“Dad, Ada and I see ghosts. And other stuff. This isn’t news to you, but I think now you finally get that we’re telling the truth. We have abilities with energy, with portals, with a whole bunch of crazy shit that we don’t even fully understand yet. We inherited this from mom, who you know was on medication to hide it, and she got it from Pippa, and we all know what happened to her.”
I’m shaking as I speak, but damn it feels good to let it out. “Ada was being trained by Jay, now being trained by Jacob, to put demons back in their place. Yes, literal demons, Dad.” I’m about to mention the big truth, that she went to Hell to get our mother, but that seems like a topic for another time. I don’t know how he’d handle it, knowing she was there, even if it was brief. Frankly, I don’t know how I handled it, but I guess that’s what Dr. Leivo meant about repressed trauma.
“I don’t believe this,” he mutters, his fork shaking. He puts it down.
“But you do believe it,” I tell him. “Because you’ve been seeing our mother regularly. You’ve been seeing her ghost.”
“What?” Ada squeaks, staring at him with her mouth open.
Now my father looks to Dex with about enough venom to bring down a horse.
“Don’t blame, Dex,” I quickly tell him. “He didn’t even tell me, though he should have. I saw your text on his phone and then I went through them all. Dex then told me what’s been going on. He kept your secret, but I have to say that you can never ask him to keep any of your secrets again, I don’t care who you think you have to protect. That’s unfair to put him in the middle. I’m his wife, he has to protect me first, he has to put me first. That’s what you’d want your son-in-law to do, isn’t it?”
He doesn’t say anything, just stares down at his plate.
“Can someone tell me what the hell is going on?” Ada says, looking between the three of us wildly.
I stare steadily at my father, hoping he’ll tell her the truth here so I don’t have to.
He closes his eyes, inhaling deeply through his nose.
We all watch anxiously.
Finally he looks at Ada. “I’ve been seeing your mother for a couple of months now. Her ghost. At least I think it’s her ghost.”
“Wait,” she says. “You knew I’d seen her ghost. I didn’t know you’d seen her too? Why didn’t you tell me? This is huge, Dad!”
“Because she’s been trying to pass me a message and I’ve been too scared to tell you what it is.”
Ada looks at me, brows raised, and then back to him. “Well, what’s the message?”
“Don’t let her,” he says, his voice cracking. “She keeps saying don’t let her, and I don’t know who she’s talking about or what she means. I just want her to stay and talk to me, I want her back.” He sounds so small and scared that my heart breaks into pieces. “I miss her so much, girls.”
Fuck. I get up from my chair and go around the table to him, hugging him from behind his seat.
He starts to cry, which in turn makes me cry, and then Ada starts to cry. She leans over, adding to our hug. I don’t think we’ve had a big family cry like this since mom died, and it’s been long overdue. That grief doesn’t vanish, it lives with you, and it’s been living in all of us, and we’ve all tried to push it away to no avail.
Eventually we break apart and I look across the table at Dex, who gives me a soft smile, his eyes wet. Still part of our family, but not wanting to intrude.
I sit back down beside him and he kisses me softly on the cheek, grabbing my hand under the table.
I think that was needed, kiddo, I hear him say.
“So what do you think it all means?” Ada asks, dabbing her tears away with a napkin. “Don’t let her?”
“She’s either talking about you or Perry,” Dex says. “And none of us can figure it out. But we have some ideas…”
I take the reins again. “This whole talk wasn’t to spoil our dinner, or to make the both of you feel bad, or to throw all your secrets in the air. It’s about me coming clean to what’s been happening in my life. There’s a lot going on, things I should be more open about. Things I need to be more open about. I can’t keep you guys out anymore. You’re Palominos. You’re my family.”
And then I launch into it.
They attempt to finish the rest of their dinner while I yammer on about the last six weeks, but more often than not, they’re both staring at me, slack-jawed. I tell them everything, from my depression, to my therapist, to wanting a baby, to Samantha and her demon, to Atlas and Harry and filming again, to Dex’s possession (minus the sex part)…everything except Maximus, and that’s only because I need to talk to Ada about that alone.
When I’m finally done, my throat hurts from talking, my pulse is racing, and I finish the rest of my wine with trembling hands.
Neither my dad nor Ada know what to say. I just piled a dump truck full of information on them.
“So,” Dex says, clearing his throat. “Perhaps Ingrid’s message was about going into the house. Don’t let her go into the house. Or maybe it was don’t let her get pregnant. Or maybe it was don’t let her keep things bottled up inside. Or maybe it’s don’t let Ada continue to screw Jay, and if so, problem solved.”
My father blinks at that. Ada looks less than pleased.
“We don’t know,” Dex continues. “And until she gives us something more concrete, we can’t know.” He shakes his head. “I don’t know why you Palomino women are always so vague.”
“Well, I don’t know what to do with that,” my father says, adjusting his glasses. “She’s so…adamant. It’s terrifying.”
“But until she clears it up, we can’t do anything,” Dex points out. “We’re not mind readers here.” He glances at me. “Well, you are.” Then he looks at Ada. “And maybe you are…”
“There’s a reason though that she’s going to you, Dad,” I tell him. “Don’t you think? If it was really about me or Ada, and she wanted to keep us safe, don’t you think she’d appear to us?”
“Yeah,” Ada says. “I saw her, but she didn’t say anything to me. It was just for a second but she could have tried. She didn’t.”
“Maybe it’s not even her,” Dex says quietly, running his long fingers up the length of the wine glass.
We all ponder that for a moment.
“Well, it doesn’t really matter,” I say. “All we can do is just move on and hope that at some point the truth will come to light. None of us can stop living over this. And Dad, that means you have to stop worrying.”
I pause to have a sip of water. “Ghosts, even ghosts of the people we love the most, they aren’t like us anymore. They can’t always communicate in the same ways that they once did. You should have seen how Pippa first appeared to me, scared the crap out of me. I think we just need to take this as it comes.”
Silence settles over us like snowflakes. We’re all lost in our thoughts.
When dinner is over (though honestly no one ate very much thanks to me) we do the dishes and then retire to the living room to stare at the presents and the Christmas tree. Ada serves us all mulled wine with cinnamon sticks, my dad puts on A Christmas Story as is the tradition (he loves that damn lamp), and we settle in for a cozy night, candles lit, lights twinkling.