Sheila Connolly - Relatively Dead 02 - Seeing the Dead (29 page)

“But we need to say good-bye to Ellie first,” Abby retorted.

Ellie came out of the kitchen at that moment. “You’re leaving?”

“Yes,” Abby said. “But I hope we’ll be seeing you again.”

“Me too.” She hesitated, then hugged Abby. Then she turned to Ned and hugged him, startling him. “Table’s all ready, Mommy.”

“I’ll be right there, sweetie.” Leslie looked at Abby and Ned. “We’ll talk. And thank you, I guess.”

She ushered them out the front door and shut it firmly behind them. Abby took a deep breath. “She took that better than I expected. Although I’m not sure
what
I expected. She could have had us arrested for child endangerment or something.”

“She’s not like that,” Ned said. “Sure, she was shocked, but she’s not a mean person.”

“Can she handle this? Will she let us help?”

“I hope so. Look, Abby, you and I need to talk too. That is, if you’re speaking to me?”

Abby smiled reluctantly. “Do I have a choice? There’s no one else I can talk to about all this.”

“We can go get some dinner—maybe a restaurant?”

“Take-out,” Abby said firmly. “I can’t talk about what happened today in a public place. And I don’t want to get into it standing in Leslie’s front yard.”

“All right. Thai okay?”

“Whatever. You go pick it up, and I’ll drive home and meet you there.”

“Done,” Ned said. “I’ll be there in half an hour.”

He pulled out of Leslie’s driveway first, and then Abby followed suit; their paths diverged before too long. She headed home, taking her emotional temperature along the way. She decided that she felt … relieved, first and foremost. She’d been startled by several developments in the course of this one day, and she hadn’t had time to digest them. She hoped talking with Ned would help. But after the initial shock of finding Ellie in the cemetery, she’d been pleased that the conversation with Leslie had gone so well. No tears, no recriminations, no gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair. Leslie had been stunned, of course, but she’d listened. And Ellie was a treat: she took this seeing ghosts in stride. And now Abby didn’t need to tiptoe around either of them, because there was nothing left to hide. Assuming, of course, that she still had a job come Monday and would be seeing them again. There had never been a good time to ask that question when they were at Leslie’s house. Tomorrow would be time enough, after Leslie had had a chance to think. Even if the answer was no, Abby could handle it. After all, she had a rich boyfriend, didn’t she?

She reached home and disarmed the alarm, then walked to the kitchen, turning on lights as she went. She pulled a bottle of wine from the refrigerator and found two clean glasses. When Ned arrived a few minutes later, she let him in and grabbed him. “I’m sorry—I was mad.”

“I got that part,” Ned said softly. “I never meant to conceal anything about my life, but some things just never came up. And the more time passed, the harder it was to just work it into a conversation. I respected that you always tried to pull your own weight, financially.”

“Yeah, and you let me. But thank you. You were right, in a way—I would have thought about you differently if I had known about the money. And the power. And the high profile. Although I have to say, you do a good job of hiding. Anyway, like Leslie, I needed time to get used to the idea.”

“And you are now?” When Abby nodded, Ned said, “Then come here.”

When she finally pulled away, sometime later, Ned said, his voice husky, “Does this mean I’m forgiven?”

“What do you think? Come on, I’m starving. I missed lunch today.” Abby led the way to the kitchen.

She opened cartons, and Ned poured wine. Then he said, “You mentioned earlier that you had something new? Do we get to talk about that?”

“Of course we do. I had a conversation with a dead relative today.”

29

Abby stretched like a cat, then snuggled up against sleeping Ned’s back. What a week it had been! Patriots’ Day had been the past Monday? She’d only just met Ellie. And then there was the news about Esther. So much had happened, and was still happening. Whatever had happened when she moved to Massachusetts, it had kept growing and changing. Did that scare her? No, nor could she let it. It was part of her life now. She didn’t plan to go public with her odd ability—that could be disastrous. Hadn’t there been a television show a few years back, about someone who talked to ghosts? The writers there had got it wrong, sort of: the only ghost Abby had managed to communicate with had been very newly dead, and she wasn’t looking for help to “pass over” or whatever the popular term was. In fact, Esther had helped her, and handed her a whopping big clue by pointing her to John Perry, the maybe witch. She was going to have to do more research into the whole messy history of witchcraft in Massachusetts, but even if most of the fuss was simply hysteria, there was a slim possibility that old John Perry had been the real thing. How would she feel about that?

Today she wasn’t worried. Today she felt like she could handle anything. She wrapped her arms around Ned and whispered, “You awake?”

“I am now. It’s Sunday, right? And we don’t have to be anywhere?”

“That it is. And the sun is shining and the birds are singing. I want to see your house.”

Ned rolled over. “Can I at least put some clothes on first? The neighbors already think I’m odd.”

“Not just yet,” Abby said, grinning.

• • •

Over breakfast they talked about Esther. “What was it like?” Ned asked. “Did she seem real?”

“She fooled me the first time we met. After Helen told me Esther was dead, I went back over my last meeting with her and realized that she’d never actually moved anything. Like the door, or books. But if you’re asking if I could see something strange about her, no. She had on clothes that were out of date, but not by much, and lots of older people wear what they have. I couldn’t see through her, and she didn’t have an aura or anything like that. I don’t know what she would have done if I’d offered to shake hands with her. I did think it was odd that she didn’t take my payment directly from me but told me to leave it on the table. But other than that, I never suspected anything. Of course, I was still reeling about finding John Perry, who she pointed me to.”

“So you decided to go to the cemetery and … what?” Ned asked.

“I don’t know. Helen said she had been buried there, and I guess I wanted to see the proof. Did I hope to run into her there? Maybe, in the back of my mind. But I wouldn’t have been surprised or disappointed if I hadn’t.”

Ned poked at his scrambled eggs for a moment. “Why do you think she appeared to you the way she did?” he asked.

“You mean, why could I see her and talk to her? The only explanation I could come up with is that she was so newly dead—I mean, six months instead of centuries. So the charge or whatever was still strong. I don’t know if that will fade over time. Plus she is related to me—I can show you how, if you want.”

“Did Ellie see her?”

“I don’t think so, but Ellie wasn’t looking for her. Ellie was only interested in seeing Hannah.”

“Who you saw as well,” Ned said.

“Yes, because she’s also related to me. She was Henry Perry’s granddaughter, and she died young. She’s the only Perry I’ve found a tombstone for, in either cemetery. I guess I want to think that Reuben, who in general was kind of a slacker, was really saddened by the death of his youngest daughter and somehow scraped together enough money to put up the one stone. Maybe all the Perrys are there in a row—there’s nothing on either side of Hannah’s stone, for quite a bit.”

“You know, you seem remarkably calm about all of this,” Ned said, smiling.

Abby smiled back. “I’ve accepted it, I guess. Like Ellie said, there’s nothing scary about who I see. And it’s sad to think of them kind of drifting around in a vacuum for eternity, so I think maybe I’m doing them a favor. At least the recent ones—I can’t say what the older ones are thinking. I’m not sure they see me. I have no clue
what
they see. Maybe nothing at all.” Abby finished off her own eggs. “You’re stalling, you know. We’re going to go see your house.”

“Okay,” Ned said cautiously. “I promise you I’m not hiding anything, except my apparent inability to finish a project. Are you handy with tools?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t had much chance to find out. But my father has his own woodworking shop behind the house. Maybe it’s hereditary. Does the plumbing work?”

“Of course it does,” Ned replied quickly. “I do have some standards. But that doesn’t mean that the pipes shouldn’t be replaced—there’s a lot of cast iron showing in the basement.”

“Electric?” Abby said.

“Some. Still a lot of knob-and-tube. My insurance company took one look at that and refused to issue a policy, but since I could afford to replace the house—not that I’d want to—and owned it outright, I didn’t follow up.”

“What else should I know?”

“Well, the refrigerator is older than I am, and the stove is dual-fuel.”

“You mean, electric and gas?”

Ned smiled. “No, wood or coal. I don’t spend much time in the kitchen. I definitely don’t bake.”

Abby sat back in her chair and stared at him. “You know what you’re doing? You’re trying to live in the past. You like the Victorian era?”

“Are you asking why I live in an unaltered Victorian rather than a colonial like my folks? I really don’t know. I liked the house from the start—we used to drive by it when I was a kid. I never expected to live in it. Maybe I’m trying to preserve it the way I remember it. And I do like to work with my hands, but time kind of gets away from me.”

“Amen to that! So show me. I’ll grab a shower.”

In half an hour they were on the road; another half hour brought them to the center of Lexington. Abby remembered the first time Ned had brought her here, back when she was still with Brad and just learning about the area. And Ned had been a kindly near-stranger showing her the sights. How long ago that seemed. They were passing the Battle Green, apparently recovered from the Patriots’ Day festivities.

“How much farther?” she asked.

“We’re here.” Ned pulled into a driveway no more than two blocks past the green. Abby looked up … and up. Three stories of turreted Victorian festooned with gingerbread—much of which was falling off, as was what little paint remained. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Ned said as he got out of the car.

“Is it safe?” Abby asked dubiously.

“I’ve survived so far. Although I’ve never had two people standing on some of the floors at the same time.” When Abby threw him a dismayed glance he held up his hand. “Just kidding! I promise you it’s structurally sound. This was one of those cases where the last owner died, and the heirs couldn’t figure out how to divide things, so they spent years arguing. Luckily they realized that letting an asset like this fall down was not a good decision, so they took care of basic maintenance. But the prior owner hadn’t done much to it in decades. It’s kind of like it’s preserved in amber, if you know what I mean. Come on—you’d better see for yourself.” He led the way to the front door—with a wealth of moldings and a beveled glass pane inset—and opened the locks, then stood back to let her pass.

Abby took a few tentative steps into the broad hallway and looked around. A typical layout, with a parlor with pocket doors on one side and what must be a dining room opposite, based on the built-in, glass-fronted cabinets. There was probably a second parlor behind the first, and a kitchen behind the dining room. “How many bedrooms?”

“Four on the second floor, two more—probably servants’ quarters—on the third. Half bath up top, only one on the second floor.”

“Is that one original?”

“Pretty much. Claw-foot tub, pedestal sink, lots of old tile.”

The stairs went up a flight then turned 180 degrees to complete its path. The landing where they intersected had a glowing stained-glass window in the center, flanked by plain windows, and there was a shallow seat below the ensemble. Abby started up the stairs—original bannister and posts, she noted—until she reached the landing. She peered out the window, and then she turned to Ned, who had followed her up.

“You didn’t tell me!”

“That the oldest cemetery in town lies directly behind the house? I wanted to see your face when you found out. Most people are kind of horrified, which might be why this place didn’t get snapped up fast.”

“I love it!” She turned back to the view. A strange distribution of tombstones, almost in a ring—facing something that wasn’t there anymore? And a woman standing in the middle of it, looking down at something—a stone or maybe a group of them. Abby beckoned Ned over, then pointed. “Do you see her?”

He put his arm around her shoulders. “I do. And I know what she’s looking at: members of the Reed family.”

“Have you seen her before?” Abby kept her eyes on the woman below.

“Not until now. With you.”

With a last lingering look at the woman in the cemetery, Abby turned to face Ned. “Show me the bathroom. I want to see if anything needs to be done before I move in.”

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from Sheila Connolly’s

Reunion with Death
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