Defending the Dead (Relatively Dead Mysteries Book 3) (15 page)

“Hey, pal, I thought it was
our
life! I didn’t go looking for this, but as long as we have other people in our small circle who possess some part of this, I think we need to share as much information as we have. I like your mother. Why can’t you just talk to her? Is it a guy thing?”

“How did Brad treat
his
mother?”

Was Ned trying to divert the conversation? “He didn’t have to treat her in any particular way. She thought he was the sun and the moon. I didn’t stick around long enough to see how he rationalized getting involved with the lovely Shanna. Not that it mattered much: his mother didn’t think I was good enough for her darling boy. I’d bet she’s over the moon about Shanna, if that lasts. On the other hand, my mother thought Brad was just peachy—but she’s never been the intuitive type.” She hesitated before saying, “Look, I’m sorry if I blew the whole story about Ellie, but I’d really like your mother to be part of figuring all this out.”

Ned was still shaking his head, but at least he was smiling. “We really are clueless, aren’t we? Most people in relationships, whether it’s with parents or siblings or lovers, have communication issues. With us, we’ve got a whole other level. Are we all going to end up strangling each other, or just moving to different ends of the country so we don’t have to deal with it?”

“Oh, Ned, I don’t know,” Abby said, contrite. “And there’s no guarantee that we could escape it, wherever we go, now that we know about it.” She paused, trying to find the right words. “Sometimes it feels like a game, like ‘who can see who.’ Other times it scares me, because I don’t know how deep it goes, and whether it’s going to change or grow the more we explore it. And in a way, that’s why learning more about Salem is relevant: people went to extremes all too fast, because they were scared. They wanted to stamp out whatever it was as fast as they could. Never mind that the Devil could be busy just about anywhere and would keep on recruiting new witches or wizards, or that’s what they believed in their time. They just reacted to what they thought was right in front of them.”

“Are you worried that the townspeople are going to hang you if they find out?”

“Yes, figuratively, if not literally. Look, it’s already caused a blot on my permanent record. Leslie terminated me. How am I going to explain that? Or how will she, if a potential employer asks for references? ‘I had to let her go because she sees dead people’?”

Now it was Ned’s turn to look apologetic. “I’m sorry—I hadn’t looked at it that way. But you know you don’t have to work—I can support you.”

“Ned, that’s very sweet of you, but you’re missing the point. I like to work. I like to feel productive. If I can’t, I have no idea what I’m going to do with my life. The remodeling of the house will be finished someday. I could volunteer, I suppose, if I don’t have to worry about money—but the opportunities for that around here are kind of, well, unimportant.”

“Not like saving starving children or teaching them to read, in the inner city?”

“That’s what I mean. I’m not a bleeding heart kind of person, but I do want to help people. I enjoyed teaching children about history and making it come alive for them. And before you ask, I don’t want to do anything flaky like set up a new Kimball Institute for Retrocognition. I just want to understand this and move forward with my—our life.”

Instead of answering, he moved toward her and folded her in his arms. He spoke into her hair. “I do understand, Abby. I’m not putting you down. I’ve probably been wrong to try to stifle it most of my life, but like you said, there weren’t a lot of people to talk with about it, and I guess I didn’t consider talking to my mother because she was, well, my mother. And you’re right—most guys don’t do that kind of thing. But as you say, here we are, and we can’t put the genie back in the bottle. Plus there is Ellie to consider. I don’t want this thing to mess up her life. Don’t take this wrong, but it’s kind of like having a chronic disease. You don’t talk about it all the time. You just suck it up and get on with your life as best you can. If something changes, you deal with it.”

“Mmmm,” Abby said, relishing just being held. She had no idea what she would have done without him to hold her together through the first unsettling stages of this. But what kind of life would they be able to build together? “I know. I’m just venting, and it wasn’t fair to hit you with it the minute you walked in the door. But I’m not sorry that your mother knows now.”

“And I’m sorry that I didn’t realize you could use another person—and a woman—to bounce all this off. I think you were right to include her. You need supportive friends—I’m not enough.”

“I don’t want this to take over my life. Our lives.”

“It doesn’t have to, unless we let it.”

“Do we have a choice?”

“I think so. I hope so.”

They made dinner together—Abby had to admit it was nice having a kitchen large enough for two people to work in at the same time, even if the appliances were older than she was. Some of the old ones had been built to last, unlike modern ones. Abby had read recently that the life expectancy for a new appliance was barely over ten years. And how many people even kept their cars that long? Nothing seemed to last—except a few ghosts, Abby amended with a smile.

“What are you smiling at?” Ned asked.

“The fact that some ghosts outlive modern appliances. Never mind—it was just a silly thought. Is it worth investigating whether this old stove can be salvaged with a good professional cleaning? Or should we just start over? And don’t say it’s up to me—you cook too.”

“Okay, I won’t. That thing”—he gestured toward the vintage stove—“still works. The burners are probably fine, but the oven is a little skimpy. But I love the broiler, the way it adjusts up and down just by moving a lever. So it’s a toss-up.”

“Okay, we can table that for the moment. I’m not planning on cooking any twenty-five-pound turkeys in the near future.”

After dinner, cleanup didn’t take long. When they were finished, Ned said, “Are you working on something tonight?”

Abby shook her head. “I am researched out for today. I’ve got a lot to digest, and a lot of it is interesting, but I don’t think my brain can hold any more at the moment. Did you have something in mind? Like a rousing game of Scrabble?”

“Something a little more personal, I was thinking.” He reached out a hand, and Abby took it.

The first time they’d touched . . . how long ago had that been? There had been the first time, which had done no more than scare her, and Abby had all but slammed the door in his face then. But the second time, while visiting a cemetery . . . It had felt like grabbing a live electric wire, although nicer. She had not been prepared for the jolt that skin-to-skin contact had brought about. Nor, apparently, had Ned. When her head had stopped whirling, she recognized what had happened before, when she had panicked. Ned had been so careful with her, when she was still with Brad, and even after she’d walked out on him. That was very thoughtful of him, because he had no way of knowing how upsetting her breakup might have been to her, and he hadn’t wanted to take advantage of her at a weak moment. She hadn’t known how she’d feel either, and had been happily surprised that her main reaction was relief. She had wanted Brad to be The One, but her subconscious had known that he wasn’t.

But when Ned had lent her a hand to climb over a cemetery wall (illegally, but at least they weren’t vandals), everything had changed. Not just her feelings for Ned, but her understanding of the universe, apparently. She’d been trying to work out what was happening ever since, and Ned hadn’t pressed her. Now, since Ellie was involved, the matter had taken on more urgency.

All that flashed through Abby’s mind in the microseconds before she took Ned’s hand. Some men, she’d heard, said something unsubtle like, So, you wanna do it? Ned had only to touch her and she was lost. Would it last? Was it enough to build a life together on? She had no idea, but she was going to enjoy it as long as it lasted. Which, she reminded herself, could be forever, if their ghosts lingered on.

“Upstairs,” she whispered, her voice thick.

They took the back stairs, the fastest way to the bedrooms. They slowed down once they reached the bedroom, shucked off their clothes and fell into bed. Skin to skin, the sensations were overwhelmingly intense. Was it physiological? Psychological? Did it matter? It was wonderful, no matter how you sliced it. And it hadn’t diminished with repetition.

“You know I can’t think when you do that,” Abby said as Ned traced a finger along the curve of her hip.

“Did you want to think?” he said, kissing her shoulder.

“No, not really. Can we visit Danvers this weekend?”

Ned rolled over onto his back, laughing. “That’s what you’re thinking about?”

“Yes. I’ve been reading everything I can lay my hands on, or at least online, but I need to see the real place, get a feeling for it.”

“See if anybody’s there?” he asked.

“Maybe. They don’t show up on command, you know. I just want to figure out who lived where, distances, that kind of thing. You have other plans?”

“Not a one. I would be happy to serve as your chauffeur.”

“You don’t think you have any connections there?”

“I haven’t really thought about it—I’m letting you lead the way. It’s possible, of course. Have you found anybody specific yet?”

“Nope. So I guess that puts us in the same boat. We’ll just have to wait and see. Saturday?”

“Saturday sounds fine.”

15

For the next two days, Abby alternated between the Salem research and—when her eyes crossed and she couldn’t absorb one more fact, much less fit it into some coherent pattern—doing tasks around the house. Actually it was a good balance: scraping and patching and cleaning were physical acts that left her mind free to ponder what she’d read. There was no shortage of material, both original sources and interpretations. The problem was, there was no agreement among them. Was she being absurdly presumptuous to think that she could come up with a new understanding, when so many others had tried and failed? But, she had to remind herself, she had an advantage: the dead. Or undead.

“Undead” was a term that had picked up some odd baggage over the years. It made her think of trashy zombie movies on obscure television channels. The movie
Sean of the Dead
had at least introduced an element of humor. And Charlaine Harris had given surprising credibility to a whole range of supernatural creatures in her successful series. But Abby lived in the real world, not a fictional one. What she saw were people, or some residue of people. They weren’t evil; they weren’t plotting to take over the world or eat her brains. Most of the ones she’d encountered were not even important people, just ordinary ones going about their lives—or deaths?

She’d never given much thought to what happened after death. Or maybe she should rethink the term “death.” The body died. Biological systems stopped, and rot set in. But now she had proof, at least to her own satisfaction, that some part of human beings could linger on. Not for everyone, based on her own experience—the real world could get pretty crowded if
all
the dead were wandering around all the time. Or maybe they were, but only certain people—like her, and Ned, and Sarah, and Ellie—could see only certain ones of them. The rest were invisible to them. Even the ones they did see existed only within their own experiences: they weren’t going to be able to create any new ones.

She’d moved on to patching the holes and cracks in the plaster in the front parlor. It was kind of soothing, and Abby liked the texture of the spackle, and the way the putty knife felt in her hand. And at the end of the day, she could look at a wall that, with a little sanding, would look whole again.

Why were the ghosts stuck in one place? Could they move about? Was she likely to run into an ancestor where he or she hadn’t been in life? Was there some charge connected to “place” that fed the human components?

Why did she keep coming back to electrical analogies—spark, jolt, charge? Maybe she should try having herself tazed and see what effect that had. Of course, that might wipe out her ability. Would that be good or bad? Heck, electroshock therapy had been used for years for treating a lot of illnesses, mostly psychological, like depression or bipolar disorder. It actually seemed to work, at least half the time; it changed something in the brain. But what? And how? Still, the bottom line was that electricity could alter the way a person perceived the world. Something else to think about. Or to ask Ned about.

Ned had made passing suggestions about the genetic component of this ability, or at least the perceiving end. She and Ned shared at least a few genes, although they had to go back a long way to find the common source. Ned’s (and Ellie’s) had come by way of Sarah, Abby’s from her mother’s side, although the effects had skipped right over her mother. But what about the flip side? Could they all see only those ancestors who had the same gene, who could somehow stick around? Waiting for a receptor to come along? Was this something that Ned and his company could test for? Or would his employees laugh at the very suggestion? Was there a psychic gene? And would anybody want to test for it?

By late Friday the parlor walls were done. “We’re ready for wallpaper,” Abby crowed when Ned came in the door.

“Where do you want to look?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Abby said cheerfully. “Maybe your mother would know.”

“Maybe,” Ned said neutrally.

“So, are we still on for Danvers tomorrow?” Abby asked.

“Sure, if you want. Were you planning to invite my mother along?”

“Do you not want me to? Actually, I kind of wanted to scout things out for myself the first time around. We can go back again. But this is preliminary.”

“So we’ll make the circuit. We can see Danvers, and downtown Salem, if you want.”

“Let’s play it by ear, okay? But Danvers first, because that’s really where it all began.”

• • •

The next morning was fair, and Abby and Ned set off after breakfast. “It’s maybe a half hour away,” Abby observed, having made the trip to Salem recently.