CHAPTER ONE
Monday, September 7 was the perfect night to catch a ghost.
I set the paperback guide to ghost photography down on my bedside table and glanced into the shadowed corner, making sure the tape recorder hadn’t come unplugged in the last five minutes. Still secure. I settled back against the pillows and blew out a long breath, ordering myself to stay calm as I fingered the silver bangle bracelet circling my wrist. It was just past midnight. If everything went the way it had for the last thirty years, in one hour – at one-oh-eight on this Labor Day Monday, to be precise — I would hear the voice.
This time, I’d be ready.
In all these years, the experience had never changed. First came the touches. Comforting ones. Familiar, even. A feeling of warmth would spread across my chest, as if someone had just pulled a blanket over me and tucked me in. Something would slide across my forehead, much the way it would feel if a mother were to push her daughter’s hair back from her eyes. A feather-light kiss tickled my forehead next, while a soft pressure on my hand attested to a bangle bracelet being slipped onto my wrist. More kisses always followed, butterflies on each cheek, then one on the nose that always made me smile even through the rush of sorrow that quickly transformed into panic at the imminent loss.
I was usually crying by the time I heard the voice. Sometimes I thought that if I could only stop the words, prevent my visitor from saying goodbye, maybe this time she wouldn’t have to leave. But always they came, always the same, sweet words whispered in a choked voice vaguely reminiscent of some place south of the Mason-Dixon line.
“I love you, Leelee. Don’t ever forget how much I love you.”
It was the closest thing to a family tradition that I had.
But this year would be different, I thought, slipping the bracelet off my wrist and laying it on the table. This year, between my cameras and my tape recorder and my sheer stubborn determination, I was going to grab the voice. I was finally going to ask the questions that had haunted me for as long as I could remember.
This year, when she paid her ghostly call, I was going to break the rules and ask my mother why she had abandoned me.
