Again the moment stretched out. Lu held Dot’s gaze steady as a surgeon’s knife while Dot did some mental calculations for what she was going to believe was real and what she was going to ignore.
“How do you know my sister was named Stella? Who told you? Calvin? Did he tell you that? About the accident?”
“No,” Lu said, gentler now. “Brogan told me. He was…I lost him in an…accident too. And he’s still with me.”
“In your heart. In your memories,” Dot insisted.
“Right there.” She pointed at where I was crouched, and I grinned until it hurt.
“He’s a short man?”
Lu chopped off a laugh.
“You better say no,” I warned her, loving that smile, loving that laugh. “Tell her I’m fully grown. A mountain of a man. In every way.” I waggled my eyebrows even though I knew she couldn’t see me.
“He’s kneeling right now. Because he was trying to get my attention,” Lu said.
“You can see him?” Dot’s eyes were wider, and her color had gone a little off, her lips pale with a slight green around the edges.
“Not clearly, no. But I know him. I know he’s there. And he told me your sister, Stella, has been here, in her old room—where I’m staying, right?—waiting to talk to you.”
Dot swallowed. “It’s, yes. It’s her room. But lots of people know what happened. If she’s…If what you’re saying is true, I need more. To believe.”
“I’m right here,” Stella said, moving around to stand in front of her sister. “Dotty, I’m right here. Honey, I’m here.”
“What would make you believe?” Lu asked.
Dot picked up her tea, lifted the cup to her lips, then put it down again. Her hands were trembling. “Is this because of that man? Are you trying to make…do this because he was…there was a gun in his hand?”
Lu shook her head, a short choppy movement. “I don’t screw around with people’s feelings or lives.”
“Well, except for meddling when you think people should fall in love,” I noted.
“There have been very few,veryfew, people I’ve told ghosts exist. Even fewer know about Brogan. If you don’t want me to speak of this, if you don’t want to speak to her, I will drop this like it never happened.”
Straight, even, clear. There was no doubting Lu was a woman of her word. She’d leave this conversation in an instant and ignore she had ever spoken the words.
It was frightening just how thoroughly Lu could shut down if she wanted to. She hadn’t been like that when we were alive. Sometimes it frightened me. Made me wonder how much this half-life had changed her. Made me wonder if we’d ever be together again, happy again, alive.
“I do,” Dot said, “want to talk to her. I don’t believe in, well, those things.”
“I didn’t use to either. A long time ago.” There was so much sorrow in those words, even Stella made a small, sad sound.
“I’m right here, love.” I rubbed my hands on her knees, then lifted one hand, finger extended and poked the tip of her nose.
She jerked her head back, surprised. Then she rolled her eyes. “Fine. I’m being maudlin. Dot, if you want to talk to Stella, I know she very much wants to talk to you. I can prove it’s Stella by telling you the details I know, which aren’t much. She likes to sit and knit in the corner of her old room. You two used to play in the old shed out back, and she was afraid of spiders. She died in a car accident, and she once met a man at the fair who sold her that book the gunman wanted.
“I haven’t actually talked to her, and can’t hear her right now, so I can’t ask her any questions to prove she’s here.”
“Then how am I…How can I talk to her?”
Lu’s shoulders stiffened. She didn’t like doing this either. Letting a ghost possess her, sharing her feelings, her memories, even for a short time.
“She wants to talk to you. Personally.”
“I don’t understand. Like a séance?”
“No. She wants to speak to you in her own words. That’s…harder. I’m…I can be a channel. She’ll share my body and can use my voice. She’ll step into me and talk through me.”
