It was Claudia’s family’s turn that Wednesday to drive the three girls to dance—Melissa and Claudia and Emiko—and because dance didn’t begin until four-thirty, there was always time for ice-cream between school and studio. The ice-cream parlor was around the corner from the dance studio in Scarsdale. The three girls had ballet for an hour and then jazz for an hour. It was, Melissa had heard Claudia’s mom observe any number of times, a pretty serious workout, even for kids who were nine. But Melissa looked forward to it immensely: she and Emiko (and even Claudia, once in a while) practiced daily what they learned each Wednesday afternoon. This deep into the autumn, it would be dark when the girls emerged from the studio.
Today Claudia’s mother, Jesse, was driving, but equally often it was Claudia’s dad. The two of them both worked from home a lot. Her dad was a computer engineer and her mom was a copywriter. Now the three girls were sitting in a booth and eating different variations on the ice-cream sundae, while Jesse sipped her coffee, read news stories and texts off her smartphone, and occasionally chimed in on the girls’ conversation. Claudia was sitting beside her mother on one side of the booth, while Melissa and Emiko sat across from them on the other.
Abruptly Jesse put her phone down on the thick wooden tabletop and leaned across the table toward Melissa. Melissa thought that Jesse was—very much like her own mom—very pretty. But unlike her mom, Jesse dressed more like a teenager. Or at least, Melissa guessed, like a much younger woman. Her mom said it was because while Jesse worked at home most days, when she had meetings she had to look more stylish and hip than a schoolteacher. Melissa could tell that she must have come straight to the school from a meeting to pick up the girls, because she was decked out in black and gray animal print leggings and a black jacket that looked sort of like a man’s, except it was cut like an hourglass. Her leather boots had stitching the same color gray as her leggings.
“So, Melissa,” she asked, “how are you?” She had emphasized the verb to stress that she genuinely wanted to know—that she was sincerely interested. Melissa understood that this was no mere social formality, where she was only supposed to nod and say fine. She paused the spoon with her chocolate ice cream in midair and thought for a moment. Claudia and Emiko were watching her. Jesse was watching her. She knew that everyone was talking about her father behind her back, but only Claudia—who, Melissa’s mom said, was one of those brilliant math kids who were born without filters—had wanted to talk to her face-to-face about the dead men and the prostitutes in her house. Claudia had wanted to know if she was afraid of the dead men’s ghosts (Melissa had not been afraid until Claudia had suggested that the spirits might have chosen to remain in the house), and whether her parents were going to get a divorce because of the prostitutes (she was indeed stressing about that, and the fears only became more pronounced when her mom had told her dad that he had to sleep downstairs in the living room—not even upstairs in the guest room).
But even if Jesse had asked the question with the hope that Melissa would respond with a deep and honest answer, the girl wasn’t prepared to go there. At least not yet. Melissa shrugged and said, “Fine.” Then she put her ice cream into her mouth.
Jesse shook her head and reached across the booth, gently resting her fingers atop Melissa’s hand that wasn’t holding the spoon. “I get it,” the mother said. “This stuff is really confusing and scary. It’s hard to talk about.”
“I’d be scared of the ghosts,” Claudia piped in. “I told her, Mom.”
“Claudia, I specifically asked you not to talk with Melissa about this weird thing you have about ghosts,” Jesse said, exasperated.
Claudia shrugged and stirred what was left of her sundae into soup. “Anyway, that’s what would make me not fine.”
“There is no such thing as ghosts,” Jesse said pointedly, staring deep into Melissa’s eyes. “I’ve told Claudia that. And now I’m telling you that.”
Melissa looked away. She stared down at the woman’s hand atop hers. Jesse’s nail polish was a shade of red that reminded her of the maple leaves on the trees in their yard a week ago. Now most of those leaves were on the lawn. If her dad hadn’t still been in the city on Sunday—or maybe if they had all been allowed to go home—he probably would have raked them up that day.
“Claudia, dear, I’m not judging here,” Jesse was saying now to her own daughter. “But if you want the ice cream to be soup, why don’t you just order a shake?”
“Because a shake is a shake and soup’s soup.”
Melissa focused on Jesse’s nails. They were perfect. She wanted nails just like that, she decided. She wanted to wear leggings just like Jesse’s.
“How is your house?” the woman asked her, the tone nothing like the playfulness that marked her question to her own daughter about why she insisted on liquefying her ice cream.
Melissa thought about this. She thought about the bloodstains. She thought about the rubber on the blue plastic Tucker Tote lid. Before she could respond to Jesse, however, Emiko was saying something, and so Melissa turned her attention to her other friend.