Re: Dietre A./Hugh C.: On the patio
Dietre answered Hugh’s smile with a faint one of his own. “Thank you, Hugh.” It was good to be understood, to not be shamed for his grief. How did Hugh always seem to know the right things to say? He really wasn’t that much older than him, yet he was so worldly. Maybe it had something to do with being an actor, playing many roles must teach you some life experiences, even if it's only pretend.
Following Hugh’s example, Dietre set his glass on the bedside table and adjusted his position to lay down beside the other man. “I used to want to see him,” he confessed. “But that’s changed…” It was hard to face Liam feeling like he’d failed him repeatedly. In life as well as in death, Dietre had been as good as useless to Liam. Ghosts were temperamental beings, they seemed to lack the logic of the living. Dietre worried that Liam’s spirit would begin to begrudge him for his inability to help. Angry ghosts were quite unpleasant indeed.
“Um… He first came to me a year ago.” He thought for a moment, “About this time, actually.” He remembered it had been spring. Maybe it had been sometime this month even. “I don’t know how long he’d been dead before he came to me, though. I hadn’t spoken to him for a year before that. So… It’s been two years since I last saw him alive.” Two years and he still wasn’t quite over it. With everything that happened in his life in the last two years, you’d think he’d had forgotten him by now. Maybe it's impossible to forget the first person you really cared about.
“...I do feel better having told you about him. I didn’t have anyone I could talk to about this before.”