The Afterlife of Holly Chase

“You’re unbelievable.” She drew herself up until she was standing as tall as she could and looked him in the eyes. “It’s probably better for both of us if I don’t see you anymore. You can pretend you disowned me or whatever. Like you’re an only child—I think that would suit you. I don’t want to be a part of this legacy. Not anymore.”

  “Fine. Fine, then go,” Past Ethan snarled. “You always were a quitter.”

  I glanced over at my Ethan. He hadn’t said anything throughout this entire conversation. He’d just watched it all replay, his jaw set, his eyes distant.

  “Like I said,” Jack murmured as she moved toward the door, “I hope you’re happy in this life. But you won’t be.”

  Then she was gone.

  Past Ethan stared after her for a minute, and then swept all the papers and office supplies off his grandfather’s desk and onto the floor. He kicked the fancy metal trash can in the corner, leaving a huge dent in both the trash can and the wall, and then he stormed out of the room and slammed the door behind him.

  “Are we done now?” Present Ethan asked grimly.

  “Almost,” I answered. “Have you seen your sister since that day?”

  He shook his head.

  “She graduated with honors,” I informed him. “And she’s an art teacher at a middle school not far from where you grew up. Giving back to her community, eating organic, volunteering to read for the blind, even. She’s getting married this spring.”

  “Good for her,” Ethan said tonelessly. “Now are we done?”

  “Ethan, it’s important that you—”

  “No, I get it,” he interrupted. “No need to explain. This was the part where you show me how bad I am. So I’ll feel ashamed, right? So I’ll promise to be better?”

  Well . . . yes.

  “I told you, these are just the shadows of things that have already happened,” I responded dutifully. “If you don’t like it, don’t blame me. It’s your life.”

  “Yes. It’s my life. It’s my business. So why are you butting in?” he asked. “You think I’m some kind of villain who needs to be taught a lesson?”

  The Scrooges were always mad at this point. They felt attacked. Exposed. They lashed out. Because they could see, maybe even for the first time, how they were responsible for their own misery. It was a bitter pill. I could still taste it in my mouth even six years later.

  “I don’t think you’re a villain, Ethan,” I said. “You’re a good person who’s had a difficult past, and . . .” I swallowed. “I understand that. Really, I do.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Why are you doing this to me? What is this?”

  I shook my head. “It’s your past,” I said. “It is what it is.”

  At that moment I let my lamp flare up again to the level that would blind him. Total whiteout. That was supposed to be my exit. I had to leave him now. This was probably the last time I’d ever see him, I realized, and I was struck by the urge to kiss him—to press my lips to his one last time. But instead I just squeezed his hand and let go.

  Good-bye, Ethan, I thought. I wish you the best life.

  I swallowed back a sob as I fled into the Time Tunnel. I caught just a glimpse of Dave’s green robes as we passed each other by.

  It was his turn now.

  Time to deal with the present. And I was officially in Ethan’s past.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  NORMALLY WHEN MY PART OF the story was done, I waited in the Go Room with everybody else at the company to see how the rest of the night played out. So I would have been there to watch Dave escort Ethan to see his Bob Cratchit, and apparently a homeless guy on Sixth Avenue.

  But I didn’t see any of that. The minute I crossed back into the Time Tunnel and then back to the present, I ran down the hall to my dressing room. Because I didn’t want anyone to notice me bawling my eyes out. That would be considered weird.

  My dressing room was empty, thankfully—part of me had been half expecting to find Stephanie in there—so I locked the door and struggled out of my costume, which was no easy task all by myself.

  There was a shower in the dressing room bathroom. I only ever used it once a year, and sometimes not even that often, because sometimes I was in such a hurry to get out of the office after Christmas that I just cold creamed my face and went home. But that night—Ethan’s night—I took a five-minute shower so I could just cry into the spray of the water. When I got out I did a quick blow-dry and slapped on a regular amount of makeup—so I’d look a little better when I went back out there.

  When I got back to the Go Room, Ethan was delivering this touching little speech to Dave on the subject of the homeless:

  “Hey, if he’s homeless, he should start by getting a job. It’s that easy—you work, they pay you, you pay for someplace to live. But this guy doesn’t want to work, does he? No. He wants to sit here, and if he sits here long enough, somebody will pay for his next bottle of vodka.”

  Apparently seeing the Dents and how bad the kid really had it at home hadn’t softened Ethan’s heart much. He seemed as cool and collected and merciless as ever. Worse off than when I’d left him. Usually, by this point, the Scrooge was starting to soften. To see things differently. To let go of his anger. So Boz was probably a little worried.

  I was worried, too, so much I felt sick with it. I’d done my best with the past. I’d tried to show Ethan things that would be meaningful. I’d tried to help him believe, and he’d seemed to; at least for part of it, he’d seemed to. But what if that hadn’t been enough?

  Dave wasn’t giving up on him, though.

  “This man is not a drunk,” he informed Ethan as they stood before the homeless guy on Sixth Avenue, who couldn’t see them, of course, but was mumbling like he knew someone was there. “He is simply a man who’s been unlucky in life. Once, this man played the saxophone for one of the most sought-after jazz bands in New York City. He had a beautiful wife and a daughter, and he was more than willing to work, and work hard, every day. But then he was injured while fixing a leak in his roof. After that, there was a series of small misfortunes, one after another, all leading him to this place.”

  “And how do you know all this?” Ethan asked.

  “I can see what’s inside him,” Dave answered mysteriously. “Right now, what he feels most is cold. Then, hungry. He lost touch with his family—his wife died, and his daughter doesn’t even know where to find him. Miranda is his daughter’s name. She works at the front desk of the London NYC Hotel just a few blocks from here. She’s probably even seen him in passing, but she doesn’t really look at him. Nobody really looks at him.”

  Ethan was looking at him, though. The man was sitting in a sleeping bag and a tangle of raggedy blankets against the side of a building where there was construction going on. He was wearing layers and layers of mismatched clothes: a shirt and a sweatshirt and a coat with a broken zipper, three scarves of different patterns wound around his neck, a faded floppy black hat mashed on top of his strings of shoulder-length salt-and-pepper hair, and a pair of cheap sunglasses.

  “If someone would inform his daughter of his whereabouts,” Dave continued, “his life would change again. All it would take is a few sentences, and perhaps a pair of warm gloves, to save this man.”

  Ethan glanced off down the street. “What does this have to do with me? Why are you going through so much effort to show me this one homeless man when there must be ten more just like him in a one-mile radius from here? What, you want me to buy him some gloves?”

  “You have a connection with this man,” Dave said. “Don’t you recognize him?”

  “No.” Ethan scoffed. “No, I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen him before.”

  “Not in person, I think, but he was on the news several years ago—a witness to a terrible accident that happened not far from here. Later he even testified in court.”

  I could tell when Ethan understood what the connection was because his face went carefully blank. “So this is the saxophone player.”

&nbsp
; Dave nodded.

  “The one my father gave money to that day.”

  “Yes.”

  “You think that’s going to make me want to help him? If my dad hadn’t stopped to listen to this guy, he’d still be alive,” Ethan said bitterly.

  “That’s true.” Dave gazed down at the man tenderly. “And it was this man who saw what happened and tried to help him. Your father died in this man’s arms.”

  Ethan took a step back and looked around, like he was deciding to take off and just needed to figure out where to go. “Get me out of here,” he said sharply. “I’ve had enough of this. Please.”

  I thought the please was a nice touch.

  “Okay, prepping the tunnel to move them to the party,” said the operator from the control booth. It wasn’t Grant anymore—someone from Dave’s team had taken over his post. He and Marty had taken up their places in the Go Room and were undoubtedly about to start taking bets on whether or not Ethan would fail. My stomach churned at the thought.

  Boz was right, I thought. We shouldn’t bet on them.

  The fog and snow machines whirred on. In less than a minute Dave and Ethan came through and the cameras shifted to the party scene—a brownstone apartment in the Bronx. Inside, all the lights were on, and we could hear voices and music—Christmas carols, of course.

  “O come all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant . . .”

  “This is my mom’s place,” Ethan said. I’d never seen him look so out of it—the thing with the homeless man had really gotten to him.

  “Yes. Shall we?” Dave gestured up the small set of stairs toward the front door.

  “Whatever,” Ethan said.

  It wasn’t a big party—about a dozen people or so—but they were all having a great time, from the sound of it. As Dave and Ethan went into the apartment, they could hear someone laughing. It was one of the best laughs I’d ever heard—full and warm and brimming with delight. It just made you feel good, hearing that laugh.

  I recognized it. I looked at Ethan to see his reaction.

  He stopped when he heard it. “That’s my mom,” he said. “She always had this contagious laugh.”

  He was right about it being contagious. Soon everybody was laughing. Dave and Ethan moved forward toward the sound until they came into a sitting room, which was decorated beautifully for Christmas, with a huge silver tree in front of the window and strands of holly and candles along the fireplace and end tables. Against one wall was a huge, comfortable-looking sofa with several people sitting on it, posing as a man took their picture with a bunch of phones.

  “Say cheese, everyone,” he said.

  At one end of the sofa, Ethan’s mother sat wearing a black velvet dress that looked amazing on her. Next to her was a tall red-haired man who I assumed must be the new husband. On his knee sat a little redheaded girl in a green dress—Ethan’s half sister. Then an older woman, Ethan’s grandmother from his mother’s side, who was holding a tiny new baby. Then a young man in his twenties who I’d never seen in any of Ethan’s memories. And at the farthest end was Jack—her hair a regular glossy brown again.

  “Squeeze together a little,” said the man taking the pictures, and they did, which made Ethan’s mom laugh again, which made them all laugh. “That’s a great one,” the man said, snapping off a series of pictures. “That’s the whole family, isn’t it? It could be next year’s Christmas card.”

  “Not the whole family,” Jack said, taking the hand of the man sitting next to her. “We’re still missing one. My brother.”

  “I did invite him,” Ethan’s grandmother said. “He told me, and I quote, that ‘Christmas parties are the lamest of all parties.’ And Christmas, he said, was just a stupid excuse to rip people off.”

  “Sounds like Ethan,” Jack said. “He believes it, too. That’s what’s sad. He’s a regular Ebenezer Scrooge.”

  Everyone in the Go Room burst into a nervous kind of laughter.

  Ethan looked out the window, like he was bored and just waiting for the opportunity to duck out.

  “Oh, he’s not that bad,” said the old woman—the grandmother. “He used to be such a sweet boy.”

  “Used to be,” muttered Jack.

  “He took your father’s death hard, that’s all,” said Ethan’s mom. “It messed us all up, didn’t it?” She gave Jack a meaningful glance that said I know all about what you did during that stage.

  Jack shrugged. “I guess. But Ethan doesn’t show signs of snapping out of it anytime soon.”

  “Where does she get off judging me?” Ethan said under his breath. “Like she’s a saint.”

  “There are two ways to respond when life hands you something unpleasant,” the grandmother said, smiling down at the infant in her lap. “You can get soft or you can get tough. Our Ethan has just decided to get tough, it seems. But he’ll come around eventually, I think. He’s got a good heart under there somewhere. And he has time—God knows, he’s, what, seventeen now? He has time to get himself on the right path again.”

  She was wrong, of course.

  “Which is why I will continue to invite him to this ‘lame’ Christmas party every year,” his grandmother said. She was so the Fred in this situation.

  “And why I will keep calling him every week,” added his mother. “Even though he doesn’t want to talk to me. Oh, and that reminds me. You know what?” Her smile was full of mischief, like she was about to spill the best secret ever. “He told me he has a girlfriend now.”

  Uh-oh.

  “Poor girl!” exclaimed Jack. “Who is it? Tell me it’s not a Manhattan socialite with an IQ the same size as her waist measurement.”

  “Her name . . .” His mom paused dramatically. “. . . is Victoria Scott.”

  “That’s a socialite’s name if I ever heard one,” Jack said.

  Ethan’s mom reached over and pretended to smack Jack on the back of the head. “He didn’t talk about her that way. He called her Tori. He said that she likes to meet in all these obscure places around the city, like the left lion of the New York Public Library—you know the lions? She’s a free spirit, apparently.”

  “Well, perhaps that’s just what Ethan needs at this juncture,” said Grandma. “A free spirit.”

  The irony was kind of killing me. I was a spirit, sure, but not exactly free.

  “But what kind of name is Tori, seriously?” said Jack.

  “Like Jack’s such a ladylike name,” said Ethan. I smiled. My hero, coming to my defense, even if his sister couldn’t hear him.

  “Tell me about this Victoria Scott,” Dave said suddenly. “I’d like to know more about her.”

  UH-OH.

  “What, you don’t already know everything there is to know about me?” Ethan gave him a sarcastic smirk. “You can see inside me, right? Wasn’t the ghost wearing her face?”

  I was dead. Done for. Doomed. This was it.

  “Her face,” Dave repeated. “What do you—”

  Thankfully they were interrupted by everyone being called to some kind of charades-like game in the other room, which was something straight out of A Christmas Carol, too, much to everyone in the Go Room’s delight. Ethan went over to watch, and Dave trailed behind him, his question unasked for the moment.

  Ethan’s mom was up first. She turned to Ethan’s stepdad. She lifted her head regally, obviously pretending to be someone else. “I’m like a cat here, a no-named slob,” she said in a higher voice than usual. “We belong to nobody, and nobody belongs to us. We don’t even belong to each other.”

  “Holly Golightly. From Breakfast at Tiffany’s!” the stepdad said immediately.

  Jack’s jaw dropped. “That was so . . . how did you even get that?”

  “We have a psychic connection,” his mom said, kissing the stepdad on the cheek. “Your turn, Jackie O.”

  “We’ll see who has a psychic connection,” Jack said.

  And so they played for a while, back and forth, one team (made up of the little girl, whose name was Grac
e, and Ethan’s mom and her husband, whose name was apparently Richard) against the other (Jack, Mason—Jack’s fiancé, and Evelyn, the grandmother), with Ethan’s mom’s team the clear winner. I didn’t fully understand the rules of the game, but it was something like Who Am I? They went through a bunch of funny characters, impersonating the person if they could, using well-known lines or sayings. In the next twenty or so minutes they went through George Washington, Katy Perry, Elmo, George W. Bush, Michael Jackson, Kerry Washington, and Harry Potter. We all kind of got into it, even Ethan, who shouted out some guesses even though nobody could hear them.

  Then Jack took a slip of paper out of the hat where they’d all put in a clue and read it. Her turn again.

  “Grace!” she exclaimed. “Did you write this?”

  The little girl giggled. “Daddy helped me write it.”

  “Okay. Well. This is one I should be able to do.” She folded the paper back up and put it aside. Then she stood up and stared coldly at the group. “This party is so lame,” she said in a low, boylike monotone. “Christmas parties are the lamest kind of party. I like money. Do any of you have lots of money? Well, then, you’re not worth my time.”

  It was quiet for a minute. Everyone knew the answer.

  “It’s Ethan.” Jack’s fiancé scratched the back of his neck. “I mean, I haven’t met him, but we were just talking about him. Mr. Scrooge,” he said with an uncomfortable laugh.

  Everyone in the Go Room giggled.

  “Yes, that’s my brother.” Jack tried to smile. “He just does what he wants, and the rest of us can go to hell.”

  I glanced at Ethan. He was looking intently at the floor now, like he was counting the fibers in the carpet. We all waited to see how he’d react. With Scrooges it was generally about fifty-fifty at this point. Half of them were seriously seeing the error of their ways. And half needed Blackpool to give them that extra little push.

  “Shall we go?” Dave asked Ethan quietly.

  Ethan looked up. I could tell immediately that something had changed in him, and not for the good. Something like what had happened with me on my night as the Scrooge. He’d taken a turn.