Page 49 of I'll Be Waiting

“I mean I don’t want to make this about me. It feels like talking about something horrible that happened, and a friend pipes up with an experience that pales in comparison. Like when I say I lost my sister and someone says their dog just died.”

“If you mean that the loss of my husband is bigger than the loss of your sister, that’s not true at all. I only had Anton for three years.”

“But he was your husband. The love of your life. When you talk about him…” Her eyes mist again. “All I can think is that I want that. I want to find someone I can talk about like that.”

I soften my voice. “And I want you to find someone who talks about you like that.”

“You loved him so much, and I just hope he was worthy.” At my frown, she blinks. “Oh, that sounded awful. I mean I hope he knew how you felt.”

“He did,” I say. “And I hope your sister knew how you felt.” Isettle in. “Can you tell me about her? You can say no, and I suspect, since you don’t talk much in group, that you’d rather keep those memories to yourself. Or share with people who knew her.”

“No one knew her,” she says, and there’s a sad twist of bitterness in her voice. “Not even me, really. She was good to me, really good, and I loved her, but I didn’tknowher. After she died, I was going through stuff and found her high-school journals, and I got to know her. It sounds awful, but that’s when she became a real person. After she was gone, and that’s just… It hurts.”

I reach out tentatively, and Shania falls into my arms.

Shania continues, “In her journals, she fretted over boys and hung out with her best friends. There were teachers she hated and classes she loved. It was such ordinary teen girl stuff that I keep thinking how much I’d have liked getting to know her better. But she was already gone.”

Shania’s sister died of an infection. I know that much. One of those mundane things that’s maybe even worse than a car accident, because it seems like it should be easily fixable.

People aren’t supposed to die driving home, but they’rereallynot supposed to die from a cut that doesn’t even require stitches.

“Can you tell me something else about her?” I ask.

She smiles and wipes her eyes. “I can.”

Shania and I talk for an hour about her sister, which gives her a chance to relive those memories and me a chance to get to know her better. Get to know Shania, I mean. Her sister sounds lovely, but the person I’m interested in is Shania and that conversation gives me a little more insight into the young woman I’ve befriended.

Shania’s first memory is of her sister. It’d been Canada Day weekend, and the fireworks scared three-year-old Shania, so her sister distracted her by looking at the stars instead, as she held her hands over Shania’s ears. Shania never forgot that, and while she still hatedfireworks, she always went along with family or friends, to lie on a blanket, with her headphones on while she looked at the stars.

Years later, when Shania was a teen, her sister had been in the hospital for an illness on Canada Day. Shania stayed with her, and they’d snuck onto the roof to watch the stars and distant fireworks. They’d been caught by one of the nurses, and her sister had an excuse, but Shania had blurted the truth, unable to face lying. The nurse let them stay on the roof and, afterward, made a point of talking to Shania, which had started her on the road to becoming a nurse herself.

By the time Shania leaves, I’m ready to sleep and I drift off easily. What I drift off into, though, isn’t dreams. It’s memory.

FOURTEEN

It’s the night of the séance with Patrice and Heather. We’re holding it in the forest, because that’s what teen girls did in the nineties. They were too old for huddling in a bedroom, giggling over a Ouija board. Movies and books had shown them how this was done, and if you couldn’t get into some creepy old house that’d once hosted black-mass orgies, you had to go into the forest.

Patrice was in the lead. She might have started off letting Heather take charge, but she’d found her footing fast enough.

“How far are we going?” I say. “I’ve already lost my shoe once in this bog.”

“It’s not a bog,” Patrice says. “It’s just muddy, and you lost your shoe for two seconds, Nic. Stop whining.”

“But how far—”

“Are we there yet?” Patrice cuts in with a whiny-little-kid voice.

I bop her in the back for that. “Legit question. I’m the only one who brought a decent flashlight, and I can still barely see. Weren’t we supposed to do this on a full moon or something?”

“Fulldark,” Heather says. “That’s how real séances are done. As for where we’re going… You tell her, Pat.”

“We’re going to the site of a murder. Adoublemurder.”

“Uh…” Heather says. “Not to be pedantic, but it was a murder-suicide.”

“Are you sure?” Patrice turns, her weak penlight under her chin, as she intones, “Are you really sure?”

Heather rolls her eyes and catches up beside me. “Two teenagers died out here about twenty years ago. A guy and a girl. There was a big bonfire, and they took off to get laid. Only they never came back. The next day, a search party found them.”

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