Bella’s heart skids into her ribcage and she gapes at Odelia. ‘What did you say?’
‘I said, Sam came to me in the middle of the night. Well, that’s not what I said, but it’s what happened.’
‘Sam,’ she breathes, closing her eyes briefly and tilting her head back. ‘Sam came to you. Then … you saw him, too.’
‘Too? Bella, did you see Sam?’
‘Max and I did. Yesterday, at the airport in Chicago. Only I didn’t think it could possibly have been real. But if he was here …’
Odelia nods. ‘He was here. He woke me from a sound sleep, and you know that’s not an easy feat for any spirit, especially not a newbie like Sam.’
Bella manages to flash a faint smile. ‘I do know that. What happened, exactly? You woke up and he was there, what … standing over your bed?’
‘This wasn’t an apparition. I heard him, and I felt his energy.’
‘He gave you a message for me? What was it?’
‘I’m still mulling it all over. It wasn’t entirely clear. Clairaudience isn’t like a telephone call. Well – maybe it’s like a long-distance one, back in the day, when connections were static-ridden and kept cutting in and out. Think of it, if you will, as …’
She goes on.
And on.
This isn’t the first time she’s explained mediumship to Bella. She’s passionate about spiritualism and considers it her duty to comfort the unenlightened with proof that the soul outlives the body.
As she half-listens to Odelia’s familiar spiel, Bella’s gaze falls on a tiny hummingbird. It darts toward a sweet pea cluster and hovers, beak dipped into a blossom. Its dark feathers are glossed in iridescent emerald, its whirring wings as invisible as high-speed propellers. Nearby, a monarch butterfly perches on a leaf with a languid flapping, as if summoned to provide visual illustration for Odelia’s oft-made point that spirit energy vibrates on a far more elevated frequency than human energy.
Like a professor warming to her subject, Odelia says, ‘This is hardly a modern phenomenon. If we go back to the dawn of ancient Greek and Roman civilization, we can—’
‘Odelia, I don’t mean to interrupt, but … you were saying you have a message for me?’
‘Oh, Bella! I’m sorry. Here I am going on and on, and of course you want to know about Sam. The very first thing that came through is that he loves you, and Max, and that he’s always with you.’
She nods.
‘He’s happy that you’ve found your way here. And he knows how much you miss him.’
Bella opens her mouth and then closes it, biting her bottom lip to keep from saying anything.
‘Did you have a question?’
‘No, I … I just … I mean, if you were asleep when it happened, how do you know it wasn’t just a dream?’
‘When you’ve been doing this as long as I have, you can tell the difference. I can give you more information on that if you’re interested.’
‘Maybe later?’
Odelia smiles. ‘Yes. Back to Sam. He wants you to know that he understands how difficult it was for you to start over and to build a new life without him, and he’s proud of you.’
She pauses, as if waiting for a response. Bella bites her lip so hard she tastes blood.
Odelia touches her arm. ‘Bella?’
‘Sorry. It’s just … this stuff you’re saying is so … generic. I feel like it could apply to anyone who’s lost a husband, or – anyone who’s lost anyone, really. How do I know it’s the real thing? Not that I think you’re not the real thing,’ she adds quickly.
‘But you’re not convinced that I am. And that’s OK. I’m not here to convince you of anything. My purpose is to deliver the information exactly as it comes through. And it isn’t unusual for a departed soul to express love for those left behind, or to let them know that life continues after they’ve departed the earthly plane, and that they remain with us always.’
Bella nods, unable to force words past a sudden lump in her throat.
It had been one of the last things he’d ever said to her, when she was at his bedside on that last day in the hospital.
‘I’ll be with you …’
He’d been so weak, his voice a ravaged whisper.
‘Promise me you’ll … stay … strong …’
She’d promised. In her darkest, most difficult moments since then, she remembers that promise and she manages to keep it.
‘Sam kept emphasizing how proud he is of you, Bella,’ Odelia says. ‘And proud of his boy.’
His boy … that does sound like Sam.
‘Where’s my boy?’ he’d call when he came home after a long day.
‘That’s my boy,’ he’d say when Max did something that pleased him.
Maybe a lot of fathers say that about their sons. Of course they do. But Bella wants so badly to believe that Odelia really did hear from Sam …
That she and Max really did see Sam.
‘Oh, and I heard wind chimes,’ Odelia adds.
‘My wind chimes?’
‘I suppose it might have come from outside, but now that I think of it, there wasn’t any wind.’
‘No, there wasn’t. I’m sure there wasn’t, because …’
Because I heard them, too.
She clears her throat. ‘Sam gave me the wind chimes on the porch. The ones with the blue glass angels.’
Odelia nods. ‘Yes. I know that.’
Of course she does. She knows many things about Sam. About Bella’s relationship with him, and their lives together. And she’s well aware that it’s been frustrating for Bella to live in the town that talks to the dead, among people who believe that everyone can learn to do so – and it seems that everyone but Bella really can.
Odelia is a good friend. She probably wanted to receive a message from Sam for Bella almost as badly as Bella wanted to hear from him.
But sometimes, people hear what they want to hear just as they see what they want to see.
‘So, the wind chimes … is that why the message was unclear?’ she asks Odelia.
‘Hmm?’
‘You said the message wasn’t entirely clear. Because of the wind chimes?’
‘No, Spirit sometimes uses sound effects to convey a clairaudient message. I’ve heard it all – car horns, trumpets, ringing phones. I think the wind chimes were Sam’s way of identifying himself to me.’
‘So he didn’t give you his name.’
‘His name? No. Again, it’s not like a telephone conversation. There’s no caller ID. Traditional names can be misleading. Most of us know a number of people who share any given name. In my experience, Spirit prefers to validate earthly identity with details that are more unique to the relationship. That said, I did get a name. I’m hoping it means something to you. It meant nothing to me.’
‘What is it?’ Bella braces herself for it – for the name that will suspend her disbelief, once and for all. It will likely invoke someone from their shared past. Someone who’d been close enough to be meaningful, but not so close that Bella has thought much about the person or shared it with Odelia.
She combs the past for such a person. Maybe their upstairs neighbor, Lena, who’d dropped off that delicious lasagna and a baby gift when Max was born. Or Sam’s college roommate, Ahmad, who’d been the best man at their wedding. Or Rebecca, the little girl who’d lived across the street and had an occasional playdate with Max. Or—
‘Kevin,’ Odelia says.
‘Kevin?’
‘Kevin.’
Bella frowns, unable to place it. ‘That’s it? Just Kevin?’
‘The last name might begin with a B? I heard Kevin Buh … something.’
‘Kevin Buh … Kevin Buh … wait, do you mean Kevin Bacon? The actor?’
‘Do that mean something to you?’
It does not.
She asks Odelia whether this might be part of her spirit shorthand – a series of symbolic references that mediums use to interpret messages from the Other Side. As Bella understands it, the shorthand is specific to the individual – the same phrase or image might have different meaning from one medium to another.
When Odelia sees rain, it signifies that someone has been shedding tears in grief; when Pandora sees rain, it signifies that a baby is on the way, ‘because all seed must be watered in order to grow, Isabella.’
‘Doesn’t a premonition about rain ever just tell you that there’s a storm coming?’ Bella had asked, but her friend assured her that the local weather is far too precarious for prediction.
‘And life isn’t?’
‘That isn’t the point, Isabella,’ Pandora had said in that maddening way she has of brushing past a legitimate question. ‘It isn’t for us to question why Spirit gives us some information and not other. We must accept what is given.’
Which, in this moment is Kevin Bacon, who is not, according to Odelia, typically included in her personal shorthand.
‘So you’re saying Sam was sending me a message about the actual actor?’
‘Maybe something related to him?’ Odelia shrugs. ‘My mission is to deliver truth, not to question it.’
‘I mean, Sam liked Kevin Bacon’s movies – we both did,’ Bella muses. ‘But I can’t think of anything … oh! Back when we were dating, we once played that six degrees game at a party.’
‘Six degrees?’
‘You know the theory that everyone is socially connected by six degrees? It’s like that, only you name someone in the entertainment industry, and the others have to name someone connected to them who’s connected to someone who’s connected to … you get the gist. You can pretty much link everyone in Hollywood to Kevin Bacon in six or fewer steps.’
‘Including the wanker and the trollop!’ a disembodied voice comments.
Bella looks around and spots Pandora, framed in the screened window of the small half-bath.
The wanker, of course, is Pandora’s ex-husband, Orville Holmes. The trollop would be Jillian Jessup, the movie star who’d come to town looking for a connection to the spirit world and made an illicit one with Pandora’s man instead.
Bella has never met either of them, but she and Sam had seen Jillian’s smash romantic comedy film Wish Come True on their first date and re-watched it every year on their anniversary.
Odelia scowls up at Pandora. ‘What are you doing up there?’
‘Tidying up in the loo, of course.’
‘Bella hired you as a housemaid?’
‘Certainly not. I’m tidying myself after my morning swim.’
‘And you’re eavesdropping on a private conversation.’
‘That can’t be helped when one has a voice like a foghorn, can it?’ Pandora shoots back, and adds, ‘Not you, Isabella.’
Bella sighs, ‘Ladies, please. Pandora, was Kevin Bacon in a movie with Jillian Jessup?’
‘Of course not! An actor of his stature wouldn’t appear in such rubbish. He was in—’
‘Footloose!’ Bella exclaims.
‘I don’t know about that, but he was in—’
‘Pandora! Bella was talking! Stop interrupting!’
‘I believe Isabella interrupted me, as did you.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Bella says, ‘but I think I know why Sam would give me a message about Kevin Bacon. We were dancing to music from Footloose at his mother’s wedding on Saturday. Maybe Sam is trying to tell me he was there.’
‘Kevin Bacon?’ Pandora asks.
‘Sam!’ Bella and Odelia tell Pandora in unison.
‘Blimey! You don’t have to shout. I’m right here.’
Odelia opens her mouth to retort, but Bella heads her off with a question. ‘Odelia, do you think that’s what Sam is saying? That he was with us on Saturday?’
Odelia tilts her head, pondering. ‘I’m not sure. I’m sorry, Bella. I can only give you the information as Spirit sees fit to give it to me. But I’ll tell you what I tell all my clients – that if a message doesn’t seem to fit, give it some time. It might become clear when you’ve had a chance to think about it.’
‘But—’
This time, Bella is interrupted by a high-pitched shriek from inside the house. The four dogs launch into a frightened frenzy of barking and howling.
‘Ah, the kettle! It’s teatime!’ Pandora vanishes. A moment later, so does the whistling.
‘Oh, for Pete’s sake. I’ll see you later, Bella. I have to get home to Li’l Chap. Good luck with … all this.’ Odelia waves at the dogs, and the kitchen, where Pandora can be heard clattering around with the kettle.
As she heads back next door, Bella bends over and scoops up the nearest and most terrified puppy. ‘It’s all right, Dash,’ she tells him, petting him and opening the back door. ‘Come on, everyone. Back inside we go.’
In the mudroom, she puts Dash into one of the three miniature puppy beds Drew had set up. There’s a larger one for the big guy, but he climbs into the basket filled with the clothing Bella had dumped in from her suitcase last night.
Turning, she spots her phone sitting on the shelf next to the container of dog treats. When she checks it, she finds that there are indeed one, two, three missed calls from Odelia.
There’s another one as well, from a caller her phone identifies as ‘anonymous’. No number.
She checks for a message, but there isn’t one. That’s not unusual.
But today, for some reason, it makes her uneasy.
For some reason?
For good reason.
Her medium friends are convinced that Spirit sometimes manipulates energy sources like household electronics and appliances.
‘If you ever notice the lights flickering, or the television unexpectedly changing channels mid-program, don’t worry. It’s probably just Nadine,’ Odelia told Bella soon after she moved into Valley View – as if that was reassuring.
But Bella doesn’t really believe that the missed unknown caller was Nadine, does she? Nadine, or … or some other Spirit.
‘Sam?’ she whispers. ‘Was that you?’
She waits, clutching the phone, glancing over to see that the dogs are poised and looking at her as if they’re expecting something to happen. As if the phone is about to ring, and Bella will hear Sam’s voice saying …
Kevin Bacon?
Krypto lets out a bark, as if he, too, thinks that’s crazy. Looking over, she realizes that the dogs aren’t even looking at her. Tails wagging, they’re looking past her at the plastic bin of treats on the shelf.
‘So much for your psychic powers, guys,’ Bella says with a laugh, doling out another round of treats.
Then she opens a search window on her phone, types in strangers who look alike, and hits Enter. There’s a long list of results.
Clicking the top link, she’s taken to a recent article published in a respected scientific journal to which she’d subscribed back in her teaching days.
Researchers have concluded that most people have at least one bona fide lookalike somewhere in the world.
All right, then. If that’s the case, then she and Max had simply come face to face with someone who looked just like Sam.
And that, she tells herself firmly, pocketing her phone, is all there is to it. Except …
She finds herself reliving the experience again, like she’d missed something.
When it happened, they’d just gotten out of the car. She’d been focused on finding Max’s missing backpack. Max had spotted Sam first.
But that wasn’t what he’d said. Not at first.
His attention had been drawn to the vehicle, not the driver.
‘It’s a golden car,’ he’d said, as if it were a heaven-sent chariot and not an old Subaru with a dented fender and dingy metallic paint.
No, wait. He’d said the, not a.
‘It’s the golden car.’
Bella frowns, considering the slight, yet crucial difference.
Calling it the golden car, it almost sounded as though Max had been expecting to see it.
Or as though he’d seen it before.