Page 57 of Earthly Ties

“Thank you for calling, Detective. I appreciate you keeping me in the loop.”

Out of the blue, Detective Barrett called Esther after her last class of the day. After months of not hearing a whisper from him, he finally has an update. Presumably. I can’t hear what he’s saying, but Esther keeps nodding and humming along to show she’s listening.

I wait expectantly as Esther ends the call.

Instead of filling me in, Esther kicks off her shoes and sheds her work clothes, leaving her dressed only in her undershirt and boxers. Her expression is drawn, giving no hints if there was good news or bad.

“Well?”

“Well, what?” Esther asks, brows furrowing.

“What’d he say?”

“Oh, sorry. I assumed you could hear him.” She smiles apologetically in my general direction. “I was giving you space to process. Uh, your missing persons case is being transferred to a cold case investigator,” Esther says hesitantly, as if worried how I’ll react. “He’s followed all of the leads he could come up with. Angel basically signed off on it. If I didn’t know you were already, you know…” she trails off.

“Dead.”

“Right. If I thought there could be a chance you were alive, I would push him to keep it open. But at this point, it would probably be a matter of finding and identifying your body, and frankly…” she trails off again.

I wince. “I wouldn’t want to subject even Angel to that.” As confused and disappointed as I am that my death will go unsolved, I am relieved that my brother doesn’t have to deal with it on such a visceral level, on top of being haunted by our parents. That Esther never has to confront the reality either, while we’re both insulated in this bubble of domestic comfort.

“Exactly.” Esther shrugs, but her nonchalance is undermined by the sorrow in her eyes.

“When are we, anyway?” I wonder how long they investigated.

“June seventh.”

I died on July first; they actively searched for me for less than a year. For some reason, I thought they’d have to keep looking for longer than that. I hate that I’m disappointed, both in not solving the mystery of my own death, and that they gave up on me so easily.

“Wait—June seventh?” Angel’s birthday. My annual indulgence has arrived. “Can you look up Angel on your phone again?”

“Uh…if you insist.” Esther pulls out her phone and checks his main page first, where he’s posted his usual gym selfie. It’s captioned it with his standard #birthdayrepchallenge #neverstopgrinding and #blessed garbage that he includes in all of his posts. “Oh, it’s his birthday? No wonder I didn’t like him, if he’s a Gemini.”

I laugh with her.

“What were your big three?” Esther clicks his latest video, where he’s posted a time-lapse of him on #legday.

I scrunch my nose, trying to remember. “Cancer sun, Scorpio moon, Cap rising.”

“Oof. That’s wet, Luce.” She laughs. “The Capricorn saves you.”

I huff in mock offense. “I’m taking ‘wet’ as a compliment.”

Esther merely laughs again. My favorite sound. “I’m a Taurus sun, Libra moon, Pisces rising. In case you were wondering.”

“That tracks, but I already knew that. You told me in a dream.” The first one, where she made me eggplant parmesan and peppered me with questions that I didn’t answer.

When I was alive, that Libra moon would have been the “dealbreaker” of choice. Not that I put any value in astrology, but shit like star signs was my tool to avoid getting serious with the few people I slept with more than once. Strange, how easily people accepted that as a valid reason. “Sorry, this isn’t going to work; I have trauma from Air signs” and “Our charts are not compatible” were more acceptable excuses than “I’m just interested in casual sex” or “I’m emotionally unavailable and unwilling to work on that.”

Now, the idea of keeping Esther at arm’s length seems like torture. She could be an Aquarius like my mother, and I’d still love her.

“Aw, you remembered my sign? I knew you cared,” Esther teases. “Looks like Angel posted to his story, too. Want to watch?”

I lean in closer over her shoulder, catching a hint of jasmine from her hair. “Yes, please. I used to look him up on his birthday every year to make sure he was doing okay. And then his posts would be so full of shit I was reminded why I didn’t stay in touch.”

“Well, let me know if you want me to slide into his DMs again.”

We mock his posts together as she clicks through photos of his morning smoothie, him posing with his car, and a spread of his lunch. I’m about to tell her we can stop, when he posts a selfie of himself crying and asking for prayers.