During our car ride, I described my conversation with Ruth in greater detail. I finished the story just as we pulled into Joshua’s driveway and he killed the engine. Joshua stared silently out at the Mayhews’ garden.

Then, frowning, he rested one arm on the steering wheel and turned toward me. “I think I need to apologize for my grandma being such a—”

“Concerned relative?” I offered before Joshua could say something he’d regret.

Joshua just grinned, easily seeing through my effort at diplomacy.

“Concerned.” He laughed. “Right.” He leaned over me to open my door and then leaned back, lingering for a moment near me.

“Promise me something?” Joshua asked, still very close to me. I simply nodded, too befuddled by his proximity to say anything even remotely clever.

“Promise we’re just going to enjoy tonight? And not worry about Ruth?”

I grimaced. “She’s going to make that pretty hard on us, isn’t she?”

Joshua shook his head. “She’ll be at the church almost all night. After we make it past the rest of my family, it’s just you and me.”

I felt a slight flush at the thought. I didn’t waste more than a second wondering how a dead girl could feel so warm. How could I care, honestly, when anticipating an entire night with him?

“Let’s go,” I managed to say. Joshua nodded; and quickly we were both out of the car, walking through the garden toward the porch. Crossing the upper deck, Joshua came to the back door first and opened it for me.

As I passed through the open doorway, he pressed his hand against the small of my back to guide me forward. The mere pressure of his hand played havoc with the speed of my breath, but I only had a few more steps to enjoy the sensation. Within seconds we had stepped into the Mayhew kitchen.

Like the last time I saw it, the kitchen bustled with activity. To my immense relief, Ruth hadn’t joined her family for dinner, as Joshua had predicted.

To our left, Joshua’s father and Jillian stood over a half-constructed salad, laughing. To our right, Joshua’s mother hunched over a pot, pouring what looked like an enormous amount of pasta into a serving bowl. She set down the pot and absentmindedly ran a hand through her hair, a gesture I recognized well from her son. Then she crossed over to the kitchen island and began to sort through a small stack of dishes, arranging them for the dinner table.

“Just three plates tonight, Mom,” Joshua said by way of announcing himself.

“Oh?” She sounded curious but not offended by her son’s request. “Not joining us?”

“Loads of homework.” Joshua shrugged, and gave me a covert wink.

“I’m not the only one who has to do the dishes after dinner, am I?” Jillian whined, looking first to her distracted mother, then to her father’s back. When both of her parents ignored her pleas, Jillian gave Joshua a small sneer and turned back to the salad, picking angrily at a few protruding leaves.

Joshua ignored his sister and crossed the kitchen to swat his father playfully on the arm.

“You know,” Joshua said in a light tone, “they’ve invented this magical thing called a dishwasher. I hear it’s life changing.”

His father chuckled. “Yeah. Her name’s Jillian.”

“Not funny,” Jillian protested, still facing the salad. With the palm of her hand, she shoved the bowl away from her. She spun back around toward her family, opening her mouth in what would inevitably be some petulant comment.

She closed it with an audible pop, however, when her gaze landed on the space where I was standing—on the space that should have appeared empty to her.

Like yesterday, her gaze didn’t fall on me. Not exactly. But she still stared in my direction and looked as if she were trying, with difficulty, to peer through a heavy screen of smoke. Still without the benefit of her grandmother’s powerful sight, Jillian’s gaze didn’t pierce me . . . couldn’t harm me. Yet it made me nervous, and caused me to cast my eyes around the kitchen in the fear Ruth would burst into the room at any moment.

As Joshua had promised, however, Ruth didn’t come barging into the room, shouting threats and dropping me to my knees in pain. And eventually, Jillian gave up the effort of peering in my direction. She turned back toward her brother, wearing only a slightly disconcerted expression.

“Nothing in this house is fair,” she complained. Joshua began to laugh, which would undoubtedly have angered Jillian further had their mother’s sharp command not silenced the entire room.

“Enough!”

Everyone, including me, turned toward the kitchen island where Rebecca Mayhew still stood. She nodded first to Jillian, then to Joshua.

“You, finish the salad. You, get upstairs and avert this crisis, before I make you.”

With a groan of protest, Jillian spun back around to the counter and began furiously rearranging the salad, muttering something about fairness under her breath. Joshua gave his mother a quick salute and then ducked, as if to dodge the displeased glare she aimed at him. Behind us, I heard his father choke back a laugh.

When Rebecca directed the glare at her husband, Joshua used his parents’ temporary distraction to catch my eye. He twitched his head to another archway on the opposite side of the kitchen. I took the gesture to mean we were leaving.

With as much grace as I could muster, I wove my way between Jillian and her father, careful not to touch either of them. Almost without thought, I paused next to Jillian, waiting for . . . what, I wasn’t sure. When her eyes didn’t flicker again in my direction, I crossed to the archway through which Joshua had already passed and turned to look at the kitchen one last time.

Rebecca had returned to setting the table, one hand continually brushing through her pretty hair. Jeremiah stood at the counter, staring down at his daughter with a surprising amount of patience as she finished the salad. When she began muttering angrily again, he picked a small piece of lettuce from the salad bowl and flung it at her. Jillian glared at him indignantly, but after only a beat, her expression softened. She smiled wryly and, without breaking eye contact, plucked the piece of lettuce from her shoulder and flung it back at him.

I smiled at them all and then gave them an impulsive little wave.

In that moment I wanted to join them so badly, it hurt. Aside from the ever-threatening presence of Ruth, the Mayhews represented something I craved, something I’d so obviously lost.

A family.

I pictured my own mother, sitting in that tiny house by herself; I pictured my father, wandering lost in the darkness of the netherworld. As I continued to watch the Mayhews, a melancholy fog started to sneak over me. My thoughts, then, were as sudden as they were dark.

If Eli gets his way, I told myself, you’ll never see these people again unless you’re trying to ruin their afterlives. And if Ruth is right, you’ve got less than forty-eight hours left with Joshua, anyway. So, dead girl, you can totally forget about joining his family; you weren’t even around to keep your own together.

I shook my head, hard, as if the movement could dispel the bitter thoughts. I didn’t want to think about those things tonight, and I’d promised Joshua I wouldn’t. So I spun around through the archway, eager for Joshua’s face to clear away the sadness for a while.

As I’d hoped, Joshua waited for me, leaning against a wall between the arch and a steep staircase. With a playful smile, he pushed himself off the wall and then crept closer to me. I kept quiet and still, although the rational part of my brain knew I didn’t have to.

Now only a foot away from me, Joshua leaned in, very close to my face, and hovered there for a second. After a few deliciously tense seconds, Joshua leaned to one side.

Though I couldn’t feel his breath on my ear, I closed my eyes and imagined I could. Warm and feathery, brushing along my skin. For the first time today, I shivered happily.