Watch for the Dead (Relatively Dead Book 4) (9 page)

“No. Why should it? Hearing and seeing stuff like this, it’s been happening as long as I can remember. I’m used to it. Aren’t you?”

“I guess I’m not. It’s all still kind of new to me. I’m trying to, well, listen harder, just in case, but it’s not happening all that often.”

Ellie reached out and patted her hand. “Don’t worry, Abby—it’ll get easier. I’m hungry—can we get breakfast now?”

Abby swallowed a laugh. “Sure. And let’s go make sure all the windows are shut tight, okay? We don’t want water getting in.”

“Okay.” Ellie skipped away and reappeared dressed in shorts and a clean tee shirt moments later. “My room’s done.” Abby pried herself out of bed and pulled on similar clothes, and checked her windows. Relatively new, double-glazed, solidly seated in the older frames. She felt a sense of relief—those windows weren’t going anywhere fast. “All secure here. Let’s go find breakfast.”

After making the rounds of the windows downstairs, Abby started some coffee and filled bowls with cereal. “Isn’t there a bakery somewhere around here?” Ellie protested.

“Probably, but I don’t think today is a good day to look for it.” She retrieved her phone from where she’d left it charging in the dining room and called up the weather again. The thumbnail report told her nothing new: wind and rain. Or rain and wind. It might end tonight. It was not—repeat not—a hurricane, just a bad storm. Okay, she could live with that. They had plenty to do without leaving the house. If it didn’t look too bad outside, maybe they could go walk on a beach in the rain—at least it wouldn’t be crowded. No message from Ned. He must be at work by now. Or he’d been there early, trying to push through whatever project he was working on so he could join them on Friday. Tomorrow.

When Abby went back to the kitchen, Ellie was sitting very still with her head cocked. “You hear something?” Abby asked.

“I think so. No, not one of them. There—you hear that?”

All Abby could hear was the wind tearing around the corners of the house. She shook her head. “No, I can’t hear anything over the storm. What is it, do you think?”

“It sounds like a kitten. I’m going to go look.” She leaped out of her chair and headed for the back door.

“Ellie, wait!” Abby cried out, but not in time to stop her from opening the inner door and then the screen door, which was nearly ripped out of her hand by the force of the wind. Abby got there in time to grab it before it slammed against the railing on the steps. They stood in the doorway, listening for a moment, and this time Abby thought she heard a mewling. Although it could have been a distant seagull calling.

Ellie bounded down the stairs and turned in a circle, watching and listening. She bent over double and looked under Abby’s car, then turned back toward the house. The house itself sat up on pilings, and the gaps between the pilings were filled with white-painted lattice—the real wooden kind, Abby noted, not the modern plastic imitation. Ellie pointed. “It’s coming from under the house.”

In the minute she’d been outside, Abby was soaked to the skin, the wind whipping her sodden hair into her eyes. She came down the stairs quickly and joined Ellie, glad for the small shelter the house provided from the wind. Ellie grabbed her hand and tugged her to the place where the stairs were attached to the house, and then she knelt down. “Hey, kitty!” she said, her tone delighted. “Look, Abby!”

Abby knelt down beside Ellie and peered into the gloom beneath the house. Yes, it was indeed a kitten. A very small one, Abby noted—was it even old enough to be away from its mother? It was as wet as they were—so wet that Abby couldn’t even tell what color it was. It opened its tiny mouth, revealing pink gums and sharp little teeth, and mewed again, sounding pitiful.

But not afraid. Ellie extended her hand to the bedraggled little creature, and the kitten came to her immediately. Abby didn’t have time to worry whether Ellie knew how to handle an animal that small: Ellie picked her up and cuddled her against her chest. “She’s hungry.”

So now Ellie was a cat whisperer too? “Then we’d better get her inside and feed her.”

They battled their way against the wind and in through the back door, shutting it firmly behind them. Ellie was still cradling the kitten, who didn’t seem to mind at all. The little creature stared curiously at Abby. Abby stared back. Now what?

Get the kitten dry. That meant a towel. Upstairs. “Be right back,” Abby told Ellie, then dashed up the stairs, found a dry towel, and hurried back down. “Here,” Abby said, unfolding the towel, then bunching it into a nest. Ellie transferred the wet bundle into the towel, and Abby brought it close to her—for warmth? For comfort? The kitten snuggled against her and stared up at her with wide green eyes.

“Food?” Ellie said.

“Uh, there’s part of a leftover hamburger from the other night. You could chop that up real fine. I’m not sure how old Kitten here is, or whether she’s ready to eat real food.” Why had she decided Kitten was a she? “If that doesn’t work, maybe she’ll go for milk?” Or was milk bad for kittens? She hadn’t had a pet in years, and she didn’t remember all the details.

“I’ll get the hamburger.” Ellie located the foil-wrapped packet in the refrigerator, then put it on the cutting board on the counter, found a knife, and began dicing it into tiny pieces. Abby watched her carefully, but Ellie seemed to know how to handle a knife. “You can put her down now, here, on the counter,” Ellie told Abby authoritatively.

Abby carefully disentangled the needle-sharp claws from the towel and set Kitten on the counter. Kitten glommed on to the meat on the plate and started devouring it immediately. “She likes it!” Ellie crowed.

“She certainly does. How do you know she’s a she?” Before the words were out of her mouth, Abby wondered how much of the “birds and bees” conversation Ellie had had with her parents.

“I just know. Can we keep her?”

“Sure. For now, anyway. We’ll see what your mother says later.”

Chapter 9

Abby wasn’t surprised when her cell phone rang and she recognized Ned’s number. “Hi,” she said.

“How’s your weather?”

“As predicted: windy and wet. We’re fine. We checked all the windows, and they’re good quality, so no leaks, at least so far. Have you heard anything different about the storm from your end?”

“No, today should be the worst of it.”

“Uh, there is one thing . . .” Abby began.

“What?”

“Do you know how Leslie feels about pets? Because we seem to have found a kitten, or maybe she found us, and of course Ellie wants to keep it. Is anyone in the family allergic or anything?”

“Not that I recall, but I haven’t ever asked. You don’t think it’s just a cat who’s wandered off from its home in the storm?”

“It’s tiny, just a kitten. I’d almost say the wind blew it in, and it took shelter under the steps. I’m not about to go around banging on doors right now and asking if anybody is missing a kitten.”

“Fair enough. We can talk about it tomorrow.”

Tomorrow might be too late—Abby wasn’t sure she would be able to pry the kitten away from Ellie by then. “Any word from Leslie?” she asked. She looked around: Ellie was absorbed in watching the kitten wash its whiskers, so Abby moved quietly into the dining room.

“George is home. All Leslie would say was that the doctors found more than they expected, but they’re cautiously optimistic. Petey’s taken care of through the weekend, so Leslie can focus on George right now. You and Ellie getting along?”

“Just fine.”

“I’d better hang up. Don’t try to go anywhere today. Please?”

“Of course not. We’ve got food and games and plenty of books. Not to mention a kitten to entertain us. What more could we want?”

“Me, I hope. I’ll call you later. Take care, love.”

“You too.”

Abby made sure her phone was plugged into its charger, then went back to the kitchen. Ellie was busy drying off her cat, who was accepting the rubdown with remarkable patience. “She ate everything!” Ellie announced.

“Well, that’s good. And she’s almost dry. Hmm—maybe we need to set up something like cat litter.”

“What do you mean?”

“A box for her to, uh, pee and poop. If we can find a box, we can probably fill it with sand and put it somewhere she can find it, until we can get to a store. If we’re lucky she’ll know what to do with it.”

“Okay, let’s look.” Ellie headed for the pantry, leaving the kitten on the countertop. Abby scooped her up and held her under her chin while she followed Ellie. “Hey, look, here’s a washer and dryer!” Ellie said. “And a box. Is this big enough?”

“I think so. I’ll go out and get some sand . . .”

“I’ll do it. You’ve got the kitten.” Ellie found a big spoon and pushed out the back door. She returned five minutes later, drenched to the skin but with a couple inches of sand in the box. “That enough?”

“I think so. Here”—Abby handed her the towel she’d used on the kitten—“dry off.” With one hand she took the box with the sand and set it on the floor in the pantry, where no one would trip over it. Then she set the kitten down next to it, and was pleased that the kitten did exactly what she was supposed to do. Abby looked critically at her. Now that her fur was dry, Abby could tell that she was a tiger tabby, and she looked bigger than she had before. Maybe she wasn’t so young after all.

Ellie pounded up the stairs and returned quickly wearing dry clothes. She handed the wet ones to Abby. “Wanna try the dryer?”

“Might as well.”

If Abby had been worried about how to entertain Ellie for a long wet day, the kitten took care of that. They sat on the floor and tried various board games, but the kitten decided quickly that the little pieces on the board were there for her to play with, and Abby was sure that they’d lose a critical number of them in short order. Eventually, though, the kitten wore herself out and curled up on a sofa and fell asleep. The rain continued to pound against the house, and the wind made odd moaning noises as it swirled around the corners. Abby seized the cat’s nap as an opportunity to set out another game, and they actually came close to completing a round.

“Want a rematch?” Abby asked. She was pretty sure there weren’t a lot of other entertainment options, unless she downloaded a movie onto her laptop.

Ellie shook her head. “I want to take pictures of the kitten. Do you think she belongs to someone?”

“I don’t know, Ellie. Why don’t you get your camera anyway?”

Ellie darted up the stairs and returned moments later with her camera. She sat down cross-legged on the floor and tried to coax the kitten into doing something cute, which Abby watched, trying not to laugh. She opened a few drawers and found a small ball, which she rolled toward the kitten, who pounced on it eagerly. Ellie kept snapping pictures; Abby was forced to chase down the ball and return it to the kitten each time she lost it under a piece of furniture. This fascinating game went on for several minutes—until the kitten stopped in her tracks, staring out the front windows, toward the water.

Ellie was quick to notice. “What do you see, kitty?” After a moment, Ellie turned to Abby. “There’s someone on the porch.” The kitten was still staring.

“I haven’t seen or heard anyone out there,” Abby said.

Ellie shook her head. “No, it’s one of them.”

Oh, no,
Abby thought. She shouldn’t be surprised: of course spirits or apparitions wouldn’t worry about getting wet, and the wind probably blew right through them. And now Kitten was seeing them too? This was getting weirder and weirder.
Stop it, Abby: if this is real, or as real as this phenomenon gets, see if you can sense anyone on the porch
. She shut her eyes for a moment, then opened them again. Yes. There was something. Someone. The crying woman? Had that been real or a half-waking dream? One way to find out: go look. Abby didn’t feel afraid. Ellie was watching her, waiting for guidance. The kitten was still staring.

Abby scrambled to her feet and walked carefully to the door to the porch. She took a deep breath and pulled the door open, then stepped out into the gale. In the corner to her right she saw a woman. Seated in one of the wicker chairs, huddled in a corner, with a shawl or blanket wrapped around her shoulders. She was looking out at the water and didn’t react to Abby’s presence. Abby studied her: definitely older—sixtyish? Silvery hair, now wet. But the water dripping down her face did not come from the storm, or not the one raging at the moment. The woman was crying, silently. Abby wanted to comfort her somehow, but how could she?

Then Abby realized that she recognized the woman. She moved slowly toward the front of the porch, ignoring the blowing rain that drenched her. She had to see the woman’s face from the front. She edged closer to the woman in her chair, who couldn’t see her anyway. And then she stopped.

“Olivia?” Abby said it out loud, not that she expected an answer. Olivia couldn’t hear her, because she had been dead since 1940. Olivia was her great-great-grandmother, who she had first seen in Waltham, back before she had known it was even possible. Olivia and her family, who had somehow set off this whole thing, across a century or more. That Olivia had been much younger, but this woman in front of her was clearly Olivia.

Abby felt frozen. She should go inside, but at the same time she didn’t want to walk away from Olivia. Was she always there? Had she been there since they’d arrived? Or had the storm somehow brought her out? Why? And why on earth here? Nobody in her family, or in the records she had seen, had ever mentioned Cape Cod. Why was Olivia here?

Or had she finally gone around the bend and started hallucinating? Abby was startled when she realized that Ellie had somehow managed to come out without Abby noticing and was now standing beside her.

“Who’s she?” Ellie asked.

Abby felt weak in the knees. Well, at least she’d answered one of her own questions: if Ellie saw Olivia, then this wasn’t only in Abby’s head. “You see her too?”

Ellie nodded. “She’s crying.”

“Yes, she is.” Abby’s mind whirled like a roulette wheel, until the ball fell into place. Multiple balls, actually. Olivia, Abby’s great-great-grandmother, had been the daughter of Elizabeth Reed. Ned was descended from an earlier Reed. There were Reeds in the cemetery in Wellesley, where Ellie had seen them. And Ellie shared Ned’s ancestors. Of course Ellie could see Olivia. If Ned was around, he would see her too. Why the kitten could, Abby decided to leave for another time.