“Well, if it was Sunday, he’d have on his good black suit, and that fedora of his I loved so much, the one with the green feather. And the girls would be wearing the dresses their Nana smocked for them, and their patent-leather shoes, and — oh, my!”
I could understand why she’d let out that shocked exclamation, because the window that overlooked the street suddenly didn’t seem to be a window any longer, but rather a portal through which a pure white light blazed. And out of that light stepped three figures, the tallest one in the middle, flanked by smaller shapes that resolved themselves into two small girls, probably four and six at the most, wearing, as Mary had described, darling smocked dresses in pink and blue, and the shiniest patent-leather Mary-Jane shoes I’d ever seen. The man with them wore a black suit, his fedora cocked at a jaunty angle.
His hazel eyes widened as he caught sight of Mary, and he cried out, “Mary! Oh, Mary — is that you?”
Tears streamed down her face. “It is, Ralph. Oh, my darling, I thought I would never see you again!”
She ran to him, and he took her in his arms, holding her close. In that moment they looked very solid — or perhaps it was more that they were solid to one another. The two little girls ran to them, reaching up with their arms to be hugged as well, and the whole family embraced in the middle of the living room, while the white light continued to pour in from the place where the window used to be.
At last I said softly, “Ralph, you’ll be taking Mary with you now, won’t you?”
He nodded. His face was pleasant, not handsome, but something in the way Mary was gazing up at him told me she thought he was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. “Yes, I will. I’ve been waiting a long time for her.” He turned, searching her big tear-filled eyes. “Are you ready, my dear?”
“I am.” She wrapped her arm around his waist and took the hand of the little girl wearing blue, while he clasped the small fingers of the younger child in pink. “I’m sorry I didn’t come with you from the beginning.”
“You’re here now, and that’s what matters.”
He began to lead them toward the light, but at the last minute Mary paused and looked over her shoulder, her eyes meeting mine. “Thank you, Angela,” she said, and they walked into the light, the radiance blazing brighter and brighter until I had to shield my eyes from that retina-scorching glare.
Then they were gone, the window just a window, the living room returned to its regular self, the abandoned remote sitting on the coffee table. I began to laugh, and then for some reason, the laughter turned to tears.
And that’s how Connor found me when he returned, his hands full of takeout bags. Just me standing in the middle of the living room, crying for no apparent reason.
* * *
“So how did you know what to do?” he asked some time later, after he’d calmed me down enough for me to tell him what had happened.
“I — I don’t know,” I confessed. “It was sort of like…well, when we had to confront Damon. Somehow the power in me understood, even when I didn’t. I guess I just felt so bad for her, thinking of her being here by herself after we moved out, and it woke up something in me. Sorry — I know that sounds kind of crazy.”
“Not as crazy as you think.” Quietly, he picked up the last bacon-wrapped date and set it on my plate. I flashed him a grateful smile. He reached over, touched my hand for a brief second, then went on, “Just like you said, you’ve had the power come to you when you needed it. For whatever reason, you understood it was time for Mary to move on. So…you helped her.”
“But that’s not my talent!” I protested. “Talking to ghosts, yes. Helping them cross over? That’s what a medium does, isn’t it? We McAllisters had one once, but she died when I was just a little girl. I even tried a few times, thinking I could coax a few of our ghosts into moving on, since it was so clear that they were clinging to what was familiar in Jerome rather than facing the next step in their existence. But I could never get them to listen to me. Not until now, I mean.”
Connor seemed to ponder my comments for a moment, one index finger tracing idle swirls on the tabletop. “We don’t have anyone like that, either. Nor anyone who can talk to ghosts like you do. Most of our powers seem to be concentrated pretty firmly in this world, for whatever reason. I know you think your talent is just talking to ghosts, but people grow and change. Why not their talents, too? Maybe yours are simply…evolving.”
“I’d say yes, but I’ve never noticed that about any of the McAllisters. What they do is just…what they do. So my aunt never loses anything, can tell you down to the square inch where anything is in the apartment or the store, or even Tobias’s place, come to think of it.” I smiled, recalling the time he’d dropped a contact lens and she’d gone unerringly to the very spot where it had fallen. “And Margot can cast illusions so real you’d swear you could touch them — until your hand goes right through the wall she conjured, or whatever.”