The room falls silent, and Jessica puts her head in her hands. Andrew, next to me, stops breathing. He reaches for Jessica’s hand and holds it.

The poem isn’t long. It’s about a boy looking at a plate of over-easy eggs and thinking how his father is the yellow part and his mother is the white part, the surrounding stuff that holds the family all together, but then later when he’s eating a hard-boiled egg, the boy sees the yellow part hop out and fall away. Then there’s something in there about the boy noticing that he’s the piece of toast; he’s not the thing that holds the yolk and the white part together, but the thing they can both join with, like he’s an egg sandwich maybe?—and then it’s done, and the air comes back in the room, and everybody claps for him. People stand up, clapping and cheering. And several of the other parents smile at Jessica and Andrew, and one woman pantomimes wiping away tears while she’s smiling. Andrew is now holding fast to Jessica’s shoulder and she’s leaning against him and they’re both shaking their heads and smiling.

When it’s all over, we walk outside together, but I find a reason to separate from this fragile, private love between Jessica and Andrew and Sammy because it’s at that stage, you know, when the night is holding it so delicately and I could blink and it might all disappear, all the magic might be gone, and Jessica would be complaining again about Andrew’s supposed maybe girlfriend, and Sammy would look miserable instead of triumphant.

And anyway I want more than anything to be back in Blix’s bedroom, sitting on her kantha, looking at her book of spells. And of course getting ready for Thanksgiving. That.

I walk to the subway, and my phone dings with a new text message.

But I am already underground, having stepped out of the cold, blowy night into the harsh yellow of the underground world, which always feels like stepping inside a huge world of light and noise, and the train is coming now. It’s here, having screeched to a halt, all the metal clanging as if it would fall apart. And people are getting off and then getting on, and I have to hurry to make it.

I look down at my phone, but the train is crowded—at this hour of the night!—and all I see, before the cellular service disappears completely, are two words, from Patrick:

Can you

And suddenly I am so happy. It’s ridiculous how those two words can have such an effect. They’re not even words you’d expect could make somebody happy; they’re not, for instance love you—but there they are, lighting me up just the same. I’m beaming as I hold on to the pole, bobbing back and forth, smiling into the faces of strangers, thinking how lucky I am to be here.

I send some white light to the rumpled-up guy who is panhandling, and the older woman who has rolled down her stockings and has her eyes closed, and the girl in the cloche hat, the one who keeps running her fingers along her boyfriend’s neck and then leaning over to kiss him. There is so much love for all of us, and Patrick needs me to do something.

Can you, can you, can you.

Whatever it is, I can!

When my stop comes, I press the button, and the phone lights up again, and I can see his message for real. And my heart drops into my stomach.

Can you come here as soon as possible? Don’t go upstairs first!!

THIRTY-SEVEN

MARNIE

Patrick has made cream puffs filled with vanilla pudding, and he hands me one as he lets me in.

“What do you think? Should I have made them with ricotta instead? That’s more authentic Italian, I think.”

“I like pudding best,” I say. “So, why couldn’t I go upstairs? What’s happened? After that text of yours, I expected to see police tape outside the building!”

“Oh. Was I overdramatic? So hard to get texting just right.” He looks at his phone, scrolls back. “Oh, yes. I see. It was the two exclamation points. Sorry. It’s just that there have been new developments this evening, and I wanted you to come here in case Noah is upstairs.”

“You think he’s there?”

“Well, I don’t know for sure—I haven’t heard noises up there for a while, but earlier he had a long, loud conversation on speakerphone with his mother, right on the sidewalk here. I had taken the recycling out, so I was where he couldn’t see me, and so of course I stayed there and listened. Not nice of me to eavesdrop, I know, but I think you ought to know that she’s furious with him. About the will.”

My heart sinks.

“Yeah. Apparently she and his father want to contest Blix’s will, and she was yelling at him that he’s not been doing his part.”

“His part?”

“Yes. His job has been to figure out how you might have manipulated Blix into leaving you the property. I guess because you’re such a known vixen who probably goes around getting old ladies to leave you stuff all the time.”

“Only if their grandnephews dump me. Otherwise, I let them give their stuff to anyone they want.”

“Well, sure. You’re chill that way.”

“So how are they going to decide if I’m guilty? Did they say?”

“I don’t know.”

“Blix wrote me a letter that the attorney gave me . . . and in it . . . oh God, in it she talks about how I asked her for a spell to get Noah back. And he—well, one night he asked me if he could read it. Oh my God.” I put my hands over my mouth.

“Wait. There’s more,” Patrick says. “His mom said that if they can’t prove you tried to influence Blix, they most surely can prove that Blix wasn’t of sound mind when she wrote the will. On account of her doing magic and all. She was a practicing witch, is what his mom said. And she thinks maybe that would stand up in court.”

“Witches aren’t of sound mind?”

“She kept saying she knew they could prove whatever they needed to, and that their family attorney was only too happy to get involved in this case, but—and I think this is really creepy—in the meantime she wanted Noah to look for any supporting stuff he might find—you know, stuff that showed she was crazy—and mail it to her. She said they’ll have someone do a psychological evaluation so he should mail everything. Artwork, good luck charms, talismans—whatever he could find.”

“And did he go back upstairs after that? Could you hear him?”

“No. He didn’t even seem all that interested. But she kept pestering him, asking him questions about Blix’s state of mind when he first got here, and then he started telling the story about how Blix wouldn’t go to the hospital. He told his mom that she did spells and stuff instead. Honestly, you would have thought, to hear how his mother was reacting, that Blix was out drinking bats’ blood in the full moon.”

“Oh my.” I swallow hard. “This actually might be a good time to tell you that I found Blix’s journal. It was in a book of spells she had in her kitchen, and I read it, and she did have all kinds of spells and remedies—not bats’ blood that I remember, but she talked to her ancestors, and she contacted some spirit god and went out in the dark of the moon.”

“Well, I’m going to go out on a limb here and think we need to put that in a safe place. Do you know where it is now?”

I try to think. I’d been reading it in bed, but then I’d taken it downstairs, hadn’t I, when I made up the little pockets for the spell for Sammy? I think I’d put it back in the bookshelf. That’s right. I did. I tucked the whole thing back where it had been, there among the cookbooks.

Right out in the open.

Where it’s always been and where anyone could find it.

I stand up. “I think I have to go.”

“Call me if you need backup.”

All the lights are off in the apartment when I go upstairs, and Noah is nowhere to be found.

Feeling ridiculous, I call his name, walking through, turning on lights, looking into corners. I’ve watched enough thrillers to know that people always hide behind doors and curtains, so I make sure these do not go unchecked. I even go into the bathroom and rip aside the shower curtain while I yell.

I’ve got myself all worked up just the way Natalie and I used to do after watching horror movies. Still, it’s true that there is a strange vibration in the house tonight. Bedford is cowering in his crate and he whimpers when I let him out. There’s something . . . it’s as though the air has gotten all messed up somehow, like the molecules got scrambled and weren’t able to reassemble themselves before I came in.

“Noah!” I call. “Are you here?”

There’s no answer. His bedroom door is open and the light is off. “Noah?” I flick on the light. The bed has been stripped, and his closet has about eight empty hangers and nothing else. Bedford licks my hand.

There’s an empty cardboard box in the hallway, and one of Noah’s gym socks is stuck under the bathroom rug. So he’d finally come back for his stuff.

But did he come back in after talking to his mom? That’s the question. I run into my room, and head for the underwear drawer. The sweatshirt is still there, and I shake it out, searching in the sleeve for Blix’s letter.