Where are you?
Lee had sensed back then that the door was of great importance. It was not just a piece of glass. It might have been the last thing his mother touched. Lee could sense traces of her there, because he’d always known when she was close. His mother was static electricity before a lightning storm, and she buzzed across his skin.
Just like the first time, he fell asleep.
He heard her screams but did not wake, just as it happened every night. Her voice was never sharp enough to tear him from sleep. The fabric of the suitcase muffled her voice, and the zipper jingled as it rattled, and the suitcasethunkthunkthunkedunevenly over the porch because of the broken wheel. The seams of the suitcase groaned as fingers scratched at the vinyl interior.
But, like always, the suitcase remained tightly closed, and Lee did not wake.
In the morning, Lee opened the suitcase and found a sea turtle.
It had blood in its nose and cracks in its shell. Its ancient flesh had turned papery and it smelled like rotting fish. It had probably just made it to Lee’s patio and thought the suitcase was a warm place to die in private, and Lee couldn’t even blame itbecause he’d had the same thought. He rolled the suitcase out to the shore and dumped the turtle into the water, where it floated out to sea on its back and the foamy water devoured it.
He’d forgotten to check if his message had been answered, but he was too late—the morning had wiped the glass door clean, and if there had ever been an answer, it was gone now.
Lee left the door open when he checked out in the morning. He knew housekeeping would close it eventually, but as he left the room, he couldn’t bear to shut it.
He put his hand on the doorknob to the hallway, suitcase in the other hand, and closed his eyes.
“I’m leaving now, Mom,” he whispered. “Last chance.”
He looked over his shoulder at the open door.
There was white sand, and swaying shadows of trees, and the dark ocean in the distance. But his mom did not return.
That was how Lee knew, now, in the house behind the sword ferns, that a location wasn’t enough to call a ghost forward. If all it took was the same place and strong desire, then Lee’s mother would have come to him then. She loved him, and he’d given her more than enough to work with. Which meant there was some other barrier between them that the girl had somehow managed to shatter.
Deep in his rib cage, another thought scratched at him.
Why her and not James?
If Lee were to be haunted by anyone, it should have been James. He would have accepted that. He deserved it. But instead of a simple and clean haunting, Lee got another puzzle.
He lay in bed and tried to remember, for the hundredth time, what James had done wrong. But there was only the ceiling, and the open door with no one in it, and the scent of cleaning chemicals, and the looming shadow of his closet.
It was nearing dinnertime, but Lee couldn’t hear Hina anywhere in the house. Normally, she would have started cookingby now. Lee didn’t mind making his own dinner—he couldn’t taste anyway, so his cooking skills didn’t matter—but his father didn’t eat if Hina didn’t cook.
Lee peered out the window, confirming that Hina’s car was still in the driveway, which meant she was somewhere in the house. He checked the garden and shed—maybe Hina had lost track of time while gardening?—but she wasn’t outside.
Instead, there were two thin, parallel lines in the dirt, carving a path from the northern yard out toward the shore.
Against his will, Lee pictured Hina in a suitcase. She was smaller than his mother and could probably fit in a carry-on if her pelvis was broken. Lee was walking before he realized what he was doing, following the scarred path out to the sea.
He found Hina sitting on the sand. The tracks were not suitcase tracks at all, but the wheels of a small cooler that Hina had dragged behind her. Inside, there were some scattered ice packs and a few bottles of Ramune. Hina seemed not to notice Lee’s approach, staring transfixed out at the ocean.
“Hina?” Lee called.
She turned around at once, eyes wide, then she smiled and gestured for him to join her.
Lee sat down stiffly in the sand. It was softer than he’d expected and seemed to breathe him in, cradling the base of his spine. The sea rushed up to greet him, the cold water kissing his toes before rolling back into the foamy brine.
“It’s beautiful out here, isn’t it?” Hina said, still staring toward the horizon.
“It’s...” Lee trailed off, searching for the right word. He liked how small the ocean made him feel, like it could devour him and all his problems in a single gulp. Nothing mattered in the face of the endless churning sea. It was important, all-consuming, all-devouring. It might have been beautiful, but Lee had never been good at discerning beauty.
“It’s everything,” Hina finished for him, because she always knew what he meant.
Lee nodded, hugging his knees to his chest.
