Chapter 1: Back from the Grave and Out for Payback

The first time I saw the fat envelope, the paper was cold and slick with morning dew, wedged behind my granite headstone like a misplaced Christmas card. For a second, I wondered if Maple Heights had some weird tradition I’d never heard of, but when I cracked the seal and found the crisp bills inside—real, weighty, and ironed flat—I realized this was no mistake. Year after year, the stacks arrived, thick and neat, making me feel like the afterlife’s answer to a trust fund kid—if only someone had warned me about budgeting in the great beyond.

Before long, I was living like the afterlife’s answer to a Manhattan heiress—if Manhattan had ghosts and the rent was eternal. I haunted the afterlife’s classiest martini bar—think smoky Jersey City dive, dead jazz musicians riffing on old Coltrane standards while the ghost bartender polished glasses that never got clean. I bought a penthouse with a view of the River Styx (total fixer-upper, but the neighbors were quiet), splurged on designer sheets, and hired a pair of dapper assistants. If I was doomed to be dead, at least I could do it in style.

But one day, Derek stopped leaving money.

I waited for the next envelope like a kid waits for Santa, hope turning sour each year. Was I really that easy to forget? I tried everything—haunting his dreams, whispering in the dark—but nothing worked. He’d forgotten me.

Because I’d never bothered to save—just to keep up my old lifestyle—I ended up owing the underworld more than a Harvard grad with six credit cards and a taste for Uber Eats.

I learned the hard way: even in death, the bills come due. The underworld wasn’t exactly the IRS, but Mr. Blackwell and his bean-counting minions had ways of making you sweat. Interest rates? Don’t ask.

In a fit of anger—yeah, I was actually that pissed—I came back to life.

I’m talking full-on, body-and-soul, cold-shock-to-the-system kind of pissed. And honestly, wouldn’t you be? Imagine going from death’s ultimate VIP to foreclosure in purgatory because your ex forgot to Venmo you. Unfinished business doesn’t even begin to cover it.

Of course, I wasn’t truly alive. The King of the Underworld, Mr. Blackwell, was worried I’d never pay off my debts, so he made an exception and let me return to the human world for a bit.

You’d think the Lord of the Dead would be a skull-faced crypt-keeper type, but Mr. Blackwell wore a pinstriped suit and always smelled faintly of cologne and legal pads. The man ran the afterlife like a Midtown law firm—full benefits, endless paperwork, and a coffee machine that always broke down.

He summoned his assistants, Bull and Horse, to craft a body for me—one just like my old one.

Bull was built like a high school linebacker, Horse tall and thin with a nervous laugh. They worked in silence, like two mechanics assembling a vintage Mustang, only the chassis was me. I could hear them muttering about cheekbones and muscle tone. "Gotta get the freckles right, she’ll notice."

After years as a ghost, suddenly having a real body again was dizzying.

My knees buckled and I grabbed the doorframe, gasping like I’d just run a marathon underwater. Every nerve was on fire. The world spun: colors too sharp, sounds too bright—a sensory slap in the face.

Disoriented, I rushed back to the world of the living and headed straight for Derek’s old house in Maple Heights.

Maple Heights hadn’t changed—a wide, winding drive, tulip beds bursting along the walk, the same lopsided flag flying by the mailbox. Somewhere nearby, a lawnmower buzzed and the air was thick with the scent of cut grass and charcoal from a neighbor’s barbecue. I sucked in the smell, feeling more alive than I’d dared in years.

But the security guard at the gate stopped me.

He was a retired cop with a mustache that could win awards and eyes that missed nothing. He sized me up like I was casing the place, radio twitching on his belt.

They said someone named Derek still lived there, but not Derek himself.

The words made zero sense—like a riddle from a bad cop show. Maybe it was the look in my eyes, or maybe the dirt smudged on my jeans from my graveyard crawl, but he softened just a touch, voice dropping.

Maybe I looked so pitiful and dirty that they took pity on me, handing me a business card and telling me to call the number on it.

He pressed a crisp card into my palm, a quiet kindness in the way he said, "Tell ’em Carter at the gate says hi. They’ll know what that means."

To find Derek, I had to put in some effort.

Google, some luck, and a couple of awkward phone calls later, I wound up navigating a lobby full of glass, chrome, and too-loud laughter. My graveyard perfume turned heads in the wrong way. Welcome to downtown, Megan. Nothing like walking into a place smelling of the past.

Eventually, I ended up at a fancy hotel downtown—apparently, an engagement party was underway.

Everything sparkled. Waiters in black vests weaved through the crowd, balancing flutes of champagne and plates of mini crab cakes. Outside, a band tuned up beneath fairy lights. The air buzzed with money and the kind of forced happiness that always made my skin itch.

But when I saw the man on the poster at the entrance, I froze.

Derek was getting engaged to someone else.

His face was there, blown up big and perfect. There he was—my Derek, forever frozen with that lopsided grin I’d once sworn was the most beautiful thing in the world. For a second, I couldn’t breathe.

Well, I’d been dead five years. It was normal for him to move on.

But still—he shouldn’t have forgotten to leave money for me.

My hands went numb. I wanted to tear down the poster or crawl inside it—anything but stand here and be invisible. I pressed my lips together, anger and disappointment tangling in my chest. Was I supposed to be just another ghost story to him? Five years, and I was already nothing but dust and old photos?

He’d never know the afterlife came with a price tag bigger than a Manhattan brownstone.

That was the cruelest joke. The price of a plot in Purgatory’s suburbs could make a hedge fund manager cry. But he’d never know. He lived in the world of grocery bills and gas prices—our worlds never aligned anymore.

Wasn’t the Callahan family loaded? Just a little from their businesses would have been more than enough for me to splurge in the afterlife.

I mean, the Callahans had their name on half the real estate in the county. What was a couple grand a year for a dead girl who never asked for more than love and a little pocket change?

I remembered how I died, trembling in pain in his arms.

My last memory: the world going fuzzy, Derek’s face hovering above mine, his eyes frantic, tears streaking his cheeks as if he could bargain with fate. He kept whispering, "Don’t go. Don’t leave me."

Derek just cried and cried, while I used my last bit of strength to get out my final words—

"Promise me—every year, don’t bring flowers. Bring cash. Dead girls still have bills."

The words tasted strange, but it was all I could manage. I’d always been pragmatic, even at the end. I wanted him to remember me—not with flowers, but something real, something that would last.

I was an orphan, dated Derek for years, never married—I was truly afraid I’d have nothing to spend after death.

I never had anyone to leave me an inheritance or cover the rent when things got rough. Derek was all I had, and when you die with nothing but a borrowed dress and a lover’s promise, you learn to hedge your bets.

Finally, when I saw him nod, I closed my eyes in peace.

That nod was everything—a promise sealed in heartbreak. I thought, for once, I’d planned ahead.

Now, just a few years later, he’d found someone new, and the dead were forgotten.

People always say time heals everything. They don’t tell you that it erases, too. The world moves on and leaves your memory in the rearview mirror.

Furious, I wanted to march inside and confront Derek, when suddenly a clear male voice sounded behind me.

"Are you looking for me?"