Page 74 of Memories of the Lost

And there were the girls, on the porch. With the cat, sitting between them. For the first time, Tillie saw that the place was a little shabby, and amid the flowers in the beds along the steps grew weeds. The girls played a game, maybe jacks, and their clothes were too big for them.

They were speaking a language Tillie couldn’t quite hear—related but not exactly like a romance language, those fluid syllables. She strained to listen, and the words started translating in her mind, like subtitles on a movie, and she understood that she could do the same in return. In their language, she said, “Hello. What are your names?”

They turned, one hostile, one open. “That’s our language!” the hostile one said.

“Sorry,” she said in English. “What’s your name?”

“Sunny,” she said, “and this is my sister, Stormy.”

“Sunny and Stormy,” she repeated. “Who are you?”

The closed one gave her a look like she was an idiot. “We just told you!”

And then, as if a door slammed, she was back in her bed, staring at the ceiling, trying to capture the images rather than run away from them. The girls were dark-haired and skinny. Sisters, maybe even twins.

The language eluded her now that she was back in her usual mind, but wisps of it lingered, clinging like feathers. It was both familiar and not, as if it had been taken from another language she’d studied.

Mindful of her therapist’s homework order, she got up and found a notebook to write down the dream. The subtitles made her laugh, and on the blank page, she drew the feeling of the syllables, lilting, and made it into an Arabic-looking format.

Sunny and Stormy. Sunny was her imaginary friend from childhood. Was Stormy the shadow version of that invention?

Then she asked herself if this could be the other Tillie, the one who’d died in the firestorm. Was it a snapshot of the pair of them at some earlier time? Was one of the girls her sister? It made her feel terribly sad.

Enough. The clock on the wall said 7:00 p.m. She really needed to find her phone.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

New York City

Noon and Night had transformed itself into a very hip bar for the evening, open to the warmish night. Well-dressed twentysomethings drank cocktails, a few of them standing outside to smoke. Soft jazz played on the speakers. Tillie stepped up to the bar. A young male bartender dropped a napkin in front of her. “What’ll it be?”

“I don’t need a drink. I might have lost my phone here earlier today. Did anybody turn one in?”

“I’ll check.”

She stood there. Nearby, a man leaned in to whisper into a woman’s ear, his hand lightly stroking her upper arm. She suddenly missed Liam with a ferocity that was both surprising and unnerving. She was desperate to find out if he’d texted.

The bartender returned. “Sorry. They don’t have anything in the lost and found.”

“Is it okay if I check under the booth where we were?”

“Go for it.”

The booth was occupied, of course, with a pair of women with heads close, having a deep chat. “Sorry to bother you, but do you mind if I check for my phone under your table?”

One gave her a weird look, but the other pulled out her phone. “I lost mine two weeks ago. It was such a pain.” She turned on her flashlight and handed it to Tillie.

She crouched and shone the light under the table while the women lifted their feet. It was bright enough to illuminate the carpeted area connecting the booth to the floor. There was no place for a phone to hide.

“Thanks.” She handed the phone back.

“Good luck.”

The co-op wasn’t far, but without her phone map, Tillie wasn’t exactly sure where it was. She looked around carefully, remembering that she and Liam had been only a block or so from the train. She headed that way, trusting her gut to lead her. She turned right, down a couple of blocks, then left, and there it was, bright lights spilling out of the basement. Again, she felt the loss of Liam, the fact he’d been here and now he wasn’t. It felt tragic.

Which was ridiculous.

A bearded man of about forty was ringing up a woman with a dowager’s hump. Tillie pretended to be looking at the bulk items while he finished. He caught sight of her and lifted his chin, smiling in a friendly way. Tillie wondered if he’d waited on her earlier. Discomfort wiggled through her. How had she behaved? What had she said? It was horrifying not to know.