Sheila Connolly - Relatively Dead 02 - Seeing the Dead (2 page)

She knew she was only a short-term caretaker, but she’d avoided thinking about where she wanted to go next, although she should be looking already, since the owners would be coming back in two months. She couldn’t expect a place like this to fall into her lap more than once, but she knew Concord rents were high. More than she could pay easily. But she really liked being close to work, and close to the town. Maybe Ned would have some ideas. Well, maybe Ned would have one particular idea that she’d also been avoiding: moving in together.

She still hadn’t seen his house. He described it as a Victorian fixer-upper in Lexington, unfit for habitation at the moment because he never had time to complete any of the essential construction projects it needed. He didn’t mind camping out surrounded by bare laths and dangling wires, but he claimed he didn’t want to inflict it on her. Of course, her place was nice, and he hadn’t been reluctant to spend a good number of nights there. But the looming return of the rightful owners was going to force her—them—to make some kind of decision, and she still wasn’t sure what she wanted to do.

When she pulled into her driveway, she recognized Ned’s car parked next to the garage; Ned was sitting on the front steps. He stood up when he saw her arrive and waited until she had parked and climbed out of the car.

“I saw your number on my phone,” he called out when she came near enough to hear, “and I figured you were on your way home. You mind my dropping by?”

“Of course not,” Abby replied as she walked straight into his arms. Luckily they were both wearing jackets, so they made no skin-to-skin contact: that was something that had proved to be an interesting problem for the two of them. “I think there’s food inside. Shall we go look?”

Without waiting for an answer she unlocked the door and quickly disarmed the alarm system, then waited for Ned to follow. She made a beeline for the refrigerator, and decided that she had enough ingredients to improvise a stir-fry, as long as neither of them was too picky about Asian authenticity. “Wine? Beer? Something else?” she said, over her shoulder, as she gathered vegetables and chicken breasts.

“Wine sounds good. How’d your meeting go?”

“It was all about Patriots’ Day. I assume you know a lot more about that than I do.”

Ned laughed. “Since I grew up in a house on the Battle Road, I had no choice. I should have warned you: both Lexington and Concord are kind of shanghaied for that weekend. What’re you supposed to do?”

“Supervise children making colonial craft projects, or that’s what the list says. I’m not sure I know any, but I’ve got a couple of weeks to practice.”

“There are great craftspeople at Old Sturbridge Village, if you want to see them in action. Also at Plimoth Plantation, although on a smaller scale. Of course, that’s earlier, so there was less of that going on, since the pilgrims were more worried about surviving.”

“Sturbridge sounds nice. Maybe one weekend?”

“Sure.” Ned watched as Abby laid out her vegetables and started chopping. “When are your landlords coming back?”

Abby’s knife slipped, luckily away from her fingers. Had he been reading her mind? “The end of May, I think.”

“What are your plans, after that?” Ned said carefully.

Abby set down the knife and turned to face him. “Nonexistent at the moment. Why?”

They stared at each other for a few counts. Whatever weird physical connection they had—something they were still exploring—it didn’t seem to extend to mental telepathy. She couldn’t read his mind, and she wasn’t sure why he was asking. Although it was a fair question.

“We’ve been ‘together’ for months now. I wondered if you’d like to take this to the next level?”

“You mean, like move in together?” Okay, it was out in the open.

“Yes, that’s what I mean. Is that a problem?” The poor man looked perplexed. Had he expected a different answer?

Abby tried to decide what she wanted to say, but it wasn’t easy. “No, it’s not a problem.
You’re
not the problem.
We’re
not the problem. It’s me, I guess. You know Brad and I were together for like two years, and it took me that long to realize that things weren’t working between us. Then I landed here, and I found that I kind of like living alone. Not forever, but for now. Do you know, I went straight from my parents’ house to a college dorm, to a crummy Philadelphia apartment with two roommates, to Brad’s place? I’d never lived with just me. I’m still exploring that.”

Ned nodded, once, his expression serious. “I can see that. But you’ll need to decide something soon.”

“I know. If you’re worried, it’s not about this, uh, ability that we kind of share. I mean, maybe that’s part of it, but it’s not personal.” Abby poured herself a glass of wine, more to give herself time to think than because she needed the drink. “I’m still trying to understand what it is, and how I live with it. You’ve had longer to deal with all that.”

“Abby, there was never anything in my life like what happened when we came together. I’m as confused as you are. Does it scare you?”

She smiled. “Only because it’s so intense. I mean, it’s great—just kind of overwhelming. You know.”

He smiled back. “Yes, I do know. All right, let’s table this for now. I’m hungry. What’s happening with dinner?”

“I’m working on it. As long as you stay all the way over there, I might actually get it cooked.”

2

Dinner was ready within half an hour, and Abby and Ned sat on opposite sides of the round table in the kitchen to eat. “What do you need to know about Patriots’ Day?” Ned asked between bites.

“Everything. I gather there aren’t too many states that actually celebrate it.”

“Right. But we take it kind of personally around here.”

“I can see that. By the way—thanks for that tour you gave me last fall. Without that I would have looked like a total idiot. I wish I had more free time, so I could actually explore all the towns and historic sites around here. And work on my genealogy. Having a job kind of gets in the way. Not that I don’t like it. I just wish I had thirty-six-hour days, with more daylight.”

“Nothing new on the ancestor front?” Ned asked.

“I haven’t had time to look. Why? Is there something I need to be looking for?”

“There’s always something more to be found. Those of us with local ancestors are lucky around here because we can access the local historical societies. They have a lot of information, including stuff that hasn’t made it online yet, and maybe never will.”

“And half of those places are open to researchers only on Wednesday afternoons and every fifth Saturday,” Abby retorted. “I can understand why, since I work for a nonprofit too, but it’s frustrating if you want to get anything done.”

“It is,” Ned agreed amiably. “You have to be patient and persistent. Remember, you’ve been working on this for less than six months. All those dead ancestors of yours aren’t going anywhere—they’ll wait for you to catch up.”

“You know,” Abby said slowly, “I’ve already got Reeds here in Concord, but I haven’t gone up that line any farther. I don’t know if they came from here or somewhere else. I mean, just because they’re buried here, it doesn’t guarantee they lived here, right?”

“True. But it’s worth exploring.”

Now that she’d eaten, Abby was beginning to warm to the idea. “I might be able to work that into my curriculum at the museum. I mean, if I find out more about any local ancestors I have, I can show the kids how to find out about their own families. Even if they came from other countries. We were all immigrants at some point, weren’t we? Anyway, I can help them figure out where to look—and tell them to start by talking with their parents and grandparents.”

“Good point. And good subject. I’m pretty sure Leslie would support something like that—as long as you don’t start working on it until after Patriots’ Day.”

“Not a problem. As you so astutely pointed out, those ancestors aren’t going anywhere.” Abby stood up and started collecting plates from the table, but Ned reached out to grab her hand. There it was again, that electric shock, that mental current that was almost physical. If she’d been holding a plate she would surely have dropped it. Ned was watching her face, and she smiled.

“Yes.”

Dessert could wait.

• • •

At the end of the evening Abby and Ned found themselves sprawled on a broad couch in front of the television downstairs, watching the late news. They maintained a discreet distance of six inches between them.

“You know, the practice part for Patriots’ Day has already started. You might enjoy watching the guys prepare.”

“Guys? They were the only ones who carried guns?”

“Just about. There weren’t that many weapons in the colonies, you know, and few people could afford to waste shot on practicing.”

“So what do these guys do to train?” Abby spooned up some melting ice cream.

“First of all, they have to learn how to handle an eighteenth-century rifle. Have you ever hefted one?”

“No, although I know there are a couple in the museum’s collection. Why?”

“Well, let me back up. The main military weapon—for both sides—was the flintlock musket or long rifle, although most people in the militia used whatever they had—it wasn’t like somebody supplied weapons to everyone who fought, at least in the beginning. Anyway, those things are long—around five feet—and weighed about nine pounds. And loading them is no simple matter. We’re all far too accustomed to popping in a magazine, all neatly preloaded—”

“Speak for yourself,” Abby interjected. “I’ve never loaded or shot a gun.”

“All right, let me correct that statement. Most owners of modern weapons are accustomed to easy loading. With a colonial weapon, there were a lot of steps involved, assuming you’ve already got the bullets handy, which you had to mold yourself. So there you are, on the front line. You fire at your enemy. You may or may not hit anything, because a lot of early weapons were notoriously inaccurate. Either way, you have to set down your weapon, find powder and wadding and the projectile, insert it into your barrel and tamp it down before you can even think about firing it again. And you have to hope that your flint is in good shape and provides a spark. Oh, and you also have to worry about whether the whole thing will blow up in your face.”

“Wow,” Abby said. “I never knew all that. It’s a wonder anybody could manage to carry on in a battle.”

“It is indeed. That’s why soldiers lined up in rows. The front row took their shot, then swapped places with the back row while they reloaded and the second row took their shot. Repeat as long as your supplies hold out or until you’re overrun by the enemy.”

“Have you done this? I mean, shot one of these things?” Abby asked. She realized she’d never thought to ask if he’d fought in an actual war, but that seemed unlikely to her. Surely something that important would have come up in conversation at some point?

“I have, once or twice. Just to satisfy my own curiosity. I have no plans to become a reenactor. But I know some people really get into it, especially if they had an ancestor in the battle, and there are quite of few of those people around.”

“Do you know when and where they practice? I think I’d like to see this.”

“I can make some calls. And this way you’d see a lot more than if you wait for the parades. That’s a real mob scene.”

“They practice on weekends?”

“Sure. Most of them are ordinary working people who like to dress up and shoot blanks at each other a couple of times a year.”

Men
. Abby shook her head. “It’s getting late. You ready to call it a night?”

“Sure. I’ve got a busy day tomorrow.”

Abby reflected that he didn’t keep a change of clothes at her house, and then had to wonder how they could be talking about living together when they couldn’t even commit to clean underwear. She didn’t recall things being this complicated with Brad—but then, there hadn’t been as much at stake with him. Whatever she and Ned had between them, it was serious—and maybe that was why they were both reluctant to take the next step. But she still wasn’t ready to deal with it head-on.
Climb one mountain at a time, Abby,
she reminded herself as she drifted off to sleep.

Ned was gone when she woke up the next morning. She wasn’t surprised, since he had to go home and shower and shave and dress and … all that stuff. She could be ready in fifteen minutes, and at work in not much more than that. She stayed in bed a bit longer, sorting out what she wanted to look for. She had stumbled on the Reeds in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery by accident—literally. She had reached out to steady herself on a tombstone, and a whole lot of unexpected things had happened after that. And then she had started following the Reed family line backward. If it was a family tree she was looking at, she supposed that would mean downward, toward the trunk or whatever. In any case, she—with Ned’s help—had figured out that the Reeds buried there had included her three times great-grandmother, and she’d ended up following that line through various towns back several generations. She’d even “met” several of them, if not in the flesh (which was obviously long gone), but through the places they had lived and their tombstones. She had some genealogical link to the Reeds going way back—and so did Ned. Which went a little way to explaining the extraordinary physical or mental connection they had discovered they had between them.

But what about the other branch of the family? William Reed had married Mary Ann Corey, who had been the first of the family to be buried at Sleepy Hollow, followed by William and several of their children. She’d been Mary Ann C. Reed there, but Abby had figured out her maiden name. And stopped looking.

The working theory that she and Ned had arrived at, after a series of strange experiences, was that the gene or aptitude or whatever they shared had passed down to them through the Reed line. Was that the only one? Should she be looking for other Reed descendants so they could all compare notes? Heck, maybe there was already a Reed Association or Club that she could tap into. She hadn’t thought to try, any more than she’d thought to Google “hereditary psychic connections” or “genetic hallucinations” or any of the other absurd terms she and Ned had come up with. But now she had an excuse to do some hunting: find another Concord family line, one that she could legitimately research and even present while at her job. The best of both worlds, right?