ALICE
“I knew she was a liar.” The new ghost is bitterly disappointed: Trenton is still alive. She begins to cry, and Sandra hushes her sharply.
“Stop it,” she says. “There’s no use blubbering. It won’t do you any good.”
“Nobody asked you,” she says. Then: “I told you I wasn’t Vivian.”
“You told us different things,” I say gently. I feel a momentary ache of sadness for her: the ache of an empty room after a party has dispersed. Every minute, she forgets how to be alive. She loses her lines and separateness; she is drawn into the air, blown apart on the wind coming through the open windows. “Who are you, really?”
She sniffles, a sound like the faint stirring of mice in the walls. “My name’s Eva,” she says at last. “It was Eva. I don’t know what I am now. I—I don’t even know why I’m here.”
“Join the club, sister,” Sandra says, but without conviction. I can tell that she, like me, is tired of pretending.
Trenton, Minna, Amy, the two policemen, and Katie—or Vivian, rather—have returned to the living room, which is now empty of other mourners. The cops have placed six chairs in a semicircle and everyone is seated.
“Detective Rogers will be here any minute,” the cop with the bad complexion says. “Everyone just sit tight.”
“What I want to know,” Danny says to Vivian, “is why you picked the Davison house. How’d you know they’d be away?”
“Can I see your badge?” Amy asks him.
“Shhh, Amy,” Minna says. But Danny passes the badge over.
“Internet,” Vivian says. She almost—almost—sounds embarrassed. “Their house was listed on vacation rentals.”
“Why did you do it?” Trenton asks her in a low voice.
She looks down, picking at the hem of her jacket. “I don’t know. Just to get away for a while. Be somebody else. It felt kind of nice to have everybody looking for me, though.” She looks up at him. “Will you?”
“Will I what?” Trenton says.
A smile flickers over Vivian’s face, moving so quickly it doesn’t touch her eyes. “Will you look for me?”
“Yes.” Trenton’s voice cracks. He clears his throat and tries again. “Yes.”
“Are we done here?” Minna directs the question to Danny. “In case you’ve forgotten, we were in the middle of a memorial service. We’re burying my dad today.”
Danny looks embarrassed. “We’re still going to have to take your mom down to the station.” Then he looks around, as if for the first time noticing her absence. “Where is your mom, anyway?”
That’s when the gun goes off.