Page 14

Mom and Dad are fighting. Not arguing as they used to, in hushed tones, behind closed doors, but all-out screaming at each other. Because while Mom had called a cop, Dad had done something even crazier. He’d gone to church.

“I can’t believe you!”

Mom screams at him. “Now. After all this time!”

“What better time than now?”

Dad asks. “I’ve witnessed a miracle. I wanted to offer thanks.”

“It’s not a miracle!”

Mom shouts back. “Dead people don’t come back to life.”

“C’mon, Gloria. I’ve learned a thing or two from you over the years. Scripture’s full of miracles. The loaves and fishes? Christ’s resurrection?”

“That’s the Bible, Brian! And is not Jesus Christ.”

“I know that,”

Dad says. “But she is a miracle.”

I wish he’d stop calling me that. I wish they’d stop fighting. I wish Missy were here, but after Mom got wind of what Dad had done and he got wind of what she’d done, Mom insisted Missy go to work and said tomorrow she had to go back to school. She had perfect attendance and she said the last thing we need now is to draw any suspicion on the family.

They keep going at it. I open the hall closet and take out Mr. Fluff’s old daybed, shoving my face in it, imagining him purring on my chest. I bet if he were still alive he’d welcome me back, not deny me or claim I was some kind of second coming.

“I just went to offer thanks, Gloria,”

Dad says. “I didn’t tell anyone. Though I think we should talk to Father Mercer.”

“You want to talk to Father Mercer?”

The sarcasm in Mom’s voice could strip paint. “You always hated him.”

“I never hated him. I just wasn’t buying what he was selling, and now I see I was wrong to doubt. I think he could help us. Help you.”

“Oh, you do, do you?”

Mom’s not screaming now, she’s scoffing, which is somehow worse.

“Who better?”

Dad asks. “We should at least approach him.”

“Are you insane? We don’t even know what’s going on, and let’s assume for a moment that this is not a hoax or a scam or a communal delusion but is real. A child back from the dead. Can you imagine people’s reactions?”

“Yes. People would rejoice in a miracle,” Dad says.

“Don’t be so naive. At best, it’ll be a media circus. Every religious zealot in the world will come out to denounce us or to beatify . And she’s not a saint. She is—or was—a perfectly average girl.”

This hurts. My mom wasn’t the sort to extol Missy or me with superlatives—that was Aunt Pauline’s domain—but I always assumed she thought I was special. Apparently not.

“She’s a miracle,”

Dad insists.

“Miracles like this don’t happen!”

“What about the Bible? You used to take it at face value.”

“I never took it at face value, Brian. I’m not stupid. The whole point of not taking it at face value is that you have faith in a truth beyond what you can see.”

“So how is returning not a truth beyond what you can see?”

“Because it’s not. The world doesn’t work like that.”

“Maybe it doesn’t until it does. And if ’s death was God’s will, why wouldn’t her return also be?”

“I can’t have this discussion with you.”

“Look, I understand you losing faith when she died, Gloria. I do. But I don’t understand you losing it now that she’s back.”

“You don’t get to talk to me about my faith,”

she sneers.

“Fine. So let’s talk to Father Mercer about it.”

Dad’s voice softens. “Let him guide us.”

“If this gets out,”

Mom says in a shout-whisper, “have you thought about what this means for Melissa? That child has been through enough. Her sister died right before her tenth birthday.”

That stops me in my tracks. I run back to look at the portrait on the wall and sure enough I died April 28, three days before Missy’s birthday. I remember suddenly how she was planning a spy party. God, I was so mean to her about it. About everything. Pauline always said we’d be best friends one day, like she and Mom were, and I guess in the back of my mind, I believed it. Even when I was being horrible to Missy, I thought I’d have time to make it up to her.

Mom’s wrong. I wasn’t average. I was a shitty person, awful to people who loved me. Why should I get to come back? Why should I get a miracle?

“Melissa will be fine,”

I hear Dad telling Mom now. “She’s the calmest one of all of us.”

“And what if people start asking about the money?”

Mom asks. “Have you paid it back?”

“Why are you asking me that?”

“I don’t know, Brian. Because think of how it looks. Our daughter supposedly dies. The town raises two hundred thousand dollars for a memorial that you spent—”

“We never asked for that money,”

Dad interrupts.

“That won’t matter. We accepted it. And you spent most of it on your ridiculous obsession. And now she’s back. Don’t you see how this will look?”

“It will look like a miracle.”

“It will look like fraud,” Mom says.

“I’ll pay it back. I don’t care about money.”

“If you ever loved me at all, Brian,”

Mom says, her voice almost soft, beseeching, “you will keep this bloody godforsaken miracle to yourself.”

Casey

Seven Years Before

Casey had never felt more like a celebrity than in the weeks following ’s death. She didn’t tell anyone that—of course not—or let it show. In public, she alternated between a somber presence and shuddering sobs, neither of which was contrived. She was devastated. She and had been best friends. would have been the first to say so.

This was why the reporter for the local newspaper had gotten in touch with her, not Alexa Santiago or any of ’s other close friends, but her. She’d been doing a piece about the “tragic hit-and-run accident”

that had robbed the town of “one of its brightest lights,” the article had said. Before, Casey might’ve chafed at that designation but now she saw it was true. had been one of those people who was going to go somewhere in life, and Casey had been reflected in her glow. But now was gone and it was like she’d passed on her glow to Casey.

Best friend was how she’d been identified in the smattering of news reports about ’s death, and it was what was listed on the little text that ran under her name when the local TV news station interviewed her.

The attention had lasted all through the spring and until graduation, when Casey had been selected to give a memorial speech, right alongside the valedictorian. She’d sweated over what to say. There might be reporters there, so it had to be good. She’d also worried about Calvin showing up, even though he’d dropped out of school, the equivalent of fumbling the ball at the three-yard line like the loser that he was.

She’d spent hours working on the speech, googling quotes about death. Her favorite one was by George Eliot: Our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them. She’d made the mistake of calling George a him when she turned out to be a woman, but whatever. “I will never forget ,”

she said at the start of her speech, and then went on to paint a picture of the most beautiful friendship in the world. She got so swept up in it that she cried, missing , and missing the relationship she’d described.

After graduation, things went, more or less, back to normal. The flowers and teddy bears that had been piled at the four-way stop where had been struck were bagged up and removed. A few weeks later, someone locked a spray-painted white bicycle to the lamppost as a memorial (a creepy one, if you asked Casey). The TV crews left; the articles dwindled and disappeared altogether. The people who had rushed to Casey’s side, supporting the grieving best friend, stopped leaving her self-care gifts like bath bombs and went back to the business of pool parties and shopping for sheets for their college dorms.

It was around this time that Casey had the idea for the memorial fund.

She would single-handedly raise money for the Crane family, who, she knew, while not poor, were definitely not rich.

Instead of going on nice vacations like Casey’s family did—usually to a Caribbean resort in winter and somewhere in Europe in summer—’s family often just went camping.

Instead of the elaborate sweet sixteen at the country club that Casey had been thrown, ’s party had been in her backyard.

She didn’t get a new car when she got her license as Casey had, or even a used one.

She continued to ride that bicycle everywhere.

Sometimes, when it seemed like had everything—a boyfriend who loved her, parents who paid attention to her, even a sibling, though complained constantly about Missy—Casey would compare her life to ’s to remind herself that Casey had it as good, if not better.

But now such comparisons were moot. And Casey wanted to continue honoring her friend. So, she put up a bunch of pictures of her and through the years, cribbed the best lines from her speech, and set up a fundraising page to, she explained, “help the Crane family through their darkest hour.”

She was worried people would be mean about it. It wasn’t like they could buy back, but the morning after the post had gone up, Casey had raised over a thousand dollars. In addition to the money were messages, some from people who hadn’t even known and had never met Casey, blessing them both.

She reached out to the reporter at the local paper who had interviewed her to tell her about the fund. The reporter was interested in what she called “the new trend of crowdsourcing tragedy.”

She did an article, not about Casey, but about the money she’d raised, which by that time had jumped to $20,000. When the article came out, the donations swelled to $65,000, then $100,000.

Casey emailed the article to every person in her contacts. She asked people to forward the article along with the link to the fund to everyone they knew. Complete strangers emailed her back, saying they’d donated, extolling Casey for being a wonderful friend to first in life, and now in death. One lady from Missoula, Montana, called Casey “an angel on earth.”

Casey’s heart had swelled. She could not bring back, but she could bring some solace to her family. And to herself.

Until she got the message from Calvin, who she must have accidentally included in her mass email. She hadn’t heard from him since the day died; she was beginning to convince herself that he’d never existed.

What the HELL are you doing? he wrote. Why are you raising all this money? The funeral already happened and if you think this changes anything, you’re wrong. Money can’t erase what we did.

She deleted the email but it was too late. It all came crashing back, and she started to cry, only it wasn’t that cathartic good sob she’d done in front of the camera, or on the graduation stage. It was an ugly cry, in all the ways.

Her father happened to come upon her like this. He was not much of a hugger. He’d said more than once that girls were too touchy-feely and would do better in business if they grew a thicker skin. But when he saw her, he wrapped his arms around her and asked: “Princess, what’s wrong?”

“It’s . . . it’s ,”

she hiccuped.

“Oh, sweetheart,”

he said, pulling her into his lap, like she was a little girl.

After she stopped crying, her father asked her how much money the fund had raised. He’d been very impressed with Casey’s initiative and had even asked his assistant to create a computer graphic that grew as the funds did.

“One hundred and eighty-seven thousand dollars,”

she told him.

“Wow! And where is the money?”

She wasn’t entirely sure how that part worked. It was still in the computer as far as she knew. The Cranes would have to fill out some paperwork to access it.

“Let’s go over there now,”

her father said. “And tell the family about the amazing thing you’ve done for them. That will make you feel better.”

And so they’d driven over to ’s house and knocked on the door. ’s dad answered, though he didn’t look like the Mr. Crane Casey remembered, who was like a TV dad, always full of goofy jokes and smiles. This man had unkempt hair and bloodshot eyes and a big stain on his shirt.

“Yes?”

He stared at Casey as if she was a stranger, not his daughter’s best friend.

“Mr. Crane. It’s me, Casey,”

she began, but something about the look in his eyes stopped her.

Her father took over, shaking hands with Mr. Crane, reintroducing himself.

“Right, Scott, Casey, sorry, I’m not quite myself. What can I do for you?”

“I’m sure you’re aware that my daughter has been raising money for your family in the aftermath of your daughter’s passing.”

It had been in the newspaper and all over social media, but Mr. Crane looked as if he were hearing it for the first time.

“She raised nearly two hundred thousand dollars for your time of need,”

Casey’s father elaborated.

Casey waited for Mr. Crane to smile, or even cry or jump for joy, as she would have if someone announced they were giving her that much money. It was like winning the lottery without even buying a ticket. But Mr. Crane just stared and asked, “Why?”

“To help with expenses,”

Casey said.

“The funeral must have set you back a pretty penny,”

Casey’s father said, his voice tight, the way it was when he fought with Casey’s mother. “And now you can set up a memorial for . Maybe even a scholarship in her name at the school. A way to honor her legacy.”

“Oh,”

Mr. Crane said. He still did not seem terribly happy about it. “Thank you.” He started to close the door, but Casey’s father shoved his foot in it.

“‘Thank you’? Is that all you have to say? Do you have any idea of the effort my daughter put into this?”

Mr. Crane seemed to wince at the mention of the word daughter, and in that moment, Casey had the briefest sense of what it would feel like to lose a child, the ineffable and unending well of grief.

“It’s okay, Dad.”

Casey pulled at his sleeve, suddenly wanting to be anywhere but here.

“It’s not okay. We all suffer in life. That doesn’t mean we can treat one another with disrespect.”

“Really, Dad! It’s okay.”

Her father turned to her, angry, not at Mr. Crane anymore but at her. She shrank back, the tears welling in her eyes having nothing to do with .

“No, your father’s right,”

Mr. Crane replied. He looked to be blinking back his own tears. “Thank you, Casey. Thank you for being such a good friend to in life, and in death.”

She felt bile rise in her throat, choking her, making her unable to speak. Mr. Crane reached forward and hugged her and the most horrible sob escaped. Mr. Crane and her father thought that she was crying because she missed , and she let them think that. But really, she was missing a part of herself that she wasn’t sure had ever existed.