“What people?” Aunt Odie asked.
“I’ll tell you later,” I said.
“Different clientele,” Paulie said. “They’re not stuck. Just want to help those left behind.”
I nodded. Stared at the sky again.
When we walked back into the house, everyone looked at us, wide-eyed.
“Where’s my daughter?” JimDaddy asked.
“She’s gone on,” I said.
Momma stood. Took a deep breath. “They’re both right here,” she said, gesturing at me and Baby Lucy. JimDaddy nodded, pulled me into a hug. Momma handed him Baby Lucy, who laughed and pointed at the ceiling as he held her.
114
I stood on the porch with Buddy. His momma had found him missing from his place and called him eight times. Now she stood across the street, staring at us, hands on her hips.
“Come to the swing,” he said. “The light will go out.”
We walked across the front porch. The smell of petunias floated in the air.
“I see those that passed on,” I said. “It’s a Messenger Gift. You just as well know.”
“I’m glad you told me.”
The light clicked off.
“May I kiss you good night, Evie Messenger?”
I answered by kissing him first.
“What’s your name?”
The girl tilts her head and her hair floats to her shoulders, like a butterfly ready to land.
“I can’t remember,” she says.
I blink in the dark.
The room is comfortable. I’m comfortable. Even though I’m getting ready to start this all again, it feels right.
“What do you remember?”
She’s quiet. In slow motion she becomes more real, more there.
“I just know everyone loved me.”
I nod. “Okay,” I say.
She’s close enough to touch now. I feel her in the air around me. Feel she was loved.
“Maybe I can help.”
About the Author
Carol Lynch Williams is a PEN/Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship recipient, author of more than a dozen books, and a graduate of the Vermont College MFA program. She facilitates Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers, a weeklong writing conference in Sandy, Utah. She lives in Utah with her family. Visit her at CarolLynchWilliams.com and at her blog, Throwingupwords.wordpress.com.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2016 by Carol Lynch Williams
Jacket photographs copyright © 2016 by Lumina Images/Getty Images and Victoria Avvacumova/Getty Images
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Jacket design by Chloë Foglia
Interior design by Hilary Zarycky
The text for this book was set in Bodoni.
First Edition
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Williams, Carol Lynch, author.
Title: Messenger / Carol Lynch Williams.
Description: First Edition. | New York : Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, [2016] | “A Paula Wiseman Book.” | Summary: “Evie Messenger, who can see and talk to ghosts, tries to solve the mystery of a teenage ghost who is following her”—Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015049285| ISBN 9781481457767 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781481457781 (eBook)
Subjects: | CYAC: Ghosts—Fiction. | Ability—Fiction. | Supernatural—Fiction. | Mystery and detective stories. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Family / General (see also headings under Social Issues). | JUVENILE FICTION / Love & Romance.
Classification: LCC PZ7.W65588 Ev 2016 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2015049285
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