The Sense of Reckoning (3 page)

They stopped at one of their favorite destinations, a restaurant in Kennett Square that drew a well-heeled crowd from the surrounding gentleman’s farms. Soaring ceilings and polished concrete floors were softened by scuffed wooden tables and white linen napkins. Ann ordered an old fashioned and talked Mike into ordering a cocktail featuring Laphroaig Scotch and a house-made pine liqueur. When it arrived she wrinkled her nose.

“Holy cow, it smells like something you’d clean the kitchen counters with!”

Mike sniffed it suspiciously. “How come you always make me order the weird drinks?”

“Because you’re braver than I am,” she said, sipping her drink.

Mike’s eyes widened slightly.

“Well, not so much braver as more foolhardy,” Ann continued, then noticed that Mike was looking over her shoulder. “What?” She started to turn around to see what had attracted his attention.

“Don’t turn around,” he whispered.

She stopped. “Why not?” she whispered back.

“Dan Kaminsky is at one of the tables behind you.”

Ann’s fingers actually loosened their grip on her heavy cocktail glass, which went crashing down onto her bread plate. An immediate hush fell over the previously buzzing dining room.

“Smooth,” muttered Mike.

“Is he looking?” hissed Ann.

“Of course he’s looking. Everyone in the restaurant is looking.” Mike glanced over her shoulder and raised his hand in greeting, a somewhat strained smile on his face.

Their server appeared at their table with a stack of napkins and began blotting up the mess. He handed several napkins to Ann. “I think you got some in your lap, ma’am.” The murmur of conversation began to rise around them again.

“Sorry about that,” said Ann, her face burning. “I’m just going to go clean up.” She grabbed the leather knapsack she used as a purse and wended her way through the tables to the back of the restaurant, her eyes on the floor. The door to the women’s room was locked, but the men’s room was unoccupied so she went in there.

In all the years she had been visiting Mike and Scott in West Chester, she had never run into her former boyfriend. She had originally met Dan when he’d taken over the vet practice to which she took her lab, Kali, and he had won her over with his sweet manner, his obvious devotion, and his meltingly brown eyes. But Dan was a scientist in spirit as well as profession, and he had been skeptical when he finally found out—not from Ann—about her spirit-sensing abilities. When he had implied she should see a psychiatrist about her belief in her own skill, Ann had been devastated. She had left unreturned the voicemails and emails he’d sent for weeks, until they slowed and finally stopped. And when Dan showed up at the apartment she shared with Mike, she told Mike to tell him that she had no interest in speaking with him—a message that Mike, always her staunchest defender, had no doubt delivered with convincing finality.
 

She had gotten through those post-breakup months when she expected to see Dan in every store, on every West Chester street corner, at any concert featuring music that she thought he might enjoy, but almost a decade had gone by since then and it had been years since she had thought of him. Much.

And when I finally do see him—hell, I didn’t even see him myself—I drop my glass like a ditzy blonde in a bad sitcom.
She gave a shaky laugh that was one moment of loosened self-control away from tears.

Her face was flushed and she ran cold water on a paper towel and pressed it to her cheeks. She had a junior high moment of wondering if she could leave the restaurant by a back entrance, even as she realized that anything other than a calm and collected return to the dining room would make the incident even more embarrassing than it already was.

When she had dabbed the remains of old fashioned off her jeans, smoothed back a few tendrils of hair that had escaped from her ponytail, and applied some tinted lip balm, she returned to the dining room. Her stomach lurched when she saw that Mike was standing at Dan’s table, and lurched again when she saw that Dan wasn’t alone. Of course—why would he be?

She crossed to the table, being extra careful not to sweep any diners’ glasses off the tables as she passed with her knapsack. Dan had grown a beard and mustache, and his hair was just beginning to show a few strands of gray at the temples, but otherwise he looked much the same as he had the last time she had seen him. Across from him sat a beautiful woman—Indian or Pakistani—her jet-black hair pulled back in a long braid, her dramatic coloring set off by a cherry-red sweater that looked like cashmere. Next to the woman sat a little girl, the perfect combination of the two adults—dark hair with Dan’s curls, dark brown eyes with Dan’s sparkle. Their table was in front of the restaurant’s large front windows and the light created a halo behind the little girl and shimmered off what must have been metallic threads in her shirt.

Dan stood. “Hi, Ann.”

She wiped her palms on her jeans, hoping no one would offer to shake hands. “Hey, Dan.”

“Ann, this is Dan’s wife, Amita,” said Mike.

Ann smiled and nodded. “Pleased to meet you.”

Amita nodded back, a bit formal but not unfriendly.

“Mike says you’re visiting from the Adirondacks,” said Dan.

“Yes.”

“Scott and I are always trying to get her to spend more time in West Chester,” said Mike. “Especially during the winter—Pennsylvania is practically balmy in comparison. But she’s tougher than I am. How’s the vet business?”

“Going well,” said Dan distractedly. “It’s turning into a family business—Amita’s my partner now.”

“And how about your daughter?” asked Ann. She turned toward the girl. “Are you going to become a vet and join the family business when you grow up?”

Amita’s expression froze. Dan followed Ann’s gaze and then looked back at her, the blood draining from his face.

“I’m sorry,” Ann stammered, “I just thought—”

Mike took her elbow. “Well, Dan, it was nice to see you,” he said, extending his hand, which Dan took mechanically. “Nice to meet you, Amita. I recommend you stay away from that Scotch cocktail, unless you want to knock down a few cold germs.” He steered Ann back to their table.

Another old fashioned had appeared at her plate. She took a gulp, clunked the glass down on the table, and leaned forward. “What did I say wrong?”

Ann had at first thought Mike was annoyed with her, but now she saw his lips were twitching with what might have been an almost-suppressed smile.

“You didn’t say anything wrong,” he replied.

“I just thought—” started Ann, turning to glance over her shoulder toward Dan’s table.

Dan and Amita were bent together across the table, Dan holding his wife’s hands while she whispered low and fast, casting occasional glances toward Ann. It looked to Ann like she was about to cry. And the little girl was not in the chair next to her.

Ann turned back to Mike. “Where did the daughter go?”

“She didn’t go anywhere,” said Mike. “It was always only Dan and Amita at the table.”

*****

Mike wasn’t buying Ann’s argument that they should leave.

“I ordered the food while you were gone,” he said. “Plus, it would be weird to leave.”

“I’m sure they’d be thrilled if I left—I make them think about a little girl who is obviously their dead daughter and now Dan has to try to convince his wife that it’s all parlor tricks.”

“Well, obviously it’s not parlor tricks,” said Mike, and leaned forward. “That’s extraordinary that you saw a spirit so clearly that you thought it was a living person!”

Ann took another gulp of her drink. “The sun was behind her, I couldn’t see her that well.”

Mike shook his head. “Now you’re being silly—this is a huge leap forward and you know it.”

They both sat back as the server delivered their mushroom soups. Mike tried for a while to engage Ann in a discussion of the movie they had seen the night before—
The Blues Brothers
, a personal favorite of Mike’s—but she responded in monosyllables and he finally gave up.

When their entrees arrived, Ann pushed her food around on the plate, her stomach clenched by the distraction of wondering what was going on behind her. Mike gave her periodic updates—“They just got their lunches” ... “Looks like they’re not getting dessert”—and finally he reported that they had paid and were leaving. He gave them a wave.

Mike got Ann’s uneaten entree boxed up and wished the hostess a good day as they left. Ann wished he wasn’t so damn cheerful.

They were walking toward Mike’s Audi when the driver door of an immaculately clean pickup opened and Dan emerged. He trotted toward them and they stopped to let him catch up.

“Hey,” said Dan when he reached them. “Would it be okay if I talked to Ann for a minute?”

Mike glanced at Ann, who nodded. “Sure, no problem,” he said and strolled away.

Despite the warm October afternoon sun, Ann pushed her hands deeper into her jacket pockets. They stood in silence for a few seconds, then Dan said, “Wow, that was something.”

Ann looked toward where Mike was looking in the window of a women’s clothing store. Women’s clothing not being Mike’s thing, she guessed that he had picked it as a location far enough away that they would have no fear of being overheard but close enough that he could get back to Ann quickly if she looked like she needed help. “Dan, I don’t—”

“I’m so sorry that I didn’t believe you when you told me what you could do,” he blurted.

Ann’s eyes snapped back to him. “Really? I mean, you believe I saw something?”

“How could I not? You saw my daughter, right? Little girl with dark curly hair?”

“Yes.”

Dan shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair. “That’s just unbelievable,” he said, then waved his hand as if trying to erase something in the air between them. “No, I don’t mean unbelievable—I completely believe you.”

Ann glanced toward the pickup. “How about Amita? Does she believe me?”

Dan also looked toward the truck, his face tightening with concern. “Well, at first she thought you were playing a joke on us—a really horrible joke. She thought you must have heard about our daughter from one of our old friends.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Of course you didn’t. I think I convinced her you aren’t that kind of person.”

Ann hesitated. “What did happen to your daughter? If you want to talk about it.”

“Leukemia. It was terrible. Truly terrible. Especially after losing my sister to cancer so soon before. Well, you can imagine.” He ran his fingers through his hair again. “When you saw her, was she ... clear?”

“Yes, quite clear. It’s not always like that.” Ann didn’t specify that it had never been like that. Even with Elizabeth Firth, who had been the most lifelike spirit she had seen before Dan’s daughter, she would never have mistaken her for a living person.

“What was she doing?” Dan asked eagerly.

Ann thought back to what she had seen. “She was sitting in the chair next to your wife, following the conversation. She looked interested in what was going on—very engaged. She looks like a smart little girl.”

Dan smiled. “Oh yes. She wanted to be an astronaut. One time she made a ‘Martian rover’ out of a coffee can and hitched it to the cat to pull around. You can imagine how successful that was.”

Ann smiled with him, and felt a tug at her heart. This was the Dan she had missed so much. She could just imagine the talk he would have had with his daughter after that incident—gentle but firm about her responsibility not to treat the cat like a toy.

“What’s her name?”

His smile widened. “I like that you ask that in the present tense. Her name’s Sylvia.”

“A pretty name for a pretty girl.”

Dan nodded, the smile still on his face. “Yes, she was. She was a sweetheart.” His voice caught a little on the last word. He glanced back at the pickup. “Listen, I need to get back. Amita was okay with me talking with you but she didn’t feel like she could handle it right now herself. We lost Sylvia less than a year ago.” He looked back to Ann. “But I really wanted to tell you that I’m sorry for doubting you. I was trying to find a scientific explanation for what you experienced, but now that doesn’t seem so important anymore. Maybe I had to have a child to be able to see that there’s more to life than science and logic. Do you forgive me?”

Ann felt tears burn and in her mind’s eye she saw the scene the way it might have been: her and Dan and their own child—a healthy child—going to a restaurant for lunch for a special occasion. Maybe it would be a little girl with curling, reddish-blonde hair and sparkling green eyes telling them about a Martian rover, and speculating about ways of powering it. Maybe that little girl’s pet would be Beau, who would be only too happy to tow a rover if it made his person happy. She nodded at Dan. “Yes. Of course.”

He stepped forward and extended his arms tentatively, and she walked into a hug that was both awkward and wonderful. It lasted only a moment before he stepped back.

“I’m so glad we ran into each other,” said Dan. “I read about you finding that woman’s murderer. I must admit that at the time I didn’t know quite what to make of it, but knowing what I do now, you have a lot to be proud of.”