She faced Ava square on. “Your mom eventually moved on, or pretended to. I was furious. The weight of knowing that a girl had disappeared, that because of my sister, a girl had disappeared . . . it crushed me. I started feeling as if I were going crazy. People said Klara was crazy; maybe I was, too. So, when it was finally my Wishing Day, do you know what I wished?”
Ava dealt out possibilities like playing cards: maybe Aunt Elena wished for Emily to come back, for everything to go back to normal, or for Klara not to have made that stupid wish about the contest in the first place. Maybe she wished she hadn’t woken up that night, wanting a sip of water.
Ava discarded them all, because if Aunt Elena had made any of those wishes, she and Aunt Elena wouldn’t be sitting here now. Mama wouldn’t have shut herself up in her bedroom. There wouldn’t be an Angela in Papa’s life.
“I wished to forget Emily too,” Aunt Elena said softly. “That was the wish I could make come true myself, and I suppose I did.” With her eyes, she begged Ava to understand. “Denial is a powerful force.”
Ava was dumbfounded. She understood that Aunt Elena was hurting, and she didn’t want to dig a knife into her wound or whatever. And yet, seriously?!
Ava snapped a sugar cookie in half. She snapped one of the halves in half.
“So now, when you think of Emily . . . ,” Ava began.
“I didn’t, not for years and years,” Aunt Elena said. “But after Natasha’s Wishing Day, bits started creeping back. After Darya’s birthday, more crept back. You girls, with all your questions. And your mother! She can’t go a day without mentioning Emily!”
“So now that you remember her again, why don’t you tell people?”
“Because I don’t remember her again!” Aunt Elena exploded. She pressed her lips together and shot a look down the hall. “I remember the events that happened, but I remember them the way I’d remember the plot of a play. Act One: Klara made a wish. Klara told me her wish. Her wish made a girl named Emily disappear.”
She leaned forward, holding her head with her fingertips. “Act Two. I searched for the girl named Emily. I found no trace of her. So, on my Wishing Day, I wished to no longer remember her.” She peered at Ava through the hair falling into her eyes. “The end.”
“I hate that play,” Ava said.
“Yes. You’re not the only one.”
“Shouldn’t there be an Act Three?”
Aunt Elena moved her hand to suggest it was out of her control, and Ava felt a surge of frustration.
“You’re acting as if . . . as if it were a play for real, and you’re just doing what the script says to do!” she said.
Aunt Elena lifted her head. “What an odd thing to say, Ava.” Something was going on with her features, some internal battle playing out that sent a shiver up Ava’s spine. “What a very. Odd. Thing to say.”
“Is there anything about any of this that isn’t odd?” Ava demanded.
Aunt Elena shook her head. It seemed as though she had one foot planted in the world in front of them, the now world, and the other foot planted in another place, another when.
“Is there any way you can prove what you’ve told me?” asked Ava.
“About Emily? No.”
“And there’s no one who can confirm your version of things, since I’m the only person you’ve told your story to.”
“I’m afraid you’re right,” said Aunt Elena. She frowned. “Unless . . .”
“Unless what?”
“There is something. It might matter, or it might not.”
“About Emily?”
“I can’t grab hold of it,” said Aunt Elena.
“Is it about Mama?”
“No, I don’t think so . . .”
“Then what?”
“You asked if there was anyone who could confirm my story,” Aunt Elena said. “I said no, but I think there might be, after all. It’s . . . it’s like a toothache, but in my mind. It’s there. I just can’t get to it!”
Ava got a crazy idea. An absolutely ridiculous idea. She took Aunt Elena’s hands and said, “Did you know that scientists, lots of them, think telepathy is real?”
Aunt Elena looked bewildered.
“Telepathy,” Ava repeated. “The ability to read another person’s thoughts.”
“I know what it is,” said Aunt Elena.
“Scientists also say that more people have it than maybe we know. That a person could be telepathic and not even know it!”
Aunt Elena’s smile was fond, if amused. She returned to Ava, present again and no longer in the world-between-worlds she’d seemed trapped in. “Do you want to try and read my mind, sweet niece?” She spread her arms, flopped against the sofa, and closed her eyes. “Go for it.”
Ava set her shoulders. She had no clue what she was doing, but the papers she’d read mentioned focus, concentration, and single-mindedness of purpose, so . . . okay. She closed her eyes and mentally reached out to Aunt Elena.
Jellyfish tentacles, she thought, imagining slender tendrils floating from her mind to her aunt’s. Then she thought, No! Yuck! She didn’t want jellyfish tentacles connecting them. Jellyfish were pretty, but they stung people.
She tried again. She imagined probes. Pleasant, well-intentioned probes, not UFO-abduction-story probes. She imagined electrodes, but without the skullcaps. She imagined energy from her mind seeking energy from Aunt Elena’s mind, and for a moment, she felt something! A door, edging open. Brilliant light seeping through the crack, tiny wings fluttering and surrounding Ava with Aunt Elena-ness . . .
And then, gone.
Calm. Neutral. A door merging seamlessly with a wall, a lake without ripples.
“You can open your eyes, Aunt Elena.”
Aunt Elena did. “Nothing?”
“Nothing.” Ava tried to hide her disappointment.
“Well, it was worth a try,” Aunt Elena said. “Don’t feel bad.” She stood and took the cookie plate into the kitchen.
Ava trailed behind her and put her Coke can in the recycling bin. “So . . . guess I’ll take off.”
“It was good to see you,” Aunt Elena said. “Come anytime. And Ava?”
Ava paused.
“Don’t ever stop trying. Even if it seems silly, even if it seems pointless—never give up hope.”
“Okay.”
Aunt Elena adopted an I’m-about-to-quote-something expression. Speaking clearly, she
