Phoebe slept on the couch facing the townhouse’s front door through the heat of the long afternoon, with her handgun within easy reach on the little coffee table in front of her. Her dreams — dark and restless and filled with shadowy shapes that danced just out of her line of sight, mocking her — left her tired and tormented. She woke several times, certain that she had heard something moving through the townhouse, and each time she got up and walked from room to room, searching, and found nothing disturbed, nothing wrong.

At last, at nine o’clock, she admitted defeat. She wasn’t going to get any more sleep, she wasn’t going to feel any better than she felt at that moment. She might as well get up and get to work.

With a sigh, she got out both decks of tarot cards — the round Motherpeace deck that she used for reading women and the rectangular Universal Waite that she used for reading men — and shuffled them with practiced hands. She put her headset on, dialed her log-on number, and waited.

Phone traffic was heavy, which was a blessing, and in the early-evening hours not so grim as it sometimes got. A lot of men called that night with relatively simple questions: Will my promotion come through? Is this very young woman I like interested in me? Has my wife been seeing someone else? Does my wife know I’ve been cheating on her? Fewer women called — a reversal of the usual run of things — and their calls, too, were mostly simple. Does he love me? Will I ever get pregnant? Should I wait for him to get out of prison? Can you give me a number to play in the lottery?

Phoebe talked, listened, read the cards, and started to relax. She was keeping her times up — her call volume, and thus her paycheck, was completely at the mercy of her call-length average. She made twenty-five cents a minute, and those minutes were hard to hold on to, especially since she insisted on being ethical and giving people good value for their money. She never put anyone on hold, as some readers did; she never dawdled or pretended to need to light a new candle or to meditate for a few moments while her caller’s clock ran. She had to be bright and cheerful and entertaining in spite of the fact that she felt anything but; she had to give good readings, she had to give her callers a reason to want to hang on. That night she was lucky not to get too many clock watchers who wanted their free three minutes or their free five minutes and who then hung up, cutting her off in midsentence.

“Thank you for calling Psychic Sisters Network. My name is Ariel, and my extension number is 723884. May I have your name, please?”

“This is Louisa.” Her dog had run off, could Phoebe tell her what had happened to him?

“This is Bob.” Bob just wanted to be amazed. He was. Fifty minutes later, after one marriage proposal and several attempts to get her home phone number or at least the state she lived in, Bob hung up, satisfied that he’d gotten his money’s worth, anyway.

“This is Danny.” His girlfriend was pregnant, and he wanted to know if the baby was his. The cards said it was. He was okay with that.

And then a caller who said nothing.

Phoebe didn’t like pauses. “Are you there?” she asked.

“Closer than you can imagine, Phoebe.”

She hit the switch-hook button, her hands shaking, and shouted at the phone, “Don’t you ever call me again, you son of a bitch. Not ever!”

The calls were coming faster. She wasn’t going to be able to log off. She couldn’t afford to take the night off. She tried *69 on her work phone, hoping no calls would come in while she was trying to get information, because if they did, they would count as hang-ups and drag down her minute average. She’d end up farther down the priority list, get fewer calls, and make less money. She was barely hanging on already.

The last number that had called her was the psychic hotline — exactly what she would find if the call had come through the system. No help there until she logged off, then. She marked the time the call came through on her log sheet and wrote “prank caller” in the place where the name should have gone. She would call the service once she logged off to see if she could find out where the call came from.

“My name’s Charlene. I’m psychic, and I’m looking for a job. How can I get on the network?” Phoebe told her. Phoebe got a little kickback for any referrals that PSN actually hired. But if Charlene had been much of a psychic at all, she would have picked up Phoebe’s panic, her terror at being tied to the phone in a room with windows in it, with doors. He was watching her, whoever he was. Phoebe could feel him watching. In the cramping of her belly, in the cold sweat on her skin, in the white fire in her knee, she could feel his presence. His slow, patient hatred.

She could feel Michael.

Not a stranger playing with her, not a father of one of the kids who had died out for vengeance against the only target left, not one of Michael’s brothers distraught at what she’d done.

Michael.

Phoebe could almost feel his finger trailing down the back of her neck. She shivered. One way or the other, she was going to have to get information out of the nursing home people. Any means necessary, she told herself.

Logging off took her a dozen tries.

When she finally succeeded, she worked herself into a tearful state and called the nursing home. It didn’t take much; she was already right at the edge of panic. “This is Laine Schaeffer,” she said between hiccuping sobs. “I just got a call from someone who said that Michael was dead, and I can’t get anybody back home to pick up the phone. I don’t know who called, I can’t trace the number. Is it true?” Perhaps it was the genuine fear in her voice; perhaps it was the fact that at three thirty in the morning the on-duty nurse was less inclined to be suspicious; perhaps the nurse was simply sloppy. She said, “Oh, Ms. Schaeffer, I’m so sorry about whoever told you that. I was in there not fifteen minutes ago changing his tube feeding and turning him, and he’s the same as he has been for the past few days.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure. The ventilator is breathing for him now, and he’s running a bad fever, but we’re working on it.”

“Any sign that he’s waking up?”

A soft sigh. “I’m going to sound so mean saying this, but he isn’t going to wake up, Ms. Schaeffer. It’s been too long. He doesn’t respond to painful stimuli, he doesn’t follow with his eyes, he doesn’t move. People always hope for miracles, and I know you will too, no matter what I say. But I’ve never seen a miracle after this long. I don’t think anybody has.” She paused and sighed deeply. “And he isn’t doing well. I know he’s pulled through before, but I really think you should prepare yourself for the worst.”

“Well. Then. Well... thank you,” Phoebe said and hung up.

The call ought to have reassured her. She should be relieved. Michael was still in a coma, still in a nursing home bed all the way up in Cleveland, Ohio. Not doing well. She was safe from him. He would never hurt her again.

But in the back of her mind she could hear Michael laughing.

Then, from the corner of her eye, movement again. The little girl. The ghost, or the hallucination, or the physical manifestation of her guilt. The child stood staring at Phoebe for the longest time, while the room got colder and colder, until Phoebe’s skin felt like ice and she wanted to scream to the apparition just to go away. But Phoebe couldn’t scream. She couldn’t move. She sat there frozen, with her heart pounding in her throat and her hands clenched into fists, and she couldn’t do anything but blink.

Go see my daddy, the child’s voice whispered inside Phoebe’s head. An image flashed through Phoebe’s thoughts — the doctor next door. Alan Mac-something. That was the little girl’s daddy? Oh, Christ.

And then the kid vanished.

At three in the morning, Phoebe couldn’t imagine Dr. Alan Mac-whatever being happy to see her on his doorstep — assuming he was home — but she didn’t want to spend another minute alone in her house with that telephone, either. With Michael’s voice inside her head, with that feeling of knowing her that had always oozed from Michael. She didn’t know how he could be in a coma in the nursing home in Ohio and on the phone with her. At that moment she wasn’t going to try to figure it out. The child had come to her and had told her what she needed to do. Just like Nana had. This time, she was going to listen.

Phoebe got her cane and her backpack and hobbled to her front door. She had no idea what she was going to say to her neighbor when he opened his door. If he opened it. She knew she had to look like a crazy woman, and she knew when she opened her mouth she was going to sound like a crazy woman. But she hadn’t listened to the voice that had tried to warn her when she’d had the chance before. She hadn’t trusted whatever it had been — whether it was her grandmother or simply her own instincts manifesting in an unexpected form — and people had died. People she could have saved if she had just believed.

Go see my daddy.

Phoebe stepped out into the muggy, jasmine-laden Florida night air, hobbled the few steps between her front door and the doctor’s, and before she could think about what she was doing — about how completely crazy her actions were — she rang his doorbell.

It took him only a second to open the door, and he looked wide awake. So he’d already been up. She didn’t remember him being quite so tall, or quite so... solid. He looked like hell — unshaven, with swollen red eyes and a red nose, and Phoebe thought, Oh, shit, he’s drunk.

But he didn’t look drunk. He didn’t smell drunk.

Honestly, he looked like he’d been crying.

What the hell?

He said, “You.”

“Me,” she agreed.

“The knee?”

“No.”

They stared at each other for a long moment, and then he said, “I hate to be blunt, then, but what in God’s name do you want at this hour?”

“I wish I knew,” she said. “Things have been — strange — at my house.”

He narrowed his eyes. Studied her warily, and came to a decision. “Look, I was up anyway, and I could use some company right now. Turns out being alone in this place tonight hasn’t worked out too well for me. If you tell me your name, I’ll let you come in.”

Which seemed reasonable. Phoebe looked through the door behind him, eyes scanning for chains, body parts, animals nailed to walls — if the child she’d seen and heard had been real, and not an omen of impending madness, then Phoebe didn’t know how the little girl had died. And there was a big difference between Go see my daddy (because he needs to know I’m all right) and Go see my daddy (and see that he goes to jail for what he did to me).

But the unit had a surprising amount of very nice furniture, tastefully arranged. No heads on spikes. No naked women in dog collars or black leather straps.

“Phoebe. Phoebe Rain,” she told him. “Bad day for me, too. Worse night.” She took a deep breath and stepped inside. Looked around. “Pretty.”

“A colleague — friend — of mine dropped by about a year ago, saw the place, and told me that sleeping on the floor in a sleeping bag and eating off an unpacked cardboard box four years after I bought the place did not look good and if I didn’t get some furniture, he was going to take pictures and pin them to the wall in the doctors’ overnight room. Morrie’s the kind of guy who would do that. And he was right. So I paid a decorator.” He looked around at the place, shrugged, and turned back to Phoebe.

“I don’t have the talent or the money to decorate,” Phoebe said, and laughed just a little. “What furniture I have is the kind that comes in a box that you put together yourself, with dowels and glue and parts labeled A, B, and C.”

Alan pulled an ottoman up to one of the armchairs for her and said, “Have a seat, put your leg up. Want some coffee?”

“Just water,” Phoebe said. “I’m a bit sensitive to caffeine.”

“I live on it,” Alan told her. “Though today I’m wondering what I am sensitive to.” He went over to the kitchen that was a flipped image of hers and poured coffee from a pot. Then rummaged around in his cabinets and found a nice, heavy glass, filled it with ice and filtered water. Carried both drinks back. Cleared away a couple of cartons of Chinese takeout and put the glass in front of her. He glanced at her. “Want some? Or some cookies?”

“I mostly eat raw,” Phoebe said. “Lots of cantaloupe, lots of carrot juice. Tofu. Steamed stuff occasionally.”

“Vegetarian?”

She nodded. “Vegan. Keeps me healthy and keeps my weight down. With the leg pain, not carrying any extra weight has become critical for me.”

“I imagine.” Alan looked thoughtful. She saw him start to say something, then stop himself, shake his head, and sigh. “Who shot you?”

She arched an eyebrow. Direct, wasn’t he? “My ex-husband.”

Alan winced and stared at her. “I’m... Fuck. Is he in jail, at least?”

“In a coma,” Phoebe said. She didn’t add anything about that being better than jail. Because Michael had called her twice in one day. Had talked to her. Had threatened her. She couldn’t rejoice over his coma anymore, over the fact that she’d beat him, stopped him from killing anyone else, including her — she couldn’t rejoice in anything again until she knew how he’d called her.

“Good,” Alan said. He watched her.

And she watched him. “I thought it was. He’s in a coma because of me.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“Maybe if I do, I’ll be able to make sense of what’s happening with me today.” Phoebe settled into the chair. It was wonderfully comfortable, and just sitting in it soothed her frazzled nerves.

“Your family not being much help?”

She exhaled slowly. “They’re all dead.”

He looked stricken. “God. I’m so sorry.”

She nodded. “They were driving home from visiting me in college, my last year there. My dad, my mom, my sister. They had a bad, wet, hilly road, bad brakes, old car. And an eighteen-wheeler coming the other way.”

He closed his eyes. “How did you get through it?”

“Badly,” she told him. “I fell to pieces. I turned to the first comfort offered. And I married the biggest mistake of my life.”

“Your ex.”

“Yes.”

Alan rose and walked around the small front room. For a while he didn’t say anything at all. Then, with his back to her, he said, “What about your friends? Whatever support system you have?”

“I have me,” Phoebe said. She shrugged. “I see myself as a woman who has someone who wants to kill me. I’m not willing to put friends in the line of fire. So I don’t have any.”

“Line of fire. I thought you said your ex was in a coma.”

“He’s been in a coma for almost two years,” Phoebe said. “But my... gut, intuition... nightmares... whatever... insisted that even though he was in a coma, he wasn’t going to stay that way. That he was going to come after me again someday. And that he would be perfectly happy to have an excuse to hurt anyone I cared about on the way to me.”

“If he’s been in a coma for two years, the odds of him coming out of it now are almost astronomically bad.”

“So I’ve been told. But I have very good reason to never want to take any chances where he’s concerned.”

Alan settled back into his chair and took a sip of his coffee, clearly waiting for her to go on.

Phoebe took a little drink of water. “We’d been married for eight years when I finally got up the nerve to run. It took Michael three years to find me; just long enough that I was finally pretty sure I’d successfully gotten away from him. He came into the school where I was teaching. Had a shotgun with him, and a pistol, and a lot of ammunition, and I don’t know how he got into the school with it. No one does.” Phoebe closed her eyes, trying to blank out the pain that came from talking about it. She’d been over the story so many times — with police, with counselors, with nurses and physical therapists — that she thought she’d gotten numb to the whole nightmare.

But she was discovering that all the numbness wore off the second the danger came back.

“He walked into the classroom, smiled at me, and said, ‘Hello again, Phoebe. I told you you’d never leave me. Time to go home,’ ” Phoebe said. “Then he pulled out the pistol and shot one of my students through the head. Twelve years old...” Phoebe couldn’t speak for a moment.

Alan’s lips thinned, and his body tensed. She could see his hands knot into fists, could see the knuckles go white.

“I saw him aim at another one of my students and I charged him. He pulled the trigger, hit the boy, and had the shotgun in his other hand part of the way up to shoot me when I landed on him.”

“You jumped a man who was trying to shoot you?” Alan asked, studying her.

“Yeah.”

“Shit. Little guy?”

“He was six four and about two hundred thirty pounds. I’ve been told that now he’s rolled into a fetal ball with a gastric tube through a port in his stomach, and last I heard he was down about a hundred pounds.”

“You attacked a guy that size?” Alan looked like he didn’t quite believe her.

“At that moment I would have jumped King Kong. What were my other options? Stand there and die? Watch him kill all my students in front of me, then kill me — which was, I think, his plan?”

“Run, maybe?” Alan suggested.

“That option didn’t even occur to me. My students were in there with him; all I could think was that I had to stop him. Something inside me snapped when he brought up the gun. I was scared, but just too furious to think.”

Alan nodded. “Adrenaline rush. It hits people different ways. We get some strange things through the ER — people who have done impossible things.”

“That was me,” Phoebe said. “All adrenaline. I hit him, the shotgun went off and took most of my knee with it, but I went for his eyes with my thumbs and his throat with my teeth and his groin with my good knee. We fell. I jammed an elbow into his throat. I remember hearing the crunch. That took him out of the fight — he was too busy trying to breathe.”

“Could have killed him right there, actually.”

“I wish I had,” she whispered. “But I didn’t hit the cartilage hard enough to completely crush it.” She stared down at the glass of water in her hands, realizing that it was shaking. She tightened her grip on it. “I grabbed his hair with both hands,” she continued, “and started smashing his head up and down on the floor. He couldn’t fight me off. I’d crushed his windpipe. I just kept thinking of all the times he’d hurt me, tortured me, and I kept thinking if I’d had the guts to fight back just once then, two kids wouldn’t be on the floor dying...”

Her voice flattened and her pulse galloped. She was back in the nightmare again, back in the endless recitations to police about what had happened, and all of a sudden her voice sounded tinny and far away to her, as if she were listening to someone else talking. “I remember my hands clutching his hair and the sound of his head hitting the industrial carpet and, under it, the concrete floor — the sound it made. And how the sound changed.”

Phoebe looked up to see Alan staring away, a look of sick horror on his face.

It was horrible. The whole ordeal was still with her on the bad days, and though she hadn’t suffered from so many of those of late, the events of the day had just made it all sharp and clear and brand-new again.

“In the back of my mind, I could hear the screaming, and I could see blood,” she said, barely able to force out the words. “Lots of blood. And I realized that my right leg hurt a lot. But I was inside a dark tunnel and the only people in it were Michael and me. And Michael’s head slamming and slamming and slamming. Then that tunnel narrowed down to a pinpoint, and then to nothing. I woke up in the hospital. He never woke up at all. At least that’s what the hospital says.”

“The kids?”

“Both died.”

He reached over and took her hand and held it, not saying anything. That single human touch undid her. Tears filled her eyes, and she closed them tightly, swallowing hard until she knew she could keep going without crying. She didn’t let herself cry anymore.

“You don’t have anybody?”

“I learned something from my last meeting with Michael — keep innocents out of the line of fire. You don’t know what it’s like, having people murdered because of you.”

Alan was quiet for a moment. “You’re right. I don’t. But I know what it’s like to feel guilty.” He didn’t look at her when he said it. “Still.” He took a long sip of coffee. “Two years. You could surely at least risk a phone call to a friend after two years.”

“A friend who would come running to help me? And then what if Michael showed up?” Phoebe considered her next words carefully. “Which of the people that you love would you intentionally put between you and a bullet if you only had to do one simple thing to prevent any of them from being there?”

Alan didn’t say anything.

“It’s not a rhetorical question. Which of them?”

“None of them, of course.”

“Me either,” Phoebe said. “And I only have to do one simple thing to keep them out of harm’s way. I have to stay away from everyone I’ve ever known.”

Alan nodded. “I truly understand that.” He put his coffee on the table and leaned forward, elbows on knees, hands clasped together. “But if I can offer an opinion as a doctor, if he’s been in a coma for two years, you can probably stop worrying.”

Phoebe shook her head.

“No?”

Phoebe’s mouth went dry. She didn’t want to say anything, but she didn’t see how she could avoid it, either. “Michael called me today.”

The color drained out of Alan’s face. “He’s out of the coma?”

“The nursing home says no. That he’s very close to dying, in fact.”

“Then...”

Phoebe looked into his eyes and tried to look like someone sane. Because as bad as this confession was, everything else she had to say was worse. “I can’t explain it. I know Michael’s voice. I would bet anything that it was him on the phone.” She took a deep breath and added, “But that’s not why I’m here.”

“I was wondering about that.” He smiled a little. “Though I am grateful for the company.”

“You may not be. Do you believe in ghosts?”

She could see him framing the word “no” — could see the flat automatic denial already on his face and then something... something... It was like watching a man get hit in the face by a bucket of ice water. He froze and his eyes went wide, and for just an instant she could see fear and denial and the strangest little flash of what might have been hope. And then it was all gone. He was under control again. He’s really good at that, she thought. And he said, “I try to maintain a healthy skepticism about the paranormal.”

Phoebe nodded. “I taught science — could have taught at the high school level, but I enjoyed working with younger kids.” Her voice didn’t break there. She could almost have been proud of herself, had the circumstances been different. “I understand about skepticism. It’s a lot more useful than, say, dogmatic denial.”

“Why do you ask?”

Phoebe let herself look at Alan — really look at him. His was a pleasant face worn not so much by age as by pain. She could see the pain in his eyes. No one would ever mistake Alan for a movie star; no woman would ever stop in her tracks to stare at him as he walked by. But Phoebe had a sense of underlying solidity to him. Of something genuine. Something good. And she could hear the little voice in the back of her head.

Go see my daddy.

She already had some idea of what had happened to him. He had been someone’s daddy, though in his home she could see no signs of anyone else in his life at all. If she’d brought her cards with her, she might have had a clearer picture of what she was stepping into — but she hadn’t been ready to show that part of herself to anyone, and especially not to the neighbor who had politely invited her into his house at three in the morning.

“Because I saw a ghost today.”

He hadn’t changed position, but she noticed that his knuckles had gone white. “This happen to you a lot?”

“Second time in my life,” Phoebe said.

“When was the first time?”

“Also today.”

He took a deep breath. “I see. Spooky white sheet sort of thing?” he asked, and he was trying to be casual about it, but Phoebe could hear in Alan’s voice that the casualness was an act. All of a sudden he wasn’t so good at keeping his emotions in the box.

And this was where it got hard. Because Phoebe hadn’t seen something vague. She’d seen someone. Someone very specific. Someone who had mattered a whole hell of a lot to somebody — probably to this man, unless Phoebe had misunderstood.

She said, “My visitor was a little blonde girl, blue jeans and a pink blouse with a big red heart on the front. Short, curly hair. Sweet smile. Sort of... pixie-ish.”

Alan shuddered and swallowed. Closed his eyes and turned his head to one side, and then abruptly stood up. Turned his back to her.

Beneath his shirt she could see muscles in his back knotting and flexing.

“You teach science,” he said.

“Not anymore.”

“Doesn’t matter. You must still remember some of it.” His voice had gone hoarse, scratchy. “You have any explanation for what you saw?”

“No.”

“Where... where was this little girl?”

“In my living room.”

“Not... outside a window?”

“No.” Phoebe was trying to figure out where his questions were coming from. They weren’t the sort of questions she would have asked had she been on the receiving end of this conversation. “She told me to come see you.”

He turned to stare at her. To glare at her. “She talked to you.”

“She told me, ‘Go see my daddy.’ She showed me... you.”

Alan’s body went rigid, and the bones stood out under the skin of his face. Phoebe realized again that he was a big guy. Not as big as Michael — but a hell of a lot bigger than her.

“My daughter. Talked. To you.”

“I told you what she said. It wasn’t much. Just to come see you.”

She saw something heartbreaking in his eyes. He’d loved his little girl. Phoebe didn’t know how or when the child had died, but she could see in every line of Alan’s body that it might as well have been five minutes ago. That he hadn’t found any peace. Hadn’t come to terms. He was still raw and bleeding inside.

“And your husband who is in a coma called you today, too.” Another statement, not a question.

Phoebe nodded.

“Right.” Alan stood there, staring down at her, wearing an unreadable expression. “What do you do for a living now?” he asked.

Phoebe’s heart sank.

“Why do you ask?”

“I’m curious. You have some... interesting things going on next door. Ghosts and mysterious phone calls. You aren’t teaching anymore. These places cost money. Unless you own yours outright — and I’m guessing that you don’t — you have bills to pay. So... what do you do? How do you make a living?”

Phoebe had never sought out the paranormal. It wasn’t an area of special interest for her, it wasn’t something she loved. It was, most times, an embarrassment. Her mother had taught her to read cards when she was little, so Phoebe had thought it was normal — that everyone did it. She’d proven to be good at it. But the world had quickly disabused her of the notion that anyone else thought reading cards was normal. She’d learned not to mention it at all in most circles and, when she did, to never suggest that it might be more than an amusing parlor game. Because if she did, she was suddenly a threat. Or a crazy person.

She’d learned to shut up about the cards. About the world she could sometimes sense just on the other side of conventional reality. She had learned never to suggest that she got information from anywhere except television, radio, or something she’d read. Except with people she knew very well, she covered her few slips with the stock line “I must have read it somewhere,” along with a smile and a shrug.

Which wasn’t going to work here, because he’d asked her a direct question.

Phoebe stood up. Grabbed her cane. “My job isn’t a part of this.”

“Humor me.”

“I’m all out of humor. It’s been a very bad day for me,” Phoebe said evenly, “because I received a call I can’t explain from someone I hoped I’d never hear from again. And I saw a ghost. Twice. And while I can understand that you don’t want to believe me — or maybe just that you don’t believe me — I only came over here to give you a message. It wasn’t easy for me to come, and frankly, I’m not sure why I’m here. The little girl — your daughter — told me to come see you, but she didn’t tell me why. So. I’m here. I’ve told you what she told me. But now I think I’m done.”

Phoebe discovered that she didn’t want to know what Alan would think of her when he discovered her current line of work. She didn’t want to know any more than she already knew from the look on his face — that he thought she was a scammer. A charlatan.

As she limped to the door, he was still demanding answers, sounding angrier and angrier. “Who sent you here? Really? Who told you about my daughter? What sort of game are you playing? Answer me, dammit. You come here and say something like this, tell me you saw my daughter—”

His voice broke, and Phoebe’s heart broke with it. But she wasn’t going to tell him any more about herself. Wasn’t going to let herself be the target for all of his pain.

She’d spent too much time as a target already.

“You owe me the truth!” he was shouting as she stepped out of his door.

“I gave you the truth,” she said as she slammed the door behind her.

She wanted to cry. Why couldn’t she have still been a nice, normal science teacher when this happened? Then she could have admitted to her job without instantly destroying whatever credibility she might have had.

I read tarot for a psychic hotline. Yeah. That would really add to the poor man’s peace of mind.

* * *

Alan stood behind the heavy vertical blinds over the front window and watched Phoebe leave. She’d claimed that Chick had come to her, that Chick had appeared to her on the anniversary of Chick’s death and told Phoebe to come see him.

Alan wanted to think that someone had put his neighbor up to it. That this visit had been some disgusting, heartless trick, or maybe the opening move of some bizarre money-grubbing scheme, something foul. Because that would make sense.

But after Phoebe closed her door and moved out of Alan’s sight, he shut his eyes and saw Chick standing in the rain, staring up at him, trying to tell him something that he couldn’t hear, and he felt the tears burning paths down his cheeks again.