You Seriously Don't Want to Know (Working Draft)

Chapters 1-9

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You Seriously Don’t Want to Know

Chapters 1-9 (Working Draft)

Disclaimer

This is a work of fiction.

Names, characters, places, and events have been changed or fictionalized for narrative purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to real organizations, events, or situations is purely coincidental — unless it’s not. In which case, trust me: you don’t know the half of it.

Certain events are inspired by lived experience, but details have been altered, compressed, or reimagined to serve the story. Interpretations are my own, shaped by memory, grief, perspective, and (occasionally) rage. These pages reflect truth as I lived it, fiction as I needed it, and a whole lot of “You Seriously Don’t Want to Know” in between.

This is fiction. Except when it isn’t. Grief scrambles memory, rage edits the script, and love insists on showing up whether or not it fits the timeline. I changed names, bent facts, and invented conversations. But the ghosts, the laughter, the bite marks, and the dogs? Those are as real as it gets.

---

Author’s Note

The following chapters reflect our personal experiences, memories, and interpretations of public records and reported safety information. We don’t claim legal or technical conclusions — only the emotional truth as we lived it.

The chapters addressing Ford and transmission defects reflect my good-faith understanding based on publicly available reporting, government records, and historical litigation materials I reviewed for this book. I am not alleging new facts beyond those sources; I am placing my family’s experience in that documented context.

A brief Notes & Sources section at the back lists the principal materials consulted and outlines my research approach.

#

PART ONE: The Hill, the Dog, and the Shovel

Chapter 1: The Dog, the Street, and the Sky

Zee wasn’t just a dog. She was gravity with fur — my pillow, my shadow, my best girl. The kind of presence you built your whole axis around.

Which is why, when she bolted, so did I.

It happened fast. One moment she was at my side, tail wagging, leash looped in my hand, sun slanting through the trees — and the next, she was gone.

A flash of tan and black streaked at the edge of my vision. A squirrel? A cat? It didn’t matter. The leash slipped, my heart jumped, I yelled her name — but the world had already gone quiet in that too-late kind of way.

The street was just ahead.

I didn’t think. I ran.

She lunged across the sidewalk toward the open stretch of asphalt, chasing a dream or maybe a ghost.

And then — for reasons I’ll never understand — she hesitated.
Just half a second.
Just long enough.

That tiny pause was the only reason I reached her at all.

I dove.

I caught her mid-stride, arms wrapped tight around her chest. Felt the thrum of muscle, the damp warmth of fur, the scrape of claws skittering against pavement. She twisted once in confusion — and then the impact.

The world tilted. Metal, motion, blur. For a second I thought I was flying. Or falling. Or dying.

Was this what my mother felt?

The thought cut through me, sharp as glass.

Sirens. Voices. Light. The world kept moving even as mine collapsed inward.

I had been here before: snow on the ground, metal on metal, my mother’s hand slipping away. Only now it was Zee’s leash, the blur of fur, the terrible weight of inevitability.

A sound like thunder inside my skull.

And then silence.

Not blackout exactly. More like… displacement. As if my soul had been knocked a few inches to the left and hadn’t found its way back.

No pain at first. Just floating. No light, no tunnel. Only me — and a flicker of memory. Or maybe a story. Or both.

Then something shifted.

The street disappeared. So did the sky.

The echo of tires still hummed in my ears, but when I opened my eyes, I was somewhere else entirely.

Trader Joe’s.

Fluorescents buzzing, shelves of cookie butter. Kara waving from the far end of the aisle.

“Come on!” she called. “They’ve got samples — cookie butter on mini waffles!”

The shimmer of metal again — but this time it was foil on a tray of waffles as Kevin laughed beside her. Zee sniffing the cheese display like nothing had happened at all.

“Ba,” Kevin said, using the name only family ever did. “You didn’t think I’d let you go just yet, did you?”

I tried to answer, but my voice was gone.

The aisles bent at the edges, the world itself not fully solid — as if it could be shaped into something else.

Kevin leaned closer, laugh warm and familiar, like he was about to tell me something important.

“Remember…”

But the rest slipped away, just out of reach. Only one fragment clung afterward — not even his words so much as the echo of them: no spoon.

I didn’t know what it meant. Not yet. But it felt like something I was supposed to remember.

And then Kevin was gone. Like smoke. Like memory. Like my mother.

But Zee stayed a moment longer. Tail wagging, eyes soft, leaning against me like she always had. A heartbeat, a breath, a reminder.

Then she too dissolved, and I was left with nothing but the echo of her weight and the sound of tires in my ears.

#

Chapter 2: The Room Where It Happens

Kara

The hospital chair dug into my back, all vinyl and angles, like it had been designed to punish anyone who stayed too long. The air smelled of sanitizer and stale coffee. A clock ticked somewhere, steady and merciless.

I stared at my sister, still and pale under the wires and machines that were doing her breathing for her. For a moment I tried to match my own inhale to the pendulum beep of the monitor, like if I could keep time, I could keep her here.

And then the tears came—hot, furious, unstoppable.
How could this happen? Hadn’t we lost enough already?

They had taken my mother. They had taken my baby brother. I’d nearly lost my son to seizures, and I’d already lost my breasts to cancer. Loss after loss, heartbreak stacked on heartbreak. Surely this was enough for one lifetime.

Kate lay there, motionless. Every so often I’d see a twitch—a hand, an eyelid, the corner of her mouth—and I couldn’t help wondering: where was she? Dreaming? Floating? Waiting?

I held her hand and talked like she could hear, because I had to believe she could. “You’re not allowed to leave me,” I whispered. I painted her nails that soft nude-pink she loved, the one that made her feel a little more put together when nothing else did. I played her audiobook—the one about alternate timelines and second chances. Of course it was that one.

Patrick had gone home to take care of Zee, to feed her and maybe just breathe for the first time in hours. He needed the break. He hadn’t been eating, hadn’t been sleeping. None of us were right without her. It had been two days. Two long, terrible days.

The irony wasn’t lost on me: she was here because she’d run into the street after Zee, her soul dog, her “baby.” Just like our mother had done for her. Saved her. Died for it. Now here we were again—full circle—like the universe was telling the same cruel story all over again.

The door opened and John and Gino slipped in with coffee, food, distractions I didn’t want but forced myself to take. A halfhearted bite, a sip I barely tasted. Then Wanda and her old-man husband arrived with flowers, said the right things, and disappeared.

June and Dad hadn’t shown up. They were in Hawaii. “Non-refundable tickets,” they’d said. Too early to fly back. I tried to picture them on a beach, but all I saw was sand and silence. And the truth was, Ba wouldn’t have wanted them here anyway.

I whispered that to her, leaning close so no one else could hear. “You don’t have to wake up for them. But I need you to wake up for me. Okay?”

The monitors answered in broken time.

And then—for just a second—I saw someone in the doorway.

A young man. Hoodie. Hands in his pockets. Familiar in a way I couldn’t place. He looked at Ba like he’d always known her.

I blinked, and he was gone.

I stood, checked the hallway. Nothing. No footsteps. No badge at the desk. Just antiseptic air and hums of machines.

Back in the chair, I picked up her hand again. She twitched. Once. Then again.

Somewhere in the space between prayer and panic, I felt her fingers curl tight around mine.

#

Interlude: The Bargain

My mother stepped in front of a car and saved me.
That was the bargain.

Everyone wanted her to survive.
Everyone loved her.
Everyone misses her.
She was the best thing.

And the truth is brutal:
the world lost her,
and it kept me.

I never asked for that trade.
She was the one who chose it.
Not because I was better or worth more.
Because I was hers.
That was enough for her.
Some days, it’s not enough for me.

#

“Think about who you want to be and be that person.
There is no spoon.”
—Kevin

#

Chapter 3: There is No Spoon

Kate

It wasn’t the beeping that woke me. It was the silence after—like the machines had stopped holding their breath.

My eyes opened to a too-white ceiling, humming fluorescent lights, and the antiseptic bite of gloves and soap. My throat burned. My arm ached beneath gauze. But I was here. Awake. Wherever here was.

Kara was in the chair next to my bed, folded halfway in on herself. When she heard me breathing, her head shot up, eyes wet.

“Oh my God. You’re awake.” She pressed the call button. “You’re okay. Just… stay still. Don’t try to be brave.”

“What happened?” My voice rasped.

“You ran into the street. After Zee. Do you remember?”

A flicker: fur, street, tires, the sound, the impact.

“She’s okay?”

Kara nodded. “Of course. That dog’s immortal. Probably told the car, ‘Not today.’ You, on the other hand…”

Nurses poured in, flashing lights in my eyes, asking name, date, president. I answered hoarsely, through fog. Kara hovered, filling in when my voice broke.

When the room finally cleared, I noticed something in my hand—not the IV line, not tissues. Something cool, with weight. I opened my fingers.

A single yellow rose. Petals tipped with frost.

“Where’d this come from?” I asked.

Kara frowned. “It was here when I came in. I thought maybe a nurse…”

We both looked at the door. Empty. On the tray, just Wanda’s cheerful arrangement of sunflowers. The rose, still cold, seemed foreign—like it had been carried from somewhere far away. Its stem left a faint chill against my palm. I closed my hand around it before anyone else could see.

“Was Kevin here?” I asked.

Kara froze. “What?”

“Wherever I was. I saw him. He called me Ba.”

Her mouth twitched. “No one calls you that except us.”

“He said not to go yet.”

I swallowed. The memory felt too fragile to say out loud.

“Then he looked at me and said…”

I paused. Kara leaned in.

“‘Think about who you want to be and be that person. There is no spoon.’”

I waited for her to laugh. But she didn’t. Not right away.

Finally: “The Matrix? Seriously?”

“He said it like it was the real answer. Like both things belonged together—who you are and what’s real. And it felt… true. Like someone I’ve always missed.”

Kara leaned back. “God, if we start believing in ghost brothers, Mom’s Infant of Prague statue from Hopeland will probably start talking.”

“June and Dad…” I trailed off.

“They’re in Hawaii,” Kara said. “I told them not to come back unless something changed.”

“Wow.”

“They’ll send thoughts and prayers. Or a pineapple. Maybe both.” A pause. “Also, they gave you the burial plot. Next to Mom. And Kevin.”

The words hung there.

I blinked.

“You know,” she added, softer now, “just in case you felt like staying dead.”

I hesitated. “I knew.”

Kara turned her head. “You what?”

“Dad gave me the title on Christmas…at your house. I just… never told you. I meant to…”

She didn’t speak. Just stared at the wall like it might offer a better answer than I could.

“Well.” She exhaled, finally. “Merry effin’ Christmas, I guess.”

My eyes filled, but before I could speak, Kara softened. “You’re not going anywhere. Not yet. Too much left to say. Too many people to haunt. And Zee would never forgive you.”

A bark echoed down the hall.

Kara grinned. “Thought she would wake you up. Told them she’s a therapy dog. Which is technically true. If anyone needs therapy…”

The door opened, and there she was—Zee, tail wagging like she’d been waiting her whole life for this moment. Her paws hit the mattress, and suddenly she was curled against me, warm, real, impossibly alive, squealing like this was the happiest she had ever been.

I buried my face in her fur.

The yellow rose was still in my hand. Kevin’s words echoed again: Think about who you want to be. There is no spoon.

I held Zee tighter. Maybe I already was.

#

Interlude: The Gate That Wasn’t

We tried leaving her on the porch “just for a minute.”

Two steps down the walk, the latch clicked. Zee shouldered the gate like it was a suggestion and trotted out, chin up, ears forward—pure purpose in motion. She slid between Kara and I without breaking stride, matching our pace like she’d trained us for this: left, right, left—the three of us a small parade. I glanced down; she didn’t look back. She didn’t need to. Her job was obvious: keep the pack together, get the girls where they’re going, make sure no one walks alone.

By the corner, we weren’t mad anymore. We never stayed mad at Zee. You can’t scold the part of you that refuses to be left behind.

#

Chapter 4: Halfway There

Later, when the room was quiet and Zee was curled against me, sleep came fast — and so did the somewhere-else.

She woke to the smell of coffee and the faint whine of Zee, though neither belonged. The room wasn’t hers; the walls were too pale, the light too golden, as if someone had tried to rebuild her life from a Polaroid and missed a few details. She pushed herself upright, surprised by the absence of pain, no tug of bandages, no sharp catch in her chest. Beyond the window, the ocean shimmered—impossible, since she didn’t live close enough to see the ocean.

Zee padded over, tail wagging slowly like she was in on the secret.

“Am I dead again?” she asked her.

Zee sneezed and flopped over dramatically.

Then: a voice from the hallway. “You’re not dead. You’re in Jersey. Same thing, different branding.”

She turned.

Kevin stood in the doorway holding a cup of coffee and a banana that looked suspiciously like it had been used as a phone. He was older than she remembered. Or maybe just more real.

“You’re back,” she said.

“You make it sound like I’m a rash.”

“I’m not convinced you’re not.”

He grinned. “Fair.”

She stood or thought she did. Her legs moved like they were underwater.

“Where are we?”

Kevin sipped his coffee. “Somewhere in between. Remember that song, ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’? Don’t worry, it’s not permanent. Think of it as a reboot. You needed a little more time.”

“Time for what? Is Bon Jovi going to show up next?”

He shrugged. “To remember. Or to forget. You always mix those two up. And if he does, probably singing ‘Bad Medicine.’”

She looked around. The living room was a distorted version of her childhood home. The wallpaper was too new, the furniture just slightly wrong. The record player was spinning something vaguely Irish and way too cheerful.

“Is this… a memory?”

Kevin wandered over to the window and pulled the curtain aside. “It’s whatever you need it to be. Not all ghosts come from the past.”

“Are you a ghost?”

“Define ghost.”

“You’re avoiding the question.”

“You’re avoiding the answer.”

She sank into the couch. Zee jumped up beside her like this was all totally normal.

Kevin leaned on the doorframe. “You keep trying to make sense of everything. Dad’s silence. June’s Fox News obsession. Paul’s dementia. The fact that you never got to name me.”

Her breath hitched. “So, you’re saying you’re—?”

“I’m saying maybe I’m what you lost. Or what you never had. Or maybe I’m just a really elaborate fever dream with great cheekbones.”

She laughed. It came out more like a sob.

He sat beside her. “You don’t have to choose which version is true. You just have to listen.”

“To what?”

“To the part of you that already knows.”

Outside, a car horn honked — long and familiar. The sound of someone yelling, “Move your damn Honda!” floated in.

Kevin stood. “That’s your exit cue. John must be visiting.”

“Wait,” she said. “Don’t go.”

He leaned down and kissed her forehead. “I’m not going anywhere. You just have to remember where to look.”

And then she was alone.

Back in her bed. Or her real bed. Or whatever counted as real today. Zee was curled at her feet. The coffee smell was gone.

Kara called from the kitchen. “You want pancakes, or should I just toss them to Zee and save us both the effort?”

She didn’t answer right away.

Because somewhere between dream and daylight, Kevin had left the banana on her nightstand. And she could hear “Wanted Dead or Alive” playing in the other room.

#

Chapter 5: The Keeper of Softer Truths

January before Ba’s accident

She hadn’t called him yet. Or Kara. The silence felt strange and too heavy, like even her purse knew something she wasn’t ready to say aloud. One thin envelope sat inside it, heavier than a brick.

Uncle Paul had always been the keeper of the softer truths.
He taught English and drama at Rockford High for forty forty years, turning awkward kids into Shakespearean lovers and spotlight villains. He spoke in metaphors even offstage — the kind of man who poured emotion into a whiskey glass and paused for effect in everyday conversation.

He had come out quietly when she and Kara were already in their twenties. Before that, Calvin had just been his “roommate.” Back then no one talked about being gay; HIV was a shadow people pretended not to see. Some whispered. Some stopped calling. But she and Kara never cared. He was Paul — dramatic, funny, theatrical, soft where the world was hard.

He took them to Sunday brunches in the Village, introduced them to his eccentric friends, ordered cheeses they couldn’t pronounce, bought them drinks they were too young to appreciate. And he was always — always — there.

For seven years she and her husband lived next door to him and Calvin. Paul would sit on their shared rooftop deck in a robe, angel statues tucked into whiskey-barrel planters overflowing with basil and petunias. He’d tip his glass toward her and say, “Honey, when I’m gone, these’ll be yours.” He said it like he was handing down heirlooms, not glorified plaster from Canal Street.

One night, after too many stories and too much wine, she laughed so hard she cried. Paul raised his glass and shouted, “Calvin, fill her glass — we’ve got another believer!” Calvin topped it to the rim, grinning, while Paul launched into a story about Elle’s first heartbreak. For a moment, the three of them hovered in that rooftop glow — the city pulsing below, laughter rising into the warm night.

From that roof you could see the cruise ships sliding down the Hudson, bracketed by the Empire State Building and the quiet grid of lights stretching out forever. On clear nights, the skyline looked like it was holding its breath. Every Fourth of July they threw a blowout across both apartments — savories at Paul and Calvin’s, desserts at hers — timing a toast to the big chrysanthemum burst when the sky went white.

Those were some of the best years — the dinners, the drinks, the nights that ended in stories about her mother.

She still hadn’t told Kara about the envelope. The words never seemed to come.

Paul had known Elle differently. Not just as a sister. As someone who saw him when the world didn’t.
He told them how she sang while she ironed.
How she watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s every time it came on.
How once, just to make their little brother laugh, she made a cake entirely out of Jell-O.

And then he’d get quiet, glass in hand, staring at something that wasn’t there anymore.

Sometimes he even said he talked to her.
Once, after too much wine, he told her Elle had appeared in a dream — wearing the same coat she died in.

Her purse shifted against her hip, the envelope whispering its reminder. She wished he could tell her again what he used to believe: that Elle had held on long enough for the baby to take a breath.

She needed that kind of faith.
Not from a priest.
Not from her therapist.
Not even from her father.

But from Paul.

Because Paul didn’t talk about ghosts like they were gone.
He talked about them like they were just out of reach.

He used to say, “Every time I thought I was being rejected from something good, I was redirected to something better.” He’d pause, sip, then add, “And better doesn’t mean easier, honey. It just means truer.”

It always sounded like wishful thinking — except he never said it that way. He said it like someone who had lived it. Someone broken, betrayed, loved deeply, and still able to see joy on the other side.

People talk about moving on like it’s an upgrade. But sometimes moving on just means finding a new version of the same ghost in a better suit.

She didn’t know if she believed in “better.”
Not yet.
But she believed in Paul.

And she really needed him to remember.

The strap of her purse dug into her shoulder — a reminder she was still carrying it, and everything inside.
Kara didn’t know. Not yet.
She kept telling herself she’d bring it up when the moment felt right.

But lately every moment felt wrong.

She could almost hear Paul in her head:

Honey, better doesn’t mean easier. Start with now.

#

Chapter 6: Missy

I hadn’t thought about the dog in years. Not until my dad brought it up at Christmas like it was trivia.
“Didn’t we have a dog back then?” he said, buttering a roll. “What was her name… Missy?”

I almost choked on my wine. How did he do this every holiday? Drop something meaningless to him but shattering to me.
Across the table, Patrick gave me the look — the don’t-do-this-right-now-it’s-Christmas look. Then the under-the-table nudge. I didn’t kick back. I barely blinked. I didn’t answer. Couldn’t.

Missy. Yeah. We had a dog. Right after the accident. Right after the funeral. Right after the world went permanently quiet.

It was Uncle Paul who suggested it — said a puppy might help. He’d grown up with dogs: Tags, the retriever my grandfather used to sit me on like a horse, and Caesar, a schnauzer of his own. Paul thought maybe loving something new could hold together what had fallen apart.

So we got a mini schnauzer. Missy. Wiry fur. Sharp puppy teeth. Big, liquid eyes that followed me everywhere. Kara and I named her — probably from some sitcom we half-watched with Grandma.
Even then, the naming mattered. It made her real in a house that wanted to forget.

I remember bringing her home in a cardboard carton punched with air holes. I sat beside it in the back seat, sticking my fingers through the slots. Missy licked them, her tiny tongue hot and frantic. It reminded me of Tags, of Grandma’s house, of joy before grief. For the first time since the accident, I was excited.

Missy took turns sleeping on mine and Kara’s bed. Her nails clicked across the floor whenever we moved. She’d curl at the foot of whichever bed she chose that night and sigh, as if even she were tired of the silence. When I cried — which was often — she’d nudge my hand until I touched her, reminding me I wasn’t alone.

The first time I was left alone after Mom died, it poured. Not drizzle — pounding rain that shook the windows. Grandma had gone to meet Kara’s bus with an umbrella, and I stayed behind. Twenty minutes at most, but it felt like hours. The house was too quiet, too threatening in its stillness. I sat on the floor clutching Missy, her smoky fur damp against my cheek, her ribs rising and falling in a rhythm that felt like the only steady thing left in the house. She smelled faintly of wet dog and baby shampoo, and I buried my face in her wiry coat and sobbed until the door finally opened again. She never once left my side.

And then she was gone.

Dad thought it would be good to go away for the first Christmas without Mom. His uncle Henry had retired in Miami, and Disney World had just opened. “A distraction,” he said. Sunshine instead of snow. Magic instead of grief.

But when we came back, Missy wasn’t there. No warning. No goodbye. Just a vague, “She went to a farm; she’ll be happier there.”
He didn’t even look at us when he said it — just kept his eyes on the suitcase.
Grandma stood behind him a little flushed, her face a knot of sympathy and disgust, as if she wanted to speak but knew it wouldn’t matter.
The chewed-up molding replaced. The bite marks on the furniture sanded away. Like she never existed.
Proof, to five-year-old me, that everything I loved could vanish.

I never talked about her again. Not with Dad. Not with Grandma. Not with anyone.

Until now. Until Dad asked at the table, decades later, if we’d ever had a dog.

On the ride home, I kept wondering if he really thought we hadn’t noticed Missy was gone. That he didn’t know she’d made things, even briefly, a little better.

Later, when Kara texted me — “WTF was with that dog comment??” — I stared at the screen before typing back:
“I think he really forgot.”
“Yeah,” she replied. “But we didn’t.”

We never could.
Some things stay buried until someone mentions them like trivia — and suddenly the ghosts sit up and listen.

#

Chapter 7: The Plot

The Christmas before Ba’s accident

He handed her the burial deed on Christmas Day like he was passing the salt (and pepper).
No warning, no explanation — just slid the envelope across the table between a half-eaten crumb cake and the dregs of coffee. Another Christmas surprise from Dad.

“We won’t need it,” he said, as casually as if he were talking about old Tupperware. “We’re being buried in Sanibel.”

Kara was already in the kitchen, loading the dishwasher. Why wasn’t she hearing this? Why wasn’t she part of it?

The envelope sat in front of her, thin but heavy. One plot. Next to her mother. And the baby.
It had the same quiet finality as every other disappearance — the way Missy had, the way memory always did in this family.

“Maybe you want it,” he added. “Or Paul. If he even remembers.”

That was it. No mention of what happened on that hill. No mention of snow. Just Florida sunshine, his new life, and her mother’s grave reduced to a passing thought over brunch.

She hadn’t been to the cemetery in fifteen, maybe twenty years. The last time, the grass had been knee-high, the headstone dulled with lichen, but her mother’s name was still too sharp in the granite:

Elle Joan Donovan
April 21, 1944 – February 24, 1971

A second name had never been carved.

The plot had once been meant for her father. Now he and his second wife had other plans — some poetic story about the Gulf and simplicity. “We just thought maybe you’d want it,” he’d said, “or give it to Uncle Paul. He still visits sometimes.” The royal we, the one that meant his new wife. The your mother and I that never meant her actual mother.

Or give it to Paul, half-lost to dementia now.

The whole conversation felt like a dream — bright, slow, echoing in a room that smelled like pine and cinnamon — but the envelope was solid in her hand. Heavy. Watching. Holding it felt like being formally invited to lie down next to a mother she couldn’t remember.
It wasn’t the first time she’d been handed a goodbye disguised as a gift.

It cracked something open inside her, like a door she thought had been sealed shut had just blown in with the wind.

That night, she dreamed of snow.

In the morning, the envelope was still on the table. Waiting. She thought of Uncle Paul.
It wasn’t just his memory that was slipping — it was the fear that the memories she needed most were slipping too. The ones no one else had.

She didn’t even realize she’d picked up the phone until her husband asked, “Who are you calling?”

Her thumb hovered over Uncle Paul’s name.

Paul had always been the one to talk about things when her father wouldn’t. Not often, not easily, but enough to let her know she wasn’t alone in remembering.

He’d bring it up gently: the baby should’ve had a name, he’d say. There should’ve been something on the stone. She first heard it as a teenager, overhearing him with his mother, confused by the sharpness in his voice. She didn’t understand then — how wrong it must have felt to bury someone nameless.

Paul once said there were things about that day no one had written down. That maybe the baby had lived, if only for moments. Long enough to matter.
Maybe, she thought, nothing ever truly disappears — it just waits to be named again.

No doctor had said it. No one had confirmed it. But Paul believed it. And she’d never quite stopped wondering.

Lately, the thought of him wasn’t the distant, abstract grief it used to be. He felt closer somehow, like a shadow at the edge of her vision. She didn’t know why.

She pressed the phone to her chest, unsure whether she wanted to call. Paul’s mind wandered these days. He might not remember the story. He might not remember her.

But the shape of it was already blooming in her chest like a bruise.

“Uncle Paul,” she told her husband.
“Do you think he’ll answer?” he asked.
She wasn’t sure if she meant the phone — or the silence that had been waiting on the other end of it for fifty years.

#

Chapter 8: The Call

For years, she’d tried not to think about what was missing — the words, the names, the proof. But now a single name had risen through the static, soft but certain, the way truth sometimes does when you stop forcing it. Kevin. It was enough to make her reach for the phone.

She hadn’t wanted to call. Not really. The envelope sat on the table like a loaded gun, and the ocean kept crashing behind the windows.
Not because she didn’t care — but because she cared too much. Because once you opened a door like that, you had to walk through it. And you never knew what you might find on the other side.

Still, Paul was the only person left who might remember what she never could. She waited until late afternoon. Calvin, Paul’s partner, would either be out running errands or napping, and Paul usually liked this time of day. The light would be slanting across the living room, and if he was feeling lucid, he’d say things that made the world tilt.

The phone rang four times before he picked up.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Uncle Paul. It’s me.”

“Oh, honey! You sound far away.”

“I guess I am.”

She pictured him on the couch in that ridiculous robe, a dog-eared playbill beside him, maybe an old photo album cracked open on his lap, and his two miniature Yorkies — Willie and Eddie — tucked on either side.

“I wanted to ask you something. About Elle.”

He sighed. Not heavily — just enough to shift the air.

“She’s been around lately,” he said.

Her throat tightened. “Around how?”

“Oh, just the usual. Dreams. Songs on the radio. You know how she is.”

She didn’t. But she wanted to. She wanted to remember something other than snow and sirens and the look on her father’s face when he said they had to be brave.

“Do you remember what they were going to name the baby?”

Another pause. Longer this time.

“Darryl, I think,” Paul said carefully. “Or maybe Kevin. They argued about it once. She liked Kevin. Your dad thought it was too soft.”

She smiled — a small, strange thing.

Kevin.
That felt real. Familiar in a way Darryl never had.

“Too soft,” she repeated. “What does that even mean?”

“You said once she held on. After the crash. Until the baby…”

“I still believe that,” he said, voice low and steady. “She was stubborn, your mother. Fierce. She wasn’t going to leave until she knew. You know she saved your life. I know she tried to save Kevin.”

Something clicked in her chest. Not clarity. Just a pull. And he called him Kevin again.

“I haven’t been to the cemetery in years,” she said softly.

“It’s quiet there. Cold this time of year. But the birds still come.”

“Do you still go?”

“Sometimes I think I do. Calvin says I just dream it. But I always wake up with mud on my shoes.”

She didn’t know if he was joking. She wasn’t sure it mattered. He’d had a couple of scares — falls when he was out getting the paper, which he insisted on doing. Calvin had given up trying to stop him. Everyone understood. Once Paul made up his mind, it was futile.

“Thanks, Uncle Paul.”

“Give her my love when you go. She always liked yellow roses.”

“I remember.”

She hung up.

The ocean crashed behind the windows. Zee shifted beside the couch, head lifting. Listening. Waiting.

“We’ll go tomorrow,” she said aloud. Zee was going with her. Let the groundskeeper yell if he wanted to.

The dog wagged once, slow and certain.

The envelope was still on the table, unopened. She couldn’t bring it up. Not yet.
But now it felt less like a weapon, and more like an invitation.

“Tomorrow, then.”

#

Chapter 9: The Ghosts We Know

Morning after the call

Kate lived a block from the ocean. Sometimes you could hear it through the windows — usually when it was angry. Some days it sounded like something trying to speak but never quite finding the words. Or it was speaking and I just wasn’t understanding the language. It felt like everything was a few seconds delayed — like the sound reached her, but the meaning didn’t.

The house had a huge wraparound porch where she and Patrick used to sit and listen to the wind or watch thunderstorms. Sometimes the wind rattled the porch lights at night; the gulls argued over shellfish in the mornings. She liked the isolation there. Or she had just learned how to survive it.

Zee lay in her usual spot near the glass doors, ears flicking, massive body curled into a deceptively relaxed pose. Her black-and-tan coat gleamed in the light, markings so classic she looked like she’d stepped out of a GSD textbook. She had been like this since the beginning: watchful, patient. Zee was a witness — the most devoted dog. She would squeal and spin any time someone came home and cry if it had been too long. She adored John and Aunt Kara. Now she simply knew: when things weren’t right, when someone might cry, when memory was bleeding through the walls.

Kate kept walking past the envelope, as if it might unfold itself, walk into the ocean, and solve her emotional damage. Which would have been thoughtful.

She missed Paul. Not this fractured, flickering man who drifted in and out like a weak signal, but the one who used to call her “honey” and quote Shakespeare over tapas; the one who loved orange everything and once painted a bathroom “burnt sunset” because Calvin said it looked “spiritually warm.”

She missed her sister too, though they hadn’t fought. They had talked, but not really about anything that mattered in months — since Christmas brunch at her house. Technically they texted, mostly memes and passive-aggressive likes, but nothing that required voice. They didn’t meet on the past. They didn’t meet on the plot.

She tapped the Nespresso harder than necessary. Coffee first. The rest could wait.

The smell filled the kitchen — sharp, familiar. She took it black, the way she always had. For years she’d managed to keep the memories contained, an unspoken agreement between her and whatever waited behind the door. Most of the time, it worked.

This time, it didn’t.

The wind hissed. In the silence she caught the faintest breath of yellow roses.

A photograph unhooked itself from the dark and floated up uninvited — a faded image of her mother holding a baby. That couldn’t be right. No such photo existed. The baby hadn’t made it, they’d said. Still, she saw it: Elle’s dark hair curling near her jaw, the soft fold of a flannel blanket. Her stomach clenched. Her fingers itched to check the old photo albums — the ones Dad “donated” after a move with a casual, Thought you might want these, we don’t really have room. She should call Kara. Or Paul. Or drive to the cemetery herself.

It felt like someone knocked — not on the door, but in her chest, where memory never stopped knocking.

She turned. Nothing. She didn’t move. Not yet. Zee stood at the door, tail low, eyes locked. Probably the ghost of a squirrel. Or her mother. Maybe both.

Kate stayed where she was, coffee cooling in her hand, and listened.

The ghosts we know don’t break in.

They knock.

You decide whether to open.

That night, she slept fitfully. The ocean kept crashing, and when she woke, it was still rumbling outside the glass.

#