about hanging out with a not-so-much-anymore dead guy? Probably.

Half an hour later we were in the town next door, somewhere no one had heard about the fatal car crash Richard and I had been in.

"What if someone recognizes you?" He laughed.

"I guess the point of me being alive on Halloween is so that people just brush it off as a ghost seeing or that they're paranoid because of all the creepy stuff going around. Seriously, what is creepier than kids asking adult strangers for candies?"

I couldn't help but laugh at his statement. It was something we'd discussed every year on Halloween, debating whether we'd let our future child go trick or treating or not.

The thought of never being able to have a child with the man I loved was heartbreaking, but I didn't want to let him see it.

I parked in front of the water park and we got out of the car. Nerves were talking control of my body, I was afraid we'd get caught up in a mess if someone recognized him. I mean, it's not like anyone actually would since news of the car crash were only in town for a week until they moved on to the next big thing, so it was not very likely they knew him.

We went to the front of the park, it was closed. Of course, why would a water park be opened on Halloween?

I turned around to look at Richard. "It's closed. I'm sorry... Anything else you want to do?"

He gave me a smile that made me remember for a moment that he had died, at that moment he looked like the ghost I was sure he was. The smile that made me question whether he was a good guy, or a bad guy.

The fear in my eyes was probably evident, because as soon as he saw me take a few steps back his face softened. His eyes had no longer the look of troublemaker, a look he hadn't had in years. His eyes were a soft brown again, the one I'd fallen in love with. I had to remind myself over and over again that he was not my Richard. He was dead, no. He was not dead, he was alive for the night, but I couldn't fall for him again. It would only end in more pain than I had already suffered.

"Lucky for you, Tina, we both know how to climb a fence." I looked at him, confused.

"What?"

He laughed and flashed me his smile. "Do you trust me?"

I frowned. Was this really a good time for this conversation?

"Yeah...I mean, I think." He held out his hand for me to hold. I looked at it, it wasn't burnt and it wasn't cut. His hand was okay, exactly how it wasn't after the crash. I hesitated before taking his hand and I'm still not sure whether I regret it or I'm happy about it.

His hand was warm, which meant two things.
1. He wasn't lying, he was alive.
2. I wasn't dreaming.

We walked to the back of the park where it was completely dark. Richard looked up to the top of the fence surrounding the water park and started to climb.

I stared at him in amazement, I'd known him for ten years and he'd never shown this much crave for adventure. Maybe it was a side effect of death.

We climbed up the fence. He climbed with ease and a rhythm I'd never seen before and something told me he'd done a lot of fence climbing in the last few days.

I started climbing the fence, only to slip when I was still a few feet from being on the other side. I thought I'd fall and become a human pancake, even if I do know that height wouldn't leave me that way.

I prepared myself for impact and a possible broken back, but the impact never came. Two strong arms held me before I hit the ground. I didn't have to look up to realize that it was Richard.

He put me to the ground and said, "Tina! Are you okay?" I could see the concern in his eyes and for just a second I had forgotten where we were and about our current situation.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm okay. So, what do you want to do here?"

He looked around and his eyes landed on something that made me want to puke.

The "Water Mountain" is the ride that Richard tried convincing me to ride ever since it opened. I was always too scared to try it out.

The day of the car crash we were on our way to the water park. I'd finally caved to riding the Water Mountain.

We weren't even out of town when a car came out of nowhere and hit us, making the car do more flips than I thought possible.

Richard saw the ride and his eyes wandered somewhere else but I took his hand.

"Let's try this one out."

I led him to the Water Mountain and we were both more scared than we'd ever been before.

How or why the power was working at the park, I don't know.

Any kind of fear that we had in the beginning of the night was far gone by the tenth time we rode the Water Mountain.

I glanced at the clock. 10:45. An hour and fifteen minutes left with the love of my life.

"How are all the attractions here working?" I asked.

He winked at me. "I have my ways."

I rolled my eyes and laughed. "Fine. When I discovered I wasn't dead anymore I asked my best friend Mark for help. And well, Mark's the manager of this place so he's kind of controlling all this."

I smiled. I imagined he scared the crap out of Mark, and he did it partly because of me.

"Why don't we ride another thing? Like the Love Ride."

I looked at him confused. "Are you trying to make me fall for you again on our last night together?"

As soon as the words got out of my mouth I regretted them. They caused us both great pain knowing that we wouldn't see each other again after tonight.

He smiled and took my hand. We didn't go to the Love Ride, instead we went to my favorite ride in the whole park: Long River.

The Long River was basically just going down a water slide into an artificial river on some sort of round boat. It was there where Richard and I had had our first kiss nearly twelve years ago.

His smile turned into the smirk of a little boy when they get a bad idea. He yelled, "Last one to the ride is a rotten egg!"

It would've have been so bad if it was close but the ride was to the other side of the park and I wasn't exactly the most athletic person.

I got to the ride first. "I wo-"

I was interrupted by a hand on my mouth. Richard put his finger to his lips and mouthed the word "cops".

We walked silently to the back of the park, right where the fence where I'd fallen was.

We were climbing the fence with no trouble, which of course meant there would be trouble.

Half way down the fence a cop lit his flashlight at us. "Hey you! Stop right there!"

Normal human beings would've followed the police officers instructions and given themselves in, but considering my husband who died came back to life to visit me I'm not sure either of us classified under the category of "normal".

So we did what we thought was right, we ran. We ran to my car and sped underneath the night sky.

We drove for about an hour until I was sure we'd lost them. I parked in an empty field in the skirts of town. My pickup truck had always been useful for stargazing and tonight was no different.

I set a blanket on the back part of the truck and we laid on our backs. He wrapped his arms around me and I put my head on his chest, just like it had been a year ago. It was hard not to think of how easy things would be if he hadn't died, if we hadn't crashed. Everything would be different, everything would be okay.

But it wasn't.

It wasn't because on October 31st of last year I was in a car crash with my husband. He died while holding my hand, while I begged him not to leave me. Now he was there with me for one last time, and there was nothing easy about that, nothing normal or okay. This was my life, grieving for the man I never said goodbye to.

Tears fell down my face and he noticed right away. He wiped away the tears and replaced them with a smile.

But at that moment it didn't matter because even if things would never be like they were, he'd still given me the best night I'd had in a while.

I'd broken into a water park at night, I ran from the cops and I had a night with the person I thought I'd lost forever. Yes, there were no doubts. That was the best night of my life.

As I drifted to sleep I heard him whisper in my ear.

"I will never stop loving you Tina. Not even death can tear us apart. Move on, live your life. You don't have to worry about me, I'll be okay."

I woke up with a start.

It was a dream, it was all a dream.

It was now November 1st and I'd finally survived the dream where Richard came back.

I looked to the side of my bed and found something I wasn't expecting to find.

A flower and a note that said, "Don't look for me, I'm gone."