Too much time folded up in a box waiting for my dad to cut me into pieces.”
“You sleep with those on?”
“I fall asleep, yeah. They’re on a timer.”
“I could not sleep with those on. I need one hundred percent blackout darkness.”
“Then it’s a good thing we don’t sleep together.” The minute the words were out of her mouth, she heard their implication and held the phone away while she buried her face in her pillow.
Quin’s laughter came through. “That, and the fact that we don’t know each other.”
At least it was dark enough that he couldn’t see her blushing when she faced the screen again. “Back to Hedda. Do you believe her?”
His angle shifted, and she heard every creak of the antique bed. “Honestly? I don’t know. Do I believe something frightened her? Absolutely.”
“But you don’t think it was the ghost of Sallie White.”
He closed his eyes. Tightly. “No.”
“Because you don’t believe in ghosts.”
“Right.” He opened his eyes. “And c’mon, Dini. You don’t either.”
Dini stretched out on her bed, propping the phone on the pillow beside her. “Why do you say that?”
“Because of what you said on the tour. That a haunting is just something that stays with you. So, a ghost is just a memory. A person you can’t leave behind.”
“Hedda was haunted by Sallie. Her story and her tragedy. That could have been Hedda’s life too.”
Quin said nothing, allowing Dini to trail out her reasoning. She remembered the passage in the book when Hedda tore the picture until there was nothing left but her face and Sallie’s. In the darkness now, despite the twinkle lights, that was all that existed of Dini and Quin. His face filling the screen, hers tucked in the corner above it. She knew in that moment she would be haunted by him forever.
“So,” she said, welcoming him back to the conversation. “What’s your reason?”
“My reason?”
“Why don’t you believe? Is it a religious thing?”
“Kind of? I really did give this some thought after you left last night and…Hold on.” He was shifting as he spoke. She heard a rustling of turning pages, and when his image was clear and still again, he was wearing his glasses and reading from a Bible. Not a hotel Bible, but something small and soft with gilded pages. His own. “So, I had to do some googling, because I knew there was something like this in here, but I couldn’t remember exactly where. So I marked it. It says here about the dead”—he began reading—” ‘When they breathe their last, they return to the earth, and all their plans die with them.’”
“And that’s it?”
He took off his glasses again and looked straight at her. Straight into her. “For their plans, their consciousness, their spirit, yes. But we have memories and stories. Sallie’s story keeps her alive. I know I’ll never forget her. I’ll never forget Hedda.”
“You haven’t even finished the book.”
“I don’t need to. But I will. It’s late, though. And I have an eight o’clock meeting tomorrow morning in Universal City? Is it far?”
“Not really. About fifteen minutes.”
“They’re sending a car at seven fifteen. Then I’m meeting with teachers at a dual-credit high school housed on the campus. Then dinner with reps from all the colleges.”
“Okay, okay…I get it. I won’t bug you with Hedda updates.”
“No! Please do. I mean, you don’t bug me. I love this all, really. Being a part of this story—”
“You haven’t even gotten to your part yet.”
“I will. By the time I see you again.” Then something happened—a nanosecond of a change in his face, like a hot bit of realization flitting across his features. Had they been just talking on the phone, if Dini had nothing but the stars on the walls in her eyes, she might have missed it. She would have heard the catch in his voice, maybe, or wondered about the deeper, huskier tone of the words that followed, but she saw it. That unguarded moment before he said, “I actually can’t wait to see you again.”
Those were the words, and that was the face that drifted through Dini’s stars long after her phone screen went black. The silence of her room settled around her, and where she might have turned on some music or a podcast to help her busy mind settle as well, tonight she didn’t want any kind of barrier between her memory and his voice. She was just plugging the phone into its charger for the night when it buzzed—another text from Quin.