The car stopped on Park Street, across from the tourist trolleys that stopped every twenty minutes. Dad had taken them all on one once—one of the orange ones, with the open sides. It had been summer then.
“Do you have your mittens, sweetheart?” Mam was already out on the sidewalk, peering through the window. “You stay with Uncle Joe, Mandy—just for a few minutes.”
Jem got out and stood with Mam on the sidewalk, putting on his mittens while they watched the gray Caddy pull away.
“Close your eyes, Jem,” Mam said quietly, and took his hand, squeezing it. “Tell me if you can feel Mandy in your head.”
“Sure. I mean, yes. She’s there.” He hadn’t thought of Mandy as a little red light before the business in the tunnel with the train, but now he did. It kind of made it easier to concentrate on her.
“That’s good. You can open your eyes if you want to,” Mam said. “But keep thinking about Mandy. Tell me if she gets too far away for you to feel.”
He could feel Mandy all the way, until the Caddy pulled up next to them again—though she had got a little fainter, then stronger again.
They did it again, with Uncle Joe and Mandy going all the way down to Arlington Street, on the far side of the Public Garden. He could still do it and was getting kind of cold and bored, standing there on the street.
“She can hear him fine,” Uncle Joe reported, rolling down his window. “How ’bout you, sport? You hear your sister okay?”
“Yeah,” he said patiently. “I mean—I can tell where she is, kind of. She doesn’t talk in my head or anything like that.” He was glad she didn’t. He wouldn’t want Mandy chattering away in his head all the time—and he didn’t want her listening to his thoughts, either. He frowned at her; he hadn’t actually thought of that before.
“You can’t hear what I’m thinking, can you?” he demanded, shoving his face in the open window. Mandy was riding up front now and looked up at him, surprised. She’d been sucking her thumb, he saw; it was all wet.
“No,” she said, kind of uncertainly. He could see she was sort of scared by this. So was he, but he figured he wouldn’t let her—or Mam—know that. “That’s good,” he said, and patted her on the head. She hated being patted on the head and swiped at him with a ferocious snarl. He stepped back out of reach and grinned at her.
“If we have to do it again,” he said to his mother, “maybe Mandy can stay with you, and I’ll go with Uncle Joe?”
Mam glanced uncertainly at him, then at Mandy, but seemed to get what he was really saying and nodded, opening the door for Mandy to bounce out, relieved.
Uncle Joe hummed softly to himself as they turned around, went right, and headed down past the big theater and the Freemasons’ building. Jem could see Uncle Joe’s knuckles showing through his skin, though, where he was clutching the wheel.
“You nervous, sport?” Uncle Joe said, as they passed the Frog Pond. It was drained for the winter; it looked sort of sad.
“Uh-huh.” Jem swallowed. “Are you?”
Uncle Joe glanced at him, kind of startled, then smiled as he turned back to keep his eyes on the road.
“Yeah,” he said softly. “But I think it’s gonna be okay. You’ll take good care of your mom and Mandy, and you’ll find your dad. You’ll be together again.”
“Yeah,” Jem said, and swallowed again.
They drove in silence for a little bit, and the snow made little scratchy noises on the windshield, like salt being shaken on the glass.
“Mam and Mandy are gonna be pretty cold,” Jem ventured.
“Yeah, this’ll be our last try today,” Uncle Joe assured him. “Still got her? Mandy?”
He hadn’t been paying attention; he’d been thinking about the stone circles. And the thing in the tunnel. And Daddy. His stomach hurt.
“No,” he said blankly. “No! I can’t feel her!” The idea suddenly panicked him and he stiffened in his seat, pushing back with his feet. “Drive back!”
“Right away, pal,” Uncle Joe said, and made a U-turn right in the middle of the street. “Gloucester Street. Can you remember that name? We need to tell your mom, so she can work out the distance.”
“Uh-huh,” Jem said, but he wasn’t really listening to Uncle Joe. He was listening hard for Mandy. He’d never thought about it at all before this, never paid any attention to whether he could sense her or not. But now it was important, and he balled up his fists and shoved one into his middle, under his ribs, where the hurt was.
Then there she was, just as though she’d always been there, like one of his toenails or something, and he let his breath out in a gasp that made Uncle Joe look sharply at him.
“You got her again?”
Jem nodded, feeling inexpressible relief. Uncle Joe sighed and his big shoulders relaxed, too.
“Good,” he said. “Don’t let go.”
BRIANNA PICKED UP Esmeralda the rag doll from the floor of the Abernathys’ guest room and tucked her carefully in next to Mandy. Four miles. They’d spent the morning driving round Boston in circles, and now they knew roughly how far the kids’ mutual radar went. Jem could sense Mandy at a little over a mile, but she could sense him at nearly four. Jem could sense Brianna, too, but only vaguely and only for a short distance; Mandy could sense her mother almost as far as she could detect Jem.
She should write that down in the guide, she thought, but she’d spent the afternoon in frenzied arrangements, and right now the effort of finding a pencil felt like searching for the source of the Nile or climbing Kilimanjaro. Tomorrow.