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“Are you okay?” she asked.

Mickey didn’t know how to answer. She felt like a trapdoor had opened and all of her insides had spilled out, leaving her tripping over her intestines as she climbed the stairs, apologizing for their stains.

Her dad had never, ever talked to her like that. Sure, he yelled at her some for stupid choices. The time she brought food coloring into the bath and accidentally dyed the porcelain purple. The time she and Sean wrapped the family car in cellophane on April first. Those times, he yelled like he knew that was what he had to do, but ultimately, he loved her the same as always. Tonight was different.

“I’ll tell him tomorrow it was all my idea. I’ll just tell him, and it’ll be—”

“He assumed as much.”

Ruth nodded and slumped back against the bed. “Got it.”

Mickey felt pain moving through her, building a tether. She hurt, so she threw it at Ruth. Now Ruth hurt. And so on. Mickey lay down and buried her face in the pillow. She wanted comfort. She wanted her mother.

Mickey heard the bedsprings shift, felt Ruth press against her.

“I’m sorry, Mick,” she whispered. “I didn’t think he would find us. I had no idea—I didn’t think about what it would feel like for him.”

“Me neither,” Mickey said, softening. “I’ve never felt this bad.”

Ruth put her hand in Mickey’s hair, starting over her ear and combing backward. Mickey tensed at first but then relaxed into it, grateful. She wanted to feel exactly like this, she thought. A child with a bad dream.

“I remember one time my dad found me on his porch steps. I had taken the bus all the way from my mom’s by myself. I was, maybe, seven? God, he was so mad.”

“I didn’t know you had a dad,” Mickey said.

Ruth’s hand went still.

“Everybody has a dad.”

“Right, yeah, of course. I just mean, you’ve never talked about him.”

“He moved out when I was a little kid. Met somebody new, wanted to start a new family. My mom was so angry. So hurt. When they went to court, she told me to lie. Say stuff about him, bad stuff. Like that he touched me, slept in my bed with me. I didn’t know what I was saying. I was just a little kid, you know?”

It was the most Ruth had ever talked about her family. Mickey nodded, silent.

“So I said it, and my mom got full custody. My dad got in a lot of trouble. He got fired, had to move to a different town. Couldn’t come near me or my mom again.”

“Damn.”

“I’ve regretted that my whole life. If I had just told the truth, maybe I could’ve grown up with him instead. Had a little sister, a nice brick house. A Labrador. The whole nine. Instead of my mom’s crazy.”

They were quiet, and Ruth’s fingernails resumed their slow progression across Mickey’s scalp.

“I’ll tell you,” Ruth said. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to make that up to him. To prove that he could trust me.” She swallowed. “Nothing.”

Mickey rolled over so their noses almost touched.

“I agreed to the séance; it’s not your fault.”

“Do you want to know what I do when I feel bad?” Ruth asked, her voice deep in its quiet.

“Yes, please.”

“One sec.”

Ruth got up and went to the bathroom. Mickey rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling. The room was lit by the lamp on the dresser and nothing else. In the shadows, she kept picturing her dad’s face. She had never seen that much rage in him. Silas was the fun parent, the goofball. The one who encouraged her to bring the air mattress into the community pool, not the one who made her spend hours drying it with a blow-dryer. He trusted her, and she failed him. Even worse than that: she failed Philip, his favorite person. His second-favorite person, she had always thought. Second to her.

Ruth poked her head around the doorframe.

“Come in here.”



* * *



—

AN OPEN ALTOIDS TIN balanced on the edge of the sink. Mickey recognized it from Ruth’s makeup kit, which sat open and ravaged on the back of the toilet. Mickey used that makeup before dinner. Blue mascara. She could barely remember the way the night felt back then. Ruth tipped the contents of the tin into one palm and patted the opposite corner of the sink with the other.

“Stand here.”

Mickey stood next to her and saw the tin wasn’t empty. Inside remained a collection of loose pills, round and scored and definitely not Altoids.

“What are those?”

“Nothing,” Ruth said, snapping the tin closed. “Just some medicine my mom got for when she flies—she hates airplanes. They take the edge off. I used to take them, too, but this works better.”

Ruth distributed the tin’s contents in a line along the sink: an alcohol wipe and a sliver of metal that she rested on a cloth made for cleaning glasses. It gleamed enough to catch the reflection of the faucet, which, in return, caught the reflection of the metal, like a conversation among believers of the same faith.

“I used to use shaving razors—if you break the cartridges, you can get them out individually—but then I saw these at the art store, and I never went back.”

Mickey watched as Ruth rolled up her shirtsleeve.