Bill had been a ghost for eleven years when he first met Madeline. The house he had been haunting, the same house he had lived in when he had died of a heart attack at the age of forty-seven, was being torn down. Someone had bought the property and wanted to rebuild. Bill couldn't blame them. The house was getting old, and there was mold. Bill knew this because when he passed through the walls he could taste it.

When Bill found out his old haunting grounds would be no more, he had no choice but to find temporary lodgings until the new house was built. So, he went to a house across the street. Its pale blue coloring and white shutters appealed to him.

The transition wasn't easy. Bill hadn't left the house since he had died there. What if there was a mighty wind that swept him up and away? Or what if it was the house that had him tethered to the earth, and when he stepped outside, he would just float up into the sky and all the way into the atmosphere until even his ghostly form could take it no more and just poof, vanished, and he would cease to exist?

These thoughts plagued him as he hovered in the doorway for days. But somewhere inside him, there was still some courage left, and he plucked it up and took his first step.

He did not float away. Rather, it was quite like being in his home. He just glided on over to the house across the way, and that was that.

In this house lived Madeline. The previous tenants of Bill's house had been familiar to him. He knew who they were and he knew what to expect. With Madeline, on the other hand, it was not like that. This alarmed Bill at first. He went straight to the attic and did not come down for many weeks. But then one day, when he was looking out the window and thinking about his death, he heard a sound. He knew he had heard it before, since he had come to the house, but he had always ignored it. This time, though, it caught his attention. He took the long way down to the kitchen, going through each doorway and the stairwell. He felt he didn't know the house well enough yet to just pass through its walls so casually.

In the kitchen, Madeline was washing the dishes and whistling. She had a very pretty whistle, loud and clear. Bill couldn't think of anyone else he knew, or had known, that whistled while they washed dishes. His wife certainly hadn't. He could only remember her complaining, about having to wash the dishes at first, and then moving on to other topics.

Bill stared at Madeline curiously for some time, watched her breeze through the plates and then struggle with the pots and pans. She was fairly young, younger than Bill had expected, maybe in her early thirties. She had deep brown hair that kept falling forward as she worked, and she would flip her head just so to get the strands back out of the way. She was attractive, but not really Bill's usual type. His wife was blonde and petite.

When Madeline was finished, Bill went back to what he was beginning to think of as his attic. But from that day on, he would venture down more and more, to watch Madeline go about her daily chores and routine. He watched her do yoga every Sunday. Sometimes he even did the moves with her. He wondered if he had done such things when he was alive, perhaps he wouldn't have died of a heart attack so young. He wondered why his wife had never done yoga. Maybe then she wouldn't have gained all that weight.

He watched Madeline when she would pour herself a glass of wine and watch The Bachelor. He watched her vacuum the house. Once, when he was feeling particularly brave, he went into her room and watched her put her make up on in front of the mirror that rested on a set of drawers across her bed.

After a few months, Bill found himself by Madeline's side whenever she was home. He left her alone when she got dressed, or went to the bathroom. He may have been a ghost, but that didn't mean he wasn't still a gentleman. But he would stay with her at any other time, following her like a shadow. For the first time, he found himself enjoying death.

But like all good things, or so Bill thought, something always had to come along and mess it up. That's how it was in life, so it was in death. With him and Madeline, this something was a man named Adam. Adam started coming around after Bill had been there for about three months. He had heard Madeline talking on the phone with Adam, and had not liked where it was going. Madeline would blush and giggle sometimes, when she talked to Adam. She never blushed or giggled with Bill.

The first time Adam came over, Madeline cooked him a steak dinner. He was tall and handsome, with dirty blond hair and a chin dimple. He was dressed in a nice tailored blue shirt and slacks. Bill could tell he made decent money by the classy Movado watch he wore. Bill disliked him instantly.

They talked and laughed over dinner. Adam told ridiculous anecdotes that Bill didn't believe for a second, but Madeline ate up. They finished dinner. They went to the couch. They talked. They kissed.

Adam came over a lot more often after that. Bill stayed in his attic more than he was now used to. He tried to think of how he could be enough for Madeline, so that she wouldn't need Adam anymore.

The first thing he tried to do was talk to her. He talked to her all the time, constantly. He did not know whether he was actually making any noise. She certainly did not seem to hear him, but she didn't see him either, so he had expected this. Still, he talked on. He told her about his life. How he had been an investment banker. How he was moving up the company ladder. How hard he worked to make something of himself, but had died before he had the chance to get where he was going. Then he talked about his wife. How he had loved her once. How it had taken her only a few weeks to move her lover, Marco, who also happened to be Bill's best friend, into the house after he had died.

Bill had been present for the conversation in which Marco pressed Bill's wife to allow him to move in. Bill and Marco had been good friends when they had worked side by side at the company. But then Bill had started applying for promotions and trying to get somewhere with his career. Marco had never made it past entry level. Bill liked to tell himself that he always knew that Marco was jealous of him. But when he was honest with himself, finding out just what Marco thought about him was quite a shock. Bill's wife and Marco talked about how selfish Bill had been. How much he hadn't seen. How he hadn't listened. How he was so absorbed with work. Bill had thought he was making a life for himself, and for his wife as well. Apparently, she saw things differently. She had nagged him a bit in life, about being home more or about how much she had wanted a family, and how it was too late. Bill thought she knew that what he was doing was for the best, for both of them.

Even so, Bill knew she felt guilty after Marco moved in. She would justify herself to him far too often. Without being asked or pressed into speaking, she would bring up Bill. She would talk about how she had tried to talk to him, so many times, or how he would have wanted her to move on and be happy.

She did not know him well, Bill realized. He did not want her and Marco to be happy. Not while he was still there, watching.

When his wife and Marco moved out, his brother-in-law Justin moved in and Bill spent the next nine years living with him. Justin was a quiet, easy-to-please kind of man. Bill had always thought he had potential, but he never did much with his life. His wife had died early, and he was left a widower with no children. He never remarried. Bill would watch as he sat on quiet nights, eyes closed but not sleeping, and knew he was thinking of her, of his wife. Bill did not know what it was to love someone so much. Eventually Justin passed away. Bill thought maybe he would join him in the afterlife. He had waited eagerly as Justin took his final breaths. But alas, nothing. Not even the hint of a ghostly form beginning. Bill had been a little disappointed, but not much.

Bill told all these things to Madeline, but she still kept Adam around. He decided he needed to do something more, so he started with some light haunting. Turning the TV off while they were watching it, making the lamp flicker, just the basics.

Bill tried to direct these things at Adam. He took his chances whenever Madeline left the room for any reason. Adam always seemed confused. One time, he mentioned the strange occurrences to Madeline. At first she had brushed them off. Bill continued with his antics but then Adam went and tattled again. Madeline took it more seriously this time. Her eyebrows creased in worry and she moved closer to Adam on the couch, as if she needed him to protect her.

Bill stopped the haunting after that. The last thing he wanted was for Madeline to think her house was haunted. What if she called those ghost hunters who would come and try to get him to make peace with something? Or maybe she would try an exorcist. Bill had no idea what would happen to him if someone tried to exorcise him, but he was sure he didn't want to find out.

Bill had dabbled with more serious haunting techniques at his old house. Actually, if he was being honest, he had more than dabbled. He had become somewhat of a proficient, he thought, although he didn't really have any other ghosts to compare himself to. He had had only one goal then, to break Marco and his wife apart. He started with research. Every time they fought, he was there, watching, listening. He could see the way his wife would start tucking her hair behind her ears too many times, just the way she had done with him whenever she was particularly upset. He saw all the times Marco would get mad enough to leave the house and go for a drive. And each time he noted the reason.

For months and months he watched them. And then he began to strike. When his wife was feeling guilty about her affair, he made the photo album in the closet fall down and open to the page with their wedding pictures. When she was feeling particularly suspicious of Marco, Bill would make the phone ring and hang up when she answered. He could see in the way her hand shook when she set the phone down that she thought it was a woman calling for Marco. When Marco was feeling annoyed with her clingy behavior, Bill would press his ghostly hand through her phone, and send him text message after text message.

It had taken him a while to perfect this. At first all he could manage was to dial random numbers. But if he thought really hard about it, and moved his hand in just the right ways, he was able to gain more control.

Little by little he chipped away at them. He would watch with glee whenever they fought about something that he had his hand in. Sometimes he would look to the left and to the right with a smug smile, as if there was someone next to him for him to boast to.

Eventually, he conquered. Marco moved out, and not long after, so did Bill's wife. He was somewhat sad to see them go. He did not know what to do with himself anymore. At some level, he had thought that maybe that was all he had needed to do to "move on." Maybe that was his "unfinished business," his wife's affair. But he had gone nowhere. And he was not sure that he wanted to go anywhere. He did not know where he would go if he did go somewhere. Still, he wondered sometimes where Justin had gone, and why. Why had he moved on while Bill was still stuck there? Bill couldn't tell if this was some sort of reward, or a curse. Either way, he figured he had a new mission now.

It didn't take so much time or effort with Adam and Madeline. Bill saw one night that Adam was using his phone frequently, probably some work matter, Bill deduced. So Bill floated over to him, waited for him to send a text, and then touched the phone, sending Madeline a message addressed to "Jessica."

Madeline heard her phone beep twice with a little jingle, and walked over to the stand in the foyer where it was sitting. She picked it up, read the message, and her face flushed. She clutched the phone close to her chest, and looked over at Adam. She bit her lip and looked around, as if she could find some explanation in her surroundings as to what had just happened.

She went to the couch and carefully took a seat next to Adam. She sat in silence for a few minutes, and her eyes began to brim with tears. Finally, she asked, "Who's Jessica?" And thus the arguing commenced.

Adam denied it time and again, trying to remain calm and rational. He even showed Madeline his phone so that she could see he had sent no such text. Madeline made the point that he could have just deleted it, like he probably did with any other texts he was sending to different girls while he was with her, afraid he would get caught.

Bill watched, waiting for the familiar feeling of accomplishment to embrace him, just as it had done whenever Marco and his wife had fought. But it did not come. Bill did not feel good. As he watched Madeline get more and more upset, he found himself only growing sad. His ghostly form seemed to wilt and shrink, and Bill wondered if this was how he was going to disappear from the world. Madeline began to cry and Bill huddled in the corner like a banished dog.

The fighting got worse. Adam, feeling confused and attacked, eventually blew up. Madeline had her phone out and she was crying, showing him the proof once again. Adam knocked the phone from her hand and told her he was done. He grabbed his coat and left the house without another word, slamming the door behind him. Madeline collapsed onto the couch and broke out into a new wave of sobs.

She sat there for some time, and Bill did not watch this time. He put his head in the wall, wishing that he had eyes to close. When he found the courage to come out of his corner, Madeline was gone. He slowly stretched himself out. It seemed almost painful to him, if he could feel pain. He glided over to her room, and found her curled up on her bed. She was no longer crying but she stared at the wall with a blank face, eyes red and cheeks puffy. Bill had never seen her look so lifeless. He wished she would get up and whistle or laugh again. But she did not.

Bill slowly made his way over to her. He wanted to tell her how much he enjoyed his time with her, how she had made his death livable. But he found that he had no mouth, so the words would not come out. And he wondered if he had ever been able to speak at all. If he had ever even said all the things he thought he had said to her.

Arriving at the foot of the bed, Bill moved his head down and lifted the end of his frame so that he was hovering horizontally in the air. He stayed like that above the bed, next to Madeline, and tried to mimic her balled-up form. He inched closer to her until he was almost touching her. For a moment it was as if he was breathing. He took the final step and moved himself right beside her. Some of his ghostliness went into her body, and he could almost taste her salty skin.

It was the most alive he had felt in all his years of death. But Madeline shivered violently, and Bill flew away from her as if he had been thrown. He watched from afar as she pulled the covers over herself, her teeth chattering. She looked scared and alone and Bill, after one last long look at her, went up through the ceiling and on, out towards the fading sun.