All I could do was stare and try not to show fear.
“I know it sounds crazy,” he said, moving toward me, his voice pleading with me to believe him.
I drew back. “Maybe I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me,” I said, forcing my voice to remain calm.
It wasn’t his fault his mom had died suddenly. Of course his mind was messed up. Mine was too, after my mom died. Yet, as time went by, I got better. Maybe he would too.
He slumped against the tree, looking as if he wanted to say something, then lowered his head. I stepped back. Dad expected me in the house, and I couldn’t force Luca to tell me what he was thinking. A big part of me didn’t want to. I was no good at pretending. Once I was sure he was insane, I wouldn’t be able to pretend otherwise.
He said nothing, so I slowly turned to walk away. I heard him sink to the ground and turned to face him. He buried his head in his arms, his legs pulled in tight. He looked so small, so alone in the shadows.
I turned to my house and then back to Luca. My heart was breaking for him. Even the insane deserved someone to listen to them.
“Luca, I can’t stay out here long. My dad expects me back in a few minutes for dinner. But if you want to tell me about your mom, I promise I’ll listen.”
He didn’t raise his head; I wasn’t sure he’d heard me.
After several seconds, in a muffled voice, he asked, “Was your mom good?”
I paused. It was an odd question. “Yes, she was very good,” I answered.
He raised his head, leaning it against the tree. “Mine wasn’t.”
“Luca, don’t say that.” I recalled what he’d said about her at the pond, about how her presence made him sick. “She loved you, I know she did. Sam told us.”
“She did love me, but she wasn’t good. But she wasn’t evil, not fully. I have to believe that, and that’s why I sit here every night and watch for her.”
His words were convoluted and his voice sounded like he was about to cry. He believed what he was saying, he believed he was telling the truth, yet no part of this conversation made the slightest bit of sense.
“What does your mom being good or evil have to do with you sitting here every night?” I asked, trying to be as patient as I could.
He stared up at me, then at my house, and back at me. I knelt in the damp earth. Luca was a good person. I was sure of that. And he was hurting. I was sure of that as well.
“I promise, whatever you say will stay between you and me,” I said. I didn’t like making such promises, not being able to tell my family things, though in this case it didn’t matter. Luca wasn’t healthy, in the psychological sense. I could tell my dad that, if I needed to, without telling him any specifics. That way Luca would get the help he needed, and I wouldn’t be breaking my promise.
“You’re going to think I’m crazy,” he cautioned.
“No, I won’t,” I lied.
A smile of sadness crossed his face. “You already do, so I guess it doesn’t matter.”
He watched me for a long while and then took a deep breath in and exhaled. “I’d been in Maine for a week, maybe less. It was late, but it was still light. Uncle Jace asked me if I’d mind bringing you all some firewood he chopped earlier in the week. He said it was one of the ways he helped your family and he’d appreciate it if I helped him with it. I loaded the wheelbarrow and brought it up here. I got to this spot when I noticed a man.”
“A man?”
He nodded. “I thought it was your dad, then realized it wasn’t. So I figured he was some other relative or friend or someone. He was old and stooped over. I assumed he was your grandpa or something.”
“Both my grandfathers are dead,” I said, feeling a chill surround me.
“Yeah, I found that out later,” he said. “I didn’t know it that night, so I ignored him. I unloaded the wheelbarrow and when I turned around, he was gone. I figured he went into the kitchen or something. I was getting ready to leave when a young girl came walking across the yard. I assumed it was Avi, but it was about to get dark and I wasn’t sure who the old man was, so I didn’t feel right about leaving her outside by herself. I decided to ask her if you all knew she was outside. When I got a little closer, I realized it wasn’t Avi. I thought maybe you had family visiting and this was a cousin or something. I didn’t want to scare her, so I stepped back and watched to make sure she got in the house okay.”
“Did she go in the house?” I asked, feeling afraid of a child, though a child who didn’t belong to us. We had no family visit us this year, let alone this month.
His posture relaxed as mine tensed. “No, she went to the side of your house, leaned against the wall like she was listening through the stone, stood back, clapped, and disappeared.”
“Disappeared?” I said, feeling the deepening darkness around me.
“Yes.”
“People don’t disappear,” I said.
“No, people don’t,” he said, pronouncing the word “people” in a way that made me pause.
“What are you saying?” I asked, trying and failing to keep my voice from trembling.
Luca stood, as I remained kneeling on the earth. He held out his hand for me. I cautiously placed my fingers into the palm of his hand. He helped me stand, our bodies were inches apart. The closeness seemed to make him uneasy. He released my hand, angling his body away from mine.
“It took me a long time to figure it out,” he said. “I’m still not sure, but after seeing so many, I’ve had to accept it.”
“What have you accepted and what do you mean, so many?” I said, starting to feel concerned he wasn’t crazy but purposefully messing with me.
“Every night at this time, when your family is praying, a stream of ghosts come up to your house, go to the wall of your dad’s office, wait, or maybe listen for a few seconds, and then disappear.”
I heard the sincerity in his words. He wasn’t messing with me. My mind and body became rigid. “You’re insane,” I said, starting toward the hill to my house.
Luca followed me, placing the tips of his fingers on the thick sweatshirt covering my arm. “One of them left a handprint. It’s burned into the stone,” he said, begging me to believe him.
I refused to make eye contact, I refused to listen to him. He was crazy, exactly like his mom before him. It was a horrible thought, but I didn’t care.
I stormed up the hill. He stayed behind, watching me from his hiding place beside the chicken coop—as he always did.
Nineteen
Everyone stared as I entered the kitchen. I felt like screaming in frustration or anger or fear. I wasn’t sure which, it was all I could do to calm down enough to walk across the kitchen to where my father was dishing up meatloaf, his apron smudged with ketchup.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
My body shook as if I was cold, but I wasn’t. I was freaked out, completely freaked out, and I was grateful to be in my home, surrounded by my family—away from Luca.
“Yes,” I said, steadying my voice. “Just hungry and a little chilly.”
“You were out there a long time,” Avi said, carrying her plate of meatloaf to the table.