Six

SIX

We sit on the porch with the propane heater taking the chill off as the sun sets, and it is a spectacular sight, pastel blues and pinks darkening as the sun disappears into the lake.

We ask Dr. Cirillo about his work. That seems a safe topic. It's a bit of an odd situation, with him spending three days in a house with strangers. It's supposed to give him time to settle and get to know us, rather than ushering us into a room for an hour-long séance. It does mean, though, that he's here as a professional, and we can't treat him like a fellow houseguest. I don't want to ask anything personal, so we stick to work questions.

His actual degree is in psychology. As a discipline, parapsychology is considered fringe science, even junk science. One professor at his college had specialized in an offshoot of parapsychology called anomalistic psychology. It wasn't what Cirillo imagined studying, but he found himself intrigued.

Anomalistic psychology examines common paranormal experiences and attempts to explain them. I know a bit about it from my spiritualist research, as I girded myself against the predators. As a scientist, I found the explanations fascinating. Like the one that explains the common phenomenon of seeing a dead loved one at your bedside, watching over you. I remember a friend telling me she'd seen her dead grandmother and I will fully admit that, at thirteen, I was a little bit horrified by the thought of my grandmother in my bedroom at night, catching me doing… whatever I was doing while awake in bed at thirteen.

Seeing a dead loved one in your room might be the most common ghostly experience. The scientific explanation is that when we're falling asleep, we sometimes drift into a hypnagogic state, where we're still transitioning to sleep and think we're awake. In that state, we dream of seeing a loved one and mistakenly believe we're awake.

I remember one time when Anton was away at a conference. Shortly after I went to bed I swore I heard him come home early—open the door, take off his shoes, walk into the kitchen. I'd gone to sneak up and surprise him and found myself alone in the condo. I texted and discovered he was still in Montreal. He'd wanted me to call the police, certain we had an intruder. But the door was locked and the alarm on. I understand now that I'd had a hypnagogic hallucination.

That's the sort of thing Dr. Cirillo studied under his advisor. Scientific debunking, though he winces at the term when Jin says it. Debunking suggests you're on a mission to prove people wrong. What Dr. Cirillo's advisor did was accept people's experiences and look for the explanation beyond the paranormal.

Many supernatural experiences do have a natural explanation. But our brains are wired for story, and we try to create it where none exists. Our sports team won twice while we were wearing our blue shirt and lost when we wore our green one? The blue shirt is lucky. We notice an ad for a vacation to Cuba, and suddenly we're seeing ads for Cuba everywhere? It must be a sign. We hear voices in our empty condo? It's ghosts, not real conversation conducted through the vents. Creaking boards upstairs? Ghosts, not the plumbing system. We want to believe that luck exists, that signs exist, that ghosts exist, and so we find proof.

Dr. Cirillo had been happily pursuing his doctorate, investigating paranormal phenomena and leaping on scientific explanations like a detective solving crimes. At first, they all did have explanations. Then came a few where the explanation felt like jamming an octagonal peg into a round hole. It almost fit… but not quite. That didn't bother him much. Science doesn't always perfectly explain everything.

"Then, I had an experience myself," he says. "One that I couldn't explain away."

"Story time?" Jin says.

"If you want it."

"We absolutely want it," Shania says.

Jin's gaze shoots to me, suddenly cautious. "If it's okay with Nic."

"Fine with me. I like ghost stories." I flash a smile that sells the lie and turn to Dr. Cirillo. "Please continue."

Dr. Cirillo settles deeper into his wicker chair. "I was investigating a haunting at a recently purchased home. The new owners claimed to hear crying and the sound of someone pacing in the attic. They discovered that the former owner had ended his life, quite violently, in that attic."

"They discovered that after hearing noises?" Jin asks.

"That was the question. They said they definitely heard the sounds first, but I went into it knowing that might not be true. It would be understandable to learn about a violent death and then imagine sounds from that part of the house. Also, it was a very old house, with all the attendant creaks and odd noises. On the first night, I heard nothing. The second night, the whispers and crying came. On the third, the pacing started. That's when I went into full detective mode. These clearly weren't the creaks of an old house. Therefore someone was faking a haunting."

He takes a pause to sip his tea, and I have to give him credit for knowing how to play his audience.

"I tried everything to catch someone in the attic," he says. "I set up video. I checked for alternate entrances. I positioned myself right below the hatch. Still the noises continued. When I cleaned up the recording, I clearly heard a woman's voice pleading to be let out. Promising she wouldn't tell."

Shania rubs her arms and shifts in her seat. Even I feel hairs prickling.

Cirillo's gaze goes to Shania. "I could stop there."

She twists a smile. "Then I'd only imagine the worst. Go on."

"Well, I don't have a definitive answer for what I experienced, only a theory. It turned out that the man who'd ended his life had a niece who disappeared a few years earlier. The story went that he was supposed to pick her up at college and drive her home for the summer break. Only he was late to the meetup spot, and she was already gone. The police suspected she'd accepted a ride with someone else when her uncle was late. The family believed the uncle blamed himself for it, and that's why he ended his life. But… given what I heard in that house, I see another explanation."

"He did pick her up," Shania whispers. "And locked her in the attic. After she died, he kept hearing her there. So he went into the attic and…" She shudders.

"I believe so," Cirillo says. "That experience obviously unsettled me. Not only was it disturbing, but I had no rational, non-paranormal explanation for what I experienced. I told my advisor I needed a break. I thought I was getting too deep into the work. He argued that to properly investigate these phenomena, we had to accept the possibility that there could be something out there. That shook me. I thought I knew what I was doing, and then I didn't. But I went back to it. Nineteen times out of twenty, I found an explanation. But every now and then…"

"You found one that couldn't be explained away," Shania says.

"Yes. I finished my doctorate and decided to stay in the field. Over time, those exceptions to the rule increasingly seized my attention, and my studies evolved to where they are today. I still investigate phenomena with an eye toward scientific explanations, but I also actively try to communicate with the dead, because I believe, sometimes, they are there and want to communicate, as that poor girl in the attic did."

"So you're not a medium?" Shania says. "I mean, in the sense of having the Sight or being attuned to the other world."

"I don't believe in the Sight, as they call it, nor in the idea of some people being naturally attuned to the spirit world. I am more attuned, but purely through practice. And still, as I explained to Ms. Laughton, ninety-five percent of the time, I find nothing."

"Nicola, please," I say. "Or just Nic. Your research is the reason we chose you. I don't want guaranteed contact, because I know that's bullshit, pardon my language."

His eyes warm with a smile. "No need to pardon any language. I'm a professor, not a priest. What I believe is that some spirits are right on the other side, waiting to communicate. Most of them, though, are not. They've crossed over."

"And Anton might have stayed," Shania says, "because of what he said before he died."

Dr. Cirillo answers carefully, "It's possible, but more than that, I think Ms.—Nicola is in a particular situation where what I offer might be what she needs. Not necessarily contact, but answers, even if that answer is that I don't sense him."

I nod. "I won't lie and pretend I don't care whether I make contact or not. Of course I want to know he's somewhere and he's okay. But mostly, I just…" My hands find each other, clutched on my lap even as I try to relax. "Mostly, I want to be done with this. I tell myself that the person who claimed to see Anton's ghost just wanted atten tion. But I feel as if… as if Anton disappeared and someone said they saw him, and I ignored it."

"A missed opportunity," Dr. Cirillo says.

"More than that."

Jin looks over at me. "Like he's trying to call, and you aren't picking up the phone. One of those nightmares, where you can't answer it."

My eyes fill. "Exactly. As if he's trying to get in touch, and I'm not answering the phone. As if he's right there, waving his arms, and I'm ignoring him. As if… I've moved on."

Jin reaches out to squeeze my hand.

I squeeze my eyes shut against welling tears. "I'm going to do this now and then. I know it's been eight months but… I'm not getting past it."

"Your husband died," Jin says softly. "No one expects you to get past it."

"No one expects anything of you this week, Nicola," Dr. Cirillo says.

But I do. I don't expect to get over Anton. That's never going to happen. But I expect to be able to put on a good face in public and save my tears for private. Months of therapy, group and individual, and I've barely progressed beyond where I was at his funeral.

No, my therapist would say that isn't true. At his funeral, I didn't cry. I know people judged me for that, but those who knew me—Keith, Libby, Jin, and others—realized the truth of my stony silence. I was locked behind that facade, screaming at the top of my lungs that this was all wrong, that Anton wasn't gone, that someone had made a terrible mistake.

Reaching the point of being able to cry was an improvement, even if it meant nights of sobbing so bad that I'd rented a house for a week because my neighbors complained about the noise.

I am making progress. It's just not where I personally want to be. I want to keep my grief as private as I'd kept my love.

Everyone knew I loved Anton. They just didn't know how much. I want the same for my grief. They can know I'm still hurting… just not how much.

I take a deep breath. "Okay, so let's talk about tonight. You said you'd explain the process when you got here."

That sounds accusatory, as if I've been waiting and he's failed to deliver.

I rub my mouth. "That came out wrong. I'm just… not good with spontaneity. I like plans, and if I can't be the one making them, I'm eager to know them."

"Eager." That's a good word, a positive word. Much better than admitting I've been anxious, not knowing what's coming.

I grew up planning my days around my CF. It wasn't intrusive; it just required planning so it didn't feel intrusive. My insistence on scheduling worked well for day-to-day life. It worked less well when an infection exploded my schedule.

And it really, really did not work well when the universe stole my husband in the blink of an eye, ripping up my entire future, incinerating all our plans.

I realize Dr. Cirillo is talking, and I don't know how long he has been while my thoughts swept me away.

"—making a place for Anton," he says. "That's our focus tonight. We will make no attempt to actually contact him."

"We're rolling out the welcome mat," Jin says.

Dr. Cirillo smiles. "Yes. Think of the séance tomorrow as the arrival of a guest. Tonight, we're preparing. We want him to feel welcome here, comfortable here."

"If I were expecting a guest," I say, "I'd get out the good towels and change the sheets on the spare bed. I'm guessing this is different."

"Not entirely. If you were expecting a guest, is there anything else you'd do?"

I consider the question. We didn't have a lot of guests at the condo—while we did have two bedrooms, the second was an office with a pullout bed. We'd had the kids—Hayden and Lucy—over about a dozen times, though.

"Clear my schedule," I say. "Figure out a meal plan. Buy foods they like. Decide what we're going to do while they're here."

"Good. It's something like that, then. We clear our mental schedule to fully focus on the séance. We spend some time getting comfortable ourselves. We set out food and drink that Anton would associate with a party. And we relax, as much as possible. Maybe it's better to think of it less as entertaining a guest and more as inviting Anton to join the gathering."

"Nothing tonight then?" Jin says. "No ritual or whatever?"

"I do a small welcoming ceremony. It's a little woo-woo, but it sets the tone. We can have that whenever you're ready."

Shania and Jin both look at me.

I rise. "Let's do it."

Dr. Cirillo had asked whether there was a place in this house Anton liked best, especially one from our visits here together. My first thought had been "the bedroom." We had just gotten together, after all. But the honest truth is that his favorite spot—and mine—hadn't been in the house at all. It was the cliffside.

Anton had even carried out chairs from the deck for us, which was an absolute violation of the rental agreement. We'd sat there, bundled up, watching the lake and feeling as if we were at the edge of the world. Some postapocalyptic drama where the last two people on earth dragged chairs to the edge of a cliff and enjoyed the view in the silence of a dying world.

Holding Cirillo's welcome ritual outside is not an option. So we move to Anton's next-favorite spot—the breakfast nook that overlooks the rear garden.

We keep the door into the rest of the house open. I even light a fire in the living room. It's cool enough for that, and it's one of my favorite memories of this place, with its three fireplaces.

While we have the living room fire going nearby, we also open the breakfast-nook windows. Anton always loved throwing them open to hear the sounds of his childhood here—the lapping of waves, the cry of cliff swallows, the chirps of tree frogs. That's one reason we'd planned to move into the countryside. Get our fill of the city and then escape to a place where we could have the windows open and drink in the smells and sounds.

I'd wanted that, too. It'd been part of my "someday" list for as long as I can remember. Live in the heart of the city until I was sick of it and then move into the country. When I reunited with Anton, I hadn't even completed the first part of that plan.

I tend to postpone things I want, as if I haven't earned them yet. I must endure life in the suburbs to save money for living in the city. I can't take vacation time until I've banked enough time for a big trip. I must get through the chocolates I don't care for before I indulge in the ones I like.

Anton taught me to eat my favorite chocolates first… and discard the ones I didn't want. He converted my "someday" list to an actual plan. He didn't remind me that I was unlikely to live past forty-five, but that's the truth, and I didn't want to be housebound, waiting for a lung transplant that might never come, thinking of all the things I'd wanted to do.

There's a reason why I didn't buy a downtown condo even when I could afford it. Fiscal responsibility. I don't know how long I can work, and so I must be prepared for that eventuality, along with increased health expenses. While my parents left me money for that, guilt made me lock it all up, in hopes the lion's share will pass to Keith.

Anton didn't advocate for spending my inheritance. Yes, when the new medication made a huge difference—and wasn't completely covered by my plan—Anton and Keith convinced me to dip into that money, but otherwise, Anton respected my decision. He brought his own "professional with zero dependents" earnings to our marriage, though, and he showed me the joy of splurging. The trick is to keep them as splurges. Fly business class on every trip and it soon becomes just part of travel.

Anton pulled that "someday" list out of my brain and handed it to the part of me that loves to plan. We came up with a list of things we'd do in the next five years, and if I was still healthy—the medication gave me honest hope of that—then we'd make another five-year list.

Only we never got through the first one. Now, between my savings and his savings and his life insurance, I have enough money to do everything we planned twice over… and none of it matters if he's not here to do it with me.

And there I go again, getting sidetracked by grief and anger and a discomfiting amount of self-pity, all triggered by opening the damn windows and hearing the chirps of tiny frogs.

We're in the nook, sitting around the table with cups of chamomile tea, because that's what Anton liked when he was here. It was a ritual that pulled in memories of his childhood visits, when he'd get to stay up until his grandmother served tea and shortbread fingers. He'd curl up with his very adult treats and listen to the very adult conversation and feel very adult.

I brought the tea and the shortbread, and we enjoy them ourselves. Drinking and eating. Inviting him to join us. Invoking fond memories.

And then I have to do the hard part. I have to do more than invoke memories. I have to share them. As if this were an evening with friends, telling stories.

Dr. Cirillo is explaining when my attention drifts to the window. I'm sitting right beside it, the chill of the night air making me consider going for a sweater. It's dark out, and I can't see the lake. The cliff seems to drop away to nothing. The edge of the world.

I'm still staring out when I pick up something and tilt my head, frowning.

"Nicola?" Dr. Cirillo says.

"Sorry. I just… Do you guys hear that?"

Shania perks up. "Anton?"

"No, it's a buzzing." I lower my head to the opening, ear almost against the screen. "I hear a buzzing."

"All I can hear are the damn tree frogs," Jin says.

"There's that, but there's also a buzzing."

The others listen, only to shake their heads.

"Nic has great hearing," Jin says. "Keith always says never talk about her when she's in the house or she'll hear." He grins. "Not that we ever talk about you."

I roll my eyes. Then I shake off the odd noise. "I'm supposed to share a memory, right?"

"Tell me about the first time you met Anton," Dr. Cirillo says.

I smile. "He filled out the contact form on my website, if you count that as ‘meeting.'"

"Before that, though. You knew him in school, right?"

Shania looks over, frowning, and I realize she doesn't know about that. It was a small part of our story.

No, that's a lie. It was an important part of our story, one that I wanted to gloss over because of what it dragged behind it.

I look at Shania. "We went to high school together. Briefly—less than a year before my family moved east. And I didn't really know him. He was just a guy in a few of my classes."

"But he noticed you," Jin says, his brown eyes dancing. "Don't leave out that part."

I try not to wince. I'd have preferred that my final conversation with Anton stayed private, but that's not what happens when your husband dies at the side of a busy highway, with people all around, at least one of whom stood close enough to report every word to the point where I wonder whether they'd recorded it. If so, I guess I should just be glad they didn't post the video of my husband's death. Or I'll tell myself they didn't, which will keep me from searching, in case it's hidden in some dark corner of the Web.

I mask my wince by pulling a face, as if I'm just embarrassed to be talking about this. Although, now that I think of it, the fact that Shania didn't know Anton and I were classmates means she never went looking through those online stories, and I'm grateful for that.

I explain Anton's "secret" for Dr. Cirillo and Shania.

"Oh, that's so sweet," Shania says. "He had a crush on you."

I try not to make another face. "I don't think it was like that. He just meant that he noticed me, and then he sought me out after seeing that article. Which is still very sweet."

"But you never noticed him?" Shania says, her voice rising with hope. She wants this to be a romantic story, two teens with secret crushes who reunited twenty years later.

I answer carefully, because it's not that kind of story, but to say I never noticed Anton is a lie. I just… didn't notice him in a good way.

While Anton himself had seemed decent, his two friends were assholes, which had made me wonder whether he was secretly one himself. And if he wasn't, what the hell was he doing with those losers? The answer was simple. They were popular, and he'd been flattered by their attention.

Anton was easygoing, with his own gentle form of popularity. Even teachers liked him, which bought his friends a certain degree of immunity.

"I noticed him," I say. "He was cute and popular and…" I shrug. "I was the new girl. We'd been living in a small city. When the local CF clinic closed, my parents moved us to Edmonton. Anton and I didn't travel in the same circles." Understatement of the year. "So we didn't have much to do with one another."

That isn't strictly a lie. Anton and I only had brief exchanges. But our groups had interacted, in the way popular asshole guys sometimes interact with geeky awkward girls. Which is to say that the interaction was not, by any means, a positive one. That wasn't Anton's fault, though. Both he and I were on the periphery of our groups and the drama between them.

"Would you rather tell me about when you first reunited?" Dr. Cirillo asks.

I shake my head. "No, let's do the first time I noticed him. If he's someplace he can hear me…" My throat constricts. "I didn't get a chance to tell him at the end, to reciprocate. I'll do that now."

I take a deep breath. "Okay then. First time I noticed Anton. I was sixteen. Grade eleven. My parents had hoped to stay in our small city until I finished high school, but the CF clinic closing plus Dad getting a job offer in Edmonton meant we moved the summer before I entered grade eleven.…"

I close my eyes and let my mind slide back to high school. It starts tapping around at first, feeling its way, touching things that set me flinching before I redirect.

Back. Go back.

Back to the beginning.