His voice snags slightly, eyes soft and liquid. I touch his arm, feeling his skin smooth and warm beneath my hand.
“Do you have a photo of her?”
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his wallet, flipping it open so I can see inside. There, behind the small plastic screen, is a photo of a gap-toothed little girl grinning up at the camera. She is wearing a paper crown, which is slipping slightly over her red hair. Sometimes I wonder how our many-chambered hearts can stand the loss all these years, why it doesn’t simply stop beating. I wonder how the grief can still twist inside you like a stitch in your side when you least expect it. The man clears his throat and swipes at his eyes.
“That picture was taken on her seventh birthday. Me and my wife—ex-wife now—we made her a Snoopy cake. She loved that stupid dog.”
“It’s so unfair. I’m sorry. Listen, I’m going to make a cup of tea. Do you want one, uh—?”
“Sam. I don’t suppose you’ve got anything cold, have you?”
“There’s juice in the fridge.”
“I was hoping for something stronger.”
“Like a beer?”
“Vodka. Tequila maybe. My mum used to keep a bottle of brandy under the sink.”
I laugh, pulling the mugs down from the cupboard in front of me.
“I think that would be unwise. They have AA meetings here.”
“Oh. Tea, then. Thanks.”
I fill the kettle and put it on to boil. When he speaks next, his voice is soft and so quiet I could almost have believed I’d imagined it.
“What you just said in there, about your brother—did he-did he ever come back?”
I stand very still. I hadn’t told the group about the photograph, the image of Eddie with those unsettling silvery eyes turned toward the camera because the rational side of me knows that it isn’t my brother. Itcan’tbe. It’s just some trick of the light, a smear on the camera lens. I know this and yet I cycle back to Eddie’s words that day—“If there’s anything out there, I’ll come back and tell you, Meens”—and I wonder. I wonder. Sam clears his throat.
“I went to see a psychic, you see. To try to make contact with Maggie.”
“Did it work?”
“You tell me.”
He hands me the piece of paper he has been holding. It has been scribbled all over, crumpled and folded from endless handling. Through the looping coils of script some words seem to float to the surface.Teeth. Heavy. Rust.
“It’s illegible.”
“The woman who wrote it claims it’s the work of spirits. ‘Psychography,’ it’s called. ‘Automatic writing.’ She went into a trance right in front of me. It cost me a hundred pounds. She must have seen me coming, right?”
Loops and curlicues, like hieroglyphs. A smear on a camera lens. The dead, walking among us.“We don’t fool anyone harder than we fool ourselves,”as Oscar is fond of saying. Heat flares in me like a stirred ember.
“I paid in cash. She told me I had to give her something of Maggie’s to be able to make contact—a toy or a piece of clothing—so I went up to the attic and I dug through all her old things, all the boxes we couldn’t bring ourselves to give away, to find that fucking Snoopy T-shirt she always wore. I was up there half the day. It tore me up to do it, but to take my money on top of that? It’s criminal.”
I reach for Sam and slide an arm around him. His eyes are gleaming.
“At her funeral—God, the tiny coffin, as light as a feather and the size of a toy but still I don’t know where I found the strength to lift it—I told Maggie I would come and find her. I was worried that she would be lonely. That she wouldn’t be able to find her way home. You see, I get it. Your brother, that weight you’re carrying? I understand.”
Something catches in my throat.“If there’s anything out there, I’ll come back and tell you, Meens.”Sam and I, orbiting a void, a life suspended just waiting for a sign.
“The worst thing about it is that I basically expose these kinds of people for a living,” Sam continues, voice strained and angry sounding, “grifters and con men and frauds. I learned to cold-read before I could fucking talk and I still fell for this crap.”
He screws up the piece of paper into his fist and shoves it clumsily into the swing bin beneath the counter.
“You cold-read for a job?”