I try to push the memory from my mind and let the good things I remember take its place. Whatever Jesse might say to the contrary, I know we were happy here, even with the nightmares, even with the ghosts, though the ghosts are why Mama wanted to move out once Daddy was gone. They weren’t her people’s spirits. It’s one thing to live with the ghosts of your own blood, but other people’s—those can be hard to get along with if you don’t have the right temperament. They feel all wrong in the air, against your skin. They make your nerves jittery.
Mama could never stand it, and once Daddy was gone, she never slept another night under this roof. We spent a few weeks at her friend’s place, and then she used Daddy’s life insurance money to buy the trailer on the other side of the woods. She walked away from Daddy’s old family home without a backward glance. Jesse turned his back, too—he hasn’t set foot in this house since we moved.
“How’s your music coming along?” Aunt Ena asks, pouring a bag of dried black-eyed peas into a glass jar.
“It’s all right. It’s not like it used to be. I don’t think I’ll ever be as good as Daddy was.”
Silence drops and deepens around us. “How’s Sarah then?” she says, arching an eyebrow, trying to lighten the mood.
I haven’t told many people I’m bi, so I don’t know how Aunt Ena figured out about my crush on Sarah. Probably the ghosts whispered it to her. She’s always had a better ear for them than the rest of us.
I go to the fridge and pour myself a glass of orange juice to hide my embarrassment. “Sarah’s Sarah,” I say, but Aunt Ena’s not fooled.
“You ask her to prom yet?”
I laugh outright at the thought of Sarah in a prom dress. She’d probably show up in Converse and jeans. Maybe a tuxedo if I could talk her into it.
“Leave me alone,” I say, but I smile too.
“All right, all right. I’ll make you some French toast.” Aunt Ena makes better French toast than any restaurant ever could. She told me once it was her mama’s recipe, but she doesn’t like to talk about my grandmother, who died right before Aunt Ena started college.
What little bit I know about my grandparents was hard-won, wheedled out of Daddy when he was distracted, pulled like teeth from Aunt Ena’s mouth. Neither of them ever liked to talk about the past. Daddy would always say something like, “Don’t matter, Shady girl. What’s gone’s gone,” and then he’d go back to painting or hammering or planting. But I do know their mama was Irish and worked as a medium when she was young—helping folks get in contact with dead relatives and lovers.
Daddy got his ghost-raising magic from her, but the ghosts only came to him when he played his fiddle. That came from his mama, too, the instrument passed down through the family for generations.
My grandma stopped working as a medium after she married my grandpa. They settled here in Briar Springs, Florida, in the only house they could afford—a house no one else wanted, on account of it being haunted. Once my grandmother moved in, even more lost souls began to haunt the house and the woods that surround it, drawn to her just like they were to Daddy. I guess the ghosts have been coming ever since.
Our people mostly didn’t mind the ghosts, kin or not. Well, maybe Daddy’s father did, but poor people can’t be too choosy about where they live. I don’t know anything about my grandfather, except that Daddy didn’t seem to like him much. Maybe the ghosts rubbed him raw the way they did Mama.
Today the ghosts are quiet, listening to Aunt Ena and me chat at the table, Aunt Ena growing steadily more animated. She tells me about the books she’s been reading, the plants she’s been growing, her blue eyes bright as morning glories in early summer. The tight feeling in my chest starts to fade.
When the faint strains of a mournful fiddle start wafting down from the second floor, we both stop talking. Aunt Ena’s smile wavers and then goes out like a spent lightning bug.
“What is . . . ?” I stare at the ceiling, trying to catch the melody, all the hairs on my arms standing on end. “Oh my God, that’s ‘The Twa Sisters.’ I heard it in the woods last night, too,” I say, suddenly sure. “I didn’t imagine it.” The song is distant but unmistakable, and it doesn’t sound light and sweet like when I play it. The only person who ever played like that was Daddy.
When Aunt Ena’s eyes meet mine, I can tell she’s thinking the same thing. Her face has gone pale, her mouth a hard line. “It’s just an echo of the past. That’s all. Don’t mind it. It’s an echo. You know this old house is full of ’em.”
The music’s already gone.
“An echo,” I say, but I know she’s wrong. Tears stand in my eyes.
“Oh, Shady,” Aunt Ena says, reaching for my hand.
I pull it out of her reach and wipe my eyes. “Did I ever tell you about the first time I saw one of the ghosts Daddy raised? He was playing ‘The Twa Sisters’ that night.”
“You shouldn’t think about it. The past’s the past.” God, she sounds so much like Daddy. Everyone in this family’s determined to forget.
But the memory crept in with the music, clawed and fanged. I close my eyes and let it rip me open.
I was six years old, upstairs in my bedroom. I was asleep and then I wasn’t. I was alone and then I wasn’t. From the room below came Daddy’s fiddle music, frenzied and wild as a hurricane night. A ghost stood over my bed, staring at me. The louder and faster Daddy’s music grew, the more real the ghost became until he looked hardly discernible from a living man. Gray hair, a face lined and hardened. His pants and shirt were made of the same rough, beige-colored material, like a work uniform, a long number stamped across the breast pocket. I was just working up the nerve to scream when he spoke.
“I won’t hurt you. I’m looking for someone,” he said, his voice a confused old man’s. The face that had seemed hard and sinister moments ago became soft, vulnerable.
“Who are you looking for?” I whispered.
His brow furrowed. “I don’t know.”
The fiddle music downstairs was building and building until I thought the room Daddy played in would explode. I saw the old man’s eyes fill slowly with recognition. He looked down at the floorboards. “I think I’m looking for him,” he said, pointing at the floor.
“Shady,” Aunt Ena says, pulling me from the memory. “This isn’t good for you, darlin’.” She takes the dirty dishes to the sink and turns on the tap.
“Do you think Daddy’s fiddle is really at the bottom of the lake?” I ask, trying to keep my voice even, despite the sharp stab of longing in my chest.
“Where else would it be?” she says, staring fixedly into the soapy, churning water.
I don’t answer because I’m picturing Daddy’s truck careening off the road, the fiddle sinking into the water. It happened four years ago, and even though I wasn’t there, I’ve pictured it so many times it feels like I was. The truck hitting the lake, sending up a spray of frothy, algae-scented water, his body slamming into the windshield, his blood turning the water red. He was bringing Jesse home from a friend’s house, and there was a deer in the road. Daddy died on impact and the fiddle was lost, but Jesse made it out alive.