The Afterlife of Holly Chase by Cynthia Hand
“I just thought you might want to feel human again,” Yvonne said sweetly.
“That really is amazing of you,” said my dad. He smiled at her. He genuinely meant it. “Thank you so much.”
After she’d talked to my parents for a while, got some good footage, made my mother look less like Gollum, Yvonne took me aside. “And let’s see you, my little darling,” she said, pulling me out to arm’s length to give me a once-over. “Well. You look just like your mother.” She tapped her chin thoughtfully. “Though I really think we should do something about that hair.”
I stared up at her. Having this reality-show-personality in my house felt a bit unreal, like there was a lioness stalking around the living room. I could see that Yvonne had carefully constructed every part of herself—her long platinum hair, her perfect makeup, her form-fitting black clothes. Even then I understood that her appearance was like her armor, her shield against the world. She looked tough and smart and capable of anything.
I thought, She’s not going to get sick. She’s not going to die.
And I wanted to be just like her.
That’s how it began. My dad married Yvonne about a year after Mom died. Yvonne was like a different person around my dad—she laughed at his jokes and hung on his every word and was always kind of petting him. He didn’t figure out what she was really like until it was too late to back out. Then he started disappearing into his work. And I started dyeing my hair blond and straightening it, so when I looked in the mirror I didn’t see my dead mother anymore. I saw Yvonne’s strength. I saw a fighter, a survivor, a realist. I saw a version of myself that I could live with. And that’s what got me through. So, in her own horrible way, Yvonne saved me.
Anyway. That was my Marley. I had a hunch that Ethan’s was his grandfather. The old man with the cold blue eyes. I’d seen only a flash of him during my first memory sift with Ethan, and he had the right look, as I mentioned, but most of all it was the feeling I’d gotten when that image had flitted through Ethan’s mind—a kind of hard reverence that I recognized, a mix of dislike and admiration. So during the next sift, I went hunting for Ethan Jonathan Winters I. Ethan Senior.
He wasn’t super difficult to locate. He hadn’t been around much when Ethan was little—I got the impression, sorting through the past here and there, that he and Ethan’s father hadn’t exactly seen eye to eye about most things. But after Ethan’s father died, the grandfather started popping up all over the place like a cantankerous old penny.
I picked one of the keener memories and honed in on it: Ethan knocking on the door to his grandfather’s study. If I had to place us in time, I’d say this was after his dad had died (there was just that particular tang of grief in Ethan’s awareness that I was so familiar with myself—the terrible ache), but not long after. Ethan and his mother and sister were staying at what was then Ethan Senior’s penthouse until his mother could get her feet under her. At least that was what the old man kept telling everyone. Kid Ethan thought this was strange for him to say, because his mother had never been off her feet, that he knew. But the apartment had plenty of room, and Ethan felt safe there. Like the bad things that happened in the world couldn’t happen in that place. Grandfather had so much money that nothing could touch him.
Ethan knocked on the study door. A sharp voice told him to come in.
His grandfather was on the phone. “I don’t care whose fault it is,” he was saying. “Fix it.” He waved Ethan inside. “You’ve got until Monday, or you’ll be looking for another job. Good-bye.” He slammed the phone down and glared at little Ethan. “What do you want?”
Heart beating fast, Ethan handed him a report card. His grandfather scanned it quickly.
“It’s acceptable,” he said.
The last time Ethan had given his report card to his dad, he’d received a high five and a rough hug and a “what a brain you’re becoming,” before his father had whipped out his wallet and given him ten dollars—one for every A he’d earned. Then they’d gone to get ice cream.
His grandfather frowned. “I suppose you expect some sort of congratulations, but you’ll get no such thing from me. If you want a trophy, go join Little League.”
Ethan straightened. “I don’t care about a trophy, sir. Mom’s out of town until Tuesday, so I need you to sign it. To prove that you’ve seen it.”
“Oh.” The old man hastily scrawled his signature at the bottom of the paper. He pushed it back toward Ethan. “There you are.” Then he picked up his phone and dialed. “Mary,” he barked when the person on the other end picked up. “Call HR and have them start processing Hopkins’s termination. Have them deliver his pink slip on Tuesday.”
He hung up again.
Ethan didn’t say anything, but his grandfather explained anyway. “I don’t give second chances,” he said. “Second chances make you weak. He’ll be better off if I fire him. This way he’ll learn.”
His grandfather had apparently said a lot of that kind of thing to Ethan over the years. This was the first time, though, that Ethan paid attention. He’d been listening closely ever since, and now he could flip through these tidbits of advice like songs on a playlist.
Never give anything away unless you know it will benefit you somehow in the long run.
Never settle for a woman who isn’t beautiful. But take care that she’s not stupid, either. Beautiful, stupid women have been the undoing of many a great man.
Don’t let anybody get to you, and if they get to you, don’t let them see it. Never let them see you weak.
It was just like the way I heard my Inner Yvonne. Pure gold Marley-type stuff.
I looked for another memory of the old man and pinged on a particular Christmas morning sometime after the report card moment. The Winters family was still living in the penthouse, gathered in the living room opening presents that were piled neatly on the coffee table—no tree in the old man’s place, no other decorations, no Christmas spirit evident anywhere. Ethan was in a better mood than the Christmas with the family in the coffee commercial—he’d just received that new gaming system he’d wanted, so he was kind of happy. And he wanted to make his mom feel better, because he knew she was hurting, too.
“Thanks, Mom. This is awesome,” he said, and tried to give her a smile.
There had been kindness in him, I thought. Once.
“Rots your brain,” Ethan Senior muttered from his over-stuffed leather chair in the corner. He was practically scowling the entire time the present opening was happening. “That’s why this generation is made up of morons—because their parents just plug them in and let the television do the raising.”
I felt Ethan’s smile fade. His mother tried to act like she hadn’t heard the insult. His sister, though, who seemed about seventeen, looked at her grandfather and smirked. “Whereas you just left the raising to the hired help, isn’t that right, Grandpa?”
Jack kind of rocked. Ethan thought so, too. There was a fearlessness to her. She’d never cared what other people thought of her. If she wanted to dye her hair neon pink, she did it. If she wanted to wear combat boots with a plaid miniskirt, she wore them. She’d told Ethan that her nickname at school was Honey Badger. He had no idea what that meant.
“Don’t be impertinent,” snapped Ethan Senior.
“I can’t seem to help myself,” she shot back with a falsely sweet smile. “It must be my terrible upbringing.”
Ethan’s mother raised her hand. “Let’s try to get through this peaceably, please.” She bent to pick up another present from the table, a long silver-wrapped box. She read the tag and then handed it to Jack.
“Who’s this from?” Jack asked, frowning.
“From me. And it’s more than you deserve,” answered the old man.
Jack unwrapped the package, revealing a velvet box. She opened it. Inside was a diamond bracelet, which was totally familiar—I’d seen that bracelet the first time I’d been in Ethan’s mind. It was important, I felt. A key image that he carried with him.
“Well?” the old man demanded after a minute. “What do you think?”
“What is it, exactly?” Jack asked, staring down at the glittering string of jewels.
“It’s a tennis bracelet. Isn’t that what the young girls like to wear? It cost a pretty penny, I’ll tell you that.”
“And what am I supposed to do with it?” Jack clearly wasn’t as impressed as she was supposed to be. “I’m not really into tennis.”
“Wear it. Show your friends. That way they’ll know you’re a Winters.”
She shut the box. “No, thank you, Grandfather.” Her tone was surprisingly polite.
The old man’s face was slowly turning a beet red color, but his expression was calm, collected. “You don’t want it?”
“It’s not my taste,” she pointed out.
“As if you had any taste. Fine.” He held out his hand for it. “Give it back to me.”
She did. He immediately held the box out to Ethan. “This bracelet is worth twenty-five thousand dollars,” he said coldly. “If your sister’s too stupid to accept it, I want you to have it. Keep it. Sell it, when you’re old enough. It will be part of your inheritance.”
“Don’t call her stupid.” Ethan’s mother had a protective arm around Jack now. “We’re here because you wanted us to be here. If you treat us this way, we won’t come back.”
“In what way have I treated you? I’ve paid for the children’s school, shoes, clothing. I’ve kept you out of the poorhouse after my son died,” scoffed the old man.
“I didn’t ask you to do any of those things,” said Ethan’s mother. “Get your coats, kids. We’re going.”
That was clearly the moment when Ethan’s mom officially got her feet back under her.
Jack went out to the hall to fetch her jacket, but Ethan hesitated. His grandfather was still holding out the box. Still looking at him with eyes that were like chips of ice.
“Ethan, come on,” his mother urged from the doorway.
“Take it,” the elder Ethan Winters urged.
“Ethan, now.”
“Don’t let them make you soft,” Ethan Senior said softly. “It ruined your father, and it will ruin you, too. And never pass up an opportunity to gain an asset.”
“I’m coming, Mom,” Ethan said. He didn’t really know what the word asset meant, but he understood twenty-five thousand dollars well enough. He glanced over his shoulder, and his mother wasn’t looking at him—she was messing with Jack’s scarf—so he reached out and took the velvet box from his grandfather, who smiled. Ethan opened the box quickly, and then he slipped the diamond bracelet into his pocket.
“Good boy,” he heard his grandfather whisper as he walked out with his mother.
Oh yeah, I thought. This guy has Marley written all over him.
I spent a few minutes perusing the moments surrounding his death—his stroke, the series of hospital visits, his funeral. Then I watched from fifteen-year-old Ethan’s eyes as he took the urn of his grandfather’s ashes into the study and set it on his grandfather’s desk. He stood there for a minute looking around at all of the items that had belonged to Ethan Jonathan Winters I—books and papers, mostly, an antique clock ticking on the wall. And he actually missed the tough old bird.
“He was a bad man.” Jack came into the study. She was a senior in high school now, and she’d dyed her hair blue to match her eyes. “Don’t you remember how he used to talk down to Dad?”
“What are you talking about?” Ethan asked sullenly.
“Dad quit the company,” Jack said. “He left to go back to school for something besides business. That never sat well with Grandfather. They fought about it all the time before Dad died.”
“Grandfather was a great man,” Ethan said, his throat tight. “Dad was a screwup.”
Jack’s eyes filled with hurt and surprise. “You look just like Dad, you know?” Her expression hardened. “But now I think maybe you’re more like dear old Grandfather, after all.”
After she’d gone, Ethan thought about the diamond bracelet. He’d kept it hidden in an envelope at the back of his desk for two years, and he hadn’t told a soul about it, ever. He looked again around his grandfather’s office. He’d been told, just that morning, that the old man had left everything to him. His fortune. The business, as soon as he was old enough to run it. This very building. It’s all going to be mine, Ethan thought.
“Hey, Holly, he’s starting to move into a lighter sleep stage,” came Grant’s voice in my ear. “You should head back soon. Or give him a second dose of the lavender, if you need to keep working.”
It was late, and I had what I’d come for. Slowly I untangled myself from Ethan’s mind until we were fully separate again, him lying on his side in his near pitch-black bedroom, muttering in his sleep, me standing over him. I detached the transducer carefully and made my way back to the closet door, which was glowing around the edges. I opened it, stepped through, and was instantly back at Project Scrooge. The lights went on. Grant and Marty, both looking bleary-eyed, gave me a thumbs-up and started to gather their cards. They had apparently been playing poker all night while I was slaving away. Slackers. Stephanie bounded over to me with a vanilla latte. I sipped at it blissfully as she and I walked back to my office, our footsteps echoing in the empty hallway. The building was quiet this time of night. Deserted. I liked it so much better that way.
“So, did you get the Marley?” Stephanie asked as I plopped down at my desk. I put my arms over my head and stretched, rolled my neck from side to side. I was so exhausted it was suddenly hard to keep my eyes open. Sometimes the mind melding took a lot out of me. Especially those times when the Scrooge really reminded me of, well, me.
“I got the Marley,” I said with a tired smile.
SEVEN
“SO THE DAD’S THE FAN, right?” Grant asked.
“I mean, the dad’s obviously the Fan.” Marty turned to mans-plain this to Stephanie. “In the book, Fan is Ebenezer Scrooge’s sister. She’s the one good thing in Scrooge’s life—the only person who loves him unconditionally, who believes in him, who’s on his side no matter what.” Stephanie already knew this, as over the course of the past few weeks she’d practically memorized A Christmas Carol, but she nodded politely.
“And then the Fan always dies,” Grant added. “Total bummer.”
It was July. We were all sitting around the table in Conference Room B for a Team Lamp meeting. We’d just listened to Tox lay out her strategy for how she was going to wrangle up the spirit of Ethan Jonathan Winters I from wherever he’d wandered in the afterlife. That was how it worked: I found the Marley in the Scrooge’s memories. Tox found the Marley, like, literally. She was kind of a Ghostbuster—she located the spirit and brought it in to Project Scrooge. It was also her responsibility to convince this unhappy spirit to play his part on Christmas Eve—warn the Scrooge, be repentant, that kind of thing. I didn’t know why, since Tox handled the negotiations and I pretty much stayed out of it, but we never had any trouble convincing the Marleys to cooperate.
So now, with finding the Marley checked off, we were on to the next step: the Fan.
“Ethan’s dad does seem like a good Fan,” Stephanie said. “But that’s almost too easy, isn’t it? Why do we need all this time to figure out the Fan if we already know who it is?”
“Okay, no. Maybe we’ve identified the Fan,” Tox said, “but that doesn’t mean this next couple of months is going to be some kind of cake walk. What we have to do now is decide on the perfect Fan moment to show Ethan, the one that will affect him the most without sending him into a grief spiral or making him shut down completely.” She laughed. “The situation is delicate, clearly. So you see, now is when we actually have to figure out the Fan.”
“So we sift for Fan moments,” Stephanie assumed. “Find the best ones.”
“But it’s not that simple, is it, Holly?” Grant said.
I sighed. “Yes and no. The problem is that Ethan does
Tomas, who worked in research and development, flipped through his folder, where I could see a copy of a newspaper clipping. “We know most of the details,” he said. “Ethan’s dad was killed five years ago on the morning of December twenty-ninth, in a freak accident on the sidewalk at Lexington Avenue. He was just at the wrong place at the wrong time, and then bam—he got hit by falling construction debris. At least it was quick.”
I doubted that made a lot of difference to Ethan. That sounded bad.
“I thought you could look at any memory you wanted to,” Stephanie said, frowning.
I shook my head. “What I’m doing during a sift is basically remembering something with the Scrooge. He experiences it as a sort of dream, and I can direct it, in a way, but he has to cooperate. If he doesn’t want to go there, I can’t make him.”
“So what do we do if he won’t go there?”
“We look for ways in. Find memories to connect to that aren’t as painful, and hope to be able to catch a glimpse at the more important stuff. I did get that one initial memory of Central Park in the snow, so it’s possible. But it’d be better if I could see the dad’s death and know exactly how to approach the subject with Ethan.”
“Like I said,” Tox harrumphed, “it’s delicate. Sometimes it’s easier to catch a real ghost than a bunch of emotional baggage. I’m glad my job is the ghost.”
“And you’re sure the dad’s the Fan?” Stephanie asked.
I closed my eyes and sighed. “Ethan was a normal kid until his dad died. He was fine.”
And just like that, I wasn’t thinking about Ethan anymore. I was thinking about me.
“Okay, maybe he wasn’t exactly normal-normal,” I admitted. “But he wasn’t the way he is now. He had a family and a life and hopes and dreams like every other kid, and then . . .”
I remembered the door to my mother’s hospital room. Pushing it open. Seeing my mom lying there hooked up to all her tubes and wires. She’d looked like she was sleeping, but she wasn’t sleeping.