47

47

H er dad believes her. He believes her. He didn't call her crazy. He packed himself into the car and agreed to ride with her to fetch Belinda.

Even if he is only choosing to believe her, something cracked open within him last night. His confession about Zephie crumbled decades-old walls around his heart. And Flora knows that he will do anything to protect Iris—he would never forgive himself for making the same mistake twice.

Flora drives fast this time, too, but not out of anger. Now she is giddy with hope. She isn't going at this alone. It finally seems like she and Iris might have a chance. Flora will not live the rerun of her mother's life; she will not waste the years avoiding her daughter out of fear. Because she knows now: She is not a bad mother. This isn't her. At least, this isn't all her. She is not to blame. She can make this right.

"I think that's Belinda," Flora says when they arrive at the airport. She points to a woman at the curb's edge leaning on her suitcase. Belinda wears a soft linen-blend knee-length black shirt over a pair of dark jeans. Tall boots kiss the bottoms of her knees, and her hair falls in thick waves past her shoulders, graying at the roots. Her delicate jewelry is made of colorful stones and thin silver. Her waist is slim but her hips balloon out as if she is wearing a small inner tube around her gut.

"You look so much like your mother," Belinda says when she sees Flora.

"Really?" Flora is surprised. "I never thought so…"

Her dad pipes up from the back seat. "Oh, yes, you definitely do," he says. Something he has never told her before.

The three make introductions, pack Belinda's suitcase into the trunk, and set out on the road. Flora feels a bit like she's driving a demented clown car: a new, emotionally vulnerable version of her father in the back; Belinda, a stranger who talked to dead people with Flora's mom, in the passenger seat; and, most likely, floating around somewhere in here, the spirits of her dead sister and mother.

Flora catches Belinda up to speed on everything she learned in the last few hours. Her dad contributes when relevant. At one point, Belinda's eyes drift upward as she nods slowly, assembling puzzle pieces in her mind.

She asks Flora, "Zephie appeared to you when?"

"Oh, I must have been two?" Flora guesses.

"No," Belinda says, "I mean when did she first appear to you recently?"

Flora thinks. She remembers the voice in the monitor, Zephie holding her hand, the trail of beetles. "The same day I reached out to Mom."

Belinda nods, as if she had been expecting this answer. "And the last time you saw her was in the bathroom? When you stabbed your mother with the tusk?"

Flora sees her father wince in the rearview mirror. She grips the wheel more tightly. "Well, I saw her for just a second in the shower the other day. When she tried to burn the house down."

"Yes, that's right. She lured you to the tub. The same bathtub." Belinda sucks on her incisor with her tongue, nodding to herself. "I wonder if they are connected somehow. Your mother's spirit and Zephie's. Zephie appeared first, then you contacted your mother shortly after. When you stabbed your mother's form with the tusk, Zephie, too, disappeared."

"So what does that mean?"

"It means, perhaps, that if we have trouble connecting with your mother, we might have another pathway through Zephie. It's a good thing."

Suddenly nauseous, Flora rolls down the window. She doesn't like the idea of using Zephie to get to her mother. It feels dangerous or cruel.

Belinda's face goes slack, a heaviness setting in. "That must be who she was trying to reach. I had no idea…"

Her father leans in from the back seat. "So are we really going to have some kind of séance?"

Belinda turns toward him and nods. "It's a scary idea, I know. I thought so at first, too."

"Flora says you've done it before? That it worked for you?" he asks.

"My son." Belinda nods. "He was very sick when he died." For the first time since she got into the car, her gaze retreats out the window. "It was nice to know that he is no longer in pain. Comforting."

Flora slowly passes a cyclist, who is illuminated by the early morning light that greets the quiet backcountry road. A month ago, she would have doubted Belinda's story. She would have chalked it up to some kind of mental placebo effect: an elaborate form of self-therapy for a grieving mother. But now, just a few weeks later, having gone through what she has gone through, she is more inclined to believe Belinda.

Or maybe, like her father, she wants to believe her. Needs to.

Belinda continues. "You know, it's even more unusual to me that Jodi never told me about the daughter she lost. She knew my son had passed. We had that in common. Why wouldn't she have shared?"

Flora echoes her father's words from years ago. "My mother's sadness was all her own. That's all she'd let it be." She makes eye contact with her dad in the rearview, one corner of his mouth turning upward in sad acknowledgment.

Then he asks Belinda another question. "Why is this all happening?"

Belinda sighs. "I suspect there is some ‘unfinished business,' as they say. Between Flora and her mother." Then, to Flora, she adds, "Or maybe some problem of your mother's that she thinks you can help solve."

Flora loosens her grip on the wheel, which she had inadvertently tightened again. She stretches her fingers long and sees that they are shaking. She takes a deep breath in an attempt to steady herself. They are on a narrow two-lane road flanked by ditches.

"Is there anything you want to tell her?" Belinda asks.

"Yeah, ‘leave us the fuck alone,'" Flora says.

Her father raises an eyebrow.

Belinda is struck by another thought. "You said the tusk burned her. You still have it?" she asks.

Flora nods.

"Good," Belinda continues. "I think that tusk is the only thing that can destroy her."

Flora thinks about this duality that keeps coming up for her—this notion that creator and destroyer are one. The tusk, the very thing that facilitated her mother's return, is also the only thing that can get rid of her.

"You want to destroy her?" Flora's father asks, eyes wide.

"Dad…" Flora says, making eye contact in the rearview. "What choice do we have?"

"Right," he says, looking down. "You're right, of course."

Belinda looks to them both, sad. "I know on some level it probably feels like a betrayal. But this thing is clearly not your mother. It is only the worst parts of her. It's like this broken part of Jodi was awakened when you had a baby, and that broken part of her—that's the part that wants to hurt Iris."

"She couldn't have her daughter, so she doesn't want me to have mine," Flora says, realizing the truth of the words as she says them.

Belinda nods. "I think so. The worst parts of her want you to suffer as badly as she did. But again: that thing is not her. It's not Jodi."

Her dad agrees from the back seat. "You're right. Jodi wouldn't want this. Never."

Flora's eyes remain fixed on the road but glaze over in a glassy stare as she thinks. The spirit of her mother is hurting, and it only knows how to exist by hurting others the same way. It's a childish motivation: something a toddler would do. Flora thinks of all the times she had to parent her own mother in life. Perhaps she should not be shocked that she will need to parent her mother in death, too.