“Me neither,” Mickey said, softening. “I’ve never felt this bad.”

Ruth put her hand in Mickey’s hair, starting over her ear and combing backward. Mickey tensed at first but then relaxed into it, grateful. She wanted to feel exactly like this, she thought. A child with a bad dream.

“I remember one time my dad found me on his porch steps. I had taken the bus all the way from my mom’s by myself. I was, maybe, seven? God, he was so mad.”

“I didn’t know you had a dad,” Mickey said.

Ruth’s hand went still.

“Everybody has a dad.”

“Right, yeah, of course. I just mean, you’ve never talked about him.”

“He moved out when I was a little kid. Met somebody new, wanted to start a new family. My mom was so angry. So hurt. When they went to court, she told me to lie. Say stuff about him, bad stuff. Like that he touched me, slept in my bed with me. I didn’t know what I was saying. I was just a little kid, you know?”

It was the most Ruth had ever talked about her family. Mickey nodded, silent.

“So I said it, and my mom got full custody. My dad got in a lot of trouble. He got fired, had to move to a different town. Couldn’t come near me or my mom again.”

“Damn.”

“I’ve regretted that my whole life. If I had just told the truth, maybe I could’ve grown up with him instead. Had a little sister, a nice brick house. A Labrador. The whole nine. Instead of my mom’s crazy.”

They were quiet, and Ruth’s fingernails resumed their slow progression across Mickey’s scalp.

“I’ll tell you,” Ruth said. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to make that up to him. To prove that he could trust me.” She swallowed. “Nothing.”

Mickey rolled over so their noses almost touched.

“I agreed to the séance; it’s not your fault.”

“Do you want to know what I do when I feel bad?” Ruth asked, her voice deep in its quiet.

“Yes, please.”

“One sec.”

Ruth got up and went to the bathroom. Mickey rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling. The room was lit by the lamp on the dresser and nothing else. In the shadows, she kept picturing her dad’s face. She had never seen that much rage in him. Silas was the fun parent, the goofball. The one who encouraged her to bring the air mattress into the community pool, not the one who made her spend hours drying it with a blow-dryer. He trusted her, and she failed him. Even worse than that: she failed Philip, his favorite person. His second-favorite person, she had always thought. Second to her.

Ruth poked her head around the doorframe.

“Come in here.”

—