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“She was like a cornered animal looking at this place.” He hadn’t bothered to ask her to come along, already knowing full

well that she wouldn’t. And the expression on her face earlier, when she’d exited the supermarket, made it clear enough. John

felt his throat constrict, a ghost sensation since he didn’t have a physical throat. What was it about this town that the

air was drenched in greasy potato? “There must be something here.”

“Dude, maybe it’s anxiety. The fading issue—ticking clock and all.”

“A while back, Persephone had mentioned the Grey House possibly being in a different dimension.”

“It’s possible.”

“If so, then for all we know it could very well be sitting right there in the middle of the road, isn’t that right?”

Ruben nodded reluctantly.

“But?”

“But I still think the answer is a portal,” said Ruben. “In the greatest stories super magical portals aren’t plopped across

the street from Kmart and Wendy’s.”

“Real life, Ruben. Not storybooks.”

“Clarification. We’re talking about real life where a Boy Not-So-Psychic is trying to help his best friend Definitely Dead

find a portal to the Grey House mansion he was haunting for years. I think it’s safe to say we can use a little story inspiration

for direction.”

John sighed in capitulation, even as Mabel’s theory that searching for a place would be in vain echoed through his mind.

Ruben held up his mobile. “According to navigation, we’ve got some desolate and possibly creepy areas about twenty minutes

from here.”

5

Persephone sat atop the motel bed, plastic bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch in one hand. The cereal had been Ruben’s choice.

Running out of Winn-Dixie, she’d forgotten her Honey Pot multis.

You dropped these , he said when handing them to her in the car.

She thanked him and added, Where’s your bag of diabetes and heart disease?

He grinned and revealed the cereal box, and upon her look, insisted it was healthy because it was wheat-y or whatever.

Now, after ignoring five calls—all from Parker, none from her mom—the box of cereal was half-empty.

She and her mother spoke only briefly on the holidays, with the exception of the last two seasons, when Persephone had been

doing her best to avoid her brother. She stared at the phone and wondered what she was going to say when she finally answered.

It surprised her how hard it still was, even after they’d already spoken, to face Parker.

She reread his text: You home??

And then, without a reply, she tucked the phone under her pillow, where Parker couldn’t see her.

6

Already, they’d been idling at Persephone’s old home for a full minute. The night before, the desolate and possibly creepy

areas proved to be just that, but still no portal. John found himself anxious yet almost relieved. Something about Corpus

Christi brought forth an increasing sense of self-loathing, and really, it was this baffling sentiment that made him think

perhaps the way to the Grey House and the Grey Man was actually here.

Persephone turned off the ignition. “Could you guys stay here for a minute? I just—”

Bang. The male version of Persephone bounded from the trailer’s landing to the dirt, the screen door bouncing off the side of the

mobile home behind him. And not just the male version of Persephone, but a browner, possibly biracial version.

“Stay inside,” Persephone muttered, opening the door.

For a moment, she and her brother stood facing one another, neither speaking. And then they exchanged a few quiet words and

she looked away. He put his hands on his hips and stared into the car, appearing even more like Persephone at that moment.

He walked over to Ruben’s side and leaned a forearm against the roof. Ruben rolled down the window.

“Parker, Persephone’s brother.” Parker thrust his hand forward.

He stares up at her, knee shaking, arm still holding up the ring. It’s a tiny squint-to-see-it diamond but the band is real

gold and he’ll get her a better stone as soon as he’s able. But her eyes have gone all wrong. I’m sorry, Parker. Dating you was fun but we’re outta high school now and I gotta think about my future. You just ain’t got

much to offer.

Ruben shook Parker’s hand. “Ruben Colón. This is John.”

Parker nodded and looked John over, a flash expression of awe replaced by one of shrewd assessment. He turned to his sister and headed toward the mobile home, calling over his shoulder, “Y’all come on in.”

The mobile home was wood paneled and cramped, but neat. It was also doilied to high heaven: doilies on the coffee table; doilies

draped over the back of the sofa and reclining sofa chair; a doily on a side table, laid beneath a leatherbound Bible and

a basket of glass fruit. On the wall, a dark-skinned Jesus with locs.

Parker asked if they’d like anything to drink ( got beers in the cooler ), anything to snack on ( got some pie, cheese crackers, and a few shreds of turkey deli, but that’s about it for quick eatin’ ).

After about ten minutes of everyone pretending to watch a football game rerun, Parker rose from the sofa chair.

“Funny?” He jerked his head toward the narrow hall that led to the other half of the home.

“Yeah, sure.” She turned to Ruben and John. “Be right back.”

The moment the door at the end of the hall closed, Ruben turned to John. “Sooo, is that Persephone’s half brother or is she

like, a super-duper light-skinned Black girl? And even more surprising, dude, I never would’ve taken Persephone for a ‘Funny.’

It’s kind of delicate for her, right?”

John was distracted by the feeling of being watched. Porcelain figurines—praying Black and white children and benevolent blonde

angels—stared at him through the glass door of a varnished wood cabinet. There was yet another image of Black Jesus, this

time on a decorative plate and with an Afro.

And there was, again, what was becoming a familiar sense of unease.

7

John and Ruben hadn’t been sitting on the sofa more than five minutes when the front door opened and a Black woman wearing

fitted jeans and a simple white blouse stepped in.

John rose. It seemed the polite thing considering they were unexpected company and this was likely Persephone’s mother, though she looked too young to be, even by Black-don’t-crack standards.

Considering the Everything Doily approach to her decor, she wasn’t wearing the matronly floral dress he’d expected.

She took one look at John and her eyes widened. She took a step back, hand over heart.

The labor pains are severe and Persephone’s twisting in her belly like she’s late for her own birthing when she’s two weeks

early. There’s no use phoning Cam’s Watering Hole or Cuesticks or any other of Terry’s haunts—when that man doesn’t want to

be found he has a way of disappearing, and having a baby shouldn’t have been expected to make one lick of difference. She

considers picking up the phone and calling her mama but doesn’t because she’ll only say I told you so.

Instead, she calls Karen because she knows she won’t say a thing but I’m comin’ .

Ten minutes later, when she gets into Karen’s car, she glances down the road one last time to look for Terry’s pickup. She’d

expected the street to be empty, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less. She rubs her stomach. Maybe he’ll show at the hospital.

“Hello,” said John, still standing. “I’m here with Persephone. She’s speaking with her brother—”

Mrs. Cross shut her eyes and mumbled, “Lord Jesus give me strength. Strength, I beg you in the name of Jesus .” She opened her eyes and glanced down the hall, but instead of heading toward the back, she glared at John. Perhaps she

thought he might run off with the doilies. She lowered herself gracefully into her reclining sofa chair, pressed a lever,

and the footrest sprang up with ferocity. John sat as she crossed her brown arms. She muttered, “Devil’s work.”

“He really isn’t,” said Ruben.

Only now did she give more than a cursory glance at the gangly-legged teenaged boy leaning too hard on her sofa’s armrest.

She eyed the tattoos blanketing his arms with suspicion and squinted, as if trying to determine whether Ruben, unlike John,

was flesh and blood. She turned back to John. “So you’re dating my daughter.”

“She’s a wonderful girl.”

“She always liked to go against the grain, and I wondered what kind of trouble she’d get herself into out there in Hollywood.

Thought maybe she might get into lesbianism or something like that and maybe, just maybe I could deal with it, wait for the

phase to pass, but this. ”

“Well,” Ruben muttered under a hand, “she was definitely in a passing phase.”

Mrs. Cross leaned forward. “Do you know how it feels to have the whole congregation—folks you’ve attended church with your

whole life—stare you down like you’ve got an upside-down cross on your face?” She leaned back. “Don’t feel good.”

John hadn’t thought much about what to expect when it came to meeting Persephone’s mother. Certainly he hadn’t expected her

to be Black, though now he could see the resemblance, especially in the soft curves of their noses, the fullness of their

lips, the angles of their jaws. And stubbornness... that gift had passed from mother to child in full.

8

Hours later, Persephone and Parker sat atop the mobile home, staring out across the empty road at the end of the dirt drive,

across the field of wild grass beyond. The streetlamps had buzzed on about thirty minutes ago, and Persephone drank in the

dusk, the gentle blue sky with a hint of orange fire in the distant horizon. Their mother was inside watching Judge Hatchett , and John and Ruben had gone out to get Ruben something to eat. Probably to get away from her mother, too. The night, here

on the roof with Parker... if she closed her eyes, Persephone could pretend this was ten years ago, more, even, before

things took that terrible turn. Before everything changed.