May Calloway is very good at leaving. She has built her whole life around it - temporary apartments, transactional relationships, a one-way ticket to Ireland already booked. Then Missy, her rescue tabby, begins speaking in the voice of Michael Devaney: a dead FBI analyst who doesn't know how he died, can't quite remember his own name, and is certain of only one thing - he failed his daughter, and he needs May's help to make it right.
What follows is part mystery, part impossible miracle, part slow undoing. As Michael's memories surface in fragments - a kitchen table, a recital, a hallway full of regret - May is pulled into a search she has no business caring about, alongside a dockworker who keeps showing up asking for nothing at all. Helping Michael find his daughter means sorting through his failures and her own history of being left behind. It also means that when the search ends, he will be gone.
For the first time, May has to sit with the question she has spent years avoiding: what if staying is the answer?
The Ninth Life of Missy is a haunting, funny, and quietly heartbreaking novel about grief, abandonment, and the courage to let someone see you. Some ghosts ask for closure. This one asks for a life.
