Proof of Life

by Sheila Lowe

  Jessica immediately forgave her. “I know. I got your messages. I went to the beach and then Zach came over with pizza.”

  “Oh, Zach. Is that it?” Jenna slid the plastic money tray to the edge of the table and signaled their waitress. “Are you two a ‘thing’ again?”

  “No. We hang out once in a while. We’re just friends.”

  “Really.” Jenna managed to put a lot of skepticism into that one word. “C’mon, Jess, you aren’t fooling me for a minute. I know something’s up. You’ve canceled on me twice. You never call me anymore. You don’t even return my calls half the time. Now, you know I’m gonna keep buggin’ ‘til you tell me the truth. If you’re back with Zach, you can say so. I won’t judge you for it.”

  Jessica stared down at her empty soup bowl. If only it was as simple as re-starting her relationship with Zach. That would have been easy to explain. The truth was anything but simple or easy.

  Was unburdening herself to Jenna the wise course to take? They might share a physical appearance, but there the similarity ended. Jessica was the free-thinking liberal. Her twin was pragmatic and conservative in her ideals, her politics, and her religious views. What would she say about her sister talking to the dead?

  Jessica busied herself stacking her bowl and utensils, brushing the breadcrumbs that had scattered on the table into a neat pile, all the while silently begging her twin not to push her. They had always joked about being womb-mates, an unbreakable bond. In her amnestic fugue state, Jessica had unwittingly assumed her sister’s identity. Jenna was all she had.

  She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again, delaying the inevitable. A strong intuition told her that if she laid her cards on the table, a chasm would open between them as inevitably as if she did not. She was screwed either way. Her heart sank at what she read in her twin’s unflinching gaze: they had reached a brink and it was time for her to make the leap.

  “C’mon, Jess,” Jenna prodded. “Are you gonna tell me what’s going on, or not?”

  After the weeks of holding her secret so close to her chest, bringing it into the open seemed impossible. Like prying open a tin can with her fingernails.

  Jessica sucked in a breath, then lobbed the hand grenade onto the table between them.

  “Does the name Hailey Martin mean anything to you?”

  “Sounds familiar. Who—” Jenna broke off, a puzzled frown creasing her brow. “Wait, that’s the woman who was killed by her husband?”

  “Yes, that’s her.” Jessica hesitated. “Roland doesn’t talk to you about his cases, does he?”

  “No. He’s always kept the gruesome stuff away from us. He doesn’t want it contaminating his family. And tell me why we’re talking about this?”

  Jessica drew another deep breath and blew it out. “I helped them find her body.”

  “You what?” Jenna’s mouth gaped open like a fish on the line. “I’m gonna need you to explain what the heck you’re talking about.”

  So, Jessica let the story rush out, beginning with the first dream where Hailey appeared, going on to what the dead woman had gradually revealed about her murder. She told how she had contacted Zach with the information, and the involvement of Jenna’s husband Roland Sparks, who was Zach’s supervisor. When she came to the FBI’s discovery of the body precisely where she had predicted, her sister stared back at her, her mouth slightly agape again.

  Jessica paused to give her space to respond and when she did not, launched into her tale of spirit beings taking up residence in her head, topped off with an explanation of Justin growing into a seven-year-old in the other world.

  “Five years?” Jenna’s throat worked with emotion. She seemed more upset that Jessica had kept important information from her than the fact of the spirit communications. “You’ve been hearing voices for five years and you never told me?”

  “I tried to in the beginning? Don’t you remember? You never wanted to talk about it. You always changed the subject, so I stopped mentioning it.”

  “No, I don’t remember that. You were so crushed about losing Justin, and then there was the amnesia—”

  “As long as the voices stayed in the background, I could handle it. Everything changed with Hailey.”

  Jenna’s mouth twisted into an angry pucker. “Dammit, Jess, I knew my head was messed up when it shouldn’t be. I should have known it was you.”

  “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Think about it. If there’s no good reason for me to be all buzzy, it’s got to belong to you.”

  “That works both ways,” Jessica retorted, stung. What she really wanted to say—the go-to excuse she gave her sister when she was being uncharacteristically nasty—was that the mood control chip that had been implanted in her brain when she was kidnapped, and which the doctors said could not be removed—was a more likely cause for her “buzzyness” than anything Jessica might have contributed.

  Jenna glanced around the busy café. She stared at her twin as if she were a bug under a magnifying glass. A big, ugly, scary bug. “Are you hearing them now, the voices?” she asked, lowering her voice.

  “They’re quiet, but yeah, they’re here.”

  They’re always here.

  “Do you see things, too? I mean, since that woman who was killed.”

  Jessica picked up her cup and gulped coffee, which had grown cold and bitter. Anything to distract from her sister’s expression of distaste. Where was the waitress? She hadn’t been by their table with a fresh pot in a while. She was nowhere to be seen. With a sigh, Jessica gave up.

  “Sometimes I catch a glimpse of someone that I know isn’t—well, isn’t alive.”

  Now Jenna set her lips in a tight, disapproving line. Had she always used her mouth to express disapproval as she kept doing today? “How do you know?”

  “How do I know they’re spirit and not human? Uh—I can usually see through them.”

  Usually. But not always. To Jessica’s chagrin, on two recent occasions, she had discovered that the person she was speaking with was visible to no one other than her. If she told her sister that those glimpses were growing more frequent, the shadowy figures becoming more distinct, more insistent, Jenna would have a fit.

  Telling her had been a mistake. She should have kept her secret to herself.

  “What are they saying?” Jenna pressed. Despite her promise not to judge, the tension in her body language shouted ‘judgment’ loud and clear.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You said they were here right now, didn’t you? So, what are they saying?”

  Jessica jerked her chin in the direction of their waitress, who was taking an order at the next table and ignoring her need for fresh coffee. “Don’t look, but our waitress’s mother wants me to get her attention.”

  “Why?”

  Jessica closed her eyes and breathed deeply, tuning in to the mother in spirit whose voice was louder, more insistent than the rest. As she listened, the restaurant noise faded away. When she got the message, she opened her eyes. “She wants her daughter to know she’s sorry she was a rotten mom.”

  Jenna made a scoffing pfff sound with her lips. “Are you sure? Sounds more like wishful thinking about our mother.”

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  “So, are you going to tell her?”

  “Tell the waitress? No frigging way am I walking up to a stranger like I’m the Long Island Medium and telling her that her dead mom is hanging around.”

  “Why not? Maybe she’d be happy to hear it.”

  “And maybe she wouldn’t.”

  “You won’t know unless you try.”

  “Why are you goading me, Jen? You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “No, I don’t, thank God, and I don’t want to.”

  “Look, I tried that once and got shot down. No way am I chancing that happening again.”

  Jenna’s eyes widened. “What happened?”

  Jessica felt her chest tighten with anxiet
y at the memory. “It was around the time it all started to ramp up, six or seven weeks ago. I was in the checkout line buying groceries at Sprouts. The father of the guy ahead of me started begging me to tell his son that he was there.”

  “His father?” Jenna looked confused.

  “His father in spirit. I tried to brush it off, but he wouldn’t stop nagging. So, finally, I did it.”

  “You did? What did you say to him?”

  “I said something like, ‘Excuse me. I realize this sounds kind of weird, but your father wants me to give you a message’.”

  “And?” Jenna leaned toward her, avid, despite her earlier annoyance, eager to hear.

  “His eyes got all bulgy. His face was so red I thought he was gonna have a stroke. The way he was looking at me—Oh. My. God. It was so scary. He didn’t say anything, he just looked kinda crazy and stormed out of the store. He was waiting outside and he followed me all the way to my car, screaming at me the whole time. Everyone in the parking lot was watching. It was awful.”

  “Well, what was he screaming?”

  “What was he screaming? ‘Who the hell are you? What the fuck do you want from my life? My old man’s dead and I pissed on his grave’.”

  Jenna was giving her that dead fish gape again. “Omigod, he said that?”

  “Every word is etched in my brain. I totally expected him to hit me.” Jessica shrugged. “I guess he hated the guy so much he didn’t want his apology. So, no, I’m not about to march up to that waitress and tell her that her dead mother is sorry.”

  “There must be a load of dead people who have something to say.”

  “Yeah, and half of them seem to be living in my brain.”

  At that moment, the waitress stopped by and picked up the money tray. She didn’t offer a coffee refill, but she must have wondered why Jenna stared at her the way she did.

  “You said you saw the doctor,” Jenna said, once the woman was out of earshot. “Did you get checked out thoroughly?”

  “Yes, thoroughly. I told you, the neurosurgeon ordered a brain scan. Everything was clear. No tumor; nothing.”

  “You should get a second opinion, maybe a third.”

  “Why? You didn’t complain about my doctor when I was in a coma; or later, when I didn’t remember who I was. You didn’t think I needed a second opinion then.”

  “Coma and amnesia aren’t the same as—as this. What about Dr. Gold? What does he say?”

  Jessica faltered at the mention of her therapist. “I haven’t told him yet.”

  The exasperated glare Jenna gave her was one she might turn on one of her misbehaving daughters. When she acted that way it made Jessica want to disappear. Or yell at her. Yelling in the restaurant was a bad idea but it would feel so good to let off some steam that way.

  “Don’t you think that’s kind of important information you should be sharing with him?” said Jenna.

  “I’ll tell him, okay? I just haven’t seen him in a while.”

  “Well, I think you should make an appointment. Like, right now.”

  “I’m not schizophrenic, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m not crazy. It’s not those kinds of voices.”

  “I’m not saying you’re crazy.” Jenna began tearing her paper napkin into long strips, measuring each against the other to make sure they were the same length. Then she tore each strip into a half-dozen more pieces. For at least half a minute, she studied the pile of confetti she had made before looking up. When she did, her gaze landed somewhere beyond Jessica’s shoulder.

  “It’s just that—well, communing with the dead sounds to me like a really bad idea.”

  “Communing? Is that what you think I’m doing? What the hell are you saying?”

  “It totally makes sense to me now, that you’re looking so—so frail. You have dark circles under your eyes, too. I’m worried about you, Jess.”

  The temptation to start yelling was working its way to the front of the line. “There’s nothing for you to worry about,” Jessica said emphatically, again regretting having made this confession.

  “You think you have dead people hounding you night and day, and there’s nothing to worry about?”

  “I think I have…?”

  “Whatever. I think—”

  “I’ll deal with it, Jen.”

  “You can’t deal with evil spirits.”

  “What the—? There’s nothing evil about them. They’re not scary, they’re annoying.”

  Jenna swept her pile of napkin shreds onto a plate and avoided Jessica’s eyes. “Still. About Sunday. I think you’d better ‘deal with it’ before I let you stay with my girls.”

  Jessica blinked at the gut punch her twin had just delivered. “Did you really just say that?”

  “Wait, Jess. It’s—”

  “Wait for what? You’re afraid to leave your kids with me? That’s all I need to know.”

  It was not merely her twin’s attitude that cut Jessica to the quick. The worst part was the fear in Jenna’s eyes when she looked at her—the belief that her children needed to be protected from their aunt. She was acutely aware of the words that her sister left unspoken: the belief that she was possessed.

  Jessica slid out of the booth. “Take me home.”

  “Wait, Jess, stop!”

  With the faint hope that Jenna had thought better of what she’d said, Jessica turned around. “What?”

  “Why can’t you at least try to understand—”

  Of course, she hadn’t thought better of it. She was digging in.

  “No,” Jessica said. “You try to understand. I’m the same person I’ve always been.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  Without another word, Jessica turned on her heel and strode out of the restaurant.

  FOUR

  Jenna jacked up the car radio too loud for conversation, leaving a stony silence between them on the way back to the cottage.

  Jessica spent the time erecting a mental barrier, a force field designed to prevent her twin from accessing her thoughts. They had perfected the skill as teens, when identical twinhood had made the need for privacy an all-important issue.

  Almost before the vehicle came to a stop, she jumped out and slammed the car door without a goodbye. She let herself inside the cottage, still fuming, and changed into sweats, turned on the oven for heat, and zapped the leftover coffee from this morning. If Jenna didn’t have such a big stick up her ass, maybe she could open her eyes long enough to see that Jessica had not asked to be plagued by spirits lining up with their whispers, wanting her to do their bidding.

  She did some stomping and throwing things around until she ran out of steam and realized that the tantrum had not made her feel any better. Throwing herself into an art project was the better solution.

  Some of Jessica’s earliest memories involved finger painting and Play-Doh. The olfactory memory of the musky odor from those cans still had the power to make her smile. It was Jenna who had been most interested in their family of baby dolls, dressing and arranging them in their carriage, explaining that she was their mother and she loved them very much. Not much had changed since then.

  Her anger over her sister’s judgments about the spirit voices was a waste of time and energy. Jessica perched on the stool at her worktable determined not to spend another minute on them and switched on the desk lamp.

  She plucked the dust cover from the life-sized bust of a German Shepherd she had been working on and brought the armature closer to her, inspecting it to see what more needed to be done. The sculpture, commissioned by her friends, Claudia Rose and her LAPD detective husband, Joel Jovanic, was an extra-special project. The couple had played a vital role in helping Jessica recover her lost past when she’d had too few places to turn. She gave her all to every piece of art she created, but she wanted this sculpture to be perfect for them. Plus, completing it would keep her mind occupied long enough to cool off her anger at Jenna.

  Jessica ran a critical eye over the life-sized head
of the handsome German Shepherd. She spent a few minutes gazing at the photo Claudia had sent of the real-life dog, Flare. The ears were not quite right yet. Softening her focus, she waited for the creative side of her brain to take over and tell her what was needed.

  When she was ready, she set about tweaking and adjusting, making minute corrections. She could practically feel Flare’s wet muzzle pushing her hand, making sure she got it right. Once she was satisfied that the head was cocked to the perfect angle, the ears pricked up as if listening for a command, she painted the golden-brown eyes.

  Hunched over the sculpture absorbed in what she was doing, Jessica worked straight through to mid-evening. Ignoring the ache in her neck and shoulders, she kept going until she was confident that the same intelligent curiosity radiated from the sculpture as the dog in the photograph. Even the voices faded into the background. Finally, she released a long breath of satisfaction.

  Climbing off her work stool, she stretched, surprised to realize that aside from the pool of light on her worktable, the cottage was dark. Her phone showed the time at just past eight o’clock.

  Was she imagining a soft whine for attention?

  “Why not a spirit dog?” Jessica said to the Shepherd bust. “Join the crowd. But I’m not telling Claudia. She’d think I’ve totally lost it for sure.”

  The phone rang right then, startling her. As if speaking the name had summoned her, Claudia was calling.

  “Great timing,” said Jessica. “Flare is just about ready to go.”

  “That’s awesome. I must be psychic.”

  “You must be. I’m sure the fact that I promised to have it by this weekend doesn’t have anything to do with it.”

  “Of course not,” Claudia chuckled. “I’m gonna love it.”

  “You haven’t seen it yet.”

  “I know your work, silly girl. I have zero doubt that it looks exactly like the photo I sent you.”

  Flushing with pleasure at the compliment, Jessica said, “Please tell your neighbor that I’m sorry for her loss. I get the impression you loved Flare as much as she did, even though it was her dog.”