Dear Lizzie, this is for you, because of everything you’ve gone through . . . I had to stop there and stare at the car. Seriously?
“It’s from my dad.”
“I knew it!” Jamie cried. “The second I saw the dealer plates, I knew that this was some kind of terrorism-related guilt gift!”
I shook my head. “No way. My dad wouldn’t do this.”
“Clearly he has. What else does it say?”
I stared down at the paper, which had turned everything I’d thought about my father completely sideways. But as I kept reading, everything turned sideways again.
. . . especially now with your mother’s diagnosis. I wish I could do more.
They’ll slip the keys under the door. Love, Dad.
“No,” I said softly.
Jamie was still laughing, her fingers stroking the curving lines of metal. But my mind went rushing back to two nights before, when I’d been making ravioli with Mom. What she’d said about my father: You’ll need him one day.
This is what she’d been talking about.
“My mom’s sick.”
It took a long, twisting moment for Jamie’s laughter to fade. “She’s what?”
I held out the piece of paper, unable to speak. Jamie pulled it from my hand and read, her expression showing everything I was too shocked to feel.
“What diagnosis? What’s he talking about?”
I shook my head.
“But you’d know, Lizzie! I mean, your mom would never tell him anything before she told you.”
“She said something the other night,” I managed. “About me needing him.”
“No way.” She crumpled the paper in her hand. “He must be f**king with you.”
I wanted to believe Jamie, but my mind was still flashing back to everything Mom had said two nights before. Jamie doesn’t want to talk about herself. She wants to be there for you.
My mother hadn’t meant Jamie. She’d been talking about herself.
“She thinks I can’t take it,” I said softly.
Jamie shook her head. “Even if she’s hiding something, Anna would have told him not to tell you! Not even your dad would just forget something like that.”
As I stood there, some cold, impassive part of my mind worked it out. It was easier to tease apart my father’s motivations than to think about what the note had just told me.
“He wanted to spoil me.”
Jamie looked at the car. “You mean, to be nice?”
“Not that kind of spoil. This was a spoiler.” I was breathing hard now. “He wanted to show that he found out Mom was sick before me. To make the point that he knew and I didn’t.”
Suddenly my legs were too weak to hold me, and I sat down right there on the driveway. It wasn’t like falling, just a slow collapse into a heap. I wrapped my arms around my knees, and my eyes closed.
A second later, Jamie was right next to me.
“It’s okay, Lizzie.”
“It’s not.”
Her hand smoothed my hair. “You don’t even know what kind of diagnosis. It could be, like, for a root canal or something.”
I didn’t even bother to argue with that. People don’t use the word ‘diagnosis’ for root canals. Nor does anyone buy a car for you when your mother requires dentistry.
Instead I said, “What if it’s me?”
“What do you mean?”
“The attack in Dallas, whatever disease my mom has.”
I opened my eyes and looked at her pleadingly. She didn’t answer.
“What if it’s all because of me?” I asked. “I’m not a valkyrie at all. I’m a f**king grim reaper.”
“You’re talking crazy, Lizzie.” Jamie’s voice was calm but stern. “You didn’t cause what happened in Dallas. That was those guys from Colorado. And whatever your mother has, it’s because of a bacteria or something. Not you.”
I shook my head. Jamie didn’t know what was inside me, the cold place that resonated with the darkness of the afterworld. She didn’t know that I could see ghosts, could cross over to the flipside, and could see the dead histories of things dancing in front of me. She hadn’t seen the little girls, the way they looked at me, wanted me.
She didn’t know that I was part of death now.
“It’s inside me, Jamie.”
She pried one of my hands loose from my knees and held it. “What is?”
“Since Dallas. There’s something different about me.”
“Of course there is. But nothing that can make your mom sick. We should call her and find out what this is all about.”
“Maybe it’s always been with me.” I squeezed Jamie’s hand. “I grew up with Mindy. She’s been here since before I was born.”
“Wait. Who the hell is Mindy?”
Suddenly I had to explain it all. “My mother’s best friend, when she was little. She was murdered. It changed my mother’s life.”
Jamie was just staring at me. I could hear that I was barely making sense, but somehow I couldn’t stop talking. I’d hidden so much from her, from everyone, and I had to say it aloud now.
“I think it changed me too. I grew up with the ghost of that little girl.”
Jamie stared at me a long time. “Are you serious? That really happened to Anna?”
“When she was eleven years old, her best friend disappeared on a trip with her parents. But they found Mindy buried in her own backyard. That’s why my mom’s always afraid for me.”
Jamie dropped my hand. “You mean, like on that field trip last year, when she texted you every five minutes?”
I nodded.
“Crap,” Jamie said. “I made so much fun of you about that.”
“Mindy’s always been here, since before I was born. That’s why I’m changing so fast.” Even if half the stuff coming out of my mouth sounded crazy to Jamie, it was helping me to say it out loud. I was a natural psychopomp, just like Yama had said.
Jamie squeezed my hand harder. “You know there’s no such thing as ghosts, Lizzie. But why didn’t you ever tell me about this little girl?”
“I didn’t find out until after Dallas. Mom hid it from me.” I looked down at the crumpled note, now on the ground. “Just like she hid being sick.”
“Lizzie. We should call your mother.”
“Sure.” I put my hand on the bumper of the new car, pushed myself back to standing. I knew what I had to do now. “But not while she’s at work. I bet she hasn’t told them either. We can’t just drop this on her.”
“But it got dropped on you!”
“That’s not her fault.”
Jamie didn’t look like she agreed, but said, “Okay. But I’m staying with you till she gets back.”
“You don’t have to.” I took a deep breath, forcing myself to smile at her. “I mean, I kind of need to be alone. Please.”
She stared at me, and I stared back. The cold place inside me was growing, keeping me calm.
“Are you really okay?” she finally said.
I nodded and gave her a hug.
Eventually Jamie was convinced, and I watched her drive away, smiling and waving at her. Then I walked to the front door and opened it. There on the floor was another blue envelope. I knelt and picked it up. Metal clinked inside.
“Lizzie?”
It was Mindy, peeking out of the hallway that led to my mother’s bedroom.
“Everything’s okay,” I said.
“You look funny.”
I nodded. No doubt I did look funny, like someone ready to calmly tear the world to pieces. The blue envelope ripped in half like tissue paper, the car keys dropping into my hand.
“I have to go away tonight. But I’ll be back tomorrow, I promise.”
“Okay,” Mindy said hesitantly. “Where are you going?”
“To fix things,” I said.
* * *
The new car had a fancy GPS system, which blinked to life when I started the engine. But instead of simply taking me to Hillier Lane in Palo Alto, the car wanted to dither and delay, to regale me with operating instructions and helpful hints and endless safety tips, as if it wanted to get to know me.
It had picked the wrong day for that. Two minutes in I switched it off and asked my phone for directions.
The cold place inside me had made me logical, somehow, and I had realized something. In some way—deep in his brain, in his heart, in his spirit—my father saw me the same way that Mr. Hamlyn saw ghosts. The same way the two of them saw everyone, as pieces in a game. Our emotions were just threads to weave amusing patterns with.
I couldn’t fix my father, or what he’d done to my mother over eighteen years of marriage. And I couldn’t fix Mr. Hamlyn either.
But I could fix the bad man.
* * *
It was almost three in the morning when I found Hillier Lane.
It shouldn’t have taken eleven hours to get there, but I’d begun my journey at the start of rush hour, on a route that led me through the treacly heart of Los Angeles. It was also possible that I made a few wrong turns.
My phone’s battery had started to fade two hours into the trip, so I’d switched it off and followed I-5, and then highway signs the rest of the way to Palo Alto. In the end I’d done something even more old-fashioned, asking a gas station attendant for help. It hardly mattered how long the trip took. I was a valkyrie. I didn’t need sleep.
It was strange, seeing the bad man’s house in the colors of the overworld. The bungalow wasn’t gray, it turned out, but painted a sunny saffron orange, like runny egg yolks. But it wasn’t a cheery sight. My valkyrie eyes were like a cat’s—half on the flipside—and I could still see the dead girls paired with their gnarled little trees.
As I got out of my shiny new car, they turned to face me. But they didn’t make me nervous anymore. I walked straight into them, and knelt next to one of the trees.
“I’m going to fix this,” I announced, and began to dig.
My hands clawed at the neat circle of wood chips around its base, tossing them aside. The little ghosts looked on, curious and silent, as I worked. My hands reached loose dirt, then packed soil full of stones and bugs. I wondered if there were any neighbors watching as well, wondering what the hell I was doing. I wasn’t so sure myself. I only knew that I was driven by a burning need to find the truth buried beneath those trees.
But then my fingers were grappling with the tangled roots of the tree, thick and gnarled and unbreakable. I swore, and looked up at the ghost looking down at me. It was the one in overalls with sparkly barrettes in her hair.
“Don’t worry,” I said. My hands were covered with dirt, and they ached from digging. “He’s not getting away with it.”
I rose and steadied myself, my eyes fixed on the bad man’s front door. I willed myself across to the flipside as I climbed the porch steps. A moment later I was inside.
His bedroom was as tidy as ever, and the bad man was sound asleep beneath thick blankets. It was cold up here in northern California. I hadn’t even noticed.
I stared down at him, for the first time unsure of what to do next.
Maybe I’d expected my anger alone to be enough. As if I could unwind the bad man with a glance. But reality was slowly seeping into my body. My muscles were cramped from driving all those hours, from digging with bare hands. My head pounded from grinding my teeth, and part of me wanted to turn my phone back on and call my mom. She would be worried senseless by now.
Instead I stared down at the bad man, listening to him breathe.
I couldn’t just leave him sleeping peacefully. He’d done so much damage, and every moment he lived did more. It was the bad man’s memories that kept Mindy’s last hours alive.
I slipped my bottom lip between my teeth and bit down hard. The pain threw me back into the real world, and color rushed into the room. Like the outside of the house, the bedroom was full of color now—the curtains turned yellow, the walls a light russet, the blankets were patterned in dark greens. Even in darkness, the room seemed joyful.