½ lb.
Sat with Morris tonight, and I’m so ashamed of myself, Diary. I had the blues, or rather I have the blues and I let it all out on him, but he’s a peach. Was great to me.
I shove Lucy’s choice of dolls and doll clothes into her backpack. My cell is pressed to my ear, and like it has time and time again, it rings. When I go into Mom’s voice mail again, I end the call with a mumbled curse. Sylvia said her mom is home tonight and she didn’t hear that anyone had any plans. Where the hell is my mom?
“Mommy says not to use that word.” Lucy sits on her bed with her doll in her lap.
“She’s right. I’m wrong. It’s not a word anyone should use. What else do you want to take?” I told Sylvia I needed help with Lucy, and she’s on her way to retrieve my sister until Mom returns home from wherever it is she ran off to without telling me.
“Is V okay?” Lucy asks.
I try to imagine what this all must look like in her eyes. Monsters, ghosts, burning sage, cleansing, Veronica crumbling in pain, me carrying her to my bed, Nazareth—the tattooed and black-framed-glasses giant—showing up and carrying Veronica to her apartment while telling me to keep Lucy away, and now me in this frantic pace to get Lucy taken care of so I can check on Veronica. It must feel like a bad dream.
“She gets really bad headaches sometimes and they make her feel sick. She won’t feel good for a bit, but I’m sure she’ll feel better soon.” I hope that’s true. Veronica told me her headaches could be bad, but I never imagined anything could be like that. “It would probably cheer Veronica up if you made her a card.”
“I can do that. We’re celebrating Christmas soon so I’ll put a tree on it.” Lucy twirls her fingers in her doll’s hair. “I think getting rid of the ghosts is what hurt V.”
“It’s not.” Not sure how long Mom will be gone or what’s happening with Veronica, I shove PJs into the bag along with clothes for school tomorrow.
“V liked her ghosts and they never hurt her. She loved them.” Her lower lips trembles. “It’s my fault she’s sick.”
It’s not and I don’t want her to carry that burden. I drop the backpack to the floor and sit on Lucy’s bed. I hold out my arms and she clambers across the sheets and onto my lap. I hug her tight and kiss the top of her head. “It’s not your fault.”
“If we hadn’t tried to get rid of the monster, V would be fine.”
My heart rips open as I’m sure that’s how it appears to her. Consequence of an action. A plus B equals C. “Veronica has this thing in her brain that shouldn’t be there.” I search for the words to try to explain a tumor to a six-year-old.
“But you don’t understand how much V loves her ghost.” Lucy’s voice becomes higher in pitch—frantic with tears and she pushes her head into my shoulder. “They talk all the time. V talks to her and she talks back. V said that having her there made her feel better.”
“Veronica isn’t really talking to ghosts. They aren’t real.”
“Maybe V isn’t sick. Maybe we broke her heart,” she continues like she didn’t hear me. My T-shirt starts to become wet with her tears. “V needs her ghost. That way she knows that she wasn’t truly gone.”
Dammit, Veronica. She must have told Lucy about the EVPs. “The sounds Veronica had on the recorder aren’t real.”
Lucy adamantly shakes her head. “No, they talk. V whispers to her when people are around so they don’t know she’s talking to her mom. She said no one would understand, and she’s right, no one understands when you see something no one else does. Just like they don’t understand my monster.”
My entire body jolts and I gently push Lucy back so I can look her in the eye. “Did you say Veronica talks to her mom?”
She convulses as sobs rack her body. “I promised I wouldn’t tell! I promised I wouldn’t tell!”
I pull her close again, rubbing her back, shushing her, telling her it’s okay, but my mouth and my actions are disconnected from my brain. Her mom. Does Veronica actually think she sees her mom?
“We shouldn’t have done it.” Lucy sobs. “Because the monster is my monster. It’s not V’s monster. I wanted to