As I walked over to the kitchenette counter to retrieve it, Mrs. Robinson asked me, “Aren’t you going to introduce your friend?”

Startled, because I hadn’t notice anyone enter the room behind me, I looked over my shoulder and didn’t see anyone. “I’m sorry. There’s no one else here with me,” I told her.

“Sure there is. She’s right next to you,” Mrs. Robinson insisted.

My scalp broke out into a raging storm of pins and needles. It was then, as I stood at the table and took a closer look at the elderly woman where she sat in front of her television, that I noticed the milky white cataracts covering her eyes. Mrs. Robinson was completely blind.

CHAPTER 2

YOU SEE SOMEONE NEXT TO me?” I asked softly as I took a step closer to Mrs. Robinson.

She scowled at me playfully. Her white hair had been cut very short, and she wore heavy turquoise earrings that pulled her earlobes downward. “I can’t see much of anything. Can barely see you. But I can tell she’s here. Shame on you if you’re ignoring her, because she seems to be quite attached to you.”

My scalp was tingling again, and it felt as if my heart was beating loudly enough for Mrs. Robinson to hear it. I sank down into one of the chairs at the table, fully aware that I was cutting it close to the end of my shift and I might be in trouble if I clocked out a few minutes after seven. Naturally, I assumed that this woman was somehow able to sense Jennie’s presence even though I couldn’t, which thoroughly freaked me out.

“I had a twin sister,” I said, but my voice emerged from my throat as more of a hoarse whisper than I intended. “But she died almost eight years ago.”

Mrs. Robinson made a grumpy noise, kind of an umph, and I couldn’t tell if it was an acknowledgment or dismissal of what I’d just told her. After a long pause, she said, “Where I come from, we’d call her an invisible. They’re all around us, but you’re lucky. You have one all to yourself.”

She had pronounced “invisible” with such a strong French accent that at first I hadn’t understood the word she’d said. I didn’t know how to reply. At Dad’s, we didn’t talk about the fire, or about Jennie. Not ever. I was sure Rhonda knew what had happened, but it was like an unspoken rule that it was a forbidden topic of conversation in Florida. I was completely baffled by how this woman I’d never met before seemed to have known the most important thing about my childhood before I’d even entered her suite.

I asked, “Where do you come from?”

“Born and raised in Louisiana. My daughter brought me here to Florida five years ago, after I had a stroke. She said she couldn’t trust me to live alone anymore.”

“Your daughter lives in Tampa?” I asked, not wanting to press too hard with my questions in case Mrs. Robinson was upset about having been “dumped” in the assisted living facility, as several of our residents were.