The Whispering Hollows (12 page)

Eloise closed her eyes. Yes, that was it. Florida or maybe Hawaii, someplace where it was warm all the time, someplace where the sun shined more than it didn't. Stephanie Schaffer loved the feel of water on her skin, the smell of the ocean. Stephanie wanted a better life for her daughter—it was a girl—than the one she'd wound up with. And she was going to find it before it was too late for both of them. Eloise smiled.

Tell him to let her go.

“It sounds like you're thinking about dropping the case,” said Eloise. “I'm sure Mr. Schaffer will be disappointed, but you've hit a dead end. And there's nothing to do now but let it go.”

He watched her as he chewed. He'd finished his meal and now he was polishing off hers.

“We won't get paid,” he said. “He's
that
kind of guy.”

“Whatever,” she said. “We never cared about that, did we?”

“No,” he said. He pushed her plate away, trying not to eat any more. “I guess not.”

She found herself staring at him, his shirt dusted with flour, his brow creased with concern. Maybe it was the golden morning light, or perhaps it just the feeling that some weight had been lifted. But she felt like she was seeing him for the first time—his warm, dark stare, his broad chest. She reached for him, and he took his hand in hers, their eyes locking. She felt her cheeks flush. Then he was pulling her up from her seat, he turned in his seat and guided her into his lap. She let herself be led.

“I want to take care of you,” he said, wrapping a strong arm around her waist. “Let me.”

Her body resisted him. She had always held herself back from him just a little, even when they made love. She couldn't, wouldn't, give over all of herself. How could she betray Alfie by surrendering everything to another?

She put her hand on his chest, the gentlest push away, even as her other arm folded around his neck.

“Let me,” he whispered.

Something in her heart loosened and released, a balloon drifting up into the sky. Ray pressed his mouth against hers, warm and sweet, and she breathed him in. Unexpectedly, with the kitchen a terrible mess around them and Oliver mewing at her feet, Eloise felt herself finally, after so many years, let go.

• • •

Letting go. Why was it the hardest thing? It sounded so easy, as if all you had to do was open your palms and step away. And yet we cling, don't we? To ideas of ourselves, hope, how things should be, how we wish they were. What we should be able to do, what we want, what we were supposed to want.

The Burning Girl kept holding on to Eloise. That afternoon, she came back, and this time she told Eloise her name, which was so odd. They almost never did that. But this one? She wanted to be known. Eloise told the girl that she must go away. Eloise was sorry, but she couldn't help. A few days of raging fires ensued, the carpets and the drapes again. On the final day, the girl herself, engulfed in flames, wailing.

It was quite a display, with heat and smoke and all of it. But Eloise had no choice but to ignore it. She went about her business—cleaning, grocery shopping. She even got herself some new clothes.

The girl was trying to suck her in, wanted more than Eloise could give. It wasn't help she wanted; rage and sorrow never want help. They want an audience. There was nothing for Eloise to do, not yet. But then the fires stopped, as if the tantrum, ignored, had fizzled out. And The Burning Girl was gone again. There was more to come, Eloise was quite certain.

Meanwhile, Eloise couldn't
let go
of Miriam and her family, kept thinking about them. She attended Ella's service, which was absolutely heartbreaking. The official cause of death was SIDS. But The Whispers told Eloise a different story. And, now, Miriam was in a mental hospital. What more should Eloise have done for them?

You can only help the people who want to be helped.

Another lesson that was so hard to learn.

Let it go,
the voice told her as she drove home from the church. The image of Nick sitting stoically beside his young son stayed with her.

• • •

Back at home, she dressed to go work in her garden. She needed the solace of her hands in the dirt, the smell of greenery in her nose, even the light sweat of mild exertion. But she was interrupted by a knock on her front door.

She moved through the house carefully. She didn't answer the door unless she knew who was there. She didn't answer the phone either. Ray was her agent, more or less. All requests went through him.

The knocking again—insistent, pushy. She knew who it was before she recognized the man she saw through the peephole. Tim Schaffer. He had been stalking Ray, inundating him with angry phone calls, insisting that he was hiding something. Ray wasn't, not really. He'd simply dropped the case. He no longer wanted to find Stephanie Schaffer for her creepy husband.

Eloise went back to the kitchen and dialed Ray, who said he was on his way. Then she went back and opened the door for Mr. Schaffer.

The sadness came off of him in waves. Eloise had to step back, but she kept her hand on the door. She did not invite him in.

“Where is she, Ms. Montgomery?” She could see that he was driving himself mad, had a kind of wired, haunted look about him. “Where did she go? Is she alive?”

“I don't know where she is, Tim,” said Eloise gently. “I believe she's alive. But I have no way of being certain.”

“But you're a psychic, right?” he said. It was a little whiny. She felt bad for him; he didn't have any friends. “You
know
things. Or are you just a fraud like everyone else?”

She smiled. People were ignorant, some more than others. “I don't know everything.”

His hands were raw and red: psoriasis. It was the disease of the perfectionist, the person who feared that unless he was perfect, he would be rejected. He had a patch of it on his face, on his arm. How much should she tell him?

She was surprised to see him tearing up.

“It's time to let her go now, Tim,” said Eloise. She put on her gentle Agatha voice. Agatha called it her Obi-Wan Kenobi voice. “You've done enough.”

“Enough?” he said. His voice went shrill. He sank into the chair on her porch and put his head in his hands. “I've been looking for five years. Something's happened to my wife. And I can't help her.”

Now he was just sobbing. Eloise considered herself an evolved person, but there was something very uncomfortable about watching a grown man weep. Though she'd certainly seen it enough times, she never got used to it. She sighed and sat down in the chair beside his.

“The hardest thing to accept is that we can't always help the people we love,” she said. She put her hand on his arm, but he drew it away quickly. He was the kind of person who didn't want to be comforted. When he looked up from his hands, she saw that same petulant rage that she saw in The Burning Girl.

“Who are you to tell me
that
?” he asked. He stood, and Eloise was relieved to see Ray pulling into the driveway. “Handing out that kind of pop advice. You should be ashamed.”

“It's time to let Stephanie go,” she said. “Past time. The trail is cold.”

“I'll never give up on her,” he said. Really, he was more yelling. “If she's out there, I'll find her.”

Eloise hoped that he was wrong. Ray walked up the path.

“Tim,” he said, “I refunded your money, gave you all the information I have found. There's nothing else to discuss. If you don't leave, I'm going to have to call the police.”

“Call the police?” he said. “
On me?
You two are the criminals. You promise to help people who no one else has been able to help. But you don't help
anyone
.”

He raged all the way back to his car, through her flower bed, across the yard.
Goddamn con artists, charlatans, posers
. Then he slammed the door and sped off up the dirt road.

“How'd he find you?” Ray wondered aloud.

“He's resourceful,” she said. “Unfortunately.”

“Hmm,” said Ray. She could feel his tension. People like Tim Schaffer—you never could tell what they'd do next. But Eloise suspected they'd seen the last of him. She hoped Stephanie had, too.

“I'm getting sick of this job,” said Ray. He heaved a heavy sigh and dropped his arm around her shoulders.

“Me, too,” said Eloise.

Then she looked up at Ray, and for some reason they both started to laugh.

• • •

Letting go. If you let go, did you then fall to your death? Did you simply drift away? Or was it the other things that floated away, leaving you alone onshore? Weren't you
supposed
to hold on to some things—to your loved ones, your sanity, the life you had built for yourself? Maybe
that
was true wisdom, knowing when to hold on and when to let go.

Ray insisted on making lunch, so Eloise went to work in the garden. The Whispers were loud today, a million voices telling their million stories. Eloise tried not to listen as she pulled weeds, popped off dead heads, watered, and pruned.

Since their midnight conversation, Amanda and Finley were very much on Eloise's mind. Even though they'd talked a number of times since then, Eloise still hadn't told Amanda what she'd learned in her research about their family history. There was no reason to frighten her. Amanda had shown none of the early signs that Eloise now understood from her own childhood—the strange nightmares, the knowledge of other people, seeing things that other people didn't see. But Finley was a prodigy, according to Agatha. When they came to visit, Eloise would have to make them aware of everything. She had tried to protect Amanda. And Amanda had tried to protect Finley. The sad fact was, you didn't get to protect your children. Not forever. Not from everything. Eloise had an especially hard time letting go of wishing that she could.

When Ray called to say that lunch was ready, Eloise rose and took off her gloves. She surveyed her work and was pleased. She wanted the garden to be perfect for Finley and Alfie when they came. Amanda hadn't called to tell her they were coming next month, but Eloise woke up knowing that it was so. Amanda would have other big news, too. Eloise wasn't quite sure what it was. But Eloise tingled with happy anticipation at the thought of seeing her family. She took a deep breath. The air smelled like new beginnings.

That afternoon, Agatha invited Eloise and Ray over for a swim.

“I sense,” said her friend, “that you two need to do something just for the fun of it. And guess what? I do, too.”

Eloise gratefully accepted. And the cool blue water was every bit as wonderful as she'd imagined it.

THE THREE SISTERS

The woman in the black dress had, apparently, moved in. As she drifted from room to room, her long skirt swishing about her ankles, her black lace-up shoes shuffling, all she did was stare at Eloise Montgomery. Eloise's visitors usually didn't stare. They were generally in their own worlds, wrapped up in whatever circumstance they were enduring. Or maybe she wasn't staring at Eloise, precisely. Maybe she was staring at something that Eloise couldn't yet see. It was hard to know these things.

There was something familiar about her, something around the eyes. Her salt-and-pepper hair was pulled back tightly into a braided bun. And she wore a deep frown. There was a heaviness to her energy, as if she were carrying an enormous burden. Eloise felt tired when the woman was around, bone tired.

“What's she doing here?” Finley asked, entering the kitchen with an arm full of textbooks. Most of her classmates were using e-readers. But Finley was old-school; she wanted books to hold and write in, and flag with Post-its. She let them fall on the table with a thump. “She's been around awhile.”

Eloise still couldn't get over her surprise that Finley could occasionally see what Eloise could see.

Eloise's twenty-year-old granddaughter had also, apparently, moved in—much to Eloise's daughter Amanda's very great displeasure. Finley was attending Sacred Heart College, a small private university just on the outskirts of The Hollows. Amanda had worked tirelessly to keep Finley away from The Hollows. (
At best, it's a social and cultural void.
At worst, it's a hell mouth
.) Amanda had also tried to keep her distance from Eloise's “situation.” (
It's not your fault, Mom. But it's toxic for everyone around you. You must see that.
)

“I'm not sure,” said Eloise.

“She looks familiar,” said Finley. “Energetically speaking. She feels known to me. Do you know what I mean?”

Eloise smiled. She knew exactly what her granddaughter meant.

“Do you have class today?” Eloise asked.

Finley nodded, walked over to the refrigerator. She'd been with Eloise only a few months. But it felt as if Finley had always been around. The house was happy; there was the energy of a family again. Eloise didn't realize how much she hated living alone until Finley had arrived. Not that she had been living alone, exactly. She heard the woman in the black dress march down the hall.

“She's angry,” said Finley. She'd cocked her ear toward the sound. “She's got an axe to grind.”

Finley was a pre-med student, planning to go on for her doctorate in psychiatry. An interesting choice of profession for a psychic medium, if ever there was one. How Finley could concentrate on her studies was beyond Eloise. But the girl was more native to their “situation” than Eloise was; that was clear. What was still painful and hard for Eloise seemed to come easily to her young granddaughter. Finley took it in stride, didn't seem put out in the least by the woman in the black dress. The girl clanged about the kitchen, making breakfast for the two of them.

“Are you going to Google her?” she asked Eloise.

Finley popped a pod into the new coffeepot her mother had sent—a sleek, space-age-looking thing. Eloise was mortified by the machine. It was ridiculously loud and what a waste, those spent aluminum pods! Finley dutifully put the used pods into a bag that was then shipped off to a recycling facility. Still, what about the plastic envelope? Was that, too, recycled? Eloise kept her mouth shut about it, though. People didn't love their habits scrutinized, and Finley was an adult now.

“No,” said Eloise. “I think I'll go see Joy at The Hollows Historical Society. She's good at this sort of thing.”

Finley nodded her agreement. Technology had made Eloise's job so much easier. When her abilities had turned on in the mid-eighties, she hadn't had the internet. She had the television—but of course, there were no twenty-four-hour national and international cable news channels like there were now. She'd had microfiche at the library, access to other area newspapers with that. And Agatha Cross, her mentor and a celebrity psychic, had created a kind of network between people who did what they did. Information was shared—crackly late-night phone calls, hushed meetings in highway diners, parking garage assignations—and it was very effective. There was even a sketch artist who sometimes helped put faces out into The Net (as Agatha called it back then, nothing if not prescient). And there was a selection of law enforcement folks around the country who were believers.

All of it worked, somehow, if often too slowly. But today it was as simple as typing a few words on a keyboard. Lightning fast. Tremendously effective. But it was far lonelier. The idea of “the psychic” had grown mainstream, had been popularized in television and film. But Eloise had been feeling more isolated than ever until Finley came.

Finley made breakfast in the mornings, though Eloise had never asked it of her. But on her first morning there, Finley had simply come down to the kitchen and made eggs, and had been doing it every morning since. Eloise thought about telling her to stop. Eloise would have enjoyed taking care of Finley—making her meals, doing her laundry, tidying her room. Eloise missed that about having a family, the caretaking. Even though it seemed very old-fashioned now, a lost art, there was something deeply satisfying about making a home, and seeing that the people you loved were cared for in the simplest but most important ways: a clean and orderly house, good, simply prepared food on the table, laundered clothes folded and ready to be put away.

But Finley, too, had the urge to take care. Eloise knew that it made her feel grown up to do things in the house, to do things for Eloise. So Eloise let her. Eloise had to admit that as nice as it was to take care of someone, it was also nice to have someone taking care of her.

Eloise did, however, pack Finley's lunch while she was in the shower: a chicken salad sandwich (leftovers from the one they'd roasted last night), a shiny Granny Smith apple, some baby carrots, a crinkly bag of kettle chips (her granddaughter's favorite), and a piece of homemade banana bread. She'd also started doing that on the first day and had done it every day since.

“Wow,” said Finley that first morning. Her face was bright with gratitude.

“Thanks, Mimi!”

Oh, the girl was a bright light, a beacon in this dark world. It wasn't just her prettiness or her sweetness. Though she was both of those things, petite with jet hair (which was currently highlighted with hot pink), with eyes so dark and glittery that it was like looking into a night sky alive with stars. She laughed like a fairy, was generous to a fault, had a heart that bled for the world's lost and broken.

But it was her wattage, the sheer volume of the energy that Finley gave off, that really scared the bejeezus out of Eloise. It was mesmerizing and powerfully attractive. And Finley was totally unaware of it.

“She's nowhere near taking the seat of her own power,” Agatha had said after first meeting Finley. “She doesn't even
know
what she is.”

There had been problems in Seattle; Eloise was not clear on what those problems were. She hadn't pried, though she thought there might be a boy and that it had something to do with him. Whatever the case, they were problems that Amanda and her ex-husband Philip couldn't handle. Hence, Finley's decision to come to The Hollows and live with Eloise. Amanda was livid at both of them. But Eloise sensed that she was also relieved. Amanda was way out of her league with Finley, and smart enough to know it.

Finley came back downstairs and loaded up her backpack, including her packed lunch (which earned Eloise a big kiss and hug). Eloise walked her out and kept her mouth firmly pressed shut as the girl donned her helmet and climbed onto her motorcycle.

Amanda did
not
want Finley to have the Harley-Davidson Sportster that Phil had purchased for their daughter. The battle was multilayered and epic, spanning the distance between Seattle and The Hollows. But in the end, Finley had her way. Or was it Phil that had his?
She
's her father's daughter
, Amanda had said bitterly. Eloise tried to stay out of it.

Eloise touched the glinting handlebars. The machine was shiny and tough. Eloise herself had never been on a motorcycle, and she had to admit that she was curious. But she was far too old for something like that now, wasn't she?

“Have you spoken to your mother?” Eloise asked.

“I talked to her last night,” said Finley, with a roll of her eyes.

“She's worried about you,” said Eloise. “Riding this thing.”

“She's worried about not having control over me.” The features on Finley's face turned to granite when she talked about Amanda. It made Eloise sad. “She can't stand it when she's not in control.”

There was some truth to that. Amanda
was
anxious and controlling. She had been that way since the accident. The morning that Alfie and Emily died had changed Amanda and Eloise both—and not for the better. Finley was too young to understand how desperately you wanted to control the whole world when you were a parent.

She was also too young to understand how her father was manipulating her with presents. He'd always done that, cast himself as the fun one, the easy one, the one to give money and gifts even when it destabilized. Amanda who was the stickler, the rule maker, the limit setter, came off looking like the bad guy. So now Finley and Phil were pals; Amanda was persona non grata. Somehow Alfie, Finley's younger brother, had managed to avoid drama with everyone.

“If they weren't fighting about this, they'd be fighting about something else,” Finley said, intuiting the direction of Eloise thoughts. “It's the only way they can connect. Fighting or fucking. They still sleep together, you know, Mimi.”

Eloise had felt a prim shock at that piece of news—and at her granddaughter's foul language.

“Finley, Mimi did
not
need to know that. And please watch your language around your poor old grandmother.”

“Sorry.” Just the shade of a smile; someone else probably wouldn't have seen it.

The girl wasn't sorry. She enjoyed shocking people; it gave her a little thrill of amusement. Finley knew too much, saw too much. And she shared her father's irreverence for the things most people took seriously—like physical safety and marital vows. Philip thought that the world was a big cosmic joke. Eloise hoped that he wouldn't find himself the brunt of that joke at some point. And she prayed that it wouldn't be at Finley's or Amanda's expense.

“Drive carefully,” said Eloise.

Eloise had a lump of unease in her throat. If ever there was a dare to the physical world, it was a motorcycle. It was like
asking
to get torn limb from limb. Finley was too far removed from the car accident that took the lives of her aunt and her grandfather. She didn't get it. But Eloise would never, ever forget the sound, the impact of metal on metal, on concrete, on delicate flesh. She smiled at her granddaughter, tried not to look anxious and worried.

“I'm always careful,” said Finley solemnly. “I promise.”

Eloise knew that her granddaughter was. But she also knew that it wasn't nearly enough. Eloise took comfort in the understanding that Finley had a lot of work to do. She was
needed
. Maybe that would keep her safe for a time. And maybe on some level, Finley knew that, too. That she could push the edges, peer over into the darkness, and get yanked back by some divine bungee cord.

Finley gunned the engine on the Harley and gave her grandmother a winning smile, then snapped the visor down. Eloise watched helplessly as her slender granddaughter raced away down the same road where Alfie and Emily had died nearly thirty years ago. There was no point in dwelling on it. She went back inside.

The woman in the black dress was gone.

•    •    •

Eloise drove her Prius to see Joy Martin. The Hollows Historical Society made its home in a red house off the main square in an area residents referred to as SoHo, or South Hollows. Any initial resistance to the ongoing gentrification in the town had been weak and short lived. The downtown area had gone from rundown and depressed, populated by just-holding-on mom-and-pop businesses to thriving boutiques and coffee shops, a yoga studio, a bookstore, even a
gelateria
.

Great tracts of land had been sold off by the children of old Hollows families, and sprawling homes and McMansion developments now characterized the outer regions of the town. The developers had promised a gold rush of money and an influx of wealthy folks, and they had
not
lied. Even the downturn didn't really hurt The Hollows. The money came early in the new millennium and it had stayed.

The Hollows Historical Society, once housed in a single back room of the old library, now had its own home—a beautifully restored three-story Victorian.

“Suddenly it's very hip to be historic,” Joy Martin, president of the HHS, had recently quipped. “These city people
love
to think they've bought a little bit of Americana.”

Today, they sat at the long wooden study table in the big library, poring over records and old photos, looking for the woman in the black dress or something that would give Eloise that little jolt, some piece of knowledge she didn't have before.

“Just like the old days,” said Joy. “Before you could Google every question in your head and get an answer—right or not.”

Eloise didn't share Joy's disdain for the internet. The way Eloise saw it, it was a mirror of the spiritual universe, every person connected by glittering threads to every other person. The wisdom of the ages was stored in a collective consciousness, a kind of psychic databank. If you talked to enough people, you might find the answers you were seeking. The internet was just a physical manifestation of what had always been there. Access was merely more readily available now.