The candles wouldn’t light properly. Olivia struck the match three times before the flame caught, her hands trembling in her dim apartment with a bird’s eye view of Salem’s bay. Pink September twilight filtered through the curtains, leaving everything gray, uncertain. She touched the match to the first white taper, then the second, watching the flames waver as if they too were unsure.

Mother’s hands never shook. The thought came unbidden, as all thoughts seemed to do since her mother died. This gift, this ability to connect to the spirit world, this magic she could access with the snap of her fingers like a television witch, it was a gift. She knew it because her mother had told her so, as her grandmother had told her so, as generations of her women had told each other so through so many centuries. Now it was up to Olivia to continue the tradition. The weight of her gift felt too heavy to her then. 

It was only six weeks after the funeral, after all. Olivia still couldn’t believe her mother was gone. She still turned around, expecting to see her mother’s steel-gray eyes that matched her own, winking as though she were letting Olivia in on some great secret. Olivia shuddered with the knowledge that now her questions will never be answered. Her apartment felt both too large and too small—her mother’s grimoires still scattered among her own while the scent of dried lavender and sage lingered in corners. Olivia looked at the rotary phone hanging on the kitchen wall, noticing that it rang less often now that her mother was gone.

Olivia arranged the candles in the pattern her mother had taught her: four points, one center. Earth, air, fire, and water. And spirit. Spirit was the most important one, her mother said. Olivia had watched her mother’s ritual hundreds of times, had even assisted with the herbs and the timing, had held grieving hands while her mother did the real work of contacting the spirit in the Other World and relaying any messages. But Olivia had never done it alone and now she didn’t know if she could.

The knock came at seven o’clock, exactly as arranged. Olivia smoothed her navy blue flowing gypsy style skirt–all the girls were wearing them these days. It was modest, after all. Her hand reached to brush away hair that was no longer there. Her long red locks had been cut into a pixie, like Twiggy’s, since Olivia’s hairdresser had said the look would suit her. Olivia nodded at herself in the mirror, hoping that she appeared to be the kind of person that others would put their trust in.

Olivia opened the door to a woman, perhaps in her fifties, dressed in a heavy gray coat despite the lingering warmth of early autumn. The woman’s eyes were hollow, grieving, and she clutched her purse like a life preserver.

“Miss Olivia?” the woman whispered. “I’m Dorothy Patterson. We spoke on the phone. You said you could help me?”

Olivia smiled with great warmth. That had always been her gift, her mother told her. Her ability to connect to people. That’s what their work came down to in the end. Did the people who came to you for help trust you? Olivia stepped aside, and Mrs. Patterson entered, hesitantly, studying the small living room its light walls, neutral furniture, and the scent of the sea wafting in through the open window. Mrs. Patterson nodded once as if in approval. The card table with its white cloth, the candles, the two chairs facing each other. It was all as it should be. Olivia wore her mother’s amethyst, now sitting in the center of her chest like a purple heart as a good luck charm. Mrs. Patterson cleared her throat as she sat in the chair Olivia indicated.

“Your mother helped my sister,” Mrs. Patterson said, still clutching her purse. “Three years ago. After my sister’s son died in Vietnam. Your mother gave her peace. I thought, well, my husband, he… it’s been two months, and I can’t…” She pressed her handkerchief to her mouth and sobbed.

“I’ll do my best for you, Mrs. Patterson.”

Olivia took opposite chair and between them the candle flames danced. Olivia reached across the table, palms up, and Mrs. Patterson placed her cold hands in Olivia’s. 

“Tell me about your husband,” Olivia said.

This was how her mother always began. Not with ritual, not with ceremony, but with story. They need to remember him as alive first, her mother had explained years ago when Olivia was still a girl. Before we can reach the dead, we must honor the living they were.

Mrs. Patterson’s voice wavered as she spoke. “His name is Harold. We were married thirty-two years. He was a postal worker, and he was a kind man. Quiet. He love crossword puzzles and baseball. The Boston Red Sox, you know.” She smiled at the memory. “He had a heart attack sudden like, you know, no warning. Nothing. One day he was sorting mail and suddenly he was gone.” She sobbed again, louder this time, and Olivia’s heart broke, for Mrs. Patterson and herself. Her mother was so recently gone too. 

“I never said goodbye,” Mrs. Patterson whispered. “I was angry with him that morning. Something stupid, I can’t even remember what. My last words to him were angry.”

Olivia felt the familiar tightness in her chest. How many people had sat across from her mother with this same regret? How many carried the weight of unsaid words? We never know it’s the last moment with someone until that moment is gone forever. How many of us would change the way we interact with our loved ones if we thought that our time together was our last? How many angry or frustrated thoughts would we hold back while choosing to share our love instead?

Her mother’s voice echoed in her head. Feel for the thread, Olivia. Every spirit leaves one. Trust your hands, trust your heart.

At first, nothing. Only the sound of her own breathing, Mrs. Patterson’s quiet sniffling, and the rhythm of the waves slapping the shore. Olivia felt  the woman’s hands in hers, felt the pulse of grief radiating from her touch. Olivia visualized opening herself, creating space, and becoming a door between worlds. 

But there was nothing. No voices. No flashes of light. No sensing of a presence. Panic fluttered in Olivia’s stomach. She closed her eyes and tried to reach further, deeper, the way her mother had taught her to. She thought of Harold Patterson, postal worker, crosswords, the Red Sox. She tried to form his image in her mind, to call him forward.

Olivia’s breath came faster as she feared that Mrs. Patterson would realize that she didn’t have her mother’s gifts. Mrs. Patterson would feel Olivia’s failure, decide she was a fraud pretending to be her mother with none of her mother’s gift for the spiritual. Six weeks wasn’t enough time to become what her mother had been. Six years wouldn’t be enough. Six lifetimes.

I can’t do this, Olivia thought. 

And thn, a memory. Olivia at fourteen, crying in frustration after a failed attempt to sense the spirit her mother was channeling. “There’s nothing there,” Olivia said. 

Her mother had cupped her face, thumbs wiping away hot tears. “You’re trying to be me,” she’d said. “But you’re not me. You can only ever be you. Your gift won’t feel like mine. You won’t channel the way I channel. You will learn your own gift in your own time. Be patient. It will come.” 

“But I don’t know what my gift is.”

“Then find out.”

Olivia opened her eyes to see Mrs. Patterson watching her with hope and doubt crossing her face.

“Forgive me,” Olivia said. “I just need to change something. My way is different than my mother’s.” 

Mrs. Patterson nodded though her eyes grew small and uncertainty flickered across her features.

Olivia closed her eyes again, only this time she didn’t try to recreate her mother’s process. She didn’t visualize doors or threads or any of the metaphors her mother had used. Instead, she simply sat with her own grief. She thought of her mother’s hands, still and cold in the hospital bed. She thought of the last time she’d held them. She thought of the things she hadn’t said, or said too late, or never found the words for. She thought of the enormous absence filling her apartment now, the silence where guidance used to be. From that grief, that raw, open wound of loss, she reached, not up, not out, only forward. Heart to heart. Spirit to spirit. 

I miss her every day, Olivia thought. I don’t know if I can do what she did. But I’m here, and I’m trying. She thought of the damp hand in hers and heard a stifled sob. I’m so sorry you’re hurting too, Olivia thought. 

Then something shifted. It wasn’t dramatic. There was no flash of light, no sudden presence. A subtle change made the air feel lighter, like a room after someone has left. A warmth that hadn’t been there before. A sense of, not attention, but awareness.

Someone was listening. Olivia was sure of it. 

“Harold?” Olivia whispered.

The candles flickered, all at once, though there was no draft.

Mrs. Patterson gasped. “Is it…?”

“Shh,” Olivia said. “Give me a moment.”

The presence seemed confused. Olivia could feel it, not in words, but in impressions, emotions that pressed against her consciousness like fog against glass. There was some disorientation, some fear. A desperate quality, like someone trying to grasp onto something slipping away.

This is harder than anything she watched her mother do. Her mother had made it look easy, but now Olivia understood the truth. Her mother had borne the weight of this confusion, this fear, and had transformed it into peace. But how?

Olivia squeezed Mrs. Patterson’s hands tighter. “Harold is here, but he’s confused. He doesn’t understand what has happened.”

Mrs. Patterson made a sound, half sob, half laugh. “He never liked being confused. Always wanted everything organized, in its place.”

“Tell him what happened.”

“He can’t hear me.”

“He can. Through me. Tell him.”

Mrs. Patterson drew a shaky breath. “Harold, you had a heart attack. At work. You died, sweetheart. You died, and I’m so sorry I wasn’t there. I’m so sorry our last words were angry. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean any of it. You are the most important person in my life, and I’ve always loved you.”

The presence shifted again. Olivia felt recognition, then a wave of something so strong it nearly knocked her out of her chair. Vast, encompassing, three-decades-of-marriage love. And regret. Always, in the end there’s regret. 

Olivia felt herself overtaken by a force so profound. She felt as if the light of a hundred suns flowed through her veins and when she tried to speak a Babel of voices, in all languages from all times, flowed through her lips. Mrs. Patterson pulled back in fear. When the light dimmed, Olivia could speak to her guest again. 

Olivia exhaled and tried to pull her thoughts together so she could speak so her guest could understand. “Harold is sorry too.” Suddenly the right words were there, flowing through her like water. “He says the argument was his fault. He was stubborn. He’s always been stubborn.”

Mrs. Patterson laughed through her tears. “Yes, he has.”

“He says…” Olivia let the impressions form into meaning, keeping a tight control over her tongue, resisting the urge to speak all the languages at once. “He says you were right about the kitchen curtains. And he never finished the crossword puzzle from that Sunday. It’s been bothering him.”

“The seven letter word for regret.” Mrs. Patterson smiled through her tears. “I told him it was ‘remorse’ but he said it didn’t fit.”

The presence pulsed with something that like laughter. Yet Olivia still felt confusion and fear. Harold Patterson was there, connected to his wife, but he was also stuck. Caught between worlds, tethered by love and regret. Olivia had brought them together. But that wasn’t enough. She had to help him move forward. She had to show him how to let go, but she had no idea how.

Olivia took a breath and spoke from the rawest place inside her. “Harold, I lost my mother two months ago. Also from heart failure. She went fast too. I miss her every single day. There are things I never got to say. Things I wish I’d told her. But she’s gone, and I’m still here, and every day I have to choose to keep living even though she’s not here to guide me anymore. Your wife has to make that choice too, and she can’t make it if you’re still here, holding on to this life. You have to let her let you go. And you have to trust that the love doesn’t end. It transforms. It becomes something she will always carry with her. Something that makes her stronger, not weaker.”

The presence stilled and Olivia felt the moment stretch on, steady yet fragile as spun glass. Slowly, the confusion eased, the fear softened, and the desperate grasping quality loosened its grip.

Olivia opened her eyes and smiled. “He understands.” 

Mrs. Patterson leaned toward Olivia as though Olivia were the living embodiment of her husband. “Harold? I don’t want you to go. But I know you have to. And I’ll be okay, I promise. I’ll finish your crossword puzzle. I’ll keep the house the way you liked it. I’ll remember you every day. But I’ll keep living. For both of us.”

The warmth in the room intensified for one brilliant, golden moment of pure connection. Then it faded, not disappearing, but shifting away, over there, transforming into something, but what, Olivia couldn’t say. Peace, perhaps. Or release. The candles stopped flickering and the air settled. The presence was gone.

Olivia opened her eyes to see Mrs. Patterson wide eyed with an expression between wonder and devastation.

“He’s at peace,” Olivia said. “He’s gone now, but I promise you, he’s at peace. And you will be too. In time.”

Olivia held Mrs. Patterson’s hands while she wept. These weren’t hollow, desperate sobs, but something deeper. This was grief mixed with gratitude. Loss mixed with closure.

Finally, Mrs. Patterson stood, pressing a folded envelope into Olivia’s hand despite her protests. “Your mother saved my sister’s life. You saved mine. Thank you.”

When her guest was gone, Olivia sat alone in the candlelight, the Salem sky nearly dark now, casting shadows on the shag rug. Olivia’s whole body trembled with exhaustion. She noticed that the apartment felt different somehow. It was still full of her mother’s things, but it felt less haunted by the absence. Olivia reached out and touched the amethyst, warm around her neck.

A whisper brushed against her consciousness, so faint she might have imagined it. It felt like approval. Like pride. Like her mother’s hand briefly touching her shoulder. Olivia sat in the quiet, letting her own tears come. Grief for her mother. Relief at her own success. And underneath it all, something new–the first fragile shoots of confidence. She was not her mother. She was Olivia. And her gift was her own. The speaking in tongues was odd, perhaps, she had never seen her mother do it, but that was part of her unique way of connecting with those in the Other World. She would make sense of it in time, she was sure. 

Two days later, another knock came at her door. A young man, barely twenty, with red-rimmed eyes and a folded newspaper clipping about her mother’s services. Olivia took a deep breath. 

“Yes, dear.” She opened the door wider. Even at her young age, she exuded a generous, motherly warmth. “I can help you.”