Seven

SEVEN

An empty classroom. The smell of whiteboard marker. I've lost one of my earrings. I have a habit of twisting them when I'm focusing, as if they're radio dials to tune my brain. The most likely place for me to lose one is here, in math class, which I left about ten minutes ago.

I walk in, and there's a boy at the whiteboard, staring at an equation. He has an eraser brush in one hand and a marker in the other, and he's too lost in concentration to notice me enter.

I know him. That is, I know him as the guy to beat in my AP math class. Not that I'd personally try to beat him. I might be in advanced math, but I'll never be competition for…

What's his name?

Andrew? Alan?

He's an inch or two taller than me, meaning slightly below average for a guy. Lean bordering on skinny. Tan skin. Dark hair that curls over his ears and the back of his neck. His nose is the most prominent thing about him, and it reminds me of a phrase I've seen in books. A Roman nose. I never understood what that meant, but seeing him in profile, I get it—his nose looks like it belongs on a Roman statue.

He's cute, which is why I may have been going out of my way to not notice him. A cute guy who's also a STEM nerd? That should be my catnip, but instead it makes me want to ignore him. Otherwise I might find him attractive and start staring at him and trying to talk to him and— Yep, best to just keep it like this, where I'm not even sure of his name.

I slip in as quietly as I can. I was sitting in the second row, at the back, making it easy to slide past his notice. He's too engrossed in his work to look up anyway.

What's he doing?

Don't look. Don't try to figure it out. Maybe he's having trouble with that equation and came back to work on it.

There's my earring. Under the desk. I crouch to pick it up—

"Hey."

I jump, like I've been caught stealing.

"Janica, right?" he says.

When I nod, he grins like he guessed the right answer on a pop quiz.

"Anton," he says.

"I lost my earring," I say. "Found it."

Yep, I was smooth at sixteen. So smooth.

"Good," he says.

I glance at the board. Then I see what he's done, and before I can help myself, I say, "You came back to correct the equation?"

His cheeks flush. "Nah. I just thought there was another way of doing it, so I came back to try." He makes a face. "Weird, right?"

I shrug. "I don't think so, but I spend hours fussing with computer programs to see if I can do it in fewer lines of code."

He grins, and maybe I should say my heart gives a little flutter, but it doesn't. It's my stomach that reacts, twisting in a sudden need to flee. He's too smart, too cute, too tempting, and nothing good would come of that.

"That's right," he says. "Computers are your thing. My parents sent me to coding camp when I was a kid, hoping I'd find a science that pays a little better than…" He motions to the board with a smile. "But I couldn't wrap my brain around it."

I could say something to keep the conversation going. Mention that math can make you money—my older brother is at university, applying his own math skills to finance and economics. But I just want to get out of there before this turns into an actual conversation and I start to think he's interested in what I'm saying, and then I realize he's just being nice or, worse, setting me up for mockery. I know who he hangs around with.

"I should go," I say. "My friends are in the caf. Lunch."

Yes, because clearly, if they are in the cafeteria during lunch break, I need to clarify why they're there. So smooth.

I mumble something and flee.

What would have happened if I stayed? Knowing what I know now—that Anton was making conversation, that he wasn't an asshole, that he'd noticed me.

What if I stayed, Anton?

If I'd stayed, would we have had twenty-two years together instead of three?

No, because what happened six months later would have ended it. I'd have been gone, my family whisking me to Toronto under a new name.

Any relationship Anton and I developed back then wouldn't have survived what happened that spring. The séance. The aftermath. The trial.

Blood splashed through a forest clearing. The only sound the chirping of tree frogs.

"Janica."

I jump out of my seat. I've been telling the story to Dr. Cirillo and the others, speaking on autopilot as I relive those memories. Now that name yanks me back, and it's not the soft whisper I'd imagined at the séance with Leilani. It's harsh, spat with a sneer.

"Nic?" Jin reaches to lay his hand on mine.

I blink hard and look around. Clearly no one here said my old name… or heard it.

Because it never happened. I imagined it because I'd been thinking of that old life, when I bore that name.

"Did something happen?" Dr. Cirillo asks.

I shake my head. "I was just… just thinking of how things might have been different if I'd stayed and talked to Anton. But we were sixteen, and my family moved again that spring—Dad got a job transfer to Toronto." Because he requested it. "So maybe, if anything happened then, Anton wouldn't have sought me out later. We'd have already had our shot."

"He sounded sweet," Shania says wistfully. "A cute, sweet math geek." She sighs. "I need to find one of those."

I smile at her. I could say something. Like that, if she wants to find someone, she needs to get out and look. Shania is a nurse who also works part-time as a personal support worker to pay off her student debt. That doesn't leave much time for socializing, and her sister's death seems to have made an already introverted young woman fold deeper into herself.

Shania may have found me through our grief therapy, but it's become more than that. Friendship? Not in the traditional sense. I acutely feel our thirteen-year age difference.

Am I filling her big-sister void? Maybe, a little.

Am I okay with that?

I… I'm not sure. I'm fond of Shania, and she certainly isn't thrusting me into that role. I balk at the idea because I have too much going on in my life to be anyone's big sister. I'm very, very busy. With work and grieving, and more grieving.

It's not that I don't have time to be a big sister. It's that I don't have the bandwidth. And maybe I should find it, but I'm afraid of seeing Shania as a project to distract me from my grief.

I'm drifting again. I gather my thoughts like an armful of clothing I keep dropping, forever losing a sock or shirt on my way from the laundry.

"Anton was sweet," I say. "I wish I'd kept talking to him, but if we could only have had a few months together, then I'm glad I waited. What we had later…" My throat tightens and my eyes tear up.

God how I love you, Anton.

"Shh, Nic," a voice whispers. "It's okay."

I stiffen. The words come from a distance, as if from deep in the house, so soft that my ears wouldn't have picked them up if I weren't already halfway zoned out, lost in memories of Anton.

I glance over my shoulder, toward the door. The voice came from over there.

"Nicola?" Dr. Cirillo says.

I want to shake it off, but I keep staring over my shoulder. That snapped "Janica" was easy to dismiss. It hadn't even sounded like anyone. But this had been Anton's voice. Undeniably Anton's voice.

I pull myself back. "I'm sorry. I thought I heard something."

"Anton?" Dr. Cirillo says gently.

"I'm hearing what I want to hear, and if no one else does, then it's just me."

"What did you—?"

"I was imagining it," I cut in, a little too sharply. "That happens sometimes at séances. It's just wishful thinking."

Dr. Cirillo meets my gaze. "You're engaging in what I call blocking behavior. You're worried about seeming foolish, right? Being the grieving widow who leaps on any curtain flutter as a sign that her husband is in the room."

My face heats. That's exactly what I'm afraid of. At séances, people expect the grieving widow to be desperate—hell, it's what the charlatans count on.

Dr. Cirillo continues, "If you—or anyone else—experiences something, I want you to share it, please, without qualifications or apologies. We accept that there will be misreadings, so to speak. Now, did the voice sound like Anton?"

I nod.

"Could you tell what it seemed to say?"

My throat closes, but I force the words out. "He said it's okay. Which is trivial, but also what I'm hoping for and—" I take a deep breath. "That's qualifying, isn't it?"

He smiles. "It'll take time to get used to this degree of openness, particularly after you've been taken advantage of so many times."

"But Nic's really good at seeing through the scams," Shania says, and then shoots me an apologetic look. "I don't mean to cut in, but you spot the snake oil before I do."

"And Nicola recognizes that if she hears Anton, it could be wishful thinking," Dr. Cirillo says. "With all those caveats in place, would you like to return to the welcoming? Or investigate the voice?"

"Return to the welcoming, please," I say.

"All right. Jin? You knew Anton, didn't you?"

Jin nods. "He got together with Nic not long after Libby introduced me to Keith. We joked that we joined the family together."

"Would you feel comfortable sharing a memory?"

"Sure. First time we met?"

"Please, if that works."

Jin gets comfortable in his chair. "It was the first time I met Nic, too. I knew about her. Actually, I knew about her before I knew about Keith. Libby would talk about going out with Nic, and I thought it was really cool that she'd stayed friends with her former sister-in-law. Then when I started dating Keith, he'd also talked about Nic. So I felt like I knew her already. Anton was just some guy she was seeing that both Libby and Keith really liked."

Jin takes off his sweater and hangs it on the back of his chair. "So, that sets the stage. I'm going to dinner with my new boyfriend and his sister and her relatively new boyfriend. Last thing I want to be is late, right? So of course I was late. Got held up at work, and I'd texted Keith, but he hadn't answered. I thought I'd pissed him off. Turned out he just didn't see the text."

Jin slants a look my way. "Typical, right?"

"It is," I say.

"Anyway, I'm freaked out, and I get to the restaurant, back into a spot, throw open my door… and smack into the door of a guy climbing out of his car. My fault—his door was already open. Now there's a nice crease in the door of his little Beemer, and I look like the pickup-driving asshole who throws open his door without looking. I apologize, say I'm late to meet my partner's sister, can we exchange info and I'll cover the damage. I'm babbling, flustered and very aware I'm getting later by the second. Then he says ‘Oh, you must be Jin. I'm Anton. Nic's boyfriend.' Great. First time meeting Keith's sister, and I make a bad impression on her boyfriend—a literal impression in his car door. But he just laughs about us both being late and in such a hurry that our doors collided, and what's the chance, right? Starts joking that we should make it a bigger story like someone sideswiped him on the highway and—" He stops short. "Shit. I'm sorry."

"Go on," I say with a reassuring smile. "I knew about the doors, but I'd like to hear the whole story."

I'd like to hear it because it's an angle Anton would never have given, where he's the decent guy who tried to make a stranger feel better about an accident. It's not that Anton didn't want to be seen as a decent guy. Just that he'd never have taken credit. To him, it would sound like boasting.

I prompt, "Anton joked about pretending he'd been sideswiped on the highway."

"And that I'd stopped to help him, which is why we were late."

Even in his joking suggestion, Anton made someone else the hero. As much as I loved his humility, I love this even more—seeing him through the eyes of others.

Jin continues, "Of course, he just said our doors collided and joked about us both running late and being flustered. Then I met Nic, and she was everything Libby said, and I decided I wanted to be part of this family, and if I had to marry Keith, then that seemed a relatively small price to pay for it."

Jin glances at me with a smile that doesn't quite reach his misted eyes. "That was my first glimpse of Anton, and it showed me who he was. I never got to know him as well as I did Nic, but I always expected there'd be time for that."

He turns away, fingers drumming the table. When he looks back, he says, "Is that okay, as a memory? It's a good one, but being a good one means it brings up…"

"The pain that he's gone," I murmur. "I still like hearing them and—"

Jin's head swings left, and I stop short. He stares toward the living room before looking back at us.

"You didn't hear that?" he says.

We all shake our heads.

"What was it, Jin?" Dr. Cirillo asks.

"I…" Jin's gaze goes to me. "I thought I heard Anton. His laugh. But distant. Maybe just someone walking past outside?"

"That's easy to check," Dr. Cirillo says. "Let's do that."

We walk all the way to the lane, which ends at the house.

"No one's out here," Shania says. "And I doubt we'd have heard them anyway, with all the front windows shut. You said it was a laugh, Jin?"

"Anton's laugh. It came from…"

Jin heads back inside to the breakfast nook, stands behind his chair, and shuts his eyes. Then he opens them and walks as if following an invisible trail. He ends up in the living room, near the sofa across from the fireplace.

"Over here," he says. "Or this direction, at least. As if Anton were on the sofa, laughing at something."

"Nicola?" Dr. Cirillo says. "Can you tell us where you think the earlier voice came from?"

This is exactly where it seemed to come from. This side of the room, on the sofa where Anton and I had curled up together every night, talking and… laughing.

"Could we be hearing echoes?" I say. Then I make a face. "Okay, that sounds even more far-fetched than ghosts. I was just thinking that Anton and I sat here a lot when we'd visit. Especially at night, with the fire going. Sharing a drink and talking and laughing."

Dr. Cirillo rubs his short beard. "People talk about echoes. Sounds permeating a place. I'd call them memories, because they're usually experienced by those who knew the deceased."

"Like me." I touch the back of the sofa. "Remembering that we used to sit here and talk, and then hearing him talking from here."

"Only that doesn't explain Jin's experience," Dr. Cirillo says. "Did you ever mention sitting here with Anton?"

Jin shakes his head. "She didn't."

"If Anton's here, we should communicate, right?" Shania says. "Do a proper summoning?"

"No," Dr. Cirillo says. "If Anton is here, he'll stay, and it gives everyone—including Anton—time to settle in and relax for tomorrow." He looks at me. "Is that all right, Nicola?"

"It is."