Roger was white-faced and almost sick to his stomach. “Tell us more about the man,” he said, looking meaningfully at Anna, who was horrified: It would be doubly scandalous, she thought, for her dead mother’s elderly lover to turn up at a séance. But he did work in leather. She remembered perfectly that he’d upholstered the trailer love nest when he and Lydia ran off.

“Oh, it couldn’t be him,” Anna whispered.

Mrs. Always knew that she’d really hit upon something, but she didn’t know what it was. The word “leather” had just come to her out of nowhere. Neither of the sitters looked very happy about the connection, though. The man was glowering and the stout woman looked scared to death. “I sense a great love, a love that lasts beyond the grave,” she said shrewdly, hopefully.

“Oh,” cried Anna.

“Anything else?” Roger asked. He was beginning to collect himself again.

“A long journey,” Mrs. Always said. She was growing tired. She was never sure where her impressions came from: Some were conscious guesses, but some … definitely had a different source.

Roger grumphed. Was that a lucky guess or did it really refer to the cross-country journey with the old man and woman, half out of their blessed minds, on their last wicked binge?

“She’s leaving. Everything is getting dim,” Mrs. Always said. “Goodbye, dear lady, your two children ask that you remember them,” she said to the ceiling.

Children, Lydia thought; that was it. Out of curiosity she’d followed the voices that seemed to act like steps down inverted corridors with endless mirrors, until she emerged into this room. With surprise she saw that she was indeed on earth, obviously after her own death, but the rest of the proceedings at first were incomprehensible.

Two of the people looked very familiar, and from the dialogue she’d overheard, these must be her children, Anna and Roger. But they were older than she remembered. Next to them, invisibly, she was a jaunty twenty-five or maybe even thirty-five, and she was wondering whether or not to be born again as a baby. Lydia stared and tried to bring herself into the environment more clearly.

“There’s something over there,” Anna cried. “I swear it.”

“Don’t move,” Mrs. Always whispered. In fact, the medium nearly sprang out of her chair, for in a flash she saw Lydia quite clearly in one of the few legitimate psychic experiences of her lifetime.