Of course, I was not the only one who had been worrying about Henry. Once they knew I had been to see him, Zack and Renee wanted a full update. And Zack didn’t wait either. He started asking a bunch of questions the next day at school. Right in the middle of silent reading.
“So, is he going to die?” Zack asked.
“Zack!” Renee said.
“What? That’s what we all want to know, isn’t it?”
“How is Barbara Anne supposed to know? She isn’t a doctor.”
“She went to see him,” Zack said.
“I think he’ll be fine,” I said. I couldn’t explain how I knew. I had decided not to tell them—or anyone—about Edgar, about how he helped me, about what he did for Henry. “I’m going to see Constance,” I said. “She’ll know.”
“How will she know?” Zack demanded.
“She’ll tell my fortune,” I explained. “She’ll see it—in the cards.”
“Table three!” Ms. Biniam said. “A little less conversation, please. This is silent reading time.”
I guess I was still technically grounded, but on the days my grandmother watched me, I could get away with pretty much anything, and even my mom didn’t remember to enforce it all the time. That morning, when I told my mom I planned to visit Miss Leary after school, all she said was, “That’s a sweet idea, Bitsy. I’ll pick you up as soon as I’m done shopping.”
And Constance might have been surprised when I turned up on her doorstep, but she seemed happy to see me.
“How’s your little friend?” she asked. “How’s Henry? We’ve been so worried.”
“How do you know about Henry?” I asked her.
“He was mentioned,” she said. “At church.”
“I think he’s going to be okay. I hope he will be. My mom told me he’s not in intensive care anymore. But that’s partly why I came,” I said. “I thought maybe you would know.” Constance looked at me, puzzled, until I went on. “Can you tell my fortune?” I asked her.
“Of course,” she said. “Let’s get out the cards.”
Constance and I settled ourselves in the living room, and she asked her helper to make some tea. Then she dealt out the cards with her crooked fingers and began. “Let’s see what we have,” she said. Of course she gave me only good news. And some of it might have been made up. I mean, who ever heard of a fortune-teller reminding you to study and do all your homework? But she wasn’t telling me what I wanted to know most, and so I had to ask.
“What about Henry?” I asked. “He’ll be all right, won’t he?”
Her expression changed, and she looked more serious.
“Barbara Anne,” she said gently. “Nobody knows the future. I wish I could tell you what lies ahead, but I can’t. I can only say that whatever it is, happy or sad, you won’t be in it alone. You have family and good friends.”
“I know,” I said. “But Henry is my only close friend.”
“Oh, I’m sure that’s not true,” she said. “And even if it were, he’s taught you, already, how to make others. That’s what our friends do for us.”
“Did Edgar do that?” I asked. “For you?”
Constance nodded.
“You must miss him,” I said.
“I do,” she told me. “But he’s with me still. I like to think of Edgar as my guardian angel.”
“I think he’s Henry’s too,” I said.
“Well,” she told me. “I guess I don’t mind sharing.”
I offered to carry her teacup to the kitchen, and when I got back, I saw that Constance had closed her eyes. At first, I thought she was just resting for a minute, but it went on too long. I knew she must be asleep or…I leaned across the table and stared at her as hard as I could in the dim light. I held my own breath until I saw her chest was moving. Then I got up and headed to the door. Miss Leary’s helper stepped out into the hallway.
“She fell asleep,” I said. “Will you tell her I said goodbye?”
“Of course,” she said. “She’s asleep more often than not these days.”
My jacket was hanging on a hook in the hallway. And as I reached for it, I saw a photo I had never noticed before. It was a picture of Edgar and a girl with dark, curly hair, a girl who looked a little…like me.
“Beautiful children, weren’t they?” Miss Leary’s helper asked. “It’s hard to believe Constance was ever that young. And the boy was so talented. A prodigy on the piano. Such a shame. You’re a dear to visit her. I hope we see you again soon.”
I told her I would be back soon, though I had no idea if it was true. Then I took my jacket and stood outside on the porch, waiting for my mother. The lights were on in Henry’s house, and I could see Sophie in the window watering a plant. It looked so cozy, and I wished more than anything that I could ring the bell, that Henry would be there to open the door and welcome me.
At school the next day, we were scheduled to share our artifact reports, and it was Renee’s turn. She stood in front of the class, looking straight down at her paper. Her voice was soft and a little shaky. “When most people think of Thomas Edison, they think of this,” she said, and she held up a lightbulb. “Or they remember that he created the phonograph and the first motion pictures. He was a brilliant man. People called him the Wizard of Menlo Park, and he had more than a thousand patents for inventions.”
I was sleepy and still worried about Henry, and I’ll admit that I wasn’t listening too closely. I guess I expected it to be the usual stuff. You know, when he was born and when he died and a long, dull list of everything he invented. But then Renee started talking about something I’d never heard of before: a spirit phone.
“The spirit phone, or spirit box, may have been the last invention that Edison worked on,” Renee said. “And nobody knows if he ever finished it or even if he left behind drawings. Some people said that it was just a joke that Edison was playing and not even a real thing.”
Renee stopped for a minute then and looked out nervously at the class.
“Go on,” Ms. Biniam said. “Tell us more, Renee.”
Renee went on, but she wasn’t even looking at her paper anymore. She was just talking to all of us. “Well,” she said. “It was right after World War One, and a lot of people died in that war. So people were interested in finding ways to communicate with the people they had lost. And Edison, he was a scientist, so he didn’t believe in most of the things that they were doing, like séances and mediums who try to talk to the dead. But he did think that maybe some part of us, our personalities, I guess, might go on. So some people say that he was building a machine, the last and greatest machine of his career, to record…the voices of ghosts.”
“What do you think, Renee?” Ms. Biniam asked.
“Well, I’m not sure,” Renee said. “But there was this guy, this journalist in France, and he says he found a section of Edison’s diary that nobody else had ever seen. And it was all about finding ways to reconnect with people who have died. And I think he could have done it, maybe, if he’d had more time. Because sometimes it does seem like the past isn’t really over and done with. And everyone would have been rooting for him, to find a way, you know, to deliver those messages to the people who needed them. And that way people could have something besides just memories.”
There was so much feeling in her voice. I could hear it gathering as each word joined the next. It was like watching raindrops slide down a window, merge, and fall.
When she finished and took her seat, Ms. Biniam said quietly, “Thank you, Renee.”
When school was ending the next day, Ms. Biniam said, “I have a special project, and I need a volunteer.”
I barely heard her. I wasn’t really paying attention. I was stuffing a worksheet inside my backpack and wondering if we would keep getting this much homework right through winter break. Probably we would. Biniam was relentless. She was also staring right at me.
“Barbara Anne?” she asked. “Wouldn’t you like to volunteer?”
“For what?” I asked.
“The army,” Zack said, and then laughed alone at his own joke.
“To make a special delivery,” she said. “Henry needs his homework, and I thought you might like to bring it to him.”
“You’re making him do homework in the hospital?” I asked.
“Of course not,” she said. “He was discharged. This morning.”
Biniam was smiling. I nearly started to cry.
I was so happy to see Henry that I really didn’t want to even think about anything that came before. Still, a part of me was curious too. I had to know—how it was for him.
“Do you remember it?” I asked him. “Any of it?”
“Not really,” he said. “I was dreaming.”
And then he told me—one last time—about them.
In the dream, it seemed to Henry that his mother was with him, sitting on the edge of the bed. She faced away from him, with her hands covering her face. She was crying. Henry said that he tried to ask her what was wrong, but she didn’t seem to be able to hear him. And when he tried to sit up, to put his arm around her, Henry realized that he couldn’t move. This strange, sudden paralysis scared Henry more than his mother’s tears. He didn’t understand why his body had stopped working. But it had. He was pinned down to the bed as if someone were holding him there. All he could do was listen to his mother sob and watch the strange, dark shadows pass across the ceiling.
“They looked like clouds,” Henry said. “Like storm clouds forming.”
Eventually, she stopped crying and turned toward him. And that’s when Henry realized his mistake. As she leaned forward to kiss his forehead, Henry saw that she wasn’t his mother at all. And when her cold lips touched Henry’s brow, she whispered her own son’s name: “Edgar,” she said.
She reached toward Henry’s throat, and he tried to scream, but no sound came.
Gently, she adjusted something at his neck, tied a knot, and patted Henry’s chest. Then the ghost rose up and unfolded a huge white sheet. It opened over Henry’s head like a parachute and floated down softly, landing across his face and body, covering Henry in gauzy white from head to toe.
“He’s ready now,” Henry heard her say.
And his eyes flew open.
“And you were there,” Henry said. “When the doctors came running in. How did you get there, Barbara Anne?”
I didn’t know what else to say, so I told him the truth. “Edgar sent me,” I answered.
“Edgar?” Henry asked, and so I nodded.
“You know,” Henry said. “He was all I thought about while I was in the hospital. And being all cooped up in there alone…well, I think I finally understand him, Barbara Anne. It must have been so awful for him, trapped in that room, our room, all those days and nights. Maybe I never needed to be so afraid of him, you know? Maybe he just wanted what he asked for in the beginning, to have somebody to play with.”