How to End a Love Story(20)

“Who wants to talk to some ghosts?” he asks. He’s had a few hot toddies and an alcoholic hot chocolate too. They all have. “I got this in a discount bin after Halloween.”

There was a period of time a few years after her sister’s death when Helen was consumed with wondering whether it was possible to communicate with the dead. Her parents were scientists who held the scientific method more sacred than the smattering of Sunday school classes she and Michelle attended (for concerns of socialization and assimilation, rather than their immortal souls). So Helen wrote a college research paper on the subject to exorcise herself of the obsessive wondering, and she now recalls a paragraph on Ouija boards.

She’d found the concept of them silly, like a slow phone connection to the afterlife.

Make more of an effort.

“You know, Ouija boards were created as a Victorian parlor game so people could flirt,” she says, tentative.

“Why would we know that,” Nicole says.

Helen wants to shrink down until she disappears into the cracks of the floorboards, but next to her, Tom says, “I knew that, because I’m not uncultured swine.”

Nicole barks out a laugh. “Fine, then I want to flirt with a Victorian ghost.”

Grant stokes the fire as the rest of them kneel around the floor, the Ouija board laid out in the middle of the coffee table.

“Grant, get over here, we’re gonna booty-call a ghost for Nicole,” Owen shouts.

Helen suddenly wonders if Grant Shepard believes in ghosts.

“You guys have fun with that,” he says. “I’m gonna sit this one out.”

He swings his long legs onto a love seat and pulls out his Kindle.

“Lame,” Eve heckles him.

“Everyone, put a finger on the planchette,” Owen says, reading the instructions. “Then we ask a simple question, like ‘Are you friendly?’ or ‘How many spirits are with us tonight?’”

“Are you friendly?” Saskia asks the antler chandelier.

Helen glances in Grant’s direction. He doesn’t look back at her and she can’t remember the last time their eyes met without some awful thing passing between them.

The planchette beneath their fingers moves slowly, slowly, to the Yes on the upper left corner.

“Oh, that’s nice,” Saskia says. “Hi, ghost . . . ghosts? How many are there?”

They look at each other as the planchette travels across the board.

“I’m not moving it,” Tom says.

“It’s a psychological thing,” says Eve. “Everyone unconsciously moves it a little toward the answer they want.”

“Stop being so logical,” Suraya says. “Ghosts are talking.”

The planchette lands between 2 and 3.

“So there’s . . . two and a half ghosts here? Or twenty-three?” Helen frowns.

“I like two and a half,” Nicole says. “Which half? The bottom?”

The planchette stays still.

“I don’t think the ghosts liked that question,” Saskia says.

“Did you die here?” Tom asks.

The planchette moves to the Yes.

“Spooky,” Owen says.

“Were you hot?” asks Nicole.

The planchette stays on the Yes.

“So we’ve got two and a half hot ghosts who all died here,” Nicole says. “I feel like a ghost orgy is the way to go.”

“We should ask them about dead people we actually know,” Owen says.

Helen glances up at Grant. She could have sworn she felt the prickling heat of his gaze, but he’s determinedly reading his Kindle.

“Do you know my grandma Ruth?” Nicole asks. “She died last year.”

The planchette moves to the No.

“Well, that makes sense. There’s probably a lot of ghosts in the spirit realm,” Nicole adds. “Anyone else wanna try?”

“Helen, do you have any ghosts you want to talk to?” Suraya asks.

Helen swallows. She’s reminded suddenly of those awful hours spent in the school counselor’s office her last few weeks of senior year, when she’d heard whispers follow her every step—can’t believe she’s even here, her little sister, I know I wouldn’t be coming to school like normal if it was me. She remembers the adults trying to help her, asking her so patiently, so condescendingly, “And what would you say if you could talk to your sister now?”

You have to make more of an effort, Helen thinks to herself miserably.

“I’ve got a ghost,” Grant says abruptly. “Move over.”

He squeezes between Suraya and Owen and puts his finger on the planchette. Helen looks up at him, which is a mistake because Grant’s brown eyes are instantly on hers. She registers the stirring of some raw, terrible, unspoken thing clawing up inside him, before he snaps his gaze away. Come back here, she wants to say. I want a better look at you.

Grant clears his throat. “My uncle died last December. Fred Shepard. He’s got a bunch of boxes in the basement we still have to go through, and I think we should just throw them out. That cool?”

The planchette moves to G . . . E . . . T . . .

Owen yanks his hand off. “Nope, nope, nope. This is getting too spooky for me.”

“Get is too spooky for you?” Grant laughs.