Donald was the first to recover, but his serious features only set us off again.
“Okay,” he said. “It wasn’t that funny. So why are you still laughing?”
“Because we can,” Zia told him.
“Because we can-can!” I added.
Then Zia and I put our arms around each other’s waist and began to prance about the kitchen like Moulin Rouge can-can dancers, kicking our legs up high in unison. It was funny until my toe caught the edge of the table, which jolted a mug full of spoons, knocking it over and sending silverware clattering all over the floor.
Zia and I stopped dead and we all three cocked our heads.
Sure enough, a querulous cry came from down the hall.
“Who’s out there?” the old woman called. “Is there somebody out there?”
That was followed a moment later by the sound of her getting out of her bed and slowly shuffling down the hall towards us. Long moments later, she was in the doorway and the overhead light came on, a bright yellowy glare that sent the shadows scurrying.
Zia and I had stepped into the between, where we could see without being seen, but Donald stayed where he was, leaning against the kitchen counter, his arms folded across his chest. He was frowning when his mother came into the kitchen, the frown deepening when it became apparent that she wasn’t able to see him.
We all watched as the old woman fussed about, trying to gather up the spoons that, with her poor eyesight, she couldn’t really see. When she was done, there were still errant spoons—under the table, in front of the fridge—but she put the mug back on the table, gave the kitchen a last puzzled look, then switched off the overhead light and went back to her bedroom.
Zia and I stepped out of the between, back into the kitchen. Our sudden appearance startled Donald, which was kind of funny, seeing how he was the ghost and ghosts usually did the startling. But I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to set us all off again—or at least it would be enough to set Zia and me off. I could feel that chemical imbalance spilling through me because she was so near—a sudden giddy need to turn sense into nonsense for the sheer fun of it—but I reminded myself why I was here. How if I didn’t fulfill my promise, I’d be beholden to a ghost for the rest of my days, and if there’s one thing that cousins can’t abide, it’s the unpaid debt, the unfulfilled promise. That’s like flying with a long chain dangling from your foot.
“How did you do that?” Donald asked.
Zia gave him a puzzled look. “Do what?”
“Disappear, then just reappear out of nowhere.”
“We didn’t disappear,” she told him. “We were just in the between.”
I thought he was going t
o ask her to explain that, but he changed the subject to what was obviously more often on his mind than it wasn’t.
“Did you see?” he asked us. “She was standing right in front of me and she didn’t even notice me. Dead or alive, she’s never paid any attention to me.”
“Well, you are a ghost,” Zia said.
I nodded. “And humans can’t usually see ghosts.”
“A mother should be able to see her own son,” he said, “whether he’s a ghost or not.”
“The world is full of shoulds,” Zia said, “but that doesn’t make them happen.”
It took him a moment to work through that. When he did, he gave a slow nod.
“Here’s another should,” he said. “I should never have gotten my hopes up that anyone would help me.”
“We didn’t say we wouldn’t or that we couldn’t,” Zia said.
I nodded. “I made you a promise.”
“And cousins don’t break promises,” Zia added. “It’s all we have for coin and what would it be worth if our word had no value?”
“So you’re cousins,” he said.
He didn’t mean it the way we did. He was thinking of familial ties, while for us it was just an easy way to differentiate humans from people like us whose genetic roots went back to the first days in the long ago, people who weren’t bound to the one shape the way regular humans and animals are.