“I’m sorry, Jo. I’m sorry for getting you involved in all this. I should have left you alone,” he says.
He vanishes as the morning sun passes the tops of the trees. I consider calling him back, but my body decides for me, and I’m unconscious in less than a minute. My dreams are dark, full of empty coffins and bloodstained missing person posters.
Twenty-Three
Tonight, my mom is atthe store with Paige, leaving her giant television up for grabs. There’s one in the living room, but it’s at least twenty years old, bulky and temperamental. Mom’s TV is the best in the house.
But when I get down the stairs, a giant bowl of chips pressed between my arm and hip, I find the television occupied.
Aisha and Sloane sit sprawled across the futon.
The basement was renovated around ten years ago and turned into a living area and guest room. One side of the room is now my mom’s room, with a big bed and a dresser. The staircase cuts through the middle. On the other side, a plush purple futon and the TV.
Aisha fumbles for the remote. Sloane jumps to her feet. Both human actions, like kids caught with their hands in the cookie jar.
It’s easy to forget how young they both are. How much they’ve lost.
“Oh. It’s you.”Sloane flops back onto the futon. When anyoneelse sits, the metal frame creaks and groans. It doesn’t so much as shift with Sloane on it.“We’re watching something about Saturn’s rings. Riveting stuff.”She clears her throat and leans back with exaggeration.“It’s Aisha’s turn on the TV.”
“You can watch your cooking shows at nine p.m. and not a minute before,” Aisha says pleasantly.“And there’s always the living room.”
Sloane snorts.“Right. Margot’s home and it’s Friday, so there’s a new episode of that trashy reality show she watches. With the volume on full blast.”She scrunches her nose and says, “Feel like passing a message along?”
I hold my hands up in surrender.
“The volume debate isn’t a new one. She has the captions on and everything, she just likes it loud,” I say.
Sloane groans.
“Welcome to my world,” I say.
“I may have wanted to kill my brothers half the time, but god, I don’t think I could have handled a sister,” Sloane says.
“I never got to meet mine,” Aisha says.“She’s probably so big now. Probably doesn’t even know who I am.”
Sorrow settles in the room like a dense fog.
So many futures that will never come to fruition.
“Your parents will tell her all about you,” I say.
“Yeah?” Aisha asks softly, voice wavering.
Jasper was barely a toddler when my dad left. Whatever memories he had of him, even blurred images over a crib, faded with time. But to hear Jasper talk, you’d think the pair had years together, more than the holiday visits we get each year. We’ve fed him a steady diet of photos, videos, and stories his whole life, and sometimes it feels like my dad is still here. Like when Jasper tellsthe story of one of our memories, we all get to live in the moment it happened.
The ones we lose never really leave us. They’re never truly forgotten.
“I know it,” I say.
Aisha’s eyes glitter with tears. I wish with every fiber of my being that I could pull the girl into a hug, squeeze her until there’s no room left for loss. I wish her childhood was a real one.
I don’t hear the basement door open and notice too late the creaking of the stairs as someone descends. Another thing I’ve gotten pretty good at since I’ve begun conversing with ghosts is pretending I wasn’t conversing with ghosts.
As I start angling my body away from Aisha and Sloane, Margot is in sight.
“Jo? What are you doing down—” My sister reaches the last step, eyes gliding to me, then past, to the couch where Aisha and Sloane sit. She trips on the final step, catching herself at the last second. She huffs, blowing the hair out of her eyes, gaze snapping back to the couch.
The couch with people she shouldn’t be able to see.
