“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.