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“I haven’t discussed it with Mom, and I wanted to see Amherst one more time before raising the issue, but I’ve been considering heading in a different direction.”

Generally, those were words a parent would rather not hear from a teenage daughter, right up there with “I’m dropping out of college,” “Can you pay my bail?,” and “I’m pregnant.” I willed my brow not to darken.

“You haven’t discussed it with me either,” I said, “so that makes two of us. If you tell me you want to take a year off to find yourself, I can save you a lot of time and trouble by drawing you a map.”

“Gee, thanks,” said Sam. “Will it be very detailed?”

“It’ll be an X on a blank sheet of paper, which I’ll stick on yourforehead to remind you that wherever you go, there you are. So tell me, what exactly constitutes a ‘different direction’?”

She took a bite of her sandwich and, possessing good table manners, waited until she’d swallowed before answering. This also gave her time to think, even though I knew she must have planned this conversation long before arriving at Book & Bar. She was, after all, my daughter.

“Did you know,” she began, “that I always keep some of your business cards with me?”

I hadn’t known, and told her as much.

“I hold on to them in case I ever meet someone who’s in difficulty, the kind of difficulty you might be able to help with,” said Sam. “I’m careful about how I dispense them—so careful that, so far, I’ve only given away three, and one of those was just a few days ago. Each of the cards went to a woman.”

She took another bite of her sandwich: chewed, swallowed, resumed.

“I’ve decided that I want to do what you do, or something like it. I want to help people who feel they have nowhere left to turn.” She frowned. “This part is hard, but I’ll say it anyway. I don’t want to hurt anyone, not the way you have. If I can avoid owning a gun—or routinely carrying one—I will. I’m not sure you were ever like that.”

“No,” I said, “I don’t believe I was.”

“And I understand why. I think about your father taking his own life. I think about your wife. And I think a lot about Jennifer, her most of all. I know that what happened to them made you the way you are, or the way youusedto be, because you’ve changed. Even Mom says so. You’re not as angry anymore, and what you do is no longer an outlet for rage.”

“You really do sound like your mother,” I said.

“Would that be so bad?”

“Not at all. In some ways, Rachel always knew me better than I knew myself, and certainly better than I knew her.”

“She still loves you, just as you still love her,” said Sam. “I don’t mean in a sexual way, because that would be, like, gross”—she wassmirking—“but as two people who’ve been through a lot and care about each other. That makes me happy. It always has.”

The grin dissolved.

“Can we talk about Jennifer?” she asked.

Some years earlier, Sam had opened up to me about her experiences of seeing and hearing her dead sister. We had touched upon the subject before, but Sam preferred to avoid it. That time was different. She said Jennifer had told her it was okay to speak to me, and that I would understand. It was a first step, and there had been further small steps since then.

“We can talk about whatever you like.”

“She doesn’t come to me so much anymore,” said Sam. “That’s the first thing. It started to change when I turned thirteen. She became like this annoying younger sibling, the little sister I didn’t want bothering me while I tried to figure out how to be an adult. And just as I was impatient with her, I felt her annoyance with me—and her envy. Jennifer is older than she looks, but a part of her is still stuck at the age she was when she died, and she struggles with those two sides of herself. She realized why we were drifting apart, yet it didn’t mean she wanted it to happen. At the same time, I was having all these experiences that were denied her, and she couldn’t explore them through me because that was never the bond we had. So she stopped visiting. It’s been months since I’ve sensed her near, and longer since I’ve heard her voice.

“But when I was younger, it was as if she was there all the time, or as good as. Even when she wasn’t around, I was aware of her. I knew her name almost as soon as I knew my own, but I can’t remember how. Now I think she was whispering to me from when I was little, so it became almost natural for me to see and hear her, except I grasped very early on that I wasn’t supposed to speak of her to Mom, and sometimes not even to you.”

“We’ve both kept our secrets,” I said, “for good or bad. As you say, Jennifer doesn’t like being spoken of, not without care.”

“Because she’s afraid of who might be listening, and not just here.”

“By ‘here,’ I’m assuming you don’t mean a bookstore-cum-bar.”

“By ‘here,’ I mean this world. Why do you think that is?”

It was my turn to pause and reflect. Outside, people were going about their affairs on a day that finally felt like spring; inside, we were talking about a dead child who refused to be released, and it still felt like winter.

“She’s frightened of being discovered,” I said.

“Not for her sake alone, or perhaps not even at all. She’s frightened for you.”