The Last of the Moon Girls(77)

Rhanna shoved a hank of wet hair off her face, then nodded groggily.

Lizzy exhaled for what felt like the first time since arriving at the cemetery. The smell of roses was so strong in the shut-up car it nearly made her queasy. This was what she had picked up when Rhanna first arrived. The smell of the cemetery and funeral flowers. The smell of death.

“All right, Rhanna. I need you to explain some things for me. What did you mean when you said you needed to see it finished? What exactly did you need to see finished?”

Rhanna’s eyes were glazed and slow to respond. It was how she used to come home sometimes, after a night of heavy partying, dulled by whatever combination of goodies she’d managed to score from friends. But there was no slurring now, no sharp reek of alcohol oozing from her pores. There was only fear.

“What haven’t you told me, Rhanna?”

Rhanna sucked in a ragged breath and sagged against the seat. After a moment, her head swiveled in Lizzy’s direction. “Do you want to know why I left? Why I really left?”

Lizzy swallowed uneasily. Suddenly she wasn’t sure she did want to know.

“I see things, Lizzy,” she said, closing her eyes. “Awful things no one should see.”

Lizzy waited for the rest, afraid to push. The seconds ticked by as the rain continued to pelt the car roof. The windows began to fog.

“I see how people die,” Rhanna said finally.

The hair on Lizzy’s arms prickled to attention. “How people . . . die?”

“When I was a girl—fourteen, I think—Althea and I were downtown at the green. It was Easter Sunday, and there was an Easter egg hunt. There were kids everywhere, all dressed up in their new clothes. They were having so much fun. There was this little girl, a tiny thing in a stroller. She had these big blue eyes and strawberry-blonde curls. I can still see her face.” Her gaze slid to her lap, her voice little more than a whisper. “I can see all their faces.”

“Whose faces?”

“The dead people.”

Lizzy felt goose bumps spring up beneath her sopping clothes. She grabbed the steering wheel, squeezing tight. “You were talking about a little girl.”

Rhanna nodded, swallowing thickly. “She was holding this little stuffed lamb, hugging it the way they do. When she saw me watching, she held it out to show me. It fell out of the stroller and landed on the sidewalk. I bent down and picked it up. When I gave it back to her, our fingers touched. That’s when I saw it—when we touched.”

“What?” Lizzy prodded. “What did you see?”

“The girl. All of a sudden my head was full of noise—sirens and those horrible horns the fire trucks blow. And then I saw her. She was still in the car, in her car seat, covered with blood and broken glass. And the lamb. It was on the floor of the car. It was a split second, like a single frame from some hideous home movie, but it was her, Lizzy. It was real.”

“It wasn’t real, Rhanna. It was your imagination.”

“No.” Rhanna pressed a hand to her eyes, shaking her head in denial. “It was on the news a few days later. A mother and a little girl hit by a drunk driver on Spaulding Turnpike. They showed her picture. And the mother’s. It was them, Lizzy. It was her. The girl from the park. Some guy in a Suburban got on going the wrong way. The drunk guy lived, but the mother and little girl died at the scene.”

Lizzy fell back against her seat, trying to digest what she’d just heard. “And you saw it? You saw the accident?”

“Not the accident, no. I never see that part. Just . . . after, when they’re already dead.”

Her response was so matter-of-fact that Lizzy found herself groping for words. “I don’t understand . . . how . . . You’re saying it’s happened more than once?”

Rhanna nodded miserably. “Yes.”

The windows were completely fogged now, and the car felt steamy and claustrophobic. Lizzy used her sleeve to wipe the windshield, knowing she was stalling for time, knowing it wouldn’t make any difference. “Do you know . . . how?” she asked finally.

“The first time—with the girl—I thought I caused it. That I’d made it happen. I felt like a monster. And then it happened again. A guy at the drugstore went home and had a heart attack after I bumped into him at the lunch counter. And then again, with a kid I went to school with.”

“How many?”

“I don’t know. After a while I lost count. Dozens, I suppose. And every one of their faces is burned into my brain. Do you have any idea how many ways there are to die?”

Lizzy remained silent. There was simply no way to answer a question like that.

“I get how crazy this sounds, Lizzy. Like something the old me would have said to get attention, but I swear I’m telling the truth. Even I wouldn’t make up something this hideous.”

“Did Althea know?”

Rhanna shook her head. “I was already enough of a handful. I didn’t want to add crazy to my repertoire. Besides, it’s not really the kind of thing you want to share, is it—that you’re some kind of freak who sees dead people? They put you away for saying things like that, and I didn’t want to go away. Not then. And in the beginning I didn’t even know what it was. It only happened to people I physically touched, and even then it could take weeks.”