43

43

I t sounds crazy, I know," Flora tells Belinda on the phone. She has laid it all out: her mother's visit, the tusk, the rash and eye twitch and beetles and Dark Spots. She even told Belinda that her imaginary friend tried to kill her.

Belinda is silent for a long moment, but Flora can hear her breathing and knows she is still on the line. "I'm sorry to hear all that," Belinda finally says, "but I'm not sure why you're calling me. I don't know how I can help."

Flora is in the woods. The sun warms the air and the ground; here under the trees, the snow is turning to ice. She slips and catches herself on a nearby tree trunk. The near fall skyrockets her heart rate.

"I need to talk to someone who knew my mom," she says. She looks up at the branches above, which weave a netted pattern in the sky. "Someone who won't think I'm totally nuts. Mom said you're spiritual, so I thought…" Her phone vibrates in her hand, and she pulls it away briefly to see that Connor is calling. She presses "ignore." "Or maybe you would know something about her, something from the last few years that might help me make sense of all this."

"I wish I did," Belinda says.

"Did you really go to psychic fairs together?"

"A few times," Belinda says.

"My mom never believed that stuff. How did you get her into it?" Flora asks.

" She got me into it," Belinda answers, much to Flora's surprise. "It all started because she wanted to reach someone on the other side."

Flora scrunches her eyebrows together and furiously itches the back of her inflamed hand. "What do you mean? Like… a dead person?"

"That's right," Belinda says.

"Who?" Flora asks quickly.

Belinda breathes into the phone. "She never told me." Disappointment or maybe regret laces her tone. "Your mother was a secretive person. We spent a lot of time together, yes, but it still felt like she was always holding something back."

"Yeah." Flora sighs. This is the first thing Belinda has said about Flora's mother that makes any sense.

Her phone vibrates. She again presses "ignore."

"I got the sense it was someone from her childhood," Belinda says. "A sibling, maybe. A sister. Did your mother lose a sister?"

Flora chews her lip. "No," she says, then quickly adds, "Well, not that I know of, anyway."

She thinks of the box of dresses, handmade with so much love. Maybe they belonged to an aunt Flora never knew she had. If the girl died when she was ten, that would explain the number of dresses. She just can't believe her mother wouldn't have told her.

actually I can believe it I just don't want to

Flora tries to picture her mother contacting the dead. A cartoonish image pops into her mind of Jodi staring into a crystal ball. "So when you went to these fairs, she would ask the psychic to make contact?"

"At first," Belinda replies, "but eventually we learned how to do it on our own."

"Like a séance?" Flora's voice explodes in disbelief.

"Yes, and we did it," Belinda says somewhat defensively. "We never reached your mom's contact, but we reached mine."

Flora's phone vibrates again, this time with a text from Connor. We need to talk, I'm gonna stay with friends back home for a bit. Give you a break. I'll be taking Iris.

Flora's heart detonates, every piece of shrapnel slicing her insides.

"You need to come here," she says to Belinda before she has even thought about the words. "You need to come and do a séance. To talk to my mom."

"In Vermont?" Belinda asks.

"Yes, this must be—this makes sense now—why she mentioned you to me, why she mentioned the psychic fairs. You're the only one who can help—"

"Flora…" Belinda takes a deep breath, and Flora can tell that Belinda does not understand the urgency of the situation.

"Listen," Flora says, "I'm worried. About what I might do—what she might do through me. My daughter, she's so little." Flora tries to steady her voice. "Please, please, you have to come tonight. He's taking my baby."

"Who is taking your baby?"

"My husband," Flora says, unable to catch her breath, "he's taking her away. I need you to come now. I don't have time, I—" She cannot hold it in anymore; the tears begin to fall. "Oh God, it's all happening now."

"I can't come to Vermont tonight," Belinda says, and Flora crumples. Of course she can't expect a stranger to hop on a plane in a matter of hours to maybe-kinda wrangle a dead spirit.

But she has to try. For her daughter, she has to try. Because the moment she loses her, she loses everything. She loses her will to live.

"Please," Flora says, "if you've made contact with the dead before, you have to come here and try. You have to try to talk to my mother. To figure out what she wants. To force her to leave us alone. If you don't, my daughter… She is going to hurt my daughter. I know she is." Her voice drops impossibly low. "My mother wants to kill her. She wants her dead. "

A very long silence hangs in the air, and Flora can suddenly hear a whooshing around her, as if she is attuned to the world's blood rushing in its veins all around her. Finally, she hears Belinda's lips part.

"Okay," the woman says, her voice small.

Flora sucks in so much air that her chest might pop.

"Okay," she replies.