The whispers grow so loud that even Reagan Tam hears them. She hovers in the hall as her cook tells the new maid that it was a brother and sister who retrieved the lost Miranda transmission; the girl, she says, is special (she says the words like a prayer). At a charity function an acquaintance leans close and says, “A friend of a friend told me they’re from Osiris originally, can you believe that? And from a good family. Of course, I think the whole thing is a hoax, but, if it were true…” One of Simon’s doctor friends stops by the house and asks her, “Have you heard anything?” as if she could hear from her dead children. “What exactly do you mean?” Reagan asks, but the boy frowns, shakes his head quickly, mutters apologies. “I’m sorry, I thought maybe… I heard… I’m so sorry to bother you Mrs. Tam.” She offers him tea, and wants to touch his hand, his hair, but he leaves so quickly.

She was told there had been an accident. The school notified them. Simon, who had been acting so strangely, went to visit River. He left the hospital with no warning, it wasn’t like him at all, but then he loved his sister, missed her. They had taken a flyer out for the afternoon, to spend some time alone. One of River’s teachers called to convey the news. She was red-eyed, and spoke very slowly. “There are no words for this kind of tragedy,” she said. Reagan had not been listening then. Reagan had not listened for a long time, after.

But Reagan listens now, to the things people say and the things they do not say. When she was young, and moved more quickly, she used to have much better hearing. Whispers reached her with no breath behind them. The first time she met Gabriel, for instance, he had looked at the floor and said something idiotic, but she heard his heart beating faster inside his chest. Sometime in the years between then and now, she had forgotten how to hear. It was too difficult, knowing other people’s secrets. “Your responsibility is to us now,” Gabriel said, his hand on her swelling stomach and Simon agreed, curled up safe and tight inside. She stopped listening then, to all of them. Forgot she ever knew how. River used to bring it back, now and then. River, who sang to Reagan before she was born, who was special, like a prayer. River reminded her sometimes, but then River left, and she forgot again. And then River died.

Between the whispers, Reagan hears her singing again.

“What is going on?” Gabriel asks, when he finds her in River’s room. Months since she came in here, to touch her dolls and watch vids of her dance recitals. “I thought we were past this.”

“What is past?” Reagan asks, closing her eyes against the raw fur of a stuffed bear, brown with a red ribbon. Gabriel sits beside her, takes her hands. His are old and dry and empty. He knew. She can hear him now, she can hear his doubts and regrets and excuses. I won’t come for you, he had said.

“Don’t do this,” he begs, but he should have begged before, when he sent her children away to die. Away, somehow. His words, even the ones he does not say, do not fill up the space between her hands and inside her lungs. River did, once. No need for other voices, besides hers, besides theirs. Special little girl, sings out of tune but she dances beautifully.

“Are they alive?” she asks. Her voice is sparse and pock-marked.

“I don’t know.”

She puts the bear down; it does not help. Her fingers open and close on air. The room still smells of River. Reagan used to brush her hair every night before bed. She would brush long after the tangles were gone. She would brush until Simon came in, which he always did, pretending to have some question, some errand. Really he wanted to be read a story, to climb into bed beside River, making bored eyes, and they would shove and tickle and finally quiet as she read them highly age-inappropriate books, The Odyssey or Tolstoy, until they fell asleep, curled up together, and Gabriel had to be called to carry Simon back to his own bed.

“They’re never coming back,” Reagan says, which was an easier fact to bear when she believed them dead. It was not her fault then. She could hate God, and not herself.

Gabriel thinks many things, but he doesn’t say any of them. She wonders if her mind will ever close again, if she will return to her peace, her enclosed house, or if she will live the rest of her life this way, the echo of River’s voice always just out of reach. The latter is more just, a fit punishment for her crimes. “Go away,” she tells him, and he goes. They are both too tired to argue.

She lays down on the bed, which is too small, a child’s bed. There is no child anymore. She draws her legs up and closes her eyes. Listens.