Watch for the Dead (Relatively Dead Book 4) (17 page)

Ellie was now drawing things in the wet sand, with a stick she’d picked up somewhere, and watching the water erase them. She looked up at them, and Abby waved.

“We should leave tomorrow. That’s what we told Leslie, isn’t it?” Abby said. “That’ll give Ellie a day to decompress before she has to go to school. If George is up for it, that is. Have you heard anything new?”

“No. I’ll call Leslie tonight and check. Is there anything else you want to accomplish while you’re here?”

“I’d like to check the property records for the house,” she said. “I don’t have to see the originals in Barnstable—I can always do that later. But I would like to verify that Olivia actually lived here.”

“What if she only rented?” Ned asked.

“Maybe there will be something in the society pages, in the newspapers the library has. I’ll save that for the next trip.”

“I don’t mean to burst your bubble, Abby, but where will this end?”

“You mean all the ancestors, not just Olivia and her family? I don’t know, Ned. It’s still new to me, and I don’t have a lot of answers. Aren’t you curious? After all, you’re the scientist.”

“Yes, but I have a business to run, and other people depending on me for their jobs. I can’t just take time off and go looking for ancestors.”

“And I can? I told my mother, this isn’t forever. I want to get back to work. I like to work. But I need to know what’s going on. And I bet you’d like to know how many other people can do this. Don’t you?”

“Well, yes. Please don’t take this wrong, Abby. I’m happy to pay the bills—I’ve got the means to do it. What I’m more worried about is you obsessing about all this. Look, I saw you after Salem—it really upset you, didn’t it?”

“It did. But isn’t that important? That the grief or anger or whatever that took over Salem three hundred years ago is still strong today, for those who can see it? I don’t want to go wandering around looking for emotional cheap thrills from my past. But I kind of need to know where the boundaries are. Does that make sense?”

“Yes.” Ned wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer. “Should I be happy that I provide enough cheap thrills for you in the here and now?”

“Go right ahead.” Abby leaned against him.

“Hey, enough mushy stuff!” Ellie called out as she approached them, her pockets bulging with shells. “I’m hungry.”

They drove into Falmouth and found a small place to eat lunch, then picked up a few supplies for dinner. Their last dinner in the house. Fall was looming, and Ellie was headed back to school in a couple of days. Abby still had no specific details for Olivia’s presence, although she knew what she had to look for next. She cast a wistful eye at the town library.
Not now, Abby!

Back at the house, Abby asked Ned, “Do we have to clean the place or anything?”

“No—the service will do that. Just sit back and enjoy yourself.”

“Ned, you know I’m not happy just sitting and doing nothing. Even with you.”

“Then go look up those land records online. I’ll entertain Ellie. But set a time limit, will you? Oh, wait—let me check in with Leslie in case there are any changes in plans.” He headed for the dining room to call, while Abby stowed their few groceries.

Ellie came into the kitchen with the kitten in her arms. “Is Mom going to let me keep her?”

“Sweetie, I don’t know. That’s between you and your mom and dad. I hope so, but I can’t promise anything.”

“Can you write a letter about her?”

Abby swallowed a laugh. “You mean like a letter of recommendation?”

Ellie nodded vigorously. “You can say that she’s quiet and doesn’t make messes, and she gets along with people really well.”

“All true. Let’s see how it goes.”

Ned returned quickly. “No changes. Ellie, we’ll be taking you home tomorrow afternoon. Your dad’s doing fine, but he’s going to have to take it easy a little longer.”

“That’s good,” Ellie said quickly. “Abby’s going to write Kitten a letter of . . .”

“Recommendation,” Abby said, finishing for Ellie. “Saying what a good kitten she is, in case Leslie has a problem with her.”

“Then I’ll write one too,” Ned added, smiling. “Ellie, you want to play a game? Abby wants to look up something about Olivia on the computer. But she won’t be long. Right, Abby?” He looked directly at her, waiting for an answer.

“Just a quick check, that’s all. Then I can join your game, okay?”

“Okay,” Ellie said and went toward the living room, with Ned trailing behind.

Abby settled in front of her laptop at the dining room table. There was only one question she wanted to answer, although she was pretty sure what the answer would be. Had Olivia owned or lived in this house? Given her age as Abby had most recently seen her, it had to be after the death of her husband, which was in 1916. And she had died in 1940. Those were the limits Abby had to search.

She found the website for the Barnstable County Registry of Deeds, and the instructions were fairly simple to follow. Just looking was free. Setting up her computer to print the results was a little more complicated, and Abby decided she’d rather see the originals personally—that could wait. She took a deep breath and typed in ELLINWOOD OLIVIA, then added Falmouth to the search, and hit the Search button.

And there it was. Olivia had purchased the house where Abby sat, in her own name, in October of 1928. Or at least that was when the deed was registered—Olivia could have been settled in a bit earlier. Maybe the summer before. When all the economic world looked rosy, before the Crash and the Depression. How long had she held it? Abby read further down the list that had popped up, and found the answer. Olivia had died in 1940; her daughter had sold the property as quickly as she could, since the deed was recorded before the end of that year. No question of keeping a summer place, not when she was scrabbling to keep a roof over her head and her daughter’s.

So Olivia was here for the big hurricane,
Abby thought. But that was in September of 1938. Why hadn’t she gone back to New Jersey by then? Of course, from what she’d read, that hurricane had fooled a lot of people who should have known better. Maybe Olivia hadn’t realized the risks involved. Or she had had faith in her house, which had in fact weathered the storm intact.

But why had she been crying? Both she and Ellie had agreed that what they sensed from Olivia was sadness, not fear. And if Olivia had been afraid, she wouldn’t have been sitting on the porch, in the wind and rain.
I wish there was a way to know you better, Olivia,
Abby thought.
Why did you buy this place? Why did you keep it when your daughter needed money?
There was no way to find out, no way to talk to Olivia and just ask.

Why do you care so much, Abby?
Olivia had died long before she was born. She’d barely known Olivia’s daughter Ruth or Ruth’s daughter. Why was she obsessing about this, sitting in front of her computer while two people she cared about were enjoying vacation fun and games? They should be outside taking advantage of the lovely late-summer weather. Was it because Olivia had appeared to her? Was there some sort of sliding scale for degree of emotional intensity? Abby had never encountered an ancestral someone just because they’d received a nice birthday present that had made them happy in 1827. Mostly she had felt their pain, across centuries. Intense pain, anguish, grief—call it whatever you wanted. Too bad she couldn’t reset her perceptions to mix in at least a few happy experiences. But that didn’t seem likely.

She shut off the computer and stood up, then marched into the living room, where Ned and Ellie were playing some kind of raucous game that Abby didn’t recognize. She sat down cross-legged next to them. “Guess what?”

Ned and Ellie looked at her, although they probably already knew what she was going to say.

“Olivia owned this house. And she was probably here during the hurricane.”

Ellie nodded. “I figured that. Why was she sitting outside in the rain?”

“That I don’t know, Ellie. And that’s going to be a lot harder to figure out, since she can’t tell us.”

“You think we can? I mean, find out why she was so sad.”

“I’m going to try, but there may not be much to go on.” Abby glanced at Ned, who looked amused. “What would you look for, Ellie? Wait—first tell me if you see people when they’re happy, not just when they’re sad.”

“Yeah, sometimes. Like Hannah, in the cemetery. I know cemeteries are sad because people are buried there, and their families were sad at the funeral. But Hannah was happy to see me.”

“So was Johnnie,” Ned said suddenly. “He may have died a sad death, but when he appeared to me, he wasn’t unhappy. He must have been happy in that house.”

“Wow, you mean he was your friend? Like Hannah?” Ellie said, round-eyed.

“Didn’t I tell you about him? I was probably about your age when I met him—he’d lived in our house a couple of hundred years earlier, and when I saw him, we were about the same age. It sounds like we used to play the same way you and Hannah play. He never spoke to me, though.”

“Cool.” Ellie looked down at the board, then up at Ned. “Can we finish this game before dinner? Because I’m beating you.”

Abby almost laughed. First they’re talking about spirits and then suddenly Ellie shifts right back to winning at whatever it was. Ellie didn’t seem to be in danger of becoming obsessed by all the dead around her.

“We’re keeping it simple tonight—hamburgers on the grill, fresh corn and salad,” Abby told them. “And ice cream for dessert. It won’t take long to get ready. So you’d better whomp Ned quickly, Ellie.”

“No problem,” Ellie said, her eyes on the board.

After mixing up the salad, Abby handed over the cooking chores to Ned, and she and Ellie went out to sit on the porch. “This was nice, wasn’t it, Ellie?”

“You mean being here? Yeah. You didn’t know about Olivia being here, before, did you?”

Abby shook her head. “No, I had no idea. Remember, there’s a whole lot more that we don’t know than we do. So I’m sure there are lots of surprises coming. You don’t see these people at school, do you?”

Ellie shook her head. “No, but that’s a pretty new building. There’s not enough of the past there.”

“Are you looking forward to third grade?”

Ellie shrugged noncommittally. “I like some parts, but a lot of the kids are . . . well, kinda dumb. I’m done with stuff before they really get started.”

“What does the teacher tell you?”

“To sit down and be quiet.”

Poor kid—that was a surefire recipe for turning any child away from learning. “That’s not much fun. Learning should be fun. Do you think you’d be happier at a different school?”

“You mean, like a private school? I dunno. I haven’t met many kids from those. Are they snobby?”

“It depends. There are some schools that are proud of being old and brag about all the important people who have gone there. You know, presidents and writers, those kinds of people. And then there are schools for smart kids, who don’t care about that other stuff.”

“They cost a lot of money, don’t they?” Ellie asked.

How was Abby supposed to explain that Ned could pay for whatever school Ellie should go to? It was not her place to do it. “It depends. Sometimes they have scholarships to help pay for it.”

“I’d like to be at a smart school,” Ellie said with a kind of wistfulness in her voice.

“Well, we’ll see what we can do, all right? But tomorrow we have to go home, and you need to start getting ready for school—the one where you are now.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m taking Kitten with me, aren’t I?”

“Well, we haven’t talked to your mother about it, but we’ll try. Worst case, we’ll keep her at our house and you can come visit her.”

Ellie looked rebellious but didn’t say anything. Abby crossed her fingers that Leslie would be okay with a new family member.

Chapter 18

“What am I going to put Kitten in? Can I just carry her in my lap?” Ellie demanded.

Abby and Ned exchanged a look. “No, sweetie, that’s not safe for anybody,” Abby told her. “Ned, do we have any boxes?”

“There might be one in my car,” he said. “I’ll go look.”

When he’d gone out back to check, Abby asked Ellie, “We’ve got two cars here—which one do you want to ride home in?”

“Ned’s, I guess. Am I going straight home?”

“Your mom and dad want to see you—it’s been a while. So Ned can take you home.”

“But you said you’d help with Kitten. Tell them how good she is.”

“Okay, okay. We’ll stop at our house and drop off one car, then head to Littleton. But we can’t stay—your dad is still recuperating. By the way, it might help if you give Kitten a name. You have any ideas?”

“I haven’t decided.” Ellie looked down at the kitten purring in her arms. “I was thinking, maybe, Olivia?” She looked through her lashes at Abby.

Abby wasn’t sure whether she was pleased or dismayed. If the kitten was named Olivia, she’d be a constant reminder to Ellie of what had happened in the house here. On the other hand, it was kind of a nice remembrance. Although Olivia might not want to be memorialized by a cat. Well, at least Ellie had said she wasn’t sure yet. “You wouldn’t rather call her something like Stormy? Because you found her in a storm?”

Ellie came perilously close to pouting. “I’m still thinking about it.”

Ned returned with a cardboard box. “It’s not very big, but it should do for a couple of hours. Ellie, you want to help me cut air holes in it, for the ride?”

“Okay.” She put the cat down reluctantly, and the cat scurried over to the box and jumped into it to investigate.

“I’ll let you two work it out,” Abby told them. “I’ll make one last sweep of the house, to make sure we didn’t forget anything.” She went upstairs and checked the bedrooms and the bath. There was no evidence of their passing through. She went back downstairs and made sure all the board games were back where they belonged—and the binder about the hurricane—and even peeked under the furniture to make sure that no pieces had gotten batted around. She saved the porch for last.

Outside, she sat on one of the chairs—not the one Olivia had appeared in, but the one next to it. Abby shut her eyes for a moment, to see if she could sense anything, but there was nothing. She’d seen Olivia more than once, at different stages of her life. Would she be back? To have sent such lingering messages, she must have been a woman of strong emotions. It was so hard to look at scant facts from various sources and put together a profile of a person a century earlier. Maybe she should focus on Olivia’s husband, who probably had left more of a paper trail. She already had the one anecdote from her mother; were there more to be had? What could she infer from the public records? As far as she knew, they’d moved to New Jersey around 1900 and never left, and presumably they were buried there.
Abby, you’re wasting time. Go home and worry about it another day.