But Mopsy, ever the iconoclast, had scandalized her ultra-conservative maternal grandparents by choosing a doll with brown skin and even darker brown hair and eyes, a fact that had flattered and amused Jesse so much that I’d had to whisper to him during Christmas brunch to settle down, in case Grandpa Mancuso overheard him crowing, “She picked a doll that looks like me! I always told you, Emily’s the smart one. She wants to follow in my footsteps.”

I certainly hoped he was right, since if Paul got his way, Mopsy was the closest thing to a daughter Jesse was likely to get.

The fourth doll at the table had been a hand-me-down from one of the girls’ Ackerman cousins. She had blond hair that had been roughly hacked in front to give her the appearance of bangs.

Her resemblance to Lucia was close enough to cause my stomach to clench.

“What do you think she’s trying to do?” I asked. “Send us another message?”

“Yes.” Jesse had retrieved the flashlight from where I’d dropped it. He switched it off, then put it back into his pocket. “I think so.”

“But what? What’s she trying to say?” I couldn’t believe how creeped out I was. They were only dolls, not severed limbs. “If it’s ‘Don’t go in the playhouse,’ I got it, loud and clear.”

He put an arm around my shoulders and pulled me to him. “I don’t think that’s what she’s saying. I don’t think she meant to frighten you.”

“Frighten me?” I had my face buried in the soft suede of his coat. It smelled good, a combination of suede and vanilla and smoke from the wood burning in the fire pit and antibacterial soap from the hospital. In other words, it smelled of Jesse. “Who said I’m frightened? I’m not frightened.” I was scared to death. “Grossed out, maybe. The ad says ‘Say it with flowers,’ not ‘Say it with dead, decomposing flowers.’ That is one weird way to express yourself, even for a child.”

“Not for a dead child,” Jesse said, stroking my hair. I don’t think he believed me about not being frightened. “Think about it. It makes sense.”

“What does?”

“Dead flowers from a dead child. What else does she have to give? When you’re dead, you don’t have many options. You’ve heard of pennies from heaven?”

I lifted my head to look at him. “Of course I have. People who find pennies in weird places and think that the ghost of a loved one has left them there on purpose for them to find. But Jesse, that’s not a real thing.”

“Of course it’s a real thing.” He tightened his grip on me, his dark-eyed gaze intensifying on mine. “I get that it’s hard for you to understand. Communication has always come easily for you. You’ve never had a problem talking to anyone, alive or—what do you call them? Oh, right. Even the non-compliant deceased persons. And you’ve certainly never been dead. But supposing there came a day when you tried to reach out to someone you loved, and that person could no longer see or hear you. That’s what’s it like to be dead, but unable to cross over. Can you imagine the kind of living hell that would be?”

Yes. Like walking through the valley of the shadow of death.

I could hear it in his voice, and feel it in the way he’d sunk his fingers so deeply into the flesh of my upper arms. My heart twisted for him.

“Of course, Jesse.” I reached up to lay a hand along his cheek, but he flinched, ducking his head away.

He wasn’t rejecting my caress. I’m not even sure he noticed what he’d done. He simply wanted to finish what he was saying.

But they were back. The shadows in his eyes. I could see them, even in the dim lighting of the yard.

You can take the boy out of the darkness.

He continued in a low, rapid voice, “Of course you’d do whatever you could to signal to that person you’re still there, whether it’s leave a penny, or dead flowers, or shake the house down. You’re so hopeless, you wouldn’t notice what you’re doing is terrifying them. You just want them to know you’re not really gone. You understand that, Susannah, don’t you?”

But you can’t take the darkness out of the boy.

“Yes,” I said. “I understand that, Jesse.”

I realized how far Jesse had come, in one evening, from wanting to exorcise Lucia to identifying with her, and possibly even sympathizing with her.

I also realized that he was finally talking about what being dead had been like for him.

I wondered if he realized it, too. But I didn’t want to push him too far by asking. Instead, I asked, “So what do you think Lucia was trying to say with those flowers?”

He glanced at the playhouse. “That she’s sorry.”

“Sorry?” My jaw dropped. “She’s sorry?”

“Why not? They’re the same flowers from the bougainvillea tree outside the hospital. It’s likely she saw you there with your nieces.”

“You were there, too. You’re the one who gave them all the gum.”

Jesse grinned. Every time he grinned, it was like sunshine after a week of overcast days. Or maybe coming home after spending way too long in the valley of the shadow of death.

“That’s what I’m saying. I think she saw us with the girls and realized we’re friends, not foes. The flowers are her way of trying to make up for what she did.”

“In that case, she delivered them to the wrong place. They should be in Father Dom’s room in the ICU.”

“I’d have enjoyed seeing that,” Jesse said, a wistful look in his eyes.

“Me, too.”

I tried to match his light tone, but inside, I didn’t feel nearly as playful. Maybe because I knew he was right . . . Lucia had left the flowers for me, her first attempt to reach out to an adult she thought she could trust, and how had we repaid her? By allowing—even encouraging—Max to chase her off from my stepnieces’ yard, probably the only place in the world where she’d felt free to be the child she’d once been, frightening her half out of her wits (if that piercing scream had been any indication).

Worse, Jesse’s heartfelt admission about the loneliness he’d suffered when he was dead—how he’d longed to reach out to those he’d loved, but had been unable to—had reminded me of someone else from my past, someone who definitely did not have anywhere near the issues of Jesse or Lucia, but who was almost as messed up, in his own way.