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her. “So then your program runs a solid hour of me just wandering around empty rooms, saying things like, ‘Nope, nothing here,’ ‘Sorry, nothing’s coming through,’ ‘I’m drawing a blank, folks, the ghosts seem to have better things to do than talk to me tonight’?”
    Nicky had forgotten how well her mother did sarcasm.
    “Come on, Mama.”A tug got her mother moving again.
    “You think I want to look like a fool on live TV?”
    “You aren’t going to look like a fool on live TV.” Doing her best to stay in soothing mode, Nicky bundled her mother into the passenger seat, even bending to lift her feet from the ground and tuck them safely inside the footwell. “If nothing comes through tonight—and that’s a very big if, and you know it—you’ll look like the legitimate psychic you are, who tried and simply was unable to make contact with the Other Side.” Nicky tried not to contemplate the prospect of televising a live séance at which not a single ghost showed up. Heads would roll. No, correction, a head would roll: hers. “Anyway, how many séances have you done? You could probably do one in your sleep. And you always get something.”
    “Hundreds, probably,” Leonora replied gloomily as Nicky pulled her seat belt around her, fastening it less as the loving gesture it looked like and more as a precaution against her mother attempting a quick exit. “People always ask for séances. They don’t realize you don’t need to do that to get in touch with those who’ve crossed over. Séances are basically just entertainment. At least, the kind people always picture—where a group sits around a table, holding hands with their eyes closed—is.” Leonora sniffed dismissively. “That’s not how I work.”
    “I know. So just do what you do and don’t worry about it.”
    Closing the door on her mother, she rushed around to the driver’s side before it could occur to Leonora that she could, theoretically, get back out again. Nicky was curling a hand around her door handle when the banging of the screen door caused her to glance up. Karen, cell phone to ear, was running down the back steps with Mario behind her, heading toward their own car, a rented blue Neon parked in front of the garage. Karen gave her a thumbs-up as she went past, which Nicky surreptitiously returned, knowing that if her mother saw her, there would be hell to pay. Another bang of the screen heralded the appearance on the porch of Uncle Ham and Uncle John, who also hurried down the steps toward, Nicky presumed, their car, which she also presumed was parked in its usual spot behind the long, low frame building that was the three-car garage, which was situated between the house and the street and went a long way toward making the back porch and the parking area totally private. Having been converted into an office/hangout spot for Harry, the garage hadn’t housed cars for years. A third bang, and there was Livvy. The single quick glance that she spared her sister was enough to tell Nicky that the table had been kind. The boobs were nothing. Livvy’s belly was so big that she looked like she’d swallowed the Goodyear Blimp. Whole.
    “Nick! Nicky! I want to come. Wait for me,” Livvy called, waving. She hurried along the porch, flip-flops smacking the wood floor.
    On the verge of pretending she hadn’t heard, Nicky had an inconvenient attack of conscience and glanced up again in time to watch as Livvy, in unflattering white stretch shorts that she wouldn’t have been caught dead in seven months before, practically waddled down the steps. Once widely acclaimed as the prettiest girl on the island, her mother’s perfect daughter with the perfect husband and the perfect life, Livvy had fallen far. No matter how urgent the circumstances and how sure she was that Livvy’s presence could do nothing but complicate an already fraught situation, Nicky discovered that it just wasn’t in her to hop in her car and leave her sister