“Everything’s fine Sophya, go back to sleep.”

It isn’t until Nellie hears her own words hanging in the air that she remembers. She sits up, startled, searching the dark. Nothing. “Ben,” she whispers, shaking him. “Ben!” He mumbles, rolls around to face her, doesn’t open his eyes. “Ben I heard her.”

“Nellie,” he says. He looks now, sits up, puts his arm around her. “It was just another dream.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Nellie says. “She was here, right by the bed. I heard her come in, and she put her hand on my shoulder the way she always does -” And then she realizes she should have said “did” and all of a sudden she’s crying too hard to tell Ben the same story he hears almost every night.

“Honey,” he says, and she buries her head in his chest and he doesn’t complain that she is soaking yet another one of his t-shirts. He tries to whisper encouragements to her; tries to tell her that it’s all right and everything will be fine, but how can he look at her and mean it? So he just holds her tighter, his thumb making small circles on her shoulder until she wears herself out and the sobs turn to snores. His arm is falling asleep, but she needs the rest, so he stays as he is, and wonders if there’s any way they can move up her appointment with Dr. Peterson.
===

Nellie sits in the corner of the couch, staring into her teacup and waiting for Dr. Peterson’s secretary to call with news of an opening. She breathes in the steam from the cup, contemplates taking a sip, and then places it back on the coffee table. Just focus on your breath, she tells herself. In, and out. In, and out. Dr. Peterson will call you eventually. In, and out.

Music starts coming down the hall, from Sophya’s room. That’s bad, she thinks. Hearing things is always bad.

Dr. Peterson would say that it’s all in her head, that she wants to hear Sophya so she does. Maybe if she keeps telling herself that the music will just go away.
But it doesn’t. She listens. It’s that ballet tape that she used to put Sophya to bed with. Coppelia, she thinks, or maybe Giselle. The two year old could tell the difference but Nellie never quite could.

Looking can’t hurt, she decides, and stands up, wrapping a blanket around her shoulders. She shuffles down the hallway, her bare feet scuffing against the rug. She almost knocks, then shakes her head, and gently pushes the door.

The room is exactly as Sophya left it, with the tape player on the shelf in the corner and the red light on the tape player, but Sophya isn’t there. She should know by now that that isn’t how it works. Her presence may be here but her body is not; Nellie doesn’t get to see her again. But hope is the sort of thing you can never quite kill. So she sits down at the table, all set up for a tea party, and closes her eyes and waits to see if she can feel her there. Giselle, she thinks. It’s definitely Giselle.

The phone rings. The music stops, the red light goes off. She knows that it’s probably Dr. Peterson and she probably should answer it. And she probably should tell him that if there isn’t a ghost in her house, she is now seeing things as well as hearing them. But this feels a lot more like her daughter than a trick of her mind, and she would much prefer it to be that way, so she stays where she is, waiting for the music to come back on.
===

“Want to stop for lunch?” Ben never knows what to say to Nellie after one of her appointments. She’s never ready to talk about her session, but she can’t take it if they’re quiet. Somewhere between trying to sound responsive and respectful, he always ends up talking about food.

“I’m not hungry,” she says.

“You haven’t eaten all day,” Ben says.

“I know.”

He pulls into a Panera parking lot anyway. Even if she won’t have anything, it’ll be good for her to be out in public, somewhere other than the doctor’s office. She doesn’t object, and he takes her hand as they walk in and she mumbles something that sounds like “I guess I’ll get a coffee”.

The bell over the door chimes, and they’ve barely entered the line when the unmistakable Texan accent of June Daley offers her sympathies.

“I just couldn’t believe when I heard about poor little Sophya,” she says, putting a hand on Nellie’s shoulder. “Must be terrible for the two of you.”

“Thank you, June,” Ben says, squeezing Nellie’s hand.

“I can’t imagine,” June says. “You’ve been in my prayers, all three of you.”

“We really appreciate it,” Ben says. “It makes a real difference, knowing that you’re thinking of us.”

Ben continues with the same speech he always gives. He strokes the edge of Nellie’s hand with his pinky, the signal that she can shut down. She tries hard not to. It’s not fair that Ben is always the one to deal with the public; that she goes into the house and leaves him to talk to the neighbors, that she makes him answer the phone for anyone other than Dr. Peterson. For three months now this has been all on him, and that just isn’t right. So she looks into June’s big, alert eyes, and she nods at the appropriate moments, and then June says “Must be so hard to deal with an accident like that, so sudden” because she doesn’t know any better. And Nellie decides that shutting down is better than breaking down, and the next thing she knows she’s in the passenger seat of the old Subaru, holding a sandwich that Ben must have ordered for her.
===

“She was here again today,” Nellie says, as Ben slips in next to her under the covers. “While I was in the kitchen.”

“What was she doing?” He asks as if this is a question that any husband might ask his wife; as if he is wondering if she wants one spoon of sugar or two.

“I was making my lunch,” Nellie says. “Cutting up carrots to put into a salad. And I wasn’t paying much attention and my hand must have slipped. It wasn’t a bad cut, but I went to go get a bandaid. And when I came back in, the little step stool was up against the cupboards. And there was a sippy cup out. And chocolate milk powder. I didn’t even know we still had chocolate milk powder.” Ben massages little circles into her hand. “I should probably tell Dr. Peterson, shouldn’t I?”

“Probably,” Ben says, switching the direction of his circles. She feels so fragile, her bones so easy to find beneath her skin.

“Ben?” She says it quietly, hoping that maybe he won’t hear her, wishing that she didn’t have to ask him.

“Yeah”

“Ben, do you...” She looks away, out across the room. “What do you think he would say?”

She becomes suddenly aware that his breath is half a beat ahead of hers, his body rising and falling, lifting her up and then bringing her down. “I don’t know,” he says. “Probably what he’s been saying. You’re used to her being here, and you want her to be here, so you feel that she is.”

“Is that what you think?” She can’t look him in the eye.

“Nellie,” he says. “You know I love you, and support you, and -”

“You’re not answering my question, Ben.”

He sighs. “Dr. Peterson’s a very smart man. He’s worked with lots of people who have been through situations like this. And what he’s saying makes sense. You miss her, Nell, so it’s completely normal to feel like she’s still here.”

“But you think it’s all in my head.”

“That doesn’t make it any less real for -”

“She’s here Ben,” Nellie says. “I’m not imagining her, I’m not pretending. I don’t know why but she’s still here and she -”

“Then why haven’t I seen her?” The circles stop. His body halts, mid-fall. “Jesus Nellie, don’t you think that if she was still here she would want me to know too? She was our daughter Nellie, ours.” He moves out from underneath her, takes her shoulders and turns her around to look at him. She tries not to at first, then lifts her head up. He’s crying for the first time since the funeral. “I loved her too, Nellie. And I miss her. And I think about her every second of every day. I remember her first steps every time I walk into the living room and I think about how cute she was with birthday cake all over her face every time we sit down for dinner and I’ve been showering downstairs for the past three months because I can’t even open up the curtain without reliving that day. So don’t you think that if she were here she would come to me too?”

Nellie doesn’t know if it’s her sudden realization or the fact that Ben has taken her usual place of being in hysterics, but she finds it surprisingly easy to look him in the eye and say, “Because it wasn’t you, Ben. It wasn’t your fault.”
===

“Ready to go?” Ben calls from downstairs.

“Just have to brush my teeth,” Nellie calls down, opening the medicine cabinet. “You know you really should replace the toothpaste when you finish the tube.”

“Sorry,” Ben says. “There should be some in the drawer. I’ll wait for you in the car.”

“Be right down.” The front door closes, the car starts. There’s a new tube of toothpaste in the bottom drawer of the cabinet. Nellie turns on the faucet, and as the water begins to spill out she thinks she hears something else. She turns back the handle. It’s quiet, and broken, but she recognizes it immediately.
“Sunshine,” Sophya sings. “You are my sunshine.”
Nellie looks around the room. She thinks about what Ben said and she wants to agree with him, but the more she listens, the more it seems like the music is coming from the bathtub, and the more she can hear the faint sound of splashing.
“You make me happy, skies are gray.”
The song gets louder, and Nellie’s sure of it now. It’s coming from the bath. It has to be. “You’ll never know dear,” she joins in. “How much I love you. Please don’t take my sunshine away.”
“Mommy?”
Nellie throws open the curtain. “Sophya!” she cries.
Her hair is matted down to her head, her freckles bright, her little fingers pale and pruney. She smiles at her mother, showing the gap in her tiny white teeth. “Mommy!” she says again, and reaches up to her.
“Oh Sophie,” Nellie whispers. She extends her finger, and the little girl wraps her hand around it. “Oh Sophie.”
===
“Nellie, we’re going to be late,” Ben calls up. She doesn’t answer. “Nellie?”
He runs up the stairs, throws open the door. “Nellie?”
She’s done it. They thought she would get through this fine but she’s done it. Face down in the bathtub.
He pulls her out, going as fast as he can without hitting her head against the tile as he lets her down. He gives her mouth to mouth, pounds on her chest. He has no idea what he’s doing, just trying to replicate what he’s seen in movies, but through adrenaline or divine providence he figures it out. She coughs up water, and begins to breathe again. He takes her head in his hands, rests it on his lap, strokes her cheek.
“Everything’s okay,” he tells her, moving a strand of her wet hair off of her face. “I got you. Everything’s going to be okay.” She nods. “I love you Nellie, okay? You have to remember that, I love you.”
“Sophya,” she finally says, quiet and hoarse. “Sophya.”
He follows her gaze over to the bathtub, and wonders how she could have gotten it so full, so quickly.