Leaving Time(147)

If that’s true, I ask her, then how come now I can’t talk to the one damn spirit I want to?

Be patient, Desmond says. You have to find what’s lost.

I have forgotten how Desmond is always full of New Age crypto-quotes like that. But instead of being annoyed by it, I just thank him for the advice, and wait.

I call Mrs. Langham and offer her a free reading to compensate for my rudeness. She’s reluctant, but she is the kind of woman who walks through Costco just to eat the samples in lieu of paying for lunch out, so I know she will not turn me down. When she comes, for the first time I actually manage to talk to her husband, Bert, instead of faking it. And it turns out he’s just as much of a jerk in the afterlife as he was when he was living. What does she want from me now? he gripes. Always bitching. For Christ’s sake, I thought she’d leave me alone when I finally died.

“Your husband,” I tell her, “is a selfish, unappreciative ass who would prefer that you stop hounding him.” I repeat, verbatim, what he said.

Mrs. Langham is quiet for a moment. And then she replies, “That sounds exactly like Bert.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“But I loved him,” she says.

“He doesn’t deserve it,” I tell her.

When she comes back a few days later, to get advice on finances and important decisions—she brings a friend. That friend calls her sister. Before I know it, I have clients again, more than I can squeeze into my calendar.

But I make time for a lunch break every afternoon, and I spend it at Virgil’s grave. It wasn’t all that hard to find, since there is only a single cemetery in Boone. I bring him things I think he’d like: egg rolls, Sports Illustrated, even Jack Daniel’s. I pour the last over the grave. It will probably kill the weeds, at least.

I talk to him. I tell him about how the newspapers all credited me for helping the police locate Jenna’s remains. How the story of the sanctuary’s demise was splayed across the front pages like Boone’s own version of Peyton Place. I tell him that I was a person of interest until Detective Mills proved that I was in Hollywood, taping one of my shows, the night that Nevvie Ruehl died.

“Do you talk to her?” I ask him, one afternoon when the sky is swollen with rain clouds. “Have you found her yet? I’m worried about her.”

Virgil hasn’t responded to me, either. When I ask Desmond and Lucinda about it, they say that if Virgil’s crossed over, he may not yet understand how to visit the third dimension again. It takes a great deal of energy and focus. There’s a learning curve.

“I miss you,” I say to Virgil, and I mean it. I’ve had colleagues who pretend they like me but are really just jealous; I’ve had acquaintances who wanted to hang out with me because I was invited to Hollywood shindigs; but I have never really had many true friends. Certainly not one who was such a skeptic yet still accepted me unconditionally.

Most of the time I’m in the cemetery alone, except for the caretaker, who walks around with a weed whacker and a pair of Beats headphones. Today, though, there’s something going on near the fence line. I see a small gathering of people. A funeral, maybe.

I realize that I know one of the men at the grave site. Detective Mills.

He recognizes me immediately. It’s one of the perks of having pink hair. “Ms. Jones,” he says. “Good to see you again.”

I smile at him. “You, too.” Glancing around, I realize there are not as many people here as I first thought. A woman in black, two more cops, and the caregiver, who is patting down the freshly turned earth on a tiny wooden casket.

“It’s nice of you to come today,” he says. “I’m sure Dr. Metcalf appreciates the support.”

At the sound of her name, the woman turns around. Her pale, pinched face is framed by a lion’s mane of red hair. It is like seeing Jenna again, in the flesh—a bit older, with a few more emotional scars.

She holds out her hand, this woman I tried so desperately to locate, who has literally landed in my path. “I’m Serenity Jones,” I say. “I’m the one who found your daughter.”





ALICE




There is not very much left of my baby.

I know, as a scientist, that a body in a shallow grave is more likely to decompose. That predators will scavenge away bits and pieces of the skeleton. That the remains of a child are porous, with more collagen, and more likely to decay in acidic soil. Still, I am not prepared for what I see when I view the tangle of narrow bones, like a parlor game of pickup sticks. A spine. A skull. One femur. Six phalanges.

The rest is gone.

I will be honest: I almost did not come back. There was a part of me waiting for the other shoe to drop; a niggling feeling that this was a trap to walk into, that I would be handcuffed when I stepped off the plane. But this was my baby. This was the closure I’d been waiting for, for years. How could I not go?