Page 72 of I'll Be Waiting

As I bend, though, a smell hits me. I have no idea what cremains smell like and no interest in finding out, but what I do smell is familiar. It’s a smell I never thought I’d recognize, and yet I do.

It’s the mushrooms. Those damn mushrooms Heather said she’d brought back from Cuba.

I bend closer, holding my breath so I don’t inhale, which makes it hard to get a sniff. I don’t need that sniff. My brain tells me what it is even when I try to argue that my senses are affected by the dream.

I dreamed of the séance with the mushrooms. Now I think I smell them.

It’s definitely not cremains, though. These are flakes and bits of plant matter, not ashes.

“Nic?”

I look up as Shania crests the stairs.

“Are you okay?” she says as she rushes forward. Then she must realize I’m only crouched, not sprawled on the floor, and she slows. Her gaze goes to the hardwood.

“What’s that?” she says, flicking on a light. Before I can answer, she says, “Oh.”

I open my mouth to say it’s not cremains, but she lowers her voice and whispers, “Dr. Cirillo doesn’t take off his shoes.”

I frown, trying to make the connection.

She gives a half smile. “Americans, right? I’ve already cleaned up mud in the kitchen that he tracked in. He must have been wandering around the gardens.”

I look down at the flakes and bits. Shania thinks it’s detritus Cirillo brought in on his shoes. Except it’s all in front of my bedroom door. To leave a mess right here, he’d need to stand outside my closed door.

But itdoesmake sense that it’s organic matter from outdoors, tracked in on shoes. I take a closer look. Flakes and lumps that suggest a decayed spring garden.

But that smell?

Mushrooms are dried plant matter, just like this. That’s what I must be smelling.

“Nic?”

I look up.

“Is everything okay?” Shania asks.

No, everything is not okay. I’m dreaming of a past séance. I’m questioning my husband’s role in it and questioning the communications I might be receiving from him now.

I smile and tug my sock back on. “Everything’s fine. That nap was just what the doctor ordered, but now I’m in need of coffee and sugar. Are there any of your Nanaimo bars left?”

She perks up. “There are. I think Jin and Dr. Castillo find them too sweet.”

“Not possible. Let’s go get some caffeine and sugar.”

TWENTY

Shania and I eat our snack in the kitchen, leaning against the counter and talking. Jin hears conversation and joins us in the coffee, but takes an apple instead of the sweet bars. At some point, Shania slips off to take a call from work, and Jin and I keep talking. Then Keith calls Jin, and I get out of there fast.

I’d phoned Keith earlier, but he’d clearly wanted more details than I gave, and I’m not sticking around to be pulled into that. I’m trying to forget what happened upstairs—with the dream and flakes on the floor—and talking to my brother is guaranteed to yank that back.

Jin is the kind of person who brightens any room he’s in, which makes him an excellent partner for my brother. Keith has a gravitas that always makes me painfully aware of anything I’m trying hard to ignore. Like when, as a kid, I’d do something wrong, and just having Keith in the room somehow drove me to confess. It was like having our own resident black-frocked priest.

As Jin talks to Keith, I catch snatches of their conversation, Jin’s voice light and teasing, and then dropping as he tells Keith he misses him. I move away, partly to give them privacy, but also partly because, while I’m thrilled that my brother has found someone, it hurts listening to them. All I can think of are my phone calls with Anton, whenhe’d been away at conferences, how I’d long to hear his voice and then chastise myself for acting like a schoolgirl getting a call from her crush. After all, he’d only be gone for a few days.

And then he’d be back.

I grab two fresh cups of coffee and go in search of Cirillo. I’d heard him in the hall, but he’d veered off, as if not wanting to disturb my conversation with Jin. Now I wonder whether he’d been coming to grab his own afternoon caffeine, and I feel bad if we’d kept him from that.

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