“Fiona.” Patricia’s voice was singsong. “Fiona, look over here.”
A slow, imperious swivel of her head, an owlish blink. Fiona had been crying. Her rounded cheeks were glossy and sticky-looking. I felt a gasp stuck in my chest, my amazement lodging there. Fiona, resurrected, right here.
“Can you do that again?”
“I want Mama.” Fiona used both hands to push her hair off her face, her scowl deepening. “Mama. Where is she?”
“The trick again. Like earlier.”
Fiona stared, baleful. She shook her head, burying her face in her hands. “Mama,” she said, muffled, and I imagined Fiona trying to comprehend the loss of her mother, trying to understand that the person she loved most wouldn’t be coming back.
I swallowed, dizzy for a second. The camera zoomed in. It must’ve been a Super 8, faded and flickering, everything washed into nostalgic watercolors. The video had the dreamy, harmless quality of a home video. Fiona breathed heavily, on the verge of tears.
A rattling noise. A fine, quick shudder. The camera moved away from Fiona to focus on a candle, sitting inside a lumpy clay holder, perched at the edge of the table. There was something strange about the flame, the way it seemed to flicker to life just as the camera panned to it. An unnaturalness at the edges. At the sight of the flame, I felt a familiar jolt of fear.
An agonizingly long moment, and then the candleholder shuddered. It quivered against the table like it was caught in an isolated earthquake, even as the rest of the kitchen stood still, not even a curtain twitching. I heard a whisper—“My god”—and wasn’t sure whether it was the Patricia holding the camera or the current version of her, standing behind me.
The holder rose just barely, not even an inch. It hovered, or maybe it was a trick of the light, my brain trying to turn it into an illusion even as I watched it. The flame hovered in the center of the screen, so bright it felt like it could reach through into the present and eat away the entire basement. Then the candleholder came down hard, shattering into jagged puzzle pieces. Beside me, Cate flinched. The candle fell onto the table, and Patricia’s hand reached into the frame to press the flame out before it could spread.
From the projector, a high-pitched wail rose, sludgy with tears. The thump of little footsteps, growing distant, as Fiona ran.
We stayed on the shattered pieces a moment longer, as if this would convince us that it was real. That what we’d seen—cause, effect, object rises, object breaks—had truly happened. I imagined that the version of Patricia stuck forever in 1977 couldn’t make herself look away. So different from the woman who’d refused to look me in the face.
“Fiona. Come back.” The camera tracked her down the hallway, quavering, trembling with the movement of Patricia’s body as she chased after the girl. Fiona was visible in snatches: tangled hair, little feet. She veered off into another room, one I recognized. The room with the big saggy couch, the same one in that photo of pregnant Lily-Anne I’d rescued from Cate’s house. The view panned across the wall, catching the edges of the pictures and artwork, and I spotted the same framed Time cover on the wall. I thought of Lily-Anne standing there heavily pregnant in that Polaroid. Now here was the product of that pregnancy, in that same room years later, trembling and feral.
Fiona stood in the corner, hugging herself. She looked so small. The camera crept closer, and I imagined Patricia approaching this girl the way she’d approach a cornered animal. A hard dread grew in my chest.
Patricia said, “I know you’re hurting, little one. I’m so sorry it’s all so heavy right now. I’m here for you.” A pause. “Remember the candle? Can you do it again? Just show me. One more time.” Fiona’s hair hid her face. Those damp, angry eyes, shining out from behind her matted curls. Which—in the shadowed room—looked as dark a red as dried blood. “Please,” Patricia said. “Show us all what you can do. Our little miracle.”
Fiona was shaking her head again. “Where’s my mama?”
Cate tensed beside me. I felt it too. This desire to reach through that flimsy projector screen, all the way back through the layers of time, and defend this little girl. It was the first maternal instinct I’d ever felt. I was Girl One. The iconic daughter. The one famous for having been mothered. Right now, all I wanted was to help Fiona.
“Mama will come?” Fiona asked. She had gone very still. “I do trick?”
Cate’s hand slipped into mine. Reassuring.