Ashes to Ashes (19 page)

“You're not like the poltergeists,” he says. “They'll probably never get to merge with Solus—their moons are dark. That's what the death spot's energy does—it makes you emotionally unable to move on.”

“I know,” I say. “Reena told me.”

“She did?” He looks surprised. “But how could you want that?”

“How could I
not
want to stay on Earth with the people I love?”

“It isn't what you think, Callie. The people you love grow older; their lives move forward. They will
die
and you will be stuck, observing and never living, never sharing. It's like watching a movie in a theater except you're the only one. You experience no connection. It's just a yawning emptiness.”

I hadn't thought about it that way. He makes it sound awful, unappealing. Needing a minute to take this all in, I study my surroundings more closely. It's small, and very private—high walls are on all sides of us. Gray stone is beneath us, a small table and two wooden chairs rest near the hammock, green plants line the area.

“Where are we?” I ask.

“My prism. It was the one place that I knew Reena and the others couldn't follow us.”

“Because you've never invited them in?”

He nods, appears slightly discomfited. “You're the first.”

“It wasn't exactly an invitation.”

“I couldn't risk you saying no.”

Any other time I might have felt privileged that he was sharing his space with me. I want to know everything about him. But I know he won't share more, not now. He won't tell me if he has to water his plants somehow or whether this place is like a patio he once knew on Earth. As I scan the area, I see nothing like a photo or even a trinket left over from life. Has he let go of everything? How can I?

“Nick's not doing well,” I say, with regret, losing some of my anger at the high-handed way that he brought me here.

“He'll heal,” says Thatcher. “The Living have an amazing ability to go on, and I believe that Nick has already started that process.”

There's a sharp pinch in my chest. I know it's selfish, but I still hate the thought of Nick moving on, maybe falling in love again. I realize a part of me fears that he already has.

“You have to let him go, you know,” says Thatcher. “No matter what Reena told you . . . you do have to let him go.”

A tear slides down my cheek.

“Callie,” says Thatcher, quietly yet urgently. “I'm sorry I lied to you about the portals. But everything else I've told you is entirely true.”

“Thatcher,” I say, wanting to use this moment, where he's open and talking about truth. “What's a poltergeist?”

He walks over to one of the wooden chairs, sits down, and leans forward, his elbows on his thighs, his hands balled tightly in front of him. As much as I'd like to relax in the hammock, I sit in the chair beside him.

“I heard Sarah say it,” I explain.

He nods. “Reena and Leo, Norris and Delia, the ghosts who are with them, the ones gathered behind them tonight . . . they're the ones who refuse to merge even though their haunting is completed, the ones who can't get over dying, the ones who remember and cling to their past lives. They're
poltergeists
.”

He says the word like it leaves a rotten taste in his mouth.

“And Callie, I know you think they're your friends. I know you think they're fun and that their way of haunting—moving things and all that—is worthwhile. But it's not—it's all surface level.”

I nod—I've heard this from him, but I still like the way it makes me feel when I haunt that way, when the living know that I'm there. I start to say that, but when I open my mouth, Thatcher keeps going.

“The way I've tried to teach you to haunt—through an inner peace that comes from your unconscious—that's how we make a real connection, a soul connection. That's what gets you closer to merging. And Callie, Solus is the true way.”

Leaning back into the chair, I feel like a little girl for a moment, and I hate the vulnerability that overtakes me. Watching Ella almost get taken into that white light felt so terrifying, so wrong.

“Merging isn't another death?” I ask, trying to read the drawn line of Thatcher's mouth and the twitch at the edge of his cheek. I stare at him unflinchingly.

Slowly, he reaches out and sets the hammock to swaying, and I wonder if he draws comfort from the motion. Maybe he'd like to be lying in it as well, letting it carry away his worries. “No, it's not a death. Ghosts are already dead.”

“But Reena said—” I start.

“Stop listening to her!” Thatcher lunges to his feet and stalks away. “Don't you understand what she is?”

I come up out of the chair to face him. “I don't understand. You say she's dangerous, not a friend. But I know that she was your friend once, Thatcher—I've felt it. And besides, she
saved
me earlier today.”

“Saved you?”

“Yes.” I hesitate now, not sure I should bring up the séance. But now it's too late, and so I tell him. About Carson and the chanting, the pain I experienced and the rush of sensation and sound. And the tidal pool pull that brought me back to the Prism, where Reena was waiting.

Thatcher's eyes get wider and wider as I recount each part of the story, but I can't tell if he's surprised or afraid or just angry.

“I felt so much pain,” I explain. I'm trying to put Reena in a good light. “She brought me back to my prism and took care of me.”

He combs his fingers through his hair in frustration. “She didn't save you,” he says. “She's only looking out for herself.”

“What do you mean?”

“Callie, Reena is fixated on you. It has to do with your energy. I'm not sure what she's planning, but the way she spoke at the merging ceremony made it clear that she's leading the poltergeists to work against the Guides.”

“She wants to stay on Earth,” I say. “Don't we all want that? How can you ask people who've
died
not to want their lives back?”

“No one asks that of ghosts. The Guides only want to follow the natural order of things—merging is part of that. We can't have the Prism fill up with ghosts who refuse to move on because they're nervous about what's next.”

“Reena doesn't seem nervous,” I say. “She seems determined and strong, but
nervous
is not a word I would use.”

“You're right—it's deeper than that,” says Thatcher. “Reena is afraid. The poltergeists aren't happy and carefree—they are
scared
. You've been around them; you must have seen that, too. Their fear of the unknown, of merging, means that they are stuck in limbo—between the Prism and Earth. And now it seems like she's making a name for herself—and the poltergeists—by spreading that fear.”

“Well, I'm afraid, too,” I say quietly.

“You don't have to be,” he says. I feel a current of heat when his fingers lightly brush mine, as though he wants to touch me but can't ignore the rule that it's discouraged.

“Thatcher, what happens when a ghost merges?” I ask.

He stares into space for a minute before he answers, and I worry that he's going to make something up or avoid my question. But then he says, “No one knows, but Solus has always been the next stage. You die, you haunt your loved ones to ease their pain, and then you merge.”

“How can you accept that without knowing what it's like?” I ask. “How can you just
believe
?”

“It's a leap of faith,” says Thatcher.

And I remember something that Mama told me when we'd go to church and I'd ask her why I couldn't see God, or the angels: “There is grace in believing, Callie May.”

Eighteen

HIS SHOES ARE SPIT SHINE PERFECT.
They don't need another polish. But his hands are moving methodically over the leather, like he's not even aware of their mechanics, like his thoughts are far away.

Thatcher brought me home, finally. “You have to promise to follow my instructions,” he told me. “We will sit with him quietly—you will not touch anything or try to move something or show your presence physically. If he leaves the house, we will not follow him.”

I nodded yes, yes, yes, so wanting to see my father, to make sure he's okay. I realize that my fear of seeing him is fading and being replaced by an intense longing. Thatcher felt it, too. But before we went through the portal, he looked at me again, worry clouding his face.

“Why don't you want to take me to him?” I asked.

“It's complicated,” he said, casting his eyes downward. I put my hand on his arm, ready to follow him into the portal, and I realized that he and I were beginning to touch freely—he didn't object to it or have his guard up—and I melted a little bit at the thought of our getting closer.

Then he gazed into my eyes with such intensity. I've heard that eyes are windows to the soul. If that's true, in that moment, he touched mine. “You need to feel what healing really is—what the deeper kind of haunting can do,” he said. “I have to know that you trust me, fully, at least for this moment.”

“I do,” I said, with utter conviction.

And now I'm watching my dad polishing his shoes in the entryway. The silhouette of his strong shoulders nearly crushes me. I feel the pain of a thousand hugs not given, of my acceptance of his stoicism after Mama died. How I wish I'd been able to bring him back from his grief.

I study his reflection in the front hallway mirror, acutely aware that I can't see myself, though I'm right beside him.

It's another reminder that
I'm not here.

I long to nestle against his side, slip beneath his arm, but I've made a promise to Thatcher, and I know he's watching me closely, not to interfere but to be there if I need him.

“I'm okay,” I say.

“I know,” says Thatcher. “I can sense it. And he can, too.”

With a loud sigh, Dad puts down his shoes. He walks toward the den. We follow.

His sock-feet steps echo in the lonely house with a familiar rhythm. He strides with precision, with purpose, even in our living room. I used to lie in bed and hear him pacing, and the sound of his padded footfall tugs on my heart.

“Now, let's just be with him,” says Thatcher.

Dad sits down on the couch, and I join him there, hovering as we do, not really sitting here like I used to when we'd watch documentaries together with a bowl of popcorn between us. When was the last time we watched one? I was busy this spring, always out, never wanting to stop and be still when Dad would pat the cushion next to him.
Why didn't I take the time?
How did I not understand that
this
, sharing snacks and a moment with my father—not a daredevil stunt—was the best of life?

I take in a deep breath as sorrow hits me, and Thatcher moves closer, just inches from my side. The comfort that resonates through him to me is what I want to give Dad.

“Close your eyes,” Thatcher says, and I do. “Don't focus on specific memories—that's been getting in your way. Just remember your love for your father, let yourself feel it.”

I try. It's hard not to think of specifics if you're told not to. Memories rush at me like a tidal wave, but I think about what Thatcher said, and I try to
feel
them instead of just seeing them in my mind. So as I remember the voices Dad used to use for my stuffed animals when I was a little girl, I take the glee I felt as he dipped into baritone for Mr. Polar Bear and up to soprano for Lady Llama. And when I think of my mother's funeral, I take the security that surged through me when he held on to my hand—so tightly—at her graveside. I flash back to our last drive together, through the neighborhood on a sunny summer day, and I take pride in the look he shot me as I navigated a new clutch with ease. I draw the emotions from these memories, and I let the details fade, leaving me with the unvarnished feelings.

Dad shifts beside me, and when I open my eyes, I think he might put on a baseball game, but he doesn't. He reaches into the magazine rack beside him and pulls out an old book—an album.

When he opens it, I see that the first page holds a photo of me as a baby, in my dad's arms. I had no idea this picture existed.

“What is that book?” I ask Thatcher, but he just smiles and motions for me to keep watching.

My father flips through the pages, and there are dozens more photos that I never saw. Of me and Mama, of her and Dad. He lingers on each page, and I feel a surge of affection for him as he gently touches a photo of my mother in a white cotton dress and daisy-chain headpiece.

When I see a photo of the three of us in front of the Washington Monument, I flash back to a moment on that car trip. I was in the back in a car seat while Mama and Daddy sat up front and sang along to the oldies station. Mama's voice was terrible, but she laughed the whole way through, and it was a gorgeous sound as she tried to sing “Under the Boardwalk.” Dad's voice boomed over hers for the chorus lines, and she looked at him with unabashed love in her eyes. As I watched them, I tuned in to my own happiness—the comfort and joy and wonder that filled me up when I was a little girl, back before I knew that everything would end.

The emotions are so tangible that it's almost as if I'm
living
this scene from the past. And I wish I were. I wish I could go back.

But I can't. Still, I have the emotions of that day at my fingertips, in my body, and I let them pour through me and seep out into the room, hoping my father will feel something, too.

“You were a cute kid,” says Thatcher.

I smile. “I didn't know Dad kept something like this,” I say. “It's so . . . sentimental.”

“We all have that part of us.”

I look at Thatcher then, wondering what memories make him feel this way—full of nostalgia and love.

The pages of the book rustle as Dad flips forward, and I lean closer to him. The album is arranged chronologically, and it contains photos of me even after Mama's death. A toothless me on the playground swings with Carson at our elementary school, me taking a bow after my tiny chorus role in the seventh grade musical.

When Dad turns another page, I gasp. It's a shot from last year's winter formal. Nick and I are standing in front of the Fishers' fireplace, posing in that cheesy way that every couple does—his hands on my hips. But instead of being serious, we're both making giant googly eyes and sticking out our tongues. Nick made me laugh so hard in that moment—and I had Mrs. Fisher email the photo to my dad, but he never said anything about it. He didn't acknowledge it, let alone tell me that he'd printed it out.

Dad thought I was way too young to be so serious about Nick. “Your first love isn't your last love,” he told me once. I wondered at the time if he was working to convince himself as much as he was me. My mother was his first love. Was he hoping for a chance at a last love?

Dad's face softens as he stares at the image of me and Nick, so happy, so full of excitement at being together.

“You can reach him now,” says Thatcher, whispering next to me. “His mind is receptive.”

“Should I—” I start to reach out my hand, but Thatcher takes it and holds my fingers. I have to fight to ignore the electricity and warmth that I feel from his touch.

“Use your thoughts,” he says. “Think about what you want him to know, and what you want him to feel.”

I close my eyes, and I realize that I hope he doesn't blame himself, for giving me the car, for being distant. I always knew how much he loved me.

How can I convey to my father that my drive to be reckless was my own choice?

I concentrate, replaying some of my more dangerous stunts in my head—the time I set up a makeshift ramp in the backyard and launched my bike (and myself) into the river, the time I made Carson drive down the beach so I could practice bailing out of a moving car (I'd seen it in the movies, and it looked so easy), and the morning of the day of my death, speeding on the docks.

After I flash through those moments, I switch to quieter ones with my father, with Carson, with Nick—the chaste versions. The times when they each provided a safe and warm harbor, when I didn't have to put myself in danger to feel alive. As I linger in those moments, I cherish them in a way I never have before—I didn't know how to value them when I was alive. But I do now.

I open my eyes. Dad is staring as if he can see me, right at my face.

“Oh, Callie.” He sighs, but it isn't a sad one. It's wistful, loving. Serene.

“He's finding peace,” whispers Thatcher. “Can you feel it?”

I nod as I watch my father's eyelids get heavier and heavier. They close after a few moments. I stay still, letting the ease in the room flow through me, feeling a tranquillity deeper than I knew was possible.

“Can we stay?” I ask.

“As long as you want,” says Thatcher.

We sit there for an hour while he sleeps, and Thatcher doesn't push me to go anywhere, to do anything. He just stays in this space with me, with my father.

And it means the world.