The Lost Husband (18 page)

“He wants me to grow my hair out blond. And go on a diet. He said, ‘You used to be so hot.’ ”

I winced for her. “What did you say?”

“I said, ‘I don’t want to be hot anymore, you stupid gorilla.’ ”

“And what did he say?”

“I tried to explain to him how exhausting and crazy-making being hot is, but he refused to hear it. We went around and around. And then it hit me: He wants the centerfold. He
prefers
the centerfold.”

I shook my head in sympathy.

“So I dumped him,” Sunshine said.

“Good!” I said, making sure my voice sounded triumphant.

Hers sounded far less so. “I really liked him.”

“Maybe he’ll come around.”

“Maybe,” she said. “But now I know he likes the old me better.
It’s like I’m competing against my old self—and losing. And that wasn’t even really me! Even when I looked like that, I didn’t look like that.”

“Maybe you could move away,” I suggested, thinking that starting over was a possibility.

“Where could I go?” she said, then added, “Besides, I can’t leave Russ.”

Then I had to ask. “What was it like? Being famous?”

Sunshine shrugged. “Lonesome, mostly.”

I waited.

“You have a lot of things,” she said. “And you have a lot of people you don’t know being overly nice to you for no reason. But real friends are hard to come by. And without real friends, you can’t talk about real things.”

I hadn’t thought of it like that. I wondered what it must have been like to downgrade from a mansion in Pacific Palisades to one room in Russ’s old farmhouse.

Sunshine gave me a smile and went on. “Real friends are no walk in the park, either. But they’re sure better than nothing. Which is what I had before.”

That night I had a terrible nightmare. It was about Danny, and it felt so real, I woke up with no idea where I was. In the dream, I was at the farmers’ market, and I looked up to see Danny talking to Jessica Boone. She was looking at him in the same lascivious way she’d looked at O’Connor, and then she took Danny’s arm and wrapped it around her shoulders as she led him away.

I woke to my alarm—Dubbie the rooster letting loose on the morning—out of breath and with real tears on my face. I was still shaken by the time I’d made it to the milking barn. Sunshine was already there, and the minute she saw my blotchy eyes, she said, “What?”

“Nothing,” I said, turning away.

“Horseshit,” she said. “Tell me.”

I met her eyes. It felt like a tipping point. Then I just said, “I dreamed about my husband last night. And it was awful.”

Sunshine stood up. “You dreamed about your husband?”

“It’s like he was
just
here,” I said. “It’s like I
just
saw him.”

“Well,” Sunshine said, “you know what I’m going to say.”

“Actually, I don’t.”

“He wants to talk to you.”

“No,” I said. “He doesn’t. That’s the point! He was walking away.”

Sunshine smiled and shook her head. “He walked away,” she said, “because he wants you to follow him.”

It seemed to me that the dream was much more about the ways that Danny and O’Connor were starting to overlap in my heart than about anything supernatural. But of course Sunshine wouldn’t know about what was going on in my heart. Because of all the things I found myself discussing with her, my funny little crush on O’Connor was not one of them.

“So,” I said, to steer the conversation nice and far away from my thoughts, “you think it’s a sign?”

“Yes,” Sunshine said.

“And you think you can talk to him?”

“I can’t,” she said. “But you can. And I can bring him to you.”

“I don’t think I want you to.”

“Wouldn’t you like to see him?” Sunshine asked. “Wouldn’t that make you feel better?”

“No,” I said, “I think it would make me feel worse.”

“You need this! You deserve this!” Sunshine said. “And I can do this for you. Please let me. It’s the only thing I’m good at.”

I don’t know exactly what it was in Sunshine’s voice that made
me give in. In the same way you do things for your kids that you really don’t want to do, at last I found myself agreeing to do a séance with Sunshine. Not because I wanted to. Not because anything about it seemed like a good idea. I gave into Sunshine just from the sheer force of her wanting me to.

“Okay,” I said, totally defeated.

“It’ll be the most romantic thing in the history of humanity,” she said.

I was futzing with the milking machine and didn’t answer.

“Won’t it?” she demanded.

“Yes,” I answered. “I’m sure it will.”

“We’ll have to do some séances,” she went on. “At least ten or so. And then, presto—there he’ll be.”

“Ten séances seems like a lot,” I said.

“A lot?” Sunshine demanded. “For bringing back the dead?”

“Okay,” I said, shrugging at her point.

“You’re going to love this,” she promised, eyes bright with anticipation. “And you’re going to love me for making it happen.” Then she came over and gave me a suffocating hug. “Lady,” she said, letting go and just burbling over with delight at the whole idea, “I am so totally about to become your very best friend.”

Chapter 15
 

Sunshine wanted to do our first séance at the stroke of midnight, but I was way too tired for that. I countered with 9:00
P.M.
, and even though she drove a hard bargain, we finally settled on 10:00.

“Ten it is,” she said, all business. “And don’t tell Jean. She’ll talk you out of it.”

That’s how I wound up, at 9:56 on a Saturday night, sneaking out the back door of my bedroom like a naughty teenager, rolling my minivan down the gravel drive in neutral with the lights off, and hoping like hell that Jean and Russ, who were in the kitchen playing Scrabble, didn’t come out to ask what on earth I was up to.

Next thing, I was stopping for Sunshine and her backpack of séance supplies—which, incidentally, included a Magic 8 Ball—at Russ’s gate.

“I didn’t think you’d really come,” Sunshine said as she popped open the door.

“Hop in,” I said, and I was pulling away before she had even closed it.

Back home, I never would have left my children in the middle of the night without telling anyone. I never would have gone anywhere at all—and if I had, I’d have left pages of typed instructions for the babysitter on how to handle any conceivable emergency.

But things had shifted. I knew my kids weren’t going to wake up and look for me, because they never woke up anymore. I also knew that even if for some reason they did, Jean would handle it just fine.

We drove to the top of the hill and then took a left on a dark road that led into the woods. We had to make three U-turns before we found the entrance Sunshine wanted. Finally she spotted a fence post with neon green ribbon tied to it. “Here,” she said, and I pulled into what had once been a gravel driveway. Now it was so overgrown it was almost invisible. I pulled up and stopped with the nose of the minivan almost touching a closed gate.

Sunshine hopped out of the passenger seat and opened the gate.

“Is this it?” I asked.

She nodded. “Pull forward and turn on your brights.”

I did. And after we pushed through a small grove of trees, branches scraping the windows, we came to a clearing with an enormous—and, from the looks of things—abandoned house. It was perfect for a séance, with its faded grandeur and peeling paint.

Sunshine gestured with her arm as if she were introducing us. “The haunted house,” she announced. “If you want to speak to the dead in this town, or lose your virginity, this is the spot.”

We got out of the car and walked toward the house. Under the
trees, shaded from the moonlight, it was so black I could barely see my feet, but in its clearing, the house was lit by the moon. The glow made it ethereal, and for a minute it did feel a little bit like anything was possible in its presence.

But then I walked into a picnic table—clonked my shin right into the wooden seat—and shouted, “Oh, shit!” as I hopped around and clutched at it.

“Shh!” Sunshine said.

“Who’s going to hear me?” I asked. “The netherworld?”

“It’s disrespectful,” Sunshine said. “You kiss your children with that mouth?”

This from a girl who had flashed her thong at an entire nation on late-night TV.

Sunshine pulled a flashlight out of her bag and flipped it on.

“That’s helpful,” I said.

“Take it,” she said, and so I did, but I found it only made the darkness darker.

I thought we must be going to the house, but we walked right past it. Sunshine was quieter and more serious than I’d ever seen her, and I noticed my own heart ticking a little faster than usual. What if I got eaten by the panther? Or chopped up by an axe murderer? Or entombed in the cellar by a vengeful ghost? I scolded myself a little for taking unnecessary risks, but I noticed something, even as I did it: Being in the woods at night, tromping along behind Sunshine with no idea where I was going, feeling a little bit scared … it was fun.

I felt like a wild teenager—the kind of wild teenager I had never been. Life with my mother had been wild enough, and I’d become a grown-up far too young. That was how I coped with uncertainty: balancing my checkbook, even at thirteen; doing all my homework and then some; and putting all my faith in the
ideas of responsibility and attention to detail. That was my whole life—and never more so than lately, after losing Danny.

Now, however, some not-insignificant part of my psyche was begging to swirl around through life’s uncertainties. Danger! Adventure! I hadn’t imagined how good those things felt until I was actually feeling them.

“Let’s go in the house,” I suggested.

“There’s not really much inside.”

“You’ve been in?” I asked.

“Sure,” she said. “Tons of times. It’s empty. Except for the dead body.”

It was too dark for Sunshine to see my face. “I’m rolling my eyes at you,” I told her.

I was no expert, but I guessed the house was at least a hundred years old, if not more. The deep veranda, the tall windows: It had the shape of another place in time.

“What’s the story on this place?” I asked, lingering.

“There are tons of stories,” Sunshine said. “It’s supposed to be haunted about ten different ways.” Then she added, “The kids come up here before prom and play truth or dare and get each other pregnant.”

I took a step closer, but Sunshine grabbed my hand and pulled me in the other direction—out to a little spot in the yard where a potpourri of discarded lawn chairs circled a campfire pit made from collected stones. Sunshine had some matches in her pocket, and there were still some half-burned logs in the ashes. A can of lighter fluid sat stashed in the crook of a tree, and she gave the logs a dousing.

The fire caught with a
fwoomph
, and then we each took a chair.

“How long has the fire pit been here?” I asked.

“As long as I can remember,” she said.

“Did you grow up in Atwater?”

“No, but I came out every summer to visit Russ, so I knew everybody.”

“And this is where we’re doing the séance?” I asked.

“Yep,” Sunshine said. She scooted her chair up close to mine until our knees were touching. Then, beside the fire, she took my two hands and told me to close my eyes. “Repeat after me,” she said. “And really mean it.”

“Okay.”

“Danny,” she said.

“Danny,” I said, realizing in the moment that we were calling to him—and then feeling a sting of longing for the days when I used to do that all the time.

“Please come see me.”

“Please come see me.”

I waited for more, but that was it. After a minute, I opened my eyes to look at her. This was worse than the palm reading. She had relaxed back into her chair.

“That’s it?” I said, disappointed despite myself.

“That’s it for now,” Sunshine said.

“Then what?” I asked.

“We come back here a bunch more times,” Sunshine explained, as if she’d already told me.

“How many times?” I asked.

“Until it works,” she said.

I tilted my head. “I’m sorry, but it doesn’t seem like it’s enough.”

“Your love makes it enough,” she said. “Trust me.”

I turned toward the fire. If loving Danny was enough to bring him back, it seemed like I would have managed to do that long before now.

“Did you hear about the time I OD’d?” Sunshine asked then.

“Yes,” I said. “Everybody in the whole country heard about that.”

“Well,” Sunshine went on, “that night? I died.”

“You died?”

She nodded. “I was clinically dead for seven minutes.”

I took that in.

“And while I was there, I saw my father, who was dead, too.”

I nodded for her to go on.

“I wanted to stay with him worse than I’ve ever wanted anything in my entire life. But they pulled me back to life. Then they forced me into rehab. And in rehab I met this really cute guy named Ernesto, and we started hanging out all the time, and one night I told him about how I’d seen my dad, and do you know what he said?”

“What?”

“He said, ‘I can bring him back to you.’ ”