Julia says, walking around the living room and den, throwing open the windows.
Linda stifles a little surge of resentment. She acts as if she’s the wife here, as if she’s the mistress of the house. Julia has been with the family since soon after Josh was born, so she’s opened and closed this house numerous times, while Linda still feels like a guest.
“Then we need to pick some lilacs,” Julia announces, tousling Josh’s hair as the boy lugs in his backpack. “Oh, how your mother loved the scent of lilacs in this house.”
“I’ll go pick them!” Josh offers, suddenly alert at the mention of his mother.
The nanny looks over toward her employer. “Is that all right, Dr. Manwaring? The bushes are all in bloom.”
Geoff is carrying in folders of student papers he needs to work on over the weekend. “Sure. Maybe you could help him, Linda. Don’t let him pick too many.”
They exchange a look. It’s one of those moments they try to find where Linda can spend some quality “alone time” with Josh. She smiles.
“Not the white ones,” Julia tells her. “Only pick the purple lilacs.”
“Why not the white ones?” Linda asks. “I love white lilacs.”
The old woman stiffens. “Well, it’s just that—well, we only ever have purple—”
Linda smiles. “Then maybe it’s time for a change.”
She watches Julia’s face darken.
“Josh!” Linda calls. “Wait up!”
She follows the boy out the door.
They are beautiful. Dozens of lilac bushes line the driveway and the side of the house. Their fragrance is so strong it reminds Linda of the perfume counter at Macy’s. She sees several varieties of purple, some dark, some barely lavender. And scattered among them, here and there, are several lacy whites.
“Josh!” Linda calls.
The boy has disappeared into the yard somewhere. Linda walks into the cluster of bushes, almost dizzy from the aroma. She begins snapping clumps of the flowers from the branches, choosing two whites for every purple.
She breathes in the fresh air, so exhilarating after weeks in the city. She glances off toward the trees that ring the property. What a beautiful day. Simply glorious. So full of sunlight. She hears a rustle in the trees and then spots the most magnificent bird she has ever seen, red and gold with an enormous wingspan. It swoops out from a tall branch and circles gracefully over her head before disappearing once again in the woods.
She spots Josh between the leaves, on the other side of the bush.
“Are you playing hide-and-seek, Josh? Because I can see you. Pick a better place and I’ll count to ten.”
But Josh doesn’t move. She can’t see him clearly. Just a shape, really, a small shape of red and yellow through the bright green leaves.
“Okay, if you don’t want to play, fine,” Linda tells him, snapping off a few more clusters. “Help me pick some lilacs.”
But the shape on the other side of the bush still doesn’t move. He’s just standing there.
Why is he spying on me?
She strains to see him through the leaves.
That is Josh, isn’t it?
Linda moves around the bush to see.
“Josh?”
She gasps, dropping the lilacs she carried in her arms.
No, it’s definitely not Josh.
It’s a demon in the shape of a boy—a dead boy, a boy burned to death—his skin black and charred, his hair scorched. Blank eye sockets glare out at her from his blackened skull. Only his clothing—the same that Josh had been wearing—remains unburned.
“Oh, dear God, no!”
“Were you calling me?”
She spins around. Josh is behind her. The real Josh, looking fine.
She whips her head back to where she saw the dead boy. He’s gone.
I’m not going to react. They mustn’t know I’ve had another one of these crazy visions. They mustn’t know.
“I—I thought I saw you back here,” Linda manages to utter, trying to steady her heartbeat racing in her ears.
“No,” Josh says, eerily calm. “I was in the backyard looking for my swing set.”
Linda kneels, picking up the lilacs she’d dropped. “Your swing set?” she says, trying to keep her voice even, her thoughts collected.
“Yeah. When I was little I had a swing set back there. But Daddy told me he had it taken down because it got all rusted and wasn’t safe.”
Linda stands, managing a smile. “And was it gone, then?”
The boy nods, and a little twinkle appears in his eyes. “If you get him to buy me a new one, maybe I’ll be nice to you.”
“Now, Josh,” she says, “that’s called bribery.”
“Don’t you want me to be nice to you?”
She tries to quiet her own fears, to force back her own anxiety, even as Megan’s idea of Xanax is starting to sound better and better to her. She tries to see the boy’s own pain in his eyes, his own fears.
But the face of that burned boy keeps getting in the way.
“I want you to be nice to me because you want to,” Linda tells him, forcing away the image, “not because I did something you wanted me to do.”
He shrugs. “Have it your way then.”
“Josh, we can have fun this weekend. Really. If you give me a chance.”
He has started to turn away, to push off into the lilac bushes his mother loved so much, but he stops. “Why should I give you a chance?”
“Because your father would like you to.” No, that’s not enough. “Because I’m a good person. A fun person. You’ll like me. You’ll see.”
“I’m never going to like you.”
Linda suddenly feels at a breaking point, as if the trauma of seeing that horrible vision has made this kind of sparring with Josh unbearable. All she wants to do is crawl into bed and pull the sheets up over her head and forget it all. Josh. Geoff’s friends. These hideous visions.
“You may never like me, Josh,” she tells me, “but you’re going to have to get used to me.”
“Why do I have to get used to you?”
She takes a long breath. “Because your father and I are going to be married.”
The boy just stares up at her. This wasn’t the way they’d planned on telling him, but it had just come out. Linda couldn’t hold it back any longer.
“We might as well be friends,” she says, trying to soften her voice. “You’ll see I’m not so bad.”
The child keeps glaring at her, saying nothing. His round blue eyes beam. His fair hair glows in the sun.
Linda tries to smile, offering her hand. “Come on, Josh. Let’s go inside and you can help me put these lilacs in vases. We can talk. We can talk as long as you want. You, me, and your Dad.”
“You can’t marry my father,” he finally says, his eyes still holding onto hers, in a voice that is low and deep, and that sounds nothing like a child’s.
Linda can feel herself stiffening again. “Oh, no? Why can’t I, Josh?”
“Because my mother won’t let you.”
It’s