“You can’t be here in this mirror. You can’t be talking to me. You can’t be real because you’re dead!”
“You have a choice: Either you continue to deny what’s happening here, and we waste precious time on useless speculation, or you admit that sometimes things happen without any rational explanation. When I was a kid, which, sadly, was in the middle of the last century, people said it was impossible to transplant a human heart; yet, now it’s done regularly. And before that, they said humans would never fly, but now San Francisco is just eleven hours away. Do you want more examples?”
“But ghosts don’t exist!”
“Well, then, the Tibetans, the Chinese, the Japanese, and the Scottish, and all the other civilizations that have worshiped their ancestors for centuries, are bumbling idiots. Thank goodness you, Thomas, know the truth.”
There was another knock at the door. Thomas asked in an annoyed voice who it was.
“It’s your mother and Colette,” whispered Raymond. “Who else could it be? Don’t say anything about my being here, of course. I’ll go now and come back when they’re gone.”
Thomas stood and opened the door. Colette entered first; Jeanne slipped in behind her.
“You were amazing!” exclaimed his godmother. “We just came to give you a kiss and then we’ll let you rest, unless you want to get a drink with two old ladies. Your mother keeps telling everyone who’ll listen that I’m going senile.”
“You’ll exhaust him, Colette,” Jeanne said with a sigh.
“Ah, well. At least I made it ten minutes without getting scolded.”
Thomas hugged his mother.
“The audience was over the moon,” she said.
“Forget the moon,” Thomas replied. “I played poorly. I’m lucky the orchestra was there to cover for me.”
“See, just like I said!” Colette exclaimed triumphantly. “I noticed you weren’t your usual self, but don’t worry, the audience was none thewiser. Your own mother didn’t even realize it. Who were you staring daggers at in the front row?”
“Someone who disappeared from my life a long time ago,” he said, staring at his reflection in the mirror.
Jeanne and Colette exchanged curious glances. Jeanne took her friend by the arm and pushed her toward the door.
“Let’s leave him be. I can see my boy is tired. I still know him better than you do.”
She waved to Thomas as she dragged Colette away. Colette blew him a kiss as she left.
Thomas heard his godmother grumbling in the hallway, and then there was silence.
The mirror reflected nothing but his own features. His mother wasn’t wrong—his face was ashen. Thomas hung up his stage clothes, grabbed his leather bag, turned out the lights in his dressing room, and left.
He ran into Marcel backstage and nodded good night, then walked out the stage door that led to the street. There, he found his father sitting on the hood of a car, his legs crossed.
“I would have loved to take you to dinner, but ... well, I can at least keep you company if you want to grab a bite.”
“What I really want is to be alone.”
“Crazy, isn’t it?” replied his father as he placed his arm around Thomas’s shoulder.
“You’re telling me!”
“What am I telling you?” asked a man who, at that very moment, had been passing Thomas on the sidewalk.
“Nothing. I wasn’t talking to you.”
“There’s no one else on the street,” the man pointed out. “And I don’t like your tone.”
“Forget it,” Thomas said, annoyed.
“Why shouldIforget it? You’re the one who just loudly accused me of telling you something a moment ago.”
