Emma grimaced. “We’re going to get Maria Copis.”
“That’s the mother?”
Emma nodded. She gave Amy the address, waited until Amy had fiddled with the talking map, and then took it back.
Maria Copis lived well away from the downtown core, in a neighborhood of semi-detached homes with uniformly neat lawns and trees that had grown to a reasonable height, obscuring the boulevards. Emma looked at them as the car slowed, and Eric said, “Her mother’s house. Number sixty-two.”
“Oh.”
“Where did you think she would go?” Chase asked.
Eric took one hand off the wheel to slap his shoulder.
“No,” Emma told Eric. “It’s fair. I didn’t think.”
“Listen to Emma,” Chase told Eric. To Emma, he said, “Did you think about what you were going to say?”
When Emma didn’t answer, Chase snorted. As the car rolled to a stop, he opened the door.
“No, you don’t.” Eric grabbed his shirt. “You’re not going anywhere near that house. Emma, Allison, this is all yours.”
Emma nodded and glanced at Allison, who nodded back and opened her door. She got out first, waiting for Emma to join her. Emma’s hand was shaking on the car’s handle as she pushed the door open. She got out slowly.
I don’t want to do this.
“Emma?”
Emma glanced at Allison.
“I think we should get Michael.”
“We look more harmless without him.”
Allison said nothing, and after a moment, Emma nodded. She almost regretted it, but it bought her time. I don’t want to do this.
Allison walked over to Amy’s car as it pulled up, and after a minute, she returned with Michael. “She’s got kids,” Allison told him. “An eighteen month old and a baby. We might need you to help with them while we talk.”
Michael nodded and looked at Emma, who hadn’t moved.
Emma shook herself, took a deep breath, and started up the driveway. Yes, she didn’t want to do this.
But she couldn’t let that stop her.
As she walked, she thought of how she would feel if two strangers—of any age, any description—had shown up at her door, promising her they could take her to Nathan. Telling her that unless she believed them and went with them, Nathan would be trapped in a miniature version of hell for a long damn time.
She knew that she would stand in that door, Petal practically under her feet, staring at them as if they were either insane or unspeakably cruel. Knew, as well, that while most of her would want to slam the door in their faces, some stupid part of her would want to believe them. Not about hell, but about the necessity of her involvement.
And that part of her?
That stupid, selfish part would want to believe it because then she’d see him again. Just once. Just one more time. She could say good-bye. She could tell him she loved him. She hadn’t been able to do that. He hadn’t survived long enough for Emma to reach the hospital.
“Em?”
“Sorry.” She’d stopped walking. Wrapping her arms around herself, she started again. But she was aware, as she walked, that it was the stupid, selfish part of herself that she needed to understand here: the part that hoped in the face of the worst possible loss even when it knew all hope was pointless.
Emma approached the bright red door. Flecks of peeling paint showed that it hadn’t always been bright red, and this was exactly the type of detail she noticed when she was nervous. She cleared her throat, straightened her hands, reached for the doorbell and hesitated for just a moment.
Allison said nothing. Emma was fiercely glad that Allison was beside her; if she’d been Amy, she would have already pushed the doorbell and taken a step back. “Sorry, Ally,” she said. “I’m just—I’m not certain what to say.”
Allison nodded. Because she wasn’t, either. But she had just enough faith in Emma that Emma could push the doorbell. Heard from the wrong side of the door, the chime was tinny and electric.
They waited together, listening for the sounds of footsteps. They heard the sound of shouting instead, and it got louder until the door opened.
A woman with a red-faced child on her hip stood in the doorway, dark strands of hair escaping from a ponytail and heading straight for her eyes. She was younger than Emma’s mother; she looked as though she wasn’t even thirty. The child’s voice gave out in the presence of strangers, and she—Emma remembered the eighteen-month-old daughter—shoved a balled fist into her mouth.
“We’re sorry to bother you,” Emma said quietly, “but we’re looking for Maria Copis.”
The woman’s dark eyes narrowed slightly. “Why?”
“We’re not trying to sell anything,” Emma said quickly. “Are you Maria Copis?”
The child reached out and grabbed a handful of her mother’s hair, which took some effort, and made clear why so much of it had escaped its binding. “Don’t do that,” the woman said and, catching the perfect little fist, attempted to retrieve her hair without tearing it out. “Yes, I’m Maria Copis. As you can see,” she added, “I’m a little busy. What can I do for you?”
“We just want a—a moment of your time,” Emma replied. “I’m Emma Hall, and this is Allison and Michael. Do you mind if we come in?”
The answer was clearly yes. Maria set her daughter down inside the hall. The child immediately grabbed the edge of her mother’s shirt and tried to drag her away from the door. “I really don’t have time to talk right now,” Maria said. “Maybe you could come back when my mother’s home from work.”
“I’m afraid we won’t be here, then,” Emma told her.
Before she could answer, her daughter let go of her shirt and walked in that precarious way that toddlers do, half leaning forward as if taunting gravity. She reached the edge of the front step and pointed up—at Michael. Michael knelt instantly, putting his hands in reach, and she leaped off the step to the sound of her mother’s quiet shriek. Michael caught her, and she caught his nose. He laughed and said ouch, but not loudly enough to discourage her.
“Cathy, don’t pinch people’s noses,” her mother said.
“I don’t mind. It doesn’t hurt,” Michael told her. Cathy grabbed his ear instead, and he stood, lifting her off the ground. He also let her pull his head to the side until she was bored, which, since she was eighteen months old, didn’t take too long. She went on to discover the pens Michael sometimes carried in his pockets, when he was wearing shirts that had them. She grabbed one, and they had a little tug of war over it.
Maria Copis stood in the door for a minute, watching Michael with her daughter. Her shoulders relaxed slightly, and she glanced at the two girls, shaking her head in wonder. “She’s going through a shy phase. She won’t even let my mother pick her up.”
“Michael likes kids,” Allison said. “And they’ve always liked him. Even the shy kids.”
“I guess so.” She exhaled. “You might as well come in, then. It’s not going to be quiet,” she added. “And the place is a mess.”
The place, as she’d called it, was undeniably a mess, and they had to pick their way over the scattered debris of children’s toys just to get out of the doorway. Michael tried to put Cathy down, but she grabbed his hair. So he sat crouched in the hall, surrounded by toys that were probably hers. He picked up a stuffed orange dinosaur and tried to exchange it for his hair.
When she ignored it, Michael made baby-dinosaur noises, which was better seen than described, and Cathy laughed when the baby dinosaur tried to lick her face. Emma glanced at Maria Copis, who was watching while a smile tugged at the corner of her lips. It was a tight smile, and it faded into something else as Emma watched.
She wanted to leave, then, because she knew what the expression meant, and she hated invading this woman’s privacy—and her grief. But still, watching her daughter play with Michael was peaceful, and Emma remembered watching Michael play with Petal in just the same way. Life went on.
Some lives.
>
She let it go on for a while, because she was a coward and she still didn’t want to do this: bring up Andrew, her dead son. Add to the pain.
But Andrew was waiting, and he was waiting for his mother. Emma found courage from somewhere, and she spoke.
“I know this is going to sound bad,” she said quietly, and Maria started slightly and turned to face her. “And I want to apologize for that up front. I almost didn’t come here today.”
The woman looked confused. Not suspicious, not yet; that would come. Emma glanced at the living room, which was also mired in toys, and after a pause, she walked toward it, forcing Allison and Maria to follow. Michael, absorbed in little shrieks of laughter, would notice eventually, and even if he didn’t, Maria could still keep an eye on him if she wanted.
“What did you want to talk to me about?” Her eyes narrowed. “You’re not reporters, are you?”
“No! I mean, no, we’re not. We’re still in school,” Emma added.
“I’m sorry,” the woman replied. “The only strangers recently who’ve wanted to talk to me have been reporters. Or ambulance-chasing lawyers. And no,” she added, again looking at Michael, or more accurately, at her daughter’s face, “you really don’t look like either.”
Emma bit her lip. “We might as well be,” she replied quietly. “Because we are here to talk about your son.”
THE EASE—AND THERE HADN’T BEEN MUCH OF IT—drained out of Maria Copis’ face. What was left was raw and angry. Emma flinched, even though she’d been expecting it.
“I think,” the woman said evenly, “you’d better leave, now.” Her hands, Emma noted, were balled in fists, and they were shaking slightly.
Emma raised both of her hands, palms out. “Please, hear me out. Please. I don’t—I wouldn’t do this to you, I would not be here, if there were any other way. I lost my father a few years ago. My boyfriend died this past summer in a car crash. Both times people let me grieve in peace. They gave me privacy, and I needed it. I know just how much I’d hate me if I were in your shoes.
“Please, just let me say what I came here to say. If you—if it makes no sense to you, if you don’t believe it, we’ll leave and we will never, ever bother you again.”
The edge of anger left Maria’s dark eyes, but her hands were still clenched, still shaking. Michael, behind her, was crawling around the floor on all fours, barking like a dog.
“Your boyfriend died last summer?”
It wasn’t what Emma had expected to hear, and she flinched again, for entirely different reasons. But she swallowed and nodded.
“Were you there?”
“No. I would have been, if I could have. I went to the hospital the minute his mother called me to tell me—but none of us made it there in time.” She closed her eyes and turned her face away for a moment, remembering the industrial gloss of off-white halls and the klaxon sound of monitors in the distance. She shook herself and looked back to Maria Copis.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” the woman said quietly. As if she meant it. Her eyes were ringed with dark circles, and she lifted a hand and pushed it through her hair. No fists, now. No obvious rage.
“It was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me,” Emma replied. “And even so, I can’t imagine what it must be like for you. I can try. I can think I understand it—but I don’t.” It was hard for her to say this, because she wasn’t even certain it was true. Just one week ago, she would have said that no loss was greater, or could be greater, than the loss of Nathan. But…for just a moment, she thought Maria Copis’ loss might be.
“Why did you come here, Emma?” The question was quiet, weary.
Emma took a deep breath. “I can see the dead.”
Cathy shrieked with delight; it was the only noise in the house. It was followed by Michael’s voice. Neither of them erased the heavy weight of the words Emma had just spoken.
Maria Copis said, “Pardon me?”
“I can see the dead,” Emma repeated. She swallowed. “I know it sounds crazy. I know it sounds stupid, or worse. But I’m not pretending to be a medium or a—a whatever. I’m not going to tell you that I can reach the afterworld and put you in contact with your son, or offer to do it if you pay me. I don’t want your money, and I’ll never ask for it.”
“You…can see the dead.”
Emma nodded.
“And you’re going to tell me you’ve seen my son.”
“Not—not exactly.”
Maria Copis lifted a hand. “I’m crazy tired,” she said, and she obviously meant it. “And I’m either hallucinating, or I’ve lost my mind. I need a cup of coffee. Would either of you like one?”
“No, thank you,” Emma replied. Allison didn’t drink coffee.
“Come into the kitchen with me.”
“Should we tell Michael to follow us?”
Maria lifted a hand to her eyes and rubbed them a couple of times. “No,” she said. “My mother would call me an idiot, but—he’s not going to hurt her, and he’s not going to let her hurt herself. And this is as happy as I’ve seen her since—since. She deserves to play in peace while he’s willing to play with her.” She turned and walked into the kitchen, and, stepping around toys, Emma and Allison followed her.
She made coffee in silence, opening the various cupboards to find filters, coffee, and a cup. She kept her back to Emma and Allison the entire time, grinding beans first and then letting coffee percolate. When it was done, and when she’d added cream and sugar to the cup in very large amounts, she turned to them, leaning her back against the kitchen counter as if she needed the support.
“So. You two can see the dead.”
“Oh, no,” Allison said quickly. “Just Emma.”
Maria’s eyes reddened, and she bit her lip. She rubbed her eyes again with the palm of her hand. Emma looked at the floor, because it was hard to look at someone whose grief was so raw and so close to the surface she was like a walking wound.
Hard because Emma had been there. Had hidden it, as much as she could, because she needed to hide it. She’d told everyone she was fine—everyone except Petal, because Petal couldn’t talk. When Maria Copis spoke again, however, Emma looked up.
“So, Emma, you can see the dead. But you haven’t seen my son.”
Emma grimaced. “Not yet.”
“And you’re trying to see him for some reason?”
“No.” She swore softly. “Yes.”
“Which is it?”
“Yes. We’re trying to see your son.” Emma spread her hands, again exposing her palms. “I—I heard you,” she whispered. “From midtown, I heard you shouting his name. Drew.”
Maria stiffened.
“And I followed it. The shouting. It was—” Emma took a deeper breath. “I’m sorry. Let me try this again. I can see the dead. Some of the dead are strong enough that I can see where they are. Or where they were when they died. Some of the dead are strong enough that they think they’re still there, and I can see and feel what they see and feel.”
Maria put the coffee cup down on the counter and folded her arms across her chest, drawing them in tightly.
“I could hear the shouting while I was in school, and I followed it, while a friend drove and took my lousy directions. When we finally got to Rowan Avenue, I tried to go into what was left of the house. I couldn’t. Fire was gouting out the windows.”
“There’s no fire there now,” Maria said.
“No. In theory there wasn’t any fire when I went, either. No one else could see it,” she added quietly, “because no one else can see the dead. Only me. It singed my hair.
“I didn’t know who was trapped in the house. I only knew that the fire was recent because it looked recent, and the buildings were still standing. I went home, because I couldn’t get into the building, and I looked the address up, because I hoped it would tell me what had happened or what was happening.” She swallowed. “And when I read his name—Andrew—I realized that the shouting I’d heard wasn’t his. It was
yours.”
Maria lifted a hand to her face for just a moment. When she dropped it, she wrapped her arm around herself again. She didn’t speak.
Emma did. “He could hear you. He could hear you shouting. He still can.
“He thinks the house is burning. I couldn’t get to him because I couldn’t get through the fire, not then. So, no, I haven’t seen your son.”
Silence.
“I am trying to see your son,” Emma continued, her voice thickening, “because I think he’s trapped in the burning building. I’m not even sure we can safely get into the building; I’m not sure if we can reach wherever he’s standing. But I have to try. And I came to you because—” She couldn’t say it. She couldn’t say the rest of the words. She turned to Allison, and Allison was blurry, which was a bad sign. Emma Hall didn’t cry in public.
Allison caught her hands and squeezed them, and Allison saved her.
“We think,” Allison told Maria Copis, “that Andrew won’t—or can’t—come out of that building if you’re not there. He’s waiting for you,” she added quietly. “He has no idea that he’s dead.”
And there it was. When Emma could see again, when she could see clearly—or as clearly as she was going to be able to see—she could see the hunger in Maria Copis’ eyes as plainly as if it were her own. She could see the suspicion, as well; she could see the way Maria’s expression shifted as she tried to figure out what their angle was. What they wanted.
As if to quell those suspicions, she walked to the edge of the kitchen and glanced out into the hall where Michael was still playing with her toddler. She stood there for minutes, and then, arms still tightly wound around her body, she turned back.
She was crying now, but she didn’t raise her hands to wipe the tears away; they fell, silent, down gaunt cheeks. “Why should I believe you?” she whispered.
This, too, Emma understood. But she could do something about this. She lifted one hand, and she whispered a single name. Georges.
In the air before Emma, a golden chain extending from the palm of her hand to his heart, Georges shimmered into existence. The sunlight through the kitchen windows shone through his chest, casting no shadows. But he looked at Emma almost hopefully, and she cringed.