Page 4 of Remain (one-of-a-kind)

People found Sylvia’s expansive, almost mystical vision of the world irresistible, and she collected friends the way I collected lint on my clothing.

In her twenties and thirties, her calendar was filled with lunches, dinners, and outings with so many different people I stopped trying to keep track; whenever I visited, her phone would beep with texts and ring with calls until she finally turned it off so we wouldn’t be distracted.

Years later, when her heart weakened and she was in the hospital awaiting a transplant that would never come, even the doctors and nurses gravitated toward her like planets orbiting the sun.

At one point, she had so many visitors that Mike resorted to scheduling appointments.

Because I’d never made friends easily, she often worried about me.

While I was away at Exeter, she regularly called, emailed, and even sent me handwritten letters.

In my dorm at Yale, her care packages—stuffed with goodies from Eli’s and Russ they loved southern Spain and Central America, sometimes staying there for weeks during the summers, when Mike had time off.

She traveled to Rome, London, Paris, Amsterdam, and Berlin, and saw polar bears when she and Mike journeyed by train through Alaska.

Upon her return from such far-flung adventures, she would show me photographs and videos, hoping to convince me to join her on future trips.

Despite my outward success, my childhood still cast a pall over me.

Suspecting I was depressed, she often asked when I recalled last having a sensation of wonder or awe, emotions she experienced regularly, and I never knew quite how to answer.

For the most part, I lived my life as though I were checking items off a to-do list: I spent long hours at the office, exercised and ate healthy food, fed my cat, kept in touch with Oscar, went out on the occasional date, and spent as much time with my sister as I could.

Sylvia, however, wanted more than that for me.

She wanted me to imagine a wider realm of possibility and was convinced that falling in love—and fully surrendering myself to its wonder—could provide the antidote to my loneliness.

Not that I didn’t have opportunities in that regard.

In my twenties and even into my thirties, I flitted through relationships, some lasting longer than others, but none ever evolving into anything serious.

Like many men, I was a sucker for beauty but was also self-aware enough to realize that genuine relationships required a vulnerability I’d never been entirely comfortable with.

“You’re too closed off,” Sylvia observed after I’d explained why yet another girlfriend had proven incompatible.

“No, I’m just picky,” I said, half joking.

She laughed, but behind her smile, I could see her sadness.

· · ·

Perhaps because Sylvia’s health issues had always been part of our lives, I never truly believed I would lose her.

As the years passed, however, her heart condition took its inevitable course.

After a series of increasingly desperate medical interventions, she was admitted to the hospital for the final time.

Every detail from our last visit together remained as vivid as if it were happening in the present.

“Hey,” I said to her.

Beneath fluorescent lights and surrounded by flowers, Sylvia had been sleeping for hours.

Behind her, medical equipment beeped in rhythm with her heartbeat.

Her skin was gray, her breathing rapid and shallow.

She’d been growing smaller with every passing day, and sitting at her bedside, I raged inwardly at the unfairness of it all.

How could a lifetime of unfettered joy and generosity lead to this?

Although she was only forty-two, she’d been on the transplant list for more than a decade.

Her blood type was AB-negative, the rarest of all, and in all that time, no donor had been a match.

“Hi, Tate,” she whispered, before turning toward Mike.

“Can I talk to my brother alone for a few minutes?” she whispered.

“Of course,” Mike said. “I’ll get some coffee and be back in a few.”

When he was gone, I slipped my hand into hers.

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

“Dumb question,” she said with a wry smile. “Ask me something real, something you’ve been too afraid to ask before.”

I closed my eyes before opening them again. “How am I going to live without you?”

“You’ll find your way,” she answered. “I’ve been praying about it.”

“Don’t you mean your way?” I joked.

“Same thing.” Her eyes crinkled in amusement, and my stomach filled with lead.

“I hate this, Syl.”

“Me, too.” Even now, her tone was soothing, as if she needed to support me instead of vice versa.

“Are you scared?” I croaked.

“No,” she answered. “I worry about Mike, and I worry about you, but I’m looking forward to whatever’s coming next.”

“How can you say that?” While I had always tried to humor Sylvia’s otherworldly beliefs, I felt a surge of incredulousness verging on anger.

Despite her exhaustion, her voice was firm. “Because I know there’s something more out there.”

I said nothing to this, but Sylvia, who knew me better than anyone, squeezed my hand.

“I have a surprise for you, Tate. Actually, three of them.”

“What are they?”

“Messages,” she said.

“What does that mean?”

“You’ll see,” she said. “But first I want to tell you something.” She waited until my eyes were fixed on hers. “I know you’re not going to believe me, but I want you to pretend that you do. Can you do that for me?”

When I nodded, she went on.

“Mom and Dad came to see me today,” she announced. “They sat in those chairs, and we talked, just like the two of us are doing now.”

I said nothing, but really, how was I supposed to respond? She tried to frown, but it was more like a squint.

“I asked you to pretend, remember?”

“Fine, okay. What did they say?”

“They told me that they were happy to see me again, and that we’d be together soon.”

“Uh-huh,” I offered.

“Try harder.”

“That’s…nice?”

She choked out a laugh, which eventually gave way to a coughing spasm. When she recovered, she tried to catch her breath, but even that effort taxed her body. It was a few long seconds before she was able to go on.

“You’re bad at this, so let me just come out with it.

It’s not the first time they’ve visited me.

And I’ve seen others, too. Do you remember when we were kids, how I would watch people in the park for hours from my bedroom window?

Well, I wasn’t watching only living people.

Sometimes, people who had already passed appeared to me as flickers of movement at the corners of my eyes, like figures I barely registered in the background, nagging me to look again.

At other times they were opaque, or resembled shadows.

” Her sunken eyes gleamed. “But once in a while, Tate, they looked completely real, right up until they vanished into thin air.”

It took a moment for me to grasp what she was saying. “Are you telling me that you see ghosts?”

“Or spirits. Or maybe they’re just souls that haven’t departed yet. I’m not sure what to call them. I do know that each of them seems to be bound by different rules, and that most of them are visitors, here and gone in a matter of minutes, like Mom and Dad earlier.”

I could only stare at her in stunned silence.

“But some of them,” she continued, “can’t find a way to move on.

They’re troubled, sometimes even in terrible pain.

Maybe something about their death was traumatic, or there were unresolved issues when they died, but whatever the reason, they remain here.

” She paused, searching my eyes with almost feverish intensity.

“If they stay too long, the good part of them fades away until only negative energy remains. Then they’re stuck here, forever tormented by anger and grief.

Those are the ones I always wished I could help, but I never knew how. ”

I swallowed, unable to formulate any kind of response. She seemed lucid, but how could I accept this as anything but the product of a delusional, dying mind?

“I know you don’t believe me, but Mom knew I could see them,” she added.

“She said that her mom had the same gift. I want you to do something for me—please try to pretend it’s a reasonable request, and don’t ask any questions.

” She gave me a beseeching look. “Promise?” When I nodded, she lifted a papery hand and waved me closer.

“Lean forward and open your mouth,” she instructed.

This is crazy, I told myself, but I did as I was asked. She blew into my mouth, her breath as light as a feather. Oddly, it didn’t smell sickly at all. If anything, I thought I detected a licorice-like scent, gone as quickly as it registered.

“Thank you,” she whispered, collapsing even farther into her pillows.

“Can I ask what that was about?”

“I don’t know. Just now when she visited, Mom told me to do it.” She released my hand and studied my face with doting affection. “Never forget that I love you.”

“I love you, too,” I whispered.

Her voice was growing hoarser, but her words were clear. “You’re going to fall in love, Tate. And when you do, it’s going to change your life forever.”