Jenny Longley stood in the musty front room of the house her Aunt Helen left behind in Clarendon Hills, staring at a seam of wallpaper peeling like an old wound. A week ago, she’d stood in her sleek Chicago apartment and handed Loomis Bennington his diamond ring. “Take your ambition, your lies, and your convenient affection with you,” she said.

Three days later, Aunt Helen died—peacefully, the coroner said. But the next-door neighbor swore she’d heard a scream under the full moon.

Now Jenny stood in the house, wondering if the inheritance was a gift or a curse. The outside looked like something from a ghost story—cracked white paint, wild hydrangeas browned at the tips. Inside, the air was lavender-dust and something faintly metallic. The floor creaked in ways that seemed timed with her thoughts.

It wasn’t just disrepair. It was presence.

She took leave from her editing job in Chicago. Told herself she was here to fix it up. Maybe sell. Maybe live in it. Either way, the idea felt like walking through a mirror—terrifying and magnetic.

On her second night, under a blood-orange moon, she heard whistling from the backyard.

A man was trimming the hedge line by moonlight, movements precise. His T-shirt clung to his back. When he turned, his face was cut in moon-silver shadows.

“You’re Jenny,” he said.

“Yes… and you are?”

“Kirk. Kirk Bucannon. I used to help your Aunt Helen. Yard work. Fixing things.”

There was gravity in his voice. Not sadness—depth. Jenny felt something shift in the grass beneath her feet.

***

Kirk kept showing up. Quiet. Capable. He never asked for payment.

“If you sell the place, pay me what you think it was worth,” he said.

He repaired shingles, painted shutters her aunt’s favorite blue, fixed the window that wouldn’t stay open. His presence soothed the house. The wind stopped hissing through the attic. Each fix stitched something back together—both in the house and in her chest.

One breezy afternoon, Jenny brought iced tea after they patched a chimney leak. They sat on the back steps. The moon was already visible.

“You haven’t told me much about yourself,” she said.

He shrugged. Looked at the clouds passing over the moon. “Had practice fixing things. Been around these parts off and on.” Then he glanced back. “Do you ever think about moving here?”

She looked at him, then at the moon. “Maybe. It’s quiet. And it feels… honest.”

Their hands brushed. Neither pulled away. The air rippled, as if the world inhaled.

***

As fall came, so did change.

They shared dinners by the river, sat on a big log that always felt warm.

At her house, shadows moved oddly across the walls at night. Jenny swore she heard her aunt’s voice hum when they kissed outside the half-painted guest room.

Kirk kissed like someone who had forgotten the world. Jenny kissed back like someone beginning to understand it.

But something lingered. Kirk disappeared once a month—usually under the full moon—for eighteen hours. Never said where. She never asked.

Like they often do, answers came unexpectedly.

***

A knock. Kirk’s brother, Jimmy.

“You seen my brother?” he asked.

“I haven’t today. I didn’t know he had a brother. Come in and sit. I’d love to hear more about Kirk.”

Over a beer, Jimmy told her everything—an armed robbery sixteen years ago. Kirk had taken the gun from Jimmy, told him to run. Kirk drove Jimmy’s car, the getaway car. Served fifteen years in Joliet. Still had a year left on parole. “But that don’t stop him from being a great guy,” Jimmy concluded.

Jenny’s breath caught. Kirk hadn’t told her. He’d let her fall in love in the dark.

When Kirk returned that evening, the moon was high and silver.

“Jimmy came by and we talked. You lied,” she said.

“I didn’t lie. I just didn’t tell you everything.”

“I can’t do this,” she whispered. Then she stood and pointed toward the door.

Kirk nodded and vanished into mist that hadn’t been there a moment ago.

***

Jenny stayed. The shadows deepened. The floorboards groaned again. The porch light flickered more. The attic door creaked open during a thunderless storm.

She missed him. Not just the warmth. The balance he brought.

Two weeks later, Jimmy returned.

“He saved my life,” he said. “He’s loved you since the moment he saw you. You lifted something ancient from him. But now, he’s lower than the day he got sentenced for something he didn’t do.”

That night, she found Kirk by the river sitting on a log they’d shared. The moon shimmered in the water like a second sky.

“I was scared,” she said. “One that maybe I didn’t know you like I thought. But that wasn’t mainly it. I feared what it means to really love someone—to love you. But I do.”

“I love you too,” he said. “Even the shadows fall quiet around you. I’ll never withhold anything from you.”

***

They were happy again. Their attraction stronger than ever.

Until Loomis returned near Halloween, under a crescent moon, cologne thick, designer suit sharp and a snake-like smile.

“You know you miss me,” he hissed.

Jenny laughed—cold and sharp. “What I miss is peace. If not that, straight answers.”

She only let him in far enough to stand in the hall. He flashed the diamond engagement ring. “It’s still yours,” he said smugly. “It could be real again between us.”

“I gave it back,” she said, “and I meant it. You don’t belong here. When we first got engaged, I wanted to get married—you weren’t ready. Then, when you wanted to get married, I’d seen what kind of deceitful man you were, and I wasn’t ready. Did they teach you those kinds of scheming ways in law school?”

They continued to argue. Voices grew louder. He left—steaming and humiliated. She slammed the door. He lingered on the porch like a wicked spell.

But outside, he found Kirk returning from the paint store.

“You must be the handyman,” Loomis said. “Jenny took the ring back. Said she wanted her real life again.”

Kirk froze—didn’t reply. He just turned and walked away.

***

Jenny learned the truth an hour later. Jimmy called her in a fury, told her what Loomis had said and where Kirk was heading, a long-postponed trip to Louisiana and the French Quarter.

She bolted for the airport.

The moon was swollen and red again—too low, too close.

She reached O’Hare just as Kirk’s flight to New Orleans was boarding. She ran through the terminal, pushing people aside, heart pounding.

And then—there he was.

“Kirk!” she yelled over the ambient noise.

He turned, slowly. His eyes flickered like reflections off dark water.

“It’s not true,” she panted. “Loomis lied. I threw him out. I told him I loved you.”

Kirk stared at her. “You… really?”

“I don’t want to lose you. Not to lies. Not to the moon. Not to whatever haunts us.”

He dropped his ticket. Dropped the bag. He embraced and kissed her with fire.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he whispered. “Not when the only magic I’ve ever known is you.”

***

Jenny didn’t sell the house.

The wallpaper stopped peeling. The attic door stayed shut.

And every full moon, she and Kirk sat together on the steps, watching the mist rise from the earth like breath.

Aunt Helen’s rocking chair still creaked sometimes when they kissed on the porch.

But they didn’t mind—it was Helen’s approval.

Love had wound its way through shadows, grief, and ghostly things—and stayed. Under the magic eye of the moon.