Nicki bought a grape juice and I bought a Coke and we sat on a bench outside the post office, watching people run in and out. The corners of Nicki’s mouth turned purple from the juice, but the pink in her face and eyes was fading. She would look normal by the time Kent met us.I wanted to ask about her father, to know more about the person whose spirit we had tried to raise, but I didn’t want to set her off again now that she’d stopped crying. I couldn’t picture my own father not being around. Even though he traveled all the time, at least I knew he was somewhere on the planet, walking around and talking and thinking. Somewhere he was in a business meeting, pushing his glasses up his nose and smoothing his tie, or else he was sitting in a foreign restaurant clearing his throat and blinking the way he did when he had to eat food he didn’t like. Or maybe he was in an airport, checking baseball scores from his computer—he was supposedly coming home today. But if I wanted to hear his voice, all I needed was a phone.
