Watch for the Dead (Relatively Dead Book 4) (27 page)

“About ninety percent. I think he’ll be all right in the long run. But it was kind of scary there for a couple of days. Well, we should go. Thanks again.” Leslie went down the steps and joined Ellie in the car.

Once they had pulled away, Abby went back to the laptop and called up the photo program, while Ned wandered off toward the kitchen again. She clicked through the thumbnails of Ellie’s pictures until she came to the ones from the storm, and she opened that single shot of the porch to full screen size. “Ned, can you come here a moment?”

“That went well,” Ned said as he approached. “Maybe Leslie’s getting more comfortable with the whole thing. What do you need?”

“Look at this picture, will you?” Abby moved her chair back so Ned could get a clearer view of the laptop screen. “What do you see?”

“It’s the porch at the Cape house from the living room, during the storm, right? You shoved the chairs into the corner so they wouldn’t blow around, you told me. That’s one of them in the picture.”

“Anything else?” Abby asked.

Ned looked again, then went still. “No . . . not possible,” he whispered.

“What do you see?”

“There’s a woman seated in the chair, but you can only see her profile. Olivia?”

Abby nodded. “Explain it to me. How did this happen?”

“I can’t. There’s no rational way to make sense of it. You can’t take pictures of something that isn’t there.”

“What about X-rays?”

“But there is something there, in that case. It’s just not visible to the naked eye.”

“Exactly,” Abby said. “Why don’t you try to come up with an explanation? You’re the scientist.”

Ned shook his head. “I want to think this through first. We seem to be looking at a digital picture of a ghost. I know people have made that claim before, ever since photography was invented. Maybe back then they were hoaxes. Maybe the negative or the print was manipulated.”

“Or maybe a few of them were real?” Abby asked. “Look, this is all beyond me, but Ellie and I were in the middle of a major storm, which creates certain atmospheric conditions.”
And also a few emotional and psychological ones.
“We were together, and we both saw Olivia at the same time, and so did the kitten. So there was
something
there. Ellie was using a digital camera, which records images in a certain way. So which parts of all this came together to make that picture?”

Ned laid his hands on Abby’s shoulders, but his eyes never left the laptop screen. “I can’t tell you. But I’d really like to know.”

“Ellie didn’t say anything when the picture came up, but I’m pretty sure she saw what I saw. She might not have seen enough of it before to notice, on the small screen on the camera.”

“Smart kid. Leslie would
not
have been happy if she’d mentioned it.”

Abby sighed. “So now I’m looking for something to tell me why Olivia was so sad that her pain traveled across time until someone with the right receptors noticed,
and
why it was strong enough that she made some sort of electronic imprint on an inanimate object. It doesn’t get any easier, does it?”

“Apparently not,” Ned agreed. “Do you want to stop?”

“No!” Abby said quickly. “I see Olivia, and the others. I can’t just ignore them—that would be wrong.”

“Then get back to work.”

“I will, right after some lunch.”

After throwing together a sandwich, Abby returned to her task. Ned wisely left her alone, content to wait until she’d found something, anything. This was on her, because she was the one who had seen Olivia, along with Ellie. Well, so had the cat, but it would be hard to confer with a cat. Maybe she could carry a cat around as a kind of alarm system to alert her if a spectral presence was nearby. Did all cats have the ability to sense . . . whatever it was? Or was there something special about kitten Olivia? Abby refused to even consider the idea that the kitten was somehow the incarnation of the original Olivia. From what she had seen of Olivia, Abby guessed that she would have preferred to come back as some form of small stocky dog—a pug, maybe. A Boston terrier—that would fit.

Abby, you’re wasting time. Or are you afraid of what you might find?
She dug into the box again. There were various postcards, as she had already noted—some showing the view of the West Falmouth shore from the other side of the harbor. Unfortunately the distance made it hard to distinguish any details about the houses, although Abby could tell they were spaced fairly close together. There were a few yellowed programs, from musical events held at various venues in and around Falmouth during the summer months. And there was correspondence from a variety of writers.

Abby found it hard to imagine the world before phones. Back then people used to write notes or letters to each other. Maybe the postal service had been more efficient in those days, because if you wanted to plan lunch with someone, you couldn’t wait until the day before to send a note suggesting it, much less hope to receive a confirmation. Had there been a phone in the West Falmouth house in 1920? 1930? Hard to say. Or maybe life had been slower then. Had Olivia spent the entire summer on the Cape? In that case, setting up an engagement was not so pressing, if you knew you’d be there for a couple of months or more.

Was Olivia alone in the house most of the time, or had she brought the ever-faithful housekeeper Nora to help around the house—or to serve as a companion? Abby tried to envision living in the same house with someone for twenty to thirty years and treating that person as a servant for all that time. Surely they must have had some kind of personal relationship.

There would have been guests, now and then, wouldn’t there? Her daughter and her children? Had Ruth worked and been unable to get away? Had she sent her daughter to the Cape, while she was otherwise occupied? And had Isabel visited? With or without her mother, Elizabeth Reed Flagg? And were there perhaps other visitors?

Abby wondered if she’d ever find answers as she sifted through the contents of the box. There was so much pain in the world, both past and present. Why was she looking so hard to find one particular incident? It had nothing to do with her, did it? Say Olivia had had an unhappy marriage with Samuel—what did it matter now? Had it affected her own daughter’s choice of husband? Had Ruth not looked harder at the man she married? Had that original failed marriage set a pattern through the generations? No—her own mother seemed to have achieved a happy marriage—it was still going strong after thirty years. Wasn’t that a good model? What could she expect from marriage with Ned, if it came to that? She’d almost made a serious mistake with Brad; why had she been so willing to latch on to him and let him dictate how she lived her life? And was Ned just a guy who happened to be handy at the right time and place? A rebound romance?

No.
There was too much more going on with him, between them. This psychic thing was real, even if they couldn’t explain it, and they were equal partners in trying to figure it out. But that psychic thing, as she had called it, that was her answer: Olivia had somehow passed down that ability or trait or whatever it was, and it had come to Abby, and for her to understand how to be with Ned, she had to understand Olivia.

She went through the papers carefully, smoothing each one, trying to understand why someone had thought it worth saving. Some names she recognized from her own research; others were new to her. Sadly, Isabel had died relatively young, even before Olivia. Still, she had probably known the Cape house, at least for a few years.

At the bottom of the Bankers Box there was a metal box, and Abby pulled it out and turned it over in her hands. It was made of a thin metal—tin?—painted black with gold accents, and far from new. It had a lock in the front, but the key was attached by a faded blue ribbon to the handle on the top. Abby unlocked it, and all but holding her breath, opened it. The interior was filled with letters, neatly stacked, still in their envelopes. And all the envelopes bore Olivia’s return address, either in Westfield or in West Falmouth. Was this cache what Edna had meant when she said the answer was in the boxes? Maybe they were all the “Hi, how are you?” variety that ladies of polite society exchanged in those days. Or maybe—since Isabel had saved them carefully and set them apart—there was more in them. Only one way to find out. Abby removed the letters from the box, saw that they were sorted by date, and began reading.

The letters covered a period that mostly overlapped the years that Olivia had owned the Cape house, and most of the later ones had been written from there. They stopped in 1938, at the time of the Great Hurricane. The house had survived, Abby knew, but maybe there had been repairs to be made? And by the time they were finished, Olivia had already begun her decline. Or maybe the greater devastation in Massachusetts and Rhode Island and Connecticut had made it seem frivolous and somehow indecent to go and frolic on a beach. From what Abby had read, it had taken years for many shore communities to recover; entire industries had been all but wiped out.

Had Olivia stopped writing then, or had Isabel not bothered to save the later letters? Abby knew that both of them were already ill with whatever disease they each had that would kill them shortly—in Olivia’s case she suspected cancer, although the cause of death had been blacked out on the copy of the death certificate that she had. The answer became a bit clearer as Abby read on. It was obvious that Olivia and Isabel had had a fairly close relationship, despite the difference in their ages. Olivia could have been Isabel’s mother, whereas Elizabeth was far older, so it was not surprising. The letters started out as cheerful and almost chatty—Olivia commenting on small improvements she was making to the summer house, new stores that had appeared in Falmouth, other houses in the neighborhood that had changed hands, guests that Olivia had entertained, the occasional invitation for Isabel to come visit, with or without her family, often followed by “how lovely it was to see you” letters. Olivia had had a small, neat hand, and it was easy to read. Abby was enjoying the glimpse into a social life that was unfamiliar to her, and that had vanished before World War Two, with some pressure from the Depression as well. Even Olivia would have known that the era was passing, and there was a kind of bittersweet quality to the letters. There were references to men who came to the back door looking to do any old odd job on the property, in exchange for a hot meal and maybe a dollar or two. Olivia said they were always polite, but she could sense their desperation. Even on Cape Cod there had been year-round residents who must have been hurting then—a far different picture than the present, when it was seen as a playground for the affluent.

And there was a subtle shift in tone, about a year or two before the letters stopped. There were fewer and fewer social occasions, but at the same time, one name kept cropping up with increasing frequency. A man named Charles Clarkson. It had to be a relative of the artist’s—a son, a nephew? The earliest references to him—Abby had to go back and check the prior letters—had been almost formal. “Mr. Clarkson called in and we spoke of his father’s paintings once again.”
All right, Charles was Thomas’s son—good to know
. “It was so kind of him to bring me that painting, but he has been consistently kind since he first sent his condolences upon our father’s death, years ago.”
Ah, the first contact,
Abby thought.
Charles must have known William Flagg, or at least known of him through his father, and had sent some card to Olivia, acknowledging it.
A common courtesy.

But the mentions continued over the years, and given the change in tone, Abby had to wonder: had Olivia been having an affair? She would have been in her fifties or sixties by the time she wrote the letters. Abby had to laugh at herself: did she really believe that Olivia was too old for romance or love at that age, whether or not it was platonic? She seemed to eagerly anticipate the visits of the man, who apparently stayed over in the house on occasion, and Abby had the sense that Olivia initially was worried about what Isabel might think of her. It was a shame that she didn’t have Isabel’s side of the correspondence, but Abby inferred that because Olivia had continued to refer to the man, with discreet but increasing affection, Isabel had approved, or at least had not voiced her disapproval.

Abby forced herself to read on, although she was beginning to suspect how the story would end. The last letter from Olivia to Isabel had included a tiny newspaper clipping.

When Ned walked into the dining room, he found Abby sitting in the near-dark with tears running down her face. “I know what happened,” she said.

“Tell me,” he replied.

Chapter 28

Ned offered her a hand, and she stood up, feeling oddly unsteady. He led her carefully into the parlor, where he turned on a couple of lamps. Abby felt like she had been swimming underwater and was only now coming up for air. Her back was stiff, and her eyes were bleary. “Maybe a glass of wine would help.” Silently he deposited her on the settee and went to the kitchen.

Abby struggled to put her thoughts in order. There was nothing mystical or otherworldly about how she was feeling: she was just tired. And sad. Abby could hear the clink of bottle on glass as Ned poured wine. When he returned, he handed her a glass of white wine and settled himself on the other end of the couch. “What did you find?” he asked.

Abby took a deep breath, and then a sip of wine, before she started. “The third box had all the materials from the early twentieth century, so a lot of them had to do with Isabel and her family. At the bottom of the box was a small metal box that contained letters, written by Olivia to Isabel, mostly from the house on the Cape, but also with some from New Jersey. I’m sure there were plenty of other letters, but those were the ones that Isabel saved. I think I know why.”

“Go on,” Ned said quietly.

“We know that Olivia bought the West Falmouth house in the mid-1920s. As far as I know, it was the first summer house she had ever had, if that makes sense—although she and Samuel did their share of traveling earlier in their lives, and she may have rented on the Cape for a couple of years, to get a feel for the place. But it was
her
house, her choice. It looked like she spent a fair amount of time there—of course, moving up from New Jersey and back would have been a chore, so you didn’t do it on a whim for a weekend. From the letters it sounds like she had a pleasant social life in the summers—she went to concerts, she entertained friends, she knew her near neighbors. Kind of what you’d expect from a moderately well-to-do older woman in those days. Isabel visited on occasion, with and without the rest of her family. And things went on that way for a number of years, until around 1930, I’d guess. You know that the world had changed quite a bit by then.”