“I could not care less about your whacked-out callers, Mom. I’m trying to move on.” While he still missed Belinda, that was something he had accepted he would always feel. So he was filling his time with his business and getting ready to start school this coming semester, reading letters for the next Healing Project, seeing Will and Will’s friends. “I’m the person who only looks forward.”

That night, I got a text from Esme. It read simply, I am going away. I will call you.

My sleep was restless afterward. My phone didn’t ring, but I dreamed that it had, and I quickly answered, noticing that it was Esme’s number. But when the caller spoke, it was Belinda. I woke up fuddled, and stumbled through my days.

I don’t believe in ghosts. But now, with what I hoped would be a reckoning so near, Belinda was everywhere. A figure walking away from me on a quiet street transformed as if made of water into Belinda, her spine neat as a viola, her stride, her long bright hair. The TV picture faded to a shadow but the outline of her face seemed to waver in the dark glass. A voice in a crowd set itself apart from the others, raised in a cry. Was that how Belinda cried out when Esme attacked her? My mind shied from the thought. There were nights when she seemed especially close, when small strange things happened. A curtain of shells that hung mostly forgotten from the porthole window in my room began to clatter and shiver, without the breath of a breeze to stir it. I lay down in the gloaming to read and I felt a warm breath at my cheek. Portents are another thing I don’t believe in, but it was as if Belinda herself wanted something from me. I knew full well that this was a delusion. I also knew that it felt true. And it scared me.

It reminded me of when I was a new mother, going through a phase of being afraid of the dark. Jep and I traded sides on the bed so that he was nearer the door and could protect me from what he teasingly called “the black rectangle of doom.” Now, two decades later, I shamefacedly asked him to do the same thing, not sure why it made me feel better to know that an assailant would have to take three extra steps to cut my throat, not certain why the assailant wouldn’t just cut Jep’s throat instead. I didn’t ever want to see that slight young guy in the hoodie again. But I wondered what he was up to if it wasn’t scaring me.