So he asked Allison if she’d seen Mr. Hall, as they all still called Emma’s dad, and when Allison reluctantly admitted that she had, he was silent for a half a block.
When Michael was silent, it didn’t mean anything in particular. It didn’t mean that he was trying desperately to think of something to say, and it didn’t mean that he was worrying about what you might say behind his back, because for the most part, he didn’t worry about that kind of thing. It didn’t mean he was really thinking about the last thing he’d asked about either, because he could slide into a segue so quickly you had to wonder if you’d heard the first part of what he said correctly.
But for the first time in years, Emma privately wished that she didn’t have the responsibility of walking him to school, because she didn’t want him to pick up the conversation from where it had left off last night. Guilt came and bit her on the backside; clearly, she hadn’t left it in the attic this morning.
“Do you think Eric saw him?”
Since this was so much better than the question she’d been dreading, Emma pounced on it. “I’m sure Eric saw him.”
“Oh. Why?”
“Everyone else did. Probably,” she added, “everyone in the waiting room. Most of them wouldn’t notice or care.”
“Until he disappeared?”
“Until then, yes.” She shrugged and added, “but they probably wouldn’t really notice that either unless they were staring right at him. People in emergency rooms are usually thinking about other things.”
Michael nodded. “But Eric?”
“Eric saw him.”
“He’s worried about you, Emma,” Michael told her.
Allison winced.
“Oh. Why? Did he say something in the car last night?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“That he was worried about you.”
Of course. This was Michael. “Did you ask why?”
“No.” He stared at her for a minute and then added, “Your father is dead. And he came to the hospital. I think most people would be worried about that.”
“I’ll talk to Eric,” she said, with feeling. She turned to Allison and added, “Did he say anything else?”
“Not very much,” Allison offered. “It was a pretty quiet car ride.”
Emma skipped English that morning. Eric also skipped English that morning. It wasn’t a coincidence; she collared Eric before he entered the class. The way she said “Can I talk to you for a minute?” would have made teachers throughout her history proud.
Eric, to give him credit, didn’t even try to avoid her. He met her eyes, nodded without hesitation, and took his hand off the doorknob. “Here, or off-site someplace?”
Off-site sounded better, but it made the chance that they’d be attending any of the rest of the morning classes a lot slimmer. Given everything, Emma reconciled herself to absence slips and parental questions and said, “Let’s go somewhere where we won’t be interrupted.” She grimaced and added, “And if I collapse again, just drive me home.”
They went to a very quiet cafe around the corner. Where around the corner meant about ten blocks away. Emma chose it out of habit, but at this time of day, almost nothing was crowded.
She took a seat by the window; a booth was at her back. Eric sat opposite her. They waited until someone came to take their order; Emma ordered a cafe au lait and a blueberry scone; Eric ordered black coffee and nothing. He glanced out the window, or perhaps at Emma’s reflection; it was hard to tell. His normal, friendly expression was completely absent. It made his face look more angular, somehow, and also older. His eyes were clear enough that she couldn’t quite say what color they were, although she had thought them brown until now.
When their order had come and the waitress had disappeared, Emma cupped her bowl in both hands and looked across the table. She took a deep breath. “Eric,” she said softly.
He was watching her. His hands were on the table, on either side of his coffee cup, and she noticed for the first time how callused they were, and how dark compared to the rest of his skin. He wore a ring, a simple gold band that she hadn’t really seen before. It looked…like a wedding ring.
“What happened last night?” she asked when it became clear that he was waiting for her. Waiting, she thought, and judging. She didn’t much care for the latter.
“What do you think happened last night?”
If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking. She forced the words to stay put, but it was hard. Instead, taking a deep breath, she said, “Something happened the other night in the graveyard. You were there.”
He said nothing.
“I don’t know if you saw—saw what I saw.” She hesitated, because it still made her queasy. “I thought you couldn’t have. Now I think you must have and that you understood it.”
“Go on.”
“But I don’t. I know that I saw my father last night.” She took another, deeper breath. “And there were two of me. You saw both. No one else in that room did. But when I touched my father, everyone saw him.” She added, “And he was cold.” She wasn’t sure why she’d said it, but she couldn’t claw the words back. “The headache has nothing to do with my falling.”
“You’re sure?”
“No. But you are.”
He picked up the coffee cup as if it were a shield. And then, over the steam rising from it, he met her eyes. “Yeah,” he said, not drinking. “I am.” He turned just his head, and looked outside. Emma watched his face in the window. “Why were you in the graveyard, Emma?”
It was her turn to look out the window, although it wasn’t much protection; their gazes met in reflections, both of them transparent against the cars parked on the curb outside. “It’s quiet there,” she said at last.
“Don’t ask me questions,” he replied, “until you’re ready to answer them.”
“I’m ready to answer them,” she said, more forcefully. “I’m not willing to share the answers because they are none of your goddamn—” She bit her lip.
He shrugged. “No, they’re not. They’re not my business.”
“But this is my business.”
“No, Emma. It’s not. I’m trying to spare you—”
“Oh, please.”
His jaws snapped shut, and his eyes—if she hadn’t been so angry, so surprisingly, unexpectedly angry, she would have looked away. But really? She had been so many things since Nathan had died. Self-absorbed. Even self-pitying. Desolate. Lonely. But furious? No. And right this second, she wanted to reach across the table and slap him. Emma had never slapped anyone in her life.
She swallowed. She picked up her bowl. Held it, to steady her hands, to keep them from forming fists. He sat there and watched.
“I was at the graveyard,” she said, words clipped so sharply they had edges, “to visit Nathan’s grave.”
“A friend?”
She laughed. It was an eruption of sound, and it was all the wrong sound. “Yeah,” she said bitterly. “A friend.”
He put his own cup down and laid his hands flat against the table. “This…is not going well. Can we start again from the beginning?”
She shrugged. She could carry any conversation; it was a skill, like math, that she had learned over the years. Sometimes she tried to teach Michael. But it was gone. Whatever it was that had made her carry pointless conversation, underpinning it with a smile and an attentive expression, had deserted her.
She tried to make herself smile. She could manage to make herself talk. “We can try.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“It doesn’t matter. If I talk about it, if I don’t. If I cry or I don’t. It doesn’t change anything.” She shook her head, bit her lower lip. Tried to make the anger return to wherever it had unexpectedly come from. It fought back. “I go there,” she added, “because it doesn’t change anything. I don’t expect him to answer me if I talk. I don’t expect to turn around in the dark of night and see him. I don’t expect him to—” She
looked across at Eric, really looked at him.
Something about his expression was so unexpected, she said, “You lost someone too?”
It was his turn to laugh, and his laughter? As wrong as hers had been. Worse, if that was possible. He turned his hands palms up on the table and stared at them for a long time.
Begin again, Emma thought. There was no anger left. What she felt, she couldn’t easily describe. But she wondered, watching him in his silence, if this was what people saw when they watched her. Because she wanted to say something to ease his pain, and nothing was there. It made her feel useless. Or helpless.
“You’re right,” he said softly. “It’s none of my business. I don’t even know why I asked.” He took a breath and then picked up his coffee. This time, he even drank some of it, although his expression made her wonder why he bothered. Which was a whole lot safer than wondering anything else at the moment.
“Can you see them?” Emma asked, trying to shoulder her part of the conversation.
“The dead?”
She nodded.
“Yeah. I can see the dead.”
“Does it help?”
He gave her the oddest look, and then his smile once again spread across his face. It made him look younger. She wanted to say it made him look more like himself, but what did she really know about him?
“No. It doesn’t help anything. It doesn’t help at all.” He paused and then said, “Did it help you?”
She nodded. Lifted her hands, palms up. “He’s my dad,” she said. “It was almost worth it—the pain. To see him again.”
He grimaced. “Don’t go there,” he said, but his voice and tone were different. Quieter. “You’re not dead. He is. Emma—” he hesitated, and she could almost see him choosing the right words. Or choosing any words—what did right mean, now? “I know the pain is bad. But you can get past it. It stops. If you can ignore it for two more days, you’ll never be troubled by the dead again.”
Thinking of Nathan’s grave, she was silent.
“Why can I see them? Is it because of—”
“Yes.” He didn’t even let her finish the question. “It’s because of that. You can see them,” he said, “and you can talk with them.” He hesitated, as if about to say more. The more, however, didn’t escape.
“And it’s only that?”
He looked out the window again. After a long pause, he said, “No.”
Emma hesitated. “I can touch them,” she said, a slight rise at the end of the sentence turning it into a tentative question.
He nodded.
“My dad—people could see him because I touched him.”
“Yes. Only because of that. If you hadn’t, he would have stayed invisible and safely dead.”
She wanted to argue with the use of the words “safely” and “dead” side by side, but she could see his point. “Can you?”
“Can I?”
“You can talk to them. You can see them. Can you touch them?”
“No.”
“Oh. Why not?”
He didn’t answer.
“Eric, why is it important to you that I—that I stop seeing the dead?”
“Because,” he replied slowly, “then I won’t have to kill you.”
EMMA BLINKED. “Can you say that again?”
“I think you heard it the first time.”
“I want to make sure I heard it the first time. Sort of.”
He merely watched her. She watched him right back. It was almost as if they were playing tennis and the ball had somehow gotten suspended in time just above the net; she wasn’t sure which way it would fly when it was released.
“Why were you at the graveyard?” she finally asked.
“I can see the dead,” he replied. “And oddly enough, there are very few dead in the graveyards of the world. It’s not where they lived,” he added, “and it’s not where they died. They’re not all that concerned about their corpses. I like graveyards because they’re quiet.”
“But—but you were with someone.”
“Yes. Not intentionally,” he added, “but yes. I expected some difficulty. I did not expect you.” He picked up his coffee again. Set it down. Picked it up.
“Eric, it’s not a yo-yo.”
And he actually smiled, although it never reached his eyes.
“What did you expect?”
“Trouble,” he finally said. “Not Emma Hall and her dog. Which she calls Petal for some reason, even though he’s a rottweiler.”
She winced. “My dad called me Sprout. Petal was a puppy when my father brought him home, and it seemed like a good idea at the time. Because of his ears. And my nickname.” She looked at Eric and said, “You were expecting me.”
“Emma—”
“You didn’t know who, but you had some idea of what.”
He shrugged.
“Why did you phone my mother? Why did you help me home? Eric, what were you planning to do in the graveyard?”
He continued to say nothing. But at length, he replied. “I watched you, in school. All of you. Amy, with her ridiculous entourage, her obvious money.”
“And her fabulous body?”
“That too. But not just Amy. Philipa. Deb. Nan. Allison. Connell and Oliver. Michael. You all have your problems, your little fights—but you also have your generous moments, your responsibilities. This may come as a surprise to you, but your thoughtless kindnesses made being in a new school a lot more pleasant.”
“Thoughtless kindness?”
“Pretty much. You do it without thinking. There’s not a lot of calculation, and I can’t see how most of it directly benefits any of you.” He paused again and then added, “I did not expect to see any one of you in that graveyard. Even when I saw you, I didn’t expect what happened.”
“If it hadn’t been me, or any of us, what would you have done?”
He looked at her for a moment and then shook his head, and something about his expression was painful to look at: not frightening, not threatening, but almost heartbreaking.
“What I should have done, I didn’t do. What I should be doing, I haven’t done. Instead, I’m sitting here in a cafe in the middle of a school day drinking coffee that isn’t very good with a confused, teenage girl.”
“Teenage girl?”
“And talking too damn much,” he added. He drained the coffee cup.
“Eric, you’re not exactly ancient, yourself.”
He laughed. It was not a good laugh. “Come on,” he said, as if the bitterness of the dregs of the coffee had transferred itself to his voice. “You shouldn’t have touched your father.” He grimaced. “Emma, understand that what I know about—about what you can do was learned only so that I could prevent most of it. I can’t tell you what you can do; I don’t want you to know. I want you to turn your back on it and walk away.”
“So you won’t have to kill me.”
“I told you you heard me.”
She managed to shrug.
“I don’t want to draw your mother into this; I don’t want to draw your friends into it, either. Usually that’s not much of a problem; most of the people who are affected by this are loners.”
“Like you?”
“Like me. You’re not. You’re tied to your life, and you take it seriously.” He looked out the window again. “I shouldn’t be talking to you, and you shouldn’t be skipping school. Let me pay for this, and I’ll drive you back.”
“Are you coming to Amy’s party tonight?”
He looked at her as if she were almost insane, and she had to admit that as a non sequitur, it was pretty damn ridiculous. “I’m probably driving you home, where you’ll sit in the dark until all this has passed. But yes, I intend to go to Amy’s.” He stood.
She stood as well. He waved the waitress over, and they had a small argument about who was paying, which Eric won by saying, “You can get the next one.”
As they were heading to his car, he asked, “Will you try?”
She
didn’t pretend to misunderstand him. “Yes.”
He nodded, as if that were the most he could expect.
Allison caught up with Emma in the lunch line-up, looking slightly anxious. “You missed English. Is anything wrong?”
Emma grimaced. “My mother has given up pretending she didn’t see my father in the hospital, if that’s any indication.”
Allison winced. “Is she okay?”
“She’s the Hall version of okay, which is to say, she’s fine.”
“What’s she going to do?”
“If I’m lucky it won’t involve joint trips to the nearest psychiatrist.” Emma paused and pointed at the macaroni and cheese, which was one of the hot meal choices. “You know what my luck is like.”
“And English?”
“I was talking to Eric,” Emma replied. She hesitated and then added, “And I’ll tell you all about it tonight. If I’m not curled up in the dark someplace whimpering.” She reached out and caught Allison’s hand; it was a gesture she’d learned to use with Michael over the years, and it meant, more or less, I’m serious, pay attention. Allison, who had also learned the same gesture, understood. “I’ll tell you everything, but you have to promise that you will do your absolute best not to worry at me.”
Allison nodded. “I’ll try.”
“I’m going to try to go to Amy’s tonight because I like having a social life, and I already told her I’d be there.”
“Michael’s going to go.”
Even the horrendous background noise that was the cafeteria didn’t disguise the utter silence that followed this statement. Michael was always invited to the larger gatherings, he just never went. Ever.
“Oliver’s going,” Allison told Emma, nudging her to get her moving. “And I think Connell might go as well.”
“How’s Michael getting there?”