She thought the best idea was to take Riley’s hand and drag her the hell out of there. But it was too late. Riley had taken an empty seat and was pointing at the last vacant chair, letting Helen know she should take it.

They’d been waiting with two empty chairs. Like they’d been expecting them.

Helen settled in, looked over at Dicky and tried to imagine him as the little boy who had lost his father to the woods, to the white deer. What had little Dicky seen that day? How long had he chased after his father and the deer, calling out, desperate?

The woman to Dicky’s left leaned over and whispered something to the old man next to her. He had large eyes and ears with tufts of hair growing out of them. Helen thought he looked like a great horned owl. The owl man nodded.

“Before we begin,” Dicky said, “let’s all take a minute to remember that the communication we all seek with those who have passed doesn’t begin and end here, in this circle.”

The owl man nodded, gave a low “Mm-hmm.”

Dicky cleared his throat and continued. “I reckon you could say learning to read signs from the spirits is a little like learning to speak another language.”

This got him more nods of agreement.

“It’s about picking up on patterns, learning to be more receptive to the signs we get from our departed ones every day. We’ve all gotta be on the lookout for those patterns. You all know the stuff I mean: dreams we have again and again, numbers that come into our lives over and over, a song on the radio, an image we can’t shake. Reality…it ain’t random.” He shuffled his feet in the pointy-toed boots. “The spirits, they have the power to manipulate the world around us. To send us signals. It’s up to us to keep our eyes open. To listen to what they’ve got to say.”

Was it Helen’s imagination, or was Dicky looking right at her when he said this?

“I keep seeing that pileated woodpecker in my yard,” a man Helen recognized from the pizza and sub shop said. “It was my brother’s favorite bird. I’m sure it’s him.”

There was a general murmur of agreement from the group, followed by more discussions of coincidences, serendipitous moments, and signs they’d all received: repeated license plate numbers that were actually a code, voices with important messages picked up on the static in between radio stations, recurring dreams.

Helen said nothing.

Dicky looked at her. “Tell me, Helen, have you experienced anything like this?”

She squirmed, looked at Riley, who gave her a little nod.