I dial the number and press the phone to my ear until I hear it ringing. I am agonizingly aware that the open door to Moony’s room is just behind me and to the right. And then I become aware of other things. Or rather, other not things. The absence of the smell of coffee and chicory. The quiet where the sounds of the television—the clipped and hurried speech of newscasters—would be.

There’s a click and muffled laughter. I can picture her finger over the speaker of her phone, but to the side a bit so that it doesn’t completely drown out the sound. And then a breathless, “Hello? Edna?”

“No. It’s me.”

“Cat?”

The laughter stops and her breathing changes automatically. As though she’s holding it in, letting it out slowly through her pinched lips with control.

I am unfazed. “Yes.”

“H-hi, sweetie. This is a surprise.”

Her tone is higher now, laced with sugar. I am aware that she is trying to impress me, to sound maternal and together. I feel guilty for my unaffectedness. Doubly so now that Moony is dead, and I can only react like some kind of teenage android. “I know.”

I hear my own voice come out shaky and faint. This is not how my thoughts sound. They are solid before they leave my mouth, like they’ve been carved out of ironwood. I don’t understand what I’m hearing.

“Is everything okay?” Her tone changes again. Her voice deepens as she drops the act and flattens to a practical, no-nonsense edge.

This change softens something within me. It catches in my throat, a noise that is wholly unhuman. “No,” I manage.

“Catia, what’s wrong, baby? What’s happened?” There is a desperate ring under her words, the panic that precludes bad news when it could be anything, which is always so much worse than when it actually becomes something.

“It’s Moony. I…I think, I mean I know she’s died.”

There is silence. No breathing. No background noise. I imagine even her heart has stopped beating, the world around her frozen like the scene inside a snow globe. “I see,” she says at last, the words as short as she can make them.

The chill creeps through the receiver and wraps itself around me like a shroud. I see the flash of scarlet from my dream again, the line of sashes sagging over rib bones. Please don’t make me ask, I think. What kind of mother would make me ask?

I hold my breath.

“I’m coming,” she says after a moment. “Give me a few hours to make the drive.”

“Okay.” My body sags in relief. More so because she didn’t make me ask than because she is actually coming.

“And, Cat?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t stay there, honey. It’s bad luck to be alone with the dead.”