He stopped and gestured at my hand.
“Corrie, you’re bleeding.”
I looked down. I had been squeezing my hands in a fist so tightly, my nails had drawn blood from my palms. I opened them and stared at the line of red crescent moons. I started to wipe the blood on my pants, but Fletcher stood.
“I’ll get a towel,” he said, “and maybe this is a good time for a cup of tea?”
I nodded, trembling, most of me wanting to insist he sit back down and finish the story. Instead, I followed him into the kitchen. He doctored my hand, wiping it clean and wrapping it in a paper towel.
I started to fill the kettle, but he took it from my hands.
“Sit, I’ve got this.”
I watched him move through the kitchen, filling the kettle, pulling packets of tea from the jar by the sink.
“Have you been with anyone else? Since Lauren?” I asked.
He paused and looked out the window, where rain had begun a soft patter against the glass.
“Yes, several. But no one has compared to her. Not to the love I shared with her.” He turned back to me. “I didn’t expect anything else. But you don’t have to think about that yet, Corrie. My advice to you is not to rush into anything or anyone right away.”
“I wouldn’t,” I whispered. “I couldn’t. And I won’t need to.”
“Because you’re going to bring him back from the dead?” Fletcher asked.
I looked away from him and nodded.
He sighed.
“I wanted to hold her again, so I opted for the resurrection that included another person. I needed someone who wanted to die, someone ready to leave the world, but also who resonated with Lauren. I searched for months.”
“And you found her,” I said. I had read the book. I knew.
“Yes, her name was Jade. She lived in New York City and she reached out to me online. She had planned a day for her death.”
“And it worked…”
“No,” he shook his head. “It didn’t work, Corrie. I wrote the book because I needed the catharsis. I needed to follow the possibility to its end. The night of the ritual, Jade swallowed a bottle of OxyContin. I rushed her to the hospital. I couldn’t go through with it. They pumped her stomach, and she survived. She hated me for a long time, and then she forgave me. We’re still friends.”
He took his phone from his pocket, scrolling for a moment before handing it to me.
I stared at an image of Fletcher in front of the Statue of Liberty. A small, dark-haired woman with huge brown eyes and piercings in her nose, eyebrow and cheek looked back at me.
“That’s her, Corrie.”
As I looked at the picture, my shoulders slumped. My head seemed to grow heavier, and I rested it on my hands.
“I’m sorry.” He touched my hand, and I stared at his fingers, long and smooth with the nails clipped short.
I used to clip Sammy’s fingernails. Every few seconds he’d jump and howl in pain, and Isis would giggle.
I couldn’t even look at fingernails; the most neutral thing in the world reminded me of Sammy.
Sarah
“FUCK,” Sarah grumbled when she spotted one of the detectives she’d seen during her last trip to the police station. The detective put his menu down and glanced their way. His eyes stopped on Sarah, and then widened when he spotted Will.
Will craned around in his seat, following Sarah’s gaze.
“Hey, Detective Lawson. How’s it hanging? Put away any innocent men today?”
Brook had just begun to ask who they were all staring at, but closed her mouth at Will’s comment.
Sarah kicked him under the table.
He jumped but continued glaring at the detective until the man lifted his menu back up, concealing his face.
A moment later, Detective Collins walked in.
Sarah dropped her head into her hands, looking up when Detective Collins cleared his throat. He stood next to their table.
“I see you’ve found Will Slater. Funny, you didn’t get in touch with us so we could interview him.”
“Obviously it wasn’t that hard,” Will declared, folding his arms across his chest. “Hoping to pin this one on me? Follow in your mentor’s footsteps?”
Detective Collins considered Will, nodding his head as if coming to some conclusion.
He pulled a card from his pocket and planted it on the table.
“It would be great if you’d come down to the station to answer a few questions, Will. Maybe your new friend can drive you.” He nodded at Sarah and turned on his heel.
“What was that all about?” Brook asked.
“Oh, they’d like to blame me for the murder,” Will said nonchalantly. “And now Sarah’s my accomplice.”
“I don’t want to talk here with those detectives in hearing distance,” Sarah said. She turned to Brook. “Will and I have to meet someone this afternoon, but I promise I’ll fill you in on everything soon.”
CHAPTER 33
Now
Corrie
I watched Fletcher hurry to his car, his coat held above his head as a flimsy shield against the downpour.
I couldn’t let him go. I ran into the storm. The rain had soaked me clear through before I stepped off the porch and plummeted into the muddy yard. I slipped on wet leaves and nearly fell.
“Fletcher,” I called out his name, but the roar of the wind drowned my call.
He opened his car door.
I surged forward and caught his coat, yanked him around to face me.
“Tell me, damn it!” I howled, and maybe he heard, or perhaps he read the desperation in my face.
“Get in,” he yelled into my ear.
I scrambled around to the passenger side of his car and climbed in, soaking his seat.
The cold seeped through my skin, slowed my blood, turned my bones to ice. My teeth chattered as he started the car and turned on the heat.
“I met a woman,” he said at last. She described a place - a dimension, if you will, where evil does not exist. And then there is earth, where everything, good and evil, manifests as matter. And then there is the space between, the place where souls and energy might linger, might get trapped.”
“And you found her? You summoned Lauren’s spirit?”
He closed his eyes briefly and looked back at the house. I saw the troubled way he watched it, as if were not a house at all, but a monster waiting to devour us.
“I can’t explain how, but the woman-”
Something in the way he said ‘the woman,’ gave me a chill.
“She showed me the way. But Corrie, if you do this…”
“I don’t care!” I slapped his dashboard so hard my hand stung.
“I know,” he said, hanging his head. “Why is the moment of clarity always after the disaster?”
“Fletcher…” I pleaded.
“I don’t know her name. She lives in our world, but she’s not of it. You’re fortunate - though I hesitate to use that word - because she doesn’t live far from here. I drove for a day and a half to find her. She lives in a little Upper Peninsula town called Ishpeming. She may choose not to help you. For each of us the summoning is different, and somehow she sees what needs to be done.”
“Ishpeming,” I repeated the name and city. “Do you have a phone number?”