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“She’s not allowed to leave,” Maggie said as she took my hand. Before we left the playroom, she turned back to the spot where her imaginary friend presumably still sat. “You can stay. But tell the others I don’t want them here.”
I paused then, struck by one word my daughter had used.
Others.
The unseen girl Maggie had been talking to and playing with—she wasn’t her only imaginary friend.
•••
“I’m worried about Maggie,” I told Jess that night as we got ready for bed. “I think she’s too isolated. Did you know that she has imaginary friends?”
Jess poked her head out of the master bathroom, toothbrush in hand and mouth foaming like Cujo. “I had an imaginary friend when I was her age.”
“More than one?”
“Nope.” Jess disappeared back into the bathroom. “Just Minnie.”
I waited until she was done brushing her teeth and out of the bathroom before asking my follow-up question. “When you say you had an imaginary friend named Minnie, are you talking about Minnie Mouse?”
“No, Minnie was different.”
“Was she a mouse?”
“Yes,” Jess said, blushing so much even her shoulders had turned pink. “But they were different, I swear. My Minnie was my height. And furry. Like an honest-to-God mouse, only bigger.”
I approached Jess from behind, took her into my arms, kissed her shoulder right next to the strap of her nightgown, the skin there still warm. “I think you’re lying,” I whispered.
“Fine,” Jess admitted. “My imaginary friend was Minnie Mouse. I have a shitty imagination. I admit it. Happy now?”
“Always, when I’m with you.” We crawled into bed, Jess snuggling against me. “Our daughter, I suspect, isn’t. I think she’s lonely.”
“She’ll be going to kindergarten in the fall,” Jess said. “She’ll make friends then.”
“And what about the rest of the summer? We can’t expect her to spend it cooped up in this house with imaginary friends.”
“What’s the alternative?”
I saw only one. And they lived just outside Baneberry Hall’s front gate.
“I think we should invite the Ditmer girls over,” I said.
“Like a playdate?”
That would have been the proper course of action, had their previous playdate gone well. But with Hannah being so bossy and Maggie so shy, they didn’t gel as much as they should—or could—have. To truly bond, they needed something more than another half-hearted game of hide-and-seek.
“I was thinking more like a sleepover,” I said.
“Both girls?” Jess said. “Don’t you think Petra’s a little old for that?”
“Not if we pay her to babysit. She could watch Maggie and Hannah, and we, my dear, could have a proper date night.”
I kissed her shoulder again. Then the nape of her neck.
Jess melted against me. “When you put it that way, how’s a girl supposed to say no?”
“Great,” I said, drawing her tighter against me. “I’ll call Elsa tomorrow.”
The matter was settled. Maggie was going to have her first sleepover.