Lacey Olson

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How Do You Get Rid of a Ghost?

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Lingering in Place

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The Place They Never Found

Dandelions bob their heads across the field like tiny ghosts, peeking up through blades of grass to greet me. There are hundreds of them—more than I remember—but most have already turned to seed.

Once I reach our spot, I plant my feet. The redbud is still here, taller now, its branches vibrant with clusters of purple flowers. Beneath its delicate shade, the meadow grows thick and green.

Our first kiss happened beneath this tree. We were barely eighteen. Wet grass soaked through the hems of my jeans, and his hand trembled as he touched the freckles on my cheek. We thought we had all the time in the world.

The field remembers differently. It recalls the nights we stumbled here after dark and whispered things we couldn’t tell anyone else. Arguments. Apologies. Promises. Secrets we carried home. Our love took root quickly and grew in tangles. Wild and careless, pushing up
wherever it could. Nevertheless, that summer, nothing could touch us.

Then the first frost came.

One morning, the garden was silver. The flowers had gone brown at the edges, their blooms bowed beneath the cold. By afternoon, the color had begun to disappear. So did the laughter. The touching. The best-laid plans.

I never asked the right questions, but he never gave me the right answers.

It wasn’t what you think.

The field knows better.

A gust catches the dandelions ahead of me. One seeded globe breaks apart, then another, until feathery tufts drift through the air like tiny parachutes against the sunset.

“That’ll ruin it,” he said whenever I asked what he wished for.

“That’s not how wishes work,” I told him.

Now I wonder if maybe it is.

Kneeling, I pluck a puffball from the earth and hold its weightless stem between my fingers.

For a beat, I can hear him—a muffled groan beneath the grass.

How many seasons has this place kept for me?

How many winters have passed over this patch of soil, leaving everything underneath untouched?

The sound comes again—louder this time—as the memory returns in jagged pieces.

The flash of anger. The sudden weight of him. The dull thud of the rock smashing against his head.

I drop my gaze down to the place they never found.

They searched your house and the car: the roads and the river.

Never here.

My fingers tighten around the stem.

Eyes closed, I raise the dandelion to my lips.

Make a wish.

And blow.

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