A Bridge Across the Ocean

by Susan Meissner

  “Maybe it’s not that bad if you just ignore it. That’s what you’ve told me you always do.”

  She laughed lightly at her naïveté in having shared so little with Keith. “You have no idea how incredibly bad it can be,” she replied. “And that’s my fault. I never wanted you to know. I didn’t want you to think I was crazy or delusional or for you to tire of dealing with it. With me. The sightings can be hard to ignore, Keith. Really hard. I’ve just always pretended to you that it’s easy.”

  They were both quiet for a moment.

  “Perhaps it’s time you talk to someone about this,” he finally said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean perhaps you should see a professional.” Keith did not look at her.

  “A professional what?”

  “A psychologist or something.”

  “And tell him or her that I see ghosts?” Brette felt a terrible tugging within the fabric of their faith in each other. Keith had always made it seem as though she had an unwanted ability, not a psychosis of some kind. “I’m not crazy, Keith.”

  “I didn’t say you were.”

  “Well, what are you saying?”

  He slowly turned to face her. His gaze was kind but full of uncertainty. “I’m saying maybe you should talk to a psychologist who understands what you can see.”

  Several seconds of silence passed between them.

  “Do you believe I can see ghosts?” She kept his gaze, willing him to answer her truthfully.

  He took a moment before answering. “If you say you see them, then I believe you.”

  They sat quietly for several long moments.

  “I have that trip to Chicago coming up in a few days,” he finally said.

  “I know.” Brette closed her eyes against what he might say next.

  “Maybe you could do a couple things for me—for us—while I am gone.”

  She inhaled deep the evening sea air. “What do you want me to do?”

  Please don’t tell me to make an appointment with a shrink, she inwardly pleaded.

  “Talk to your mom about this. Ask her if she had to do it all over again, would she still have had a child.”

  Brette already knew what her mother would say, that she could not imagine life without Brette. But she answered that yes, she would.

  “And look into seeing if there’s a professional of some kind who can help you. Not some nutcase or wacko. An expert. You’ve shouldered this on your own long enough. Find someone you trust who believes you and can help you handle this ability you’ve got. Will you do that while I’m gone?”

  She started to answer that there was no one like that. But the truth was, she had never looked. Maybe there was. Maybe there was someone out there who could help her figure out how to live the full life Aunt Ellen had wished for her way back in the beginning. Maybe there was someone who understood what she could do, and had the answers to the questions she’d wanted to ask Ellen and had never had the opportunity to.

  Brette leaned into her husband, and he slipped his arm over her shoulder.

  “All right. I promise,” she said.

  The ragged Drifter slid in to sit beside her on the wall, and the three of them gazed silently at the rolling surf.

  Nine

  Keith left for his weeklong trip to Chicago late Sunday afternoon, and Brette found herself uncharacteristically glad to have the condo to herself for the next seven days. Since their walk on the beach she’d come to see with even more clarity that it had been a mistake to keep Keith in the dark about how often she saw the thin places and their mysterious occupants. She had deluded herself into thinking that she’d been shielding him, but now she knew it had really been an act of self-preservation.

  He gave no hint that he was worried about her mental state when they got back to the condo after the walk, behaving as if what stood between them becoming parents were just a simple thing, easily fixed. They had spent the weekend organizing the garage, eating out with friends, kayaking in La Jolla Cove, reading the paper on the patio, and sipping cappuccinos. Keith hadn’t mentioned again what they had talked about on the beach, but the unspoken mood between them all weekend was slightly artificial, as if they both knew there was unfinished business that wouldn’t get taken care of until he left for Chicago and she made good on her two promises. Their parting at the airport was affectionate, but Brette felt the weight of his restlessness as he kissed her good-bye. She knew as she drove off and he waved a final farewell that he’d squelched his concerns from Thursday so that they could enjoy the three days before he left. But they hadn’t been far from his mind.

  When he texted her later that he’d made it to the hotel with no complications, he added that he was already looking forward to coming home. On Tuesday evening when he called, Keith asked if Brette had made any progress on what they’d talked about.

  “I was thinking I’d call Mom later tonight,” she’d replied hastily. The lie had flown off her lips before she could ponder why she didn’t want to just tell him no, she hadn’t.

  “Glad to hear it,” he’d said. “You don’t mind if I ask how it went when I call on Friday, do you?”

  “Of course I don’t mind.”

  “I’m curious now. I’d like to know what she tells you.”

  Keith’s interest in this masked extension of her life was strange and new. And almost comforting but not quite. “Um. Sure,” Brette said, after a moment’s pause.

  They hung up after saying good-bye, and Brette refilled her wineglass. It was a few minutes after seven. Her parents were probably just sitting down to eat. She’d wait a bit. Maybe she’d ask if her mother wanted to get together for dinner later in the week so that she could ask her questions in person rather than over the phone. She was sure now that her mother had to have weighed the risks and opted to take her chances. But had she brooded over it first, like Brette was doing now? Did she have to be talked into trying to have a baby? Was her dad the one who’d said, Are we really going to let fear dictate our decision here? Or had it been Nadine who asked that question and then answered it with a decisive No, we’re not? And then of course her maternal grandmother had the Sight as well. Had she wrestled with whether to have children? Did Nadine ever ask?

  Brette sat down at her laptop and opened a web browser. While she waited to call her mom, she’d trawl the Internet to search for a paranormal professional. Keith had said maybe she needed to speak to a psychologist, but Brette didn’t think that was the place to start. She needed an educated professional, but it had to be someone who had the practical expertise to advise her. Someone who didn’t think she was nuts. Someone who was convinced death wasn’t the end of it all. Someone who could appreciate the wonder and danger of having the Sight but who also had the wisdom to know how Brette could take charge of it.

  The number of results for her search words, professionals plus paranormal plus help, was astonishing. Everything from how to work with a medium to how to schedule an exorcist to how to know if your house was haunted was instantly at her fingertips. Clicking through the dozens of pages of results would take far longer than one night. Brette had grudgingly browsed through the first set of largely unhelpful results when her cell phone rang. Seeing that it was her mother seemed almost providential.

  “Hey, Mom. I was just going to call you.”

  “Something up?” Her mother spoke softly, as though calling from the inside of a library.

  “No. I just . . . I thought maybe we’d grab a bite sometime this week. There’s something I want to run by you.”

  There was a momentary pause.

  “Mom? Is everything all right?”

  “Yes. I was just trying to get to a quiet corner of the house so I could talk to you in private. We’ve a gentleman who’s been here the better part of the afternoon waiting for your dad and me to get home from a funeral. He says he knows you.
And he really wants to see you. He says he needs your help.”

  Brette looked up from her computer screen. “Who is it?”

  “Some old friend of yours from high school.”

  A warning bell went off inside Brette’s head. “I don’t have any friends from high school.”

  “He said you and he had a number of the same classes. Trevor Prescott? I think he said he lives in Texas now.”

  Good Lord, Brette breathed. Trevor Prescott had been in Kimberly Devane’s circle of friends. He had also been the only one in that group of highly popular students who had been nice to her. He’d always behaved toward her as if she were a member of his crowd, which she knew she was not. She had appreciated that about him, his way of making her feel accepted and of value. But on the day Kimberly broadcast Brette’s secret, he’d looked at her with the same fear and revulsion as everyone else. She waited for the I’m just kidding! response that should follow something as ridiculous as what her mother had just said. But it didn’t come.

  “Brette? Do you know him?”

  “Yes. I know him.”

  “He really wants to talk to you. And he won’t say what it’s about. He just said it was very important and that he’s only in California for a few more days. I told him I’d call you to see if you’d allow me to give him your phone number. He seems very nice. I don’t recall you ever mentioning him, though.”

  “That’s because I never did.”

  A dozen thoughts raced in Brette’s head, paired with a dozen images. Trevor in her freshman comp class picking up her pencil when she’d dropped it. Trevor sitting one chair away in American History and asking if she wanted a piece of gum. Trevor surrounded by jocks and cheerleaders but nodding hello to Brette as she walked by.

  Trevor shocked and wide-eyed the day Kimberly Devane announced Brette’s macabre talent.

  That day was the last time he had made eye contact with her. Sixteen years had come and gone since their high school graduation. Brette had stayed in contact with no one from that time in her life.

  “Well, what do you want me to tell him? He’s out in the common room with your father,” her mother said.

  Brette twirled her finger on the base of her wineglass. What could Trevor Prescott possibly want from her?

  “Brette?”

  “Put him on.”

  “All right. Hold on a sec.”

  A few moments later, a voice that Brette had never expected to hear again spoke her name.

  “Brette. Thanks for talking to me. I can’t tell you how glad I am.”

  For a moment she could not speak.

  “How did you find me?” she managed to say, even though she didn’t care in the least how he’d located her. It was that he’d contacted her at all that was mind-boggling.

  “I remember you told me once your parents owned this bed- and-breakfast. I tried to find you on Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn. But you’re not on any of those sites.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I need to talk to you about something important. May I come over to your place? Or I could meet you somewhere. Please?”

  “Trevor, what is this about? You and I haven’t spoken a word to each other since high school.”

  “I know. I wouldn’t have bothered you at all if it wasn’t important. But I need your help. I don’t know who else to turn to.”

  “You need my help.”

  “Yes.”

  Her more practical side kicked in at that moment. As fascinating as it was to hear Trevor Prescott speak to her this way, she knew she was no one to him. Whatever it was he wanted, she had probably been the last resource he’d tried.

  “I haven’t stayed in touch with anyone from high school, if that’s what you are hoping. I don’t know where any of your old friends are.”

  “Can we just meet somewhere?”

  The subdued desperation in his voice was both off-putting and appealing. But she did not trust it. He was probably wondering where Kimberly Devane had ended up.

  “I seriously doubt I can help you, Trevor. Sorry, but I need to go.”

  “Please! I’m not asking for me. I’m asking for my daughter.”

  “Your daughter?”

  “She thinks her mother is on the Queen Mary! You know. The ship.” Trevor’s voice faltered. “We toured the ship on Saturday. It’s all Emily will talk about now. She can’t sleep. She won’t eat. All she wants to do is go back there and be with her mother.”

  “Trevor, I—”

  “Her mother is dead. My wife died in a car accident six months ago. Laura’s dead, Brette. You’ve got to help me.”

  For several seconds silence hung between them.

  “Help you do what?” Brette finally said.

  “Was what Kimberly said about you all those years ago true? Can you see and talk to ghosts?”

  Brette had no interest in ghost-chasing, but the tone of Trevor’s voice was so childlike and earnest, hopeful and yet so afraid. In her mind’s eye, she saw his grief-stricken daughter, grappling with such tremendous loss at so tender an age. Brette’s dormant mother-heart awakened with a jolt, and she winced as though a splinter from what had been a protective shell had sliced into her. It had been on the tip of her tongue to tell Trevor it didn’t matter if she could talk to ghosts, she could not help him. But those weren’t the words that came out of her mouth.

  Instead, she gave him her address.

  Ten

  VENELLES, FRANCE

  1944

  After Sébastien left the wine cellar, Simone was alone with the wounded American.

  The flashlight had been left with her but it was sitting atop a barrel to her right. Its meager light was illuminating only the back wall—a length of rock and wood that revealed that the hidden cellar was part cave. She wanted the light closer to her so that she could see the American’s face, but she dared not lift her hand from the wound to crawl over the straw to get it.

  Sébastien had pressed her for details on how she’d killed an officer of the Gestapo, but she had told him nothing, and he hadn’t the time to convince her to reveal more. He’d seemed proud of her, envious maybe. His admiration for her—if that was what it was—unsettled her.

  There had recently been moments when Simone had almost forgotten that she’d done what her father had told her to do: She had held the gun steady and she’d kept her eyes open when she’d fired it. Some mornings she would awaken and not instantly remember the German man with the gold tooth. She wouldn’t remember the sound the gun made when she pulled the trigger or see the spray of blood. Sometimes she would wake up and for a moment she was in her own bed in the flat above the shoe-repair shop and she would wonder for just a second what was poking her. But then she’d open her eyes and she’d smell the barrels and the dirt and she’d feel the coarse straw she’d slept on and it would come back to her.

  All of it.

  But she’d told Sébastien only that she was not proud of what she had done, it had just seemed the only thing she could do. And he’d nodded once and then headed up the stairs to get the woman named Marie.

  She was wondering if the American would die while everyone was out fetching things, when he suddenly spoke. She hadn’t realized he was awake. The faint light cast by the flashlight was not strong enough to plainly show that his eyes were now open.

  The words that came out of his mouth were masked by pain, a parched throat, and a language of which Simone only knew the elementals.

  “I am American,” he sputtered, almost proudly, and Simone supposed he had been told to say this if he was captured in occupied territory. He said other words, too, but most were lost on her. She heard the English words for airplane and United States but the rest of what he was saying was a mystery. He tried to get up and then cried out as he fell back onto the straw.

  Simone repositioned her hand
on his wound and he grimaced. She didn’t know the English words for Lie still. You have been shot. Do not worry. You are among allies. We will help you. All she could remember from those long-ago English classes at school were useless conversational phrases like I have a gray cat and Do you think it will rain? and The bus leaves at three o’clock.

  So she made a shushing sound, the kind a mother might make to a child who has awakened from a nightmare. She said the French phrases she wished she knew how to say in English, in as gentle a tone as she could.

  He quieted. And then he spoke in halting French. “Where am I?”

  “Do you speak French, monsieur?” Simone leaned closer to him to get a better glimpse of his face.

  “Only little.”

  “You have been shot. Help is coming. Do you understand?”

  The American hesitated only a moment before continuing. “My camera. Do you have?”

  “Oui. Henri has your camera. It is safe.”

  “Henri?”

  “This is Henri’s wine cellar. A secret one. You are at a vineyard near Venelles. Henri and François and Sébastien brought you here.”

  “Who are . . . who are those?”

  Simone pondered her answer a moment. “They are people who can help you.”

  “Résistance?”

  Papa had told her never to mention the word, never to admit knowing anything about it.

  “And you?” the American continued, when she said nothing.

  “I am Simone.”

  Perhaps the American had been expecting her to say she was part of the underground movement as well. He seemed taken aback that she had said her name instead.

  “I am Lieutenant Everett Robinson,” he replied.

  He had no sooner said his name than the cellar door opened and boots again were heard on the steps.

  The man startled, and Simone used one hand to gently touch his arm. “Shhh.”

  Henri and Collette rounded the corner, laden with a basin of hot water, more blankets, strips of cloth, and the bottle of Armagnac. Henri had also brought a kerosene lantern that threw a stronger light about the room.