Practical Magic - Alice Hoffman [55]
“Tell me if you see him now,” Sally says.
Kylie looks at her mother. She’s afraid, but she recognizes her mother’s tone of voice as one to be obeyed and she goes to the window in spite of her fear. Sally and Gillian come to stand beside her. They can see their reflections in the glass, and the wet lawn. Outside are the lilacs, taller and more lush than would seem possible.
“Under the lilacs.” Little knobs of fear are rising on Kylie’s arms and her legs and everywhere in between. “Where the grass is the greenest. He’s right there.”
It is the spot exactly.
Gillian stands close behind Kylie and squints, but all she can make out are the shadows of the lilacs. “Can anyone else see him?”
“The birds.” Kylie blinks back tears. What she wouldn’t have given to look out and find he’s gone. “The bees.”
Gillian is ashen. She is the one who should be punished. She deserves it, not Kylie. Jimmy should be haunting her; each time she closes her eyes, it should be his face she sees. “Oh, fuck,” she says, to no one in particular.
“Was he your boyfriend?” Kylie asks her aunt.
“Once,” Gillian says. “If you can believe it.”
“Is that why he hates us so much?” Kylie asks.
“Honey, he just hates,” Gillian says. “It doesn’t matter if it’s us or them. I just wish I’d learned that when he was still alive.”
“And now he won’t go away.” Kylie understands that much. Even girls of thirteen can figure out that a man’s ghost reflects who he was and everything he’s ever done. There’s a lot of spite under those lilacs. There’s a whole lot of get-even.
Gillian nods. “He won’t go.”
“You’re talking about this as if it were real,” Sally says. “And it just isn’t. It can’t be! No one is out there.”
Kylie turns to look outside. She wants her mother to be right. It would be such a relief to look and see only the grass and the trees, but that’s not all that is out in the yard.
“He’s sitting up and lighting a cigarette. He just threw the burning match on the grass.”
Kylie’s voice sounds breakable, and there are tears in her eyes. Sally has gone very cold and very quiet. It’s Jimmy her daughter is in contact with, all right. Every once in a while, Sally herself has felt something out in the yard, but she’s dismissed the dark shape seen from the corner of her eye, she’s refused to recognize the chill in her bones when she goes to water the cucumbers in the garden. It’s nothing, that’s what she’s told herself. A shadow, a cool breeze, nothing but a dead man who can’t hurt anyone.
Now as she considers her own backyard, Sally accidentally bites her lip, but she pays no attention to the blood she’s drawn. In the grass there is a spiral of smoke, and the scent of something acrid and burning, as if, indeed, someone had carelessly tossed a match onto the wet lawn. He could burn the house down, if he wanted to. He could take over the backyard, leaving them too frightened to do anything but peer through the window. The lawn is rife with crabgrass and weeds, and not mowed nearly often enough. Still, the fireflies come here in July. The robins always find worms after a storm. This is the garden where her girls grew up, and Sally will be damned if she lets Jimmy force her out, considering he wasn’t worth two cents even back when he was alive. He’s not going to sit in her yard and threaten her daughters.
“You don’t have to worry about this,” Sally says to Kylie. “We’ll take care of it.” She goes to the back door and opens it, then nods to Gillian.
“Me?” Gillian has been trying to get a cigarette out of the pack with her hands shaking like a bird’s wings. She has no intention of going into that yard.
“Now,” Sally says, with that strange authority she gets at these times, the worst times, moments of panic and confusion when Gillian’s first instinct is always to