She’d written that exchange in her journal, trying to work out her feelings about it—and then, she’d just kept writing, imagining the parts of the conversation she hadn’t heard. When her pen ran out, she stopped and realized she’d written seventeen pages by hand, and had almost a full act of a play sketched out.
It was the second act, she’d realized quickly. Now she had a first act, too, and was drafting the third. One of her favorite novelists wrote his first drafts in longhand and then made a second draft by typing the first into the computer and revising as he went. Lia thought she’d try that.
The play was about her father, and their family, and the ‘other world’ he insisted he had. The title she’d scribbled on the inside cover of the journal was ‘There Was Only Ever One.’
It was probably terrible. She knew for a fact this draft wasn’t good, because she kept thinking of holes she’d left or inconsistencies she’d made—sometimes she’d wake up with a start in the middle of the night thinking of problems she had to fix. Even if she could make it good, there was no way in hell she could ever put it on stage. She was writing about her family. Her father. Don Pagano. He’d never allow it, and it would probably be dangerous in some way if he did.
None of that mattered, because Lia felt so good writing it. It was more than mere journaling could ever do. In creating her family as characters, she understood them better. She even understood herself better. She was building a world not much different from her real life, and yet there were few places she’d rather be than lost in the writing of its fictional version. This world of her creation, she understood—and that made the real world comprehensible.
Snuggles groaned and hoisted his old body off the floor. He stretched and yawned, and then lumbered, his tail wagging slowly, into the bathroom.
He didn’t like the bathroom—too many hard surfaces—so Lia watched him, curious, and heard him scratch lightly at the other door.
Her heart twitched. That was what Snuggles used to do when he heard Elisa in her room and had decided to seek out fresh scritches.
But no one had been in Elisa’s room since Elisa had last been in there.
“Snuggie, c’mere,” Lia called when he did it again.
He came to the door to her room and cocked his head.
Then he turned around and went back to Elisa’s door.
Fighting off an instant spate of tears, Lia set her journal and pen aside and unbundled herself from the chair. As she stood, she noticed that the snow had finally filled out into fat flakes that would stick.
She went into the bathroom. Snuggles wagged his tail harder at the prospect of getting what he wanted.
Her hand shook as she reached for the knob—no one had been in there in weeks. Mamma didn’t like anyone even to pause at the door. Elisa’s room had become a sacred place. More than a shrine. A tomb.
As Lia tried to make herself take hold of the doorknob—she didn’t believe in ghosts, really, but she didn’t want to do anything to upset her mother, who was coming so slowly back to them—she heard a noise from within, and suddenly believed a little bit more in ghosts.
Snuggles pushed his nose at the jamb, his old tail now going happily. Dogs didn’t like supernatural stuff, right? So he wouldn’t be excited if Elisa’s ghost was roaming her room, right?
She opened the door, and Snuggles pushed eagerly in.
The room was as her sister had left it—the bed was made, but the jeans and sweater she’d changed out of for the party were tossed carelessly over the duvet. Her Uggs lay in a scatter near her open closet, where she’d kicked them off. Her laptop was open on her desk, and a cup half-full of curdled hot chocolate sat beside it. Her Kindle sat on the bedside table.
Elisa’s ghost was most definitely here. Not manifested in vapor, but here all the same.
Mamma was sitting on the floor by Elisa’s old dollhouse, holding a couple of the dolls in her hands. She was crying silently.
Snuggles hurried to her and lay at her side, putting his head on her lap.
He’d known one of his people needed him.
With that, Lia began to cry, too.
Mamma looked up and tried to smile through her sorrow. “Oh, honey. You shouldn’t be in here.”