A Lily in the Light(16)

“Mom?”

A woman on the street below powdered her face and retied the belt on her blue coat, pulling strands of blonde hair into place and steadying herself in front of their building. Esme had seen her on TV, but she looked smaller on the street than she had on the screen.

“Is it the same thing like you said before Lily was born? That you always know what we’re feeling and thinking even after we’re born?” If it was true, then she’d know this would be OK, and it didn’t matter if all the news stations in the world and more cops than she could count swarmed the street if Cerise still had that umbilical connection with Lily.

Cerise stared at Esme without blinking. She looked like she wanted to fold into herself and roll away like a pill bug. The lights flickered overhead, and the room was washed in gray. Esme wanted to shake her. Was it true or not? What did any of this mean? She wanted to snap the rosary in half and let the wooden beads roll out everywhere because praying wasn’t the same as doing. It felt like a nothing something.

“Get dressed,” Cerise said finally. “Someone’s coming to help us.”

“Who?” Esme asked, desperate for something.

“Someone Mrs. Rodriquez thought could help. Someone who can see things other people can’t.”

Esme doubted anyone Mrs. Rodriquez thought could help would be any less strange. She wondered where her father was and whether he’d agreed to whatever Cerise had planned, if he knew about it at all.

“Go,” Cerise urged, gesturing toward the kitchen. “There’s peanut butter and apples.”

And if only because Esme thought it might make her mother a little bit happier, she pulled herself away from the window where the camera was pointed at the woman in the blue coat and found her way to the kitchen, where the fruit bowl was empty and there weren’t any apples after all.





Chapter Four

When the doorbell rang, Cerise abandoned the list of names and phone numbers she was making. She flew toward the door in such a rush that Esme was sucked up into it, too, and followed at her heels. Esme felt her mother’s disappointment when the door opened and it was only Mrs. Rodriquez and her friend.

“This is Annette.” Mrs. Rodriquez stood in the doorway, one arm hooked through Annette’s like little girls on the playground. “She’s found my Denny more times than I can count in places no one could imagine.”

Annette didn’t look like the sidewalk psychics that sat under ten-dollar palm-reading signs. Those women were wispy thin with inky hair and dark eyes. They smelled like a garden after a rainstorm. Annette had gray-streaked temples and a thick mole under her right eye. She looked like a mom waiting outside school at three o’clock or in line at the supermarket with a cart full of potato chips and skim milk. She didn’t look very magical.

Esme kicked at the rolled-up newspaper by the door. It was Friday. It should have been a school day. She’d missed the test she’d been studying for, but it didn’t seem to matter. Pointe shoes on Monday. They should have been celebrating that. She looked down at her feet in purple socks, so threadbare the curve of her nail showed through. She flipped into first position, then traced a rond de jambe with her right foot even though there wasn’t much space between her and Cerise, pushing away the pit in her chest telling her that things wouldn’t be better by Monday. If Lily hadn’t made all this trouble, Esme would’ve been examining shanks and boxes. Amelia would’ve matched her foot with a perfect shoe. Then, she’d hold the barre while Amelia told them to roll onto relevé, and finally, she’d let go and stand en pointe for the first time for five or ten seconds. And summer programs auditions were in January. She was finally old enough. Maybe, maybe if she asked nicely and promised to keep it short, her mother would let her call Amelia to explain. She felt guilty for worrying about ballet and what Amelia would think if she wasn’t there on Monday when Lily was . . . when Lily was where? The sour taste came back full force. Why hadn’t she just told her the stupid story about the fish?

“Stop that,” Cerise snapped. Pain shot through Esme’s toe where she’d kicked her mother’s calf by mistake. She thought of Lily’s stubbed toe in her sequined shoe. Cerise rubbed her hands over her eyes. Esme balled up the frustration she felt in her core and pretended to squeeze an orange between her stomach and ribs like Amelia had taught her. Use it, Amelia would say when someone fell out of a pirouette after three when they wanted four. Take that feeling, and try again.

“She doesn’t mean it.” It was the same whisper their mother would have used, only it came from Madeline. Before Esme could answer, Mrs. Rodriquez pushed past the circle of dining room chairs set up in the living room and unpacked two candles from under her arm, one brown and one white, and a bottle of oil that made the room stink like black licorice.

“It’s a candle spell,” she mumbled. Lily’s name was scratched into the wax in neat script. “To bring back something lost. No matter what”—she flapped her old finger at them—“don’t blow out the brown one.”

Oh my God, Esme thought, still smarting from Cerise. Mrs. Rodriquez wasn’t a psychic—she was a witch.

“Thank you, Teresa.” Annette nodded approvingly as Mrs. Rodriquez lit the candles. They flickered and jumped as she walked toward the door.

“This always worked for Denny.” Mrs. Rodriquez sighed. “And Annette, well, we met when Denny’d been missing for about a month. She had a dream about him in some warehouse by a river and four numbers she thought was a phone number. She looked through the whole phonebook until she found me, and then we found my Denny.” Mrs. Rodriquez smiled at Annette, the kind of smile she’d give a fireman who saved a kitten from a tree. Esme rubbed the little dent under her chin from when Denny had thought it would be funny to pull the lobby rug out from under her, wondering if some people should just stay lost. The bodega owner Denny had stolen everything from probably felt that way too.