Goodnight Blackbird

a novel

by Joseph Iorillo

Copyright ©2014 Joseph Iorillo. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the author. Digital formatting by Christine Filipak.

Print edition ISBN-13: 9781502755155

Visit Joseph Iorillo online:

www.JosephIorillo.com

Contents

Acknowledgments

Part I: Stigmatized Properties

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Part II: Love Don't Live Here Anymore

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Part III: The Clearing

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

About the Author

More From Monolith Graphics

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to my family, particularly my mother and father; Jim Dolwick; Kelly Misch; William Piotrowski; and especially Joseph Vargo and Christine Filipak, who have done more for my writing career than anyone, and who have always worked tirelessly to help numerous struggling writers and artists, asking nothing in return. No gratitude is adequate.

PART I

Stigmatized Properties

ONE

Darren Ciccone noticed the woman as soon as he walked into the Starbucks. It was hard not to notice her—she was attractive in an upscale businesswoman sort of way, and they were the only customers in the place.

They both seemed to be waiting for someone.

Darren was waiting for Laurie, who said she'd be there at nine. His watch said 9:46. You didn't need to be a cryptographer to crack this code. He'd been stood up. He caught a reflection of himself in the rain-speckled window—Portrait of a Man All Too Familiar With Being Stood Up.

For a while he and the businesswoman performed a prosaic ballet: he'd go to the window and stare out at the cold April rain and the desolate mall parking lot, then he'd sit down and the woman would take his place, searching the rain. Maybe she'd been stood up too.

Since there wasn't a pay phone in the store, it took some coaxing—and a few dollars in the tip cup—before he could convince one of the twentysomething baristas to let him use her cell phone. Before she handed it over, though, her eyes flicked over his wool topcoat and silver tie with incomprehension. "How can you not have a cell phone?" she asked. "Are you Amish?"

"No. Just unpopular."

Laurie answered on the second ring. "Where are you? Darren, I've been waiting almost an hour."

"Where?"

"The Starbucks on Richmond Road, like you said."

"I said the Starbucks at Richmond Mall." She was about a mile north, next to the McDonald's at the Richmond Road-Highland Road intersection.

Laurie laughed—a delicious, wholesome sound. She was a senior at Cleveland State and worked at her dad's pizza joint around the corner from Darren's office. She could make grown men go giggly just by giving them a soft drink and her heartbreaking smile. And, miraculously, her face lit up like a Broadway marquee whenever Darren came in the restaurant. It had been a while since a woman had that reaction to him. "Our bad luck continues," she said. "This place is gonna close in a couple minutes, so maybe we better just call it a night. I have an eight o'clock class tomorrow morning, anyway."

"I'm really sorry about this."

"Not your fault. But you know whose fault it is."

Darren had once made the mistake of mentioning to her what had happened at his house back in 2002. Now she couldn't let it go. "The house is not haunted," he said.

"I heard the hesitation in your voice, Darren."

"You only heard disappointment in not being able to see you tonight." He received the expected awwww and Darren told her he'd call her tomorrow.

So he hadn't been stood up. But that was almost preferable to what seemed to be behind this ongoing comedy of miscommunications. This was supposed to be their first date (actually what he would have termed a pre-date—an hour at a coffee shop wasn't exactly dinner at the Ritz), but it was their third attempt to make it happen.

When Darren called her from his house last week, the phone as well as all the lights in the place went dead just as he was in the middle of the sentence, "Listen, what do you think about having dinner at this Mexican place on University Circle?" Hours later, he was finally able to get hold of her again and make definite plans, but she had to cancel a couple days later. One of the waitresses at the pizza place had come down with the flu and Laurie's dad needed her to fill in. (Gallantly, Darren showed up that evening to pick up a sausage pizza and give Laurie a long-stemmed rose. Her thousand-watt smile and cry of "Oh, that is just so sweet!" were damn near narcotic.) Then, yesterday, she had called him at home to ask him out for coffee. But the line was so choked with static they could barely make out what the other was saying. Tonight's mix-up was more or less inevitable.

Aside from those two instances with Laurie, Darren's phone had never had problems like that before.

When he left the coffee shop, he saw that the businesswoman was now standing outside under the Starbucks awning. It was raining harder. Rumbles of thunder provided an uneven bass line to the treble hiss of the rain, and Darren stood next to her, trying not to shiver. April in Cleveland was usually as cold as November.

The woman wore a rueful half-smile and appeared to be looking at the tall power pole at the corner of the parking lot.

"Waiting for someone?" Darren asked.

Several long seconds passed before she answered. "I'm not really sure."

He was about to dash for his car but the woman intrigued him. Her Donna Karan suit was getting a bit wet but she didn't seem to care. "You having car problems or something?" Darren asked. "I got cables in my trunk."

"No, I'm fine." She glanced at him then averted her eyes, looking embarrassed. Again, she went back to studying the power pole. "I think lightning's going to hit that," she said.

"What makes you say that?"

"Someone told me."

Over the last hour or so, Darren had seen the sky flicker only a couple times with half-hearted lightning. It wasn't that kind of storm. In fact, it really wasn't a storm at all. "Five bucks says you're wrong."

A minute went by. Then two. Darren felt ridiculous and was about to hurry off to his car when the sky briefly flickered and a jagged bullwhip of lightning shot out of the sky and crashed into the transformer atop the power pole. The crack of the whip sounded like a ten-kiloton bomb going off. The ground shook, and Darren almost jumped out of his shoes. The transformer erupted into a sizzling, drooling confetti burst of white and yellow sparks. Car alarms wailed, the lights in the coffee shop and the adjacent movie theater winked out, and the baristas came out to look at the impromptu fireworks display.

Darren stared at the businesswoman. "How did you know that was going to happen?"

The woman shrugged. She still wore the serene, somewhat sad smile, but she no longer seemed to be a mild, waiting trance. She looked around. "Guess it's time to go. Christ, I should've brought an umbrella."

Darren nodded at the handful of cars in the lot, sitting there like stray, helpless cattle caught in a downpour. "Which one is yours?"

"Silver Camry. The one about a thousand miles away."

It was about six rows beyond Darren's Accord, which was a good twenty-five yards away. "Wait here. I'll bring my car to the curb, then drive you over. You'll only get partially drenched."

"You don't have to do that—"

"Wait here." He hustled to his car, trying without much success to avoid the puddles. It took him a few wet seconds to dig his keys out of his pocket. He pulled his Honda up close to the Starbucks and heaved open the passenger door.

The woman hesitated before climbing in. "How do I know you're not another Ted Bundy?"

"You're the one who can control the weather. I think I have more to fear from you."

Once in the car, she smiled. "Sir Walter Raleigh in the flesh. Thank you." There were a couple paperbacks on the floor that she had to move out of the way. She looked at their titles with curiosity—Encyclopedia of the Supernatural and Ghosts, Poltergeists and Other Visitors From Beyond. Now it was the woman's turn to study him with interest.

The transformer was still sparking and smoking. Ozone-fragrant air wafted in through the car's vents. Darren was still shaken from the lightning strike. It was easy to understand how primitive man would have interpreted something like that as the accusatory finger of a spiteful god. "How did you know that was gonna happen?" he asked. "Tell me."

"It's not important." She was looking at the back cover of one of the books. "I have this one, too. Haven't read it yet."

It occurred to Darren that this was the first time he'd had a woman in his car since his divorce. It gave him a silly little thrill, like he was once again a normal member of the species, upwardly mobile and out on the town with his significant other. "They haven't been particularly helpful," he said.

"Helpful how? Do you have a ghost problem?"

He pulled up next to her Camry. "I'm not saying anything. You won't tell me how you can control the weather."

She had her hand on the door handle but she remained where she was. "Believe it or not, it came to me in a dream," she said.

Darren sensed the woman was looking at him expectantly, waiting for him to talk about his ghost problem. For some reason he felt like she would understand. He stared off through the windshield as the wipers slapped away the rain—moments of clarity alternating with moments of misty, fragmented confusion.

His house was a problem, no getting around that. It was the ostensible reason for the divorce and now it seemed to be waging a low-grade guerrilla war on his painfully embryonic post-divorce love life.

The irony was that he had taken a cheap, ghoulish pride in the place at first. When he brought up the house in conversation, it was always a juicy bit of attention-getting gossip: Speaking of housing values, try to top the deal I got. Two-story colonial, two bedrooms, one-and-a-half baths, ninety-eight grand in a neighborhood where the cheapest place was going for one-fifteen. All it took was being the site of a massacre. Bank just wanted to get rid of it. I didn't even have to pay closing costs.

When people asked him if he'd seen any ghosts, he told them the truth—no, he hadn't seen any. No gossamer mist, no Jacob Marley dragging his ectoplasmic chain.

But ghosts don't have to be seen to be present, he supposed.

It wasn't just the stuff with the phone. One morning last July he woke up in a bedroom so cold he could see his breath. There was also the night back in January when he came home late from work and from the driveway saw the light on in the spare bedroom. When he went upstairs, though, the light was off.

And there were the rose petals. One morning last November he found a handful of rose petals in his bathroom sink. Occasionally he'd find them sticking to his clothes.

"Do you remember someone named Jerry McAvoy?" Darren asked the woman.

"Sounds familiar. But I don't know why."

"In November 2002 he lost his job as a salesman at Shearson-Copley, a company that made electrical components for forklifts. He went home and put a bullet in the heads of both his wife and teenage daughter, then shot himself in a corner of the dining room, where I have a shelf full of books. You can still feel the spot where they filled in the bullet hole in the drywall with putty."

He continued to stare out at the rain, but he could still feel the woman looking at him. "I think," Darren said, finding the words difficult, "there might be something wrong with my house."

The woman held out her thin hand. "Jacqueline," she said.

"Darren."

"A poet once wrote that there are two kinds of ghosts. The ones who are here to suffer and the ones who are here to teach. Do you know which one you have?"

"I don't know. Which kind should I be scared of?"

The woman appeared to consider the issue. "The ones who teach."

She slipped out of the car and into the rain. The transformer smoldered sullenly, spitting the occasional spark. Darren watched as the headlights on her Camry came to life. She raised her hand to him in farewell, then pulled out. The car's taillights grew smaller and smaller until they dissolved in the rain.

Darren assumed he would never see the woman again.

TWO

"So this is it," Laurie said, "the House on Haunted Hill."

1661 Shadeland wasn't on a hill, it was at the end of a cul-de-sac in Lyndhurst, a middle-class Cleveland suburb whose only virtue, Darren believed, was that it was five minutes from his office in Mayfield Heights. He pulled into his driveway as Laurie pressed her face close to the passenger side window like a little girl getting her first look at the Magic Kingdom.

Darren had to shade his eyes against a spectacular setting sun. It was the beginning of May, the weather was perfect, Laurie was here and he was feeling good. Even his house looked like it was feeling good. The sun turned the western windows a blazing, welcoming gold, and the recently mowed lawn was immaculate (if a bit brown in places). Darren hoped the house would behave itself tonight. He was about eighty-five percent sure it would. There hadn't been any disturbances since the phone incidents two weeks ago, and the more he thought about them the more he could write them off as minor electrical glitches—nothing more.

Like any girl raised on a steady diet of PG-13 horror flicks, however, Laurie was hoping for some good, old-fashioned supernatural fireworks. Last week they had had a fine time on their first date—En Fuego, a four-star Mexican place downtown—but for their second date, Laurie had insisted on cooking him dinner at his house. She wanted to "feel the cold spots" first-hand.

Darren toted the bag of groceries while Laurie carried the two-liter bottle of root beer (she didn't drink alcohol) and the box of pastries. She lingered on the front lawn, looking up at the bland, clean lines of the house, its bland white siding, its utterly vanilla architectural character. In fact, the house's character was defined by its sheer lack of character. 1661 looked like one of the tiny plastic houses that came with every Monopoly board. There were clones of 1661 on every suburban street in every city and town of America. Some homeowners would try to jazz things up with a deck in the back or premium decorative shutters from Home Depot, but the effect would always be like Donny Osmond trying to cover an Aerosmith tune. Nothing would ever disguise the drab Willy Loman soul of a house such as 1661.

In a strange sort of way, it was one of the things Darren found endearing about the place. He nodded at the front picture window which was almost totally obscured by a large evergreen bush that reached up past the roofline. "Know what really sold me on the place?" he said. "Aside from the price? That bush. It looks like the house is holding it up in front of its face, hoping no one notices it. Like it's bashful."

Laurie's grin made the sunset seem dark and insipid by comparison. "If my hands weren't full I would seriously hug you right now."

He held the screen door open for her. "Après vous, mademoiselle."

Darren gave her the nickel tour, which took all of two minutes. She oohed and ahhed from time to time, too goodhearted to comment on how threadbare his couch and chairs were, how dusty his vertical blinds were. Then she commandeered the kitchen and told him to stay out of her way.

Watching Laurie whip up some chicken parmigiana and grilled squash while listening to her running commentary on fifteen different subjects at once, Darren felt—not for the first time—that disorienting moral pang that comes from being with a substantially younger woman. In three years he would be forty; six months ago, Laurie hadn't been old enough to order a chocolate martini.

"—and I'm actually glad I won't be graduating until next December," Laurie she was saying, bouncing from pot to pan to cupboard, "because even in a good economy, how employable are psych majors? I am so not anxious to end up waiting around for a temp agency to call. You are so lucky to be where you are."

Writing press releases for an aerospace components company that was barely solvent wasn't exactly the height of worldly success, but Darren supposed it was all a matter of perspective. He grated the parmesan and took a swig of root beer. "Does my age bother you at all?"

"How do you know I don't like older men?" She said it with a half-comic sauciness that was far too adorable to be sexy. Laurie sliced the squash with rapid-fire efficiency. She was blushing. "You know, you were the only one of the lunchtime crowd who didn't act all pompous and loud, like the insurance company guys, or try to hit on me all the time. I appreciated that. But it sure took you long enough to ask for my number." She stirred the squash in the sizzling skillet, adding a pinch of garlic. "You are going to love this. My dad will sometimes make this at the restaurant for his lunch but he never puts it on the menu."

Darren was doing sad, morbid arithmetic in his head. Laurie had been born in 1988. He wondered if she'd even heard of Jackson Browne. For her Elton John was probably just the old guy who did the Lion King song.

"How long were you married?" Laurie asked suddenly.

Darren set two places at the little dining room table. "Two years. Divorced for three."

"You said you split up because of this house?"

"Oh Lord, let's talk about something more interesting. Like the results of my last colonoscopy."

"I'm just curious. I told you my dark secret of stealing my mother's Vicodin, remember?"

Darren smiled, thinking how best to sum up the end of his marriage without turning it into the kind of bitter, depressing rant better reserved for a therapist's office. "We were living in an apartment, saving our money for a place. Annika really wanted this big old arts-and-crafts-style house out in Wickliffe near her family. I hated it. Smelled like a wet dog. And it was about twenty grand more than this place. I liked this house. Neither of us would budge. She was getting her Master's and didn't have a job and I was doing the financial heavy lifting for the two of us, so I felt my decision should carry more weight. Not very chivalrous of me, I know."

Laurie said nothing.

"Annika could not believe I would want to live in a house where...." His eyes instinctively went to the bookcase in the corner of the tiny dining room. Behind the massive leatherbound collected works of Shakespeare was the dimple in the drywall where the final .45 slug had ended up seven years ago after exiting Jerry McAvoy's skull. "She moved out the day I made an offer on this place," Darren said.

Laurie quietly filled their plates with food. Darren was overcome with the need to soften the picture he had just painted of himself—the sick, cruel spouse who wanted to force his wife to live in the Amityville Horror. "Remember, this was years before the housing market crashed," he said. "There weren't a whole lot of affordable places out there. Definitely nothing this decent at such a low price. The monthly payment on this place is about a hundred dollars less than it would have been on the house Annika wanted. Money does matter. Especially when you don't have a lot of it."

"Maybe it wasn't the money that appealed to you about the house. Maybe it was just a way to be done with Annika without bearing the responsibility for ending it yourself."

"Ouch. The doctor is in."

"Oh God, I can't believe I said that out loud. I'm so sorry—"

He laughed. She was beyond adorable. He kissed her on the forehead and told her to eat.

They talked for more than two and a half hours. They talked about her job at her dad's restaurant, about her potential life after college, about a dozen other things. By ten-thirty, he began clearing the table and rinsing off the dishes, figuring he would impress Laurie's parents by getting her home just past eleven. When he felt Laurie's hand linger on the small of his back as she put her plate in the sink, however, he sensed that maybe she had other ideas. She took her coffee and went into the living room. Darren put the dirty silverware in the dishwasher, feeling a satisfying glow inside. This was the way life was supposed to feel.

"You really ought to get some pictures and stuff to put on the walls," Laurie called out. "When I get my own place I'm gonna blow up some of these black and white pictures I took of Glacier National Park. When my parents took me and my sister last year. The photos actually turned out really good."

"You're into photography?" Darren poured himself some coffee and was about to reach for the sugar bowl when Laurie shrieked. It was the most startling sound he had ever heard. It was the sound of raw, atavistic terror—the sound that welled up when you were suddenly face to face with something repulsive and threatening and irrational on a scale that exceeded what your mind could handle. The horror in her voice was so intense it was contagious: Darren's heart rate leapt into a throbbing, adrenalized overdrive and he felt chilled to the core, as if he had stepped into a vortex of supercooled air.

He charged into the living room to see Laurie standing in front of the couch, her eyes wide and staring at the far wall, her hands up by the sides of her face and twisted into tarantula-shaped claws, as if she were about to shred her cheeks open. Her coffee cup lolled on the carpet by her feet in a small puddle of Taster's Choice.

"Oh my God oh my God," she said. "Oh God."

Darren saw nothing out of the ordinary. There was the couch, the sagging armchair, the coffee table, the cheapo pressed wood entertainment center with all its chips and nicks. Nothing else. Darren felt nothing else, sensed nothing else. The living room was the same as it had always been.

"What is it? What did you see?"

He touched her on the elbow. Laurie recoiled as if Darren had jabbed her with a needle, her eyes still riveted to the blank wall behind the La-Z-Boy recliner. Darren followed her eyes but saw nothing. Just a chair; just a wall.

"Laurie, what is it? What did you see?"

"I want to go home. Please. Take me home. I have to go home."

"Laurie—"

Her hands shook as she grabbed her purse. "Take me home, please," she said, her voice turning shrill.

In the car, she would not tell him what she saw. He pulled into the empty parking lot of a strip mall and held her hand and begged her to calm down and just tell him what happened. This only made things worse. She began to weep and yell at him, demanding that he just drive, just take her home now. She would not look at him. She stared straight ahead, breathing loudly through her nose. She was nearly hyperventilating. She held her purse primly in her lap in two white-knuckled fists.

She did not say goodbye. When she yanked open the front door of her parents' house, she did not look back at him.

A grim scrapbook of the following week:

Several unreturned phone calls, several plaintive voice mails, hi Laurie, please call me back, let's at least talk about this.

Two visits to Pizza Italia—during the first one, she saw him and slipped out of sight into the kitchen. Another waitress took his order. Laurie's father watched him from behind the register, his expression unreadable but not exactly brimming with hospitality. For a moment Darren could almost see himself the way her dad must see him: desperate and borderline creepy, way too old and worn for a girl whose life was made up of final exams and iTunes downloads.

During the second visit Darren wouldn't let her avoid him. When her shift was over and she walked outside, he was right there. The wincing expression on her face told him that this meeting was about as pleasurable to her as gum surgery.

"Why won't you talk to me?" Darren said. His attempt to keep a wheedling, annoyed tone out of his voice was unsuccessful. "We need to talk about this. What happened that night?"

She shut her eyes. "Look. I just don't want to talk about it. I just think... that we probably shouldn't, you know, hang out anymore. I'm sorry."

He recalled the lingering feel of her hand on his back that night. It had meant something. He could have sworn that it had. "This doesn't make any sense. Why are you treating me this way? Can you at least answer me that?"

"Darren." She rubbed her forehead as if she felt the onset of a migraine. She was avoiding his eyes, preferring instead to watch the traffic go by on Wilson Mills Road. "I just don't think we should keep seeing each other." More firmness in her voice now. The subject was closed.

He didn't know what else to say, so he said, "All right." What could he say? She was completely shut off to him now. He was old enough to know when to cut his losses. He was about to head back to his car when she spoke again.

"I just had some time to think about it. And I think you're right, the age difference is kind of a problem."

"It wasn't a problem before."

"You just..." she began, staring at the ground and shaking her head. She seemed to be on the verge of leveling with him, but then she pressed her lips firmly together and the hard, unreadable glaze came over her eyes again. "You need to get out of that house," she said finally.

"Laurie, just tell me what you saw."

"I've got to go."

She hurried off to her old Chevy Cavalier, leaving Darren more confused than ever. Within hours the confusion gave way to an all-too-familiar, low-grade sense of mourning—for another lost opportunity, for another bungled shot at the ordinary sort of happiness that came so easily to most people but for him always seemed to be a little out of reach.

It was the second week of May, and his life settled once again into its usual pattern of work and microwave dinners in front of the TV. Since that evening with Laurie there had been no further incidents at his house. It was as if whatever monster she had glimpsed had gone dormant, sated for now.

The only thing out of the ordinary that occurred that week was an e-mail sent to his workplace account from someone named Jacqueline Prentiss. It said: So, have you decided? One who suffers or one who teaches?

THREE

Jacqueline Prentiss had a secret.

Actually, she had several—and this fact surprised her, given how guileless and aboveboard her life had been for so long. The life of a one-dimensional girl. One time in high school it got back to her that a few of the guys thought she was an airhead despite her good grades. A naïve, sweetly smiling airhead who said little in class because she had little to say. At the time Jacqueline—then known as Jackie—was outraged. Just because someone's shy doesn't mean she's stupid, she'd wanted to say. But in retrospect she had to admit that they were right. She had no depth. She didn't read the newspaper, she didn't know why America fought the Vietnam War. She read teen magazines and thought endlessly about boys. She was honest and simple. And of course she had no secrets. Simple people never did. Secrets implied complexity, nuance, a palette of unorthodox tints. Simple people painted their lives in broad strokes of primary colors.

But with time comes nuance. Now she had become a keeper of secrets.

One such secret was now printed on her new batch of business cards, some of which were stowed in her purse. Jacqueline LaPierre—her maiden name. When she pulled into her driveway in Beachwood and saw Kevin's Lincoln Navigator already there, she made a plan to keep her purse out of Kevin's sight tonight. He was known to occasionally root around in her purse for gum, for loose change, for tissues. If he happened upon one of the cards and saw that she had jettisoned his last name he would be hurt. He wouldn't show it, of course. Kevin would be detached, analytical and understanding to a fault. Well, it's to be expected, he would say. We're separated, you're trying to establish a new identity, and you want your work life to be fully separate from me, from everything that came before. But it would hurt him, and even if it was just the equivalent of a pinprick, it would still hurt. The fact that he kept showing up like this meant that he was not trying to separate his life from hers, from everything that came before.

He stood next to the SUV, hands in the pockets of his Dockers, looking pensive and a little nervous. He always did nowadays whenever they were together. Jacqueline sensed that it was her increasingly erratic lifestyle that was making him uneasy.

"What's up?" she asked. She gathered her pile of folders from the front seat.

"You work late and still bring work home. You'll be running that place soon."

At Datascape Market Research, she wrote studies about a dozen different industries. Whenever the CEO of an office supplies company gave a PowerPoint presentation saying that demand for felt tip pens was expected to increase two percent over the next five years, he invariably used information compiled by someone like Jacqueline. It wasn't a glamorous job, and she wasn't raking in the money the way Kevin was—he was part of the in-house legal team for Stratus Chemical downtown—but she was getting by, although Kevin still paid the mortgage.

"How come you didn't wait inside?" she asked. "You still have your key, don't you?"

Kevin nodded, not looking at her. Of course he wouldn't wait inside. It was a dumb question, now that she thought about it.

"Just came by to see if you wanted to go to Leslie's party tomorrow," Kevin said. Leslie was Kevin's sister, and her daughter Claire would be nine years old tomorrow. "Last week you said you'd think about it."

"I said I'd get back to you if I wanted to go." She let them into the house and Kevin stood by the kitchen table while she poured herself a glass of iced tea. He declined the pitcher when she held it out to him.

"So, you're saying no."

"I'm not up to it, Kevin, I'm sorry."

"It's just that Leslie hasn't seen you in months. Claire kind of misses you too. She asks about you—"

"She's not going to notice one missing adult. She'll be busy with her friends." Jacqueline put a Lean Cuisine French bread pizza in the microwave. Did he really think she wanted to spend four hours in the high-pitched chaos of a kids' party? Did he really want to be there himself? Jacqueline knew he loved children but why did he want to put himself smack dab in the middle of situations that would only inflame that old phantom pain?

Kevin said nothing for a long time. Then: "Last weekend you blew me off when I asked if you wanted to grab lunch somewhere. I guess I'm getting a little frustrated here. It's like I don't quite know where I stand with you. If you want me to buzz off completely, maybe it would be better if you just came right out and told me."

"You chose to move out," Jacqueline reminded him.

"I moved out because I couldn't take living in this house anymore. After what happened anyone could understand that. I wasn't leaving the marriage."

"It amounts to the same thing."

"No, it doesn't. I wanted to get a new place. I still do. Hell, if you like this neighborhood so much we can just buy a place down the street. I just can't be here."

"I understand that."

"So explain to me a couple things. Can you do that?"

"Okay," Jacqueline said.

"First, why are you so distant from me? Are you trying to get back at me for moving out?"

"I'm not trying to get back at you for anything. Believe it or not, sometimes I just want to spend some time alone."

"Spend some time alone here," Kevin said.

"Here, out taking a walk, out at the museum, the mall. What difference does it make?" She sat down on the couch in the living room. The couch faced the large sliding glass door to the patio and the thirty-foot pool, a dingy, debris-dotted, white-tiled hole in the ground that hadn't held water for six years. It was like the gaping burial vault for some enormous monster that had not yet died.

"Are you involved with someone?" Kevin asked.

Jacqueline stared at him. "Where did that come from?"

Kevin's expression was sharp. He seemed to be steeling himself for her answer.

"No, Kevin, I'm not seeing anyone."

"You'd just rather sit around here instead of having anything to do with me."

"I'm not always here. I just told you." The microwave oven chirped. She went into the kitchen with Kevin trailing behind her, a grim shadow.

"Actually, you do seem to be here all the time," Kevin said. "Every time I drive by here, your car is here."

"Are you watching me? Good God, why would you do that?"

"Because I'm trying to figure out why you love this damned house more than me. Why you won't leave it. You go to work, then you come back here. Work, then here. You shut everyone else out. I guess I'm relieved—it's not just me you're trying to blow off. It's Leslie, it's Claire, it's everyone."

She stared at the meager pizza in front of her, her appetite vanishing. "Kevin, it's been a long day."

"If you're going through another... if this is like the depression you had...." He sat down at the kitchen table across from her. "I just wish you'd tell me. Because you do know how this appears to everyone, don't you? Your refusal to even consider selling this place... it's like you're punishing yourself, rubbing your nose in what happened."

"Maybe I like the house. Have you ever considered that?" The stridency in her voice surprised her. It seemed to surprise Kevin as well.

"Then we'll get one just like it. I saw one for sale on Belwood a couple blocks away. Same kind of ranch, but it had an attached garage. Bigger lot, too. How about that?"

Jacqueline said nothing.

"You're not making any sense at all," Kevin said. "I offer to get us a better house, but you don't want that. It's irrational."

"And maybe I think your inability to stick it out here is pretty damned irrational. Do you think if we just pick up and move to some other house the bad memories will magically disappear?"

"No, but I think it's healthier than living in a goddamned crime scene." His voice was hoarse, close to breaking. He stood up and raked a hand through his thinning hair. For a moment he looked at the pool—the scene of the crime—before returning his gaze to Jacqueline. His face was puffy and lined, and there were more than a few grey hairs at his temples. The double chin that he sometimes got when he grimaced now seemed to have become a permanent feature on his face. (Or maybe there was just so much more to grimace about.) A small part of her wanted to touch his face and comfort him. He was growing older, his wife was fading away from him and the life he had envisioned for himself fifteen years ago was dissolving all around him like a sand castle at high tide.

It would have been so easy to get up, take him in her arms and tell him okay, let's start again.... The look of relief and hard-won joy in his eyes would have been heart-rending.

But she couldn't bring herself to do it. His wife may have been fading away from him, but Kevin was fading away from her as well, like a man standing on a pier as a ferry spirited her away. The affection she felt for him was morphing into something lukewarm and, at best, sisterly. It wasn't a deliberate choice on her part, but at some point during the separation Kevin had stopped feeling like home to her.

He stood by the stove, his back to her. "I don't suppose you've given any more thought to what we talked about last month."

Jacqueline wished she had taken some aspirin before coming home. "Kevin. I don't want to have another baby. And I'm not sure you do, either."

"Do you think I keep bringing it up just to fill time between the awkward silences? I'm serious about it."

"I think you just want to paper over Michelle." She said this as gently as she could but she knew it was going to hurt him anyway. Everything she said or did nowadays seemed to hurt him—like little inadvertent slices with a razor blade. "I think when it comes to having children, you should want to have them rather than need to have them."

"What does that mean?"

"Sometimes I see you looking at families in a restaurant or on the street. You have this desperation in your eyes. To find some way to get back what you—what we—lost." She had the image of a gambler who's lost his shirt at the tables and can't sleep, obsessed with getting back to the casino floor to try to win it all back. "I don't think that's the best frame of mind to be in when it comes to having children."

"I didn't realize all your time alone here has given you the ability to read minds and provide dime-store psychological insights."

"Kevin—"

"No, you've had your say, I'll have mine. You can't see into my mind, Jacqueline, so don't pretend you can. If you want to reduce me down to a few pitiful pop psychology motives, I can do the same to you. How about this? You won't leave the house because you're punishing yourself. You don't want to forget seeing her in the pool like that. I know what that therapist said, that you had finally gotten beyond blaming yourself. But maybe you haven't. And maybe you don't want any more kids because deep down you're afraid you're incompetent. A lethal mother. But rather than admit that, it's easier to attack me."

Jacqueline placed her hands on the table, the cold, unappetizing pizza between them like a modern still life. It was clear she would probably throw the pizza away, even though the only things she'd eaten all day were some cheese and crackers from the office vending machine.

"Does what I said capture the essence of you?" Kevin said. "Does it sum you up? Probably not. I hope not. So maybe my desire to get back to a normal life with you has nothing to do with the pathetic little caricature you've drawn of me."

She sounded like a sullen, chastened little girl when she said, "I wasn't trying to hurt you."

Kevin sighed. "I just don't get you anymore. It's like you're completely closed off to me now. Like you're full of secrets you don't want to tell."

"I think we're all like that," Jacqueline said.

And she did have secrets. There was the issue of the business cards, there were her changing feelings for Kevin, who had once been the alpha and omega of her life, whose very presence had once been enough to make her heart race with a love/lust/adoration/joy that had been nearly painful.

There was also the matter of the anorexia. Well, maybe it wasn't truly anorexia yet—but in the last six months she seemed to have lost all interest in food. There were many, many days when she subsisted on toast and coffee for breakfast, and nine hours later she'd have a peach and a glass of iced tea for dinner. No lunch. Even when the hunger got too distracting and she broke down and had a full meal—take-out Chinese, usually, or lasagna classico at Olive Garden—there was invariably quite a bit left on her plate at the end of the night. Food just seemed unimportant—a necessary evil. It amazed her how some people made such a big deal out of it. She labeled such people trivial and then avoided those people.

There were other secrets as well. Little ones, unimportant ones. Like her newfound love of seventies soul music—the Commodores, Marvin Gaye, the Delfonics, the Chi-Lites. There was her almost sensual satisfaction in being alone. Xanax was wonderful but being alone cleared her mind and calmed her like nothing else could.

And being alone made another secret, her final secret, possible.

After Kevin left that evening, she went about her usual routine: a few minutes of TV, another glass of iced tea, a halfhearted attempt to catch up on some office busywork. Once that was done it was eight o'clock and the rest of the night spread out before her like a quiet, dark ocean, breathtaking in its vast emptiness. Sometimes at night she would read—books on life after death and mediumship, mostly. But most of the time she simply wandered the house, not thinking of much in particular, just trying to get her mind to gear down into a trance-like peace where everything in her world fell away—Kevin, work stresses, everything. She could then feel her senses sharpen and she'd become more receptive to her surroundings. The throbbing, frantic buzz of the evening crickets would sound louder, more hypnotic. The everyday house smells—the mock orange blossoms from the bush by the front door, the synthetic lemony scent of the dishwashing liquid—would intensify, as if they were magical perfumes cast by some invisible sorceress. The sorcery was almost always effective; Jacqueline would be so drowsy and empty and mentally purged that a rejuvenating, healing sleep would be almost guaranteed. And lately that sleep had a nice little bonus to it. A couple weeks ago, Michelle had come to her in a dream in the early morning hours. In the dream, Jacqueline had been at the Richmond Mall Starbucks and lightning had struck the power pole. Michelle's voice had told her: Tonight your life begins again. When she went to the coffee shop that night and she saw the lightning, she felt such a surge of satisfaction it was nearly erotic. Your life begins again. What did she mean? Jacqueline didn't know. The only thing she knew was that the dream wasn't just a dream—it was proof positive Michelle was communicating with her. So sleep was now as precious to Jacqueline as gold.

But sleep and the possibility of a Michelle guest appearance in her dreams weren't what she lived for now. Before she'd drift off for the night there was always the chance that she would smell it: the chlorine.

Sometimes in that half-awake, half-asleep twilight state, as she lay on her bed or the couch, the acrid scent of chlorine would waft in from somewhere. That was the sign that the magic was about to happen.

It was by no means a regular occurrence, though. Maybe two or three times a month. Sometimes it would begin and end with the subtle but still unmistakable chlorine smell—which was definitely not coming from the pool, because the pool had not been filled since that horrifying week six years ago. The scent would come and quickly go, and as disappointed as Jacqueline would feel at such a brief visitation, she would still feel a bit giddy. Because she had been here.

Sometimes—and these were the times Jacqueline lived for—it wouldn't end with the chlorine.

The chlorine would insinuate itself into the house, a subtle undercurrent at first, but then it would intensify and become as pungent as a spilled jar of bad cologne. Jacqueline's eyes would usually be closed by now. She would be too tired to keep them open but the inner core of her being would be too excited to give in to sleep. The chlorine stench would then develop an undertone—the cheerful berry scent of the shampoo Michelle had liked, the same type of shampoo that Jacqueline herself had used as a teen. It would be at this point that Jacqueline knew Michelle was in the room with her.

"Baby," Jacqueline would sometimes mutter groggily, her eyes still closed, not wanting to open them and possibly break the spell. At all costs she would not break the spell. It was like getting a squirrel to take a peanut from your hand. You needed to be as still as a statue—any sudden moves would scare him away for good.

Sometimes—not often—Jacqueline would feel a light touch on her hand, like a feather stroking her. And although sleep was by now starting to drag her resolutely away, Jacqueline would have enough of her wits about her to savor those three or four seconds of a feeling she had not had for years: happiness. Because Michelle had come back, like Botticelli's Venus rising from the waters. Michelle was back, she needed her mother, she had forgiven her mother—that feathery touch on Jacqueline's hand was forgiveness, pure and simple. It was a little girl's way of telling her mother that she had been a good mother who had done the best she could.

"Honey," Jacqueline would say, tears streaming from her closed eyes, and then the precious sensation would fade and sleep would finally come, like dark water pouring through a broken dike to drown her. Restful sleep—happy sleep.

This was Jacqueline's secret.

FOUR

When Darren got the e-mail from Jacqueline—So, have you decided? One who suffers or one who teaches?—he didn't immediately remember who she was. He dipped into his vast, rich reservoir of witty repartee for an appropriately engaging reply: Who are you & what are you talking about?

Glad to see I'm so memorable, she wrote back the next day. Starbucks? The lightning and the rain? You said your house was haunted. Wasn't too hard to get your e-mail. Looked at some articles on the McAvoy shooting, plugged the address into a couple public records sites, got your name, Googled it and found your contact info on the Northeast Aerospace website. Sherlock Holmes has got nothing on me. Yikes, it sounds like I'm stalking you. Sorry if I'm bothering you.

The whiff of dry humor was charming and the effort she put forth to track him down was flattering, as was her frank, apologetic closing statement. Things were slow at work—ominously slow, due to Northeast Aerospace recently losing a $5 million subcontract from Northrop Grumman—so Darren wrote back right away: Lightning Woman! I remember you. That was one of the wildest things I'd ever seen. Tell me about the dream you had. More importantly, tell me about any dream you had in which lottery numbers appear.

Jacqueline: I wanted to ask if you really have a ghost problem in your house or if you were just being melodramatic.

He didn't get a chance to answer. At Darren's office door stood Khabir Hassani, the IT guy and Darren's only real friend in the company. As usual, Khabir's face was as glum as a Russian novel. "I have my expert analysis of those e-mails."

Over the last week, Darren's junk mail folder had been getting spam that was stranger than the usual come-ons for cheap Cialis and lonely Russian brides. The e-mails were just brief strings of gibberish, as if someone had pounded the keyboard once and hit SEND. There was no sender address.

"My expert analysis: no friggin' clue. Can't figure out the sender. There's about a dozen ways to hide an IP address, but these messages are using something I can't figure. At least there's no viruses, though."

"Why send gibberish? I don't get it."

"It's not all gibberish." Khabir showed him a printout of an e-mail from yesterday. He'd underlined a single coherent word sandwiched between long strings of random keystrokes: love.

Love. The concept was very much on Darren's mind a few Saturdays later as he watched his brother-in-law, Sam Wilcox, dance with his five-year-old daughter, Darren's niece. Little Madison stood on Sam's big black shoes as Sam's booming voice mangled a verse of Billy Joel's "Just the Way You Are." Sam had a bottle of beer in one hand but a good portion of the beer had ended up either on the carpet or on his polo shirt. Sam was a Parma Heights patrolman, and he moved with the lumbering, swaggering non-grace of a born bully.

Sam and Julia had brought the kids over to Darren's place to celebrate ten-year-old Brandon's recent promotion to fifth grade. However, young Brandon seemed blasé about this milestone. He paid little attention to the Mylar balloon tied to the back of his chair, a balloon which showed Snoopy in graduation garb dancing over the words Job Well Done! Brandon was slumped on the couch, fiddling with his handheld video game, his chubby mouth hanging open in a look of slack-jawed incuriousness that Darren assumed had been inherited from Sam. Madison, her pink dress already stained with grape juice and ketchup, was more lively. She declined another dance with her father and ran around the house like a dervish, looking for Darren's ghosts and constantly leaving Lulu underfoot for the adults to trip over. Lulu was a homemade doll constructed from socks and yarn.

"Maddie, for the last time, no running," Julia said. She poured milk into the kids' cups while Hurricane Madison crawled under the dining room table in pursuit of a pretend ghost. Julia shot Darren a cold look. "I don't know why you had to tell them you had ghosts."

"I thought it was interesting—"

"Sam, Brandon, come on," Julia said. "Cake time." Her lips arced downward with hostility when Darren began slicing the cake. "Yellow? What happened to chocolate?"

"It's cake. They'll eat it."

"I wanted chocolate," Maddie declared, staring at the unsatisfactory contents of her plate.

"See?" Julia said.

What Darren saw was Madison eating the cake anyway. Why was Julia so irritated with him?

"I'll tell you where you went wrong," Sam said to him. He poked Darren in the chest with his bottle of Miller Genuine Draft. "You never got the house blessed. You ought to call our parish priest, Father Petkovic, and have him do it."

"You once made fun of me for reading a book about psychic phenomena, but you want me to call in a Catholic witchdoctor."

"There's a difference between talk show kooks and a member of a legitimate religious institution, Darren. Got to bring in the big guns. You know, nutty as it sounds, maybe this whole thing is part of God's plan to bring you back to Jesus. Ever thought of that? When the shit hits the fan, that's when we usually need him the most."

In the kitchen, Darren bypassed the beer Sam had brought over and pulled a bottle of 7-Up from the back of the fridge. He toyed with the notion of pouring out half the beer from one of Sam's longnecks and topping it off with a little water from the upstairs toilet. Have another cold one, Sam, bottoms up.

Julia materialized beside him. "Do not start with him," she whispered.

"I'm not starting anything with him. Christ, I've barely spoken to him all afternoon."

"You're making faces at him behind his back and everything you say to him is just drenched in... disdain. Like you're so much better than him."

From the dining room came the sound of Sam Wilcox belching theatrically while Maddie just about collapsed in manic laughter.

"How could I ever be better than that?" Darren said.

Julia grabbed a handful of M&Ms from the bowl on the counter. Just as she had since she was a girl, she ate them color by color, reds first, then the blacks, then the others. "It just pisses me off that he makes an effort to bond with you and you treat him like something you found under a rock. Don't think he doesn't notice it."

What exactly did she mean by "bond" with him? Sam cheerfully starting off conversations with "You know what's wrong with you liberals?" Darren would have rather bonded with an armadillo.

Looking at his frizzy-haired younger sister, he was again struck by how much she had changed over the last twenty years. Julia Ciccone Wilcox, stay-at-home mom, had once been a fiery-tempered latter-day hippie, a summa cum laude Kent State graduate whose boyfriends had all been musicians and angry poets. She could have been fighting world hunger through Amnesty International or painting angst-ridden post-modern canvases in a SoHo loft. Instead, she was married to a paunchy cop who wore pastel-colored polo shirts and thought Reagan was the thirteenth apostle. That was the mystery of love—very often it was a map that led you to a place you never thought you'd go.

Julia stalked back into the dining room. "Maddie, you left Lulu behind again."

Darren took another swig of 7-Up and his eyes fell on the bowl of M&Ms. He had filled it this morning because he knew the kids liked them. Five seconds ago, when Julia had grabbed a handful, the candies were in the bowl. Now they weren't. They were scattered all over the counter.

No—not scattered. Like the bulbs in an old-fashioned scoreboard, the multicolored candies had been arranged into the shapes of letters: Y R U NOT GODFATHER.

The sudden racing of Darren's heart made him lightheaded. Waves of gooseflesh coursed up and down his arms and over his scalp. He hadn't heard a thing, hadn't heard the expected semi-musical ting-ping-ting of the M&Ms whirling around in the glass bowl. In the blink of an eye they had simply... moved. He tried to say, Julia, did you do this? but it was as if the wind had been knocked out of him. And of course Julia hadn't done this. Darren had been standing right next to her. Ten seconds ago the bowl had been full. What he was looking at would have taken several minutes to create by human hand.

Why are you not the godfather?

He felt nauseous. The question had actually been in the back of his mind ever since Julia told him the kids were coming over today. Whatever was in the house with him evidently knew Darren's mind pretty well.

His hands shook as he gathered up the M&Ms and put them back in the bowl. When he sat back down at the dining room table, his breath was coming in quick, shallow half-gasps.

Maddie's goblin-like grin was spackled with chocolate frosting and she was trying to feed Lulu a forkful of cake.

"Maddie, Lulu can't eat cake," Julia said. "Lulu's diabetic."

"Unbelievable how many houses are for sale around here," Sam said. "Same in our neighborhood too. I bet our house has lost twenty percent of its value. All because of these deadbeats who put no money down and then can't make the payments."

Darren tried to keep his hand steady as he reached for his coffee cup. The shock of what he'd seen in the kitchen was being replaced by the more comforting and familiar irritation with Sam.

"You can thank your Democrat geniuses for that," Sam went on. "Let's get all the poor people into houses, let's give 'em all no-money-down loans. Then they default, the neighborhoods end up gutted, and it's people like me who actually pay our bills who get screwed. Where's the fairness in that?"

"Sam, please," Julia said.

"I'm just saying! Now they're on this health care kick. Everyone's gotta get health care. All these poor people who don't have jobs, gotta give them health care. And who's gonna foot the bill? It's the revenge of the welfare state. I mean, screw them, I had to work for everything I have, why can't they do the same?"

"'For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat,'" Darren said. "'I was sick and you did not look after me.... Whatever you did not do for one of the least among you, you did not do for me.' Guess you must have slept through that in Sunday school."

"Gimme a break," Sam said. "Jesus was all for personal responsibility. Being poor doesn't give you a blank check to be irresponsible—"

"How come you didn't pick me to be godfather?" Darren asked suddenly.

Sam looked confused. "What?"

"With Brandon. Or Maddie. How come you picked your brother and his wife and not me?"

Sam looked at Julia, who gazed at Darren with watchful alarm. "Because," Sam said, "they already have kids, they go to church, and the parish has rules for picking godparents."

"Ah, yes," Darren said. "The rules."

Brandon and Madison were now looking at their uncle too. They seemed to sense a shift in the tenor of the conversation.

Sam laughed. "What the heck, Darren? You're miffed about something this old?"

"I guess I'm miffed because I probably wasn't even considered. Not even for a second."

"Darren, this is ridiculous," Julia said.

But Darren's attention was still on Sam. Julia could take the church or leave it, like a store brand of laundry detergent. She probably just went along with whatever Sam wanted. Sam was the holy roller in the family. "Remember when your brother needed that cash so he could get his kid into that deaf school?" Darren asked.

"What does that have to do with anything? Jesus, Darren, he paid you back."

At the time, Sam and Julia had been up to their eyeballs with their kitchen renovations and didn't have the money. Enter Darren, everyone's favorite sap. "I'm not good enough to be considered as a godparent, but you have no problem treating me like a walking ATM. That's my value to you."

Sam blinked at him. "You know, that's pretty goddamned insulting."

"You bet it is."

"Darren, stop it," Julia said.

Darren put a hand on Madison's head. "Maddie, want to know why people go to church? It's for people who are too lazy to actually think for themselves. So they go to this big building with the cross, and a guy gets up there and tells them what to think, who to hate, whose lives they should make more difficult. And the people go home happy, because they think all those words came from God. But really they came from a closeted homosexual who likes to touch little boys in bad ways."

"Enough, Darren," Julia said.

Sam stood up. "Darren, I feel sorry for you—" But he didn't get to tell Darren why he felt sorry for him because a hardcover book flew off the middle shelf of the bookcase in the corner of the dining room and crashed into the back of Sam's head, making him cry out and nearly fall over. The book—Haunted America, a recent pickup—skidded across the table and flopped on the floor.

The kids gaped silently. Julia had a hand plastered across her mouth as if stifling a scream.

"Who the hell threw that?" Sam said. For some reason he glared at Julia, who was sitting closest to the bookcase.

Then another book soared off the shelf—Barack Obama's Dreams From My Father—and clipped Sam in the shoulder.

Now Madison was screaming, and so was Julia.

A third book flew from the top shelf—an old college paperback, Bertrand Russell's Why I Am Not A Christian and Other Essays—and this time Sam sidestepped it. It flopped onto the middle of the cake with an almost comical swack.

Sam charged the bookcase, his fists cocked as if he were facing down a troublemaker in a bar. Darren gave him credit for courage. Darren could only sit, immobile with shock and a queasy feeling of unreality. But Sam, the man of action, faced down the bookcase, punching at the spines of the books. "Come on!" he screamed. "You want to mess with me? Come on, I'm right here!"

Julia crouched as if she were under sniper fire. She grabbed the arms of the kids and pulled them along out of the dining room toward the back door. "Sam, come on, let's get out of here."

Sam threw a hard right cross, spilling a row of paperbacks onto the floor. "Come out and fight!"

The dining room table began trembling in response. The half-eaten cake wobbled and slid. The silverware chattered and tinkled. Then the table bucked up and down, pounding an erratic drumroll on the carpet. The cake flew off and splattered on the carpet and the paper plates, cups and forks followed suit. Like an enraged bull at a rodeo, the table rose up and down, up and down, two legs slamming down hard on the floor while the other pair reared up high enough to almost touch the chandelier.

Darren fell off his chair and began backing away toward the back door. His legs were too rubbery to stand. To his surprise he found himself grinning. My house is angry, he thought, my house is very, very angry.

Darren managed to make it out the door with Julia and the kids. Julia belted Maddie into the backseat of their minivan. Maddie was crying. Brandon had a glazed, stunned look on his face.

"Julia, are you okay?" Darren asked. He put a hand on her arm but she shrugged him off.

"Get away from me!" she screamed. "Sam!"

Sam trotted down the porch steps and snatched the car keys from his wife. His hands were shaking so badly that he dropped the keys on the asphalt. Darren tried to pick them up for him, but Sam shoved him away.

"Julia," Darren said, "please don't leave like this. I'm sorry. Hey Maddie, are you all right?" But Sam and Julia wouldn't let him near the van.

"Just stay away," Julia cried. "Haven't you done enough? What the hell is happening in there?"

"Brandon, buddy, are you okay?" Darren asked. But of course Brandon wasn't okay, and neither was Maddie. They stared at him as if he were an accomplice to what had happened. Freak, their looks said. Dangerous.

Julia wouldn't even look at Darren as they backed out of the driveway. The van sped down the street, very much over the speed limit.

Half of him wanted to laugh and half of him wanted to cry. Annika, Laurie, Julia, the kids—it seemed as if everyone nowadays ended up leaving him. Everyone but the poltergeists.

He nearly stumbled on something soft in the driveway. He wasn't the only one who'd been left behind—Lulu stared up at him with her empty button eyes.

Darren re-entered the house.

He lingered by the stove, listening. The house was quiet. From his angle he could see a thin slice of the dining room but he didn't see any movement. He saw a frosting-encrusted fork lying near the leg of a chair.

He walked gingerly toward the dining room entrance, his legs stiff and tingling.

The tableau before him seemed anticlimactic: a cake on the floor, a mess of plates and forks at his feet, a disordered bookcase. There was a stillness, an emptiness, in the air that was in sharp contrast to the atmosphere a few minutes ago, when it felt as if the house had come alive—when it felt as if a wild animal had been let loose in the room.

He went upstairs to the bathroom, shut the door and put some water on his face. At first he thought the trembling of his lower lip was residual stress or anxiety. But after he dried his face and still felt wetness on his cheeks he realized with some surprise that he was crying.

"Why are you doing this to me?" he said out loud.

The childish self-pity in his voice was embarrassing but he couldn't help it. What had he done to deserve this? What kind of object lesson was he supposed to learn from having his family and potential girlfriends terrorized like this?

After a moment, he heard a deep growling.

At first he thought it was the sound of someone's motorcycle or muscle car cruising down the street. But it was not a mechanical sound coming from far away. It was an organic sound coming from the other side of the bathroom door. Adrenaline surged in Darren's veins. He could not move.

The growling faded away after a few seconds.

He still stood there staring at the door, his hands leaving sweaty prints on his slacks. It was several moments before he could reach out and turn the knob.

When he opened the door, there was nothing there except for the Mylar Snoopy balloon, which bumped lazily into the door jamb. Job Well Done! it said.

FIVE

The e-mail in her inbox made her smile:

Dear Ms. Prentiss

I got the impression that perhaps you know one or two things about household pests of the decidedly non-corporeal variety. Was wondering 2 things: 1. how you got this knowledge, and 2. do you know if there is any sort of Craigslist for Ghostbusters.

Would appreciate a referral. Also, do you know how to get chocolate frosting out of carpet? Tried Resolve carpet granules but stain now for some reason just smells like a combination of ass sweat and oranges.

Yours very truly,

D. Ciccone

Media/Communications Director, Northeast Aerospace

"Bringing Analog/Digital Interface Solutions to Avionic Systems Architecture"

On her lunch break, she replied, sidestepping the first question: "Actually, there is a sort of Craigslist. It's called the Archangel Society. Check out their website. You'll probably be underwhelmed—first of all, they misspell 'society' a couple times, but nobody's perfect. They seem to be a loose confederation of New Agers, low-rent psychics and crystal healers who bring human/spectral interface solutions to residential systems architecture. They even have a state-by-state listing of kooks with their contact info. Beware of Kat Shakespeare, from Akron! One guy wrote in asking how to get rid of the ghost of a woman who kept playing—badly—the piano in his living room in the wee hours of the morning. Kat advised a complicated ritual involving 88 votive candles and daily recitations of some incoherent Sanskrit Vedic chant about music being the voice of God filtered through imperfection. You're on your own with your citrus-smelling carpet—I have hardwood floors."

Darren Ciccone e-mailed, "If music be the food of love, play on! I checked out the website—the guy never wrote back to say if the ritual worked. But I sent Ms. Shakespeare an e-mail anyway. At least she's local. Thanks for the website info. And you never answered my first question."

Jacqueline's fingers tensed over the keyboard for a long while before she responded. "It's something I prefer not to get into over e-mail. And I don't exactly know the circumstances of your haunting, either. Care to share?"

He replied: "If you're free for coffee tonight, we can discuss it—the Starbucks at the mall like last time? 9 p.m.? Sorry it has to be so late—gotta hang around here to sit in on a conference call with some California people."

She typed "See you then" and hit SEND. Was this how friendships begin? She couldn't remember. It would be nice to have a new friend.

Not that she didn't have friends—she had quite a few. But the word "friend" was a big, threadbare tent that covered a lot of party guests. It included girls she knew from high school and college, girls who were really just friendly acquaintances and who still didn't know about Michelle's death or Kevin moving out. It included a few people at work with whom she'd sometimes go out to lunch—and those lunchtime conversations always had a superficial late-night talk show sheen to them, never touching on the truly personal, always centering on movies, work gripes, the best places to vacation, the worst baby shower gifts. Like a well-trained street cop, she waved traffic around the accident scene in the middle of her life. No one was the wiser. She was very good at it. The Jacqueline they knew—quiet, a bit aloof, friendly in an understated way—was a serviceable paraphrase of the real thing.

A few people did know about Michelle, of course. Hard to keep something like that secret. There were her old high school friends Allison and Kayla, there were some friends of Kevin, there were other young mothers she had known from Michelle's kindergarten. Allison and Kayla were perhaps the most problematic. Though Jacqueline still considered them friends, she always felt a flare of bitterness when she saw them now. They seemed to ooze pity—irritating enough in itself, but occasionally she sensed that the pity had a slightly theatrical quality, like they were just trying to prove to themselves how bighearted and caring they were. Look at us, we're being nice to the woman with the dead daughter.

Maybe Jacqueline was just being paranoid—maybe they genuinely did care. But for the life of her Jacqueline couldn't see what they were getting out of the friendship. Spending time with Jacqueline wasn't exactly a million laughs. And she wasn't getting much out of the deal either. She was enough of a realist to understand that friendships can become exhausted, like overcultivated fields. After a while, the soil has nothing left to give. But Allison and Kayla refused to let the ground lie fallow. Every couple weeks they would call and ask her how she was doing, was she getting out, et cetera. Like she was a dying invalid.

It was understandable right after Michelle's death. Most people were like that. The pitying half-smile/half-grimace, the whispered solicitude ("Are you really okay?"), the whole grueling performance. But Allison and Kayla kept it up far too long. And they acted so damned apologetic whenever the subject of their own kids came up, as if the very subject of children would send the now-childless Jacqueline into an emotional death-spiral. Allison and Kayla had four children between them. Jacqueline knew from personal experience that young mothers couldn't shut up about their kids—their potty habits, their allergies, who was "acting out," who had the early signs of ADHD. With Jacqueline around, though, Allison and Kayla became grimly ministering angels always trying to make Jacqueline's fragile mental well-being the center of attention. How are you doing, Jacqueline, are you sleeping all right. It all seemed so phony.

I'm fine, she'd say. Hanging in there. Phony answers to phony questions.

She had the inescapable feeling that there was a definite phoniness—or at least a maddening superficiality—to their friendship. To friendships in general, probably. The Facebook episode last year proved that to Jacqueline.

Allison and Kayla had been bugging her for months to join Facebook. They were concerned Jacqueline was spending too much time alone. And Facebook wasn't just for high school kids, they said. Everyone was on Facebook. "I know you like your privacy, but Facebook can give you the best of both worlds," Allison told her. "You don't even have to leave the house, but you can talk to me or Kayla or Brenda—remember her?—and find out how everyone's doing, right there on the computer."

"But if I want to talk to you I can just pick up the phone and actually talk to you."

"Just give it a try," Kayla said. "You'll love it. You'll become addicted."

But it wasn't enough to just register and slap up a digital photo. You had to fill your page with something, otherwise you'd have a ridiculous, uninviting wasteland of white space there. What was the point of joining if you didn't share things from your life? It would be like going to a party and not talking to anyone.

So Jacqueline posted some of her interests, some tidbits about her life. "Alumnus of John Carroll University. Love Marvin Gaye and the Chi-Lites. Love Dillards, especially in February when they have their clearance sales." Like everyone else, she created her own little digital altar of cheerful self-absorption.

And people would "friend" her! A few coworkers, some friends of friends, some girls she had gone to elementary school with, even actual strangers, would request to be her friend. For a while, it was nice. Every day or so she would end up in one of those bubbly, breathless, punctuation-free instant message conversations with someone she hadn't seen in years:

"OMG Jackie I haven't seen ya in YEARS!!!! Howsit goin I have 3 kids now LOL!!!! Bruce & I are expecting AGAIN in late mar/early apr... yr picture is so BEAUTIFUL do u have kids are u married?!"

No, Jacqueline would usually reply. No kids. Not married.

Like a catchy pop song, these chats were fun at first, cloying after a while... then they set her teeth on edge. When she friended Cassie Christopher, who was rumored to be the most promiscuous girl in their high school graduating class, her other Facebook friends immediately leapt in with the sort of mean-spirited gossip more appropriate to bitchy junior high schoolers than women in their thirties. "Did you know she works in an ESCORT SERVICE downtown?!? She always was such a HO!!! LOL!" (The great irony was that Cassie seemed kinder and less superficial than Jacqueline's other Facebook "friends.")

After a while, Jacqueline realized she didn't have much to say to these people. And she lacked the ability to have mind-numbing, stream-of-consciousness gab sessions overflowing with the cheery, superficial flotsam of life. "Have u been to key biscayne it is so FABULOUS u should stay at the kenilworth resort chuck & I are thinking about home schooling what do u think we're putting in granite countertops I gained so much weight u wouldn't BEELEEEEVE how fat I got!!!!"

Well, in all fairness, it wasn't superficial. Their kids were important to them, their vacation choices were important too. This was their lives. But Jacqueline felt so far away from them now. They were speaking a language she had forgotten how to speak.

After a while she began to ignore the friend requests. She went on Facebook less and less.

"You haven't put up any status updates on your page in a month," Allison told her reproachfully. "Come on! Have some fun. Put up a list of your favorite restaurants. Put up some more photos. People would love to know what's going on with you."

Would they really?

For the hell of it, she posted a list of all the antidepressants she'd been on since that day six years ago when she came up from the basement and saw Michelle at the bottom of the pool. Wellbutrin, Paxil, Effexor, Zyprexa, Cymbalta. She put a couple photos on her page. There was the headstone in Marymount Cemetery. "This is where my daughter is buried" was the caption. A shot of the dirty, drained pool, speckled with dried leaves and twigs. "This is where Michelle drowned," she typed below it.

For one of her status updates, instead of something like "I'm looking forward to my vacation" or "Bought the newest Michael Bublé CD & loved it," Jacqueline wrote this:

"Am starting to wonder if only idiots want to see this life through to completion."

Allison and Kayla doubleteamed her after that. "Jackie, you can't put stuff like that on your page," Allison said. "It's creepy."

"It makes people uncomfortable," Kayla said in a more conciliatory tone.

"I've been so inconsiderate," Jacqueline said.

Allison said, "If something's going on with you, you should be telling it to a therapist. People on Facebook aren't therapists. They're just there to hang out and have fun."

Hang out and have fun. Well, that was Jacqueline's cue to leave. To hell with the Facebookers. She pulled down her Facebook profile that day, smashed her digital altar like Sampson bringing the temple down around him. From then on when the three women were together it seemed as if Allison and Kayla looked at her with an uncomfortable wariness, as if Jacqueline wasn't someone they had known since puberty but a virtual stranger.

In a very real sense, though, they didn't know her. The Jackie LaPierre they had known in high school was dead.

When they called her, Jacqueline would try to be pleasant and upbeat. They would ask how she was doing. But there was always a palpable reluctance in their voice, as if they were saying, I'll only ask how you're doing as long as you tell me you're fine.

She hoped Darren would turn out to be a good friend. She liked being alone but even that got tiresome after a while. And she had felt compelled to contact him after that night at the coffee shop. Tonight your life begins again. Maybe he was part of the puzzle. To her, everything about that evening had a sacred glow to it, as if Michelle was the electricity illuminating it from within. She had a crazy but not unpersuasive feeling that maybe Darren held the secret of how she could—

(What? Bring Michelle back? Christ, was she becoming that unhinged?)

—no, not bring her back, but maybe strengthen the strange, frail lines of communication she had with her. And apart from those coldblooded reasons, Jacqueline simply liked him. She didn't know him at all but for some reason she got a comforting feeling from him, as if he were the glove her hand had been searching for.

She was late by a few minutes. When she pulled into the mall parking lot, there was a lone blue Honda by the Starbucks. But there was no Starbucks. The store was dark, with black construction paper all over the door and windows. Even the big green Starbucks sign had been taken down, leaving faint ghost letters.

Darren was sitting in his car, reading a USA Today. Jacqueline knocked on his window.

"You waited," she said. "My hero." She nodded at the coffee shop. "What happened?"

"This is what's known as a very bad economy."

"There's another coffee shop around the corner. Next to the dry cleaners. Let's try that."

But their two-car caravan arrived four seconds before the pair of twentysomething baristas began turning off the lights inside.

Darren stood by the door waving his arms in the universal sign of What the fuck? The baristas mouthed the word "closed."

Jacqueline chuckled. "Foiled again."

Spreading out his arms like a latter-day Sinatra, Darren began bellowing to the empty parking lot, "'I want to wake up in a city that never sleeps!'"

"Maybe we ought to do this another night," Jacqueline said. "Unless you want to hit that IHOP down near the Wal-Mart."

"Not crazy about that place. The tables are always sticky."

She had an idea.

Five minutes later they were in the open-24-hours Giant Eagle supermarket on Mayfield Road. She piloted a cart and Darren settled for a basket. "May as well get some shopping done," she said. "And don't give me that look. It's not like this was a date or anything."

"I didn't say anything."

She dawdled in the produce section, debating whether to get peaches or red seedless grapes. "Did your Kat Shakespeare contact you yet?" Jacqueline asked.

"Got one of those 'out-of-office' automated replies. She's out of town until late July."

"Bummer. But I think you're better off. I believe in psychic stuff but I prefer to stick with the A-listers. Like George Anderson and Michael Percival. Now tell me about your ghost."

As they wended their way through produce, bakery and deli meats, Darren laid it out for her. She was impressed with his storyteller's almost sensual grasp of pacing and suspense, from the understated foreplay of the telephone hijinks and strange e-mails to the heavy petting of the pizza girl's inexplicable scream to the explosive climax of the books and the levitating table.

Jacqueline stopped her cart halfway down the frozen food aisle and looked at him. "That's quite a story."

"I didn't even mention the rose petals. Sometimes I'll find them in the house. In the sink, on the carpet. One time I found a few of them sticking to my clothes when I took them out of the dryer. There aren't any rose bushes on the property." Darren seemed to be studying his reflection in the glass of the freezer case. "So how long do you think I have before this thing kills me?"

"Maybe this thing isn't an enemy. Maybe it's an ally."

"How so?"

Jacqueline tossed a bag of frozen stir-fry vegetables in her cart. "When you were talking about that girl Laurie, you made a point of saying how foolish it was, someone like you trying to get involved with a college girl. Almost like you were relieved not to have to deal with it. And you said yourself you took great satisfaction in seeing this thing attack your redneck brother-in-law. Maybe this thing thinks it's protecting you."

Darren grunted. "Stalin was our ally in World War II. For about fifteen minutes. Now what about you?"

"What about me?"

"Your turn. Your ghost."

Jacqueline lingered in front of the case full of frozen pizza rolls and garlic bread. "One summer afternoon about six years ago, I was down in the basement, doing laundry and emptying the dryer, folding up clothes. Kevin—my husband—was at work. My daughter, Michelle, was six at the time. She was upstairs, playing in the living room." She glanced at Darren. "We have a pool. You get to it by the sliding glass patio door."

She selected a box of frozen garlic bread and before she could put it in her cart she decided she didn't want it and put it back. "Michelle had been learning to swim a little bit that summer, but she still wasn't ready. I mean, she could get in the shallow end with me and flop around, but she couldn't really swim. Still, I was surprised by how much she liked it. The pool. She wasn't intimidated. Wasn't really afraid of the water. She always wanted to go into the deep end, but of course she wasn't ready."

Her throat was dry. She coughed briefly, clearing it. She told the rest in as matter-of-fact a way as she could, as if she were reciting the dull details of a fender-bender to a cop: the rumbling noise of the washing machine and dryer which must have prevented her from hearing Michelle go out onto the patio; Jacqueline toting a basket of clean towels upstairs and putting them away in the bathroom before she bothered to stroll back into the living room to ask Michelle if she was ready for lunch; the sight of the patio door open; the wavering, hypnotic blue of the pool. The pool had looked so peaceful that Jacqueline at first didn't think anything was wrong. Michelle was probably playing in her bedroom. Jacqueline was even about to turn away when the lumpy shadow at the bottom of the deep end caught her eye. At first she thought it was a clump of beach towels.

Jacqueline turned from Darren and faced the freezer full of Stouffer's entrées. Her voice was bland and bloodless as she talked about diving in, pulling Michelle to the surface. She talked about the CPR, the frantic 911 call. Her throat tightened up a few times and at one point her vision became momentarily bleary with tears, but she kept it together. That was something.

She had gotten through the worst of it, now she hurriedly told him about the events of the last year or so: the smell of chlorine, the gentle sensation of Michelle's presence. The dream about the lightning.

Darren took it all in silently. Finally, he said, "I'm very sorry."

She looked at her shoes. "I don't know why she didn't scream. Or maybe she did and I just didn't hear it when I was in the basement." She coughed again. "So," she said, adopting a chirpy, faux-happy tone that sounded brittle and totally unconvincing, "what exactly does a media director for Northeast Aerospace do?"

"It's extremely complicated and technical and it would be way above your head. I write press releases. And I make sure the trade journals aren't screwing us on the ad rates."

"I take it this isn't your dream job."

"It pays the bills. In school I wanted to be a novelist. Even wrote a novel the year I got out of college."

"Impressive," Jacqueline said. "Was it published?"

"Nope. Thank God. At the time I thought it was very avant-garde. Written in the present tense. 'He walks to the window, scratching his stomach, wondering if Jessica would bring the heroin tonight.'" They were heading up the crackers and cookies aisle now. "I think my talents are better suited to writing press releases about cockpit data modules."

"I think it's pretty rare for a person to end up where he wants to be in life."

She felt him touch her briefly on the elbow. "I'm sorry," Darren said again.

"Thank you." She nodded at the chairs in the waiting area of the in-store pharmacy and they sat.

"How is your husband dealing with the... presence?"

"He doesn't know about it. We're separated. I'm not sure I want him to know."

"Because he won't believe you?"

Jacqueline shrugged. "Partly that, partly because... these things started happening after he moved out. Maybe these things are just meant for me. I'm... protective of them. Do you think that's selfish?"

"I don't know. I think both of us are in uncharted waters here."

With her foot, Jacqueline nudged the shopping cart to and fro, like a mother on a park bench with her baby carriage. "What do you want most out of life?" she asked.

Darren's brow furrowed as if he were doing math in his head. "To be loved," he said finally. "I know that sounds like a Hallmark card, but it's true. I'd like to matter to someone. Not just a little, but a lot. What about you? What do you want most of all?"

"I don't know. I really don't." The truth of that statement was starting to make her uneasy. At an age when most women were well into the productive swing of their lives, with kids and husbands and careers, Jacqueline felt as if layers of her life had been stripped away—first Michelle, then Kevin, then her friends. What was left? There was her job, and there were her nights alone, listening to the sounds of her own thoughts and reading book after book about communicating with the dead. It was a morbid joke.

"When I was a senior at John Carroll," she said, "a few days before graduation, one night a few of my girlfriends and I went and laid out on the quad and looked up at the stars and we planned out our lives. 'I'm gonna be married two years from now and I'll have the executive vice presidency of a leading advertising firm.' 'I'm gonna have two kids and my husband will look like Richard Gere and every year we'll spend a week in the Caymans.' Like we were a bunch of spoiled country club darlings ordering off a menu. Makes me sick to think about that now."

"It's not sick. It's kind of sweet."

Darren seemed to sense her darkening mood and he changed the subject, lightening things up with some funny workplace anecdotes. He told her about one of the executive assistants, a fussy old pain in the ass named Annie Burlana ("We call her Anal Rub, because that's her last name spelled backwards. It's also extremely fitting") who always complained that Darren typed too loudly. He told her about Khabir Hassani's disturbing and vaguely horrifying karaoke rendition of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" at last year's Christmas party. After a while Jacqueline's stomach hurt from laughing so hard. As numb as she had felt lately, as numb as she had wanted herself to feel, this felt nice—having a man try to make her laugh, make her feel better.

"Come on," Darren said. "Gonna take you somewhere."

"Where?"

He was already pushing her cart to the checkout.

She told him she didn't like surprises but still she followed behind him in her car. They drove down Warrensville Center Road for a mile or so, then Darren took a left. He parked at the curb beside the John Carroll University freshman dorms.

"All right, what's the big idea?"

He took her reluctant hand and they strolled into the deserted quad. She hadn't been here in years. There were more dorms, and the unsightly new Arts and Sciences building at one end of the quad made the small campus feel even more crowded. But the place was much the same as it had been in the nineties—tidy lawns, lots of red brick in the Tudor style. It could have been the set for any low-budget TV show about rich kids and their college angst.

Darren sprawled out awkwardly on his back on the quad's grass, his tie flopping up over his shoulder. She laughed and lay down near him. "We're gonna get picked up for trespassing," she said. "If we do, I'm gonna tell them you exposed yourself to me, too."

"For me that's just a typical Tuesday." He pointed at the stars. "Big Dipper."

The stars were clear and bright, like sequins in some cosmic little black dress. The light from some of them hitting her eyes now had probably originated fifteen years ago when Jacqueline had been laying on this very grass as a twenty-two year-old. The idea was eerie in a way.

"So, someone has hit the reset button on your life," Darren said. "What do you wish for now?"

"I can order anything off the menu I like?"

"Sky's the limit."

"I don't know," she said. "I just don't. Silence, maybe."

"Not to be too critical, but that's a pretty goddamned lousy wish. What about love? Don't you want that?"

Jacqueline couldn't even imagine being in love again. That was another language she'd forgotten how to speak. She got to her feet and helped Darren up. "Come on. My groceries are melting."

"Don't you even want to wish for ten million dollars?"

"Why? I'd just be the same bitch with better shoes."

As they made their way back to their cars, a dark SUV peeled away from the curb farther down the street from them in a tire-squealing huff. Jacqueline's stomach turned over, squashing her mellow mood.

"Wonder what that was about," Darren said.

"That was Kevin," Jacqueline said. "My husband."

SIX

E-mail exchange between dciccone@northeastaerospace.com and jprentiss@datascape.com, June 18-19:

dciccone: You are cordially invited to the social event of the season, the ceremonial Blessing of the House, on Wed., June 24, 7 p.m., 1661 Shadeland. In light of the high level of supernatural activity in said House, the Lord of the Manor has enlisted the services of three—count 'em—three men of the cloth, a priest, a rabbi and an imam. I know it sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, but whatever. Refreshments will be served. Dress: casual. By the way, sorry I kept you out so late last week. Hope I didn't cause any problems for you.

jprentiss: Would not miss this gala for the world. No apology necessary. I enjoyed that night. I have not heard from Kevin about it, so maybe it was someone else's car.

Even still, Darren found himself checking the street for any dark SUVs when he welcomed Jacqueline inside on the swelteringly humid evening of June 24.

Jacqueline presented him with a store-made apple pie. "I bought it myself."

"You're a doll. Come in and meet the gang." Darren led her into the dining room. The gang consisted of Father Baricek, "who came highly recommended from some folks at work," Darren said, "and that fine figure of a man over there is Khabir, our IT guy."

Khabir Hassani, his flabby, dour form clad in jeans and a t-shirt promoting a Who concert from 1980, had parked himself at the table in front of the deli spread, making what was probably the largest sandwich outside of a Dagwood Bumstead cartoon. He was even ladling potato salad onto it before topping it off with a slice of rye.

"Nice to meet you," Jacqueline said. "Wasn't there supposed to be a couple others?"

"Rabbi Rosenthal from downtown canceled on me a couple days ago," Darren said. "He wasn't pleased that I invited Abu Shiraz, the imam of the Lorain Avenue mosque and Khabir's cousin. Apparently they were in some interfaith basketball pickup game a few months ago and Shiraz threw an elbow. Shiraz canceled on me this morning. Strep throat."

"Just as well," Baricek said. "The whole thing was shaping up to be a goddamned sitcom." The old priest sniffed the tub of potato salad and recoiled. "When was this made, the Carter administration? Lord, take this cup from my lips."

"I wasn't doing this for comic relief," Darren said. "I figured with three of you here, it's three times the protection."

"This isn't like putting three layers of undercoating on your car," Baricek said. "Out of curiosity, do you even believe in God?"

"I'm not really sure. I guess I'm not married to the idea."

"Big surprise. Your irony, smugness and lack of belief could be part of the problem here. I can throw all the holy water in the world at this place, it won't do a damned bit of good if you're creating an atmosphere of negativity here. Ever heard of the law of attraction?"

"Sorry, I must have missed that day in Picking Up Chicks 101."

"What we project, we attract. Peace invites peace. Misery calls out to misery. It's worth keeping in mind."

"Are you saying Darren is causing this?" Jacqueline asked.

"No," the priest said, "but I think there are a lot of occasions in life when we end up with exactly what we ask for, whether we know it consciously or not." He frowned over the sheaf of newspaper articles Darren had printed out from the Internet on the killings. "So McAvoy killed his wife and daughter here. Any idea what set him off?"

"He lost his job," Darren said. "He was a salesman. Apparently not a very good one. He was on antidepressants and they weren't working. And it looked like he was on the outs with his wife. She told a friend they were thinking of separating."

Baricek looked at him over his bifocals. "He leave a note?"

"'Darkling I listen; and, for many a time / I have been half in love with easeful Death,'" Darren said. "That's all he wrote."

"Why does that sound familiar?" Jacqueline asked.

"It's Keats," Darren said. "'Ode to a Nightingale.'"

The priest clucked his tongue. "Seems to me that if he was half in love with death he wouldn't want to cling to this house."

"Maybe it's not the guy," Khabir said through a mouthful of sandwich.

Everyone looked at him.

"His wife and daughter were killed, too," Khabir said. "Could be either of them."

From his battered valise, Father Baricek removed his purple stole and vial of holy water. "Let's find out."

They started in the living room, then moved to the dining room and kitchen. Although Baricek did most of the recitations, he insisted Darren play a role too. Darren felt incredibly silly and nervous and his voice sounded thin and raspy as he read a few passages from Paul's letter to the Colossians.

They blessed the downstairs; they blessed the upstairs. In the spare bedroom, the priest flung his holy water and said, "Protect us, Lord, as we stay awake. Watch over us as we sleep, that awake we may keep watch with Christ, and asleep, we may rest in his peace."

As they left the spare bedroom, Darren briefly felt the sensation of being watched—that uneasy, prickly feeling on the back of your neck when someone is staring at you. But it was just his imagination. The house was quiet and well-behaved. Books remained on their shelves. The furniture did not move.

The blessing was over in twenty minutes. Everyone shook hands, Baricek had a diet Coke and left, and a few minutes later so did Khabir. Jacqueline helped Darren clean up. He felt oddly disappointed. It was as if some masochistic side of himself wanted something to happen tonight. To force the moment to its crisis, as T. S. Eliot said. But the house felt empty—a soulless box of sticks and bricks and the cheapest grade of carpet Home Depot had to offer.

"Feel like taking a walk?" he asked Jacqueline. "There's an ice cream stand a couple blocks away."

The humid evening had attracted a small mob of suburbanites to the Dairy Freeze. Darren and Jacqueline sat on a bench and people-watched as young mothers wiped chocolate sauce from the faces of their kids and teen girls with bare midriffs let their boyfriends pay for their frozen yogurts.

Maybe it's not the guy, Khabir had said.

Darren recalled the grainy photos of McAvoy's wife, Shannon, and his daughter, Rachel. What was a more preferable ghost to have—the spirit of a suicidally depressed and clearly off-his-rocker salesman or the ghosts of his sane and undoubtedly resentful victims?

And why wouldn't they be resentful? Their lives had been cut short and now a stranger lived in their home. He remembered when he was about eight years old and his dad had sold their old Chevy Impala to the man three streets over. Darren had loved that old car... had even taken walks around the neighborhood so he could look at it again in the guy's driveway. Maybe ghosts were the same way—reluctant to let it all go. So reluctant they'd stalk their former lives.

"I wonder how the house is going to treat you after tonight," Jacqueline said, sipping her vanilla shake. "Think you'll have to start sleeping with one eye open?"

"I've been taking Ambien. I could probably sleep through the London Philharmonic doing Wagner's Ring cycle. Oh damn."

"What?"

"Nothing. That girl over there. Dark hair. For a second I thought it was Laurie."

Jacqueline squeezed his knee. "You're better off. Believe me. Girls in their twenties are as deep as a comic book. They all read Pride and Prejudice and think they're Elizabeth Bennet, but they're more like Lydia and Kitty, the sillier sisters. Look for someone with an interior life."

"Ouch. Someone had a big bowl of bitter this morning."

They watched a young couple approach the order window, each spouse holding the hand of their terrified-looking little girl. The wife wore Bermuda shorts and a baseball cap; the husband wore the uniform of suburban men everywhere, a polo shirt and khakis. The sweet reassurances of the young couple and the promise of chocolate fudge and whipped cream apparently weren't enough to assuage the little girl's suspicion of streetside commerce. Her lower lip trembled and tears spilled from her blue eyes.

Darren smiled faintly. Even though he wasn't sure he wanted kids, sometimes when he saw these Norman Rockwell scenes he couldn't help wishing they were scenes from his own life. He glanced at Jacqueline and felt a twinge of shame. It was much easier to cope with the loss of children who were purely theoretical. Jacqueline had had to deal with the real thing.

"Come on, sweetie," the young mother said, "you like chocolate ice cream, don't you? Yes, that's right, Michelle loves chocolate ice cream!"

Darren could see Jacqueline's wan face harden and her eyes grow distant. Then they seemed to widen and burn with suppressed rage.

Jacqueline said little on the walk back to the house. Darren's attempts at witty banter fell flat. He touched her on the elbow as she was climbing into her car. "Are you all right?" he asked.

"Just tired." She mustered a limp smile. "Let me know if the blessing did the trick."

Darren had an answer to that when he walked into the living room a few minutes later. Somehow the plastic squeeze bottle of ketchup had moved from the back of the refrigerator and now sat half-empty on the coffee table. Much of the contents had been squirted out on the carpet, forming sloppy but readable words: DON'T EVER LET THAT BITCH IN THIS HOUSE AGAIN.

SEVEN

When Jacqueline turned onto her street that evening, Kevin's SUV was at the curb in front of the house.

She drew in a deep breath. He was as persistent as a bill collector. She was pretty sure now the black SUV she and Darren had seen that night was Kevin's.

They got out of their cars at the same time, suburban gunslingers at an emotional high noon.

"What's up?" she said, trying to keep her voice light and polite.

Kevin's face was carefully blank. "Working late?"

She let them into the house. "Got a deadline I have to meet."

"That must be why you didn't answer your office phone. And your cell. You're very focused."

She looked at him. He was goading her. The man she had once thought of as the ideal husband, a man who never forgot an anniversary and who bent over backwards to understand her and cater to her every need like the world's best maître d', that man was now trying to goad her into an argument.

"What do you want?" she asked.

"Were you with your new boyfriend?"

Forget about politeness. If he wanted a fight, he would get it. "I can't believe you. You're following me and acting like a goddamned stalker—"

"I'm acting like a husband trying to understand his wife. Any time I try to get close to you now you just push me away. And now you're screwing around with this guy."

"'Screwing around with this guy'? Not that I have to explain anything to you, but he's not my boyfriend and we're not screwing around. He's barely even a friend. He's someone I know."

"Looks like you're getting to know him quite well. But that's not really why I'm here."

"Why are you here?"

"I called my friend Josh Culberson. He's going to help me get started on the divorce paperwork this week."

She stared at him, trying to gauge what she felt. It was like sending a bucket down into a well that was nearly dry. Maybe this was a natural side effect of getting older, but all her emotions lately seemed weak, diluted. Even her anger.

"Okay," Jacqueline said.

"That's all you have to say. Fifteen years together and all you can say is 'Okay.'"

She sat down at the kitchen table. "Maybe it's for the best."

"I hope so. I can't keep living this way. I can't keep living with that look on your face every time you see me."

"What look?"

"Like you can't wait until I leave. Like I'm a depressing black cloud over your life." Kevin stood in the doorway to the living room, looking through the patio door at the empty pool.

It pained her to admit it, but Kevin was right. It wasn't his fault, it was just the way things were. When Jacqueline looked at him now, all she could see was the funeral, the days when she couldn't get out of bed, the night when he packed up all of Michelle's toys and clothes into three big boxes, his hands trembling and his cheeks slick with tears. A therapist she had seen had warned her that the loss of a child often blew marriages apart like a grenade. You would have thought that something like that would bring a couple closer together—like survivors in choppy waters, desperately clinging to each other as the currents got rough. But it wasn't that way at all.

"His name is Darren," Jacqueline said, wanting to level with him and let him back into her life a little, "and he's just someone I ran into. We have... some things in common. It's not sexual. I've only talked to him a few times—"

"You know what, I don't even want to know. Okay? I don't want to hear it."

"Okay."

"What's going to happen is this. Josh will get the paperwork rolling. We'll split all the joint assets. I don't want this house. I'm going to sign a quit-claim deed, which means only your name will be on the title. You'll have to go to the bank and try to refinance on your own if you want to keep living here. But I'm not going to keep paying out on this place. I have my own place and it's not cheap."

Jacqueline did the arithmetic. Was he kidding? Her salary was only $32,000. The mortgage was for $390,000, more than $1,600 a month, and that wasn't including things like food and keeping the goddamned heat on. "There's no way I can afford to stay here," she said softly.

"Then we'll just have to sell. If necessary, I can short-sell it for less than the mortgage, if the bank will go for it. Neither of our credit scores will take a hit."

"You're trying to kick me out of here."

"I'm trying to do what's fair and practical. What is not fair is me paying both rent on an apartment and the mortgage on a place I don't even live in anymore while my wife runs around with some other guy. Do I pick up the tab for everything in your life now? I'm sick of writing the checks while you keep shooing me out the door like some nuisance."

"I'm sorry I've treated you that way."

"If you can refinance, great. If not, we'll sell it and split the equity. It won't be much, but it'll be something. Use it for a down payment on someplace else."

"You know I won't be able to refinance. You know what I make."

"Then I don't know what to tell you. But I know what Josh told me—once this goes before a judge, he's gonna order the house to be sold if you can't afford the note."

She was silent for a long time. "I think you're enjoying this," she said at last.

"Look at me," Kevin said. "Do I look like I'm enjoying anything right now?"

EIGHT

On Thursday, July 2, Darren spent much of his lunch break on the phone. His first call was to a floor refinisher. Darren's quixotic attempts to rid his carpet of the ketchup graffiti—grim evenings spent on his knees with half a dozen different eye-watering sprays—had accomplished little besides creating a pinkish blob the size and shape of a baby rhino. He finally surrendered and pulled up the carpet. The oak flooring underneath seemed to be in decent shape despite a few water stains.

The second call was to Miriam Huntsmeyer, the real estate agent who'd originally sold him 1661 Shadeland. "I'm thinking of selling it," he told her.

"What's wrong with it?"

"Nothing. Aside from the ghost infestation."

"Ghosts. Oh please. There are no such things. It's the wind. It's other stuff. People get so goddamned superstitious with places like that. That house is beyond perfect." Miriam was an aggressive, chain-smoking old broad who, Darren recalled, existed in a constant state of stress and unhappiness. If you said it was a nice day, she would say, Nice day? Are you kidding? Could it be any hotter? I got pit stains the size of a Chrysler minivan. One more degree and I'll have a stroke and those ungrateful kids of mine will be fighting over who gets to haul my jewelry to the pawn shop. That's your nice day. After the foreclosure crisis of the last few years and the subsequent implosion of home values, Darren was surprised she hadn't impaled herself on one of her FOR SALE signs.

"If it's so perfect, you'll have an easy time unloading it," Darren said.

"Look, if you're serious about this, we'll set up a time to get it reappraised. Then I'll give it the once-over to see what needs to be spruced up before we go to market. But if you think you'll be able to find a jewel like this again, you're insane. You're killing me, Darren."

"Actually, I saw three listings in the paper today for places ten grand cheaper than mine. More square footage, too."

"Crack houses! All of them."

"You just don't want to try to sell this place again, do you?"

"No one has any money. Don't make me try to push this turd again. You are physically killing me, Darren."

The third call was to Liz Neumann, who had been quoted in one of the newspaper articles on the shootings. She had been a friend of Jerry McAvoy's wife. The two women had worked together in the accounts receivable department of Metro Printing downtown. A quick Google search told Darren that Mrs. Neumann still worked there.

"I'm sorry to bother you at work," Darren said, "but I was hoping I could maybe set up a time so I could talk to you about Shannon McAvoy. I live in their house now, and I had a few general questions about them."

Liz Neumann's voice was icy. "Why do you want to know?"

"Like I said, I bought their house after... after what happened, and I'm just curious. The paper said you knew Shannon. I was hoping you could tell me about her. About what kind of person she was."

"Mr. Ciccone, not that this is any business of yours, but Shannon was a good, decent woman. She had dignity. Even with all she had to put up with from Jerry, with his manic-depression and his self-pity, she always came to work and did her job. She was just a lovely person. She collected donations for the company food drive and even drove me around for a week after I had my cataract surgery. She never complained, never said a curse word, never let anyone see the pain she must have been going through, living with that... that crumb."

"Did you know Jerry McAvoy?"

"Not well. But I could see what kind of man he was."

"What kind was that?"

"Damaged. Needy. A man with a raging inferiority complex. Shannon brought him to one of our office Christmas parties once. It was at this nice restaurant out in Beachwood, and Jerry was the only one there without a tie. He was mortified. He wouldn't let it go. He looked like he wanted to cry. He kept apologizing. A better man would have made a little self-deprecating joke about the whole thing, but not Jerry. He was humiliated, and it just made us all uncomfortable. It was just a tie, for God's sake. I felt so bad for Shannon. She just wanted to have a nice evening but once again she had to play emotional nursemaid to that man."

Darren was taken aback by the hostility in her voice—but then again Jerry McAvoy was a murderer. Compassion for him would be in understandably short supply. And in many ways Liz Neumann's reaction to Jerry was natural. Father Baricek had said it himself: what you put out into the universe, the universe often gave back to you. If you thought of yourself as a loathsome barnacle on the hull of humanity, eventually other people would take the hint and see you that way too. Emotions boomerang—especially the bad ones.

"Men like Jerry are all pretty much the same," Liz Neumann said. "They feel powerless and castrated by the world, so what do they do? They drink. They buy guns. The chip on their shoulder gets bigger and bigger. And they're just looking for any excuse to fight back and show the world that they have power. Like demented little bullies on the playground."

Darren thought, I have been half in love with easeful Death. "Maybe the killings weren't about power. Maybe he thought it was mercy."

"What are you talking about?"

"Maybe he thought that life itself was so toxic that he needed to spare his family from it."

"You're sympathizing with him."

"I'm just trying to understand him."

"Instead of trying to understand a pathetic murderer, why don't you show a little respect to the wife and daughter he killed and try to understand them. They deserve to be remembered. Not Jerry." Liz Neumann hung up.

Don't ever let that bitch in this house again.

Never complained, never said a curse word.

Darren wasn't sure if any of this made things clearer or not.

"The anger seems feminine to me," Khabir said the next day at Harry Yarborough's retirement party. The party was at a faux Irish pub a few blocks from the office. As usual, Darren and Khabir were the two least social people there. They hung back by the jukebox, watching everyone else have a good time. "The thing didn't raise a fuss about the priest. But it noticed Jacqueline. Obviously it felt threatened. It's sort of like my mom and her sister. After two minutes in the same room together they're throwing things at each other and the phrases 'backstabbing bitch' and 'cheap worthless slut' start coming up with increasing frequency."

They watched as Annie Burlana, the old crone who thought Darren typed too loudly, buttonholed anyone in the vicinity so she could yammer on about her son, who just got an internship at some insurance company and was making $22 an hour. "Christ, why don't you tell us how many sit-ups he can do," Khabir murmured, too softly for Anal Rub to hear. "You know, we've been here half an hour and not a single girl has tried to talk to me."

"Try smiling. You tend to glower."

"I do not glower," Khabir said, glowering. "I liked Jacqueline, by the way. Major hottie. She has an air of sophistication and worldliness."

"You'll get no argument from me."

"A woman like her deserves to have a man like me make gentle, yet passionate, love to her every night."

"Thanks for the image. I think my appetite will come back around Thanksgiving."

"You two dating yet?"

"Just friends," Darren said. "And she's still technically married." He watched the younger women from accounting form a giggling, boisterous cluster around Tad, the young guy from engineering who looked a little like Brad Pitt crossed with Adonis. Darren, who looked like nobody crossed with no one, felt that old familiar pang of sadness. He was too old to register on the girls' radar but too young not to care.

Something Khabir had said wormed its way back to the forefront of his mind. "You said it felt threatened by Jacqueline. Why?"

"Jealousy." Khabir looked at him as if Darren were the stupidest person in the world.

"Why would it be jealous?"

"Obviously because it's fond of you. Jealousy is the dark underbelly of love, my man."

Rob Lancaster was painting the front of his house around six the next evening when Darren visited him. His house was just four blocks from Darren's own.

"Mr. Lancaster. Thanks for letting me talk to you."

"Not a problem." Gaunt and grey-haired, Lancaster looked more like a humorless Puritan minister than a high school English teacher. His paint-spattered Simpsons t-shirt, however, suggested a man who perhaps viewed the world through Vonnegutian glasses. He ambled down the porch steps, wiping his hands on a paper towel. "I'm not sure what you're after. And I'm not sure if I should be talking about former students like this."

"You don't have to answer anything you don't want to," Darren said. One of the newspaper articles in the aftermath of the shooting had the reactions of friends and associates of the McAvoy family. Lancaster, who had been seventeen-year-old Rachel McAvoy's English teacher at the time, was one of the people interviewed. "I'm just interested in what kind of person Rachel was."

The narrowing of Lancaster's eyes was almost imperceptible. "And why do you want to know this?"

"Like I said on the phone, I live in their house now. I'm just curious."

"Just curious."

"There've been... incidents in the house since I bought it."

"Incidents."

Darren wondered how the word ghost would go over with this man. Despite his Simpsons t-shirt, Lancaster had the air of a man who did not suffer fools gladly, and Darren was feeling very foolish at the moment. "It would take way too much of your time to explain," he said, "and I'm sure somehow your opinion of me would suffer in the telling. But rest assured, I'm not a kook. I don't even read my horoscope."

Lancaster took a sip from a bottle of water. His face was grim. "I don't disbelieve in ghosts, in case you're worried I'd laugh at you. Assuming that the incidents you're talking about are of that variety."

"They seem to be."

Lancaster sat down on the bottom step of the porch and picked some dried paint off his old tennis shoes. "It broke my heart when Rachel was killed. She was a very sweet person. Very gentle. At first glance you would have thought she was the sort of shy, meek girl who would just slip through the cracks of life. I guess on the surface she was. She wasn't popular and outgoing, didn't have boys trailing after her all the time. Although I'm sure she could have. She was a pretty girl. But shyness can make a person radioactive.... Humans are by nature social creatures, and being in the presence of someone whose life doesn't revolve around parties and gossip can be off-putting for most people. So they leave you alone."

"Did you talk much to her?"

"A bit. She was in my senior English class. A very good student, a very thoughtful writer. She was also in my homeroom as a junior. Very often she would be the first one there in the morning. Sometimes we'd chat. For those few moments she'd be so animated and charming, as if she couldn't get the words out fast enough. The meek, silent Rachel would be gone and out came this funny, intelligent, latter-day Dorothy Parker. We'd talk about books, about anything under the sun. I asked her once if she was going to Homecoming. She said absolutely not—high school boys were far too immature and bourgeois. Bourgeois! I'm sure she would have had a different attitude if she'd been asked, though."

"What else do you remember?"

"She was artistic, I remember that. The Drama Club put on a production of 'The Masque of the Red Death' for Halloween and she helped design the masks for the actors. They were very striking, very elegant and Old World. She also loved ballroom dancing. Who would have thought a girl of this generation would be into that. But she was."

"Ballroom dancing?"

"One of the phys ed teachers, Sheryl Krantz, organized a dance club for some of the girls after school. She raved about Rachel being so graceful at the waltz. Had a boy ever asked her to a dance, she would have shone, I have no doubt about that."

Darren had the image of gawky teen girls waltzing unsteadily with each other in a gym, stealing suspicious glances at the one girl among them who moved confidently and fluidly, a throwback to a bygone era. Ginger Rogers in stonewashed jeans.

"Another memory I have," Lancaster said, "involves me personally. One time after I sprained my ankle slipping on some ice in the parking lot, I spent about a week hobbling around on this ridiculous crutch, like an overgrown Tiny Tim. Even I thought I was a pretty ludicrous figure. One day in homeroom a couple of the other girls were giggling at me behind my back. You know the way girls are at that age. Well, next thing I hear is Rachel, who rarely ever spoke in class, practically yelling, 'Why don't you shut up? No one made fun of your mother when she broke her leg, Caitlin!'"

"Sounds like she might have had a little crush on you."

Lancaster poked idly at the edge of the lawn with a twig. The expression on his face was hard for Darren to pin down. It was like a detached, emotionless sadness, though that seemed to be a contradiction in terms. When old men are sad it's as if they're feeling an existential sadness for the whole world. "Maybe," Lancaster said. "Maybe."

Darren did not know what else to ask him.

"The day after the killings I walked around like I was in a dream," Lancaster said. "That's no exaggeration. A few police officers were sent to the school to talk to us, ask us about Rachel, ask us what we knew about her dad. For days the police kept coming. By then it had already come out that Mr. McAvoy had gotten fired from his job and had emotional problems, and in fact his medication seemed to be making him worse... but it was as if even the police couldn't accept such a mundane explanation. It was like they thought there had to be something more."

Darren thought of something he'd read in the paper just yesterday—a ten-year-old boy in Texas had been lured by two older boys into a construction site, where the two older boys proceeded to pelt him with bricks until he was knocked unconscious. The boy died of head injuries eighteen hours later. Why did it happen? The proximate reason, according to the district attorney, was that the two boys wanted the pocket video game the other kid had brought to school. But the truth was that there was no why. Tornadoes, plagues, shooting sprees, pedophilia, Rush Limbaugh—you'd go mad trying to look for logic or purpose in horror. The truth was that logic, reason and love were tiny aberrations in the universe—meager, fast-fading sparks in an everlasting night.

"The day after the killings, in my senior English class," Lancaster said, "we talked about what happened. Some of the students were crying. Some said nice things about Rachel, even though most of the kids in class were the popular ones who didn't hang around with her. The sight of her empty desk there in the back.... The next day I reorganized the class, arranged everyone in a circle, and I put the extra desk in the hallway. I just couldn't look at it."

A grey-haired woman put her head outside the door. "Rob? Dinner." She looked at Darren quizzically and held up a hand in greeting.

Lancaster got to his feet, cracking his back. "Wait here a sec," he told Darren. "Something I want to show you." He went in the house and returned a few minutes later with a creased copy of the autumn 2000 edition of the Brush High School literary magazine, a humble little pamphlet with a cover adorned with clip art caricatures of famous writers like Shakespeare, Poe and Hemingway.

"I was the magazine's advisor that semester and it required a considerable amount of holding my nose when it came to evaluating the poetry," Lancaster said. "Lots of warmed-over Rod McKuen, lots of goodhearted but hamfisted doggerel about world peace and tolerance. But I thought Rachel contributed a very nice piece." He found the appropriate page for Darren. The poem was called "My Love":

My love for you is fierce

Like a hungry dog with its bone

I will protect you, my love

From harm

From heartbreak

From the wolves in the night

This mangy mutt has been lonely for so long

I will carry you in my jaw like a pup

Carry you across this field where the wind troubles the wheat

Under the ferocious summer sky.

"She'd written a couple other poems for class as well," Lancaster said. "She had a fondness for animal imagery and I asked her about it. She said she admired the purity of animals. 'A dog loves you because it loves you, not because you're pretty or because you buy it nice things,' I think she said."

Darren stared at the poem for a long time.

"You can keep that," Lancaster said. "I have other copies. Are you all right? You look a little pale."

"I'm fine."

Lancaster gathered up his painting supplies. He paused by the rose bush near the front porch. "She loved roses. That's another thing I remember. She was always doodling them on her notebooks."

"Roses."

"One morning she came into homeroom with a white rose blossom in her hair," Lancaster said. "It was sweet, though she got teased about it quite a bit. Teased by girls with nose rings and pink streaks in their hair, if you can believe it. I always wondered why roses were so meaningful to her. But I suppose it was just something beautiful that she liked." He squinted at Darren. "Do you really think it's Rachel in your house?"

"I don't know."

Lancaster ran a finger over one of his roses. "The Persian Sufis used to believe the rose was the symbol of perfect understanding," he said.

NINE

"I have to keep the house," Jacqueline told her lawyer, Pulaski, on the phone at work after the Fourth of July weekend. She tried to keep her voice as quiet as possible, even though the two cubicles on either side of her had been empty for months. "That's the dealbreaker."

"That may not be up to you, Jacqueline. The math just isn't working. Even if a judge orders generous spousal support it's not going to be enough to cover the mortgage, even with your salary. I've been through dozens of similar cases and pricey houses like this always have to be liquidated. They're a drain on both parties. Look, I have to take this other call."

The consultation with Pulaski a few days before had cost her a cool hundred, and Jacqueline was sure he would have a meter running every time she called. And what was she getting for the money?

She could barely concentrate on her project—a study of the US ethanol market. She spent most of the morning staring at a graph of escalating corn prices through the latter half of 2008. The jagged line of the graph reminded her of the spike in an electrocardiogram just before the patient flatlines.

On her way to the bathroom, she heard a familiar sound. Amy, one of the junior research assistants, was standing by the cubicle of Mara, another research assistant, and they were having one of their hourly half-whispered gabfests. Amy always wore lots of pink and talked with her hands. She had graduated from Cornell and loved reminding people about it. Although she and Mara usually had free-ranging discussions about such meaningful issues as clothes, their boyfriends and who was doing what on Friday night, lately their talks had taken on a more focused quality. Amy was getting married in the fall, as was her sister, and Amy felt an almost biological need to tell any available ear about all the intricate dual preparations. Today she was telling Mara about the wedding cake for Amy's sister's nuptials. So many things to consider! Two tiers or three? And the frosting! My God, the frosting. It was enough to make your tits fall off from exhaustion.

In the bathroom, Jacqueline put some water on her burning face. Her hands trembled. She felt as if her body were thrumming with electricity. She stood at the sink for nearly five minutes, trying to calm down.

On the way back to her cubicle, she looked over and saw that Amy and Mara were still talking. This time it was about how many children Amy and her fiancé planned on having.

"—and even back at Cornell, I told Chris, I was like, it's better to have one then wait a couple years and have another one, because I loved having a big sister, and he was like, well, you know—"

Jacqueline politely interrupted and asked Amy if she had finished putting together the spreadsheet with the USDA historical commodity price data. Jacqueline needed it for her project, which was due in a few days.

"Oh!" Amy said. "I'm so sorry, I'll have it, like, by the end of the day. Excel kept crashing on me this morning."

The day went on. Work was done; coffee was drunk. Around noon, Jacqueline went to the bathroom again and saw that Amy had affixed herself to someone else's cubicle, another one of the twentysomething research assistants, and this time the discussion had veered back to the topic of the cake for her sister's wedding. The dilemma: cream cheese frosting or butter cream?

When Jacqueline adjourned from the bathroom a few minutes later the conversation had careened back to the topic of children and the names Amy and her fiancé had picked out.

"Amy," Jacqueline said, "I really need those figures."

Amy's large, innocent eyes got larger and her pink lipsticked mouth hung open in that almost cartoonish look of phony concern that twentysomething girls thought passed for seriousness. "Oh! Yeah, I'm real sorry. I'll get right on it."

"You've spent close to an hour socializing this morning. I need that spreadsheet."

Amy gaped at her. Jacqueline had committed a shocking breach of Datascape Research etiquette: she was rude. No one was rude here. Everyone got along, and if they didn't, they just avoided one another.

At her desk, Jacqueline's breath came in quick, shallow gasps. She had trouble focusing on her computer screen. She still felt that sickening, crackling electricity coursing through her body. No—it wasn't electricity. It was adrenaline. Somehow her fight-or-flight mode had been switched on.

Twenty minutes later, Amy appeared by Jacqueline's desk, meek and solemn-faced and bearing a sheaf of papers. Amy was blushing. "Here's the information. I'm really sorry it took so long." She was about to step away, much in the manner of someone who has strayed into a minefield and who then must delicately backtrack, but she seemed to feel the need to say something more.

"Oh! Like I said, I'm sorry it took this long, but you know, I checked the schedule and—maybe I'm totally wrong about this—but the schedule actually said I had until tomorrow to do the numbers. That's why it didn't get prioritized. But, you know, you really didn't have to be rude like that. I mean, it's no big deal or anything. It's totally my fault, I know." She said this in such a caring, apologetic manner, she couched her words in such soft cushions of humility, empathy and self-deprecation, that even the most hard-hearted of Bosnian war criminals would have had a tear in his eye. Any normal person would feel so ashamed at being angry at the cute, sweet pink girl that the person would spasmodically blurt out her own apology, and then catharsis would be achieved and they would end up braiding each other's hair or going shopping or diddling each other with sex toys, best friends for life.

Once upon a time Jacqueline had been a normal person. But now she had an overwhelming desire to punch this bitch in the face.

Jacqueline leaned back in her chair, taking in this fresh-out-of-college nincompoop whose life revolved around wedding invitations and cream cheese versus butter cream frosting. What kind of scars would life give her? Probably very few. Maybe her hubby-to-be would have a low sperm count. Boo fucking hoo. Perhaps one of her cunty girlfriends would make a snippy comment about her weight at a candle party. What a tragedy. It was a good bet, though, that Amy would never see the body of her daughter at the bottom of a swimming pool. God watched out for idiots and drunks.

"I was rude to you," Jacqueline said, in a tone of mild wonder.

"Look, it's no big deal, really."

"I've been here almost four years. You've been here approximately fifteen minutes, yet you are going to tell me how I should behave in the workplace."

Amy blinked, blushing an almost painful shade of crimson. It accentuated the pink of her outfit in a striking way. "Jacqueline—"

"Let's get this straight right now," Jacqueline said, her voice steady but a bit hoarse. "This isn't your college dorm room. Your work comes first. I know you're at that age when you think your life is endlessly fascinating and it's difficult to control your self-absorption, but if you want to talk to your friends, you do it on your lunch break. The rest of the time you should sit at your desk and do your fucking job."

Amy's deep scarlet blush dissipated, replaced with ashen shock.

Fifteen minutes later, Jacqueline was in the office of Nick Hasselbeck, her supervisor, with the door closed.

"I don't think I've ever seen someone so upset," Nick said. "She was practically in tears."

"Oh, give me a break. She is not the injured party here. I am. The company is." With a vehemence that a distant, more rational part of her brain found alarming, she paced back and forth, enumerating for Nick all of Amy's workplace transgressions—the endless socializing, the half-hour lunches that invariably stretched into 45 minutes, her sloppy collection of automotive production data for Jacqueline's hybrid vehicle study last month. She got herself worked up into such a state that it was as if she had suddenly become the walking, talking mission statement for Datascape Research and Amy was some Marxist saboteur bent on the complete annihilation of the capitalist free enterprise system. Jacqueline's voice rose to such a pitch that it began to scare her.

Nick stared at her. "You need to calm down. What is going on with you?"

"With me? Nothing. The issue is Amy's behavior."

"And I promise I will address these things, especially if she's been wasting company time the way you say she is. But what I need for you to do—and it's a little thing—is to apologize to her."

"I am absolutely not going to apologize to her. I would rather die than do that."

"You are going to apologize to her," Nick said, "because you have class, and because we run a congenial ship here, and I can't have my twentysomethings crying at their desks. They're young and they're fragile." He leaned forward at his desk. "I don't understand you. This isn't like you. But I cannot have people being insulted and verbally intimidated here. Okay? It is absolutely not tolerated."

A few minutes later, Nick led her over to Amy's workstation. Amy's face was the portrait of a stricken and wronged woman trying bravely to pick up the pieces of her shattered day.

"Amy?" Nick said. "We've been talking, and Jacqueline wants very much to tell you something." With a gracious smile, Nick withdrew, leaving Jacqueline to stare into the Pink Lady's expectant pout.

The fabric walls of Amy's cubicle were festooned with Cornell pennants and an orgy of photos—Amy and her pimply dipshit fiancé on vacation in Maui, Amy and her pimply dipshit fiancé at a club, Amy and her friends, Amy and her family, all Amy all the time, a thousand giddy smiles assaulting Jacqueline from every angle. It was just so... typical. Jacqueline could have been staring at the clichéd images of her own life circa 1996. It made her sick to think that she had actually been like this, a shallow little fool who thought life was just one big cute party.

"I wanted to apologize to you," Jacqueline said, and Amy nodded coolly, visibly relaxing now that she was getting her reparations. "I'm sorry that you have the brains of guacamole. I'm sorry that your smugness and cluelessness have had a lobotomizing effect on your brain. You should have been in the special education classes with the mentally handicapped kids, and you weren't. I'm sorry about that. I'm sorry you've decided to stitch together a life out of silliness, out of bachelorette parties and gossip, and I'm sorry that all your grand ambitions seem to consist of getting a man to spread your legs for and getting a house in the suburbs and maybe taking a Pilates class. I'm sorry that previous generations of women have suffered and protested and marched for equal rights, for the end to war, the end to prejudice, only to pave the way for a new generation of Stepford Wives who discuss cream cheese frosting as if it was an issue of vital national importance. I'm sorry there's nothing much to you. And I'm sorry that you won't be prepared for the off-chance that life can come crashing down around you. Because it can. And all of this—" Jacqueline gestured at all the photos of smiling Amy in the superficial prime of her life "—all of this can be taken away."

Amy, as pale as curdled milk, practically sprinted for Nick's office.

At her own desk, Jacqueline shut off her PC and stuffed her few personal items in her purse. May as well beat Nick to the punch.

TEN

Darren trailed behind Miriam Huntsmeyer as she barged through the house, pointing out things that had to be done. "Too much clutter. All this junk has to be put in storage.... Why the hell is this light flickering? Get these drapes to the cleaners, they're filthy...."

Most of her suggestions involved decluttering. "Make it look like a room at the Holiday Inn! Simple, clean and bland."

"Shall I put a mint on the pillow?"

"They don't do that at the Holiday Inn. Ritz-Carlton, maybe. I stayed there once, you know. Realtors' conference. There was a man." Her harsh, slightly bloodshot eyes grew introspective for a moment. "He loved me like no man has ever loved me before. Jesus, what's with this linoleum? It's hideous."

"It's the same linoleum that was here when you sold me this dump."

"Oh, how can you lie like that? Pull it. Put in some tile...."

The phone rang and Darren attended to it while Miriam scribbled notes and opened cabinets.

"Hi," Jacqueline said. "How are you?" Her voice sounded dull and hoarse, as if she had spent several hours screaming.

Darren started to ask if she was okay but the phone line crackled with impenetrable static before going completely dead.

He was acutely aware of the house around him. He tried to feel the presence that had infected the place but he sensed nothing out of the ordinary—no electrical charge in the air, no inexplicable cold drafts. The refrigerator hummed. The warm evening breeze sighed through the open kitchen windows.

"Miriam, let me borrow your cell for a minute."

"What's wrong with your phone?"

"Just let me borrow it for a sec."

She tossed him her cell phone. "How come you don't have a cell? My God, you're the last man in the country without a cell."

"It's a statement of principle." Out in the driveway, Darren dialed Jacqueline's number. The setting sun reflected savage fire off his windows.

"Sorry about that," he said when she picked up. "Phone problems."

"Do you think it's... you know?"

"I don't know. Are you okay? You sound funny."

"I just wanted someone to talk to. I'm not having a very good week."

"What's wrong?"

It was several seconds before Jacqueline answered. "I got fired yesterday." She chuckled without humor. "And Kevin's going ahead with a divorce. I'm going to lose this place."

"Jacqueline, what's your address?"

Twenty minutes later, Darren was cruising down her street in Beachwood, looking for the right house number. The houses on the street were not mansions but you knew you were in the presence of money. Some of the lots were twice the size of Darren's, and he took note of many exotic, colorful Asian trees and roofs made of Spanish mission tiles. Orthodontists lived here, as did young lawyers and guys who owned dry cleaning chains.

Darren found Jacqueline's ranch and pulled in. When she didn't answer his knock, he wandered around to the back and found her sitting on the grass by the empty pool. In the gathering dimness, the whiteness of the pool's tiles seemed to emit a feeble glow.

"Tell me what happened," he said.

She did. Like a young girl, she sat there hugging her knees. There was a paperback by her feet—We Wake Eternally: A Medium Speaks to the Other Side, by Michael Percival. In the sky above, a half-moon played hide-and-seek among wisps of lavender clouds. "I probably shouldn't have called you," Jacqueline said. "I barely know you and there's nothing you can do. I was just feeling needy."

Darren hunkered down beside her. "Are you sure there's no way you can get your job back?"

"It would be pretty difficult. Doesn't matter how good a worker I was. You create a hostile work environment, it just causes all kinds of headaches that management doesn't want to deal with. Besides, I just don't want to be there with all those girls. It's funny. Before all this, they were just annoying. But all of a sudden I just couldn't stomach it." She glanced at him. "It's a nervous breakdown, isn't it? What I'm going through."

"I've never much liked that phrase. It's too nebulous. And way too bleak. It's like the word 'cancer.' You hear that and you think the worst. But some cancers are treatable."

"You think what I'm suffering from is treatable?"

"Yes."

She laughed.

"I'm serious," Darren said. "Let's start with your job situation. You get on unemployment for a while. That'll keep the wolf from the door for a few weeks. Then, if you haven't found a decent job, I can get you in at my company. We're supposed to revamp the technical manuals for most of our product lines by next June. Lots of writing and editing. I usually get saddled with some of it but I'm gonna have enough to do with updating our marketing materials. It won't be a lot of money. But it'll be something." The idea had come to him on the drive over and it gave him a shameful little thrill. It was an opportunity for him to feel gallant, like a knight rescuing a distressed princess. He remembered what he had told her that night in the supermarket: I'd like to matter to someone. Not just a little, but a lot. He wondered if that was altruism or just narcissism.

Now that he had seen her house and her upper-crust neighborhood, though, his job offer sounded pathetic. Like offering an aspirin to someone with a gunshot wound to the chest.

Jacqueline reached out and squeezed his fingers. "You're sweet. But it's not going to be enough."

"Then maybe you're going to have to think about telling Kevin. About why you want to keep the house."

"You don't think he'll feel betrayed I didn't tell him earlier?"

"He may," Darren said. "In fact, I'd say it's likely."

"And if he doesn't feel betrayed he might just think I'm psychotic. After losing my job like this, he'd have a pretty good case."

"That's a risk too. But I think he deserves to know now. He lost a daughter too."

Jacqueline gazed at the pool, which reminded Darren of the gaping hole left after a tooth has been pulled. "I was on the swim team in high school," she said. "Varsity. I used to love swimming. The pool was one of the reasons we got this place. If I had been into flying Kevin would have probably put in a runway. He would have done just about anything for me."

"He sounds like a good man."

She flicked a bit of dirt into the pool. "If I could go back in time, I would have joined the chess club. No little girl ever died when queen takes knight."

"What happened wasn't your fault."

"Well, God Himself could give me a sworn affidavit to that effect and it probably wouldn't change how I feel."

Darren was silent. He flicked a pebble into the pool.

Jacqueline stood and brushed off her slacks. "Could I ask you to do something for me?"

"Like what?"

"Would you stay the night with me?"

He looked at her.

"It's not sexual," she said. "I'm just less likely to fall apart if I have someone here."

"A designated warm body."

"I guess I should have phrased it a little better."

He stood. "I thought nighttime was when... you know."

"She came last night." Jacqueline looked toward the warm yellow glow of her living room lights beyond the patio door. "I felt her. So maybe she'll take tonight off." She started playing with her hair, and Darren saw that her fingers were trembling. "You know, if I could just tell her I'm sorry...." Her lower lip quivered, and then she winced, her face collapsing in abject grief like a Southern California house being pulled down a hill in a mudslide.

Darren put his arm around her and she melted into him, grabbing handfuls of his shirt. The intensity of her despair unnerved him. Do wounds like these ever heal? Or was that only possible with life's micro-tragedies, like being passed over for a promotion or busting up with your girlfriend? The micro-tragedies were the only ones Darren had ever experienced—and for that he was glad. He hoped he never had to understand grief, real grief.

He resisted the temptation to whisper all the usual empty clichés, all of them variations on don't worry, it'll be all right, because he really didn't know if things would be all right again. Those asinine words of his echoed in his brain like a gunshot: I just want to matter to someone. Very often you matter the most to someone when they don't have anything else, when the wrecking ball has knocked everything else down.

He led her back indoors and made her some coffee which she did not touch, and when he prepared to crash out on the couch she took his hand and led him into the bedroom. It touched him how she refused to break contact with him, holding onto his hand like a blind man gripping his cane. Who am I to this woman, he wondered as he lay with her, fully clothed, holding her crumpled figure. An acquaintance? A friend? Maybe this night meant they had become something else to each other, something too subtle to fit under clumsy words like acquaintance, friend, lover.

She took his hand and placed it on her breast, and she was right, it wasn't sexual. It was probably some primal desire to draw some of his warmth and energy into herself. He could feel her racing, unsteady heart. Darren thought of a wounded animal looking for a warm, safe place to die.

There was something terrifyingly intimate about feeling the beating of another person's heart. Darren thought that in a way it was even more intimate than sex. It felt neither good nor bad. It just felt... humbling. This was what all our lives amounted to when everything had been stripped away, he thought, this modest, persistent rhythm.

He did not sleep much, but that was all right. Around dawn, as the darkness in the room gave way to a sickly grey dimness, he allowed himself to kiss her on the cheek. She did not stir. She slept on.

ELEVEN

Jacqueline awoke to strange sounds and smells. The sounds: Darren talking to someone on the phone in the living room. The smells: scrambled eggs and toast. It had been a long time since her mornings had been overloaded with such sensory stimuli.

She found him in the kitchen, dividing the eggs onto two plates.

"Hi," she said. For some reason she felt nervous in his presence. Ashamed.

He poured her a small glass of grapefruit juice. "Hope you don't mind all this. I'll clean up."

"I usually don't eat breakfast," she said. Or lunch and dinner, she nearly added.

"Then there'll be more for me." He put the pan in the sink. "Eat something. Even if it's just toast."

"Thank you for staying with me."

"Eat. Then get dressed."

"Why?" She already had her day planned out—several hours in a fetal position, Oprah, then several more hours in a fetal position.

"First, we're gonna go down and get you signed up for unemployment. Not the most fun thing in the world to do, so I figure it's best to do it with a buddy. Second—do you like baseball?"

"Not a big sports fan."

"Good. Neither am I. We'll just stay for an inning or so."

Because the Indians were busy stinking up their division, you could just walk up and buy a ticket at game time. In some instances you could have most of a section to yourself. Today there was a rare weekday afternoon game, and it was a brilliant, sunny summer day. Even though sports bored the crap out of her, Jacqueline was surprised at the twinge of pleasure she felt. She felt like a little girl being taken to her first ballgame by her dad.

The real purpose of their trip, Darren told her on the ramp to the upper deck, was so she could meet Rich Oliphant, one of the vice presidents of Northeast Aerospace. He was in the Terrace Club, the upscale glass-enclosed restaurant built into the upper deck of Progressive Field. Oliphant was reading The Wall Street Journal and paying no attention to the game as he munched a Caesar salad, a glass of white wine by his plate. With his deep tan and thick shock of white hair, he reminded Jacqueline of an artist's conception of a five-term Southern senator.

"Darren. Playing hooky, I see. Hope you weren't counting on that raise this year."

"This is the woman I told you about, Jacqueline LaPierre."

She glanced at Darren, impressed that he remembered her maiden name. She shook Oliphant's hand, still unclear as to what was going on.

Oliphant gestured them into seats and insisted they at least order some drinks if they wouldn't share lunch with him. "So," Oliphant said, "I believe Darren's told you about our need for a writer and editor for our technical junk?"

"This is a job interview?"

"The most informal kind," Oliphant said, sipping his wine. "Darren tells me you have four years at Datascape Research and are no stranger to business writing. How come you left your job?"

Before she could answer, Darren said, "She lost her cool with a girl there who was wasting company time and affecting Jacqueline's ability to meet a deadline. Management picked sides." Darren gave her a quick, pointed glance that seemed to say, They'd find out anyway.

There was a twinkle of amusement in Oliphant's eyes. "Lovely and tempestuous. There are worse combinations." He studied her for a moment, then seemed to make a decision. He described the editorial duties she would be responsible for, then told Jacqueline that if she could start by the middle of August it would be terrific. She would be an independent contractor and could work at home if she so desired, and if she did well prepping their technical manuals, "we'll look into getting you settled in with us on a permanent basis, if you're interested."

Jacqueline was so off her game she could only murmur something that sounded like "thank you."

Oliphant looked at Darren. "May as well tell you this now. Confidential. You know we've been having cash flow issues since we lost those Boeing contracts. Well, we've been talking to Goodman Technologies. There's a good chance they'll make an offer for us and save our butts. I wanted you to know in case any reporters ambush you. Just tell them no comment for now."

"Goodman has a habit of stripping companies down to the bone, you know."

Oliphant looked grim. "If we keep on without capital there won't even be the bones left, Darren."

A few minutes later, as Jacqueline and Darren strolled around the main concourse, she said, "Why did you have to go and do that? I'm in no condition for a job interview."

"Would you have gone through it otherwise?"

"Did you ever stop to think that I might not be interested in the job?"

"Then you don't have to take it."

Jacqueline stared at him, not sure what her dominant emotion was at the moment. Her head was a potpourri of feelings—a little anger, a little humiliation, a pinch of frustration.

"I just didn't want you to become paralyzed," Darren said as the meager crowd in the stands mustered a roar as Cleveland got a hit. "I didn't want you to collapse in on yourself. I've done that a couple times. Particularly after my divorce. You need to see there is hope out there. There are opportunities. You can build your life up again."

"I appreciate what you're doing, but I told you that it's still not going to be enough for me to keep the house."

"Have you considered that it might not be the house you really want?"

She stared at him.

"That book you were reading last night," Darren said. "We Wake Eternally. I noticed a couple others like it in your bedroom. Maybe what you want most is a chance to talk to her again. So you can tell her what you need to tell her, and she can tell you that it wasn't your fault. Then you can let the house go and start concentrating on living the rest of your life."

Jacqueline felt an almost instinctive need to disagree with him. You don't know anything about me, she nearly said, you're not my shrink.

"How am I supposed to talk to her?" she asked at last. They had stopped in front of a concession stand. "I can't afford it. I looked up Michael Percival online and it costs a fortune for one of his readings. And he's all the way in Florida, and I don't have the money—"

"I've booked you for the evening of Wednesday, October 14. Six p.m. You and Kevin."

She felt her eyes bulge and her mouth fall open like a kicked-in door. She mouthed the word how.

"The back of his book had his contact information," Darren said. "His people said this was the earliest date he had available. If you think I'm overstepping my bounds, you can go ahead and cancel. But I hope you won't."

"Darren, I can't let you—it's too much—"

"If I couldn't have afforded it, I wouldn't have done it. So don't worry about that. All I need to know is if this will help you."

Jacqueline felt as if she were on the verge of tears again. Why didn't she feel grateful? At first she thought it must be her dented pride—once again she was the helpless little girl who has to rely on a strong man to take the reins of her runaway life. Since she'd gone back to work after Michelle's death, she had gotten a lot of satisfaction out of not being beholden to anyone.

So yes, her pride was hurt. But that didn't fully explain the sense of dread she felt. It startled her when Darren suddenly articulated some of that dread:

"Are you afraid she really will blame you for her death? If you got the chance to communicate with her?"

It took an exceptionally long time for her to say, "Yes."

"What happened was an accident. I know you've probably heard that a thousand times by now. But the reason you've heard it that many times is because it's true, not because people are just lying to you to make you feel better. And do you think she'd manifest the way she does if she was angry with you?"

"I don't know."

"Yes, you do. You were a good mother, Jacqueline. She loves you."

He ordered them both soft pretzels and Pepsis, and they sat at a plastic picnic table in the concourse. She ate little, feeling subdued and exhausted. Soon, though, a hesitant smile twitched at the corners of her mouth, and something akin to excitement and—dare she even admit it?—hope flared briefly in her stomach.

Tonight your life begins again.

The smile seemed to want to stay on her face, and even though she had no interest in baseball she suggested that they sit in the stands and watch the game. She found herself clapping whenever Cleveland got a hit, and she even rose to her feet like everyone else when Grady Sizemore belted a home run in the sixth. She had trouble seeing the field because of the bright sun and the tears in her eyes.

TWELVE

The next day at work, Darren noticed an e-mail from Jacqueline mixed in among the usual interoffice e-mails and come-ons for cheap Viagra:

Darren—

I cringe at the fact that I'm starting this message with a cliché but in this case the cliché is true—no words can express how grateful I am to you for what you did. It is far and away the most generous thing anyone has ever done for me, and it dismays me that all I can muster in return are two small, drab words: thank you.

But perhaps I can muster something more. As lame and small as it is, I would be grateful and delighted if you would let me make dinner for you this Friday night. PLEASE COME. If Friday is not good for you, then pick another day. Any day. Every day, even. My home is your home. You are always welcome wherever I am.

Darren breezed through his work that day. Even Annie Burlana's passive-aggressive sighing over the loudness of his typing did not bother him.

Over the ensuing weeks, dinner at Jacqueline's place became a weekly—sometimes twice weekly—event, and most of the time it was Darren who cooked (although his definition of cooking primarily consisted of opening Chinese food containers or removing the lid from a bucket of chicken). He would have liked to host a few of these evenings at his place, but after he told Jacqueline about the threat in ketchup she told him not to risk it.

"You know the old saying about a scorned woman," she said.

"Putting the place up for sale is about the most profound act of scorn there is. And so far she hasn't made any noise about that. So maybe I'm just jumping at shadows." By some unspoken consensus, he and Jacqueline came to believe it was Rachel McAvoy's spirit in the house. No other explanation seemed to fit. Referring to the presence as she made him uneasy, though. When he thought of what was happening at 1661 Shadeland as random bursts of unexplainable phenomena, it seemed less threatening somehow. Once it became the handiwork of an actual personality, it became... well, personal. There was another person in his house.

"I wonder what she looked like," Jacqueline said one evening as she rinsed out their coffee cups.

He pulled a folded piece of paper from his wallet. It was a printout of a Plain Dealer article two days after the shootings, complete with a grainy photo of Rachel McAvoy that had obviously been lifted from the Brush High School yearbook. With dark shoulder-length hair and a nervous, wincing smile, Rachel looked like the sort of girl who spent much of her time hoping no one would pick on her in gym class.

Jacqueline handed the article back. "Why do you carry it around with you?"

Darren felt himself blushing. "I don't know. Maybe to remind myself that it's just a young girl I'm dealing with. Not a boogeyman."

But what happened at the first showing of his house in the middle of July did seem more like the work of a boogeyman than that of a teenage girl. The violence of that day could have easily been more serious than it was, and Darren considered himself lucky that the man decided not to hit him with a lawsuit.

Miriam was adamant about decluttering, so a few nights a week Darren would stash as much stuff as he could in the garage and in the attic. He toyed with the idea of renting one of those self-storage units but decided it wasn't necessary—the only truly messy parts of his house were his crowded bookshelves, and the overflow could be easily boxed up and stored in the attic. He had the downstairs hardwood floors refinished and he took a closetful of old clothes to Goodwill. He vacuumed; he scrubbed. Miriam might have bitched about how much still needed to be done—Miriam bitched about everything—but even she had to admit the place was in good enough shape for an official showing. Well, almost—she wanted the beat-up old desk in the spare bedroom removed.

"I want clean, uncluttered minimalism," she said, "not the Sanford and Son junkyard."

The evening before the showing, Darren bought dinner for Khabir in exchange for helping him move the offending furniture out to the garage. Which was easier said than done, because they somehow managed to get the bulky desk stuck in the back doorway. They budged, shoved, pushed, wiggled, swore and sweated for ten minutes before Khabir suggested they coat the damned thing with butter.

"Why?" Darren asked. "So you can eat it?"

"Maybe while we have this moment together you can explain why you won't come to the convention." Two weeks ago Khabir asked Darren to come with him and some friends to the Motor City Comic-Con.

"Because I'm not twelve years old and I still have some semblance of dignity."

"You could bring Jacqueline."

"Yes, I'm sure she'd love driving six hours to look at a bunch of moldy Aquaman comic books."

"It's an opportunity, my friend. A gorgeous lady invites you to her house every week and you don't even so much as shake her hand. You need to take it up a notch."

"We're just friends."

Khabir rolled his sad, suspicious eyes.

"And she's still technically married," Darren said. "Even if she weren't, a relationship isn't her number one priority right now. Tell you the truth, I don't think it's mine either."

"You are absolutely the world's worst liar."

"How am I lying?"

"Any man who says he's not interested in love," Khabir said, "is either a liar or a fool. I see your face when you're on the phone with her at work, you know."

"Let's just move this thing."

They tried for another five minutes to unstick the desk. It moved a grand total of one centimeter. Darren and Khabir were both drenched in sweat, and Khabir's t-shirt had ripped at one armpit. His flip-flops slipped and slid as he made one more clumsy but valiant try to budge the desk.

"Why are you wearing sandals?" Darren asked. "Are you a gladiator?"

The showing was scheduled for two p.m. the next day. When Miriam called him at work around four, he thought—with extraordinary naïveté—that an offer was on the table.

The first words out of Miriam's mouth, however, were: "We have a problem."

Fifteen minutes later, he met Miriam and a young Japanese couple out in Darren's backyard. The man's name was Edward Kanagawa; his wife was Sachika. Edward's left hand was wrapped in a swath of bandages, his index and middle fingers braced in a splint. He didn't look to be in any serious pain, though. Darren thought he looked more like someone miffed that the newspaper had dropped his favorite comic strip.

After some hurried introductions, Miriam took Darren aside. "I was giving them the tour. Everything was fine. We go up to the spare bedroom, he asks if there's air conditioning, how old is the roof, the usual stuff. The window was up. I opened it before they came. The window facing the driveway. Goddamned thing was a nightmare to open. Anyway, he was running his fingers along the windowsill and asking me how old the windows are. Right then the window just slams down on his fingers like a goddamned guillotine. I have never in my life seen something like that. And you know what those frigging windows are like."

Darren did—you could get a hernia opening or closing them. They squealed and groaned and fought you every inch of the way.

"It scared the Jesus out of me," Miriam said, running her fingers through her henna-rinsed hair. "The guy just went down on his knees like he'd been sucker-punched and his wife nearly fainted. We just got back from the ER. Christ, they're gonna yank my license for this, I know it."

Darren went to the young couple. "Mr. Kanagawa, I am so sorry for what happened. Are you all right? Is anything broken?"

"No, just one bitch of a sprain. Tore open the skin." His smile was grim and businesslike, and his eyes glittered shrewdly. "So, your listing is for one-oh-seven. That price pretty firm?"

Darren's brow furrowed. "You're still interested?"

"No!" Sachika said, tugging on her husband's arm. The expression on her face—disbelief with an undertone of disgust—reminded Darren of the look Annika had given him when he too had expressed interest in 1661 Shadeland. Sachika looked at Darren and Miriam. "No, please, thank you for showing us the house. We are not interested."

"Honey," Edward began.

Sachika's cold look shut him down. "I am not going to live in a house where people were murdered, Edward. End of story."

Darren bestowed a similarly frosty look upon his Judas of a Realtor.

"It's the law," Miriam said defensively. "I have to disclose it."

Super. Ohio's 'stigmatized property' disclosure law had just cost him a motivated buyer in the worst housing market since the Depression. Could there be a better definition of 'snakebitten'?

Darren slipped his hands in his pockets and studied the house, which stared back at him in all its humble, idiot blandness, like a pit bull sitting docilely by its master's side an hour after mauling the postman.

Once Miriam and the Kanagawas were gone, Darren mowed the backyard, then the front. He debated whether or not to go to the gas station to fill up the plastic gas can for the mower.

The Sphinxlike house waited politely. Gonna have to come inside eventually, it seemed to say.

Darren stood in the back doorway. He took a few tentative steps into the kitchen. All was quiet. He went into the living room, his fingers jingling the change in his pockets.

His voice sounded small and strange when he called out, "Rachel?"

His only answer was the mindless, almost inaudible hum of the refrigerator.

"Is it you who's here?" he said, his voice a bit softer.

He wandered through the living room and stood at the foot of the steps.

"I guess we haven't been formally introduced yet. You know who I am, but I'm still not really sure who you are. Or what you want."

Over on the next street, someone's dog barked.

"Why are you doing this to me? Why are you terrorizing the people who come here? Why are you terrorizing me? I've done nothing to you. I only wanted to live here in peace. But now I just don't feel safe here. So that's why I have to leave. Can you understand that?"

Even with his senses on high alert, Darren neither heard nor felt anything out of the ordinary. He mounted the steps, the anxiety and dread within him starting to abate somewhat. It was a sunny midsummer afternoon, and from a few streets away came the musical tinkling of the ice cream truck, a sound that made him relax. The prosaic, comforting white magic of his ordinary neighborhood was battling whatever dark magic had infected this house, and it was winning.

At the top of the steps he looked into the spare bedroom. The only furniture left in it was a cherry nightstand by the window. He'd have to put a plant or something on it before the next showing. The room looked painfully bare. Bereft.

The room was a few feet shorter than Darren's bedroom. He assumed this must have been Rachel's room.

The sill of the window overlooking the driveway was dotted with red-brown spots. Blood. Greasy fingerprints were smeared all over the upper portion of the frame, undoubtedly from Miriam trying to budge the window upward. She had managed to force it up about an inch to free Edward's fingers. Darren tried pushing it up further. It groaned and squealed. He got the window up another inch before his shoulder muscles throbbed in protest.

He sat on the floor with his back against the wall. The blank walls were like a white canvas which he tried mentally decorating with the posters she might have had back in '01 or '02. What bands had been popular then? In Darren's day it had been Springsteen and Van Halen.

"I talked to your teacher. Mr. Lancaster. He liked you very much."

The room was silent.

"He said you were a good person. I'm sure you were. He showed me one of your poems. You were very talented. I bet if I'd been going to your school I would have liked you. In some ways we're a lot alike. I didn't talk much in class. I didn't have a lot of friends. Definitely no girlfriends."

The similarities ended there, though. Darren had had a first kiss. He had gone to college, gotten married. He had lived. Rachel had not.

"Are you angry? I can imagine you would be. All the things you never got to experience.... You know, most of those things aren't as great as they're cracked up to be. Like marriage. But it's not fair that they were taken away from you."

The shaft of afternoon sun on the far wall slid a half-degree lower. The seconds ticked by. Through the window came a whiff of barbecue from a cookout down the block.

"I just want to know what you want. I want to know how I can help you. You need to communicate with me. I just don't want you to scare me. Or the people who come here. Please?"

He felt stupid talking to himself this way.

Darren stood and moved to the door. I will turn back, he thought, and I will see something. She will be standing there, or else there will be some other sign—maybe a rose on the nightstand. Maybe the scent of roses in the air.

But when he turned back there was nothing.

The next morning at work he got two e-mails. The first was from Kat Shakespeare, resident kook of the Akron chapter of the Archangel Society:

Hi Mr. Ciccone! Sorry for the delay! I found your story fascinating! It does sound like your home is ripe for a clearing! I'll need to come there and do an evaluation in person, then I'll get an idea of what sort of ritual would be appropriate. Interested? Gimme a holler and we'll figure it out!

XXXOOOXXX—Kat S.

The second e-mail had no sender address. It had been sent at 2:06 a.m. Pls dont lea v me, it said.

THIRTEEN

Darren was right. Kevin deserved to know. He had lost a daughter, too.

Jacqueline found a space in a garage not too far from Key Tower, where the Stratus Chemical administrative offices were located. She hated coming downtown but it wasn't fair to always make Kevin drive out to Beachwood. The afternoon was muggy and overcast, but the marble lobby of Key Tower was wonderfully cool, an air-conditioned grotto.

An elevator door whisked open, disgorging a crowd of suits. Kevin was among them. He was talking to a woman. Jacqueline recognized her—she was another Stratus lawyer, a more senior attorney. Sylvia somebody. Mid-forties, brutally short blonde hair. Attractive in a take-charge corporate way. Jacqueline was about to approach them but something in their manner made her hold back by the information desk. Kevin looked... light. Upbeat. The way he used to look after his legal team had won a big case and their boss had promised them bonuses. He did not look like a man whose daughter had died. Kevin grinned and murmured something to Sylvia—and were they standing a bit too close to one another?—and Sylvia put her head back and cackled. Sylvia's eyes glimmered warmly at him and she patted him on the forearm before drifting off with some other suits heading out of the revolving doors toward home-grilled flank steaks or drinks at Marbella.

Jacqueline tried to gauge how she felt about this. Finally she decided to cut him some slack. Most likely they were just talking about some work-related bullshit. Sylvia was older and, if Jacqueline remembered correctly from a past Christmas party, she wore a rather large, rather ostentatious wedding ring.

When Kevin saw Jacqueline, his breezy demeanor vanished and his smile tightened.

Gee, she thought, control your enthusiasm.

"Did you get caught in rush hour?" Kevin asked.

"A little bit."

"I didn't make reservations anywhere. I just figured we'd walk over to Steinkamp's, if that's okay."

Steinkamp's was a steak and chop house on the corner. Jacqueline had always found the place irritating—the dim lighting, the mahogany and the brass promised upscale dining, but the drinks were watery, the steaks were forgettable and the servers were as sloppy and inattentive as the teens who waited on you at Applebee's. Kevin ordered a chicken sandwich and a beer; Jacqueline requested an iced tea. Nothing else.

"Have you eaten anything all day?" Kevin asked.

"I'm fine. I need to talk to you."

"How come you won't tell me why you got laid off? They loved you there. Have you told your folks yet?"

"I don't want to talk about my job."

"Well, how are you going to pay your bills? Or did you expect me to do that?"

She stared at him. "I've got a job lined up already. I'll be starting in the middle of August. This is not what I came to talk about."

The waitress came with their drinks. When she left, Jacqueline said, "I wanted to tell you why I don't want to leave the house."

Kevin sipped his beer.

Suddenly Jacqueline felt foolish. It was going to sound ridiculous, no matter how she phrased it. Kevin, do you believe in ghosts? Coming on the heels of getting fired, it would be further embarrassing evidence that his soon-to-be-ex-wife was losing her mind.

"Do you remember all those books on psychic phenomena and mediums I was reading after Michelle died?" Jacqueline asked. "You bought a lot of them for me."

"I remember."

"You know, I could never figure out if you believed any of that stuff yourself. You never came right out and said if you did."

"I never really gave it a lot of thought. What's this about?"

"But you read a few of them. I think you read one of the books by Michael Percival, right?"

"I can't remember that far back. Why?"

"Just tell me. Do you believe in life after death? Like... ghosts?"

Kevin's eyes hardened. He took a deep breath. "Jacqueline."

"Sometimes I sense her. I know how that sounds. I know. But I swear to you it's true. This is why I think it would be a mistake if we gave up the house."

Kevin shifted in his seat.

"I know how crazy it sounds," Jacqueline said. "But she's still there."

"And you want me to keep on paying the mortgage. You don't actually want to be my wife anymore, you just want me to sign a check for you every month."

"This is going to sound laughable, but would it be possible somehow to have—I don't even know if this is the right term—joint custody of the place? Maybe we can share it. We can work out a schedule."

"Sure. Sounds fair. Where will you stay when it's my turn at the house? I know you don't have any desire to sleep in the same room with me. But maybe we could just fix up one of the spare bedrooms."

Jacqueline looked away.

"And that way," Kevin said, "I could maybe bring over a date, if I have one, and we'll all be out of each other's way. We could all have breakfast together in the morning. No, that won't be too awkward at all."

"You don't have to be sarcastic."

"The house is going to be sold."

Jacqueline stirred the ice around in her tea with the straw. "Would you come with me to see Michael Percival?"

Kevin's brow furrowed. "You want me to go see a psychic."

"He's a medium. Kevin, you read one of his books. I think he's on the level. More so than most other psychics. He can communicate with the dead—"

Kevin sighed.

"Well," Jacqueline said, powerless to stop the anger from seeping into her voice now, "I'm going to see him in Tampa. In October. With or without you. I figured you would have welcomed the chance to speak to your daughter one more time, but I guess I was wrong."

"How much is he charging? More to the point, how are you going to afford this?"

"That's all you have to say? I bring up communicating with Michelle and you're more concerned with the money? Don't worry, it won't cost you a thing. A friend set it up for me. For us."

"That guy 'friend' of yours."

Jacqueline sat back in the booth. She wanted to fling her iced tea in his face. "Yeah, that guy 'friend' of mine. Darren. He's sort of my version of Sylvia."

Kevin did not take the bait. His face maintained its expression of mild irritation. "What exactly are you doing?"

"What do you mean?"

"What do you hope to get out of this? Assuming this guy is on the level and he can talk to spirits, what exactly are you looking for? Absolution?"

"I want a chance to speak to the daughter I lost. But I suppose that doesn't interest you."

"And what will she say to us that you don't already know, Jacqueline? That she loves us? That what happened wasn't your fault, wasn't anyone's fault? We already know all this. Why do you have to put yourself through some wrenching emotional..." He cleared his throat as the waitress brought his sandwich.

When the waitress departed, Kevin leaned forward. "Don't ever tell me or insinuate to me that I don't love my daughter as much as you do. Don't ever do that."

"I wasn't trying to do that."

"I don't know what's going on with you. You want to close the door on a big, ugly part of your past—and I guess disposing of me is key to that. Fine. But at the same time you keep peeling back the scab. What is it that you want? Do you want a fresh start or not? I think you have to make a choice, otherwise you're going to drive yourself crazy. It's definitely not fair to the next man in your life. I think he deserves to know where you're coming from."

Kevin took a bite of his chicken sandwich and sighed. "I told her no pickles," he said, picking off the pickles.

It was then that Jacqueline understood, with astonishing clarity, that her marriage was now over. Even after Kevin had moved out, and even after he filed the paperwork with his lawyer friend Josh Culberson, she could still sense a frayed but nevertheless tangible connection between them. She could see it in Kevin's sad, longing-filled looks, in his thankless performance as her long-suffering, hand-wringing handmaiden. Whatever you want, Jacqueline, whatever you need—just please keep me in your life. That had seemed to be his philosophy. A few months ago he had called her and with an awkward formality had asked her out to dinner at an expensive restaurant in Chagrin Falls. He had sounded like a nervous high school boy asking out the girl of his dreams. Keep me in your life. But now that was all done, and Jacqueline felt like weeping for the man she had hurt and now had lost. There was a businesslike curtness to him now. He was guarded and wary with her, and he would no longer reach across the table and take her hand the way he used to do. Why would he? She had starved him and discarded him. Treat anyone like that—treat even the most loyal golden retriever like that—and the love and trust would go away. There wasn't even any confusion and resentment in his eyes now, there wasn't that expression of Why did you hurt me? She supposed she had been ignoring him for so long that she hadn't noticed he had already passed through that stage and was on to the next chapter of his life—the first chapter without her.

The next afternoon she was supposed to drop off a wok at her parents' house in Shaker Heights. Since her mom retired last year after more than thirty years as a nurse, she had rediscovered her love for cooking. The more exotic the better. Gone was the baked chicken and mac and cheese from Jacqueline's childhood; hello, Cantonese duck and fried calamari in white wine sauce.

When she pulled into the driveway, Jacqueline noticed the cars at the curb. They were familiar. In fact, she could have sworn the red Cavalier was Allison's.

In the kitchen, her mom sat at the table with Allison and Kayla.

"Hi," Jacqueline said. She suddenly felt ill at ease. The last time her mom had ever socialized with Allison and Kayla was at Michelle's funeral. All three women looked solemn, like mourners at a wake. "What are you two doing here? What's wrong?"

"You brought it," her mom said, taking the wok. "You're an angel. Want something to drink?"

"I'm fine. What gives? Did someone die?"

"We wanted to talk to you," Allison said. Although Allison tended to dress a bit more suggestively than was appropriate for a stay-at-home mom in her mid-thirties, her apparel today was surprisingly sedate—jeans and an old Genesis concert t-shirt.

"Kevin called me," Jacqueline's mom said. She sat down again at the table, trying to smile but managing something that could best be described as a grimace. "Last night. He called Allison too. Why didn't you tell me you lost your job?"

"I was going to tell you eventually."

"He also told Allison you think your house is haunted," Kayla said.

Jacqueline stared at Kayla, a girl she had known since junior high. Kayla's large, soulful eyes seemed a bit too watchful today, as if she were afraid Jacqueline would make some sudden, threatening move, like a violent mental patient. She is actually afraid of me, Jacqueline thought. They had had sleepovers, Jacqueline had listened to her moan about all the boys who'd dumped her over the years, Jacqueline had been maid of honor at her wedding, and now Kayla was afraid of her.

"And what's this about going to see some psychic?" Allison said. "I mean, with all that's going on in your life now, why are you getting involved in 'that kind of stuff?"

"'That kind of stuff'? What is that supposed to mean?" Jacqueline said. Then she got it—the metaphorical lightbulb flickered into dim life over her head. This was an intervention. "Where's Dad?"

"At the mall," her mom said, sighing. "He had some huffy notion that we were all going to beat up on you. But all we're trying to do is express our concern for you. We just want you to take a good look at all the things that have been happening in your life. Maybe you need to, you know, take a step back. Maybe talk to someone...."

"You mean a therapist."

"Jackie, you just lost your job," Allison said. "You're getting divorced from a man who would've died for you. And now you keep talking about ghosts and psychics and talking to Michelle. It isn't healthy. And this guy you're hanging around with—I don't know the whole story, but Kevin made it sound like he's kind of enabling you with all this stuff."

This guy. She made Darren sound like some scuzzy salesman in a cheap suit she met in a bar somewhere. And why the hell was Kevin telling Allison any of this? It was none of her goddamned business. "Answer me this," Jacqueline said. "You and Mark, you still go to that church every Sunday, right?"

Allison blinked. "Yeah. But what does that have to do—"

"Every Sunday you go there and you hear about Jesus, how he rose from the dead and absolved everybody of their sins and gave us eternal life, all that fairytale mumbo-jumbo. You believe all that, don't you? I mean, you wouldn't go there if you didn't, right?"

"What is your point?"

"You believe in life after death and Jesus and heaven," Jacqueline said, "you take your kids there and have that stuff force-fed into their brains, but for some reason my belief in life after death and ghosts and mediumship is unhealthy. I just want to make sure I'm getting the scope of your hypocrisy here. Or maybe it's not really hypocrisy. Maybe it's just that you haven't put any actual thought into your religion. It just goes in one ear and out the other. It's just the suburban thing to do on Sunday morning. It's no more meaningful than an hour at Pottery Barn."

"Jacqueline," her mom said sharply. "There's no call for this."

"All we're asking," Kayla said, "is that you just consider talking to someone. Yes, a therapist. There's no shame in that. When I had postpartum depression, I talked to someone."

Jacqueline looked at her. "Know how many fucking therapists I talked to after Michelle died? Know what most of them said? They said one of the best things a person can do in cases like this is be proactive. Not just sit around. This is what I'm doing."

"Losing your job is being proactive?" Allison asked.

"No, but getting a job is," Jacqueline said. "'That guy' you just sneered at actually set me up with a technical writing job at his company. And how I pursue my beliefs in ghosts or the afterlife is really no concern of yours. Unless you want me to get in your face about things that concern me about your life." For the second time that afternoon, the epiphanic lightbulb came to life and Jacqueline could see why these three women were so insistent on her seeing a shrink.

Jacqueline's mom, in her brassy, aggressive way, had always viewed Jacqueline's college years as the best time in a girl's life to land a husband. When Jacqueline had opted to go to John Carroll to be close to home, Jacqueline's mom had said, They have such a good business school! It's a regular husband farm. To a large extent, Jacqueline had bought into that philosophy. So had Allison and Kayla. Go to college, land a man (just make sure he's got a solid $45,000-a-year position lined up after graduation), have a baby. To this suburban paradigm be true. It was probably a tired cliché to say this all had a deadening effect on the soul, but Jacqueline did sense that a sort of hive mind dynamic was at work here among these women and women like them, as if they were thoughtless insects operating on the same limited biological programming. All of Jacqueline's friends and acquaintances seemed to want the same things, bought the same baby toys, had most of the same opinions. And the 'rebels,' such as they were, were the ones like Allison, whose rebellion pretty much consisted of wearing halter tops and getting a tattoo above her ass. What did they call those things? Tramp stamps? These women—these fucking women. People said girls matured faster than boys, but that was bullshit as far as Jacqueline was concerned. Once most girls hit fourteen they'd stay that way until they were fifty.

And what became of people like Jacqueline, the ones who were chewed up and spit out by this thing, this gigantic, strange, shape-shifting creature that could only be discerned by the spoor left in its wake, namely the crabgrass-free lawns, the polo shirts, the SUVs? What do you do with the woman with the drowned child and disintegrating marriage? She's starting to act a little strange there, she's getting some weird ideas, what do we do?

Easy answer—medication. Therapy. Get her mind right. After a while she'll get with the program. Soon she'll drop all this ghost stuff and start talking about proper things again—like whether to take a spin class, or the scary prices of Williams-Sonoma's espresso machines.

I tried playing by your rules and look where it's gotten me, she wanted to scream at these women. I did everything I was supposed to and it blew up in my face. Now you want me to go back?

She got angrier and angrier as the day wore on. Cassie Christopher, the high school classmate/call girl she'd friended on Facebook, called and left a message, wanting to get together for lunch, but Jacqueline didn't pick up. Her throat was so clogged with nettles of rage she didn't trust herself to have a civil conversation. She tried eating a can of soup but she could barely sit still. She paced the kitchen, her head ringing with everything they had said. Their words got louder and more insulting as the minutes of the night ticked away. It was like the sting of a slap that hits you moments after the hand is gone. She picked up the phone, slammed it down again.

A few minutes before eleven p.m., she was at Darren's house, knocking on his back door.

Darren came to the door wearing glasses. He looked surprised but bemused. "Hey."

"I'm so angry I could punch something. I didn't call because I figured your phone would be wonky again. I—" She cocked her head. "I didn't know you wore glasses."

"For reading. I'm proofing stuff from one of our VPs. He prints everything out in ten-point type. Come on in."

She stormed in and then swore, pressing her hands to the sides of her face like Munch's The Scream come to life. "I am so stupid. I forgot."She turned on her heel and retreated to the driveway.

Darren followed. "Ghosts don't kill people," he said. "I've never read about a single instance of a ghost capable of homicide. At best they make noise or throw things."

"What if one of the things they throw is a carving knife?"

"Don't worry about it. What's wrong?"

Jacqueline started to tell him, but the glowing window panes of the house seemed too much like unblinking eyes watching her. "Want to get a cup of coffee somewhere?"

They took Darren's car. The only decent place open at that hour was the Denny's on Wilson Mills Road.

"What's that old saying?" she asked. "People don't go to Denny's, they end up there."

"Food snob. Just for that you can't have any of my smiley-face pancakes."

Over coffee and cheesecake, she told him about the intervention, her voice at times getting loud and borderline hysterical. A pair of heavyset men in sweat-stained John Deere ballcaps at the table next to them looked over at her a couple times. For the most part, though, the men's attention was fixed to the TV bolted to the wall. CNN was showing a program in which rednecks questioned the legitimacy of Obama's birth certificate.

"What the hell is wrong with these people?" Jacqueline snapped. "He was born in Hawaii. What do they want, a videotape of the labor?"

"I'd like to see Bush's birth certificate," Darren said. "I'm not fully convinced his was a live birth. How did you leave things with your mom and your friends?"

"I pretty much left them in mid-sentence. I just got the hell out of there. What infuriated me most was how they subtly tried to smear you." She knew it was bad manners to play tattletale like this and risk hurting Darren's feelings, but it felt necessary to drive home how violated she had felt. It was as if her mom, Allison and Kayla had set out to kick dirt onto the few remaining good things in Jacqueline's life. "They tried to make it sound like you were just trying to get me into bed by feeding my delusions. I told them you were so far above all that it wasn't even funny. Stuff like that has never occurred to you. It was so goddamned insulting."

Darren said nothing. The waitress came by and refilled their coffees.

"And it was insulting to me too," Jacqueline said, getting revved up again. "They just automatically assumed that I was 'involved' with you. That as soon as I washed my hands of Kevin I hopped into bed with you. Christ, another romance is about the last thing I need right now." It made her heartsick to realize that the people who had known her the longest were so completely unable to read her emotional temperature. Like a monk, she'd spent the last few years simplifying her life, reducing it to its bare essentials—a job, a roof over her head, time to herself. When Kevin moved out, she was actually relieved. It was too crowded with him there. Why would everyone think she'd suddenly chuck this hard-won simplicity and solitude for the cheap fireworks of a fling? She wasn't some bored, fickle housewife looking to screw the pool boy.

"I have been married," Jacqueline said, more to herself than to Darren, "I have been in love, and you know what? I think I'm okay with never going through those experiences again. I've had chicken pox too, and I'm not anxious to go through that again, either."

"I think love can be a bit more satisfying than chicken pox."

"You know what I mean. I just feel—overloaded. The circuits are blown."

"You won't always feel that way."

"Want to bet?"

"You won't always feel this way. Life is pretty long. There are only so many evenings you can spend alone in front of the TV."

Jacqueline pushed aside her plate. She'd taken exactly three bites of her cheesecake.

"I know that love and all the rest of it aren't priorities for you right now," Darren said, "but it's pretty silly to make up your mind about the rest of your life over coffee at Denny's. Love isn't some mugger in the bushes we ought to avoid. It sounds like a cliché, but love can have a healing effect on your life. Sometimes it might seem to be more trouble than it's worth, but I have to say that it's worth it. And like I said, the way you're feeling right now isn't forever. People change. We get hungry." He nodded at her plate. "You may not want cheesecake now. But someday you might."

She sat back in the booth, staring inside herself. "For all practical purposes, Kevin was the perfect husband. And I loved him. If even he wasn't enough to make my life complete, what sense would it make to ever get involved with anyone else?"

Darren said nothing for a long time. He seemed to be studying the tines on his fork. "I don't know," he said at last. "I just hope that you would at least be open to the possibility. That's all."

"Every time I see you now I seem to be dousing you with bucketloads of drama you never asked for. I'm sorry."

"That's okay."

"Tell me what's going on with you."

He sipped his coffee. "Kat Shakespeare e-mailed me."

"The kook from the Archangel Society?"

"She's gonna come to the house and do an evaluation. Then she'll do what she calls a clearing."

"Do you think she's on the level? What's she like?"

Darren pursed his lips. "She uses lots of exclamation points."

"I'm sure she'll bring her crystals and her chakras and incense candles," Jacqueline said. "And she'll leave one of the candles burning, the place will go up in smoke and you get booked for arson."

"That's one way to get out of a mortgage," he said.

"Can you do me a favor?"

"What?"

"Give me a call when you get up tomorrow morning, first thing. I want to make sure you lived through the night. You laugh, but I'm serious."

"I'll be fine," Darren said. "Ghosts don't hurt people."

FOURTEEN

Despite what he told Jacqueline, Darren did worry about what awaited him when he came home that night. He fully expected to open the back door and find the entire place trashed, windows smashed, tables overturned. He imagined the bathroom door slamming shut and locking itself while he brushed his teeth, and then the toilet and bathtub would proceed to overflow in an attempt to drown him.

What he wasn't prepared for, however, was the grand, empty nothing that awaited him. Nothing was out of order. Everything was as he had left it.

He also wasn't prepared for the wave of desolation that began to wash over him like a dark rain as he stepped out of the shower and got ready for bed.

I think I'm okay with not ever going through those experiences again.

Darren sat on the edge of his bed for a long time.

When he got depressed, he got nostalgic. Out came the high school yearbooks, the old photos of Annika and himself. One night he found an old letter from a sweet girl he liked in college who just wanted to be friends.

Almost forty, and this was all he had.

Shooting baskets with Khabir at the park one evening, he barely heard Khabir grumbling about his nonexistent love life. Darren dribbled the ball, missed a jump shot and stared off at the smear of hot red sunset in the west, feeling an eerie, dispiriting sense of finality. Would it be this way ten years from now? One-on-one with Khabir, then dinner for one at the Taco Bell drive-thru followed by a couple hours of TV?

Khabir made an easy layup. "The dating website I'm on wants to know how I'd describe my perfect match. It would probably be bad taste to put, 'Someone with a pulse who doesn't mind dating a guy who often gets pulled aside for additional screening at the airport.' How would you answer it?"

"My perfect match?"

"Yeah."

Darren missed another jump shot. "Someone who lives outside the ordinary. Someone who's been through hell and who maybe doesn't even know what she wants anymore. Someone who doesn't fit in anymore." He grabbed the rebound. "Someone who loves silence."

"What the heck kind of a chick is that? Why would you want someone like that?"

Darren put his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. He had no answer, other than what Pascal said: The heart has reasons which reason knows nothing of.

That Friday evening was his parents' 40th wedding anniversary party. They had invited Darren, Julia and a handful of friends to a backyard barbecue at their house in Mentor, near the lake. Darren spent much of the evening shooing away the mosquitoes and listening to the soft, high-brow conversations among the Japanese lanterns. Most of the talk was about novels and poetry—his liberal parents steered clear of politics in deference to Sam, who still had a faded Bush-Cheney bumper sticker on his car.

The portable stereo was tuned to the smooth jazz station. Lou Ciccone manned the grill, poking and prodding the sausages and hot dogs and hamburger patties. He handed Darren a burger. "Inform your mother that if someone doesn't change this abominable music soon, I'll start singing. All of you will need therapy for the rest of your lives."

Natalie Ciccone refused to let Darren turn the dial. "You inform your father that if he puts on any of his insufferable Dave Brubeck I'll file for divorce. I'm the chief breadwinner, ergo I pick the music."

Darren's mom still worked full-time as an administrator for the Shaker Heights school district; Lou Ciccone, once a professor at Cleveland State, was semi-retired, although he still taught an English comp class or two at Lakeland Community College.

"How about a little country?" Sam suggested, sipping his longneck of Sam Adams. "Some Kenny Chesney?"

Darren wandered out to the lawn where Brandon, Madison and Julia were playing a chaotic, uncoordinated game of soccer.

"Hey, buddy," Darren said to his nephew. "You doin' okay?"

Brandon glanced at him and shrugged.

"I'm sorry about what happened at my house. Do you still think about it?"

Brandon shrugged again and went after the ball. Darren tried to get a few kicks in but his hangdog expression and listless demeanor seemed to brand him as a poor playmate. The kids spent most of their time keeping the ball away from him.

Julia disengaged herself from the game and came over to him. "They're okay. They haven't had any nightmares."

"Do they talk about it?"

"Not a lot. Kids are more resilient these days, I think." She looked like she wanted to say a lot more about that day at his house, but she glanced back at their parents. "Think they liked the gift?"

Darren and Julia had chipped in and bought their parents a year's worth of DirecTV; the truck had come yesterday to install the dish on the side of the house. "What's not to like?" Darren said. "Dad'll have all the History Channel and Curb Your Enthusiasm he could ever want."

The anniversary gift had given Darren and Julia an opportunity to come to some sort of rapprochement, and they seemed to have reverted back to their usual roles—Julia being vaguely brusque and condescending toward her big brother, and Darren feeling more like a slow-witted kid brother. Julia had evidently interpreted Darren putting his house up for sale as a tacit apology for that disastrous day back in June and was willing to let bygones be bygones. Sam, however, still refused to even acknowledge Darren's existence. Which, in Darren's opinion, wasn't exactly the worst thing in the world.

When Darren and Julia rejoined the adults on the patio, Darren's house and the housing market in general were the topic of conversation.

"Lily Kirschenbaum and her husband have been trying to sell their house for more than a year," Natalie Ciccone said, "and you wouldn't believe how gorgeous it is. And not a single offer. The market is atrocious."

"Tell me about it," Steve Wittenberg said. Steve was one of Lou Ciccone's colleagues from his Cleveland State teaching days. "Four houses on our street are up for sale."

"Five," Steve's wife said.

"Oh, hush," Lou Ciccone said, pouring himself half a glass of Riesling. "Darren's place is priced right. The people out there looking now are the bargain hunters, and Darren's place is a bargain."

"Not with what's inside it," Sam said. "I won't have my kids set foot in there. The place is evil."

"Being in your house isn't exactly like being in church, either," Darren said. "Still have that Al Gore shooting range target in your den? You sure you want to talk about evil, Sam?"

Sam would not deign to look in Darren's direction. "The house is evil, and your inability to see it speaks volumes about you."

Even in the dimness, Darren could see his father roll his eyes. Darren's parents hadn't seen any of the supernatural events, but even if they had, he doubted whether either of them—atheists both—would have resorted to a word like evil. 'Evil' smacked of Ouija boards and sweaty semi-literates under a revival tent, getting a taste of that old-time religion.

"What is evil," Darren's mother said pointedly, "is intellectual laziness and people's tendency to jump to ridiculous conclusions when they see something they can't explain. I'm sure there are aboriginal tribes in the Amazon who'd look at a radio as a sinister chalice that contains the voices of a pantheon of demons. But is a radio evil, Sam?"

"I don't see your point," Sam said.

Lou Ciccone handed Sam a sausage sandwich. "Physics. People experience a haunting and they immediately start using words like evil, demon, angel, God, miracle. If there are ghosts, maybe they're the natural residual energy released from the physical body, an energy that still retains some sort of cohesive form. Maybe we just haven't outlined the physics that make it possible."

"You know, I can never understand what the hell the two of you are saying half the time," Sam said, dabbing at a spot of grease on his polo shirt.

Julia rescued her husband by changing the subject to little Maddie's new imaginary friend, a flying red-haired girl named Suzie Rainbows. In addition to flying, Suzie's résumé was chock full of such skills as riding dinosaurs, making the rain stop and dancing so fast she could burn holes in the earth that reached all the way to the other side.

"Sounds like she'll have a great career ahead of her at ExxonMobil," Lou Ciccone said, finally losing patience and turning the radio dial. He couldn't find any non-watered-down jazz so he settled for the oldies station, where Dusty Springfield wistfully mused that the only boy who could ever teach her was the son of a preacher man. The bit of hot dog bun that bounced off Lou Ciccone's scalp most likely originated from the direction of Darren's mom.

"I think it's sweet," said Trish Horvath, a colleague of Darren's mom. "I remember when my Jason was little, he had an imaginary friend named Petey the Penguin. Apparently Petey was always the one eating my bags of chocolate chips."

Everyone else had a similarly cute story to tell. There was a great deal of hearty laughter in the smoky air and firelight. Old, faded faces were lit up with smiles, and the smiles were so transformative and youthful that Darren could see his parents and their friends as they must have looked more than forty years ago, when they were prickly young intellectuals raving about Updike and railing against Nixon. Darren didn't know if it was the acrid smoke or the sight of all the men's arms thrown loosely around the shoulders and waists of their spouses, but he had to excuse himself. He went into the kitchen and splashed water on his burning face. He did not feel like crying, but the sensations of detachment and exile were so strong they were almost paralyzing. For some reason he felt that it would always be this way—he, the loner among all the couples, year after year. Arriving alone, driving home alone. He saw his ghostly reflection in the window above the sink, saw how the lines around his eyes and mouth were becoming more deeply etched, adding an unappealing sternness to an already unhandsome, ordinary face.

Through the open window, he could hear his mother recount the tale of Darren's own imaginary playmate. "He must have been barely four years old when he started drawing these wonderful pictures of this big black raven with big, friendly eyes and huge, fluffy wings. I asked him who that was and he said, 'That's Blackbird, and she's my friend! Sometimes at night she flies me through the sky to her house in the trees, and she fights off the other birds who try to eat me. She gives me tea and these magic cookies. And one day we're gonna get married, and that's when I'm gonna turn into a bird, too! And we'll live in the treehouse all the time.' And he drew this precious picture—this big friendly black bird holding the hand of a tiny little boy."

"I take responsibility," Lou Ciccone said. "Instead of reading him Curious George I started reading him some of the more accessible Wallace Stevens poems. Including 'Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.' The imagists always make a vivid impression on children."

"Actually, it might have been me," Natalie Ciccone said. "I was going through my Ella Fitzgerald phase and must have played 'Bye Bye Blackbird' a thousand times while I was writing my thesis. But it was so sweet—I'd tuck Darren in, and he would touch the picture of his avian friend and tell her sleep tight, sweet dreams."

"Sounds like there's a book to be written about the psychological underpinnings of the imaginary friend archetype," Steve Wittenberg said.

"Oh, I could write that in my sleep," Natalie Ciccone said. "The invisible playmate is the shadow self, the reservoir for all the things we wish we could be but can't. It's the perfect helper, the perfect confidant, the perfect healer for all our woes. It gives us whatever is missing."

"Like a dream spouse, minus the sexual component," Trish Horvath said.

Her husband said, "You mean there's a sexual component to marriage? News to me."

"I could've sworn Jung wrote something about childhood fantasy archetypes," Steve said.

"Do you people always have to deconstruct everything?" Julia asked.

Darren's mother came into the kitchen bearing a stack of empty plates. "So here's where you're hiding. I hope you're not offended we were talking about you behind your back. Don't worry, we won't bring out the baby pictures."

"I was an ugly baby, anyway."

"What's the matter? You don't look very happy."

"Do you think I'm a good-looking guy?"

"Of course you are," Natalie Ciccone said. "You are very handsome."

Darren's smile was as weak and watered-down as the jazz on his mother's radio station. What did he expect her to say? Well, to be honest, you're not getting any younger, and I think Lyndon Johnson wants his nose back.

"What's this about?" his mother asked.

"The usual. I'm friends with a woman. And she's made it pretty clear that that's all we're going to be."

"Friends. How awful. There ought to be a law."

"You laugh, but you'd be singing a different tune if you weren't married. What if someone else out there was getting the best part of Dad and you had to make do with a few conversations here and there, a few lunch dates?"

Darren's mother put the dishes in the sink and gave them a quick rinse. "I'm tempted to be funny and say there are no best parts of Lou. I'm surprised at you. You were married. And you remember how your father and I used to fight. Marriage isn't exactly paradise on earth, you know. And how do you know you're not getting the best part of this woman?"

Darren handed her a paper towel to dry her hands.

"Do you think that sex and domesticity and joint checking accounts and looking at paint swatches is where the magic lies?" she continued. "Maybe all that stuff is just window dressing."

"I doubt you'd be married if it was just some hollow exercise."

"No, it's not a hollow exercise. But neither is friendship. Whether you sleep alone at night or not is pretty much irrelevant. Maybe the real magic is just having someone who cares about you and knows your heart and is glad you're in this world."

That night, the tablet of Ambien wore off and he found himself half-awake and half-immersed in what was perhaps the first erotic dream of his life. Even during puberty Darren didn't remember ever having any sexual dreams.

The dream was about as no-frills, bare-bones as you could get—just his room bathed in the moonlight. There was a feminine presence he couldn't seem to focus on. The woman was simply the sum of many blurry, tantalizing fragments. The suggestion of long dark hair, smooth blue-white skin, the glittering pool of an eye catching the moonlight. The sweet aroma of some girlish shampoo with a melon undertone. But every time he tried to focus his bleary, sleepy gaze on her she seemed to shimmer and fade into the moonlight like dissipating smoke. It was as if he were trying to peer in at someone from behind rain-streaked glass.

The fragmented woman seemed to be standing beside his bed, and Darren felt the lightest touch of fingers smoothing the hair at his temples, lingering on his cheek. Jacqueline, he thought, letting himself slip a little further back into the dream state. He felt himself reaching out to the dream figure beside the bed and his fingers intertwined with the woman's fingers. It was like holding a spider's web. He pulled her towards the bed. She reached out her arms for him and he folded his arms around her, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, as if they were two components of a single system finally locked together. This is what it's supposed to be like, he thought.

She kissed him. Her touch was faint, feathery—he was immersed in the spider's web now. The feather-touches on his lips became more urgent, heavier, more rhythmic. Love you, love you, love you, she seemed to be saying, although he didn't hear the words, they simply appeared in his mind as breathy little whispers.

His hands slid down her slender curves and he still couldn't focus on any one part of her for more than a half-second before she seemed to fade. But he didn't really need to see her clearly to understand that this wasn't Jacqueline; the figure's smooth, taut skin was much more youthful, shockingly youthful, and her fragrant shampoo was something a teen girl would favor. She seemed to intuit some hesitancy on his part and she held him more closely, whispering, It's all right. I'm here. Love you. Whatever you need I'll give. Won't hurt. Just love. Love you, love you.

Can't, he said. Was he speaking, or was this all just thought-speak? It was hard to tell. Can't, Darren said/thought again, and it was a transparent lie, because the sturdiness of the erection in his boxers was damning evidence that he could. What he meant to say was that he shouldn't—she was dangerous. She made threats. She threw things. Still his hands caressed her soft skin, and she folded her small hand around his and guided it around her welcoming body, telling him, I don't hurt. No hurt. Love. You can be happy. Blue-white moonlight fell upon slender shoulders, upon the swell of a breast, upon a flawless, milk-colored thigh. She would have been a beautiful woman, Darren knew; had she lived she would have been lovely. When she smiled at you it would feel like standing in sunlight. This was what the world had lost.

Why do you love me, he asked. Why don't you go on, you don't belong here.

Love you, she said. She seemed to cling to him more tightly, hugging him. Always kind. We're the same. Don't you feel it?

You don't belong here, he said again. But the light touch of her fingers all over him was hypnotic, tender, warm, nurturing, healing. He did not want to stop touching her, and she did not want to stop touching him. Her breathy whispers took on a slightly more frantic, pained tone. It took him a moment to understand that she was crying—whether she was crying because of the power of her feelings or crying for the loss of her life, Darren did not know.

Would have made a nice home for you, she said. So sweet, always. Her hand drifted under his t-shirt, groping for his heart, then it slid lower. Would have been kind to me, you would have been sweet. Gentle heart. The softness of her hair against his cheek was like the warm grass in late summer, and her aromas were so soothing and her grip so fierce that he couldn't have let go of her even if he had wanted to, and he didn't want to, because she was lost and needed someone, something to cling to in the water, and he had learned long ago that this was what he was good at—the compassion, the consolation, the shoulder to cry on. This was the only currency he had in his wallet. She had died before she had ever truly lived—didn't she deserve some reparation for that? Didn't she deserve to have someone hold her and be sweet to her and give her some taste of the life that had been stolen from her?

His hand slid, caressed, doing things his eyes were too bashful to see, and her breathing became a series of labored, rhythmic sighs. His fingers danced across the china-white dune of one cool thigh, and her lips greedily sucked at his own, and he caressed, caressed, until her weeping stopped and she seemed to throb in his arms, crying out so quietly that it was little more than a relieved exhalation, and he saw in one gleaming, jewel-like eye such a miserable happiness, such a happy misery—a drowsy drunkenness and gratitude, a peaceful ecstatic serenity and exhaustion.

Waiting so long, she said. Gentle heart.

Shhh, he said. It's all right.

Gentle heart, she whispered again, but it wasn't his heart that she was touching now. Her fingers, as insubstantial as the faintest of breezes, drifted into his shorts, and there was only the barest suggestion of friction as she explored and lingered and stroked and teased, and again Darren felt a brief hesitancy and she seemed to pick up on this because she said, Please. Let me. I don't hurt. No hurt. Love only. See? Just love.

Looking into the brown ponds of her eyes before they fragmented and dissolved, he saw a longing and loneliness and weariness that were much like his own—the same melody played in a different key, a different tempo. Her eyes told him that she knew him and wanted to heal him, fill in all the empty spaces in his life. His breathing was now becoming ragged and he buried his face in her warm hair while he felt her fingers on him below, so ghostly and so delicate that they were barely touching him at all, merely drifting across his skin like a hand passing over the strings of a harp, drawing forth music by simply disturbing the air.

God, he said, and the surge of ecstatic biological music began, a silent, warm music that poured wave-like from him, and she clung to him while it happened, while the golden warmth flooded out of him, an abundant fountain of warmth and life, the life that had been denied her, now it was out and she felt it, baptized herself in it, and she kissed him and held him as strongly as he was holding her and she whispered to him, over and over again, Gentle heart. Gentle heart.

FIFTEEN

July 16.

Jacqueline arrived at Marymount Cemetery around noon. Kevin had already been there—the half-dozen pink roses at the base of the headstone were a trademark of his.

Jacqueline brought no flowers. She didn't think Michelle would care one way or another. The day was overcast and humid, with charcoal-grey storm clouds festering in the east. She would stay ten minutes, no longer. She was supposed to meet the HR woman at Northeast Aerospace and fill out some forms around two. She wanted to make sure she had enough time to shower and change.

What a difference a few years could make. In past years, when the anniversary of Michelle's death loomed on the calendar, Jacqueline would feel its approach like the onset of a migraine. In the days leading up to it she'd go through her own personal stations of the Cross: her mood would become grim (July 12), then wistful (July 13), sluggish and hopeless (July 14), weepy and overstressed (July 15), and then on D-Day everything would annoy her and send her into profanity-laden rages or fits of morose, half-catatonic staring. Kevin, too, would become flustered and short-tempered during this time, but that was most likely from playing the role of long-suffering psychological case worker for his nutjob of a wife.

But now July 16 seemed to have lost some of its cancerous sting. It was still a bad day, a day full of shadows and dark thoughts, but its appearance on the calendar was sobering in a more subdued way. Like a root canal appointment.

Pretty soon she would probably stop visiting Michelle's grave on this day. She'd already stopped coming on Michelle's birthday and on Christmas, although Kevin still visited. In fact, Kevin came by two or three times a month. Funny how that worked—men were supposed to be the insensitive ones. Now it was Jacqueline who just wanted to put in her obligatory ten minutes and get the hell out.

And why not? Michelle wasn't really here, was she? Her remains were here, but if the animating force or soul of Michelle Prentiss was anywhere now, it was back at the house. Darren kept trying to convince her that it wasn't necessarily the house Michelle was tied to, like a classical genius loci, it was Jacqueline herself. But she was having a hard time believing that. Darren was probably just trying to cushion the inevitable blow of having the house taken from her. The house did seem to be Michelle's final resting place; it had snared Michelle's energy and kept her trapped between this world and the next, a spider's web made of drywall and high-end Italian tile.

The headstone was pink marble. Michelle Rachael Prentiss, May 7 1997—July 16 2003. "One More Angel In Heaven."

Jacqueline had always hated that "one more angel" dreck. She would have preferred just the name and the dates, but Kevin insisted on putting something else there, something that would perfectly capture his titanic love, grief and heartbreak. But Kevin wasn't a profound man by nature, and his efforts to wring timeless poetry from the storms of tragic mischance more resembled what you'd find lurking inside a card from Hallmark's $.99 budget line. It was somewhat better than the heaps of convoluted and incomprehensible Biblical verses Kevin's mom had wanted on the stone, however. Thank God Jacqueline had put the kibosh on that.

Two graves away, an old man knelt at a headstone, plucking away bits of crabgrass and weeds. He wore a faded checkered flannel shirt and a battered ballcap that had what Jacqueline at first thought was the red and blue logo from the Obama campaign. That made her do a double-take. There weren't many elderly white men who had pulled the lever for the skinny community organizer from Chicago. Upon closer inspection, though, she saw that the logo said Radco Vending Supply.

The old man caught her looking and nodded to her. "Afternoon," he said.

She nodded to him just as the sky politely cleared its throat with a soft rumble of thunder. The squadron of pigeons lining the nearby telephone wires took flight, their wings creating a counterpoint rumble.

The old man looked at the sky. "Guess that's my cue to skedaddle." He had an aluminum cane with him, but he still had difficulty getting back on his feet. Jacqueline went over and awkwardly lent him a hand.

"Appreciate it, miss. Wouldn't know it to look at me now but I was the fittest stud in my army platoon. Could run a mile in six minutes flat and not even break a sweat."

"A military man."

"Now I'm just the old guy who can't remember where he parked at Wal-Mart."

"Visiting someone special?"

The old man took off his cap and mopped his brow with a handkerchief. "My son," he said. They began walking down the winding asphalt path to the parking lot. "Died in '85. Bone cancer." He wagged his head. "Wasn't even nineteen."

"I'm sorry."

The old man shrugged. "He'd be past forty today. Blows my mind. The time passing, that is. Probably would've been married, had himself a couple kids, some hotshot teaching job. He was an intellectual, Brian was. Fascinated by animals and biology and DNA and mitochondria and all that stuff I slept through when I was in school." The old man's face grew momentarily bitter. "God must have the sense of humor of a rapist, though. Fucking biology killed him. Pardon the language."

"I say much worse."

"You visiting a parent?"

Jacqueline hesitated a moment before answering. "My daughter."

The old man was quiet for a few steps. Finally he said, "Bet you were a hell of a mom."

A weak smile came to Jacqueline's lips but it felt more like an irritated sneer. "Michelle could've done better, I'm sure."

"Pretty name—Michelle. What was she like?"

It wasn't as easy a question to answer as some people might've thought. Michelle had died before her personality had truly gelled. Jacqueline was often bewildered by her daughter—one day Michelle would be the sweet, obedient dream-child, the next she'd be cranky and contentious, turning bath time into a wailing, screaming horror, as if she were being burned alive. In other words, a typical child. But the jury was still out as to what kind of person she would have ultimately become. Introvert? Extrovert? A superficial bundle of giggles and neuroses, bouncing from one unsuitable boyfriend to another? An aloof, driven honors student with a cutting sense of humor?

No one would ever know.

"She was bold," Jacqueline found herself saying. "She might have been quiet and shy a lot of times, but she had an adventurous streak. We had one of those children's trampolines for a while. She would just bounce on that thing for hours, and she'd always jump on it as hard as she could. She kept trying to fling herself as far into the air as she could. We had to tell her to stop because she would've probably fallen off and gotten a concussion. But she loved it. She screamed like the devil when we took it away. She had an iron will." It felt strange to put it that way. When Jacqueline and Kevin would reminisce about her, the stories usually centered on things like her intense shyness around adults, or the precious names she gave her stuffed animals (Mr. Yellow Bird, Timmy the Happy Monkey, Grouchy Frog). But these stories seemed strangely impersonal—they could have applied to any thousand American kids. She had an iron will. It was the first time Jacqueline had described Michelle in those terms. With those words, Jacqueline felt as though she had gotten a glimpse of how the adult Michelle would have turned out. Polite, quiet, but singleminded if she had a goal and God help you if you got in her way.

"Sounds like she would've been a real firecracker," the old man said.

"Maybe. Or maybe she would've turned out like me."

"That so bad?"

She shrugged. "I was a quiet kid, but I used to feel pretty ferocious inside. Powerful. Self-contained. If I wanted something, watch out. But over the years I guess I turned into something else."

"What?"

"A people-pleaser. A girl who did everything her friends were doing. Just another flighty chick taking the Cosmo quiz."

The old man didn't reply. They had come to the gravel parking lot.

"This probably makes me sound heartless," Jacqueline said, "but I wish I felt worse today. It's the anniversary of her death, and mostly I'm just thinking about running errands. It's horrible."

"No. It means you're finally getting on with things. It means you're surviving. Hell, half the time I come here I'm thinking about what I ought to heat up for dinner, or if I can put off my knee surgery another few months. I've done my share of crying for Brian, don't get me wrong. But like my mother used to say, eventually the pain stops."

"I wish the guilt would stop."

"It will. You ain't heartless, missy. You're healing."

SIXTEEN

In this age of relentless self-promotion, of vanity plates and personalized ringtones, when every teen girl has a blog and every American Idol runner-up has a record deal, when every bargain book table in every Barnes & Noble is piled high with the memoirs of every quasi-celebrity to come down the pike, Darren found it a bit jarring that Kat Shakespeare didn't have her own website.

Most of the psychics and spiritualists listed on the Archangel Society's homepage did. Lots of them even had their own books, usually self-published. One woman offered a $199 DVD course in Massaging Your Way to Spiritual Enlightenment (no indication if "full release" was part of the final exam).

Kat Shakespeare of Akron, Ohio, however, seemed remarkably modest by comparison. Her one-paragraph bio on the Archangel site was almost bland: With over a decade of mediumship experience, Kat's abilities of clairvoyance and clairsentience have made her adept at house clearings and spirit crossings. She embraces a wide range of spiritual beliefs and offers fine insights into our interactions with the Spirit Realm. This was followed by an e-mail address and phone number.

Darren called her to set up a day for the evaluation: Saturday, July 18. On the phone, her voice was a disconcerting cannonade of enthusiasm and excitement. Darren could feel the exclamation points hitting him like shrapnel. I'm so excited about this! It's such an amazingly tragic situation! I can't imagine what you've been going through! It's so incredibly, amazingly fascinating and exciting!

"She probably takes amphetamines to calm down," Jacqueline told him at dinner one evening. "I'd love to be there for this travesty. But I doubt Rachel would approve."

"You can meet us for lunch afterwards if you want. Kat wants to debrief me about her findings 'off-site.'"

"That concerns me, too. You've already given her the background of the house. So there's no way to tell if she's really psychic or just parroting back info you've already given her. 'Yes, I'm seeing a young girl, bleeding from a gunshot wound.'"

"I'm not trying to prove or disprove her abilities," Darren said. "I just want the house cleared. She says she offers a money-back guarantee."

"Get it in writing."

"You told me about the website, remember?"

"I bet she's three hundred pounds and makes her own dresses. Oooh, wait, I'm also getting the psychic impression of someone who wears gypsy scarves and lots of plastic beads."

Kat Shakespeare, however, wore no beads of any kind. And she was most definitely not three hundred pounds. When Darren opened the door at two p.m. on July 18, standing on his front stoop was a slender thirtyish woman who looked as if she had leapt exuberantly out of Victoria's Secret's summer catalog. Miles of tan leg issued from hip-hugging denim shorts and her pile of bleach-blonde hair made Darren think of the mane of some mythic horse-beast galloping across the pages of a storybook. Kat's belly-baring babydoll tee was improbably printed with a quotation from Montaigne: The ceaseless labor of your life is to build the house of death.

She also had a smile that made you feel as if you had just spent three and a half hours having energetic sex with her. She grinned at Darren and held out her arms, exclaiming, "I'm Kat! I'm here! Hug!"

And before Darren could react, the blonde bombshell was exploding all over him in a big bear hug. She smelled like baby powder and a hundred different exotic flowers.

Darren must have had an astonished look on his face because Kat laughed and adopted an oh-there-I-go-again expression. "I'm sorry! I just always like to start these things off with a burst of some good old-fashioned positive energy."

Darren was reasonably certain few of her clients objected. "Thanks for coming. Come on in."

He was about to fill her in on some things he hadn't told her already, things he'd picked up during his own research and which hadn't been in the newspapers—where each of the bodies was found, Rachel's talent for poetry—but Kat quickly put a finger to her lips. From a denim purse the size of a duffel bag, she took out a steno notebook and began wandering through the house like a prospective homebuyer, every now and then making a notation in confident shorthand. Darren trailed after her. He watched her placid expression as she strolled through the dining room, where Jerry McAvoy had shot himself in the head, sitting at a table much like Darren's own. Kat lingered in the sun-drenched kitchen—where Shannon McAvoy had been found, face down by the refrigerator, for some reason clutching her checkbook—but her serene expression did not change, though she scribbled notes for some time. At the foot of the stairs to the second floor—where Rachel McAvoy had been executed, presumably as she ran downstairs to find out what was going on and possibly help her mother—Kat paused briefly, then trotted up to the second floor.

In the spare bedroom—Rachel's room—Kat ran her fingers along the windowsill (still stained with Mr. Kanagawa's blood) and spent considerable time just standing there, head cocked as if listening to faint music. She behaved the same way in Darren's room, in the cramped attic, in the drafty basement. In the basement, under the weak bulb by the washing machine, Kat turned and looked at Darren intently, as if she had just asked him a question. He was about to ask her what was wrong when she jotted something in her notebook and then breezed past him, heading back upstairs.

For the first time in more than half an hour, Kat spoke. "Well! Did you get that tape I asked for?"

On the phone, she had told Darren to buy a blank cassette tape—for what purpose, he didn't know. It was on the coffee table, and Kat unwrapped it. From her huge purse she removed a handheld tape recorder, the kind used for dictation, and popped the new tape in and pressed PLAY/RECORD. She set the recorder on the coffee table and then led Darren outside.

"Okay," Kat said, clapping her hands. "I'm hungry. Let's eat!"

They met Jacqueline at El Ranchero, a Mexican place in Richmond Heights. Darren was amused to see Jacqueline struggle mightily to not seem startled by the Helen of Troy before her. Kat's appearance also seemed to inspire a degree of solicitude from the restaurant staff more appropriate to a presidential visit. Diego, the surly busboy who barely grunted at Darren in the five-plus years Darren had been coming here, topped off Kat's water practically every time she took a sip, and the goofy, fixed grin on his face was so alien that at first Darren thought he wasn't Diego at all but some family relation of infinitely sunnier disposition. Even the bartender came over to inexplicably recite the daily specials to Kat personally, although the smirking hostess eventually led him back to his post.

"The service is so wonderful here!" Kat said.

Then it was back to business. "There's definitely the presence of a young woman in your house," Kat said. "A strong presence. I do get a fainter impression of an older woman, most likely the mother, and still fainter is the father. He doesn't come in clearly at all, though. He obviously passed in a state of extreme grief and stress. His energy is very weak, the way it would be for someone who's clinically depressed and turned inwards on himself."

While she consulted her notes, Darren looked at Jacqueline, who was giving him an easy-to-interpret look: Amazing! I'm sure none of it had anything to do with the information you prepped her with beforehand.

"Rachel, however, is emitting a real strong energy," Kat continued. "She also passed over in a state of stress, and it was such a sudden, shocking passing that she's confused, angry and sad. Sad probably isn't the word, though. Devastated. Imagine a pianist who has to have both hands amputated... that's the sort of feeling of devastation I'm talking about. She wanted to live her life. Rachel is still clinging to the house because it was her home, because it's familiar to her... and because of Darren."

The waiter came with their burritos and enchiladas.

"She has strong feelings for you," Kat told Darren. "I get a protective energy from her. She sometimes gets mad and will take on disturbing forms in order to scare away those she views as threats. I also get impressions of her thoughts: 'I wonder if Darren will like me in this dress. I bet Darren will like my hair this way.'"

Darren felt queasy.

"Wait," Jacqueline said, "she doesn't know that she's dead?"

"Oh, she knows," Kat said. "Intellectually she knows. But she's still clinging to earthly routines and emotions because she doesn't know any better. The best analogy I can give is a woman who's still convinced in her heart that her ex-boyfriend will come back to her eventually—even though he's already married and moved out of state. But the woman will still read his old love letters, still daydream about him. It's comforting. Familiar. Rachel can pass over into the light very easily but she had little in the way of preparation for the exit from her body. It was abrupt and violent. She holds onto the house and to Darren as if they're life preservers."

"You can read her mind?" Jacqueline asked.

"Not exactly, but people and spirits will often project their emotions and thoughts so strongly that I'll get a quick taste of them." Kat smiled sheepishly. "But just a taste. An impression. I guess I'm sort of like those people who are ultra-sensitive to perfumes and can smell Chanel No. Five half a block away. Some psychics are way, way beyond me. Like Michael Percival and some others. With them it's like spirits are downloading very specific, detailed information into their brains. I just get impressions."

"Can you communicate with the spirits?" Darren asked.

"Again, not as easily as some mediums. I can discern them, sense them, and communication is possible, but it's a lot like trying to talk to someone underwater. But some rituals are designed to improve the lines of communication. I think that's what our next step should be."

"Are you really descended from William Shakespeare?" Jacqueline asked. Darren heard the trace of mockery in her voice.

Kat laughed. "Oh no! This is just sort of my stage name. My real name is Jankowski. But I just love the Bard, don't you? 'And he will make the face of heaven so fine/That all the world will be in love with night.' It's just so darn rich, don't you think?"

"I'm sure some people can be a bit put off by a psychic with an alias," Jacqueline said. "Especially in a field that's ripe for dishonesty and fraud."

Kat's expression was unoffended. "I'm sure that's possible, but for me it was kind of necessary. This is just a sideline for me and I didn't want to bring any unnecessary attention to the folks at my real job. Best to keep the two separate, you know?"

"And what's your real job?" Jacqueline asked.

"I'm an attorney with Edwards, Baumberg and Kline. We do a lot of environmental and class action litigation. Now, if you'll excuse me a sec, I have to use the little girls' room. Back in a flash!" Kat leapt up in a flurry of blonde tresses and tan skin, and it seemed as if half a dozen waiters and busboys were there to give her directions to the bathroom or provide an escort.

"Are you buying any of this stuff?" Jacqueline asked.

"She hasn't said anything I haven't already thought myself."

"I'm sure she's not really a lawyer. She's probably just a paralegal."

"Are you all right?"

Jacqueline poked at her rice and beans with her fork. "Sorry. It's not entirely jealousy. But girls like that certainly get the red carpet treatment, don't they?"

"If you smiled more, so would you." He flicked a grain of rice from the corner of her mouth.

Kat sat down again. Her eyes shifted back and forth between Jacqueline and Darren like a poker player trying to guess the opposing hands.

"I heard what you said about her clinging to something familiar," Jacqueline said, "but I just don't get it. I mean, a spirit has the opportunity to move into a better plane of existence. The light, heaven, whatever you want to call it. Wouldn't that logically be more appealing than staying here?"

Kat nodded. "Sure. But logic doesn't always motivate us, does it? It's like a woman who's weighted down with bitterness and anger and hopelessness. She doesn't see that by just letting go of that negativity she can have so much happiness and love and opportunity in her life. All she has to do is let go." Her eyes lingered on Jacqueline for a moment. "With Rachel, though, we can try to make her see things more clearly, make her finally let go of this world. I have some rituals in mind. I'll e-mail you the details once I get clear in my mind about the best way to go." She squeezed Darren's hand. "I'm so sorry it took so long for me to get back to you. I didn't realize Rachel's behavior would have escalated so much. It's just been such a hectic month for me."

"The house clearing business must be booming," Jacqueline said. "Nice to know someone's making money in this economy."

"No," Kat said, "it's not that. My father passed away."

Darren offered his condolences. Jacqueline, looking pale and humiliated, murmured, "I'm sorry."

"It was Alzheimer's," Kat said. "It was expected." Her face did not darken—Darren suspected she was adept at keeping her sadness on the shortest of leashes—but it did grow thoughtful for a moment before brightening as the waiter came by to freshen their drinks.

Kat leaned forward and touched Darren's hand again. "I have to say I'm so excited by this challenge! Rachel's virtuosity is very impressive. Manifestations, telekinesis, electrical disturbances... didn't you say you had gotten some e-mails from her?"

Darren elaborated on that, although he was still not one-hundred percent sure they had come from Rachel. Khabir had been known to have his fun with Darren's work PC—on more than a few occasions Darren had returned from lunch to find that his screen saver had been changed into something that would have made Larry Flynt blush.

"I don't understand why she would disrupt phone conversations between me and Darren," Jacqueline said, "but not when you and Darren spoke on the phone. Is it because sometimes she's there in the house and other times she's not?"

"She's there all the time," Kat said, "but I don't think she saw me as a threat. I'm a stranger. I suspect she becomes very protective of him when she senses that he has strong feelings for someone."

Darren sipped his water.

Jacqueline stared into her mostly uneaten plate of food.

Kat, a forkful of rice half-raised to her lips, looked from Jacqueline to Darren, a flicker of alarm on her face. "Oh," she said.

"I am so so sorry I said that!" Kat exclaimed as Darren drove her back to the house. "I guess I just naturally assumed the two of you were a couple."

"We're just friends."

"I am such an idiot! This is so embarrassing! I mean, I'm supposed to have a knack for picking up emotional impressions, but I go and put my foot in my mouth and screw things up—"

"You didn't screw anything up. It's fine."

"No, it's not. I'm getting the feeling that I really, really messed up. I shifted the ground beneath the two of you."

Darren said nothing.

"You care for her a great deal," Kat said. "Jacqueline."

"I wouldn't go that far. We've only known each other a couple months."

He pulled into the driveway, and before he shut off the motor Kat said, "She's in flux right now. Jacqueline. It's none of my business, I know, but I do get the sense that she doesn't know what she wants or who she really is right now. So if she ever does say to you, 'It's not you, it's me,' know that it isn't just a cliché to let you down easily. It really isn't about you."

"Thanks. What was with the tape player?"

"EVP. Electronic voice phenomena. Spirits are most likely a form of electromagnetic energy, vibrating at a frequency beyond the limits of our perception. But there are many cases where their voices can be picked up on audio recordings. I want you to listen to the tape, but you'll have to really crank the volume. Sometimes their voices are so faint you can barely hear them. But there's also a good chance that we didn't pick up anything. It's worth a try, though. We might pick up something that'll give us more insight into her personality."

They got out of the car, but Kat remained by the passenger door, looking at Darren closely. "I didn't want to bring this up with Jacqueline around. But I'm getting a great deal of ambivalence from you about clearing the house. Am I right?"

Darren looked up at the dark windows, feeling antsy. Was Rachel watching him now?

"I don't know," he said. "Part of me thinks maybe it should be up to her when she leaves. She was forced out of this life. Now I'm about to force her out of her house for good. She's like one of those displaced persons in World War II. No home."

"What good would it do her to stay? Especially since you're selling the house."

"I've been thinking about that a lot lately, too."

"You mean you might not sell it?"

Darren twirled his car keys on one finger, not looking at her.

"You both would be keeping each other from where you're supposed to be, Darren. You really need to think about this."

As they went into the house, Darren said, "I'm sorry about your father."

She squeezed his arm. "You're sweet. He was the reason I got mixed up in this stuff, you know. He was a child psychologist. He knew I had these... quirks. Sometimes when he was having trouble connecting with one of his patients, he would ask me to play with the child for a few minutes. Just be friendly. Then later on he would ask me what I thought was going on with the kid. And I'd tell him. He said I was always on the money. He'd say, 'We ought to go into practice together. Your name will definitely go first on the letterhead. You do more good than I ever could.'"

In the living room, Kat popped out the tape and handed it over to Darren. "I'll contact you in a few days about what I think the next step should be." Then she took another stroll around the house, making the occasional note, running her slender finger across counters and tables.

"She's a good person," Kat murmured as they stood in the spare bedroom again. She was looking out of the window. "Her parents fought, almost constantly. There was a lot of unhappiness here. But a nice man lives here now and she feels safe again." Kat turned and Darren noticed her eyes go wide. She was staring at something behind him. The blood had drained from her face. "Darren, I want you to keep looking at me. Can you do that? I just want you to keep your eyes on mine for a bit."

"What's wrong?"

"Rachel's in the doorway, and she's trying to scare me. She thinks I'm the enemy now, and she's trying to frighten me."

SEVENTEEN

The mediation session at the Cuyahoga County courthouse started out fine. Jacqueline and Kevin were polite, the lawyers were informal and friendly, and the court-appointed mediator—a sixtyish woman named Denise Palatka—had the manner of a kindly kindergarten teacher who knew exactly how to soothe everyone's nerves.

When the matter of the house came up, however, the wheels came off the train.

"Since we're all agreed that keeping up with the mortgage and his current apartment expenses is not a sustainable situation," Denise said, flipping through the document before her, "Kevin has decided to put the home up for sale beginning in September. Jacqueline, you may stay in the house until the sale, but starting in September both you and Kevin will begin splitting the monthly mortgage payments in a manner that reflects each of your relative incomes—Kevin will shoulder 65 percent of the payment, Jacqueline 35 percent."

"Fine by us," said Jacqueline's lawyer, George Pulaski.

"Not exactly," Jacqueline said. "I'm more than willing to pay a higher percentage if Kevin will not put the house on the market."

Pulaski rubbed his neck, and Kevin's lawyer, Josh Culberson, looked almost amused. "Jacqueline, with the market the way it is, the house probably won't be sold for a year or more," Culberson said. "You'll have plenty of time to find a new place—"

"That's not the point. I'm not being given an opportunity to keep a house that I am happy with."

"You have been given the opportunity," Kevin said. "The bank wouldn't let you refinance. My name is on the note, unfortunately, so this is my call, not yours."

Jacqueline fished a piece of paper from her notebook of divorce miscellany and pushed it across the table to Denise. "This is a current bank statement. I have close to five grand in savings. I'm making money again."

"You haven't even started your new job yet," Kevin said.

"I'm making money again," Jacqueline repeated, "and this is my proposal: I'll start paying more of the mortgage in exchange for you not putting the place up for sale or letting the bank foreclose. We'll flip the percentages—I'll pay 65 percent, you pay 35 percent."

Kevin looked at the bank statement. "Two months ago you had less than $800. Where did you get this?"

"Do we have a deal or not, Kevin? Let's do it this way until the end of the year. If I'm not settled in at a decent-paying job by then, we can come back and talk about putting it on the market. Five months—can't you just give me that?"

Pulaski took off his glasses and looked as if he wished he'd gone into corporate law. Kevin got up wearily. "Jacqueline, let's talk outside."

Culberson started to tell him it would be better if they all talked in the same room but Kevin cut him off. "She's still technically my wife. I can have a private conversation with my wife if I want to."

Out in the corridor, Kevin held up the bank statement as if it were a bad report card. Jacqueline nearly laughed. He bitches about the house draining his wallet, so she does something about it, and now he bitches even more.

"Where the hell did you get all this?" he said. "You said you don't even start the new job until the middle of August."

"I borrowed some. I've been doing freelance work. What difference does it make?"

"Freelancing doing what?"

"It's a high-tech job called none of your goddamned business. Five months. Can't you at least give me that?"

"Jacqueline, listen to me. There is no ghost there."

"How would you know, you don't even live there anymore—"

"I lived there for years after she died and I didn't see or hear anything," he said, his voice almost becoming a shout. Two men in suits passing by glanced over at them. Kevin lowered his voice. "This is ludicrous. What happens after five months? Do you really think you're gonna get a job that'll pay enough to let you keep the house?"

"Darling, your confidence in me is so touching, it's so moving."

"Be realistic. The bank probably won't let you refinance until you're making at least sixty grand, and the last time I checked you don't have a law degree or an M.B.A. You're just putting off the inevitable."

There was an undercurrent of arrogance in his words that Jacqueline found remarkable. She had never once thought of her husband as pompous, yet here he was, making it clear that they belonged to two different worlds. Kevin was a member of that rarefied class of Those Who Make Money—the lawyers, the investment bankers, the people who hired architects to remodel their kitchens. Then there was Jacqueline's class—those who had their liberal arts B.A.s and shopped at Target and were more or less one paycheck away from bankruptcy.

Jacqueline tried to keep the fury out of her voice. "What I'm asking for is not unreasonable."

"The hell it isn't." Kevin's face was becoming flushed. "Every month that house isn't on the market is yet another month I get financially strangled by it. You think that's fair? You know, I always have the option of just letting the bank take it."

"You're a son of a bitch, you know that? Do you get some sick thrill out of trying to hurt me now?"

"That's rich. Take a look in the mirror sometime, then talk to me about who's hurting who."

"I'm not trying to ruin you. Didn't you hear my proposal? You're actually getting the better part of the deal."

Kevin looked at the ceiling fluorescents, chuckling wearily. He headed back into the conference room.

"Kevin."

"Five months," he said and went back inside.

"Five months isn't a long time," Cassie Christopher said. They were at Nordstrom, shopping for blouses for Cassie.

"It's a stay of execution," Jacqueline said.

Cassie studied her. Then she turned back to the mirror, holding up a cream-colored silk Diane von Furstenberg one-shoulder number that was $178. "You're just putting off the inevitable."

Her voice was soft, almost shy, and tender. It wasn't an affectation for the benefit of her escort service's clients. Even in trig class, amid the screeching monkey-chatter of the other girls, Cassie had been the polite kitten.

"When my mom was dying," Cassie said, "my brother and I tried everything to keep her alive. Even after the cancer got into her brain. She was in a coma for two months at the end. It did her no good. It did us no good."

Jacqueline said nothing.

Cassie gazed at herself in the mirror again, head cocked to the side. "You know, it took years, but finally when I look in the mirror I think: Not bad. Not bad at all." She looked at her friend. "Kevin's right. What happens after five months? And what happens even if you're able to keep the house free and clear? Is this what you want your life to be? You alone in a house with a ghost? It's very sad. And empty."

Jacqueline looked in the mirror. "You're probably not the one to talk to me about emptiness."

"No, probably not." She considered another blouse, a crimson one. "Too much like blood."

The person who was Jacqueline LaPierre began to disintegrate in those last, humid days of July. If you wanted to be technical about it, though, the disintegration most likely didn't begin then but simply reached a critical mass at that time, like a fractured miles-long chunk of the Antarctic coast that has been so riddled with fissures over the decades that it crumbles away into the sea in a matter of minutes. If Jacqueline had to guess, the crumbling in her had begun years earlier. Perhaps the fine little stress fractures had their provenance back when she stood in the immense backyard at Kevin's grandparents' sprawling home in Bentleyville that sunny May afternoon, letting Kevin slip the ring on her finger while mosquitoes flew chaotic sorties around her veiled head. With this ring I thee dread. Because there was a dark little part of her that had felt a pang of dread, that wondered even at that superficially happy moment, Should I be doing this? She and Kevin had been dating off and on since her last semester of college, and she liked him well enough, and he was gentlemanly and he listened, and her mother exclaimed he was "excellent husband material," but did all that add up to love? It reminded her of when she was a freshman in college and her parents had bought her a used Chevy Caprice. They talked up the car so much (such low mileage! no rust!) that they pretty much convinced her she should love it, too, but she had never truly felt comfortable in the boxy old thing and was glad when the transmission finally gave out.

Maybe her marriage had injured her somehow and she didn't even know it. Maybe it was like cutting yourself with an exquisitely sharp blade—you don't even realize you've cut yourself until you've just about half-bled to death.

However it began, that late summer it began to end. To invoke another analogy, Jacqueline felt herself go into "safe mode," like a damaged computer trying to operate on only the most essential of programs. She only had time to survive. She felt her mind go blank for long stretches—there was no humor, no wonderment, no clever opinions left in her brain. Eat (very little), sleep, survive. That was her program now. And survival meant making money and keeping the house.

Two months ago you had less than $800. Where did you get this?

What did it matter, really? When she was on Facebook she reconnected with Becky Horowitz, a high school acquaintance who was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy because of medical bills from four years of breast cancer treatments. Becky had to take a second job as a clerk in a store that sold sex toys in order to stave off the creditors. I'm not proud of it, she told Jacqueline, but in a weird way I am. Little by little I'm paying my bills, and the bastards aren't going to win.

Eat, sleep, survive. Eat, sleep, survive. It was the philosophy of soldiers in the field.

Her mother called her. Jacqueline didn't call her back. Allison called, too—Jacqueline ignored the message, didn't even bother listening to it all the way through before she hit DELETE. Even still, the voices of the persistent, chiding Greek chorus in her life kept seeping through. Allison e-mailed her:

Are we still friends? I can't tell anymore. Why won't you return my calls? I know you're still angry about us ganging up on you but don't you realize it was BECAUSE WE ARE CONCERNED ABOUT YOU!!! I just don't understand you anymore. And what were you doing having lunch with Cassie Christopher of all people up at Legacy Village?!? You DO know what she does for a living, don't you? Does she actually call herself "an escort"? What gets me frustrated is that you sit there all friendly with her but when I stop by the table it's like you're uncomfortable to be around me. Like I'm just dogmeat. So are we even still friends, Jacqueline? I honestly can't tell.

She was even avoiding Darren, canceling dinners left and right, but finally she mustered the courage to pick up the phone one evening when she saw his work number on the phone's caller ID.

"Been a while," he said. "Everything okay?"

"Yeah. I've just been kind of drained lately. Divorce stuff."

"Enough said. I stopped by a couple nights ago and left you the confirmation letter from Michael Percival. It was sent to me. You weren't home so I just left it in the mailbox." He said it casually but Jacqueline sensed the unspoken question: you weren't home, so where were you?

"I got it. Thank you so much. I've been looking forward to this. More than you realize. I just wish I had the eloquence to properly thank you."

"Are you really all right? Look, this is going to sound awkward, but I was worried that you might have been avoiding me because of what Kat said at lunch that day."

Jacqueline paced the living room with the cordless phone. If the phone had had a cord, it would have been entwined around her finger. Some people were fingernail-biters or foot-tappers, Jacqueline was a phone-cord-twister. "Actually," she said, "I have been thinking about that. Darren, this is a bad time in my life right now."

"I know. The last thing you need is another complication."

"And we really don't know each other that well—"

"I know. Three months is nothing. I have dairy products in the fridge older than that."

"And I just feel sort of numb in a lot of ways. It's like I'm numb to things like romance."

"Say no more."

She heard echoes of Kevin in his voice. Kevin was almost always understanding to a fault. Always eager to see her side of things and offer support, flowers, a nice dinner somewhere, a shoulder to cry on. She felt the sting of tears in her eyes. For a moment the world around her swam and became as fluid and distorted as a Picasso painting. She had wandered out onto the patio and stood before the pool. There was bird crap all over the tile.

"If you were to get involved with me," she said, "it would be a big mistake on your part. You could do much better than me."

"I know. My God, you had not one but two Kenny Loggins CDs in your collection. And don't get me started on your taste in earrings, sister."

"I'm serious. You have so much going for you. You're a catch."

"I write press releases for a living and I'm intermittently impotent. Somehow I don't think I'm in the running for Esquire's Man of the Year."

"Put yourself down all you want but compared to me you're a success. I've failed. I have nothing, I've lost my husband and my job, I'm living in a haunted house and I'm going to lose the house soon, and I'm going to lose my daughter once and for all. I've failed, in every way. And it's not going to get any better." Michelle's death had been the worst time of her life, a hellish time that she tried not to think about for very long—it was like staring directly into some blazing, retina-searing sun—but even back then, her naïve mind assumed that life would eventually get better. Kevin's mother loved to repeat that Bible verse, This too shall pass, and Jacqueline had bought into it, just as she had bought into so many things. But now she felt another sort of horror, the cold realization that perhaps unhappiness could be a permanent state of affairs.

"Kevin got the best years of my life," Jacqueline said. "Everything now is just the aftermath."

"The problem with saying things like that is that they can become self-fulfilling prophecies. Why don't you allow yourself the possibility that things will get better?"

"Because they won't." She was almost shouting now. "Because I seem to be caught in this dance where it's one step forward, two steps back, and I don't know how to get out of it, and I feel like I'm two steps away from going to an insane asylum, so you tell me how I'm supposed to look on the bright side when things are this bad. You tell me how I'm supposed to fix something that's completely broken and just can't be fixed."

Darren did try to tell her. He started in with all the usual soothing words, but he was performing CPR on a corpse. All those empty words sounded so distant and so strange, they may as well have been in another language. She hung up on him and sat at the edge of the pool amidst the bird crap and put her head on her knees, too tired to cry.

EIGHTEEN

They sat in Kat's Saab, listening to Darren's EVP tape on the car stereo. Kat had told him that normally you have to crank the volume up as high as it can go in order to catch any of the subtle whisperings that were a hallmark of EVP. In this case, they were able to play the tape at a normal volume. All the tape contained were six of Darren's favorite songs: the Carpenters' version of "The Rainbow Connection"; Joni Mitchell's somber, orchestra-backed re-recording of her hit "Both Sides Now"; Burt Bacharach's own poignant rendition of "Alfie"; "Am I the Same Girl," by Swing Out Sister; "For a Dancer," by Jackson Browne; and "When Will I See You Again," the wistful 1974 soul ballad from The Three Degrees.

Kat laughed. "This is delightful! There's no chance the tape player could have just picked up your stereo somehow playing the CDs automatically?"

"I haven't played my stereo in weeks. And some of these CDs are stashed away in my bedroom, nowhere near the stereo." The audio quality of the tape was disturbingly good, as if it had been recorded on Darren's own sound system and not on some inexpensive handheld recorder with a tiny built-in mic.

"She made you a mix tape," Kat said. "That is just so sweet. It's like a love sonnet. Are they all your favorite songs?"

"Every one."

"She's trying to tell you that she knows you. Was there anything else on the tape?"

"Nothing."

Kat ejected the tape and grabbed a paper bag from the backseat. "I'll listen to it more carefully at my apartment. But for now, I think it's about time that we make it clear to Miss Rachel that she's wearing out her welcome."

Before Kat made it to the back door of the house, Darren asked, "What is a clearing like? For the spirit? Is it—painful?"

She cocked her head and looked at him for a long time. "To be honest, I don't know what it feels like for the spirits. Their emotions seem to fade during and after the ritual, so I can't pick up on what they're going through. But ultimately, when they get to the light, there is no pain. The light is what we call heaven, so how could that be painful?"

It would have sounded ridiculous and absurdly arrogant to say, Because I'm not there, so Darren kept his mouth shut.

Kat marched into the house. "Hi, Rachel! It's me! And I have something for you."

The ritual began.

From the paper bag Kat withdrew a sack full of sea salt. She flicked a pinch of it in every corner of every room. "It may seem strange," she had written to Darren in an e-mail, "but remember that salt is one of the most ancient and important substances on earth. It's used as a preservative, it's used as a medicine in many cultures, and in some instances it was even used as currency. Seawater is an excellent conductor of electricity because of the salt. Since our souls are basically electrical energy, what I'm doing is amplifying the spiritual atmosphere of the house."

Once Kat would salt a room—Darren resisted the urge to ask if pepper and mayo were part of step two—she would shut her eyes and say, "Let the spirits of Love come forth to guide this lost soul back into the Everlasting Light." Then she would light a small scented candle that she would place somewhere in the room. Each candle had a different scent: sandalwood for the living room, lavender for the bathroom, frankincense for Rachel's room, and half a dozen other aromas that had Darren's eyes watering and nose twitching. This must be what it felt like to work the counter at the Yankee Candle Company every day.

Once every room had been purified, Kat and Darren came back to the living room. Kat sat on the floor in the lotus position, breathing deeply and serenely as if in meditation. Darren hunkered down cross-legged near her, with considerably less grace.

"I summon the spirits of love to guide Rachel McAvoy back to her true home," Kat said, "back to the Everlasting Light, so that she may enjoy the peace her soul deserves. Shantih. Shantih. Shantih."

"The peace that surpasses understanding," Darren said.

Kat's eyes widened. "You know Hindi?"

"I know T. S. Eliot. 'The Waste Land' ends with a repetition of 'shantih.'"

She smiled, her eyes narrowing as if he were a puzzle she was trying to work out. He looked away. She claimed she wasn't a mind reader but Darren felt his thoughts were so obvious, so cartoonishly simple that Kat would have had no difficulty reading them. They were practically painted on his face.

"How does the ritual work?" Darren asked. "I'm not sure how salt and candles can banish a spirit."

"They don't. The salt and the fire attract other, more positive spirits. Fire and salt are primordial elements. Their powers transcend the physical world. They're like magnets that can draw out spirits and universal forces from the ethereal plane. And once we've called out these guardian spirits to our cause, they can do what they do best—envelop Rachel with love and guide her into the light."

They sat there for a few minutes more, Kat with her eyes closed and a placid, in-touch-with-the-universe expression on her surfer-girl face. Then she hopped to her feet and wandered about the living room, touching the walls, listening.

"I think she's gone," she said at last. She blew out the candle in the living room.

Darren waited downstairs while she went around to all the other rooms, dousing the candles. In the kitchen, she packed away all her supplies.

"The operative word, though, is 'think,'" she said. She gave Darren a careful, meaningful look, though he didn't have a clue what that meaning was. "Sometimes things don't work out the way we'd like. But sometimes they do."

They toasted with cans of ginger ale. "It's Saturday afternoon," she said. "You should go out and celebrate! What did you have planned today?"

"Nothing much. Maybe go to a couple open houses."

"I love open houses! Mind if I tag along?"

"Are you serious? You're really that bored?"

"I'll come in handy, I promise. I can sniff out places that are karmically compromised. I won't even charge you!"

Having Kat "tag along" anywhere, Darren discovered, was a little like walking in the door with Rita Hayworth in tow. Every eye was upon her, men did double-takes and women got starry-eyed and mistook her for various actresses, models, country singers, hotel heiresses. And this was just at the first open house. Darren felt more or less like Kat's invisible valet—which was fine, as it let him wander unmolested through the empty house while the Realtor and the other prospective buyers fussed over the blonde Cialis tablet come to life.

The house, which was five streets over from Darren's, had a remarkably similar floorplan and almost identical square footage. There was also a finished basement—a major plus. New appliances. The price was get-out-your-checkbook-and-make-an-offer-that-day reasonable. Yet Darren stood in the bathroom looking at his face in the medicine cabinet's mirror, knowing full well he would not make a bid.

Kat materialized in the mirror behind him, her arms folded. "There's a sad man."

"I think I've seen enough of this place."

"I get a tranquil, low-key vibe here. A person could be happy here." She studied the sad man in the mirror. "But not you, I guess."

"Why would Rachel like me in the first place? What made me so special?"

"You don't think you're special?"

He resisted the temptation to belt out a few selections from his well-honed repertoire of self-pity—I'm just a nobody who works in an office, I'm approaching middle age, I'm about as memorable as plain oatmeal. Kat gave off such a nurturing, motherly aura that it was difficult to keep from acting like a little boy looking for comfort. He settled for muttering, "I'm not special."

As they headed for Darren's car, Kat said, "Know what struck me about you right off the bat?"

"What?"

"You're a safe harbor. Women feel comfortable with you. You treat them like people. That's pretty rare."

"Just what every guy wants to be called—safe. Like tapioca pudding."

"No. Like a sturdy house in the middle of a storm. I've had a lot of men come on to me, try to pick me up, and I always get this predatory vibe from them. Like I'm just a conquest. But you actually look at me as a person. You couldn't care less how I look. I can understand why Rachel loves you."

"And look how I've treated her."

"You've helped her move on to where she belongs now. She's better off, Darren."

In the car, before he could put the key in the ignition, Kat said, "I won't charge you for the clearing. Because what I'm about to say to you will probably make you angry."

"This doesn't sound promising."

"You didn't want the ritual to work." From her pants pocket she removed one of the polished turquoise stones the size of a marble that Darren had placed discreetly in each corner of the spare bedroom. She put the stone on the dashboard. "Protection against the influence of magicians and unwanted intruders. I bet I even know what website you went to. I guess I don't understand why you just didn't call me and cancel. I wouldn't have been offended."

Darren said nothing.

"You're torn, I can sense that," Kat said. "But not that torn, right? I know it must be intoxicating—having a girl love you that much. And her youth... that makes it even more irresistible, doesn't it?"

He looked at her.

"Women my age—Jacqueline's age—are complicated," Kat said. "Sometimes too complicated. We're often jaded, and not easily impressed. We've been there, we've done that. For men who are unsure about themselves, a young impressionable girl with intense emotions and that innocent devotion that only young girls are capable of... well, I can see the appeal. We all want to be loved. And it's no fun to be loved halfway, or to feel like you're getting lost in the shuffle between kids and careers and ex-husbands and years and years of emotional baggage."

Darren considered all sorts of defensive replies—you don't know me, don't reduce me down to some middle-aged cliché—but there was that silly turquoise stone on the dash, staring at him like a pale, accusatory eye.

"There's a good chance my ritual didn't work," Kat said. "Because I think you're holding onto her just as much as she's holding onto you and the house. But she needs to move on. And you need to ask yourself why you'd want her to stay. Would it really be out of love? Or just so you won't feel so lonely?"

Again he had no reply.

Kat took a moment before continuing. "I know you like to think of yourself as a sensitive guy. In many ways you are. But I also think you have some growing up to do. I know that sounds rude. But it's true. It's true for everyone, I think. We all have some growing up to do in different ways."

"Now I'm immature. Thanks."

"When you lose someone—like through death, or divorce—whom do you mourn, Darren? Is it the other person, or is it yourself?"

Darren tightened his hands around the steering wheel.

"I sense that deep down it's yourself that you mourn. How is this going to affect my life, you think. As if you're the only victim in the equation of loss." Kat touched his knee. "You'll probably hate me for saying all this. But I have to say it. I know it's flattering to be loved by someone who thinks the sun rises and sets with you. But it's important to remember that Rachel loves you because she thinks you're kind and selfless and you'll look out for her. Well, maybe now it's time to really start looking out for her." She paused. "There's a big part of you that likes damaged women. Am I right?"

"You tell me. You seem to be my shrink for the day."

"You like feeling needed. You like to feel strong around them. It's a nice feeling. Especially when you probably don't feel that way too often. It's part of what draws you to Jacqueline, isn't it?"

"Jacqueline doesn't seem to be an option for me."

"But Rachel is?" Kat's expression was kind. "You have to be careful what you wish for. Rachel has been very badly damaged. I don't know if you're truly ready to handle that."

Half an hour later, he entered his house again, alone. He walked through the house, smelling the lingering scents of Kat's array of candles. The house was silent.

"Rachel?" he called.

No answer. He stood there in the living room for a while, listening to nothing more than the sound of his heart beating.

At the kitchen table, he ate a Stouffer's lasagna-for-one and listened to the silence.

PART II

Love Don't Live Here Anymore

NINETEEN

If there was any upside to losing a child, it was that it made 99 percent of life's other anxieties and difficulties—such as starting a new job—seem quaint and eminently bearable by comparison. Jacqueline felt only mildly nervous when she met with some of Northeast Aerospace's engineers and project managers and they explained her first assignment—revamping their six-year-old technical manuals so they didn't read like the stream-of-consciousness ramblings of a defective robot with a tenuous grasp of English.

"This will involve adding such sophisticated flourishes as verbs and periods at the end of sentences," one of the project managers told her, glaring balefully at the corps of engineers who had written the original materials. "And perhaps having pages that follow one another in some sort of ascending numeric sequence rather than, say, having page 18 following page 61. It would be helpful for customers installing our flight data systems in a commercial airframe to actually know what in the hell they're doing."

Although she would be working from home, Darren gave her a tour of the office and introduced her to a handful of other people (pointedly avoiding his arch nemesis Annie Burlana). The people were laid-back and friendly, the work proved to be easy, and even though she had to watch every penny now, she permitted herself an indulgence: She bought a dozen rolls of LifeSavers and arranged them in a small gift basket which she left on Darren's doorstep with a card that read Love, Jacqueline.

"You are a lifesaver," she told him that night on the phone when he called to thank her. It was good to finally have interference-free phone conversations.

"I'm hardly that. They're paying you squat and there's no health benefits. If the economy weren't in the crapper you wouldn't have touched this job with a ten-foot pole."

"You have a hard time accepting a compliment, you know that?"

"Part of my charm."

"So is it true the company's being sold? I heard some people there talking about it. They sounded nervous."

"We haven't been doing too well financially the last couple years. So we've been soliciting sugar daddies. Goodman Technologies, the aircraft designer, looks like it might buy us. It could be a shot in the arm for us. Or they could just take our patents and pink-slip everyone but the engineers."

"Are you serious?"

"They've done it before."

"So your job could be in jeopardy."

Darren either yawned or sighed, Jacqueline couldn't tell. "Goodman already has a big media and communications department at their HQ in Seattle. There probably wouldn't be any need for me. But it's too early to tell. Maybe things stay as they are, maybe I get laid off, maybe they send me to Seattle to shuffle papers there."

"Seattle." Jacqueline stopped pacing her living room. Her heart felt like a terrified bird in the constricting cage of her chest. Darren's matter-of-fact tone was completely at odds with the life-changing information he was relaying. It was as if he were saying, By the way, I have liver cancer and they're giving me three months. Want my CD collection? "How could they send you to Seattle? Your family is here, your life is here."

"There's life in Seattle too," Darren said. "Listen, I'll call you tomorrow. Khabir and I are supposed to catch a movie in a half-hour. Last month I dragged him to see some romantic comedy, now he's getting his revenge by making me watch something that has lots of spaceships blowing up."

Two days later, when she stopped in the Northeast Aerospace office to drop off some work, she put her head in Darren's office.

"Thought you might want to stop by the house later," Jacqueline said. "I was gonna make a couple chicken breasts."

"I'll have to pass. Oliphant wants me to sit in on a conference call with some people at Goodman later tonight. They're on West Coast time."

"So the merger is happening?"

He held up a printout of a retooled logo. It said, Northeast Aerospace LLC A Goodman Technologies Company.

Annie Burlana breezed into Darren's office, carrying a greeting card with a maternity theme. Darren didn't immediately notice her so she stood behind his shoulder and quietly said, "Boo!" She chuckled and tittered at her joke, her eyes glittering above her bifocals. "Sorry," she said. "Couldn't resist." She handed Darren the card. "For Nicole. And are you coming to the party this Friday? I need a rough headcount ASAP."

He signed the card and told her he would be coming.

"Bring Jacqueline if you like. But please leave the spirits at home. Unless of course they're the alcoholic kind." She breezed out of the office, smirking and tittering. She did not see Darren give her a one-fingered salute.

"What's happening this Friday?" Jacqueline asked.

"A girl in accounting is going on maternity leave. Bunch of people here are throwing her a party at some steak place up the street. Interested?"

"Sure. How did Annie find out about... you know."

"She probably overheard me talking to you on the phone about it. She loves to eavesdrop." Darren was looking at her intently. "Can I ask you something?"

"What?"

He kept staring at her with that odd solemnity. Finally he said, "Nothing. Never mind."

"You sure?"

"Talk to you tomorrow."

"Guess I better start looking for a new job," Khabir said on Friday night, his face as long as a woebegone basset hound's. The merger had been officially announced that morning and Jacqueline noticed that it had dampened the mood of the party for Nicole what's-her-name in accounting. The swollen young mom-to-be held court at a large table in the middle of the restaurant, surrounded by Annie Burlana and a few other women. A handful of other Northeast Aerospace employees were scattered around the smaller satellite tables. Jacqueline, Darren and Khabir had a table to themselves.

"Might as well just lay down in traffic and die," Khabir said.

"That's the spirit," Darren said.

"You're in IT," Jacqueline told Khabir. "My God, with your background you can pretty much write your own ticket."

Khabir shook his head. "I don't adapt well to change. When they put cherry Coke in the pop machine instead of regular Coke, it messed me up for a week. I had to go out and buy my own twelve-pack."

"Hard to believe some lucky lady hasn't snapped you up," Darren said.

Jacqueline was about to ask Darren if he had learned anything further about the fate of his job when Annie interrupted. "Oh Darren," she called simperingly. She held up one of Nicole's gifts—baby pajamas with a Casper the Friendly Ghost motif. "Aren't they charming?"

Darren smiled.

"She's the devil," Khabir said.

"That's a bit harsh," Jacqueline said.

"She is," Khabir said. "Did you know she tattled on me for sleeping in the server closet?"

"Why were you sleeping in the server closet?" Jacqueline asked.

"There wasn't enough room to stretch out in my cubicle."

Annie wasn't done with the ghost jokes; apparently her two margaritas had put the woman in a playful mood. When Darren returned from a trip to the bathroom she had a paper napkin unfolded and draped over her head with eye holes punched out. She made spectral moaning sounds. Darren just smiled.

The waitress appeared at their table. "Any dessert? We have some great pies—key lime, banana cream, chocolate silk."

Jacqueline declined but Khabir wanted a slice of banana cream.

"Tell you what," Darren said to the waitress. "Why don't you bring us a whole pie? I'm hungry and I can always take the rest home."

But it turned out that Darren wasn't as hungry as he claimed, for when the pie came, he picked it up and strolled over to Annie's seat at the main table.

The sound of a pie hitting a person's face, Jacqueline realized, is very much like it is in TV sitcoms and Three Stooges shorts—a wet, sticky, undignified splorp.

"You're insane," Jacqueline said in the car. "You hit an old woman with a pie. I can't believe it." They had left the restaurant—made a fast getaway was a better term for it—in the midst of shocked faces and outraged shouts (one of which came from Khabir, who cried, "You wasted pie!") and a grim appearance from the manager.

"I absolutely cannot believe it," she said again. "You're going to be fired for this."

"It wasn't at the office and none of the executives were there. Plus, a few people cheered."

"She's going to sue you."

"For what?" Darren asked. "Assault with a deadly dessert? Deadly delicious, maybe."

"How about public humiliation? You could be in serious trouble."

"All right. Perhaps she might have been offended by my actions."

"This is not a joke, Darren." Yet Jacqueline found herself laughing wearily. It seemed as if both she and Darren were having matching nervous breakdowns this summer.

Darren missed the left turn onto Richmond Road, which would have taken them to Jacqueline's neighborhood in Beachwood. He continued on down Wilson Mills Road.

"Now what?" she asked. "Are you kidnapping me?"

"Depends. How much could I get for you?" He made a few more turns until they ended up on Noble Road in Cleveland Heights. He pulled into the deserted parking lot of Noble Elementary School.

Jacqueline looked at him. "What are we doing here?"

"Getting some air."

A scythe-like crescent moon hung over them as they squeezed themselves onto the swings in the playground. The school itself was a sprawling, factory-like expanse of dirty, forbidding brick.

"I went to school here," Darren said. "My parents used to live a few blocks away until the early nineties. Know who else went here?"

His thoughtful, somewhat embarrassed expression was easy enough to read. "Rachel," she said.

"Kindergarten through fourth grade. The McAvoys had a pretty nice house over on Yellowstone, a few blocks away. But then Jerry McAvoy lost his job as an account manager at a plastics company downtown. Guess it was the first in a string of disappointments for him. They had to move to someplace smaller. That's how they ended up in Lyndhurst."

"You've been doing research."

"Not much."

After a long time, Jacqueline said, "You miss her."

"Do I miss her or do I miss how she made me feel? I wonder."

Jacqueline felt the words clamoring to get out of her mouth, like firefighters rushing from the station to a house on fire: Let her go, she needs to move on, how could you ever hope to have any kind of meaningful relationship with a spirit, it's insane. But then she thought of the nights alone in her own house and how much she looked forward to smelling the chlorine. She looked up at the slender blade of moon and said nothing.

"Women have never had much use for me," Darren said. "I know this sounds like childish self-pity. But it's also the truth. Even when I married Annika, there was a part of me that knew I wasn't the love of her life, not even close. When I proposed, her attitude was pretty much, 'What the hell, I'll give it a shot.' Like when you paint the living room a weird color, knowing you can just paint over it again next week if you hate it. Some marriage, huh?"

Darren fell silent, but Jacqueline could hear the unspoken second half of his argument loud and clear. We all want to be loved, and some of us have to take it wherever we find it. Even if it smells like cemetery earth. Jacqueline imagined chalk graffiti on the side of a school building—Rachel 1985-2002 Luvs Darren. To have someone love you even past the point of death—that was about as unconditional and perfect as you could get. In an age when couples split up over everything, big and little—affairs, boredom, not enough cash in the bank—there was a breathtaking poignancy about it.

"I talked to Oliphant today," Darren said at last. "About the merger. The deal is supposed to be completed by November. Most likely our Toledo plant will be phased out over the next year. Most of our sales and marketing people will be let go. Goodman will handle that stuff from their headquarters."

"What about you?"

"Oliphant said I have a choice. I can stay on doing what I've been doing, although there isn't a whole lot of job security here. Goodman might just decide to phase my job out over time too and just handle all our PR from their headquarters. Or I could go to Portland. Oregon."

"I thought Goodman was in Seattle."

"Goodman has a bunch of divisions. Magruder-Cartwright is one of them. They're in Portland. They make computer systems for military aircraft. They're big. Goodman's marquee brand. The guy who runs their corporate communications department is retiring at the end of the year. Oliphant said they were interested in talking to me about it."

Jacqueline looked at him. For some reason her heart was racing. "That's wonderful news."

"Is it?"

"I mean—isn't it? Is it more money?"

"Probably. Magruder-Cartwright is a hundred-million-dollar outfit."

"Are you going to take the job?"

"On paper it's a great opportunity. I guess I'm just looking for a reason to stay here."

Darren was gazing at her steadily. She got the feeling that the conversation had slipped into a higher gear.

"Your family is here," Jacqueline said. "You're comfortable here. Those are good reasons."

"True. But it would be nice if there was something more."

"Something more."

"It would be one thing if I were married or had a girlfriend here or something like that. The decision would be much harder then. But nothing's really keeping me here."

It felt as if he was asking her a question, a huge question. Her face felt warm.

Her voice was hoarse when she spoke. "Marriage and kids, that isn't necessarily the paradise you think it is. You were married, you know how difficult it can be. And disillusioning."

"Sure. It can be."

Jacqueline suddenly felt the stirrings of anger. "People get so programmed to believe that if they land a spouse, have a couple kids and buy a place in some suburb, that's the key to happiness. It's not. Look at the foreclosed houses around here! Look how many people end up in divorce court. Christ, marriage is just institutionalized codependence. Marriage is what dumb women still think of as an achievement. And do you know what it's like raising a child? It's hard work and it's not always fun, and it's always draining."

"I don't want children."

She stood up and directed her words at the horned moon. She was dissolving into shrill, tiresome speechifying, but she couldn't help it. "People can be such brainwashed sheep. They're told from a young age that playing house is the ultimate goal in life. And once you get the house, you have to have a baby because all your friends have kids and then you have to get a new house because the old one is suddenly too small and it has to be in a good neighborhood. It's all so boring and predictable. Sometimes when I drive around these neighborhoods I get so angry. These places are like goddamned cemeteries where we bury whatever passion or uniqueness we had. We bury them under Pergo flooring and tasteful area rugs."

"People have to live somewhere. Unless you can afford the Hamptons, the suburbs are what we have. This is where the houses are. And I hate to say it, but your suburban mediocrity screed was already old when Updike wrote about it. In the sixties."

"Doesn't make it less true."

"I don't give a damn about Pergo flooring or having a big house. And I don't think wanting to have someone to love is a form of brainwashing." Darren heaved himself out of the swing, the chains clinking dully. He put his hands on his knees and stared at the ground for a while, looking winded. He sat down at her feet and gently put his fingers on her shoes. "I can pretty much guess what I'm about to say now will go over like a lead weight."

She got a sickening, fluttery feeling in her stomach, as if she were watching a motorcycle daredevil lose control of his bike a second before clearing the stunt ramp. Stop talking, Darren, she wanted to say, please please please stop talking.

"I know what I said to you that night," Darren said, "that the last thing you need is another complication in your life. But what the hell, one more can't hurt." He shrugged. "I think I'm falling in love with you."

"No. You aren't, Darren."

He looked at her, that steady, sober, clear-eyed look that made her feel almost naked before him.

She got out of the swing, just so she could avoid his touch and his eyes. "Darren, you're being ridiculous. You don't love me. We hardly know each other. You're just lonely and I'm convenient. That's it."

"It's great to see you warming to the idea."

"What exactly are you in love with? I'm depressed, self-involved and barely functional. Even on my best days I'd be a pain in the ass to you."

"Perhaps. But I'd respect that. And at least it's not boring."

"Don't be glib," she said. "I think it's sick."

"What's sick?"

"You. Being in love with me. Are you one of those guys who get turned on by women in distress? You like girls you have to fix, is that it?"

Darren stood, his eyes flashing with anger of his own. "Christ, you and Kat. Well, Doc, this has been a wonderfully illuminating session. I've learned that I'm a lonely, vaguely sinister opportunist who preys on damaged women and who's so emotionally illiterate he can't tell the difference between love and killing time."

She immediately felt ashamed.

"Call me a silly romantic," Darren said, "but I just think maybe there was a reason we met that night at the coffee shop. I'd like to think so."

"You don't love me. You really don't."

Darren ran his fingers through his hair and smiled. "Well, I made my pitch. Can't fault a guy for trying. But you're wrong about one thing. I think I do know you. You're an exile. You don't fit anymore. The people who aren't scared of you are confused by you. You're a thousand miles away from the soccer moms who only want to talk about shopping or whether to get their kid into a private school for pre-K. And even if you could go back to that world, you're not sure that you would. You're exhausted. Your only energy comes from anger."

And all that it took to make her this way was the death of a child. Human sacrifice. "Why would you want to be with someone like that, Darren?"

He shrugged. "In case you haven't noticed, I don't exactly fit in anymore, either. And we love who we love. Sometimes it's as simple as that."

They said little on the drive back to her house. When he pulled into her driveway, he said, "You said Kevin would keep the place off the market until January. What will you do then?"

"Beg for a few more months, I guess. If I can keep paying the bulk of the mortgage, maybe he won't be so anxious to sell. Maybe I'll get a roommate. But probably not. I like being alone."

"Like Greta Garbo."

"Minus the beauty, talent and wealth."

"I think you have the beauty."

She smiled. Once upon a time getting a compliment like that from a guy would have thrilled her like a roller coaster ride or a sip of hundred-dollar champagne. Now it just tasted like soda that had gone flat—sweet but with no kick.

Jacqueline reached out and touched his face. Had she wrecked their friendship tonight? He was wearing a pleasant quarter-smile and didn't seem to be fuming with resentment. But appearances were always deceiving.

"I hope you don't go," she said. "My life is richer with you here in town. I want you to know that."

"Thanks. I really don't know what I'm going to do. Maybe I'll just flip a coin."

With her luck, it would land on whatever side would take him away to Portland. But maybe that was for the best. She was hardly a reason for him to stick around.

Alone again in her empty house, there was further confirmation of her worthlessness in her e-mail inbox—a scolding message from her mom telling her that she'd missed the birthday party for Aunt Tracy, two curt messages from her lawyer telling her she was late with some paperwork, and a strangely histrionic outburst from Allison that Jacqueline had to read twice:

I called you last week but YOU NEVER CALLED ME BACK. What is the deal with you?!? Are you even still my friend? If you were insulted about me and Kayla ganging up on you, fine, I can maybe understand that, but what YOU don't understand is that it was motivated by CONCERN & LOVE for you!!!! Which, I might add, I AM NOT getting AT ALL from YOU. Do you even care what's been going on in my life? Have you even asked about what's happening with me these last few months? Well, I'll tell you—Mark & I have SEPARATED, okay? Things have been very NOT GOOD between us the last six months & he moved out 2 weeks ago. But I suppose this is all irrelevant to you because you just exist in a universe of one. Thanks for being such a terrific friend, glad to know you're always there for me.

It would be nice if there was something more, Darren had said. Jacqueline applied the thought to herself. It would have been nice if there was something more to Jacqueline LaPierre than this isolation and this troubling capacity to disappoint. But there wasn't. There were people in her life who gave and gave to her, or at least tried. What did she give in return? Silence. Indifference. Inattentiveness. She was like a collapsed star, emitting no light, only a deadly radiation.

TWENTY

The following morning, Saturday, Darren spent a couple hours in the office prepping a PowerPoint presentation for Oliphant. Oliphant and Paul Blaylock, the company's CEO, were flying out to Goodman Technologies' headquarters on Sunday for a few days of merger-related business.

Around eleven a.m., Oliphant stood in Darren's doorway, munching a handful of sunflower seeds. "I insist and demand that you apologize to Anal Rub on Monday."

"How did you hear about it so fast?"

"I know everything. I know how many Post-It notes we go through each month. I don't want her flying into my office on her broomstick and complaining, so you will apologize to her."

Darren grimaced. "Rich, I just can't do that. No."

"Well, whatever. Make sure you e-mail a copy of the presentation to Blaylock too, I want to make sure everyone's on the same page."

"Got it."

"Why did you waste pie? You know we're in a recession."

Darren's phone rang a few minutes later. Julia sounded relieved and aggrieved and borderline hysterical.

"Darren, thank God. I tried your house but kept getting the machine. I need a big favor. Can you watch Madison from two to six today?"

"Sure."

"Brandon's at his friend Jason's house, and Sam's working the day shift. My friend Deena and I had been planning on going to a movie and getting lunch somewhere, we've been planning it for a month, but the sitter I usually get cancelled on me last night for some stupid reason, and I called Mom and Dad but apparently they're not home, I think they were talking about going to that bed-and-breakfast on Geneva-on-the-Lake but I didn't think it was gonna be this weekend, so I'm totally, absolutely screwed, and I spend virtually every conscious hour around here being a mom and if I don't get at least one afternoon of adult conversation I am going to lose my mind—"

"I said sure, I'd be happy to do it." A distant part of himself felt a bit insulted that he was Julia's last resort but that was an argument for another time. "How do you want to work this? Am I supposed to come out there?"

"Actually, I'm supposed to meet Deena on the East Side, so I could drop Maddie off at your office in the next hour, if that's okay. Why don't you take her to the park for the afternoon? And maybe McDonald's for a hamburger. Just don't get her any milkshakes, please. She had a cavity at her last appointment and I want to cut down on the sugar."

"We're not gonna spend four hours at the park. It's supposed to be ninety degrees today. Why don't you bring along one of her DVDs and we can watch it at my place."

"At your house?" There was a note of alarm in her voice.

"Julia, please."

"Look, I know you said you had that kooky ritual and the place is safe, but I'm really not that comfortable with the kids being there."

Darren swallowed a sharp response. He was doing her a favor, but of course the favor had to be on her terms. At first he was willing to chalk it up to the self-centeredness that was de rigueur for many young mothers—many of them seemed to believe the rest of the world existed solely to provide them babysitting or listen to stories about That Funny Thing Little Megan Said at the Restaurant. But he began to wonder if it was outright disrespect. Maybe his sister and others saw him as little more than three-quarters of a regular man, a childless, wifeless marginal man who somehow deserved to be ordered around like a servant.

"The house is fine," he said.

"Sam will kill me if he finds out she was there, Darren. At least take her to the park and to McDonald's for a while, okay?"

Darren waited and sweated in the parking lot, the air fragrant with cut grass and hot blacktop. At a quarter to two, Julia's minivan came barreling into the lot. Julia, her hair a crazy Medusa-like mess, handed over Maddie in a flurry of wet naps, juice boxes, Disney DVDs and rag dolls. "I will definitely be home by six," she said. "If you can bring her back around then that would be fabulous. Honey, where are your sunglasses? You're going to the park and you're going to need your sunglasses."

"I don't need my sunglasses!"

"Yes, you do!"

"No, I don't!"

"No, she doesn't!" Darren said.

"Darren," Julia said, "let me parent."

"I'll buy her a sombrero," Darren said.

Julia, looking as weary as Job during a tax audit, kissed the top of Maddie's head and told her not to drink any pop or milkshakes and then she was wheeling out of the parking lot as if the cops were in hot pursuit.

Darren stood there with an armful of kiddie crap. He and his niece coolly and silently took each other's measure. "Looks like you're stuck with me, kid," he said.

Maddie giggled and took off running.

Running and climbing were Maddie's defining characteristics. She had the frantic energy of a pack of happy chihuahuas. She insisted on climbing the three-foot-high fiberglass letters that spelled out Northeast Aerospace on the landscaped knoll in front of the building. She insisted on racing Uncle Darren up and down the empty parking lot three times until he finally let her win, and at the park a few blocks from Darren's house, she was little more than a giggling pink blur traversing the monkey bars and sailing down the slide. She demanded that Darren chase her down the narrow twisting slide, which resulted in the wincingly awkward sight of a man with a 34-inch waist trying to propel himself down a ribbon of aluminum with all the momentum of a receding glacier. By the time they made it back to Darren's car, he had bits of mulch in his hair and he felt as if he was in the early stages of cardiac arrest. As they drove over to McDonald's, Darren actually found himself relishing the simple pleasure of sitting in traffic.

"My daddy can run faster than you," Maddie said from the backseat. "He can also do handstands."

"Impressive."

"Why do you work in an office? My daddy says real men don't work in offices. He says real men carry guns."

"Your daddy's sophistication knows no bounds." Darren told Maddie he had once shaken hands with the CEO of Northrop Grumman. Maddie didn't seem that impressed.

At McDonald's, Maddie ran around the attached McDonaldland playground while Darren sat at a nearby table, reading Newsweek and sipping surprisingly good coffee. At last, Maddie settled down to her Chicken McNuggets. Darren also ordered her a large chocolate shake.

"Hey, Maddie. Did you know I could be moving away soon? I might be moving to Portland."

"Where's that?"

"Three thousand miles away, near the ocean."

"Why are you moving away?"

"I might get a new job out there. Think you'll miss me?"

She chewed a McNugget thoughtfully. "Will you send me some seashells for my collection?"

She wouldn't miss him. Darren was just a ghost in her life as it was; Sam's side of the family had pretty much hijacked her and Brandon, relegating Darren and his parents to the smallest of cameo roles in their lives. But he guessed he had to shoulder some of the blame too. He hadn't exactly made much of an effort to be a factor in their lives. Maybe he deserved to be little more than a vaguely familiar name on a Christmas card each year.

They still had a couple of hours to kill. Maddie wanted to make cookies, so they stopped at the grocery store for supplies. She sat in the front part of the cart, leaning out impishly like a carved sea maiden on the prow of an explorer's ship from the days of yore.

"Mommy always makes cookies with flour, butter, sugar, chocolate chips and lots and lots of eggs," Maddie informed him. "She never gets the packaged stuff."

Darren tossed a packet of pre-sliced Toll House cookie dough into the cart. "Well, this is how the finer pastry chefs of the Cordon Bleu do it."

"Uncle Darren, are we going to see the ghost?" There was quiet excitement in Maddie's voice.

"No, honey. The ghost is gone."

"Maybe it's just hiding."

Like a sommelier at a four-star restaurant, Darren presented her with a quart of two-percent milk and a quart of chocolate. "What does madame prefer for her digestif?"

At home, while the cookies baked in the stove's upper oven, Maddie explored the downstairs rooms, saying over and over in a cute sing-song, "Heeeeere, ghost! Heeeeere, ghost!"

Darren tried to distract her by putting in her DVD of Toy Story, a movie that Darren considered loud, annoying and generally shitty—one of those kids' films that seems to think it's a lot cleverer than it really is. But Maddie was more interested in the big bookshelf in the dining room.

"This is where the ghost lives," she said. "This is where it threw those books at Daddy."

"Do you still think about that day?"

She nodded.

"You were very scared, weren't you?"

She giggled with some embarrassment, as if she were admitting that she had wet the bed.

Darren put a hand on her head. "I'm sorry about that, sweetie."

Maddie found a large illustrated book on Greek mythology on the bottom shelf. "Are these fairy stories?"

"In a way." Darren sank down on the couch and patted the cushion next to him, where Maddie installed herself, exuberantly slamming the large book onto his lap in a way that probably guaranteed his sterility. A headache was in full bloom on one side of his head. Darren now understood why Julia looked permanently shellshocked. Babysitting young kids was like being the caretaker of a happy drunk.

Maddie flicked open the pages and Darren dutifully pointed out all the gods and goddesses, all the bizarre satyrs and maidens in flowing robes.

"Who's that?" Maddie pointed to the image of a young girl lurking in a sinister cavern.

"That's Persephone. She was a beautiful young girl who was kidnapped by Hades, the god of the Underworld. He took her down to the Underworld and wouldn't let her come back to Earth, to her family."

"Is the Underworld where they make underwear?"

"Only the Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger stuff."

"Is the Underworld like hell?"

"Sort of." He stared for a long time at the glossy image of the young maiden trapped between two worlds, belonging to both and to neither. He excused himself and went upstairs to the bathroom to hunt for some aspirin.

While he was splashing water on his face, the oven timer dinged. Maddie called out, "I'll get 'em!"

"I'll be down in a second. Just leave them, okay?" The oven mitts were somewhere in the back of one of the upper cabinets and he didn't want Maddie handling a 300-degree cookie sheet with her bare hands. Not that she could even reach the upper oven, but kids were surprisingly inventive.

In the kitchen, he found Maddie with two big fluffy oven mitts on her hands. The baking sheet sat safely on the oven's burners, the air filled with the homey aroma of freshly baked cookies. Maddie grinned naughtily.

"How did you find the mitts? And how did you reach the oven? I don't want you standing on the chairs."

"The cookies Mommy makes are bigger than these."

"Less is more, Maddie. Remember that."

On the drive back to Julia's house in Parma, Maddie sat pensively in the backseat cradling a Tupperware tub full of cookies. The muggy, blindingly sunny day had grown cloudy, even gloomy. "Do you think I'm pretty?" Maddie asked suddenly.

Darren glanced in the rearview mirror. "Pretty? You're beautiful. If this were ancient Greece, the city-states would be going to war over you on an annual basis."

"Brandon got mad at me yesterday and said I was ugly."

Brandon was hardly one to talk. A young George Clooney he was not. Darren pulled into Julia's driveway. "You're a pretty girl. You can take that to the bank."

She smiled. "Good. That's what Rachel said, too."

"Is she in your kindergarten class—" Darren began, only half-listening. He looked into the backseat. "Did you say Rachel? Maddie, who are you talking about?"

"Silly, the girl who helped me get the cookies out of the oven."

Darren stared at her but said nothing. Julia had come out of the house and was leaning into Darren's open window, thanking him for being such a lifesaver.

TWENTY-ONE

Sunday.

The Denison Park pool was filled with kids wringing the last drops of fun out of the final weekend of summer. Their raucous voices carried across the soccer field to where Jacqueline and Kayla sat on a bench by the playground. They watched Kayla's eight-year-old, Zach, climb the monkey bars and spin himself on the tire swing, lost in a daydream where he was perhaps a space pilot saving the galaxy from alien peril.

"He's getting tall," Jacqueline said.

"In a couple years he'll be my height. It's incredible." Kayla glanced at her. "Don't take what Allison said to heart. She's always been hot-tempered. And she's pretty much angry at the whole world now."

"What happened? She and Mark always seemed happy."

"I guess they drifted apart. He's always been a workaholic, and Allison says that when he'd come home at night—usually pretty late—he didn't seem to have a whole lot of interest in hearing about the PTA or problems with the dishwasher. She resented it. I certainly would have. She gave up her career to be a full-time mom."

Being an office worker at a dental equipment distributor hardly constituted a career, but Jacqueline kept her mouth shut.

"Then his company hired this woman last year," Kayla said. "Tina. Apparently they started instant-messaging each other, then they'd go to lunch.... You can guess the rest of it."

"She never mentioned any of this to me."

"Well, she told me." There was a touch of reproach in Kayla's words, as if she were really saying, I still remember what it means to be a friend. Maybe Jacqueline was being paranoid but she also sensed a note of triumph in Kayla's tone. For the first time in the history of the three girls' friendship, Kayla was the confidante, not Jacqueline. It was an upheaval of the dynamic they had had in school. Jacqueline and Allison had been the worldly, popular insiders and Kayla had been their sweet, chubby, often witless sidekick. One day during lunch period Kayla had asked them, in all seriousness, "Who exactly is this Fellatio?", as if he were an obscure character in Two Gentlemen of Verona or something. Jacqueline and Allison had mocked her mercilessly (usually behind her back) for that for months.

What a difference twenty years can make. Kayla was no longer chubby and she was now Dr. Kayla Woodhouse, professor of comparative literature at Ursuline. She and her radiologist husband Ted would be celebrating their tenth wedding anniversary in a couple weeks. It was no wonder Allison turned to her now instead of Jacqueline. Kayla's life did not resemble a burning car wreck.

"Ten more minutes, Zach," Kayla called. "Then we'll all get some ice cream, okay?" She patted Jacqueline's hand. "I want you to come to our anniversary party at the beginning of October. It's just going to be us adults. Zach will be spending the night with my sister. So we'll all have a regular adult party, just like old times."

Somehow Jacqueline doubted that. Everyone would be talking about home schooling and the interest rates on money market accounts. Once you were past thirty the old times were gone forever.

You're an exile, Darren had said. You don't fit anymore.

"Will Allison be there?" Jacqueline said.

"Allison, you, me, Ted, maybe my colleague Francesca. You can bring Darren if you like."

Jacqueline was grateful Kayla didn't burnish Darren's name with irony or distaste. "We're not dating, you know. He's only a friend." The words shamed her. They felt like a betrayal somehow. In her head was the image of Darren at the playground, sitting at her feet, telling her that he loved her, and now she had casually consigned him to that drawer that all women have, the drawer full of disposable relationships. He's only a friend. Once you append the word "only" to someone, it was the kiss of death.

"Do you remember the first time Ted told you he loved you?" Jacqueline asked.

Kayla squinted at her. "Why do you ask?"

"I'm just curious."

"First year of grad school. It was January, and we'd been dating, like, three months. It was at this tire place, of all things! He was helping me get new tires. We were sitting there in the waiting room, and it was snowing and we were talking. He took my hand and said he loved me." Kayla smiled. "God, that year was the best time of my life."

You were young and you were pretty, Jacqueline thought, and you were at the peak of your powers. Maybe it was too easy to love someone when the person was at her best. It was like only cheering for a team when it's on a hot streak.

"Maybe I shouldn't come to the party," Jacqueline said.

"Come on, Allison's not going to eat you. I promise you, it'll be good for both of you. You'll patch things up in two minutes. You know how she is. She blows her top and regrets it five seconds later. Please come."

"I haven't been much of a friend to either of you. I'm sorry about that."

"You've been going through a tough time." After a long pause she said, with what Jacqueline thought was practiced nonchalance, "Strange that you're friends with Cassie Christopher after all these years. We all thought she was bad news in school."

Jacqueline said, noncommittally, "Yeah."

Kayla seemed to wait for her to elaborate, but Jacqueline only watched the swimmers at the pool.

"I hope you'll come," Kayla said. "But, no pressure. It's no big deal, just some wine and crackers and cold cuts." She stared at her shoes for a long time. "I should tell you something, though."

"What?"

"I don't know if this means anything or not. Last week, Ted, Allison and I were planning to go out to a movie. Mostly to cheer Allison up. So we meet at the pub by the Cedar-Lee Theater before the movie. A few minutes later Kevin shows up. Allison said she invited him to come along."

"Kevin. My Kevin?"

"It was sort of strange. I mean, Ted and I really didn't know what to say. It was pretty awkward. But they didn't seem... you know. They just acted like friends, people who knew each other socially. They weren't holding hands or anything."

Jacqueline looked at the kids dunking each other in the pool. What had her mom said during the intervention? Kevin called me last night.... He called Allison too.

Any port in a storm, was that the way it was now?

She wasn't sure how she felt about this. The situation defied a simple, blunt emotional reaction like anger or hate. The feelings swirling in her head now were in the most subtle, variegated shades of grey, like a post-modern monochrome photo of some Manhattan street scene, ugly and beautiful and timeless and mundane all at the same time.

Jacqueline watched a teenage boy cannonball into the water as his friends cheered and splashed water in his face. When Jacqueline had been on the swim team at Shaker Heights High, Coach Herbert once told her that she had perfect form coming off the board. The water hardly ever splashed. You look like a switchblade snapping open, he said. Absolute perfection.

And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, Jacqueline thought randomly.

TWENTY-TWO

Tuesday evening.

The Beachwood Place food court was crowded with teens—goateed guys in too-large football jerseys, girls in tight jeans and midriff-baring babydoll t-shirts that said things like Too Sexy and Jailbait. Darren and Jacqueline moved among them like ornithologists in the field studying a flock of wild peacocks with the most exotic of plumage.

"Remember when hanging out at the mall was the pinnacle of excitement?" Jacqueline said. "Were we ever that simple?"

Darren usually grabbed dinner at least once or twice a week at the mall. "Some of us still are that simple."

They found a table. Darren munched his chicken sandwich and tried to guess Jacqueline's mood. On the phone she'd been all over the map—fury, cutting sarcasm, resignation. The Three Faces of Jacqueline. She hadn't even mentioned that night at the school, which annoyed Darren to no end. Did she even remember it?

"Maybe you should skip the party," he said now.

"I know."

"If she's there, it might be pretty uncomfortable. If she's there with him, that's just a big ol' bucket of angst. A smart woman would call Kayla and say sorry, I've got the flu."

"I know."

"Besides, if you start questioning her about Kevin, she'll get defensive and next thing you know you're having an argument in a room full of strangers. Who needs that?"

"You're right."

"You're going, aren't you?"

"Yes."

Darren sighed and offered her some fries. "I wish I'd paid more attention in freshman psych. I'm sure there's a name for this."

"It's called unavoidable stupidity. But I have to get to the bottom of this."

"Going to the movie together could be just a one-shot thing between friends."

"And it could be something more. Maybe she's doing it deliberately to get back at me for being such a crappy friend. Maybe she can't wait to see my reaction when she and Kevin play kissy-face in front of me."

"All the more reason not to go," Darren said. "You keep telling me how you'd like nothing better than to have a peaceful, simple life. This isn't exactly the way to achieve it."

"It's that sort of maturity and wisdom that my friends will find so impressive when you accompany me to the party."

"Oh Jesus."

Jacqueline clasped his hands in hers. "For moral support. Please."

"Jacqueline—"

"I know I have no right to ask you for anything after all you've done, but I'm asking anyway. Please."

He could have held her hands all night. "Okay."

Her eyes looked into his for a long, uncomfortable moment. "We should talk about the other night."

"Nothing to talk about," he said. "Dead issue."

An hour after Darren got home that evening, glaring headlights pulled into his driveway. Someone knocked on his back door.

Darren was surprised to see Sam standing on the porch, his lime green polo shirt half-soaked. It had been raining much of the evening, a light, misty mid-September rain that hissed through the reddening leaves on the trees.

Sam's holster was clipped to his belt.

"Sam. What's up? Is something wrong with Julia?"

"I just want to ask you something. You remember your parents' anniversary party, right? When I said I wouldn't ever have my kids come back to this house after what happened?"

Darren did not reply.

"I'll take that as a yes," Sam said. Even though his voice was calm, the tendons in his neck stood out, quivering like high-tension wires—a sure sign that Sam Wilcox was not a happy camper. "You were sitting three feet away, so I know you heard me. So imagine my surprise when I hear Maddie talking about the nice girl named Rachel who helped her bake cookies at your house. She said, 'Rachel's an angel, and she lives in the walls. She tries not to disturb Uncle Darren 'cause spirits make him nervous.'"

"Sam, come in, you're getting wet—"

"Now, two things are possible. One is that my daughter is like most kids and has an active imagination and has imaginary playmates and all that shit. Which is fine. Or it's possible she really did see something here, something that has clearly shown a tendency towards violence. This is not so fine, Darren. What also isn't fine is the fact that she was even here in the first place, after I told you I didn't want my kids coming here."

"I was babysitting her, Sam. We were here for maybe an hour. She had a good time. What did you expect me to do, drive around the block for four hours? I was doing you and Julia a favor."

"By undermining my authority as a parent?"

That was just a bonus. "Maddie is fine. She had a good time. I'm speaking slowly and using small words, so I don't know how else to make you understand."

That was when Sam pressed the muzzle of his service .45 between Darren's eyes. "Yeah, keep using that smug, condescending tone with me. Let's see if you have the guts for that now."

Darren didn't feel frightened, which was odd. He felt more confused than anything, as if he were watching a movie with a scene missing so that the characters are suddenly acting and talking in strange, contradictory ways. How had they moved from a boring family disagreement—one of many—to a felony in less than a second? Darren assumed pulling a gun on an unarmed man was a felony. "What are you doing?" Darren asked. "Put the gun away."

"Why don't you try to take it away from me? Or are you pretty much just all talk? Go ahead." With his free hand, Sam pushed Darren hard in the chest, sending him stumbling backwards into the kitchen table. Sam moved into the kitchen, pressing the gun to Darren's forehead once again.

Darren backed up toward the living room. He held his hands out to either side in what he hoped would be interpreted as an unthreatening gesture. His mouth was dry and he didn't know what to say. My brother-in-law has pulled a gun on me, he thought. The thought kept repeating itself on a loop, an idiotic car alarm in his brain.

"Come on, Darren. Technically, I just assaulted you. Why don't you be a man for once and stand up for yourself? Here. You want a fair fight?" Sam slid the automatic back into its nylon holster and then he too held his hands out to either side. "Now it's fair. Come on."

"What do you want?"

"I just want to see what kind of man you really are. And it's what I figured. You're just another one of those smug, holier-than-thou liberals who loves to look down his fucking nose at guys like me, like I'm just a worthless slob. Ever since I married Julia you've been treating me like I'm the scum of the earth, even when I've tried to be friends with you. And you're so goddamned dumb you think I don't see how you treat me."

"Sam—"

"But you know what? I can live with that. Big fucking deal, I've been treated like that by a lot of people, your darling parents included. I'm used to it. What I do take exception to is when you interfere with how I raise my family." He shoved Darren again, and this time Darren stumbled and fell on his ass on the living room floor. Sam stood above him, hands on his hips.

"What I do take exception to," Sam said, his face reddening, "is when you put my daughter's life in jeopardy by exposing her to God knows what in this shithole. A few months ago that fucking table was jumping up and down like a prop from The Exorcist and you have the gall to bring my daughter back here? What is the matter with you?"

Darren tried to sit up but Sam kicked him smartly in the ribs, making Darren emit a half-grunt, half-cry as a lightning bolt of pain detonated on the left side of his chest. He was going to be beaten up. It was really going to happen. Even his tense run-ins with Scott Slifka, bully of Mrs. Andrews' fourth-grade class, had amounted to little more than name-calling and a few shoves on the playground after school. This, however, would be a genuine, bona fide ass-kicking, a first for him.

Sam crouched and grabbed Darren by the face, enveloping Darren in an intense, sinus-clearing cloud of Aqua-Velva. "If you have no problem putting my daughter's life at risk, what else do you have no problem doing? Do you touch her, too?"

"Stop—"

"You're a cowardly piece of shit. You are never to see Maddie or Brandon again after this, you understand? That's the first thing. The second thing is you have a choice whether I break your nose or your jaw. You pick."

Then all the lights in the house went out.

"What the hell did you do?" Sam said.

Every door on the second floor slammed shut, one after another, each one sounding like a gun going off. Then the back door shut, an even louder shotgun blast. The efficient metallic snick-click that followed was the deadbolt being turned.

Darren's living room stereo sprang to sudden life in a flurry of twinkling red and green lights. The speakers blared a few seconds of the Rolling Stones' "Start Me Up," with Mick Jagger lasciviously saying that if you start him up he'll never stop. Then the stereo went dead.

Darren struggled to get to his feet. Every breath and movement sent hot filaments of agony radiating out from his ribcage. Sam must have cracked one of his ribs. When he got to his feet he stayed doubled over, his hands on his knees like a tired shortstop. He felt queasy. Then he clamped a hand over his mouth and tried to pull his chin in close to his neck to stave off the sudden and violent retching that seized his throat. The house had filled, in a matter of seconds, with the acrid, unmistakable stench of feces, as if a hundred toilets had backed up and ruptured in the middle of the living room.

"God, what the hell is that?" Sam cried, his voice muffled by his own hand over his mouth.

The smell dissipated almost instantly. Then the floorboards creaked on the second floor. It wasn't the house settling. The sound was footsteps. Someone was coming down the stairs.

In the darkness, Darren could see the hunched lump that was Sam draw his gun again and drop into a shooter's crouch. He aimed at the stairway. "Who the hell is in the house with you?" he yelled.

Darren's voice was a hoarse gasp. "No one."

Whatever was coming down the stairs was heavy and moved with a lurching, staggering gait, like a massive dead animal that had been reanimated. Darren found himself thinking of his high school calculus teacher, Mr. Burl, a sprawling, six-foot-six man who had been in the early stages of multiple sclerosis; when Mr. Burl moved around in class it was a grim, almost frightening spectacle as the shambling sad-faced man limped and staggered, bumping into desks (often making some of the girls yelp in horrified surprise) and dragging his recalcitrant left leg like Ahab with his wooden limb. The thing moving down the stairs now sounded much like that, but the groaning floorboards and booming footsteps suggested something that was twice the size of Mr. Burl.

A loud, insistent thought flashed into Darren's mind—don't look at it, look somewhere else—and he wasn't sure if the thought was coming from him or from some other source. He spun his body a little so that he was facing away from the staircase. Sam scrambled on the floor, backing away from the stairway landing, trying to put Darren between him and the intruder on the stairs.

The lights came back on. Sam cried out as his gun arm was jerked upward by some unseen force and the gun itself slipped out of his hand. The .45 flew upward and attached itself to the ceiling as if drawn by a supercharged magnet. A fresh crack appeared in the ceiling plaster.

Darren's body was wracked with gooseflesh. The gun was stuck to the ceiling. Dear Christ, this wasn't an hallucination. The gun was actually lying on the ceiling.

Sam didn't have much time to react to being disarmed because he became transfixed by what he saw on the stairway landing. Darren was still doubled over and turned away from it, so he could only get a sense of the thing from watching Sam's reaction.

Sam, a fifteen-year police veteran who had encountered his share of dead and disfigured bodies and who got a childish kind of pleasure in telling the stories at family parties, turned pale and his eyes opened as wide as the sockets would allow. His mouth hung open and contorted itself into a half-comical, teeth-baring expression of disgust. It was the same expression Darren probably wore that morning three months ago when he lugged a wet bag of garbage to the curb and saw that the bottom of the bag was covered with an undulating, semi-solid layer of squirming maggots.

Then the sounds came. Darren thought they sounded like the barking of a sick, choking Rottweiler. They were violent, abrupt, unclean sounds—a series of wet, rumbling explosions that formed a hybrid of barking and gagging, as if whatever was emitting them was vomiting up its life through plague-ravaged lungs. Though Darren's body was drenched with warm sweat, the sounds turned the perspiration icy and clammy.

The thought-alarm kept clanging in Darren's head, a wailing siren: Don't look. Don't look.

"Oh sweet Christ," Sam muttered. His momentary paralysis broke and he lunged into the kitchen, toward the back door. He slipped on the floorboards and fell once to his knees but picked himself back up again. He grabbed at the lock, trying to work the deadbolt with trembling fingers.

Darren was right behind him, still unable to rise to his full height without feeling a hot, pulling sensation in his side. While Sam fought with the lock, Darren fumbled around in the broom closet for the crowbar he kept in there. In the past it had come in handy for prying up the balky windows in Rachel's room or in the basement. Now it would come in handy for other purposes.

Sam got the back door open and he hurried out into the gently falling rain, digging around in his pockets for the keys to his Grand Prix. PROUD TO BE PRO-LIFE, said one of Sam's bumper stickers. BUSH/CHENEY '04, said another. Darren lurched a step behind Sam, the rain refreshingly cool on his face and neck.

"Where ya going, Sam? Hey, don't rush off so soon. The party's just getting started."

Darren swung the crowbar and obliterated the back windshield of Sam's car. It made an anticlimactic psssssht sound, like someone crushing a handful of Saltines. There was a tight warning flare of pain in Darren's side. He grimaced as he brought the crowbar down solidly on the trunk, right above the pro-life sticker. The trunk dented like an empty beer can.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Sam cried.

Darren gripped the crowbar in both hands and aimed at Sam's face. Pro-Life, meet Pro-Death. Sam managed to duck, his face a mask of almost childlike shock. Even though Darren had adjusted his swing downward, the iron bar missed Sam and connected with the driver's side window, reducing it to a shower of jagged, twinkling granules and jigsaw puzzle pieces the size of a silver dollar.

Sam held up his hands. "Darren, Darren, stop."

"You come to my house, you pull a gun on me." And he had actually accused Darren of molesting his niece. He had actually said that. Darren wasn't sure if the wetness on his cheeks now was the rain or his tears. "How could you? How could you?"

Darren bashed in the headlights. Let him drive home without lights. Maybe he'd wrap the car around an abutment. Darren would grieve for the abutment. The porchlights of Darren's neighbors had come on. Some people were watching the festivities from backyards and decks.

The pain in his side had grown too large and insistent for Darren to continue batting practice. It felt as if a shark had taken a bite out of his side. "How could you?" he panted, nearly doubling over again. He had to use the crowbar as a cane to steady himself.

"Darren. Please. My gun. I need to get my gun back." There was honest pleading in Sam's voice.

"Then go get it," Darren said and gestured to the house with the crowbar.

1661 Shadeland seemed to be going insane. Nearly every window was sliding up and down, the back door was swinging open and swinging shut, and through every window a dim red witchlight glowed, its source unknown. It was as if red filters had been placed over Darren's lamps, giving the place the look of a Depression-era whorehouse. Perhaps the house was on fire. Which would have been fine by Darren. Let it burn. No one wanted to buy the fucking thing anyway.

"Go get it, Sam. Mr. Tough Guy. Go on."

Sam was panting as hard as Darren was. He stared at the house but stayed put. "I need that gun. Darren, please."

"Get out of here. Now."

Sam brushed the broken glass from the seat and got in his car. Darren leaned into the driver's side window. He racked his addled and tired brain for some appropriately devastating remark or threat, something befitting an ass-kicking action hero. All he could come up with was: "Boo."

Sam threw the car into reverse and squealed out of the driveway.

Soaked to the skin, Darren staggered back into his burning house—which, it turned out, was not burning at all. As soon as he stepped into the kitchen, the windows stopped sliding up and down and the red glow vanished. Maybe the glow had never been there in the first place. It could have been a trick played by anger and adrenaline. "Seeing red," as the saying went.

The house was quiet. There were no strange odors, no sounds other than the distant hiss of the rain. Darren stood in the kitchen for a long time, his heart racing. He forced himself to enter the living room.

The living room was empty. The stairway was empty.

Sam's gun lay on the floor. Darren snatched it up, grimacing as he bent over. It hurt to stand and it hurt to bend over. He had to half-crawl upstairs. Sam had actually pulled a gun on him. The outrage and shock had faded, leaving behind raw, throbbing humiliation. His own brother-in-law. Darren had loaned money to Sam's brother. He had babysat for Madison and Brandon, had bought them stuffed animals when they were toddlers.

"Rachel," he said in a croaking whisper, but there was no answer. He was alone—and why should that surprise him? Somehow, some way, he was always alone. He never quite fit anywhere, was never quite accepted anywhere, he always had the air of an exile about him, a displaced person. Kat had said he was a safe harbor for women, but who would be a safe harbor for him? Who was going to console him and make him feel better? Did he have to settle for a woman—not even a woman, really, a teenager, a minor—who wasn't even human anymore, who was a disembodied entity no more substantial than the wind? What a joke his life had become. Kat would no doubt call him selfish for feeling this way (whom do you mourn, Darren?), but so be it. So be it.

He stumbled into the spare bedroom and collapsed onto the carpet, suddenly too exhausted to stand anymore. The gun felt oily and cold in his grip, and he cradled it like a deadly teddy bear as he curled up and tried to sleep. The sleep that came, however, was a ghastly patchwork of unconsciousness and nightmares, and at one point Darren recalled putting the gun to his temple and squeezing the trigger but the safety was on, and when he went to flick it off with his thumb he felt his hand and his upper arm lock, as if someone strong were wrestling with him and immobilizing him. He passed out, and in another moment of half-consciousness—it could have been minutes or hours later—he recalled muttering, "You were supposed to leave," and somewhere in the darkness of the room he heard, either in reality or in his mind, someone say, Rest. Darren felt a warm hand on his bruised side, and it calmed him. It took the pain away. He was able to sleep.

TWENTY-THREE

In a shocking reversal, Jacqueline had finished her half of the Stouffer's meat loaf while Darren's plate remained virtually untouched.

"Why don't you let me take you to the doctor?" she asked. "You could have a cracked rib."

"It's fine. Just bruised."

"So what are you going to do?"

"Not sure. Sam's burned a couple sick days already because he can't show up to work without his gun. Losing your sidearm is a big no-no. At best you can be written up or suspended. At worst you could be fired. So maybe I'll just hang on to it."

"Darren—"

He began clearing the table and putting the salad dressings away in Jacqueline's refrigerator. "Or maybe I'll just drive to the bad part of town and leave it on someone's lawn. Maybe someone will commit a crime with it and Sam'll be in even deeper trouble. Might even get a little jail time."

"And you're okay with ruining Julia's life and the lives of your niece and nephew. Because if Sam loses his job who's going to pay the bills?"

Darren rinsed off his plate.

Jacqueline shook her head. Darren had said his sister had called every morning for the last few days begging for forgiveness. What more did he want? "Look, he acted like an asshole, you dismantled his car. You're even. Why not let it go?"

"Because you weren't the one with a gun in your face."

"No, I wasn't. But getting back at him is just going to hurt Julia and the kids. Trust me, Darren. Getting even never works out the way we think it will."

"You're also missing an important factor here. Julia apologized—not him. I made it clear to her. He apologizes to me, on camera and in front of his kids, and he gets his weapon back. It would take five minutes. Julia's got one of those cell phones with a camera on it, so it couldn't be easier."

This was becoming absurd. It was male pride on steroids. "Are you going to post the video on YouTube? What's the point, Darren?" She put her plate in the sink, then crossed her arms in unintentional imitation of Darren, who slouched against the refrigerator with his arms folded like Nixon about to meet the press.

"Did Sam tell her what he saw?" she asked.

"He won't talk about it."

"Are you going to call Kat again and try another clearing?"

Darren was silent.

"I'll interpret that as 'no,'" Jacqueline said. "Maybe you should try another medium, someone with a different approach."

"And maybe I'm getting a little tired of treating Rachel like she's a bug infestation that needs an exterminator."

Jacqueline washed her hands. "Where's the gun now?"

"Trunk of my car."

"That's wonderful. What if the car gets stolen?"

"Oh well."

Darren's topcoat was draped around one of the kitchen chairs. Jacqueline fumbled around in one of his pockets until she found his car keys.

"What are you doing?" he said. "Give me the keys."

"You stay here."

Out in the driveway, Darren said, "You don't even know where they live."

She held up her cell, dialed information. A minute later she had Julia on the phone. She said that Darren had a special delivery for her. Julia gave her the address.

Jacqueline drove there alone. The sun was setting, its lava-orange light burnishing the red and green foliage with a coppery glow that was both picturesque and sad. Jacqueline dreaded the early fall—dreaded the cooler air, the darker nights and the sunlight's strained, golden tinge, like the light in a photograph yellowing with age. September and October in Cleveland were the dying months. November through mid-April was the death.

The Wilcoxes' two-story colonial was deep in a maze of side streets within shouting distance of Parmatown Mall. A short, frizzy-haired woman in a baggy cable-knit sweater paced the front yard, looking worried. The windows of the house were festooned with kitschy store-bought decals of pumpkins and ghosts.

Jacqueline stole a glance at the car in the garage. The trunk had a massive cleft in it and there was plastic sheeting taped over the back windshield. The sight of the car threw her for a loop. Darren had done this. Mild-mannered, sweet-natured Darren.

My Darren, she thought, and the intruding thought threw her for a loop as well. Darren wasn't hers.

The two women shook hands, and Julia kept thanking her; a veritable overflowing fountain of gratitude was Julia. She looked at Jacqueline in wonder. "I don't believe Darren's ever mentioned you before. How long have you been dating?"

"We're just friends." Jacqueline unlocked the trunk of Darren's car and found the gun near a pile of old Northeast Aerospace technical manuals. She picked it up gingerly, as if it were a piece of roadkill. It was surprisingly heavy. Instead of handing it over to Julia, though, she slid it into the pocket of her coat. Julia's unctuous thank-yous and solemn, overly obsequious manner annoyed her. It was the behavior of someone on the verge of getting what she wanted and ready to put on a Master's class in Method acting to seal the deal—contrition, humility, self-abasement, the whole works. Maybe much of it would be genuine, but some of it would be sheer performance. And as far as Jacqueline was concerned, acting was just another form of lying.

"I can't thank you enough for doing this," Julia said. "I'm just—I'm so sorry all this happened. Sam is sorry."

"Where is he?"

"Out at the mall. With the kids. Brandon needs stuff for gym." Julia hugged her elbows and looked at her feet. "You know, a couple times Sam did pick up the phone. He was going to call and apologize... but he couldn't. He's embarrassed. I'm not making excuses for him, though. A lot of times he can be so...."

"A felon. That's what he could have been if Darren had called the police."

"I'm not trying to defend what he did." Julia took a deep, shaky breath and put her fingers over her eyes. "I can't believe this happened. Sam is not really like this, I swear. This is not the person I married."

"Which of us is?"

"Have you been married?"

"I have," Jacqueline said.

"It's funny in a sad way. When you meet someone and fall in love you think you know him. You start using words like 'soul mate.' Then ten years go by and you slowly find out how little you really know."

It was every Joni Mitchell song in a nutshell. "Sometimes we don't even know ourselves very well, either."

"And if it turns out you don't know the person," Julia said, her voice faltering, "how can you really love him?"

It was a rhetorical question. Julia didn't wait for an answer but said instead, "I'm thinking of leaving him."

"Are you serious?"

"I don't know. I just don't."

It seemed as if Julia was hungry to talk about it with someone, but Jacqueline tried to bring the conversation back to the matter at hand. "Your husband is going to have to make this right somehow. Otherwise I think you run the risk of chasing Darren out of your life for good, and that would be a shame."

"I think I've already lost him. He says he's moving to Portland."

Jacqueline was quiet for a moment. "I didn't know he'd even interviewed for the job yet."

"He hasn't. But he says he's gonna push for it now. He's looking forward to getting out of here. Part of me thinks it's to get away from us. I'm sure he hates me now, not just Sam."

"No, he doesn't. He just feels like an afterthought in your life."

"That's ridiculous. He's my big brother."

"A lot of it is out of your control," Jacqueline said. "A lot of it really doesn't have anything to do with you." She remembered something Darren had told her at the grocery store that night months ago. "He just wants to matter to someone. I don't think he's getting that from people around here. Your husband certainly doesn't have much use for him."

"If you don't mind me asking, how long have you two known each other?"

"A few months."

Julia smiled without much mirth. "It sounds like you understand him better than I ever could. And I grew up with him."

Jacqueline said nothing for a long time. Then: "He said he loves me. I don't know what to do about it."

"Do you love him?"

It sounded so howlingly melodramatic to say she didn't know what love was anymore, so Jacqueline opted for a lame patchwork answer full of evasions like "bad time in my life right now" and "not ready for a relationship." Julia only nodded and remained quiet. Jacqueline felt a touch of embarrassment. They had both made shocking confessions to one another but neither of them could help the other. Such was life, Jacqueline thought: In the end you're all alone.

"What happened at the house?" Julia asked. "Sam won't talk about it and Darren was pretty vague about it."

"He was pretty vague about it with me, too. Whatever is there is very protective of him. That's all I know."

"He needs to get out of there. It's not safe."

"Maybe for your husband. For Darren, it's probably the safest place in the world." Jacqueline took the gun out of her coat pocket but still didn't hand it over. The cartoonish cardboard ghosts cheerfully leered at her from the bay windows of the house. They looked like bloated marshmallows with toothy, moronic grins.

"Before I leave," Jacqueline said, "would you do something for me?"

"What?"

"I'd like for you to take those things down. The ghosts."

"Why?"

"A ghost was responsible for nearly harming your husband and for turning your brother's life upside down. So it seems a bit tasteless to treat them like a bunch of cute cartoon characters, don't you think?"

Julia gaped at her. "They're just Halloween decorations. Why—"

"Ghosts are actual human souls that for whatever reason can't seem to leave this world after their bodies die. To me, that's about as tragic and heartbreaking as I can imagine. I mean, what if it was your daughter? You probably wouldn't want her to be portrayed as some goofy cartoon, would you?" Jacqueline smiled to show she meant this in a friendly, non-confrontational way. She handed Julia the gun. "I'll just wait here while you take them down."

"Come awake," Michelle said.

Jacqueline had only been sleeping a short time when the voice came—a loud, sexless stage whisper coming from the darkness at the foot of her bed. She awoke with a start, her heart reaching the speed of panic in less than a second. The scent of chlorine in the bedroom was overpowering. It was as if Jacqueline's room had been transformed into the locker room of the YWCA pool.

More importantly, this was the first time Michelle had spoken to her since the lightning dream.

Jacqueline sat up and peered into the darkness but the figure at the foot of the bed retreated further into the shadows. All Jacqueline saw was a pale bluish-white hand make the timeless gesture of Come on, let's go.

Was she dreaming? She had to be. Like most dreams, there was a distinct lack of transition. One moment she was sitting up in bed, the next she was out by the pool. Michelle wouldn't let Jacqueline look at her; like a mute maidservant, Michelle kept two steps behind her mother, cloaked in the shadows. Things must be different in the afterlife because Jacqueline sensed that her daughter was much taller and older than the six-year-old girl she knew. No doubt this was the product of Jacqueline's reading over the last few years. In one of her books, the psychic Sylvia Browne claimed that souls in the afterlife maintain the visual form of their thirty-year-old selves, even if they never reached that age on earth. Jacqueline could actually buy that. Thirty was the prime of life, the point at which we were as good as we would ever be—old enough to have a little of life's wisdom, young enough to still feel like happiness was your birthright.

The night was cool, but she was warmed by the occasional gust of heat—and mesquite!—from Kevin's propane grill. There was a party going on. Apparently she was the guest of honor. THIS IS YOUR LIFE, JACKIE-BABY! read a large paper banner over the patio's sliding doors.

"Guess we don't need Dr. Freud to decode this," she whispered to Michelle. But Michelle made no reply. She hid in the shadows at the edge of Jacqueline's peripheral vision.

Dozens of people milled around the edge of the pool, which had been miraculously cleaned, polished and filled with fresh, luminous water that glittered like an undulating ribbon of jewels in the light of the Japanese lanterns and tiki torches. A gleaming red mahogany coffin lay at the bottom of the pool. The casket couldn't have been Michelle's, though. Michelle's had been, of course, child-sized, and it hadn't been mahogany, it had been black walnut with aluminum handrails. Jacqueline remembered Kevin's sweaty palmprints on the handrails. He had been one of the pallbearers.

The partygoers consisted of family and friends. Jacqueline saw Kevin chatting up Allison, who gazed up at him and said "uh-huh" a lot, her eyes large and fawning, as if Kevin were a large, luscious chocolate-covered cherry she was thinking of putting in her mouth.

"... and sexually, I have to admit, she was borderline frigid," Kevin was saying over his daiquiri, which sported one of those little paper umbrellas. A nice touch—Jacqueline saluted her subconscious's Oscar-caliber production design. "I mean, I know men are more preoccupied with sex than women, but come on, show a little interest. Lots of times I could tell she was just going through the motions. Sort of like me at those museum exhibits she was always dragging me to."

"Uh-huh, uh-huh," Allison said, one slender finger lazily stirring the contents of her half-empty margarita.

"I hope you're not talking about me," Jacqueline said. But neither Kevin nor Allison seemed to notice her. Neither did her mother and father, who were having one of their many low-key squabbles. Jacqueline was heartened to hear her dad say, "Look, you were on her case since she was sixteen to find a boyfriend, get married, all that stuff. Why couldn't you just leave her be?"

"Oh yeah, like you did," her mom said. "What a wonderful parent you were, falling asleep on the couch every day and leaving everything to me. The couch had more of an impact on her than you did."

Jacqueline saw a few former colleagues from Datascape on the other side of the pool. They were nibbling at chicken wings and bits of their desultory conversation wafted over to her: "... really pretty... just not approachable... cold fish... invited her out to do things... never interested... didn't get her..."

"At least they said I was pretty," Jacqueline said to Michelle, who still hung back in Jacqueline's blind spot, a looming presence that was felt rather than seen. Jacqueline looked around but didn't see Darren. His absence depressed her. Darren would have been able to see her. He would have told her, Let's blow this place, and they would have gone somewhere and just looked at the stars.

She tried to get the attention of Kayla and her husband, but they were too busy staring grimly at the coffin in the water which looked like some morbid decoration at the bottom of a goldfish bowl. Kayla and her husband were saying things like "some women aren't meant to be mothers" and "Michelle's probably turning over in her grave at what she's doing." They both wore matching expressions of moralistic condescension, like newscasters talking about a celebrity's coke-and-sex-fueled fall from grace.

"I don't like this party anymore," Jacqueline said. Once again, the dream could have used some smoother editing—without transition, Jacqueline was back in her bed, but she could still sense Michelle standing next to the bed, hidden in the darkness. Jacqueline felt sleep tugging at her and she didn't have the strength to resist it. She was a hollowed-out shell. It felt as if her mind had vomited up the entire contents of her life in one long and alarming purging stream, cleaning her out and leaving only a husk, a person no more substantial than a paper doll.

"I miss you so much, sweetie," Jacqueline said. "Can you hold my hand? Until I fall asleep again?"

The specter held Jacqueline's hand.

Jacqueline shut her eyes. Some of her sadness was lifting. "Michelle. I was glad I named you that. It's elegant. It really suited you."

"That's not my name," the specter said.

TWENTY-FOUR

"We'll just stay half an hour," Jacqueline said as Darren pulled to the curb in front of Kayla's Cleveland Heights home.

Despite his initial misgivings, Darren had found himself looking forward to the party and seeing into this new window of Jacqueline's life. He felt like Margaret Mead in the field, about to study some previously unknown tribe in the South Seas—suburbanitus americanus, in all its glory. It certainly beat his usual social outings, which mainly consisted of sitting in half-deserted sports bars while Khabir enumerated the myriad ways in which his life sucked. For Jacqueline's benefit, Darren wore his midnight blue suit with the silver tie. It would send a signal that she consorted with men of style and sophistication. He didn't want to look like just another douchebag in Dockers.

When they walked through the door, Kayla and her radiologist husband Ted greeted Jacqueline warmly, Darren less so, but he expected this and played it cool. Darren and Jacqueline's anniversary gift—a bottle of sparkling wine from a local vineyard—thawed their reserve somewhat, and eventually Darren found himself having a lengthy, pleasant talk with Ted about the black and white photos (Ted's handiwork) of bleak but striking winterscapes decorating the living room walls. Tiny birds clung to bare, storm-tossed branches under unsympathetic grey skies.

But before this, there was the Allison issue to attend to.

Jacqueline pointed her out to him. Allison's ash-blonde hair, sunken cheeks and harsh greenish eyes gave her the air of an annoyed ex-beauty queen. She stood at the sideboard, nibbling on a cube of cheese. The two women noticed one another immediately and Allison had smiled tightly before turning away—that time-honored way of saying, I see you, but the next move is yours.

"I don't see Kevin anywhere," Jacqueline murmured.

Maybe now she could relax. And so could he. He hadn't been looking forward to meeting Kevin. In the annals of awkward moments in his life, that would have most assuredly been among the top five. In his more whimsical imaginings of this night, Darren had pictured Kevin and Allison with their arms all over one another to get under Jacqueline's skin, forcing Jacqueline to respond in kind by sitting in Darren's lap and calling him her little hug-monkey until the whole evening devolved into obvious Three's Company-type farce. The reality, though, would have been less amusing—long silences, heated words in the kitchen, an abrupt, uncomfortable departure.

Jacqueline took Darren with her as she made her way over to Allison. "Al, I am so sorry about Mark. I really am."

"Thanks. Good to see you."

Jacqueline had shyly held out her hands in preparation for a hug that never came. But at least Allison was smiling. Darren introduced himself and shook Allison's hand. Her gaze was borderline friendly.

"Look, I'm sorry for unloading on you in that e-mail," Allison said to Jacqueline. Allison was compulsively wolfing down chunks of smoked Gouda in a distracted, angry way. Darren thought of Cronos swallowing his own children. "I shouldn't have done that. I've just been so emotional lately."

"I'm sorry I haven't been much of a friend to you."

"I've just felt so raw," Allison said, as if not hearing her. "Like I'm under siege, you know? I'm almost forty, I've got three kids and now I'm alone. It's a lot to get used to."

"I think I understand how you feel," Jacqueline said.

Allison smiled frostily, this time turning her attention to the Swedish meatballs. "Well, no, I don't think you do. You more or less left your marriage willingly. I was kicked out of mine. Not quite the same level on the Richter scale. Sorry for airing all this dirty laundry in front of you, Darren, but you know how us over-the-hill gals are. Baggage baggage baggage."

"I'm sorry you're going through this," Darren said. "I'm divorced myself."

Allison glanced at Jacqueline. "I'm sure Kayla's already told you. A few weeks ago Kayla, Ted and I went out one night. Kevin came along too. No big deal. He's still friends with my brother so we run into each other once in a while. I figured, what the hell, dinner and a movie. Beats being alone all the time."

"Okay," Jacqueline said. Darren heard the coolness in her voice—not the reassuring, oh-think-nothing-of-it tone that Allison had probably been expecting.

Allison's eyes narrowed. "I mean, it's not like I have to ask permission or anything. You two are pretty much single now." She hovered over the pan of steaming meatballs like a vulture. "You ought to try these. My God, I could eat these things all night."

Darren placed his hand on the small of Jacqueline's back in what he hoped was a clear enough signal that they ought to move to a less emotionally charged area of the party. Jacqueline held her ground. The polite blankness of her face was a bad sign.

"I'm just wondering," Jacqueline said, "why all of a sudden you wanted to go out with Kevin of all people. It's not a big deal, I'm just curious."

Allison stopped in mid-chew. "'Go out with Kevin'? You make it sound as if we're dating. We're not, Jacqueline."

"I didn't mean it that way, I meant why choose him to go to the movie with you."

"I just explained that to you. On occasion he keeps in touch. He knows my brother. Kevin's a friend."

Jacqueline smiled. "It's not a big deal, really. I guess maybe I'm feeling a little sensitive too. I thought maybe you were trying to get back at me. Or maybe Kevin was trying to get back at me. It's silly paranoia, I know."

"Maybe it's a hard realization for you to make, but the universe does not revolve around you, Jacqueline."

Darren saw Jacqueline's jaw clench. The thin smile on her lips was only a smile in the most technical sense. "I never said it did. I was just being paranoid."

"He's a friend. That's all. Christ, why does everyone nowadays have to find fault with everything I do? You don't see me judging the company you keep."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"All of a sudden you're best buddies with Cassie Christopher. Which is a shocker because we all used to make fun of what a slut she was."

"I thought you weren't going to judge my friends."

Allison selected some celery to munch as a palate cleanser. "Mmm, nice and crisp. I'm not judging her. I don't care what she does. It's not an issue." She gave Jacqueline a strange, almost cautionary look, as if saying, I can make it an issue, though. Darren didn't know who this Cassie person was but the mention of her name seemed to make Jacqueline edgier than she already was.

Kayla interrupted, wanting to introduce Jacqueline and Darren to a woman named Francesca, a fellow teacher in the Ursuline English department.

As Kayla led the way across the living room, Darren whispered, "Get a grip on your horses. It's a party."

"She always does this. Always. If she feels vulnerable or left out, she'll steal from you. Usually it involves men. You should have seen her in high school."

"You're getting a divorce. Kevin doesn't belong to you anymore."

Jacqueline looked at him. "Can you honestly say that if you saw Annika holding hands with another man, you wouldn't feel a little hurt?"

She had him there.

They were presented with Francesca, a heavyset woman wearing a dark floral print dress so kaleidoscopically garish that it looked as if she were wearing an Oriental greenhouse. She had a warm but theatrical manner and like most academics, she didn't so much as talk to you as grant you an audience. When she asked what Darren did for a living and Darren described his enthralling career as a paper-pusher, her smile became patiently condescending, as if she thought that his idea of high culture was probably the NFL post-game show. Her estimation of him seemed to rise, however, when in the course of a discussion about marriage Darren corrected her on one point: it was William Congreve, not Coleridge, who said that courtship was to marriage as a witty prologue was to a very dull play.

"Congreve was a cynic," Darren said. "And given tonight's occasion, I like what Joseph Barth said—that marriage is our last, best chance to grow up."

Francesca grinned. "With three marriages in my rearview mirror, I guess you could say I'm the most grown-up one here." She insisted that Darren sit next to her when the dessert was served.

Dessert turned out to be a large triple chocolate cake that Kayla had baked herself. Ted poured the coffee while everyone gathered at the dining room table and discussed the sorry state of the economy. "It's even affecting us teachers," Kayla said. "Our department's trying to make some of the junior faculty go part-time so the school won't have to pay them benefits."

"Remember Vince Califano from high school?" Allison said. "He works at that Chevy dealership out in Bedford. They're gonna close next month. He doesn't know what he's gonna do."

Kayla's eyes widened. "My God. I haven't thought of him in years." She looked at her other guests. "He was my first real boyfriend, even though we only went out three times. Can't even remember why we broke up, but I do remember him breaking it off with me in the Pizza Hut on Mayfield Road. I've never been able to set foot in a Pizza Hut since."

Ted smiled. "We've got the Papa John's coupons to prove it."

Jacqueline poured half-and-half in her coffee. "I thought he ended it with you because he started going out with Allison."

Allison stirred her coffee, the spoon ting-ting-tinging rapidly against the porcelain cup.

Darren lightly squeezed Jacqueline's leg under the table. Once again she did not take the hint. "For a few weeks afterward," Jacqueline said, looking at Allison, "you and Vince were inseparable. Didn't he take you to that big party at Evan Becker's house, the one where the cops came?"

Kayla laughed. "You know, I'd forgotten all that. Yeah, I remember confronting Allison in the hallway one day after calculus."

"We were just friends," Allison said. She steadily returned Jacqueline's gaze. "Since you seem to have such a photographic memory, you'll recall that he started dating Mindy Mandelbaum around that time. Not me. He took her to Homecoming."

"I never went to Homecoming or prom," Darren said. "But girls were fighting over me for the privilege. 'You take him,' one would say, and the other would say, 'I don't want him, you take him.'"

Ted laughed.

"The economy hasn't been bad for everyone," Allison said, taking a dainty bite of cake. "Remember Cassie Christopher, Kayla? Her escort service seems to be doing well, if you believe the gossip I've been hearing."

"Escort service?" Francesca said. "My, my. In Cleveland, of all places."

"Oh yeah," Allison said. "I have to hand it to her. She finally got practical and decided to sell what she gave away for free in school. People have seen her downtown at the more upscale bars and hotel lobbies every time there's some businessmen's convention." She kept stirring and stirring her coffee, the ting-ting-tinging spoon sounding like the world's smallest alarm bell. "I find the whole thing kind of fascinating, so I've been doing a little digging here and there. Yeah, Cassie's been doing well for herself. Tell them, Jacqueline."

Jacqueline was silent.

"Don't be shy," Allison said. "You're among friends. I mean, you work with her, right?"

Kayla blinked, then looked down at her plate. Ted looked confused. Darren was likewise confused, but the ashen expression on Jacqueline's face cleared up some of the bewilderment. Jacqueline's cheek twitched and her linen napkin was clenched in one white-knuckled fist.

"Tell me," Allison said, "does a man have to pay extra to come in your mouth?"

Jacqueline dropped the napkin on her plate and fled the table. The back door opened and closed. Her quick, sharp footfalls were echoing down the sidewalk before Darren even made it to the door.

She was halfway to the end of the block by the time Darren got outside. He hesitated a moment, wondering if he should follow in the car. He saw her cross the street and slip into Denison Park, where the tennis court lights were on.

He went after her on foot in the cool night, passing by a procession of real estate signs along the street. It seemed as if every third house was up for sale. A few signs said BANK OWNED and PRICE REDUCED. The cancer of the housing crisis had spread deep into the bones of tidy middle-class neighborhoods populated not by the working poor but by teachers, dentists, plumbers, radiologists. People were waking up from the American Dream with a hangover.

Darren found Jacqueline sitting at a picnic table next to the fenced-in pool, which had been drained for the season.

He sat down next to her. Her cheeks glittered with wet trails. Her clenched, quivering jaw told him she was trying to keep from breaking down in front of him. "How could she treat me like that," she said, "in front of everyone?"

Darren put a hand on her back and her face crumpled. She slumped into him and wept into his chest, holding onto him with a ferocity that was both touching and unnerving. You're a safe harbor, Kat had said. But the dirty little secret was that he wasn't that good at it, not by a longshot. The shipwrights in his humble port were middling carpenters at best and wholly unprepared for the vessels that drifted in out of the mist, on fire, masts snapped, decks smashed by cannonfire. He had no idea what to say to Jacqueline now.

After a few moments she straightened up and put a hand to her flushed forehead.

"It's true, what she said?" Darren asked.

She didn't reply.

He looked off at the empty pool. The leaves on the trees overhanging the pool were turning red and pale yellow, and the air had that depressing October crispness to it. Summer was gone.

"When I was a kid," Darren said, "I used to come here sometimes in the summers. My parents lived about six blocks away, on the other side of Noble Road. I never went swimming here, though. Never much liked swimming."

"I did. I think I still have my high school's record for the hundred-meter freestyle."

"Nice."

"My mother didn't like the idea of me being on the team. She said it was for 'manly' girls and lesbians."

"It's also for heterosexual girls who like to swim."

"In my senior year I didn't go out for the team again. Coach Herbert was beside himself. He begged me to reconsider."

"Why didn't you?"

Jacqueline shrugged. "Guess I started listening to my mother."

"I guess we all do that from time to time. Doing what we think we should do instead of what our hearts tell us to do. Most of the time we mistake it for wisdom."

Jacqueline was quiet for a long time. Finally she said, "Cassie actually tried to convince me not to do it. You'd be surprised at how nice she is. But I really needed the money. It was only about six or seven times." She shook her head. "You know, when I think about it, it's like it's something that happened to some other person. Like it's not even part of my life at all. Maybe that's what they call compartmentalization."

"Maybe."

"A couple afternoons a week, Cassie will give me a call, saying she's meeting some clients for drinks, and if I'm interested, meet them in the bar at Hotel Such-and-Such. Sometimes I don't go. Sometimes I do. And it's not what you think, either—I don't get all dressed up in some slutty gown slit up to the thigh. Cassie says that most of the men that come to her want the 'businesswoman experience.'"

"What's that?"

"The whole traditional concept of the woman in the evening gown with the plunging neckline and the stiletto heels, that's actually passé for a lot of guys. Many of them fantasize about the powerful corporate-type women they work with day in and day out. The sensible skirts, dark suits, stylish glasses. The go-to-hell attitude. I didn't even have to buy a new wardrobe."

"I could have given you the money."

"So I can be beholden to you for something else? I'm tired of owing people, Darren."

"You wouldn't owe me anything."

"Yes. I would. It costs more than money to be a charity case. More than you know." Jacqueline dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. "This may be hard for you to understand, but I don't really care about sex anymore. It actually seems kind of silly. Naked aerobics, for six seconds of pleasure. Funny how things change. When we're teenagers it seems so majestic and awe-inspiring. Now it's about as awe-inspiring as ordering Chinese food."

Darren smiled.

"So I guess that's how I rationalized it. Like at a garage sale, when we sell things we don't care about. It's just a transaction."

He looked through the links in the fence at the empty pool. He still didn't know what to say.

"I mean, we all sell ourselves every day," Jacqueline said. "Do you really believe in the press releases and PowerPoint presentations you write every day? You use your writing abilities, you sell them to your company. But it's just a job. I need you to understand this."

"I do."

"You think I'm disgusting, don't you? Tell me the truth."

"I don't think you're disgusting."

"But you've probably lost respect for me."

"Jacqueline, I'd be proud to walk in the door with you anywhere, any time."

She looked away. "Why?" she said, her voice thick with anger. She glared at him, and the irony was that she looked disgusted with him and in no mood for greeting card sentiments. He wanted to say, Because I love you, but she would've waved the words away like irritating mosquitoes. She wanted a nuts-and-bolts answer to how any self-respecting man could want to be with a woman who sold herself for cash.

Because I love you. Unfortunately, that was all he had. Sometimes greeting cards, even with their flowery excesses, told the truth.

"I think what you're doing is probably not safe," Darren said. "So would you do me a favor and stop?"

"I'm keeping that house, Darren. And I'm not taking any handouts."

"Then Cassie Christopher is going to get a call from me booking your services every evening until kingdom come. You'll never even have to take your clothes off."

"Darren, no."

"Yes." It was his turn to sound pissed.

She laughed. "Man, you are one for the books. Why are you like this?"

"Like what?"

Jacqueline shook her head, still smiling. "I can't even come up with the right adjective."

She looked at her hands, the smile slowly fading. "I'm scared about something."

"What?"

"That dream I told you about. The party.... I did some checking on the house's history. There's a possibility that it's not Michelle in the house." She took out a wrinkled printout from her purse and showed it to Darren.

"Jesus," Darren said.

TWENTY-FIVE

Darren called her from work two nights later.

"I'm gonna book the flight for you in the next couple days," he said. "I need to know if Kevin's coming or if it's just you alone."

Jacqueline sat down at the kitchen table. "I'll call him tomorrow."

"How are you doing?"

"Hanging in there." Surprisingly, there had been no fallout from the party. She had expected a ten-megaton bomb of drama to detonate, perhaps beginning with an alarmed phone call from Kayla to Jacqueline's parents. Cue her mom, screeching like a banshee and having three strokes. And her dad... God, it would kill him. He would disown her. But the phone had been silent. Although in a lot of ways it was a relief, it probably also meant that Kayla and everyone else at the party had simply decided to forget Jacqueline LaPierre even existed. That's what you did with social pariahs.

"I sent you a present," Darren said.

"As if spending thousands of dollars on a Michael Percival reading and trying to save my soul weren't presents enough."

"It's a DVD. Michael Percival talks about life after death, spirits, ghosts and crisis apparitions."

"I've heard the term crisis apparition but I'm not sure what it is."

"I guess in times of crisis or stress, someone's spirit can appear to us, either to comfort us or give us a message. Sometimes it can even be the spirit of someone who's still alive."

Jacqueline thought for a moment. "Do you think that's why she's appearing to me?" she said at last. "Because I'm in crisis?"

"It's possible."

"But she started appearing long before I even lost my job."

"Then maybe she's visiting for some other reason," Darren said. "So. You're back to thinking it's her."

"I don't know." In her research into the history of the house and its former occupants, the only odd thing she'd uncovered was a 1957 article from the old Cleveland Press. Skull Fragment Is Human, Coroner Says. Apparently a portion of a skull had been unearthed in a tract of land in Beachwood being developed into a housing subdivision—a subdivision that would be born in late 1958 and include Jacqueline's street and two others. She hadn't been able to find any follow-ups to the story, leaving all her questions—who did the skull belong to? which lot had it been found in?—unanswered and probably unanswerable.

"Most of me thinks it's Michelle, but I'm still half-tempted to call someone at the coroner's office," she said. "Maybe they have some cold case files I could look at—"

"It was more than fifty years ago. And you don't know where the skull was found. Your development has a couple dozen houses."

"A couple nights ago you thought this could be significant. We're talking about somebody who was probably murdered. Right in my neighborhood."

"This whole earth is a graveyard, Jacqueline. I think you're reaching."

"Then what did she mean by 'That's not my name'?"

He had no answer.

"So how's your apparition doing?" Jacqueline asked after a pause.

She heard the creak and sag of Darren leaning back in his office chair. "She's being mischievous."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm flying to Portland in a couple days to interview for Magruder-Cartwright. Last night I got my suitcase out of the attic and put it in my room. When I woke up this morning it was gone. I tore the house apart looking for it. I found it again in the attic, buried under a mound of insulation that had mysteriously come down from the rafters."

Jacqueline smiled, but the smile was short-lived. "So you're really going for this job."

"If I can fool them into thinking I'm qualified. A few other people at my office are jumping ship to other Goodman operations too." The chair creaked again—Darren was leaning forward. "I got another e-mail today. No sender address. Khabir worked his magic but he still can't figure out where they're coming from."

"What'd it say?"

"I'll forward it to you now. I get uncomfortable looking at it. Look, I'm a little worried about you. About you being alone there while you're feeling this bad."

"How do you know I'm feeling bad?"

"After that party, I doubt you're feeling good."

"I'm not planning on killing myself, at least not yet. Why give my in-laws the satisfaction?" She let the flippancy vanish from her voice. "Thank you for your concern. It means a lot."

"Let me know what Kevin decides."

After he hung up, she powered up her laptop and checked out the e-mail Darren forwarded to her. At first she thought it was gibberish, but then she looked more closely: ewigieuv xxx swk43yq sva whyd u try to send me away8wffcv darrennn xjgxx just want to be 7t8with you xxxxooo fgehwr97 plse dont send me away xxxxjrweq youre my sweetie xcbvd1xxxooo

Jacqueline managed to get Kevin on his cell as he was driving home the next night. "My friend—Darren—is going to book the flight to Tampa to see Michael Percival. I was hoping you would come with me. It's October 14." Please say no, she thought. The idea of being cooped up in a plane with Kevin's simmering hostility was enough to make her want to cancel the trip altogether. But Michelle was his daughter too.

"I'm coming over," Kevin said. "We need to talk."

"You don't need to come over. I just need to know if you're in or out."

"I'm not going to see a psychic, Jacqueline."

"Fine. Don't waste gas coming over here."

"I'm coming over."

Christ, what did he want? Their lawyers had worked out virtually every issue in the divorce agreement so there wasn't anything left to fight over.

When he arrived, the first words out of Kevin's mouth were, "Please tell me it's not true." He stared at her as if she were some new and disgusting form of alien life.

Jacqueline felt tired. She sank down on the couch. Allison had probably called him. Maybe they had gotten together for drinks. I think there's something you ought to know, and it's hard for me to say it. She probably wore her deep crimson lipstick and squeezed Kevin's hand at all the appropriate moments. Or maybe Kayla had told him. Didn't matter.

Kevin's expression pinballed between fear and rage and abhorrence. "You're sickening."

She shrugged. "Okay."

"'Okay'? What is that supposed to mean?"

"It means what the hell do you want from me, do you want to humiliate me, do you want to call me names and scream at me? I've already been humiliated, I'm a little numb to it all. So just get it out of your system so you can get out of here and I can go to sleep."

"I didn't come here to yell at you. I came here to convince you to get help."

She went into the kitchen to take an aspirin.

"You need to see someone," Kevin said. "A psychiatrist."

"What for?"

He barked a bitter, shocked laugh. "What for? Do you want a list?"

While she poured herself a glass of iced tea, Jacqueline heard him rummaging around in one of the drawers of the sideboard in the dining room. Then he appeared before her, holding the framed photo of the two of them on their wedding day. "Do you remember this woman? Look at it, Jacqueline."

"Hey, what do you know, she looks like me."

"Magna cum laude, beautiful wife and mother. And now she imagines ghosts and spreads her legs for money from strangers."

Jacqueline looked at the picture for a long time, breathing hard. Then she grabbed it and flung it as hard as she could at the wall. It exploded in a hissing spray of glass shards. The imitation silver frame broke at one of the corners and clattered to the floor.

"Just get out of my house," she said, her voice rising to nearly a scream.

"It's not your house!" he yelled into her face. "My name is on the mortgage!"

She stalked off into the living room.

"You need to get counseling," Kevin said, "and you need to do it now. Do you hear me? You're falling apart."

"You don't get to order me to do anything."

"You will get help. Or your parents are going to find out about this."

"What, they don't already know? I figured Allison would have them on speed-dial."

"I'm not kidding, Jacqueline. This is the deal. It's for your own good."

"Another ultimatum. Classic."

"What do you mean, another?" Kevin asked.

"Like in '96. Before we got engaged. You got all annoyed with me and said we were just spinning our wheels and had to either get married or break up. You wanted a future together. I thought women were supposed to be the experts at emotional blackmail but I guess men are good at it too."

"Great, now I'm the villain who forced you into a loveless marriage. I don't remember holding a gun to your head."

No, of course there hadn't been a gun. Most of the world's crimes aren't committed at gunpoint. But now she was being melodramatic. Their marriage and life together hadn't been a crime, it had simply been... not enough. "I hate to break this to you, kiddo," Jacqueline said, "but I don't have any health insurance. You're more than welcome to foot the bill for another shrink, but I thought I was already driving you to the poorhouse. Hey, when you go shrink shopping, pick out a cute one. Maybe one day I'll want to start dating again."

Kevin looked like he was on the verge of tears. "What in God's name happened to you?"

"Life."

"I'm trying to help you. I want to keep you from destroying yourself."

"You can take your help and shove it up your ass," Jacqueline said.

Kevin looked at her for a long time. "This is going to be the last time I'm ever going to talk to you. I'm urging you to get some type of counseling."

"Kevin, I am seeking counseling. From Michael Percival. You can mock him all you want, you can belittle my beliefs, but I think this is going to help me. This is what I need to do now. I need to talk to my daughter."

Kevin drifted toward the front door, zipping up his jacket.

"You called me sickening," Jacqueline said softly. "I can't believe you called me that. Do you remember three years ago, when the company lost that class action suit?" A Stratus Chemical plant in Newark had been found guilty of dumping toxins in a nearby river. The rate of children there with testicular cancer was off the charts. Kevin had been on the company's beleaguered defense team.

"It was my job, Jacqueline."

"You called me sickening. I let a few sleazy guys ejaculate inside of me, but you defended a company that killed children and ruined parents' lives. Do you really want to talk about morality with me?"

Kevin said nothing.

"Do you want to know one of the reasons I just couldn't bear to stay married to you?" Jacqueline said. "It's because you're ordinary. You're a nice man, you were a good father, you always remembered our anniversary, but you're still just like fifty million other guys out there. It's like you guys were stamped out with a cookie cutter. You want to have a pretty wife and play house, you want to mow the lawn on Saturday and lie on the couch and watch the Browns lose on Sunday. In a few years you might take up golf. And that's it for you. I think that's sickening."

"And you think you're distinguishing yourself by turning your life into a long-term nervous breakdown? What prize do you get for that?"

No profound or witty answer occurred to her, so they simply looked at one another for a few seconds more. Then he left. Kevin was true to his word; it was the last time they ever spoke, and on the few instances when they had to communicate with one another they did so through lawyers. Once the divorce was finalized in mid-November, there was no need even for that.

Jacqueline called Darren at work around noon the following day. "He's not coming," she said.

"You're sure?"

"Yeah." She cradled the phone against her shoulder as she picked up the wrinkled wedding photo from the pile of broken glass on the kitchen floor. "But can I ask you for yet another favor?"

"What?"

"Will you go with me?"

Long silence on the other end. "Are you really sure you want me there?"

"I'm sure."

"Okay."

Jacqueline spent the afternoon sorting through the mess of photos stored in the bottom drawer of the sideboard. She would most likely dump the wedding album (Happy Jacqueline trying on her gown and wearing her happy wax dummy grin; Happy Jacqueline and Happy Kevin shoving happy coconut cake into each other's stupid, happy mouths), but she found a high school photo of herself that she liked. She looked like a totally different person. Her hair was a short, boyish mop (better for swimming). Her face was lean but healthy—not gaunt, the way it was now.

"Hi, you," she said to Jacqueline 1.0.

TWENTY-SIX

Portland's rainy greyness hid a surprisingly snazzy little city. It was artsy and people-friendly; it had an aerial tram and shabby-chic seafood restaurants in converted warehouses. It also had the world's largest bookstore—Powell's, which took up an entire city block—about ten blocks away from Darren's room in the Embassy Suites on Southwest Pine Street. All of this was pointed out to him by his tour guide, a Magruder-Cartwright junior VP named Bethany Barkley, a loud but good-natured woman with the glam looks of a faded anchorwoman and the edgy energy of a coke addict. She drove her Mercedes as if she were in a chase scene in a Bond flick, pointing out the sights along the way as Darren gripped his leather seat for dear life.

"And now we're about to sit in traffic on the Pacific Highway for fifteen minutes," she said. She blared her horn at a Volvo with California plates in front of her. "Move your ass! Fucking Californians."

"You don't like Californians here?"

She grinned at him. "We eat Californians."

"I think," Darren told Khabir later that night on the phone, "I could be happy here." It had been a long but satisfying day, and he lay on his hotel bed watching CNN with the sound off.

"The interview went well?"

"I thought so. They even introduced me to some of the lower-level executives. They probably wouldn't have done that if I didn't have a shot." Darren had been impressed by the size and opulence of the headquarters building, and he thought he would enjoy working with Bethany. He wished he had had the presence of mind to check her hand for a wedding ring. Darren allowed himself a fleeting fantasy in which the two of them were involved—which would no doubt be a harrowing but not wholly unenjoyable experience. She seemed nice but not quite the sweet, nurturing kind. He imagined her jabbing a finger at a cowed beau and saying, You, sit! I'm going to nurture you now! And you will like it!

"You sure you could live there?" Khabir said. "It rains fourteen months out of the year there."

The rain didn't bother Darren. Let it pour. It would be baptismal rain; he would be born again. Then something occurred to him. "I'm almost afraid to ask. How did it go?" Last night Khabir had had a date thanks to Darren. He had set Khabir up with the sister of Northeast Aerospace's Toledo plant manager. She sang in local jazz clubs in the Cleveland area and supposedly had a disposition that made Eeyore sound like a motivational speaker. In other words, perfect for Khabir.

Khabir took a deep, dramatic breath. "My friend, I... am... in love."

Darren smiled. "So it went well."

"We talked for three hours. She actually asked me questions. That never happens. She reads Camus and thinks mankind is a degenerate, doomed species. She's perfect. I owe you one, Darren."

"Yes, you do."

"You know, even if you get the job, you're still gonna have to pay the note on that house until you can sell it. You sure you can handle that?"

"One step ahead of you. Remember the Archangel Society? There was an ad on their site from a young couple in L.A. in the market for a legitimately haunted house, location unimportant. Apparently they collect them. Don't ask me why. The girl comes from money and the guy was a writer for some supernatural cable show that got cancelled."

"They're really gonna buy the place?"

"They said they'd have to look it over. They have some pretty high standards. 'Cold spots are a dime a dozen,' they said. 'We want the full Amityville.'"

"How do you think Rachel is going to feel about this?"

Darren stared at the ceiling. Light rain pattered against the window, a slow, lonely sound.

Khabir giggled—actually giggled. Darren didn't think he'd ever heard that before. "I am in love, my friend."

"Take it slow. It was one date. By the way, were you the one responsible for my new screen saver? I stopped in the office before I came to the airport."

"What was on it?"

"Two guys dressed as Satanists, licking the exposed nipples of a third gentleman, also dressed as a Satanist, who was giving the finger to the camera."

"Huh. Don't know anything about that. Must be a glitch in Windows XP."

"Goodnight, Khabir."

"Goodnight, John-Boy."

Darren spent a while standing at his hotel window, watching the lights of downtown Portland twinkle in the rain. Whyd u try to send me away, he thought. Plse dont send me away youre my sweetie.

He could be happy here. A new start, a new life. He would get an apartment in the city and spend his Saturdays at Powell's surrounded by a million books. In the summer he would drive to the coast and watch the sun set over the Pacific. He would forget about Jacqueline. They would of course still keep in touch for a while, but like most long-distance friends they'd end up just forwarding the occasional joke or funny YouTube clip every couple months or so. They would both establish new lives, new routines, and eventually she'd recede into the past. Maybe that wouldn't be a bad thing. Sometimes it was better to start again.

TWENTY-SEVEN

And then, all of a sudden, it was six a.m., October 14, and Darren was pulling into her driveway. Jacqueline was already standing outside the front door with her overnight case before Darren even got out of the car.

She was breathing hard, but she told herself it was because the morning was so cold.

"You okay?" Darren asked.

She nodded.

"We can stop for a quick breakfast somewhere," he offered.

"I can't eat anything." She went to get in the car but Darren stopped her and pointed at the front door, which she'd left unlocked. She went and locked it.

Once they were in the air, she relaxed a little. Just a little. Her Time magazine lay unopened on her lap as she stared out at the cloud deck. Golden sunlight poured into the plane, making her feel a strange stirring of giddiness, as if she and Darren were sneaking off to Barbados for some sun and fun. Then the real nature of their trip would occur to her and her insides would do their impression of a clenched fist. She went to the bathroom three times during the course of the two-and-a-half-hour flight.

After her third trip to the lavatory, her hands were shaking so much that Darren had to help her fasten her seatbelt.

"Thanks for coming," she whispered, her voice little more than a croak.

She had read Michael Percival's two books and had watched the DVD Darren had sent her, so she knew what to expect from today. Michael Percival was a heavyset, bearded man with a high, almost effeminate voice. The DVD—Michael Percival: On Ghosts, Angels and the Other Side—showed clips of him doing a reading for a couple who had lost a son to cystic fibrosis. Unlike the cringingly theatrical mediums of bad horror movies, Michael Percival sat in an armchair and doodled on a legal pad while he relayed information in a kind but matter-of-fact voice. It seemed like he was sketching something on the pad but actually he was just making random scribbles, "anything to keep my hand busy and kind of dissipate all this energy that comes into me when contact is made," he said. "Some people pace or tap their feet when they have excess energy—I doodle."

Jacqueline had watched his face and his eyes during the video, hoping to see some evidence that he was somehow in contact with some otherworldly force, but she saw nothing out of the ordinary. He would sometimes stare at his pad but most of the time he would look at his guests or stare into the middle distance, his head cocked as if he were trying to remember the lyrics of some half-forgotten pop song.

"What it's like for me," he explained, "is that very clear, very powerful thoughts and images will pop into my head, thoughts that are totally unconnected to me or my life. I'll be sitting with a woman and all of a sudden the image of an old lady will appear in my mind and the old lady will be saying, 'Tell her I'm her grandma,' and that's what I'll do. I'm their courier, their little errand boy. The images and thoughts will sometimes get jumbled if lots of spirits are trying to make contact, so sometimes that makes it hard to sort it all out. And unfortunately the images and thoughts come in little bursts, like a radio station that comes in real clear for a few seconds then just turns to static for a while. The spirits seem to know that my 'radio' isn't as finely tuned as I would like, so they often repeat things, and they try to keep their messages as clear and concise as they can. To throw in another analogy, it's like I'm taking a long-distance call and the signal is good but nowhere near perfect."

Although she instinctively trusted him and felt he was on the level—call her naïve, but he seemed too self-deprecating to be a con man—she felt stirrings of skepticism and cynicism as the pilot came on the intercom and said they were beginning their descent into the Tampa-St. Pete area.

The doubts grew more strident as they headed out into the rental car lot at the airport. It was a muggy eighty-two degrees and the sun seemed like a magnified version of the puny, anemic sun they had in Cleveland. She had forgotten how different Florida was—the land was cookie-sheet flat, and the enormous sky was right on top of you like a loud, brash woman at a party who didn't know the meaning of the phrase 'personal space.'

Darren put their bags in the trunk of their Taurus. "Ever been to Florida before?"

"Kevin and I took Michelle to Disney World when she was four. I thought she was too young. But she really wanted it." Jacqueline swallowed. "It wouldn't be that difficult for him to get information about me and just tell me what I wanted to hear."

"Actually, it would be. The check just had my name on it. And supposedly the money is handled by his management company, not him. Even if this was a scam, all he'd have to go on would be my name and address, not yours. All he knows about you is that the reading is for a woman named Jacqueline. That's the way he wants it."

The skepticism ebbed a little. Just a little.

"You're never going to be able to erase all your doubts," Darren said. "But for what it's worth I think he's on the level."

In the car, Jacqueline stared at her sweaty palms. I am afraid, she wanted to say, I am afraid he's a fraud, and I'm afraid that he isn't.

Darren navigated down Dale Mabry Boulevard, looking for the Radisson where they were booked. It was the same hotel where the reading would take place; Michael Percival had a long-standing arrangement that let him use a first-floor conference room for his sessions.

She and Darren had adjoining rooms. She sat on the edge of her bed, listening to the muted whisper of the shower in Darren's room as he got cleaned up before lunch. There was a Mexican restaurant next door that he had suggested, but she doubted she would be able to keep anything down.

The clock on the nightstand said 2:27. The session was at six.

That's not my name, Michelle—or whoever—had said.

She couldn't shake the image of a fifties-era construction worker standing in a freshly dug foundation, holding up a piece of a skull. Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him.

That's not my name.

"Who are you," she murmured. If the entity wasn't Michelle, why was it using the chlorine, why was it making Jacqueline think it was Michelle? And why go to the trouble of putting on this act if the entity was just going to say a few months later sorry, I'm not who you think I am?

Something occurred to her. When Michelle had turned four, she had gone through an obsession with princess-themed stuff, from Disney movies to toys and pajamas. For several weeks she even wanted Jacqueline and Kevin to call her Princess Sophie instead of Michelle. She would throw a tantrum if this protocol was not followed. Jacqueline recalled a time when Kevin came into the kitchen to drolly inform her that "Princess Sophie requests that her hot dog have ketchup on it instead of mustard."

So was that what was behind the pool party dream/visitation/whatever it was? Was Michelle subtly reminding Jacqueline of her Princess Sophie period, perhaps as a clever way of telling her that it really was Michelle? A little emotional watermark, perhaps?

At the Mexican place, Jacqueline ate little more than the free chips and salsa. She probably ate too much of those—she rushed to the bathroom and vomited, loudly and painfully. She wept for a moment then forced herself to get under control.

A fleeting but powerful impulse seized her: She would sneak out the back door and get a cab back to the airport. Most likely she wouldn't be able to get a flight back to Cleveland until the evening but she could easily hide in the airport for a few hours until the time for her session had passed. Darren would be furious but she knew he'd understand. He would have to see that this whole thing was making her feel like a defendant heading to court for the reading of the verdict, with Michelle serving as both judge and jury.

She looked at her worn, pale face in the mirror. The impulse passed.

Back at the table, Darren put a hand on hers. "Are you okay?" he asked.

She nodded. She ordered a margarita. It was 5:09.

At three minutes to six, Darren and Jacqueline were sitting in the overstuffed armchairs in the Radisson's lobby, watching the entrance. Her insides clenched and her heart began racing when she saw an overweight man in a short-sleeved linen shirt enter the hotel. He carried a canvas tote bag. He had a neatly trimmed beard and the desk clerk smiled at him. They chatted for a few moments. They seemed to know each other. The clerk pointed at Darren and Jacqueline and the bearded man walked over.

"Excuse me. Jacqueline and Darren?"

Darren stood. "Yes."

"Michael Percival. Good to meet you both."

Jacqueline shook his hand but could only mutter something that was in the neighborhood of "hi." It felt as if her heart had lodged itself in her throat like a throbbing, anxious frog. Michael Percival's expensive and generously applied cologne created a bracing, fragrant cloud around him that shook her out of herself and dragged her into the realization that it was happening, really happening, and there was no turning back.

Percival led the way to the conference room next to the hotel's coffee shop. "I hope you two get a chance to get a bite there," he said. "Best Denver omelettes I've ever had, and as you can tell I've had a few. Any trouble finding the hotel?"

"Straight shot from the airport," Darren said. "Couldn't be easier."

"Super. That's one of the reasons I like having sessions here. Also, it's just a block from the grief counseling center I help run." He held up the canvas tote bag for them to see. It bore the words The Healing Light Center.

The small, bland conference room was dominated by a circular table draped with a white tablecloth. There were stacks of folding chairs in one corner, and in another corner by a window were a leather couch and a matching armchair. Percival took the armchair, Darren and Jacqueline the couch. Jacqueline sat stiffly, her hands gripping her knees. Darren gave her arm a quick squeeze.

Percival removed the contents from his bag—a legal pad, a mechanical pencil and a bottle of water. He took a swig of the water and handed the pad to Darren. "Feel free to look through this so you can be assured I don't have any crib notes about the two of you. In fact, I encourage it. I want you to be assured there's no hanky-panky going on."

Darren flicked through the empty pad but was not examining it closely. Jacqueline barely looked at it at all. She was looking at Percival.

"I also want to urge you two to just answer yes or no to my questions. I don't want to be influenced by extra information you give me. More importantly, I don't want you to think that I've been influenced by the things you tell me." Percival smiled. "Now, you brought something to record the session?"

Darren clicked on his handheld digital recorder and put it on the sun-splashed coffee table in front of them.

"Okay," Percival said, "we'll begin." He was looking at his pad and tapping the pencil on it as if he were a student thinking about how to answer a tricky essay question. He looked up. "There's a Barbara here. Do either of you take the name Barbara?"

Jacqueline was about to say no but she glanced at Darren, who was staring intently at Percival. "Yes," Darren said.

"I'm getting a motherly vibe—no, a grandmotherly vibe," Percival said. His brow furrowed. "Definitely a grandmother. 'Mother of his mother,' she's saying. She says she passed when you were only a boy. She's telling me why she passed. Pneumonia. Any of this on the mark?"

"Yes," Darren said. "All of it."

"She says she loves you and thinks you turned out to be a fine man. She's giving me the image of a bouquet of white roses. That's my symbol for congratulations. She's congratulating you. Something about a promotion or a job or something like that. Something work-related."

Darren said nothing.

Percival glanced at him. "She also says that you're in a difficult emotional relationship. It's something you didn't encourage, it just sort of happened. Now this person is attached to you and can't seem to let you go. You're afraid of breaking her heart. Barbara says she doesn't know what to tell you. She says she's sorry but it's just going to be painful and there's nothing you can do, no easy way out."

Darren was leaning forward, his face hard to read. Jacqueline touched his knee.

Percival was doodling on the pad. He chewed at his bottom lip, lost in thought for a moment. Then he looked up at Jacqueline. "Young girl in your life has passed on."

She nodded.

"I'm getting a suffocating feeling, like I'm gasping for breath. Like my lungs are filling with water. She drowned. That's what she's saying. 'I drowned.'"

Jacqueline felt Darren's hand slide onto hers. She struggled to control her breathing. "Yes," she said, her voice little more than a gasp.

Percival nodded, doodling, his head cocked. "Do you take the name Shelly? No, not Shelly. Michelle."

"Yes," Jacqueline said.

"Michelle says she tried to swim but couldn't, and it was just an accident. You just didn't reach her in time. 'My fault, not yours,' she's telling me. She's really anxious for you to hear that because she knows you've been beating yourself up about it."

Jacqueline's throat felt hot, full of cotton.

"'I'm all right now, I'm all right,' she keeps saying. She says she's very happy on the other side. She's a real bundle of energy. She's dancing around you now. You can't see her, of course, but I can. 'I'm a little princess,' she says."

Tears welled up in Jacqueline's eyes. "Yes, she is."

"She calls out to Daddy. She wishes that Daddy had come but knows that he's just not open to this right now. She's shrugging and sighing, like she's saying, 'What are you gonna do?'"

Jacqueline smiled. She was not just holding Darren's hand, she was clutching it the way a stroke victim clutches her walker.

"She's sorry that you and Daddy are not together anymore," Percival said. "It makes her sad that you two have gone your separate ways. I'm getting the picture of a heart torn in two. But she says she understands. 'It wasn't right for you,' she says. I'm not sure what she means by that, not sure if she means the marriage, but she keeps saying it. 'It wasn't right for you.'" Percival looked up at Jacqueline. "Michelle says she's really worried about you. You're making bad choices. She says—and this is kind of mind-blowing, because I get the impression she's very, very young, and so it's weird for her to be using these adult words—she says you're compromising yourself. That's the word—compromising. You're doing it for money, but you don't need to be doing it. She says it's pointless. You're doing it to hold onto something, but you don't need that something anymore. I'm mentally asking her what she's talking about because she's being kind of vague."

Jacqueline could feel Darren looking at her but she couldn't meet his eyes.

"House," Percival said suddenly. "It's the house. Michelle says that's what you're concerned about. You don't need to be, according to her."

"Why?" Jacqueline asked.

"Wait, she's saying something else. 'Don't beat yourself up about how I passed,' she says. 'And don't beat yourself up about the other thing too.' Again, she's being vague." Percival took a deep breath and exhaled, shaking his head. "Whoa, lots of info here, some of it's getting jumbled. Take it slow, Michelle, my brain works at a slower speed than yours. She's talking about the house and how you don't need it anymore, and she's also saying something about 'the real reason you're here.' She says, 'You don't need to be forgiven because you did nothing wrong.' Not sure if she's talking about her passing, the drowning.... No, it's not about her death. She's adamant about that. Again, she's mentioning 'the real reason you're here.' She says it's the other thing you wanted forgiveness for, but she says you don't need forgiveness. You did nothing wrong. There's nothing to forgive. Do you understand what she's talking about? I don't."

Jacqueline's fingers were digging into Darren's palm. "Yes," she whispered. "I do."

Percival frowned, gazing over Jacqueline's shoulder. "She's telling me, 'But if you do want forgiveness, then you're forgiven.' Again, though, she stresses that it's nothing you need to be forgiven for. I wish she'd be a little clearer. Okay... okay." Percival nodded. For a moment he locked eyes with Jacqueline. "She's telling me that you were a good mommy, the best. But she's also saying that you really didn't want to be a mommy. That you just got caught up in what people wanted for you. The white picket fence existence. You thought it was something you were supposed to do. But in your heart it wasn't what you wanted."

Jacqueline's fingernails were drawing blood from Darren's palm but he said nothing, did not complain. She was trying not to hyperventilate. Her throat hurt.

"Michelle says she knows there was a part of you that never wanted her, never wanted to be a mother. That's why you're here. She says that it's okay. You don't need to be forgiven for that. We all make choices that seem right at the time. You're not a bad person. In fact, she's showing me an image of a medal, like you should get a medal for being the good mother that you were."

Jacqueline could not see for the tears in her eyes. She shut her eyes and tried to say the words "thank you" but nothing came out except for a gasp that turned into a half-sob.

"You think you didn't love her enough," Percival said. "And you think you need to be punished for that. But Michelle says that the pain and grief you feel is evidence that you did love her enough. Sometimes our only proof of love is the pain we feel when a person is gone."

Percival tilted his head, as if straining to hear a conversation in a far corner of the room. "She says you need to move on with your life." His voice took on a kinder, less matter-of-fact tone. "'Let me go,' she's telling you. She says the house is telling you, too. Let go of the house and it'll be better for you."

"It's all that I have left of you," Jacqueline said.

Percival shook his head. "She says no. The house has nothing to do with her anymore."

"If I leave," Jacqueline said, "will she still come visit me like she does? I don't want to lose the connection."

"There is no connection," Percival said. "Michelle says she doesn't visit you the way you think. 'It isn't me, it isn't me,' she's telling me. I'm not totally understanding this. There are apparitions? In your house?"

"Yes. Yes."

"'Those aren't me,' Michelle says."

Jacqueline struggled to say the word "who."

"'I only came to you once,' she's saying. 'In the dream about the lightning.'"

Jacqueline felt nauseous. She put a hand over her eyes. "Who's in my house," she tried to say again. Most of the words came out this time.

"Now she's sighing and shaking her head, like she's the parent and you're the child," Percival said. "'You're deliberately trying not to know, so it's no good for me to tell you.' Michelle is putting her arms around you now and giving you a kiss. She says she has to go back soon. But she has some questions for you. She wants to know what you want from your life."

Jacqueline stared at him.

"She wants to know if this is really what you want, to be alone and to be constantly punishing yourself in every way. Don't you want to be happy? Don't you want to feel love, or joy? There's someone you feel so good around, but you hold yourself back because for some reason all you want is punishment. She says, 'I came to you once because you needed to feel love. Why do you turn your back on it? Why do you choose a living death?'" Percival eyes had a faraway cast. "She says you never hurt her when she was alive, but you're hurting her now by punishing yourself. "I want to see my mommy happy.' Okay... she's starting to fade in and out now. Now she says she has to go back."

"Not yet," Jacqueline said. "Please."

"Signal's fading. She says that she thanks you for being her mommy. And that she loves you very much." Percival blinked. He put down his pad on the coffee table. "Okay. She's gone now."

In the elevator to their floor, Jacqueline could not look at Darren. Her legs felt weak and rubbery. She had to grip both Darren's arm and the elevator wall to keep from losing her balance.

Darren's voice seemed to be coming from far away. She could only make out fragments of what he said: "... need anything? Are you all right?"

The only thing she managed to say was, "Who's in my house?" The skull was significant. But how was Jacqueline "deliberately trying not to know"? What the hell did that mean?

She fell onto her bed. Immediately her body was wracked with seizure-like trembling. Maybe her body was breaking down, the way her morality had broken down and the way her façade of the loving mother had broken down, exposing the rot at the core. She had the impression of Darren crouching beside the bed, and she felt his hand on her back, heard his voice, but she couldn't bear to look at him, couldn't stand to have him looking at her. She could imagine the disgust in his eyes. He was probably counting the days until he could flee to Portland and get away from this human black hole, this poor excuse for a mother who had not truly wanted her child. She wanted to die. Death was preferable to feeling like this. But since there was an afterlife what if she had to spend eternity with this sickening, naked part of herself, like a deformed shadow she could never shake?

Darren was asking her questions—did she want some water? Something to eat? Aspirin?

She wanted nothing. She wanted to be left alone.

Eventually he was no longer in the room. The golden sunlight turned a deep, rusty copper, and then the purplish shadows crept in. Occasionally there would be a knock at their adjoining door and Darren would ask if she was all right. She only stared at the wall. For hours she stared.

Around two in the morning she stood at the door between their rooms. Darren had left it ajar.

She went inside.

He was awake. "You all right?" he whispered.

"You know the drill," she said and climbed into the bed fully clothed. He held her and she buried her head in his chest and wept—wept as if something had ruptured in her heart and an ocean was pouring out of her. She screamed into his chest and he held her, and it was startling how right Michelle was. Jacqueline felt guilty about how good it felt to be in Darren's arms.

When dawn came, as dispiritingly grey as a gun barrel, she was standing at the sliding glass door of the balcony, considering the six-floor drop. Darren slept, tossing and turning, wrestling with a nightmare. Once he murmured something that sounded like "don't."

The man who loved me at my worst, she thought. Something even her husband couldn't do. How do you say thank you for something like that?

She had a crazy, passing urge to make love to him as he slept. One for the road. Maybe that would chase away his nightmare. Better than Ambien.

She turned back to the sliding door. There was a large crow perched on the outside railing. Its gleaming, doll-like eye was fixed on her.

Crows were carrion-eaters, she knew. It was probably drawn by a dead mouse somewhere. Or the stench of her rotting soul.

She recalled an afternoon when Michelle was four and they'd been walking home from the Beachwood Library. Jacqueline had seen the bird on the sidewalk a second before Michelle did. It was a grackle or a fledgling crow, deflated and partially mauled, its beak gasping and its ruined wing flapping sluggishly like a broken wind-up toy that was winding down. Jacqueline, a coward to the core and allergic to all images of suffering, took her daughter's hand and they walked to the other side of the street and Jacqueline picked up the pace. Too late. Michelle had seen it. Mommy, is the birdie dying? Michelle asked. Can't we help the birdie? Underneath the childish plaintiveness in her voice had been the tinge of accusation: How can you walk away, how can you let the birdie die.

The crow on the railing preened.

It was making Jacqueline uneasy. What are you, she thought, some supernatural messenger? The guardian of the Underworld? Begone. Deliver your message and begone.

The crow continued to stare at her, an empty, alien stare. Then it spread its enormous wings and took flight.

Jacqueline watched the sky grow brighter. Soon she lost interest in watching the sky. Eventually she slipped back into bed. Darren still grappled with his nightmare. She put a hand on his cheek. After a while, the nightmare went away.

TWENTY-EIGHT

Darren watched the lights in the Northeast Aerospace parking lot wink on. It was almost seven p.m.

"The problem is," the guy on the phone told him, "we get offers like this about ten times a month. Of those ten, maybe one is a legitimate haunting and more often than not the haunting is little more than a cold spot in the sitting room. I'm not traveling three thousand miles for a cold spot."

"Did you even read my e-mail? This is a bit more than a cold spot."

"I read it, Darren, and all that's wonderful, but what happens when I show up? Invariably your ghost will play possum and you'll look like a jerk and I'm out nearly a grand in plane fare, not to mention the time. It's simple. I'm more than willing to spend a couple days looking the place over—for $1,000. That will take care of airfare and rental cars and any other expenses. You send me a check, I can be there next week. What's the big deal? If the place is as good as you say, you'll be able to name your own price. Within reason, of course."

Unbelievable. Larry Steinbach, Mr. Hotshot L.A. Writer, was nickel-and-diming him over airfare and rental car fees. "How many haunted houses do you own?" Darren asked.

"Three. Got one in Pasadena, another in Fresno, a third in Georgia, just outside Savannah."

"What do you do with them?"

"I buy them."

"Yes, but what do you do with them after? Do you turn them into funhouses or something?"

"What does that matter to you?" Steinbach asked.

"I'm just asking."

"Whether I turn them into funhouses or Arby's franchises is pretty much irrelevant, isn't it? So long as I can meet the asking price. Do you vet the homebuyers that come to you through a Realtor? No. You'd sell to Jack the Ripper as long as he had a good credit score. So do you want to do this thing or not?"

Darren told him he'd send out a cashier's check tomorrow. Then he spent a few minutes Googling the life and times of Larry Steinbach. He found a couple pictures—smug thirtyish asshole, lots of hair gel and capped teeth. His wife, Lydia, was a frosty blonde who looked bored. Considering Steinbach's résumé, she had every right to be. Steinbach was co-writer and co-producer of Spooked!, a tongue-in-cheek series on the USA network about teens investigating haunted houses (X-Files for tweens!). It had lasted exactly two episodes. Steinbach had also written two direct-to-video horror flicks, one of which was called Sex Demon II: It's Gettin' Hot In Here.

This was who he was going to leave Rachel with?

His next call was to Jacqueline. Things were looking up; she actually answered the phone. Yesterday she'd ignored his three messages. "How are you?" he asked.

"Tired."

"Have you gotten out of bed at all today?"

"Yes."

"Other than to go to the bathroom?"

"Well, if you're going to prohibitively narrow the definition of 'out of bed'...."

"I'll stop over with some take-out. I'm assuming you haven't eaten anything, either."

"I'm not hungry."

"You're going to eat something. I'm not going to leave until you do."

When he arrived, the aroma of the lo mein at least got her to a sitting position on the edge of her bed. She was still in her pajamas. Darren noticed the vial of Xanax on the nightstand next to a bottle of Tylenol PM. Both were sitting on a pile of old photos—the visual record of a younger, happier Jacqueline LaPierre.

"Can you make it to the kitchen?" he asked.

She shrugged. Her whole body seemed deflated.

"You probably won't believe it," Jacqueline said, "but this isn't totally depression."

"Then what is it?"

She ran her fingers through her unwashed hair. "I made some calls yesterday. Went on the Internet. Tried to find out what I could about the previous owners of this place. As far as I can tell no one has ever died here other than Michelle. And that person from the fifties."

"You're back to that."

"Nothing else fits."

"What does this have to do with you not getting out of bed?"

"This thing—whatever it is—it comes when I'm near sleep. I need to know what it is."

Darren came close to saying something, something he'd almost said to her at the hotel. Instead, he stood up. "Let's eat."

"You think I'm crazy, don't you?"

"No crazier than I am." Darren went into the kitchen and pulled out a plate from the cabinet.

As Jacqueline poured herself into a chair and began eating, Darren strolled back into the bedroom and swiped her Xanax and sleeping pills.

Outrage seemed to finally wake her up. "Put those back. Those are mine." She stood, armed with a noodle-tangled fork.

"No more. You're halfway to a coma already."

"I'm not going to kill myself. You have no right to take those—"

"Make sure you eat something." Darren slipped on his coat. "I'm coming over tomorrow and if you're still in your pajamas I'm going to take you to a doctor."

"You're acting like Kevin now?" She flung her plate of lo mein at him, spattering the thighs of his dress slacks. "Every goddamned man in my life thinks they can blackmail me into doing what they want. I thought you were different."

"You're not thinking clearly right now, Jacqueline."

"The hell I'm not. I never judged you on how you handled what was going on at your house. Why can't you do the same for me? I guarantee you if this were going on at your place, you'd want to know what this thing is. See, at least you know it's Rachel in your house."

"All I'm saying is I don't want you staggering around here in a drugged-out stupor. It's dangerous."

"I didn't realize I was supposed to ask your permission."

The next day, October 20, Darren stopped over her house around lunchtime. Her car was gone. There was a note taped to the back door. It said: Darren—Gone to mall to buy more Tylenol PM, which you stole from me. I am not in my pajamas. Truce? Sorry about your pants.

He tried to think of some witty comeback but given the circumstances being a wiseguy probably wasn't the best course of action. He settled for scrawling, OK. Call you in a day or two.

As he drove away past the promenade of birch trees lining the street, their leaves a luminous, fiery yellow, a bit of Milton occurred to him: I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night.

That evening Bethany Barkley called while he was doing a load of laundry. She managed to say her name before the lights went out and the phone went dead.

Darren stumbled around in the kitchen, groping for his coat and for his wallet, which he was pretty sure contained Bethany's business card. "Rachel, please."

It took nearly ten minutes of driving around in a steady, light rain before he found one of the few remaining pay phones in the neighborhood—outside the Walgreen's on Mayfield Road near the grocery store. A spectral mist clung to the parking lot, writhing slowly like a snake.

"Bethany? Sorry we got cut off. My neighborhood's been having electrical problems."

"You living in a UN refugee camp? Looks like we're liberating you just in time."

He bent closer to the phone to hear her over the white noise of the rain. "Liberating. Are you saying—"

"We're prepared to make an offer. We'll FedEx the official offer sheet in the mail in the next few days and we can haggle about the details from there, but I just wanted to let you know it's yours if you want it. Congratulations!"

"Are you sure? It was only one interview. Usually a candidate goes through two or three interviews."

"Sometimes," Bethany said. "Sometimes they don't."

"Don't you want to interview some other people first before you make up your mind?"

"Please, this gushing of enthusiasm is unseemly. What is with you?"

"I'm sorry. It's just a bit sudden. Thank you."

"Look, I know picking up your life and moving from one side of the country to the other ain't exactly like switching brands of dental floss. We'll give you till the middle of November to make up your mind. But I should warn you that if you stay put at Northeast because it's comfortable and familiar, things are going to get pretty uncomfortable and unfamiliar over the next year or so. Goodman's really big on consolidating its operations. They probably aren't going to touch your core of engineers and designers yet. But the sales guys, the marketing guys, all the non-core people—including you—will be looking for work by summer. Guaranteed. We're throwing you a lifeline, Darren. I'd grab it."

The phone rang him out of a light sleep a few minutes after four a.m., October 22.

Jacqueline's soft, hoarse voice said, "Can you come over?" Then the line went dead. Darren's digital alarm clock likewise blinked out.

"Rachel, goddamn it." He groped around for clothes and hoped to Christ she hadn't boobytrapped the stairs.

Traffic was nonexistent; most of the lights were blinking yellow. He was surprised at how calm he felt. Four a.m. phone calls were rarely good news. But he thought he was becoming good at reading Jacqueline's voice, and this time her tone was just Mildly Urgent with a Chance of Emergency. Code Yellow. A crisis, but perhaps not a big one.

All the lights were on in Jacqueline's house, as if a party was going on. Inside, drawers were open and paperbacks on psychic phenomena littered the carpet. He found her sitting on the twin bed in the bare room that he presumed had once belonged to Michelle. She held a tumbler filled with two fingers of something he guessed probably wasn't water.

"It's a shapeshifter," Jacqueline said. Books were strewn on the bed and on the floor—volumes with titles such as A Guide to the Paranormal World and Spirits Caught on Film—and she selected one. "Here. 'Occasionally malevolent entities will assume the guise of a loved one or another non-threatening persona in order to more easily entrench themselves in the lives of their victims—to become, as it were, invited guests.' Read it."

Darren glanced at the dog-eared page. "What happened?"

Jacqueline leaned forward, her breath a cloud of sour alcohol. "I saw it. I saw its face. In the bedroom. For a second."

"What did it look like?"

She stood up suddenly and swigged the rest of her drink. She stumbled over the books on the floor as she trudged barefoot into the living room. Darren followed. She rummaged among more books heaped on the couch and coffee table. "There's another one here that talks about an evil spirit that took on the form of a mother's dead child," Jacqueline said. "This family in Vermont. So there's a precedent. But what does it want? Is it trying to possess me, get my soul, what?"

"Jacqueline. What did it look like?"

"Me, okay?" She grabbed a photo off the sideboard, which was littered with a mess of family pictures. She shoved the photo at Darren. A short-haired, teenaged Jacqueline smiled and held up a swim team trophy at an awards banquet.

"You were a beautiful girl," he said. "You still are."

"You're missing the point. It pretends to be Michelle, then it pretends to be me. Why? What's the point? It hasn't asked anything of me. It hasn't told me to do anything. It's just... there. But why?"

Darren pushed aside a couple of books so he could sit on the couch. Not all of Jacqueline's frenzied early-morning reading was about ghosts and demons. One of the books near him was titled Inside the Human Mind. Another was an old college textbook on abnormal psychology. "Maybe it was never pretending to be Michelle," he said.

"What do you mean?"

"You once told me you never actually saw it before. You just assumed it was her."

"Darren, it was her, I smelled the chlorine, I sensed her—"

"But you never saw her until tonight."

"That is not the point. The point is what does it want and why is it suddenly taking on my shape?"

Darren watched her pace and glare.

"Just spit it out," she said. "Christ, you've looked like you wanted to say something since you walked in."

"I think," Darren said, putting the psych textbook on the coffee table, "maybe you're not totally convinced there's an 'it' here to begin with."

"Are you saying I'm crazy?"

"No." He studied his hands. "It's been a pretty rough few years for you."

"You are saying I'm crazy. Look at me, Darren. Is that what you believe?"

"What do you believe? Seriously. You can make a show of storming around here with your books about evil spirits, but maybe you're just trying to convince yourself. Because you're not sure."

Jacqueline was silent for a long time. At last she said, "If—and this is a big if—this is some hallucination, then why? What's the precipitating factor? Michelle died six years ago. These things just started relatively recently."

"You've been under a lot of stress."

"These things started happening before I lost my job, Darren. Before the divorce. They started when things were actually going pretty well for me. Don't give me this crap about stress."

"'Going pretty well.' That's your definition of isolating yourself, eating less than an anorexic and praying each night for a ghostly visit from your daughter?"

Jacqueline's hand was squeezing her glass in a throbbing, white-knuckled grip. Darren wondered whether she was going to squeeze it until it broke or hurl it at his head.

Her voice softened. "Why is this happening? I don't see any point to it, if it is some psychological... disorder. If it's the onset of schizophrenia or something like that, I may as well put a gun to my head because this is the last thing I need right now."

"I don't think it's schizophrenia."

"Then what the hell is it? What's a doctor supposed to say to me when I tell him I'm being haunted by the seventeen-year-old ghost of myself? It means I'm fucking crazy, Darren."

"Stress and insanity aren't the same—"

"Would you stop with the stress? I'm hallucinating things and that is not normal."

"No, it isn't. But there are a few miles between that and being crazy."

He jumped when she flung her glass at the far wall. It exploded with a sudden popping sound, like an old-time flashbulb going off. "You're so goddamned naïve. If I tell a doctor about this, he'll have me committed, Darren."

"And maybe if a doctor knew what you've been going through, he'd say your mind was just trying to correct itself. Trying to fix something that was broken."

Jacqueline looked exasperated. There were tears in her eyes. "How? By teasing me with pointless hallucinations of someone who died twenty years ago?"

"No," Darren said. "By showing you a person who wants another chance to live."

PART III

The Clearing

TWENTY-NINE

Saturday, October 31.

Jacqueline called Darren around noon, but he wasn't home. She tried him at his office and he picked up.

"Hey, stranger," he said. "Been a while."

It had been a week—probably the longest week of Jacqueline's life. She'd ducked Darren's calls and had basically spent the week in a state of solitary confinement. She'd taken lots of walks in the park. She'd slept a lot and thought a lot. Some days she didn't think at all. She watched the leaves fall.

And she listened to the recording of the session with Michael Percival several times.

There'd been no more nighttime visitations. She'd slept normally, and her dreams were ordinary.

"Are you all right?" Darren asked.

"I think I am. You have any plans tonight?"

"Actually, I do. I'm taking Brandon and Madison trick-or-treating."

"How come Julia and Sam can't take them?"

"Julia's helping out at some school Halloween carnival, which the kids don't want to go to, and Sam is going to some retirement party for one of his fellow fascist cops. So I drew the short straw."

"Mind if I tag along? I was hoping I could talk to you about something in person."

"If you want, but bring a sweater, it's supposed to be cold."

"We could get some dinner somewhere after."

"Actually," Darren said, "my dance card is filled later on, too. Khabir and a few of his teenage cousins are stopping over to bring me some authentic Middle Eastern cuisine."

"Why are they doing that?"

"I fixed up Khabir with a woman. It worked out. Now he's trying to pay me back in weird ways. Tonight he's poisoning me."

"Middle Eastern food is quite good."

"It is if it isn't prepared in his kitchen. Even cockroaches get ptomaine poisoning at his place. You're welcome to come over too, if you want."

She politely declined. Rachel was particular about her houseguests.

When Jacqueline got off the phone, she looked at herself in the bathroom mirror. She debated whether or not to do something to cover up the bags under her eyes. At this point in her life, though, nothing short of a time machine would do. She examined the crow's feet around her eyes and the fine wrinkles around her mouth that were optimistically called laugh lines. Age was no longer a theoretical construct or an unpleasant but far-off destination. It was really happening; she had arrived.

Around six p.m., she found a spot at the curb near Julia's house. Darren was shuffling around on the sidewalk outside the house, overdressed in his wool topcoat, suit jacket and power tie.

The temperature was only in the forties. Jacqueline was glad she'd worn her black boots and leather coat. They were warm and also exuded a whiff of New York chic, or so she hoped.

"Where's your costume?" she asked.

"This is it: Man Who Had to Put in a Couple Hours at the Office. Sure you want to do this? It's gonna get colder."

She knew he had added that last sentence as cover. He was probably worried that being around children would be hard for her. "I'll be okay."

Julia hurried out of the house, slipping on a bulky red ski jacket. Her Halloween costume consisted of a crumpled black witch's hat and heavy black mascara. "They'll be out in a minute, Maddie's looking for her magic wand." She noticed Jacqueline and a wariness crept into her eyes. "Hello. Nice to see you again."

"Nice to see you, too. Hope you don't mind if I tag along and help keep Darren out of trouble."

"That's wonderful. Thank you for coming." To Darren: "You could've waited inside. He'd like a chance to apologize."

"I'm okay out here."

Julia sighed. "I can't believe you'll be moving. It's just not right. Your family is here."

"But my job probably won't be."

"Then you have to at least come back for Thanksgiving and Christmas every year. It won't be the same without you."

Jacqueline watched Darren smile faintly. Even Jacqueline, an outsider, could hear the syrupy falseness in Julia's voice. Julia meant well but Jacqueline sensed that she would only occasionally think of her older brother. The Thanksgiving and Christmas invitations would be halfhearted at best, if they came at all. Julia's life was her husband and kids and school fairs and all the rest of that chaos. There wasn't a whole lot left over, even for people you might have loved very much at one time.

Julia zipped up her jacket. "Well, gotta scoot. Thank God the school's only a block away."

"Why don't you let me drive you?" Darren said.

"No, I need the exercise. Sam's taking the van tonight." She waved and trotted off down the sidewalk, her witch's hat bobbing.

"So you've made your decision," Jacqueline said. "About the job."

Darren shrugged. "Got to start thinking about a future."

Jacqueline said, "Me too."

The screen door opened and Sam came out, wearing jeans and a Browns sweatshirt. He was smiling with that pained, sober grimace that one usually reserves for greeting loved ones at a funeral. He seemed to be looking forward to this as much as having a tooth extracted by a Nazi dentist. "Hey there." Sam held out his hand to Jacqueline. "Sam Wilcox."

"Jacqueline LaPierre. Friend of Darren's."

"Good to meet you." Sam looked at Darren and held out his hand. "Darren, I wanted to apologize to you. Really. I don't know what got into me that night. But I'm sorry about it."

Darren kept his hands in his pockets. He looked at his brother-in-law's hand as if it were an old urinal cake.

"Look," Sam said, "I was hoping we could sit down some night and talk. About... you know. The house. What I saw."

"If you ever talk to me again," Darren said, "I'm going to bury a pipe wrench in your skull, you brain-dead sack of shit. Get the fuck away from me."

Sam blinked at him and one corner of his lips twitched. Then his face hardened into a mask of mild annoyance. He shook his head and wandered back into the house.

Jacqueline shot Darren a look. "Way to be the bigger man."

"What? I smiled when I said it."

Brandon and Madison came bounding out of the house. Brandon was dressed in desert combat fatigues. His too-large helmet came down over most of the top half of his head. He was barking nonsensical orders to an imaginary platoon under imaginary fire. Madison's fairy princess outfit was marred by a bright orange down-filled jacket which she complained bitterly about until she saw Jacqueline. Both kids grew quiet when they looked at her, this tall feminine stranger.

Darren introduced her. Jacqueline said, "It's good to meet you both. Cool costumes! Here, open your bags." From her purse Jacqueline removed a pair of full-sized Three Musketeers bars—none of those puny, pathetic little "fun sizes." The kids cried out in joy as the candy made a satisfyingly heavy plunk into each of their paper trick-or-treat bags.

Darren rapped on Brandon's metal helmet. "Okay, Sarge, you're walking point. I've done the recon of the area. Your mom says we can do four streets of house-to-house, then we bivouac back here at nineteen-hundred."

Brandon pushed his helmet up out of his eyes. "Huh?"

Darren nudged him in the shoulder. "Just get moving before I get hypothermia."

As the sun set, they crunched through the fallen elm and maple and oak leaves, which were colored with the full autumnal palette of reds, oranges, yellows and browns. The leaves reminded Jacqueline of confetti on the ballroom floor after a celebration. But what was today's celebration?

Feeling better than she had for a while—maybe that was worth celebrating.

Jacqueline and Darren dutifully hung back on the sidewalk while the kids banged on doors. Brandon grumbled about the disappointing spoils from the first two houses they visited ("Bit O' Honey tastes like Bit O' Dog Turd!") and Madison kept staring up at Jacqueline with something like awe. "Are you Uncle Darren's girlfriend?" she asked.

"I'm a good friend of his. In fact, I'd say he's my best friend."

Darren looked at her.

Madison blinked at her. "I like your boots."

"I like your tiara," Jacqueline said.

The kids joined a crowd of ghosts, werewolves, vampires and zombies congregating on the porch of an elderly couple's house. The old man and old woman put large handfuls of candy in each child's bag. The old man wore Mickey Mouse ears; the old woman wore a tiara remarkably similar to Madison's.

"You said you wanted to talk to me about something," Darren said. "What's up?"

Jacqueline shrugged. "You know the feeling you have the day after your flu bug clears up? For some reason I feel like that."

"Drained and woozy?"

"Calm. Quieter in the mind. Thank you."

"For what?"

"For listening to me. Sticking by me. It means a lot to me. More than you know." She swallowed. "You're a good guy."

"Do me a favor," Darren said.

"What?"

"Don't do that."

"What?"

"Don't exaggerate whatever I bring to your life. It really isn't as much as you think. And I'm not such a good guy."

The kids came back, trading candy bars and mini bags of M&Ms like frenzied brokers on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Brandon happily surrendered two cherry Ring Pops ("They're so gay!") for a good old-fashioned Nestle Crunch. Madison complained that the glitter on her cardboard magic wand was flaking off.

"Then stop hitting me with it, dummy," Brandon said.

She hit him in the butt with it. The kids trotted off to another house while Jacqueline and Darren waited on the sidewalk.

"Why aren't you a good guy?" Jacqueline asked. "I think you are."

In the fading light, Darren's face looked tired and full of shadows. "I've spent the week thinking about that. You and Kat made some good points about me. Like how I tend to gravitate toward vulnerable women. I guess it says a lot of things about me, none of them very good."

"What does it say about you?"

He shrugged. "That I'm weak. That I prefer women who make me look strong by comparison. That I'm an emotional vulture. Take your pick."

"There's a possibility that we're wrong, Darren. I was being defensive and insulting when I said it. But assume for a second it's true. There's a better spin you can put on it."

"Like what?"

"Maybe you just have a natural inclination to help people. Maybe you prefer women whose lives you can make better somehow. If that's a crime, I sure as hell wish more people were guilty of it."

Darren stepped aside to allow the passage of a Grim Reaper holding the hand of a young boy wearing a skeleton outfit. "Well, whatever. Maybe the move will be a good thing. A chance to start over and be a normal guy for a change."

Jacqueline watched the kids yell "Trick or treat!" at a grey-haired woman who feigned fright and let them grab handfuls of mini Snickers bars out of a plastic jack o' lantern.

"I could come with you," Jacqueline said.

"As what? My assistant? I doubt they'll let me have a staff, other than a part-time intern."

"Not as your assistant. As your wife. Will you marry me, Darren?"

Darren stared at her. Brandon and Madison returned. Brandon said they should skip Mrs. Donnelly's house up ahead. "Last year she gave out these dumb plastic cards with pictures of saints on them," he said. "It was embarrassing."

"Isn't there supposed to be a Constitutional separation between church and confections?" Jacqueline asked.

While the kids assailed another house, Jacqueline tried to read Darren's poker face. She hadn't expected some chick flick moment where they embraced amid the falling leaves and traded witty banter, but she hadn't expected total silence, either. His quietness made her feel a bit heartsick. It was like getting a letter back marked RETURN TO SENDER—a letter you had agonized over.

"I know what you probably think," she said. "You think this is just another wild swing of Jacqueline's emotional pendulum. You'd be pretty dense if you didn't think that way. All I can say is that it doesn't feel that way."

"I thought you were done with love and marriage and all the rest of it."

"I thought so too."

"I thought marriage was institutionalized codependence."

She smiled. "Kind of hard to walk that one back, huh?" She looked at the children on all the porches, most of their faces hidden by masks. "I've been listening to the recording of the Michael Percival session a lot. There's a lot in it. But two things stand out for me. The first is this: Michelle brought me to that coffee shop that night for a reason. For you."

"You're not obligated to be with me because she says so," he said. "We don't do arranged marriages in this country, in case you've forgotten."

"This isn't about obligation. This is about the second thing she said."

"What?"

"She said that sometimes the proof of love is the pain we feel when a person leaves. And when I think of you leaving for Portland... it hurts more than you'll ever know. Because, quite simply, I love you. When I clean out all the self-pity and anger, that's the one thought left in my head, even though I spent a lot of time pretending it wasn't there. When we were on the quad that night, you asked me what I wanted in life. I said I didn't know. For the most part I still don't. Not really. But some things are getting clearer to me, and I know that I want at least one thing."

Brandon and Madison got their candy and came back, and they walked a little ahead of the adults. Brandon was showing his little sister how to load a Pez dispenser. The Pez dispenser was topped with the mournful plastic countenance of a ghost.

"I guess I don't blame you for not warming to the idea," Jacqueline said quietly. She swallowed back a desire to cry. She kept waiting for his hand to find hers but his hands remained stubbornly in his pockets. "No money, a surplus of emotional problems, borderline frigid. Hell, I've probably got borderline personality disorder. I'm definitely no trophy wife. At best I'd be a certificate of participation."

"How come you got more than me?" Brandon cried. He held up Madison's bag and his own bag and appealed to the adults for adjudication. "Yours weighs twice as much!"

"They give me more 'cause I'm cuter! Give it back!"

Darren stepped between them and rummaged through Madison's bag. "He does have a point, sweetie. Cough up some of that."

"Hey! Don't take it all!"

He only took a Butterfinger for himself and one of the Ring Pops. He caught Jacqueline's eye and smiled. Then he slid the Ring Pop on her finger. He folded his hand over hers.

Happiness, Jacqueline finally understood, fighting back tears, is a lightness, a subtle dizziness and a relief. It was the emotional equivalent of coming out of a snarl of city traffic and seeing the freeway open up before you, clear and straight, heading into the sun. Tonight your life begins again.

They turned the corner and the kids trick-or-treated their way down the street. It was full dark now, and there were a few parents out escorting their children. Jacqueline smelled the occasional cigarette, saw the occasional bob of a flashlight beam. She and Kevin had taken Michelle out for trick-or-treating only once. They had only gone to a couple houses because Michelle had found the notion of knocking on strange doors for handouts of candy strange and wildly intimidating. Jacqueline recalled that Michelle had liked the Milky Ways and Three Musketeers bars she had gotten.

By the time they got to the end of the street, Madison was holding Jacqueline's hand and chatting as if they were old friends. By the time they got to the end of the next street, Jacqueline was wearing Madison's tiara at Madison's insistence "because it gives you special powers and anyone who wears it will become a secret princess. This way we can be princesses together in our own kingdom."

"That sounds like a good deal," Jacqueline said. "I've always wanted to be a princess."

On the way back home, Madison turned to her uncle. "Do you have to go to Portland like Mom said?"

"That's where my new job is, sweetie."

"Are you gonna have a house out there?"

"No, probably just an apartment."

"But what about your house here?"

"I'll have to sell it," Darren said.

Madison looked sad and panicked. "But who's going to take care of Rachel?"

Darren said nothing.

Under the porchlight of the Wilcox house, Madison looked at her limp and underwhelming fairy princess wand, which was shedding glitter the way a five-year-old Chevy Citation sheds rust. "Mom's wand isn't very good. And I don't know why I have to wear this dumb jacket. I don't look like a princess at all."

Jacqueline crouched so she could look her in the eyes. "You're very beautiful. And you do look like a princess. I enjoyed meeting you, Madison. Can I have a piece of candy?"

The young fairy princess turned suddenly shy, but she opened her bag and gave Jacqueline two Milky Ways.

THIRTY

They said goodbye on the porch.

Darren had to babysit the kids until Julia returned, and Jacqueline wanted to get home to e-mail her lawyer and tell him she was reconsidering keeping the house, so they said goodbye at the door. Their first kiss was tentative, awkward, brief. Darren had a twinge of panic. Maybe they were sexually incompatible. Maybe this was a colossal disaster in the making. He was sure he'd see doubt and alarm in Jacqueline's eyes—the oh-God-maybe-this-was-a-bad-idea look—but he saw no such thing. She was grinning. She kissed him again—longer this time.

"This is not going to be any ordinary marriage," she said.

Driving home, he could barely concentrate on the road. He drove too fast, then too slow. He could only see his eyes in the rearview mirror but was certain that if he could have seen the bottom half of his face, he would have seen a twitching, bewildered half-smile—the kind of look you get when you witness something borderline miraculous, like a UFO or sunset over the Greek Islands.

He stopped for gas at a BP station off of I-271 and the old man filling up across from him gave Darren a funny look.

"You okay?" the old man asked.

"Yeah, I'm good."

"Looks like you're crying, man."

"I'm okay. I'm good."

Khabir also noticed something off about Darren. "All right, who are you and what have you done with Darren Ciccone? Something is different."

"Maybe he's in love," crowed one of Khabir's cousins, nineteen-year-old Sasha. She was dressed as a Playboy bunny, while the two younger ones—Nadia and Aida—wore the ebon gowns and black lipstick of a pair of vampire queens. In the dining room, the three girls pulled tinfoil off of plates of Mediterranean beef kafta and spread the spicy tahini sauce on the chicken shawarma.

"Smells good," Darren said. "You guys really shouldn't have done all this."

"Tell him that," Nadia said, jerking a thumb at Khabir. "His idea. He starts getting laid again and he makes us suffer for it just because the only thing he can cook is a Pop-Tart."

"Yeah, why couldn't you just have bought Darren a gift card to somewhere," said Sasha. "That's what you get us for our birthdays. And you're gonna make us late for the party." The girls were on their way to a Halloween party at Cleveland State, where Sasha was a sophomore.

Khabir looked appalled. "A gift card? This man gave me the love of my life. Such a thing is an occasion, an event, one that demands an expression of gratitude that is only possible through hardworking, caring hands making good, nourishing food."

The three girls emitted a bored and nearly simultaneous "Whatever."

The girls filled the dining room and kitchen with such loud, free-spirited chatter that it seemed as if there were far more than three girls in the house—the total was more than the sum of its parts. Once, out of the corner of his eye, Darren thought he saw a fourth costumed girl in the kitchen, but he chalked it up to the effect of being amongst a trio of teens all talking at once about cute guys, parties, cute guys and cute guys.

As quickly as the girls and Khabir had swooped in and laid siege to the house, they swooped out again at nine, piling into Khabir's piece-of-crap Buick. Nadia blew the horn and hollered at Khabir to hurry his dumb ass up, but he hung back in the kitchen, car keys in hand, scrutinizing Darren. "Something is definitely going on with you. Tell me."

"Can you keep a secret?" Darren said.

"By default, yes. No one ever talks to me."

"Jacqueline wants to marry me."

After several moments, a grin blossomed on Khabir's face. "You're lying. Or she's playing a cruel joke on you."

"No lie, no joke." Darren gave him a brief rundown of the night's events.

"It doesn't bother you that she deserves to be with a much better man?" Khabir asked.

"A little, but sometimes a man has to reach for the stars."

"Will I be best man?"

"Absolutely, if my first nine choices fall through."

Khabir's grin was so wide it was nearly psychotic. He grasped his friend by the shoulders and kissed him on the lips, much to Darren's consternation. Khabir half-skipped to the car, barking Jordanian curse words at his cousins.

Darren rinsed the dirty dishes and put them in the dishwasher. That was when he noticed, in his peripheral vision, the costumed girl standing five feet away, next to the refrigerator. His first automatic thought was that Sasha or Nadia had come back for some reason. His mouth was in the process of forming the words Did you forget something but he'd already heard Khabir's rumbling Buick pull out of the driveway. It had not returned.

Darren's bladder suddenly felt as if it were filled with ice water.

He looked at the girl. The girl looked at him. The girl wore a pale, glittery harlequin's mask, the mouth an enigmatic 'O' of wonder or melancholy. She was about five-six, a shade taller than the average teen. The girl wore a formal-looking navy dress—the dress she had probably been buried in, Darren assumed.

Well, this was what he wanted, wasn't it? It was why he hadn't taken Khabir outside when he told him about Jacqueline. Rachel had to know.

His hands shook as he closed the dishwasher. When he turned back, Rachel was gone.

"You were going to find out one way or another," Darren said, his voice sounding strange and too loud in the still house. "I'm getting married."

He wandered into the living room. There was nothing out of the ordinary there. "I can't stay here," he said, a little louder this time. "I just can't. My job here is probably going away, and the economy here is terrible. This other place offered me a job. It's in Portland. I can't stay here, Rachel."

He stood at the foot of the stairs, looking up into the darkness. He flicked on the light.

"Jacqueline cares for me." The stair tread groaned as his shoe pressed down on it. Halfway up the stairs, he paused, but he heard nothing. "I'm not doing this to hurt you."

He stood in the hall outside the spare bedroom. The door was half-open as it always was. He pushed it all the way open and looked inside.

Nothing.

Nothing was amiss in the bathroom or his bedroom either. He began to relax.

In the basement, he folded up some clean laundry, then toted the laundry basket upstairs to his room. That's when he saw that every knife from the kitchen—butcher, butter, steak and paring—had been driven hilt-deep into his pillow, pinning it to the mattress.

He put some clothes in a duffel bag and grabbed his keys and wallet from the bureau. His hand shook as he locked the house. He drove to Jacqueline's place.

"I don't think the house is safe anymore," he told her.

THIRTY-ONE

"I have to talk to her," Jacqueline said.

Darren sat at her kitchen table, looking out at the backyard. He didn't notice the mug of coffee Jacqueline slid in front of him.

"I'll talk to her and explain things," she said.

"Sure. Calm, reasonable discourse will save the day. It always does."

"I have to try. I just feel like I have to be the one."

"It's not safe in there." He got up and opened drawers. "Aspirin?"

"Bottom drawer."

"Mind if I sleep on your couch tonight?"

"Seeing as how you're going to be my husband, I think I can do better than the couch." She had let her voice drop to what she hoped was a husky tone but she gave it up. "You're not hurting her. She's unstable. Don't let yourself feel bad or guilty about this."

"Too late."

"What's the alternative, Darren? Staying alone in that house for the rest of your life with her? Even after you get laid off and have no money? Is that fair to you?"

"This thing is probably going to get very ugly very quickly. Not too late for you to back out of this."

"Out of the marriage?"

He nodded.

"Rachel doesn't scare me," she said.

There followed several breathless days of the usual social niceties that accompany any freshly minted engagement. They took Jacqueline's parents out for dinner at the Outback Steakhouse in Lyndhurst—her parents' favorite—so they could meet/appraise Darren. News of the engagement was saved for the end of the meal, when the waitress was clearing the plates. Jacqueline was impressed at how Darren acquitted himself in what was essentially a no-win situation. He was polite, asked questions, pulled out chairs for the ladies. But Jacqueline's mom still looked at him coolly, clearly seeing him as a poor substitute for Saint Kevin the Perfect. Jacqueline's dad, however, was his usual gruff but amiable self, and he and Darren had a warm chat about, of all things, defense spending.

When Jacqueline announced the engagement, though, the color drained out of both of their faces.

"Jackie, you're not even divorced yet," her mother said.

"I realize that. We don't have a timetable yet."

Her mother shot Darren a hard look, then gazed at the ceiling as if appealing to some higher power. "I don't understand you," she said. "You chase Kevin away, you tell me and everyone else you're done with marriage, you just want to be alone, and now this. You're all over the place. You need to think this through, Jacqueline."

On the drive home, Jacqueline couldn't stop smiling.

Darren gave her a sidelong glance. "That was brutal. And you're smiling. Why are you smiling?"

It amazed her. She wasn't even thinking about what her parents said. "I'm happy," Jacqueline said.

Darren's parents were an easier audience. His mother cooked (Moroccan chicken with couscous), and it was Jacqueline's turn to shine. Or at least try to. She wanted his parents to think their son had gotten himself a sleek, sophisticated woman of business, so she dressed as if she were going to a job interview at a Manhattan hedge fund. She was sweet. She was charming. She did everything but give a PowerPoint presentation on why Jacqueline LaPierre was a good investment for their son. She won over Lou and Natalie Ciccone, and they won her over as well. The pair of liberal academics had the driest senses of humor she'd ever encountered aside from Darren. She would enjoy coming around for dinner during the holidays.

They toasted the engagement with an expensive Pinot noir Darren's father had been saving for a special occasion. And while Darren helped his mother with the dishes, Darren's father took Jacqueline aside and presented her with a small burgundy box. In it was an exquisite sterling silver pin shaped like the silhouette of a bird in flight.

"It was Darren's grandmother's," Lou Ciccone said. "A good woman. She had little money but she held her family together, even after losing a daughter—my sister—to cancer at an early age. You would have liked her. She once said that after losing a daughter, she felt she was strong enough to face anything life had to throw at her. And she was right."

"She sounds like someone I would have looked up to. But this is far too precious a gift for me."

He folded her hand over the box. "In some ways," he said, "she would have looked up to you."

That was also the week that Larry and Lydia Steinbach came to town.

Jacqueline and Darren met them for dinner at a high-end Thai place near the airport. Darren briefed her on what to expect from them—"pompous L.A. assholes who probably think 'roughing it' means settling for a three-star hotel"—and they did not disappoint. Larry Steinbach, who was surprisingly short, wore an expensive leather jacket and cheerfully told Darren that Cleveland "smells kind of like mildew." Lydia, who was startlingly tall and lovely in that blonde, vacuous way of ex-lingerie models, said little and ate even less. She tried a spoonful of the bean curd, grimaced, then informed Jacqueline that you "just can't get good bean curd east of Burbank." Darren again asked Larry what he did with the properties he bought but Larry dodged the question. "Let's just see if your place makes the cut, shall we?" he said, checking his voice mail messages on his cell.

They wanted to walk through the house that evening so the L.A. hotshots in their rental Lexus followed Darren and Jacqueline back to the East Side. At times Darren had to follow them—Larry drove like an impatient NASCAR driver, zipping in and out of lanes and leaving everyone in the dust.

"Does that fuckstick even know where he's going?" Darren said.

"He had all that stuff printed out from MapQuest," Jacqueline said. "I don't know which of them was ruder. Lydia actually looked around the restaurant and told me she'd never seen so many overweight people in her life. She was actually thrilled by that. Cleveland's just a zoo to them. What movie did this guy write?"

"Sex Demon II. Which, in my opinion, couldn't hold a candle to the original. It completely tarnished the franchise."

Jacqueline waited in the car while Darren and the Steinbachs toured the house. Downstairs lights blinked on, then the upstairs lights. Jacqueline had listened to five songs and two long commercial breaks on the oldies station when Darren finally rapped at her window.

She got out of the car. "Well?"

"The knives were still there in the pillow. But that was it. Everything's quiet."

They watched as Larry and Lydia appeared near the kitchen windows. Larry was on his cell phone. Lydia was yawning.

"How important is it to sell the place to them?" Jacqueline asked. "On a scale of one to ten."

"Seven. Seven-and-a-half. In the short term I can handle the mortgage and an apartment. But I'm going to be burning through my savings pretty quickly."

"I'll be contributing something, too. Don't forget that." But the words sounded a little hollow to her ears. Low-paying clerical work or maybe slinging coffee at Starbucks—that's what she would be looking at in the short term. Things would still be tight.

They were interrupted by the tap-tap-tap of Jimmy Choos on the driveway. Lydia was shivering in her suede jacket. "It's a cute little place," she said to Darren.

Jacqueline smirked. Cute—like kitschy retro earrings or a downscale club at the bad end of Beverly Boulevard. Middle-class people everywhere had to sweat blood for twenty years to pay off a house like this, but to Lydia it was a "cute little place." The catering for her Sweet Sixteenth had probably exceeded the sum total of Darren's mortgage.

Through the windows, they saw Larry still wandering about in the kitchen and living room, head bowed as if deep in thought.

"He'll probably take a few more minutes," Lydia said. "He actually likes doing this alone. He gets a better sense of the atmosphere that way."

"Is he psychic or something?" Jacqueline asked.

"No. Just very empathic."

Jacqueline and Darren exchanged a look. Empathic wasn't the adjective she would have chosen.

"What does he do with the houses he buys?" Darren asked. "Does he turn them into tourist attractions? Or is he making some reality show? Survivor: Afterlife, or something like that?"

Lydia raised her well-plucked eyebrows. "Gosh, no. Why would you think that?"

"He hasn't been real forthcoming about his motives," Darren said.

"That's just Larry being Larry. He'd probably kill me for saying this, but what he wants is to help the souls who are trapped in these places. He does some TV script work and it pays well, but it's just busywork to him. He's working on a Ph.D. in grief counseling and his real passion is counseling the souls who get trapped here for one reason or another. They usually get stuck here because their passing was so unsettling and traumatic that they cling to whatever is familiar to them, whatever feels normal and comforting. Like their homes. They need someone to help them. Larry doesn't want places like this to become sideshows or objects of fear. That's cruel. You wouldn't treat someone like that who had been raped or was suffering from cancer, would you? Occasionally Larry will bring in a psychic—someone he thinks is on the level—and sometimes he'll bring in a priest or someone like that. But most of the time it's just Larry trying to open himself to whatever is in there, listening, offering understanding, offering to be a witness if the spirit needs to manifest and communicate that way."

Once again, Jacqueline and Darren looked at one another, dumbfounded.

"How did he ever get involved in something like this?" Jacqueline asked.

"His mom died when he was just a boy," Lydia said. "Breast cancer. Larry ended up being raised by his dad. Major mistake. His dad was... well, he had a drinking problem. And he wasn't the nicest man in the world. Sometimes he'd hit Larry. But sometimes things would happen. Sometimes his dad would fly into a rage and go into his bedroom to get his belt to give Larry a beating, and the door would slam shut, locking his dad in until he cooled off. One time he was going to hit Larry with a bottle of booze. The bottle disintegrated in his hand before he could bring it down on Larry's head. It wasn't until Larry ran away when he was sixteen that he realized it was probably his mother, trying to protect him. It was an old house in Anaheim and his dad eventually sold it. In the early nineties it was torn down to make room for a new development. Larry always felt bad about that. Felt bad about not getting a chance to say goodbye. Or thank you. I guess he's trying to make amends." Lydia shrugged. "By the way, you didn't hear any of this from me, okay? He hates when I talk about him."

The back door opened and Larry trotted down the back steps. "Okay. Thanks for the dinner, Darren." He already had his car keys in his hand.

"That's it?" Jacqueline asked.

"That's it." Larry was looking at his wad of MapQuest directions. "To get back to the freeway I just take Richmond to Cedar, is that it?"

"So the deal's off?" Darren said.

"I don't sense anything in there. But when I get back home I'll forward you a list of some researchers. A couple of 'em are at Ohio State. Maybe they can do a longer walk-through with thermal imaging gear and magnetometers, the whole shebang. I'll take another look at what they find. They don't come cheap, though, so be prepared."

Jacqueline looked at the house. "Larry, come back inside with me."

Darren seemed to stiffen up. "No."

"If you want proof," Jacqueline told Larry, "come inside with me."

"Why?"

"Rachel's jealous of her," Darren said.

Larry looked at his watch, then whistled tunelessly through his teeth, a hissing, irritable sound. "Ten minutes," he said. "That's it."

Jacqueline felt Darren's hand on her arm. "Come with me or not," she said, "but I am going inside, okay?"

They all went back inside and stood around in the kitchen. Jacqueline's throat was dry. She felt very warm. "Rachel," she said, raising her voice. "It's me. Jacqueline."

Several seconds ticked by.

"Darren and I are getting married," Jacqueline said. "I know he's told you already. I wanted you to hear it from me, too. I sort of wanted your blessing."

The house was still. A car with a loud muffler rumbled by on the next street.

Jacqueline looked at Darren, who shrugged, seeming to relax. He stayed close to her as she wandered into the dining room, then the living room. Larry and Lydia brought up the rear.

Lydia spoke first. "Oh Jesus."

At first Jacqueline didn't notice it. She was looking at her own feet, listening to the house. She was expecting doors to slam and windows to slide open or explode in bursts of tinkling glass. But then Darren's hand clamped around her wrist and she looked up at him. He and the Steinbachs were staring at the walls and the ceiling.

Graffiti lacerated the drywall in foot-high letters that looked as if they had been made with a grease pencil or a hunk of charcoal. JACQUELINE THE WHORE, one wall said, over and over again, in writing that varied from drunken, sloppy scribbles to bold, carefully printed declarations. JACQUELINE THE WHORE. The graffiti went up and down, curved and slalomed, a dozen or so taunting linguistic snakes swirling, slashing, intersecting and undulating.

The ceiling said: YOU LET YOUR BABY DIE BAD MOTHER TERRIBLE WIFE WHORE BITCH HOW DID IT FEEL WHEN YOUR BABY DIED YOU CUNT.

"Did you do this?" Darren asked Larry.

Larry laughed. "Does it look like I carry a stepladder with me?" The ceiling was a good four feet above Larry's head. He touched one of the letters on the nearest wall and sniffed his blackened finger. "Some kind of charcoal. Like what sketch artists might use. I couldn't swear to it, though."

Jacqueline felt queasy. Her cheeks burned. It amazed her how it was possible to feel multiple emotions at once, like wearing four different and contradictory outfits at the same time. Wonderment, amusement, fear and an annoyance that was slowly blossoming into anger—she felt all of them.

How did it feel when your baby died.

She looked at Darren. "Did you tell her anything about that? About me?"

"Of course not."

The graffiti was not confined to the living room. It spilled over onto the wall leading upstairs. HEY JACKIE, it said, WANNA CUM UP N PLAY WITH ME???? Several arrows pointed the way up to the second floor, presumably to Rachel's old room.

Larry was taking pictures with a digital camera.

Then Jacqueline heard it. It lasted maybe a second—the sound of a little girl splashing in a pool, trying to scream through a mouthful of water.

Jacqueline's heart froze. "Did you hear that?" She stared at Darren, her eyes bulging.

"I didn't hear anything. Jacqueline—"

When Jacqueline moved to the stairs, Darren's grip on her wrist tightened. "No," he said. "No way."

"I'm going up. With or without you. I have to do this."

"No. We have to leave. Now."

She went to the landing. There was an intimidating quantity of darkness at the top of the stairs, a swollen, metastasized tumor of darkness. When she flipped the lightswitch by the stairs, there was a flash, then a pop that made everyone jump as the hall lightbulb at the top of the stairs died a sudden death. It was as if the darkness had squeezed it in its fist.

So this was how it would be—suspense movie stagecraft that was already cliché thirty years ago. But in a way it made sense. Jacqueline wasn't facing anyone of any real substance—literally and figuratively. This was a teenage girl. Tantrums and cheap shots: that's all she had. It was all she'd ever have.

Jacqueline tried to keep her voice from quavering as she called out, "Rachel? If you ever bring up my daughter again, I will kill you, do you understand? Oh, yeah, I forgot—you're already dead. Because your lunatic daddy killed you. Like a rabid dog. I guess the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree, though. You're just as demented and pathetic as he was. Well, maybe if I can't kill you, I'll just pray every night that you stay trapped in this house forever and never get to heaven. Do you hear me, you little coward?"

The house was silent.

Jacqueline worked herself free from Darren's grip. "What's it like being dead, Rachel? What's it like being kicked out of this world but too stupid to enter the next one? Is it fun? Hey, you know what I think is fun, Rachel? Having sex with Darren. We made love this week, Rachel. Several times, actually. Pity you'll never get to experience that. With him, or anyone, for that matter. Because, of course, you're dead."

"Jacqueline, stop," Darren said, his voice nearly a shout. "Enough."

She swallowed. The cheapness of her words shamed her. She was sinking to Rachel's level. It was probably what Rachel wanted—see the kind of cheap, vulgar woman you chose, Darren? And what was sex to a ghost? It was nothing. Jacqueline imagined her somewhere in the house, laughing at her. Cold, empty, mad laughter, like a mental patient beyond therapy.

"Know what else you'll never have?" Jacqueline's voice was hoarse. "You'll never have a man tell you he's proud to be with you even after you've disgraced yourself and think you can't sink any lower. You'll never have someone who feels more like home to you than even your own family. And wherever you go or end up it'll still be like home because he's with you. You won't have that feeling of safety. You won't feel complete. Know what you'll have? An empty house. And no one will stay here, because you'll drive them all away. Forever. That's it."

Darren tried to hold her back again but she shrugged him off. She stood on the landing, looking up into the darkness. Her eyes stung with wetness, blurring her vision. At first she thought it was sweat, but she was crying. The tightness in her throat and the mild hitching in her chest were dead giveaways. Terrible mother... you let your baby die. "How dare you bring up my daughter. How dare you. What's it like being such a failure as a daughter that your own father would shoot you? What's that like, Rachel?"

She ascended the first two steps with Darren beside her, trying to restrain her. Larry and Lydia stood by the landing, urging them both to come down.

Again Jacqueline struggled out of Darren's grip. The door to Rachel's room was half-open. "Am I supposed to cower in my boots because you know about Michelle? Am I supposed to be scared by your superpowers? Is psychological terrorism your only trick? Oh, I forgot, you can also slam doors and throw things. Like some spoiled little girl. Tell me, do you think that endears you to him? Do you think all that is gonna make him love you? What's that say about you when he'd rather be with a whore and a terrible mother than spend another second here with you?"

She was halfway up the steps. She was shouting now. A sob clutched at her throat. Jacqueline the Whore. It amazed her how petty it was—and how effective. This is how they do it, she thought, not altogether certain who "they" were (maybe Kevin, her family, her friends, maybe the whole world), they goad you, they call you names, they nibble away at you bit by bit like piranhas until you're raw and bleeding in a hundred different places. If life's big calamities didn't break you, the day-to-day humiliations certainly would.

"You call me a whore? You have no right to call me anything. You miserable little coward. You were never married. You never had a daughter, and never had a daughter die in front of you. You never grew up and have to spend eternity with your shallow, bitchy little teenage mind. I was once like you, Rachel, but you will never—not for a minute, not for an instant—never know what it's like to be me. So don't ever call me names. Do you understand me?"

Another step, and another. She was close to the top. The darkness was around her now like a fog.

"Come on," Jacqueline said, "slam some doors. Throw some furniture around. You've already driven Darren to my house. You've already lost what you wanted most, you idiot. These people here tonight, they were going to buy the place and maybe try to help you, but go ahead, throw another tantrum, show them how unstable you are. You'll drive them away too, then you'll be here all alone. Forever. You can fucking rot here for all I care."

Jacqueline the Whore. As if Little Miss Rachel would have been perfect had she lived. Guess what, Rachel, she wanted to say, you would have ended up just like everyone else. You would have made more than your share of mistakes too.

She reached the top of stairs and looked into the shadows of the hall and into the slice of darkness beyond the half-open door of the spare bedroom. She heard nothing other than the pounding of her heart. Her blouse was half-soaked in warm sweat. All around her was the eerie stillness of the house.

Jacqueline kicked open the door to Rachel's room. She saw nothing but shadows and the glint of moonlight through the half-drawn blinds.

"Come on, Rachel. Why don't you materialize? I'm right here. Throw some books at me. Bring the ceiling down on top of me. I've been through things that are ten times worse than anything you can do to me. So come on. Show Darren the hateful little monster you really are."

She took a step into the room and it took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the absence of light. That was when Jacqueline saw her.

The closet door was ajar. Standing in the opening, half in the room, half in the closet, was the silhouette of a tall girl with dark, shoulder-length hair. As Jacqueline's eyes adjusted even more she noticed the girl wore a strange, glittery mask that covered most of her face. Moonlight reflected weakly off the mask, but the shadows in the closet were so dense Jacqueline wasn't altogether certain that what she was seeing was really there. It has to be my imagination, she told herself. Or maybe it was a cloud of dust in the air coalescing into a shape that was roughly human-like. Jacqueline stepped further into the room, and the girl-shape stepped back further into the closet, in the cowering way of a child afraid she's about to be hit. Over her own ragged breathing Jacqueline heard something else: whimpering. The girl was weeping.

Jacqueline's hand shook so violently it was almost useless, but she managed to grasp the closet doorknob. Fear was finally catching up to her, a throbbing, nauseating fear that fluttered and pulsed like a dying bird in her stomach. Darren was holding her more firmly now, one hand on her side and the other on her shoulder, and he was saying something to her—stop it, let's go, let's just get out of here—but she had to do this. Had to.

She opened the door. There was no one there. A handful of empty wire coat hangers gently clanged together like wind chimes.

Jacqueline began to cry. She put a hand over her eyes. What in God's name was wrong with her? She was just a girl—a teenage girl, a hurt little girl, the hapless victim of a violent crime, dead forever. Jacqueline pressed herself into Darren's chest. "Oh God," she said, "I am terrible. She's right. I'm sickening."

"It's what I call 'breakpoint,'" Larry said. "It's when the relationship between the spirit and the home's occupant changes. The spirit stops being a bully and the homeowner stops being a victim. Everything changes."

"Does it mean she's gone?" Darren asked.

Larry signaled for another vodka neat from the waiter. They were at a table in the deserted bar of the Embassy Suites near the airport. Jacqueline's club soda sat untouched in front of her. She watched the bubbles rise to the surface and die.

"I doubt she's gone," Larry said. "Fear and anxiety—the emotions Jacqueline aroused in her—are exactly the kinds of feelings that keep souls from making the full transition to the other side. There is a reason why we call negative feelings 'heavy.' They literally weigh our souls down. More accurately, though, they keep our psychic frequency vibration at a low level, too low to let us transition to the afterlife. Like a plane that can't achieve lift-off velocity."

"So I've just made things worse," Jacqueline said.

Larry seemed to consider the idea. "Not necessarily. In the cases I've studied, when the breakpoint stage is reached, there is the potential for the spirits to become more malleable, more open to direction and suggestion. When they've discovered that they can no longer terrorize the occupants with the same success they once had, they have a sort of crisis of confidence. They can't progress to the other side, but they can't rely on their old tricks down here. And since they're creatures of habit, often going through the same routines and rituals as if they're trapped in a loop, this disturbance in their routine can be crushing to them. They don't know what to do with themselves. It can make them panic, it can make them lash out violently, but it can also make them hungry for instructions. Like a little dog waiting for its owner to tell it what to do." He looked at Darren. "Rachel may actually be more receptive to your wish for her to leave. You could be in a good position."

"I could be in a good position," Darren said. "You mean you could be in a good position. I thought you were going to buy the place."

"I only buy houses when no one else is able to help the spirits there. In this case, if anyone can help Rachel make the transition, it's probably you. She's attached to you. If you can't do it, then we'll talk."

"Darren's not going back in there," Jacqueline said. "So maybe it would be better to start talking now."

"Of course he's going back in there. You know it and I know it. He'd never walk away from her like this. Would you walk away from someone trapped in a burning building? She needs help. There needs to be closure. I hate using bullshit psychobabble words like that but it's true. He's one of the magnets holding her here. Therefore he has to shut down the power."

"He can do it by simply never setting foot in there again," Jacqueline said.

"Boy, you're the picture of compassion, aren't you," Larry remarked. "Do you even give a shit about Rachel?"

"Do you even give a shit about Darren? Haven't you been paying attention to what's going on there?"

"I understand you're concerned about his safety, but there's a third person in this equation, too," Larry said. "You don't walk out on someone who's in this kind of pain. She'd just keep clinging to the house, waiting for Darren to come back. That would be appalling. Rachel deserves a little respect. She is a person. She may not have a body anymore, but she's still a person. She deserves to be treated with decency. If he walks away from her he's no better than those scumbags who get rid of their dogs by driving out to the country and dumping them by the side of the road."

"What exactly am I supposed to do if I confront her again?" Darren asked.

Larry shrugged. "I don't know. I wish I did."

Jacqueline laughed, exasperated. "You lecture us on everything else, but you don't know what he should do."

"I don't have all the answers to the mysteries of the universe, Jacqueline. All I know is that Darren has to try to end this. When you break up with someone, you do it face to face—not through third parties. It's the honorable thing to do."

Larry excused himself to find a bathroom. Lydia, who had been quiet through most of the evening, perked up suddenly. In the lounge's dim lighting, she smiled. "I love this song," she said.

Jacqueline listened. Over the bar's speakers came Jim Croce's "Time in a Bottle." Hotel bars invariably piped in either smooth jazz or seventies easy listening. Nothing in-between. Jacqueline guessed "Three Times a Lady" would be up next, followed by "Desperado."

"Jim Croce is so profound," Lydia said. "Don't you think so?"

"He's a regular Ramakrishna," Darren said.

"I'm not a religious person," Lydia said, "but sometimes I think about God. Sometimes I think His greatest gift to us is time."

"How so?" Jacqueline asked, not particularly interested in the answer. She expected little more than the usual bumper sticker vapidity favored by pampered, pretty women when they wanted to appear deep. Maybe Lydia would quote from the Collected Works of Dan Fogelberg.

"Time takes the sting out of heartbreak," Lydia said. "When time passes, it lets us reflect and come to terms with things. When I was little, my older brother died in a car accident in Santa Monica. It broke my heart." She traced a finger around the lip of her glass of white wine. "But after twenty years, I've learned to get on with things. Acknowledge the past, grieve, but move on. Maybe that's why I admire what Larry does. Because ghosts don't feel time. A thousand years can go by and to them it'll just feel like an instant. For them, the moments of heartbreak are so fresh it's as if they happened a second ago. They relive them over and over again. It's sort of like what Eugene O'Neill said—there is no present, there is no future. Just the past, happening over and over again, at this moment." She shrugged. "Maybe that's the definition of a ghost."

THIRTY-TWO

"It's a 14-carat white gold 5/8-carat princess-cut diamond solitaire," the woman behind the counter said. "Definitely one of the more elite pieces we have."

She probably would have said the same thing about a $14.99 cubic zirconium set on a twisted paperclip; she was, after all, a saleswoman. But the price was unquestionably elite, and in the realm of jewelry, price was Darren's lone, clumsy criterion for quality. He slid his Visa card across the counter. While the woman totaled him up, Darren watched the young couple at the other end of the counter. The boy had a lot of acne and the slouch of a kid just barely out of high school. The girl was a brunette who looked all of sixteen. She gushed over the rings spread out before her. This one—no, this one. Oh, this is gorgeous.

Darren watched the face of the girl. She seemed to bubble up with joy, as if she knew she was smack dab in the middle of the prime of her life, the best time, the golden time against which all other moments of her life would be judged.

Darren stepped out of the store and into a heavy midday fog. The mist blanketed the stores and the winding asphalt ribbon of Route 91. A few moments later the girl and the boy came out. The girl was telling the boy he absolutely had to learn how to dance for the wedding. "It's, like, so important. Everyone's gonna be watching us, and I don't want to see you just shuffling your feet."

"I don't need lessons."

"Yes you do. I'm serious. The day should be perfect. I want a perfect memory of my wedding. That's all our lives are—a string of memories. That's all we have in the end."

The boy's hand crept down over the girl's behind. "Even if the day isn't perfect, you can bet the night will be."

She elbowed him in the ribs and called him a pig. But she was laughing.

The girl and the boy faded into the parking lot mist.

I don't ever have to go there again, Darren thought, mingling with some of his parents' friends, shaking their hands. His parents had invited him and Jacqueline over for dinner—a dinner which turned out to be a small surprise engagement party. Julia was there too. Sam and the kids were not.

He didn't ever have to set foot in 1661 Shadeland again. He could send Khabir over from time to time to pick up clothes or empty the refrigerator, and when it came time to decamp to Portland, he could just pay the movers to pack up whatever wasn't nailed down. There wasn't much furniture.

The downside was that the Steinbachs would be furious and might refuse to take the house off his hands. But then they would be in the moral hot seat. Would they too wash his hands of Rachel and leave her marooned in the house? Probably not. He hoped not. Larry was his best shot to get rid of the place. Only a handful of people had even looked at the house. Miriam said there was just no money out there. The Shipley house, which was two doors down from Darren's place, was still languishing on the market after sixteen months. It even had a new roof and new appliances.

After sixteen months of renting a place in Portland and continuing to pay the note on 1661 Shadeland, Darren would be digging under the couch cushions for grocery money.

But, Christ, the recession was easing. Yesterday the paper said existing home sales were starting to come back from the dead. Even if the Steinbachs were out of the picture Darren was sure he'd still have an offer by spring. Maybe sooner.

He could walk away and never set foot in there again.

"How come I'm always the last to know?" Julia said for the third time. "Mom and Dad call me three days ago and tell me you're engaged. Thanks for keeping me in the loop."

"Spare me the indignation," Darren said. "You and Sam eloped. All we ever got was a phone call the day after the ceremony."

Julia scrutinized Jacqueline's hands as Jacqueline selected some cold cuts from the sideboard. "No ring? Darren, what's wrong with you?"

"Actually, I did the proposing," Jacqueline said. "So I guess technically it's my job to produce a ring. But I think we're at that age when stuff like that really doesn't matter."

Julia gaped at her "The ring always matters."

"It's the world's smallest handcuff," Darren said.

"And you have the world's smallest brain," Julia said, flouncing off.

Jacqueline grinned. "We're like two aliens to her. To the rest of the world, probably."

"She is right, though. About the ring."

"No, she's not. Try this corned beef. I've never much liked corned beef but this is fabulous—"

"Sometimes I've fantasized about the perfect place to pop the question. Maybe a picturesque hill in Tuscany, or in front of the Eiffel Tower. With Annika, I guess I picked a pretty lame spot. We were walking in her favorite park, tromping through the leaves. It was early fall. It was nice. But definitely no Tuscany."

"Darren, if two people truly love each other, even a booth in a Burger King can be the most romantic spot on earth."

"Still, I imagined doing this in a more impressive place than my parents' dining room, but I'm a little short on cash." He deftly slipped the ring onto her finger. "The ring is important."

Jacqueline stared, her mouth full of corned beef.

"Come on. Looks like my dad is opening the champagne."

At the table, his dad's old colleague Steve Wittenberg lamented the fact that his grandson, who worked part-time at a Mr. Hero fast food joint, wanted to take a year off after high school to "find himself."

"At the end of the year he'll find himself between the Romanburger and the cheesesteak," Lou Ciccone said, passing out the champagne flutes.

"'Finding yourself' is usually code for 'I want to sit on my butt and watch TV for a year,'" Darren's mother said. "People never find themselves."

"Sometimes they do," Jacqueline said quietly.

The discussion shifted to Darren's haunted house (this despite the stern look Darren directed at his parents) and then, naturally, to horror movies. His parents' friends, all of them intellectuals who could quote Ibsen in their sleep, were of the opinion that virtually all horror movies were artistic failures because of the cartoon simplicity of the characters—the slutty, arrogant prom queen who gets it in the second reel; the plucky, quiet heroine; the faceless, remorseless axe murderer, a one-man killing machine.

"For once, for once," Darren's father said, "I'd like to see Hollywood try to make me care about the monster. Make me see the long string of abuses and bad luck that can take an ordinary little boy and turn him into a homicidal disaster. Make me weep for that boy."

"That's not a horror movie, Dad," Julia said. "That's just life."

I don't have to go back, he thought, but of course he knew he would.

For one thing, the graffiti all over the living room had to be cleaned up in the next couple days. Miriam was planning to have an open house on Sunday.

In the early morning hours of Saturday, Darren got out of bed and hunted around for his tennis shoes. He tried to be quiet, but Jacqueline sat up in bed, her eyes glimmering in the darkness.

"Can't sleep," he said. "I'm gonna go over and take care of that graffiti. I'll be back in a couple hours."

"Are you sure about this?"

He held a shoe in his hand. "Not really, no."

"I had a dream," she said. "You left and never came back."

"I'm coming back."

Jacqueline looked at him. He tied his shoes.

"What are you going to say to her?" Jacqueline asked.

Darren sat on the end of the bed. "Goodbye, I guess. What else can I say?"

In the darkness, her hand found his and their fingers intertwined. They sat like that for a few moments. It was 3:17 a.m.

Twenty minutes later, he was in the basement of 1661 Shadeland, filling a bucket full of hot water and liquid soap.

He flipped on the living room lights, then he got the stepladder out of the garage.

The house was quiet. Darren worked on the walls first. At first the graffiti just smeared alarmingly across the drywall but it came off with a little elbow grease. What had she used? Some grease pencil that had lain forgotten in the back of a drawer? Maybe something from the great OfficeMax in the sky?

On the stepladder, he scrubbed and scrubbed until his arm ached and the sponge was as grey as cigarette ash. The house creaked once, loudly, and Darren froze, his heart doing a passable imitation of a snare drum roll in his chest. But it was only the house settling. The ladder wasn't kicked out from under him; the light fixture didn't come down on his head.

He washed his hands. He put the ladder back in the garage. Then he sat on the couch and looked at his damp, prune-wrinkled fingers, which reminded him of the one summer during his high school years when he worked at a car wash. Four-twenty-five an hour. He wondered what kind of jobs Rachel McAvoy had had in high school. Probably the usual—working retail, waiting tables. As crappy as those jobs were—and Darren had worked his share—he remembered a satisfying feeling of forward progress at the end of a long shift. A few more dollars to sock away for college, for textbooks, for a car. Every dollar a humble down payment on a dream.

What had been Rachel's dream?

Of course she would have gone to college—she was too bright not to. A state school, probably. The McAvoys weren't rich. But maybe Rachel would have been able to wrangle a scholarship to somewhere prestigious. Darren was sure she had loved her parents, but a little breathing room between her and their imploding marriage would have been very much in order. For some reason Darren pictured her walking across the sun-splashed quad of Brown, one of those heavy Norton anthologies under her arm. She would have been an English major, and he was reasonably certain her name would come up with some frequency in the faculty lounge after class.

My love for you is fierce...

You have to see what one of my students is writing, he imagined one of her professors telling a fellow teacher in the hall one afternoon. Christ, she's halfway to a Guggenheim already.

Well, not so fast. Maybe no Guggenheim, maybe no book deal at twenty-one. Darren imagined her working jobs similar to his—tech writing, corporate communications—while penning short stories and poems in her spare time. After a couple years she would start to place a few of these in literary journals—the ones that pay in copies. He imagined her dancing around her apartment with her first acceptance letter in her hand, feeling that incomparable joy and sense of validation. I'm on my way, I'm on my way.

He pictured her on the phone, calling her boyfriend to come over and celebrate. Darren felt a dark pang of jealousy with the appearance of this theoretical boyfriend, but of course there would be one. Rachel had been a shy girl but also a pretty one. There would be a few guys who'd come up to her after class or after work to make small talk. She would keep the jocks and the frat boys at arm's length, but Darren had no trouble imagining her falling for some nerdy-cute guy who quoted Woody Allen movies and maybe had literary aspirations himself.

(The boy would be funny and self-deprecating. He would be head over heels in love with her long before she even knew he existed. They would be friends for years before things got serious. For some reason Darren imagined their first kiss happening on the first snow of the year. The occasion would inspire them both to write poems about it, but neither would show the other these poems—both would be disappointed at how inadequate their words had been at capturing the fragile heart of the moment.)

Rachel and Boyfriend would toast the publication of her poem or short story with grocery store wine, and the boyfriend would buy fifty copies of the magazine for her. He would have the page with her byline framed as a Christmas present. That wouldn't be her only present from him, though. Darren imagined them back in her crummy little studio apartment late Christmas night, watching the twinkling lights on their tiny too-cute-for-words Charlie Brown tree. Rachel is drowsing on the couch in her pajamas, a mug of eggnog on the coffee table in front of her. The Boyfriend, who maybe has had a drop too much to drink, is shirtless and has made a laurel out of the bows from the unwrapped gifts and is now wearing said laurel like some Greek statue—an image that will undoubtedly show up in the e-mail inboxes of all their mutual friends and relatives in the coming days. I forgot this other little thing, he says, nonchalantly handing her the sloppily wrapped little box.

What is it? she asks, yawning. Not another one of those kitschy ornaments with the dancing reindeer. My mom has sent me, like, six of them.

No, he says, not another one.

The ring will be simple but beautiful. It will have cost the boy three months' pay. But the look on Rachel's face will have been worth it.

Oh my God, she will repeat. Oh my God. Do you mean—is this really—The precocious wordsmith will now be reduced to sentence fragments.

I want you to be my wife. The Boyfriend gets down on bended knee. What do you say?

She weeps and hugs him, babbling.

Is that a yes? he asks.

Yes!

She will want to stay clutching him all night, hugging him as if he is the last floating spar in a dark ocean, the only thing keeping her from drowning. But he will grasp her right hand in his left and haul her to her feet. He will place his right hand firmly on her side.

Come on, he says. You took all those ballroom dancing classes. Show me how we're gonna cut a rug at the reception. I need all the practice I can get.

Rachel laughs, with tears in her eyes, and she thinks, Tonight my life begins, and she leads as they circle the tiny living room through drifts of torn wrapping paper. Suddenly her crummy day job and cramped apartment don't seem so oppressive anymore. Suddenly it feels as if she could be a noblewoman dancing on the marble floor of a European palace on some festival night.

Darren lay down on the couch. His arms were sore. He hadn't gotten much sleep last night and now the fatigue was catching up with him. He fell asleep.

He opened his eyes.

I'm dreaming, he thought—which was unusual, because in a dream you typically had little awareness that you were, in fact, in a dream.

This seemed to be one of those ultra-vivid dreams that feel so detailed and clear they create a disarming, counterfeit reality. The details were surprisingly prosaic—he was still on the couch, he was still in the house. But a brilliant, soothing white light poured in from every window, making the drapes and the blinds glow as if the house were a movie set being lit from outside with megawatt carbon-arc lamps. He had to squint every time he looked toward the windows.

Another startlingly realistic detail was the hissing sizzle of eggs cooking in the kitchen. He heard the metallic clatter of a spatula on the iron skillet he rarely used.

He wandered into the kitchen and was unsurprised to see a plump, middle-aged woman making scrambled eggs. It took only a moment or two for Darren to match her with the black and white picture from the newspaper.

"Hello," Shannon McAvoy said, polite but distracted. "Would you mind handing me the pepper?"

He found the pepper grinder in the cabinet. The light streaming in from the kitchen windows was breathtaking. It was as if the world was being consumed in white fire.

"Rachel's favorite," Shannon said. "She always loved breakfast."

"You're dead," Darren said.

She gave him a strange look as if to say, Well, duh.

"I don't come here very often," Shannon said. "It's Rachel's house now. But sometimes a child needs her mother."

"Where is... your husband?"

For several moments she said nothing, concentrating instead on the eggs. At last she said, "He doesn't come here. He's too ashamed."

Darren wasn't sure if he should pursue this line of questioning, but he was curious. "Do you forgive him?"

Shannon glanced at him. "Yes."

"I don't know if I would be able to."

"One thing I've learned is that we don't know as much about ourselves as we think."

Darren looked at the glowing windows. "Why did he do it?"

"He said it's better to be dead."

"Is it?"

"It is, if you're finished with life." She gave him an odd, almost condescending look, as if she were being asked to explain calculus to a fish. Save your questions, the look said, you wouldn't even understand the language the answers are written in. Shannon turned back to the stove. "We keep trying to get her to go outside. But she just won't go. I'm at my wit's end."

"Who's 'we'?"

"There are others. It doesn't matter. Kids can be so stubborn. When she was a little girl, she actually refused to let Jerry take the training wheels off her first bike, even when she didn't need them. You should have seen how she cried."

"It's hard to let go sometimes."

Shannon put her head in the living room. "Rachel," she called. "Breakfast. And you have a visitor."

From upstairs came the dull thud of a teenager running.

Darren watched as Rachel McAvoy hurried downstairs. Her eyes widened when she saw him. Her face lit up with a goofy, embarrassed grin. "Hi!" she said.

"Hi."

She wore jeans and a plain purple t-shirt and she suddenly seemed to find her hair a mess. She kept trying to smooth out the frizzies. She blushed. "God, I look terrible. Mom, why couldn't you warn me?"

"Eggs are almost ready," Shannon said.

"I'll eat later, okay?"

"You specifically wanted me to cook for you, honey."

"Mom. Darren's here, okay?"

Shannon smiled at Darren. "This is what it means to be a mother. You're a short-order cook, valet, psychologist and bank teller. And you do it all for free."

"Mom, please."

When Darren looked back at Shannon McAvoy, there was no Shannon McAvoy to look at. She was gone, as was the skillet full of eggs. For some reason Darren felt this was not unusual.

Face to face with Rachel, Darren couldn't help staring. Here she was at last. Darren felt disoriented and mildly disappointed... much the way you'd feel if you met God and found out He was a harassed-looking guy in a grey flannel suit. Rachel was a tall girl and she had an animated, expressive face that reminded Darren of silent movie actresses who are trained to telegraph their emotions, subtlety be damned. The emotions Rachel telegraphed now, it seemed, were excitement and first-date anxiety. She had difficulty meeting his eyes, and she kept putting stray strands of her dark hair behind one ear. "Well," she said.

"Well."

"I knew you'd come back." For a moment her eyes met his. The pure joy in her expression made his heart hurt. Had anyone ever been this glad to see him?

"I came to say goodbye," Darren said. This time he was the one avoiding eye contact. "I'm leaving, Rachel. I'm going to Portland. Jacqueline and I... we're getting married."

Like a low-pressure system brewing a tropical depression over the ocean, Rachel's face bubbled with the formation of other, darker emotions. "I don't know why you want to marry her. She'll just get tired of you and divorce you like she did that other guy. And I won't even bring up the other stuff."

"The other stuff doesn't matter."

"You love her."

He said nothing.

The tropical depression was swirling, forming a hurricane. Rachel's eyes briefly filled with tears but she blinked them away. "You know that we're better together. You know that. It's like we have this connection. You're the kind of guy I always dreamed of. And I know you like me too."

She had put an ominous emphasis on those last few words, her voice edging into stridency, and Darren found himself face to face with the searing, piano wire-sharp anger that was an integral thread in the Rachel McAvoy fabric. "I do like you," he said.

"I know you're not the kind of guy who goes to bed with someone he doesn't care about. You don't have that kind of cruelty in your heart."

The cool challenge in her eyes made him look away.

A determined smile appeared on her face and she grabbed his hand. "Come on, I want to show you something."

She led him upstairs, bouncing with that irrepressible energy of youth. In her bedroom, a vase of red roses sat on the nightstand by the window. The white glow from the window created a halo around the blossoms, making them translucent. "My mom keeps bringing me flowers," Rachel said. "Like I'm an invalid or something. You only bring flowers to sick people. Or to dead people."

"Or to people you love."

Her face became an expression of grim resentment. "She knows I like the white ones better. She never remembers."

"Why do you like the white ones?"

"When the light shines through them it's like you're looking at something holy." In the blink of an eye the red roses became white. "I used to have this crazy thought that when I graduated college or got married or something there'd be a big shower of white rose petals. Like, hey Rachel, congratulations, it's your time to be happy now. Guess there's no chance of that happening now." The grimness deepened on her face, making her look older. "Mom thinks I'm sick. Everyone thinks I'm sick." She shook herself from the momentary funk and sat cross-legged on the carpet amid a pile of sheets of notebook paper, each one carefully inscribed with her large, looping script. She patted the carpet beside her. "I wrote you some poems. Some of them are pretty good, too. Here."

Darren tried reading them but it was almost impossible because of the moistness in his eyes. "They're good," he said. He cleared his throat. "I'm sorry you died, Rachel. I wanted you to know that."

She methodically smoothed out one of the wrinkled sheets of paper on her thigh. She was suddenly shy and sullen. "Thanks."

"Your mom says you won't go outside."

"Everyone's trying to make me go. Even you and that other girl. That stupid blonde." Her voice rose. "You know, this is my house. I don't see why I have to leave if I don't want to."

"There isn't anything here for you. Outside is where you belong."

"If I go, I won't be able to see you anymore."

He did not reply.

She stared at the poems in her lap. "You don't want to be with me."

"I want what's best for you. Staying here isn't it."

"I just don't get it. How come I didn't get a chance? How come everyone else gets a chance? You were married once. Now you get a chance to be married again and I never even got my first chance. I never even had a boyfriend. I never got the chance to go to college or have a baby."

"I'm sorry."

"And now everyone wants me to go outside. So sorry, Rachel, thanks for playing, we have some lovely parting gifts for you. Everyone says it's what's best for me now. Well, you know what would have been best for me? If I hadn't gotten shot. See this? Look at it." Her voice had reached the level of a quavering near-scream. She pointed at the puckered, dime-sized crater at the hairline above her left temple. He hadn't noticed it before. There was a thick crust of dried blood around the hole. Darren had watched enough cop shows to know that the black stippling on the skin was burned flesh from the gun going off so close to her head.

Then the wound was gone.

He was about to say I'm sorry again, but the words felt so threadbare now.

Darren looked again at the poems in his hands. Most of them were nothing but random words, many of them disjointed bursts of profanity. FUCK YOU DADDY FUCK YOU KILLER OF CHILDREN. Another page said PLEASE TELL ME WHERE DO I GO FROM HERE, over and over again, the words gouged into the page so viciously the paper was torn at some points. His stomach turned over.

"Why did he have to kill me?" Rachel said, her voice rising hysterically again. "Why did he have to kill Mom? It was just a job. He could've gotten another job. Why did he have to hurt us?"

"I don't know."

"They keep telling me I have to let it go, but they don't understand: this was my life. It was my life."

The naked outrage and violation in her voice silenced the pathetically small words of comfort Darren had at the ready. She was beyond comfort. The heart wasn't breaking, it was broken, smashed.

He slid a hand across her back and within moments she folded herself into his arms, weeping until she wept herself into a sullen calm. The feeling of her body was solid, real, warm. Alive.

"It's not fair," Darren said. "I know. But in here you're going to be alone. Out there you won't."

"I'll be alone either way. You won't be there."

"Rachel, why do you like me?"

She stared at him. "Because we're the same." She touched his chest. "In here." She touched her temple. "And in here."

"I'm a lot older than you. We're very different."

"Why? Because you grew up with different music than I did?"

Because you're dead, he almost said. "It's not just that."

"I think it's more important that two people want the same things in life. I want the same things you do. And you know what? I understand you better than she does. They keep telling me I'm not supposed to peek into people's minds but I'm sorry, sometimes I can't help it. Know what I saw when I peeked into yours? I saw me." She stared deeply into his eyes. "I know you've been lonely. I can fix that. I can be everything you want me to be. You'll see."

"And we can just stay here in this house forever and ever."

"Don't make fun of me."

Another uncooperative strand of hair fell away from its place behind her ear and Darren put it back where it belonged. He wasn't looking at a teenager anymore. Time no longer applied to her. She had been expelled from time and was ageless. She'd never go grey or develop arthritis in her knees. She'd never be twenty pounds heavier and pushing forty with a divorce in the rearview mirror and lowered expectations ahead, like the skyline of a second-rate city.

You will always be perfect, he wanted to tell her.

She stroked the side of his face. "Don't worry about your job. Or the house. Or anything." She drew a finger across his lips. The touch was like the brush of a feather. "It's easy." Her voice was little more than a whisper. "So easy. I can stop your heart. You don't know what I can do."

Her finger left his lips, slid down his chin and neck and stopped at his heart.

An image came to his mind: He would take her hand, and suddenly the room and the house would disappear, and they would find themselves walking along a beach, bathed in that impossible white light. Summer without end. It would almost be like going back in time to when he was Rachel's age. When he was seventeen it really did seem like summer could last forever.

"And ever," Rachel said.

"You want me to stay with you."

Her voice was a silky murmur. "Yes."

"No. You don't."

Rachel's eyes narrowed.

"If you did," Darren said, "you wouldn't have stopped me from pulling the trigger that night. When Sam came over. We could have been together that way. But you knew it would have been wrong."

Rachel's lips pressed together in a tense line.

"You saved my life," Darren said. "I love you for that. But I have to leave."

She said nothing.

He stood. "I don't think it's really me you're holding onto. It's this world. Which I don't understand. Why would you cling to a world that treated you the way it did?"

Rachel looked at her lap full of desperate poetry. She turned her face away, her shoulders rising and falling as if she were laughing. But she wasn't laughing. "I just want to go home," she said, her voice breaking, and Darren understood that home didn't mean this nondescript Ohio house with its Home Depot carpet and leaky bathroom sink. It also didn't mean her ultimately fatal life with her mom and ruined dad. Home just meant someplace where there was love, safety and the possibility of a future. Maybe it was just the place where the hurting stopped.

"What would have happened if I lived?" Rachel asked when she got herself under control. "I think about that a lot. How I would have turned out." Again, she had trouble meeting his eyes. "Do you think you would have liked me?"

"I would have liked you very much."

Her gaze fell on the glowing white window, but she didn't seem to be seeing it. She may as well have been looking at a brick wall.

He held his hand out for her.

After a moment, she took it and he helped her to her feet, and he hugged her, breathing in her floral shampoo and soap-scented skin. Darren wondered what was on her headstone. Whatever was there was most certainly inadequate. She had saved his life; she had protected him. He didn't think any woman had ever or would ever do as much for him, Jacqueline included.

"You probably wouldn't have wanted anything to do with me," he said. "I'd have been just another creepy older guy hitting on you."

She laughed.

His fingers entwined with hers. "But maybe I would have worn you down."

Her wet eyes were spilling tears again, and Darren felt her thoughts pushing into his mind: I love you I love you please don't leave me don't leave me don't leave.

"I heard you were a good dancer," Darren said.

"Who told you that?"

"Maybe I can read your mind too." He held her small right hand aloft in his left hand and fixed his right hand to her side. One of the virtues of growing up with a sister was that he had learned how to dance—not well, but enough to keep from looking like an idiot. He led, taking Rachel with him on a nimble circuit of the bare room. Rachel's face lit up with surprise.

"You're very good," she said.

"It's better with music."

She supplied it by humming. The tune was easy for him to recognize—"When Will I See You Again," by the one-hit wonder Three Degrees. Is this my beginning, the song went, or is this the end? Darren danced with her for a few moments and they drifted into and out of the pools of white light on the carpet. Her eyes were moist, and though she still smiled, the smile kept faltering. She stumbled once but Darren caught her. She looked tired.

She rested her head on his shoulder and held onto him.

And for a moment or two he found himself seeing out at himself through her eyes, his mind filling briefly with the riotous collage of her memories, like a drawer full of photos being dumped out by a thief in a hurry—hopscotch games in the driveway under cloudy skies, running with her handful of friends on the playground after school, the eerie familiarity of the same elementary school classrooms Darren had sat in a decade before (different color schemes now, yes, but God, that was the same elm tree outside the library window!), getting braces at eleven with her father trying sweetly but ineptly to comfort her when she cried about how ugly she was. There were more images of Jerry McAvoy, sitting morosely in the kitchen with the lights off and Rachel coming downstairs, too timid to ask him what was wrong, too fearful that his answer would be too big and dark for her to handle, the way her parents' stormy arguments were too big and dark for her to comprehend... those ugly, adrenaline-filled nights when she heard them going at it in the kitchen or the living room, the shouting and screaming and, worse, the crying, her dad crying and saying things like I'm a failure and you enjoy seeing me like this, don't you, and her mother saying There's nothing about you that I enjoy anymore, no sympathy there, just disgust and exhaustion and the batten-down-the-hatches instinct for self-preservation that some people could mistake for callousness.... Rachel's heart clenched in sorrow for all the times she hadn't gone to her father in the days afterward to try to cheer him up, offer him some sort of comfort, what kind of daughter was she, why couldn't she have made even the slightest attempt instead of scurrying by him like a terrified mouse, he was her father, for God's sake, and sometimes in the summer he'd take her for an ice cream at Dairy Queen when he got home from work, and they'd be sitting there in the booth, she and her balding, nervously smiling dad, always older than the other dads, with his clumsy too-big hands, neither father nor daughter knowing quite what to say to one another until her dad started talking about his dad, Rachel's grandfather, who had owned a landscaping business and had taken Jerry McAvoy along with him during the summers to various jobs. There in the Dairy Queen, Rachel could feel the nervousness and tension slide away as her dad reminisced about going with his dad to some rich person's house out in Chardon or Shaker or somewhere and walking down the aisles of an immaculate garden full of colors, and once there was this person's garden that was nothing but roses, the owner was in love with roses, and Jerry and his father wandered among the bushes and trellises just teeming with the blood-red blooms, each a velvety, mystical swirl of folds, heart-shaped (not like a cheesy valentine heart but a real heart), a thousand hearts all around them, not beating but still living nonetheless. Rachel remembered her dad's soft, pleased voice telling her how beautiful it all was. It's important to have a memory of something really beautiful in your life, he said. When you see something beautiful and it touches you, it's like the world itself is saying, "I love you." It may not make your life any easier, but at least it'll remind you that beautiful things are possible. She was about fourteen when he said this.

Oh God, Daddy, I'm sorry I didn't comfort you, I'm sorry we weren't enough for you, where are you now, are you in the light?

These and a thousand other memories. Trips to Cedar Point in the summer, her parents actually getting along and joking quietly with one another on the ferris wheel while Rachel sat between them, gazing out over the midway and feeling that combination of vertigo and joy at being so breathtakingly high above everything. Buying CDs at the mall with her friend Tracy Stolar, who was cross-eyed, wonder what she's doing now, does she even remember me. Getting straight A's in tenth grade. Mr. Lancaster's English class. Dancing in the gym, God that was fun; the crushes that never went anywhere (one boy she liked even called her "shit-face" behind her back); how she cried when they had to put her cat Clayton to sleep when she was ten. And of course that night before she died in November, when her dad came into her room while she was doing her homework, and how awful he looked, and how he sat on the edge of her bed and said, Do you ever wish you could just fly away to someplace where it's easier, and she just stared at him, and he said, Someplace where you don't have to struggle anymore. No more problems. No more homework. Or tests. Or feeling not good enough. And of course she sometimes wished for that but the way he said it made her insides curl up in dread because there was that look in his eyes—that glazed, inward, collapsed look, like he wasn't seeing things in the here and now, he was looking at the blasted landscape of his mind, where he was a failure and had used up all his chances and everyone had abandoned him. She knew he was having problems at work ("I'm the world's worst salesman," he had once said, with a weird trace of pride) and he just seemed to be getting sadder and sadder, but she couldn't even bring herself to say, Daddy, what's wrong with you, what a coward she turned out to be, but before he left he answered the question she couldn't bring herself to ask—I'm just having a real hard time holding it together, punkin—and his eyes welled up with tears and this scared her, scared her and made her feel miserable because she didn't know how to help, she would've helped him if she knew how; and then, that final evening when she heard what sounded like someone slamming an empty pot with a metal hammer (it's a gunshot my God that's what a gun sounds like) and she ran downstairs and simply froze there on the landing because her dad was standing there, his face sagging and vacant (his soul has flown away, she remembered thinking for some idiotic reason) and he was looking at her and holding the gun down by his side and then he held up the gun and she was hyperventilating drowning gasping no air oh God Daddy why what's happening this is a dream a bad dream I'm going to wake up I will wake up.

A quiet, colorful hurricane of memories, surging and swirling—for a moment Darren saw them all. Then they were gone, scattered like petals in a gust of wind, goodbye, Rachel. A few final petals of thought were left hanging in the air, twisting this way and that—why'd it have to end this way, I didn't get my chance to be loved, not fair not fair. Then they too were gone. Darren was alone in the room, holding nothing in the white light.

When he awoke, it was still dark. He was still on the couch. His watch said 5:09 a.m. His head throbbed as if he had had five glasses of wine.

He sat up and put his head in his hands, trying to recall as much of the dream as he could before it dissipated into the ether the way that dreams do. If it was indeed a dream.

When I wak'd/I cried to dream again. Was that Shakespeare?

He went up to the spare bedroom. It was empty. There were no roses there.

He drove back to Jacqueline's house in darkness. She met him at the door and hugged him, a long hug that seemed as much an expression of relief as of greeting. She asked him no questions.

On Sunday evening, Darren and Jacqueline returned home around ten p.m. from dinner with Khabir and his girlfriend Isabella Esquivel to find half a dozen messages on Jacqueline's machine. Jacqueline played the messages while Darren went to the bathroom.

When he came out, Jacqueline was standing there looking stunned.

"It's Miriam," she said. "And the police."

THIRTY-THREE

The house had burned through much of the evening. When Darren and Jacqueline got there the two fire trucks were still parked out front. The front of the house glistened with the thousands of gallons of water that had been sprayed on it. Water dribbled from the blown-out, soot-blackened windows. It looked as if 1661 Shadeland was crying.

"Oh Jesus," Darren said. "Oh, Jesus."

From the front, the damage didn't look too bad, although the smashed windows and the smoky blackness of the rooms beyond were a cause for concern. When Darren went around to the back, though, he knew the house was lost. The bank of kitchen windows was gone—the result of either an explosion or firefighters doing their work—and so was much of that section of the structure. He stepped over a twisted ribbon of half-melted siding. The skin of the house had been savagely torn open, exposing blackened studs and soggy pink tendrils of insulation. The roof over that corner of the house had caved in.

The house wheezed dusty, sepulchral gasps of smoke and dust.

Darren put his hands on top of his head like... well, like a man who has just seen his house go up in smoke. Half the neighborhood was watching the evening's unscheduled melodrama from their porches and the street.

Miriam was in the backyard, babbling to a fire chief and a pair of uniformed cops. "... and the open house ended at five, I locked up and headed back to my office. Nothing was wrong, I didn't leave any lights on, there wasn't anything burning."

"No candles or anything like that?" the fire chief said. "Like those scented candles?"

"There were no candles. I don't use those things at open houses. And even if I did I sure as hell wouldn't leave them lit."

"How many people were here today?"

"Not many. Five. Wait, no. Four."

"Any of them turn on the oven?"

Miriam raked her fingers through her red hair. "They might have, I don't remember. Some of them were trying the appliances. That's what people do at these things."

The cops looked at Darren. "Mr. Ciccone?" one of them said.

"Yeah."

"We got a hell of a mess here."

The officer explained the sequence of events as best as he and the firefighters could determine it. Around eight p.m., Darren's neighbor, Barb Winkowski, heard what sounded like a car crash. She saw nothing outside her front window, but a few minutes later she looked out of her back door and saw tongues of fire licking the air from Darren's broken kitchen windows. She called 911. The culprit seemed to be the mangled, exploded mass of steel and iron that had once been 1661 Shadeland's twenty-year-old stove.

"Our guys smelled the gas even after the fire was put down," the fire chief said. "Looks like the stove was on, the pilot light was probably out and the oven door was open. A spark must have sent the whole works sky-high."

Darren barely heard him. He was distracted by one of the cops badgering Miriam with questions about a young dark-haired woman at the open house who may have lingered long after Miriam had left.

"Not possible," Miriam said. "There were four people. Two couples. One of the couples was in their forties. The other couple was younger but neither had dark hair."

"You sure there was no one else?"

"There was no one in the house. Before I locked up, I went into each room and killed the lights. No one was there."

"What's this about a dark-haired woman?" Darren asked the cop.

The cop nodded at the Winkowskis' house. "Woman next door and her husband went outside to watch the fire and wait for the trucks. They called out several times to see if anyone was in your place. The woman says she thinks she saw a woman in the kitchen. She can't swear to it, though. And we didn't find anyone inside."

Darren and Jacqueline looked at one another.

"I need to call my insurance company," Darren said finally. A few ashes danced in the air, spiraling upward like birds taking flight.

The next morning, Darren and Jacqueline returned to the house to pick through the wreckage. Two fire inspectors were already there. "The stairs are okay," one of them said, "but I'd stay out of the upstairs bathroom if I were you." He pointed at the kitchen ceiling, where the fire had eaten a hole the size of a big-screen TV through the studs and linoleum. Darren could see the toilet from where he stood.

The living room had been turned into a blackened cave. There were puddles on the hardwood floor. Darren touched the seat of his couch. It was soggy.

Jacqueline squeezed his hand. "Honey" was all she could say. Darren couldn't blame her. What could you say?

Darren salvaged some old family photos, a few piles of smoky clothes and a few CDs (The Who, Nox Arcana, the soundtrack to The Natural). He spent a frenzied fifteen minutes digging through singed drawers and shelves before Jacqueline asked him what he was looking for. Darren then remembered that Kat still had the mix tape from Rachel.

He stood in the middle of the charred living room, almost in a trance.

"Do you want to leave?" Jacqueline asked quietly.

"Do you think she crossed over?"

"I don't know."

He couldn't feel her around him, but that didn't mean anything. He hadn't been able to sense her even when she was here.

Jacqueline went to the car but Darren lingered.

Rachel's headstone in the cemetery in Mentor bore only her name and her dates of birth and death. According to Darren's research over the last few months, it was Shannon McAvoy's older sister, Noreen Webber of Cincinnati, who had handled the family's burial arrangements. She and the McAvoy family had not been close.

Darren visited the grave twice, once in November, once in December. Dry-eyed, he stood there, strangely impassive. He did not feel her. It was just a name laser-etched on polished stone, familiar but no more pregnant with soul than your name on a form letter from the government.

Rachel's stone was flanked on either side by markers for her parents: a family reunited in the clean abstraction of stone.

That evening, he was lying on the scorched hardwood of 1661's living room floor when he heard Jacqueline's footfalls on the porch steps and then in the kitchen.

"Thought I'd find you here," she said. "You're gonna get soot in your hair."

"Did you know that houses have heartbeats? Every time the furnace whooshes on, you hear that low rumble for a few minutes. Then it switches off, and a half-hour later it whooshes on again. Two beats an hour."

"I thought you turned off the heat and power."

"I did."

"So the house is dead," Jacqueline said.

He said nothing.

"I'm sure she crossed over, Darren. If you keep waiting for a sign you're gonna drive yourself crazy."

He got his cold, stiff body into a sitting position. His head hurt, and his hip ached. He felt ashamed of himself, but Jacqueline was looking at him kindly.

The fire department's official report was issued the day before Thanksgiving. The fire was ruled accidental, no traces of any accelerants were found on-site. The following Monday, Darren's insurance company officially informed him that the house was unsalvageable.

Two weeks after that, his claims adjuster, Henry Ulander, called him at work. "Christmas comes early for you. My office is going to messenger over a copy of the settlement check. The real one's already been deposited in your account. All that's left to do is settle up with your mortgage company and you're as free as a bird. I gave you the forms, right?"

Darren retired the balance of his mortgage that week, which was his last week at Northeast Aerospace. He was left with close to $31,000—more than enough for a down payment on a little house somewhere.

Tonight your life begins again, he thought, but he felt like crying.

He kept it together for a while, until three days before Christmas, when he, Jacqueline and Khabir went to a jazz club downtown to hear Khabir's girlfriend Isabella perform a set. Jacqueline had never been more beautiful—she wore an elegant black gown and her lipstick was the lurid crimson of a campfire's last ember. Khabir even looked dapper in his wrinkled sportjacket. He bought the drinks and made elaborate toasts to Darren's and Jacqueline's new life in the land of perpetual rain. Darren kept it together through most of the set—Isabella had a soothing, husky alto, and in defiance of the season she was doing a set of downbeat but sexy standards—but then she got to "Someone to Watch Over Me" and a slowed-down rendition of the Beatles' "Blackbird" and maybe it was the smoke in the club or the lighting but Darren's eyes watered and he had difficulty breathing. Soon he was locked in a stall in the cramped, piss-stinking men's room, weeping to the point where he felt like throwing up, weeping as if someone had died. Well, someone had died. Rachel. At seventeen. I never even had a boyfriend. I never got the chance to go to college or have a baby. The shotgun blast of sorrow he felt was frightening, asphyxiating. It was what the period at the end of a sentence felt like. Something beautiful had been taken out of the world, and it would not be coming back.

He would call Bethany and tell her he had reconsidered. He'd talk to the bank. They'd think he was nuts but so what—what would be the big deal about buying the same house twice?

When he emerged from the bathroom, Jacqueline was there by the door, searching his eyes and not buying it when he said that he was okay.

"I just can't leave if she's still there," he said.

She put her hand on his cheek. "Are you turning into me now? Darren, you have to let her go."

He could've laughed. You have to let her go. It was like asking him to move the moon.

Isabella had joined them at their table, and though Darren was quiet everyone else had a lively talk about Portland. Isabella told them that she and her combo had played a gig in Portland a few years ago. She liked it, liked its coffeehouses and its rainy feistiness. "And it's the city of roses, did you know that? It's the city's motto or something."

"That's lovely," Jacqueline said. "I think that's just beautiful."

The next afternoon he stopped by 1661 to pick up his mail and walk through the house yet again.

You know, you could've had the post office forward your stuff here, Jacqueline had said to him a couple weeks ago, referring to her house. It would save you the back-and-forth.

He hadn't filled out the form.

He stood in Rachel's bedroom for a while, watching the snow fall beyond the window, but the only thing he felt or heard was his own heart beating.

He left.

On the way to his car he flipped through the few pieces of mail. A bill; a Visa credit card offer. An actual letter, from R. Lancaster. Inside was a photocopied page from another Brush High School literary journal. An attached Post-It note read: Mr. Ciccone—Was cleaning out my den in preparation for some new carpeting and came across another poem she wrote. It's from the spring 2001 edition.

The Art of Letting Go

by Rachel McAvoy

Suddenly your hand wasn't there

On the back of my Schwinn

Training wheels gone, I wobbled—

I weaved—I tottered—I wept

I FLEW!

Down the uneven summer sidewalk

Yet still I cried

At the growing distance between us

At the receding shadow of you

This is the price of flight

You touch the sky, but you do it alone.

There was something else in the mail—a wrinkled, torn and faded post office change-of-address form. The form itself was blank, but on the back was a childishly lopsided ballpoint circle. But as he stared at it for a while he realized it was a heart. Below it was the scribble of a V. He didn't understand this at first, but then it occurred to him that this was how kids often drew birds in flight.

It was snowing harder, and Darren put his face up to the bleak sky. He felt that sorrowful tightness in his chest again but he was also smiling. He could almost believe the large, heavy snowflakes pouring down were white rose petals, a silent celebratory storm of them. A nice poetic image. Rachel would have liked that.

— The End —

About the Author

Joseph Iorillo lives in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. He is a summa cum laude graduate of John Carroll University and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English. His debut novel, This House Is Empty Now, garnered critical acclaim worldwide and his short stories have appeared in several anthologies, including Tales from the Dark Tower, Beyond the Dark Tower and The Legend of Darklore Manor. Joseph Iorillo's non-fiction works include The Gothic Tarot Compendium and foreward and commentary for Born of the Night: The Gothic Fantasy Artwork of Joseph Vargo, in addition to numerous articles for Dark Realms Magazine, covering topics as diverse as ancient civilizations, secret societies, horror cinema and theories of the afterlife.

Other Books by Joseph Iorillo:

This House Is Empty Now

Psychomanteum

Author websites:
JosephIorillo.com

Joseph Iorillo's Amazon Page

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Amazon.com Author Pages

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