How, when Claire first came in tonight, she referred to the spirit she came to contact as “her” before correcting herself.
Shaking so hard, I can barely stand, I whisper, “If you give people light, they’ll find their own way.”
When I meet Fiona’s gaze, her eyes are shining with tears.
I sob, then slap a hand over my mouth to stifle it. Then I grab the phone from Claire, run back to the junk drawer, and pull things out, frantically tossing pens, post-it notes, take-out menus and batteries onto the floor until I find what I’m looking for.
Eddie the handyman’s business card.
I didn’t notice it before, but the card is fragile and yellowed with age, the ink flaking in places. It looks as if it was printed decades ago.
Which it probably was.
With the sound of the raging storm outside nearly deafening me, I dial his number.
The phone rings twice before a man picks up. “Homefront Handyman, three generations strong. How can I help you?”
Gripping the phone in my shaking hands, I ask, “Is Eddie there, please?”
His short silence seems surprised. “Uh, no. This is Mark. How can I help you?”
“Please, I really, really need to speak with Eddie. Can you put him on the phone? Is he around?”
After another pause, the man on the other end of the line says, “Is this a joke or something?”
I shout, “Just put him on the phone!”
He sighs heavily. “Look, lady. I normally don’t pick up this late, but business has been slow, so I did. You’ve made me regret it. Have yourself a good night.”
“Please!” I beg, desperate. “I have to talk to Eddie! I have to talk to him right now!”
He snaps, “Yeah, well, that’s gonna be kinda hard, lady, because my grandpa died in 1974.”
All the breath leaves my lungs. A sob catches in my throat. Two more fluorescent light bulbs in the ceiling explode with a pop.
“Kayla.”
When I whirl around in panic, Fiona is holding out one of Dante’s envelopes to me.
“Read the name on the return address,” she says gently.
Hyperventilating, I snatch it from her hand. “Dante Alighieri,” I cry, shaking my head. “His name is Dante Alighieri! So what?”
“Don’t just look at it…see.”
When I return my gaze to the upper left corner of the envelope, all the letters in the return address are now moving, trading places with one another and slowly rearranging themselves into something else.
I blink rapidly, trying to clear my vision. It doesn’t help. The letters move sideways, overlapping then straightening out into another name.
A name that rips a hole straight through the fabric of my heart.
Aidan Leighrite.
Dante Alighieri is an anagram for Aidan Leighrite.
Into my mind flashes an image of the framed Thoreau quote on the wall of Destiny’s parlor: “It’s not what you look at, it’s what you see.”
I’ve been blind. Refusing to acknowledge the truth.
Looking at everything, but seeing nothing at all.
Tears streaming down my face, I drop the envelope and run from the kitchen. I burst through the door of Michael’s office and fall sobbing onto his desk.
I snatch up the newspaper with Michael’s picture on the front. With shaking hands, I unfold it all the way. When I see the rest of the headline that was obscured, my heart stops beating.
The headline isn’t Local Man Drowns, as it appeared when folded.
The full headline is Local Man Drowns Wife.
From the other side of the crease, my photo stares back at me.
I see myself standing at Michael’s grave the day of the funeral, hearing a woman sob my name, and realize with the sensation of the floor disappearing beneath my feet that the name on the headstone wasn’t my husband’s.
It was my own.
It all comes back in a rush. A locked iron door inside my mind flings itself open, and an icy black ocean of memory floods in.
I scream.
The windows explode outward into a million razor-sharp glinting shards of glass that are instantly sucked into the storm and carried off into the rainy night. A violent whirlwind rips the newspaper from my hand and sends it flying madly around the room, torn to pieces.
Fiona and Claire stand in the office doorway. A small barefoot figure in blue pajamas cowers behind them in terror, peeking out from around Fiona’s legs.
It’s the little blond boy I kept seeing on the lawn.
The boy who took one look at me and screamed in pure terror.
The boy who lives here with his parents, Sandy and David Wainwright, who bought this house a month after my husband ended my life.