“You told her about Jimmy, didn’t you?” Sally’s skin feels much too hot; before long her face will be flushed and red, her throat will be dry with fury. “You just couldn’t keep your mouth shut.”
“Thanks a lot for trusting me.” Gillian is really insulted. “For your information, I didn’t tell her anything. Not a word,” Gillian insists, although at this moment she’s not sure. She can’t be angered by Sally’s suspicions, because she doesn’t even trust herself. Maybe she’s been talking in her sleep, maybe she’s been telling all while in the very next bed Kylie listens to every word.
“Are you talking about a real man?” Sally asks Kylie. “Someone who’s sneaking around our house?”
“I don’t know if he’s real or not. He’s just there.”
Sally watches her daughter spoon decaf into the white paper filter. At this moment, Kylie seems like a stranger, a grown woman with secrets to keep. In the dark morning light, her gray eyes look completely green, as though they belonged to a cat that can see in the dark. All that Sally wanted for her, a good and ordinary life, has gone up in smoke. Kylie is anything but ordinary. There is no way around that. She is not like the other girls on the block.
“Tell me if you see him now,” Sally says.
Kylie looks at her mother. She’s afraid, but she recognizes her mother’s tone of voice as one to be obeyed and she goes to the window in spite of her fear. Sally and Gillian come to stand beside her. They can see their reflections in the glass, and the wet lawn. Outside are the lilacs, taller and more lush than would seem possible.
“Under the lilacs.” Little knobs of fear are rising on Kylie’s arms and her legs and everywhere in between. “Where the grass is the greenest. He’s right there.”
It is the spot exactly.
Gillian stands close behind Kylie and squints, but all she can make out are the shadows of the lilacs. “Can anyone else see him?”
“The birds.” Kylie blinks back tears. What she wouldn’t have given to look out and find he’s gone. “The bees.”
Gillian is ashen. She is the one who should be punished. She deserves it, not Kylie. Jimmy should be haunting her; each time she closes her eyes, it should be his face she sees. “Oh, fuck,” she says, to no one in particular.
“Was he your boyfriend?” Kylie asks her aunt.
“Once,” Gillian says. “If you can believe it.”
“Is that why he hates us so much?” Kylie asks.
“Honey, he just hates,” Gillian says. “It doesn’t matter if it’s us or them. I just wish I’d learned that when he was still alive.”
“And now he won’t go away.” Kylie understands that much. Even girls of thirteen can figure out that a man’s ghost reflects who he was and everything he’s ever done. There’s a lot of spite under those lilacs. There’s a whole lot of get-even.
Gillian nods. “He won’t go.”
“You’re talking about this as if it were real,” Sally says. “And it just isn’t. It can’t be! No one is out there.”
Kylie turns to look outside. She wants her mother to be right. It would be such a relief to look and see only the grass and the trees, but that’s not all that is out in the yard.
“He’s sitting up and lighting a cigarette. He just threw the burning match on the grass.”
Kylie’s voice sounds breakable, and there are tears in her eyes. Sally has gone very cold and very quiet. It’s Jimmy her daughter is in contact with, all right. Every once in a while, Sally herself has felt something out in the yard, but she’s dismissed the dark shape seen from the corner of her eye, she’s refused to recognize the chill in her bones when she goes to water the cucumbers in the garden. It’s nothing, that’s what she’s told herself. A shadow, a cool breeze, nothing but a dead man who can’t hurt anyone.
Now as she considers her own backyard, Sally accidentally bites her lip, but she pays no attention to the blood she’s drawn. In the grass there is a spiral of smoke, and the scent of something acrid and burning, as if, indeed, someone had carelessly tossed a match onto the wet lawn. He could burn the house down, if he wanted to. He could take over the backyard, leaving them too frightened to do anything but peer through the window. The lawn is rife with crabgrass and weeds, and not mowed nearly often enough. Still, the fireflies come here in July. The robins always find worms after a storm. This is the garden where her girls grew up, and Sally will be damned if she lets Jimmy force her out, considering he wasn’t worth two cents even back when he was alive. He’s not going to sit in her yard and threaten her daughters.