She glanced down and dropped her hands around her middle. "How did that happen?"
Kylie shook her head. "If I was at home, I could give you a pamphlet to explain it step by step. A sperm meets an egg and so on. My mom gives me one of those every few months. But basically, it means you had sex with someone."
The spirit's expression grew puzzled. "Sex?"
"Please tell me you know what that is, because I'm too young to have to give you the whole sex talk. I haven't even heard it yet. I've just read the pamphlets."
"I know what sex is. I'm just ... Who did I have sex with?" she asked. "I can't remember."
"I wouldn't know that."
The spirit moved closer, and so did her chill. She dropped down on the bed beside Kylie, her palms still stretched across her belly. Closing her eyes, she sat there in silence. Kylie sensed she was searching her mind, trying to remember.
Kylie pulled a throw over her shoulders to ward off the chill. After several silence-filled minutes, the ghost opened her eyes but continued to stare down at her round middle. Her hands started moving tenderly over the child she carried within, as if to show it affection.
Kylie had never seen so much love shown in a simple touch. For a crazy second, she wondered what it would feel like to carry a child inside her own belly.
When the spirit looked up, she had tears in her eyes. "I think my baby died."
The grief on the spirit's face and in her voice brought a lump to Kylie's throat. "I'm sorry."
Then the spirit pulled her hands away from her belly, and both her palms were bloody. Kylie's breath caught when she saw the spirit's rounded abdomen was gone and the front of her dress was drenched in blood. "No." The deep, painful sob of the spirit filled the tiny room and seemed to bounce around from wall to wall.
Kylie opened her mouth to say something, to ask the spirit if she could remember what happened, to offer more apologies and sympathy. But before she could say anything, the woman disappeared.
The spirit's cold vanished but left a wave of icy sadness and grief so intense that it filled Kylie's chest with pain. And it wasn't just any pain. It was the grief of a mother losing a child. Kylie reached for her pillow and hugged it.
* * *
After a few minutes, Kylie pulled the pictures out of the envelope and flipped through them slowly. When she came to the one of her mom and Daniel in a group of other people, Kylie reached for her phone.
"Hi, sweetie." Just hearing her mom's voice brought back some of the empathy Kylie felt for the spirit.
"Hey, Mom."
Odd, how not so long ago, Kylie felt certain her mom didn't love her, didn't even want her. Now, there wasn't a doubt of her mom's devotion to her. Deep down, Kylie wondered if this was a part of growing up. The part where teens stopped seeing their parents as instruments out to destroy their lives and started seeing them as people.
Not perfect, of course. Kylie knew her mom still had flaws-lots of them-but none of them involved her love for Kylie. And none of them prevented Kylie from loving her.
"I'm glad you called," her mom said. "I've missed hearing your voice."
"Me too," Kylie managed to say without choking up, and she wished her mom were here to hug her. She wished she could tell her mom about the pictures, but then she'd have to explain about the Brightens, and she didn't think that whole mess was explainable. Not yet, anyway.
"I was going to call you tonight if I didn't hear from you," her mom said.
"I'm sorry, I've been going a little crazy since I've been back."
"I figured as much. Sara called and said she'd tried to call you and you hadn't returned her call. She sounded so good. She told me it was like a miracle-her cancer up and disappeared."
"I'm sure it was one of the treatments they did on her," Kylie said, biting down on her bottom lip and wondering how she was going to handle the whole Sara issue. Kylie hadn't returned Sara's call because she'd wanted to ask Holiday first. Poor Holiday. When she did return, Kylie had a list of things they needed to discuss.
"I guess," her mom said. "But I would like to believe in miracles."
"Then you should believe," Kylie said, now unsure what to say to her mom about it. Because more than ever, Kylie knew miracles did exist. The fact that she had been the one performing the miracle still had her feeling out of sorts.
"Are you okay?" her mom asked, as if picking up on Kylie's mood.
"I'm fine."
"No, you're not," her mom said. "I hear it in your voice. What's wrong, baby?"
"Just ... boy trouble," she said.
"What kind of trouble?" her mom asked, the tension in her voice indicating that she worried Kylie's problem concerned sex.
"It's nothing." Searching for a change of subject, Kylie tossed out, "How was work today?"
"It was strange," her mom said. "I got a new client."
"Why is that strange?" Kylie asked. Her mom worked in advertising and she was always getting new clients.
"He's strange."
"Strange in what way?" Kylie asked, glad the subject had taken a turn.
"He seemed more interested in me than ... the campaign." Her mom giggled.
Kylie frowned. "Define 'interested.'"
"Oh, I don't know. It's just the way he acted," her mom said, as if she were trying to make light of the subject. "We're supposed to do lunch tomorrow and discuss his ideas for the special promotion on his new line of vitamins."
"Is it a work lunch or a ... date lunch?"
"Don't be silly," her mom said. "It's work."
"Are you sure?" Kylie asked. "I mean, if he seemed interested in you..."
"I think it's work," she said, no longer sounding so sure. "But ... if it were a date lunch, how would you feel about it?"
Kylie took a deep breath. An image of her stepfather filled her head. She recalled him sitting on the edge of her bed only a few weeks ago, crying when he told Kylie he'd made a terrible mistake. She knew he wanted to reconcile with her mom, and while Kylie wasn't sure he deserved a second chance after cheating on her, she couldn't deny wanting at least one thing in her world to go back to the way it had been.