The Ice Cradle (26 page)

I hadn’t noticed her at first, and now I couldn’t imagine why. The ghost of Emilia, or at least the ghost I took to be Emilia, was right there in plain sight, pacing along the edge of the bluff on which the Southeast Lighthouse stood. Vivi and Jamey were playing on the damp lawn that ran from the building toward the sea, giving way to a sudden, steep, and sandy decline. Waves crashed fiercely on the rocks at the bottom of the slope, and it seemed pitifully apparent that Emilia was trying to keep Vivi and Jamey from tumbling off the bluff and onto the rocks.

But Vivi and Jamey were dead. No further harm could come to either one of them on the rocks or in the sea. Any sane ghost would know this. In her flowing beige dressing gown, Emilia paced restlessly along the rim of the drop, her gaze darting left and right, following the movements of the children.

Knowing Vivi, and how she had to feel about the woman who had kidnapped her baby brother, I suspected that games like this went on quite often, games in which Vivi, a sane little ghost, tormented the poor, confused Emilia by leading Jamey into situations that would terrify the parent of any live child.

I walked across the lawn. “Vivi!” I called, trying to sound cheerful and glad to see her. “Is that your brother?”

Vivi stopped short, but the toddler kept going, straight toward the spot where Emilia stood guard. Vivi regarded me with haughty suspicion. Or maybe outright contempt; it was a little hard to tell.

I continued toward her. “I’m sorry I got mad.”

“You are not!” she shot back. “You’re mean. I hate you!”

I couldn’t suppress a smile. I feel this way every time I see a two-year-old throwing a rip-roaring tantrum in a store or on the street. The outraged, thwarted fury, the angry red cheeks: the whole thing just slays me.

I looked toward the sea. Emilia had picked up Jamey, and he was squirming theatrically to be set down. The ghost regarded me with ashen calm, another sign that she was not quite right. She clearly hadn’t registered the fact that I was a live human being, talking to a ghost.

“Henry could have been killed,” I went on.

“Good!”

This I found a tad less hilarious. “I’m sure you don’t mean that,” I said.

“Yes I do!”

I sighed. There wasn’t going to be any reasoning with her, at least not now.

I crossed my legs and sat down on the grass. I immediately felt the wetness of the sod seep into the seat of my jeans. Vivi eyed me warily.

“I was scared to death,” I said honestly. “That’s why I turned into—Monster Mommy.”

I thought I saw her expression soften.

“I’m sorry, honey. I really and truly am. I shouldn’t have screamed at you like that. You were just playing a game, but it went too far. It was
Henry
I was really mad at. He promised to stay on the porch.”

“Then you should’ve spanked him!”

“I did!”

“You
did?”
Now here was something Vivi could get behind.
She folded herself down opposite me, hungry for details. “How hard?”

I hadn’t spanked Henry. I don’t spank. Very often. All right, I’m not above giving him a little crack on the bottom, but this time, I hadn’t so much as raised my voice. He’d been so shaken that I hadn’t had to. But I wasn’t going to sacrifice my precarious toehold by admitting this now.

“I’d better let
him
tell you,” I said confidentially. “Because you wouldn’t believe it if it came from me.”

“Yes I would!” she assured me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Emilia advancing slowly in our direction. Vivi caught sight of her, too.

“I’m going to get Jamey back for you,” I said.

“She thinks he’s
her
baby.”

“I know. But he’s not.”

“He’s Mama’s. And Papa’s.”

“And
yours
! Did you have any other brothers or sisters?”

She shook her head.

“I’m going to try to help,” I said. “I’ll do everything I can, okay?”

She nodded almost imperceptibly.

“I need
your
help with something, too. If I help you, will you help me?”

She appeared noncommittal. “What?”

“I’ll tell you later. And no more Monster Mommy. I promise.”

“Monster Mommy,” she echoed, then she vanished into thin air.

“Hello, Emilia.”

“Have you come about the slipcovers?” she asked vaguely. Her voice was wan, like everything else about her.

“No,” I said quietly. “I’ve come to—” I broke off. I had to put some serious thought into how I was going to go about this. “My name is Anza. Anza O’Malley.”

“O’Malley. We know the O’Malleys, Eileen and Colm and the twins, Peter and—” She faltered. “What’s the other boy’s name? Patrick? No. Peter and—”

She look so befuddled that I took a stab in the dark. “Paul?” That was kind of twinlike: Peter and Paul.

“Paul? Yes. Paul.” She didn’t seem convinced. She looked up searchingly. “Are you related?”

“Oh, probably somehow!” I chirped. “Your baby’s beautiful. What’s his name?”

“Leopold. Leo. My little
lion.”

In response, Jamey surprised us with a spontaneous growl. Someone must have taught him that that was the sound lions made. He was adorable, chubby and spirited. It was hard to believe he was a ghost.

“Right!” I said. “That’s what the lion says! Rrrrrr!”

“Rrrrrrrrr,” replied Jamey.

“What does the doggie say? Doggie …?” I asked.

“Uff-uff!” he barked, eyes beaming.

“The kitty?” Emilia prompted.

Jamey looked stumped for a moment.

“Meow!” I said quietly.

Instead of answering, he flung his body forcefully backward, trying to slip out of Emilia’s grasp. She set him down and he immediately raced away. Emila turned and followed him.

“Nora will let you in,” the ghost called over her shoulder. “The fabric is in the sitting room.”

Fabric? Sitting room?

“We chose the beige damask. You can work on the dining table. Nora covered it with oilcloth, so you needn’t worry about scratches.”

I watched her wave and then follow the chubby little spirit toward the road. I fought my urge to go after them or call her back. For what would I do, right now, if I was to take up my subject this very minute? Confront her with a story she would never believe, even if she had the mental capacity to understand it, which it didn’t appear she did?

What would I say?
You’re dead? You’re a ghost! And so is the baby you’ve cherished for a hundred years. And by the way, your little lion? He’s not yours. You’ve kidnapped the child of a dead stranger
.

I had learned something vital in my few minutes with Emilia. I now knew that I would never obtain her cooperation if I had to rely on the truth. To do the kindest thing for everyone involved—to reunite Emilia, Jamey, and Vivi with the much-missed members of their own families—I was going to have to tell a little white lie. Or maybe a very big one.

M
OST OF THE
spirits had their backs to me, which was fortunate; as a group, they’d remained curiously oblivious to my conversation with Emilia.

I turned and made my way slowly toward the assembly. Daylight was fading, bathing the building and the lawn and the rocks in an eerie greenish glow, the kind that usually presages the approach of a tornado. Suddenly, the spotlight in the tower came on, sweeping the seascape and all the creatures in it with a harsh, almost fluorescent band of luminescence. There was a murmur and a rustling among the gathered phantoms, but the circulating beam was silent.

I wanted to be anywhere but here. It’s one thing to deal with earthbound spirits one at a time; I’ve been doing that all my life. But to have so many ghosts assembled in one place filled me with an unaccustomed sense of dread.

What was I afraid of? I knew they couldn’t hurt me, even if they were furious and turned on me all together, flying at me in alarming waves of impotent rage. I consciously tried to slow my accelerating heartbeat. They might not like my ideas, but if so, they’d just refuse to cooperate and carry on with their
plans to descend en masse upon the Grand View. Two or three of the spirits glanced around at my approach, their woebegone looks briefly leavened by curiosity. One, the ghost of a young man about twenty-five, continued to stare at me as I came closer.

I paused but did not make eye contact. Obviously concluding that I, like every other live human being he’d ever encountered, was unable to see him, he turned his gaze back to Baden, who was speaking from the steps. I suddenly understood the foundation of my grave unease. I wasn’t afraid of the assembled spirits; I was burdened by the enormous sadness of the whole situation, and by the fact that I had it in my power to end the suffering of each and every one of these ghosts. Well, any one of them that wanted my help, at least.

All my life, I’d kept my eyes down, picking and choosing which spirits I would help, and declining to reveal myself to so many more—thousands upon thousands of wandering phantoms that had crossed my path over the years. I’d made an uneasy peace with this, primarily by trying not to think about it too much.

That’s how people got by, wasn’t it? By changing the TV channel when implored to “adopt” a suffering child for the daily sacrifice of pocket change. By walking past the homeless men and women shaking cups full of coins on the street. By skimming through the reports on Google News of floods and famines and suicide bombings in crowded marketplaces, instead scrolling down to the breathless dispatches that constituted the Entertainment section. Because there was just too much pain in the world, so much sadness and suffering that it hurt even to look. So much need that if you really took it upon yourself to try to respond every time you could, you wouldn’t
be able to get through the day, much less life. That kind of selflessness, I’d always assured myself, was not for ordinary people, even those with extraordinary gifts. It was for saints. And martyrs.

I wasn’t looking away now, though. I couldn’t, because now that I was close enough to see clearly, the ghost on the steps to the right of Baden looked so much like my dad that I honestly felt my hands begin to tremble. Every one of the phantoms assembled here had once been somebody’s father or mother, or somebody’s son or daughter. This time, I couldn’t pretend not to see them, even if it meant taking on more needs and expectations than I’d ever attempted to manage before.

I walked toward the lighthouse, beginning to pick up snippets of the conversation. With any luck, Baden had simply told them that I could see and speak with ghosts, not that I actually had the power to help them cross over to what came next. If they didn’t yet know that, we’d be able to remain focused on the question of the memorial, leaving the subject of the white light and all that it might mean for them to be unpacked at a later time, when I had a clue about how I might handle things.

I was struck by the irony: I’d been so annoyed by Baden’s reticence, by his skepticism, by the way he kept his cards so close to the vest. Now I was immensely relieved that his temperament tended toward the secretive. This had probably spared me a lot of drama, for I seriously doubted that Baden, ever the cautious and strategic businessman, had told the ghosts anything but the facts that were relevant to the issue at hand: the wind farm, their watery graves, and the possibility of our erecting a more permanent memorial.

As I reached the back of the crowd, Baden turned away
from the ghosts he was speaking with, whom I took to be the spirits he had mentioned by name, Colonel Hannah and Mr. Duffield. Though dressed, like all the others, in the clothes they were sleeping in when the
Larchmont
was struck, they still projected confidence and authority. They had probably been leaders in life, and now they were leaders in death.

Baden gave me a questioning look, turning his hands palms up in a gesture I read as meaning,
So, what do you want me to do here?

A number of the ghosts were now looking in my direction. I took a deep breath, fixing my gaze on the ghost who looked like Dad, and stunned myself by deciding at that very moment that I had no choice but to come out of hiding.