Silence (26 page)

“You…can see the dead.”

“You…can see the dead.”

Emma nodded.

“And you’re going to tel me you’ve seen my son.”

“Not—not exactly.”

Maria Copis lifted a hand. “I’m crazy tired,” she said, and she obviously meant it. “And I’m either halucinating, or I’ve lost my mind. I need a cup of coffee. Would either of you like one?”

“No, thank you,” Emma replied. Alison didn’t drink coffee.

“Come into the kitchen with me.”

“Should we tel Michael to folow us?”

Maria lifted a hand to her eyes and rubbed them a couple of times. “No,” she said. “My mother would cal me an idiot, but— he’s not going to hurt her, and he’s not going to let her hurt herself. And this is as happy as I’ve seen her since—since. She deserves to play in peace while he’s wiling to play with her.”

She turned and walked into the kitchen, and, stepping around toys, Emma and Alison folowed her.

She made coffee in silence, opening the various cupboards to find filters, coffee, and a cup. She kept her back to Emma and Alison the entire time, grinding beans first and then letting coffee percolate. When it was done, and when she’d added cream and sugar to the cup in very large amounts, she turned to them, leaning her back against the kitchen counter as if she needed the support.

“So. You two can see the dead.”

“Oh, no,” Alison said quickly. “Just Emma.”

Maria’s eyes reddened, and she bit her lip. She rubbed her eyes again with the palm of her hand. Emma looked at the floor, eyes again with the palm of her hand. Emma looked at the floor, because it was hard to look at someone whose grief was so raw and so close to the surface she was like a walking wound.

Hard because Emma had been there. Had hidden it, as much as she could, because she needed to hide it. She’d told everyone she was fine—everyone except Petal, because Petal couldn’t talk. When Maria Copis spoke again, however, Emma looked up.

“So, Emma, you can see the dead. But you haven’t seen my son.”

Emma grimaced. “Not yet.”

“And you’re trying to see him for some reason?”

“No.” She swore softly. “Yes.”

“Which is it?”

“Yes. We’re trying to see your son.” Emma spread her hands, again exposing her palms. “I—I heard you,” she whispered.

“From midtown, I heard you shouting his name. Drew.”

Maria stiffened.

“And I folowed it. The shouting. It was—” Emma took a deeper breath. “I’m sorry. Let me try this again. I can see the dead. Some of the dead are strong enough that I can see where they are. Or where they were when they died. Some of the dead are strong enough that they think they’re stil there, and I can see and feel what they see and feel.”

Maria put the coffee cup down on the counter and folded her arms across her chest, drawing them in tightly.

“I could hear the shouting while I was in school, and I “I could hear the shouting while I was in school, and I folowed it, while a friend drove and took my lousy directions.

When we finaly got to Rowan Avenue, I tried to go into what was left of the house. I couldn’t. Fire was gouting out the windows.”

“There’s no fire there now,” Maria said.

“No. In theory there wasn’t any fire when I went, either. No one else could see it,” she added quietly, “because no one else can see the dead. Only me. It singed my hair.

“I didn’t know who was trapped in the house. I only knew that the fire was recent because it looked recent, and the buildings were stil standing. I went home, because I couldn’t get into the building, and I looked the address up, because I hoped it would tel me what had happened or what was happening.” She swalowed. “And when I read his name—Andrew—I realized that the shouting I’d heard wasn’t his. It was yours.”

Maria lifted a hand to her face for just a moment. When she dropped it, she wrapped her arm around herself again. She didn’t speak.

Emma did. “He could hear you. He could hear you shouting.

He stil can.

“He thinks the house is burning. I couldn’t get to him because I couldn’t get through the fire, not then. So, no, I haven’t seen your son.”

Silence.

“I am trying to see your son,” Emma continued, her voice thickening, “because I think he’s trapped in the burning building.

I’m not even sure we can safely get into the building; I’m not I’m not even sure we can safely get into the building; I’m not sure if we can reach wherever he’s standing. But I have to try.

And I came to you because—” She couldn’t say it. She couldn’t say the rest of the words. She turned to Alison, and Alison was blurry, which was a bad sign. Emma Hal didn’t cry in public.

Alison caught her hands and squeezed them, and Alison saved her.

“We think,” Alison told Maria Copis, “that Andrew won’t— or can’t—come out of that building if you’re not there. He’s waiting for you,” she added quietly. “He has no idea that he’s dead.”

And there it was. When Emma could see again, when she could see clearly—or as clearly as she was going to be able to see— she could see the hunger in Maria Copis’ eyes as plainly as if it were her own. She could see the suspicion, as wel; she could see the way Maria’s expression shifted as she tried to figure out what their angle was. What they wanted.

As if to quel those suspicions, she walked to the edge of the kitchen and glanced out into the hal where Michael was stil playing with her toddler. She stood there for minutes, and then, arms stil tightly wound around her body, she turned back.

She was crying now, but she didn’t raise her hands to wipe the tears away; they fel, silent, down gaunt cheeks. “Why should I believe you?” she whispered.

This, too, Emma understood. But she could do something about this. She lifted one hand, and she whispered a single name.

Georges.

Georges.

In the air before Emma, a golden chain extending from the palm of her hand to his heart, Georges shimmered into existence.

The sunlight through the kitchen windows shone through his chest, casting no shadows. But he looked at Emma almost hopefuly, and she cringed.

She held out her hand to him, and he took it in his own.

Maria Copis gasped and covered her mouth with one hand.

She swore into her palm, her eyes widening, her brows almost disappearing beneath the fringe of loose, dark hair.

“Georges,” Emma said, “I’m sorry. Michael can’t play right now, but I wanted to introduce you to Maria Copis. Maria,” she added, “this is Georges.”

“He’s—” Maria hesitated and then took two firm steps toward Georges, who looked dubious but stood and waited.

Georges didn’t look like a ghost. He felt like one, to Emma, whose hand was already beginning to sting at the physical contact. Maria tried to touch Georges and her hand passed through him, as Emma had known it would.

“Oh, my god. Oh, my god.”

Georges turned to Emma. “Where’s Michael?”

“He’s babysitting right now.”

The look of disappointment across those delicate features was its own kind of heartbreak, in a day that had already exposed too much of it.

“I’m sorry, Georges,” Emma said, kneeling so that she was closer to his eye level. “I promise as soon as I can, you can see Michael again. But we’re trying to help another little boy—”

Michael again. But we’re trying to help another little boy—”

“They caught him?”

“No. No, Georges. He’s trapped inside a burning building.”

Georges frowned. “Did he die there?”

Emma nodded.

“I don’t think you should go there.”

“We have to try to help him,” Emma said quietly. “He’s a little boy. Much younger than you.”

“Oh.” Georges nodded. And then, while Emma watched, he quietly disappeared.

And Maria Copis looked at Emma.

“I’m sorry,” Emma said, rubbing her hand. “Even dead children like Michael.”

The woman’s laugh was brief and brittle.

Emma swalowed air. “I can’t promise anything,” she told Maria Copis. “And I won’t try. I’m not sure we can even get past the fire—but I can’t leave him there without trying. We came here to ask you to come with us—but we might not be able to reach him at al. It might al be for nothing.”

“When are you going?”

“We’re going now. If you give me your phone number, I can cal you if we can actualy get far enough into the building to reach him.”

Maria laughed again, and it was the same thin laugh.

“But we have two cars,” Alison told her, correctly interpreting that laughter. “If you can’t find a babysitter, we can al go.

Michael would stay if we asked him.”

Michael would stay if we asked him.”

“I can cal my mother. I can ask her to come home from work. I can—” she stopped as Emma stiffened, but Emma said nothing. “…I can sound like a crazy, grief-stricken, hysterical daughter.”

Emma winced. But she didn’t disagree. “I could ask Georges to come out again for your mother,” she began.

“No. You’re right, even if you didn’t say it out loud. We could cal her, she could come home, and she could be terrified enough that she wouldn’t be fit to babysit, if she even let me out of the house. How long do you think—” She lifted a hand. “No, sorry.

I’m just being incredibly stupid. I can’t cal anyone else, either.

Do you have enough room for two car seats?”

Emma nodded. “We have two cars—and a couple of other friends as wel.”

“There are more of you?”

“We needed help with the ladders. You’l come with us?”

“Yes. He’s my son. There’s no way I’m going to stay here just waiting beside the phone while you try to help him. Yes, Emma. I’l come. Maybe Michael can help with the kids while we’re there.”

If Emma’s world had changed overnight—and, with the appearance of Longland and the ghosts, it had—Rowan Avenue had continued in blissful ignorance. If, by blissful, one meant a raging fire and bilowing dark smoke from al the downstairs windows. Emma got out of the car slowly, and approached the sidewalk, where she surveyed the ruined buildings. Only one of sidewalk, where she surveyed the ruined buildings. Only one of them was burning, which made it a bit easier to spot, given the lack of numbers on the front facade.

She glanced at Alison, who had also emerged, and at Michael, who was half in and half out of the car, struggling with the straps of a car seat and a toddler who did not, apparently, like being stuck in one. Amy had puled up by the curb, parked, and flipped the back hatch of her vehicle up; she was already giving Skip—and Eric and Chase—instructions about the ladders.

Maria Copis emerged last, holding her baby while Michael carried Cathy. She stayed beside Michael, possibly because Cathy was attached to him with that toddler force that alows for no quiet separation, and possibly because it was hard for her to approach the ruins of her home, the place where her son had died.

Emma glanced at her and found it hard to look away. Maria was holding her baby as if the baby was some kind of life buoy and she was on the edge of drowning.

“Maybe this wasn’t a good idea,” Emma said softly to Alison.

Alison shook her head. “It’s going to be hard for her. Even if she weren’t here with us—even if she weren’t trying to help her son. Her oldest child died here. I don’t know if Cathy remembers the house or not—she’s stil glued to Michael— but…Maria had to walk out of the house without Andrew and pray that he folowed.”

“I know—it’s just…the look on her face, Aly.”

Alison didn’t tel her not to look. Amy would have, but Amy Alison didn’t tel her not to look. Amy would have, but Amy was busy shouting at Skip. Skip, not shy, was shouting back.

Eric, not stupid, was quietly avoiding getting between two siblings who were arguing, and Chase—wel, it looked as though Chase was trying not to be stupid and mostly succeeding.

Emma spread her hands out, palms up. “I feel like I should say something to her or do something for her, but I can’t think of a damn thing I could do that won’t somehow make it worse.”

“Except this,” Alison said quietly.

“Except this.”

“What do you see, Em?”

Emma grimaced. “Smoke. Black smoke. And fire.”

“Can you hear anything?”

Emma frowned. After a moment, she said, “Beyond the fire?

No.”

“No shouting?”

“No. It’s the first time—” She grimaced again and wondered if the expression was going to be stuck there permanently, she’d used it so often lately. “Not that I’ve been here that often. But…

no. I don’t hear her voice.”

“Is that a bad sign?”

“I don’t know.”

“Emma!” Amy, hands on her hips, had turned. “Are you going to sit there chatting with Alison al day, or are you going to get this show on the road?”

Alison touched her shoulder. “We needed the car and the ladders,” she whispered.

Emma nodded, shoved her hands into her pockets, and Emma nodded, shoved her hands into her pockets, and headed toward the facade, where Chase and Eric were now positioning ladders. Or trying to keep them in position. The front of the building was not entirely cooperating, because there was a smal porch on the second floor that hovered just over the door.

It wasn’t terribly wide, but it was—almost—in the way of at least one of the ladders.

They did, however, manage to set the ladder against the wal just to one side of the overhang. How, Emma had no idea, and she wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. No one lived here anymore, so any external damage to the building wasn’t likely to get them in trouble.

“Eric,” she said instead, as she approached him, “I think something’s changed.”