Nadine fumbled the shrimp in her hands and it tumbled to the sink. “She what?”
“Emily’s convinced she felt her mother’s presence on that ship. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but it’s one of the more celebrated haunted locations on the West Coast. Ghost hunters love that ship.”
Nadine turned her head slowly to face her. “So what did your friend want?” Her tone was cautiously curious.
“He wanted to me to come to the ship, make a sweep, and then tell his daughter that her dead mother was not on board.”
“But how . . . how did he know . . . Why did he ask you?”
“Because he was one of the people at high school who knew. You remember when I came home crying because someone who was pretending to be my friend blabbed to everyone she knew that I could see ghosts?”
Nadine closed her eyes for a second. “I remember that day.”
“Trevor apparently does, too. He didn’t know who else to call. Emily didn’t want to go back to Texas and he was desperate.”
“Couldn’t he have called a grief counselor or something? I mean, why involve you? You don’t even do that kind of thing. You’re not going to go, are you?” Nadine locked eyes with Brette.
Brette took a sip of her wine to steady her courage. “I already went,” she said calmly as she set down her wineglass.
“You what?”
“I already went.”
Her mother blinked and her facial expression gave away nothing. Brette couldn’t tell if her mother was appalled or fascinated. “Why?” Nadine said. “You’ve always been so careful.”
“I know. I surprised myself by agreeing to go. But I felt sorry for him. And his little girl. I went Thursday. His wife wasn’t there, just so you know. At least, I didn’t see her there.”
Nadine turned from her daughter, grabbed the shrimp she had dropped, and stripped it of its legs and shell in one swift yank. “Well, thank God that’s over with, then.”
“Except it’s not over.”
“Of course it is. You said yourself she wasn’t there.”
“Yes, but there are Drifters on that ship. I met one. Or rather, she met me. I think she’s been looking for someone like me for a long time.”
Nadine paused with the clean shrimp in her hand and stared at Brette. “She?”
“I think she’s the ghost of a German woman who supposedly committed suicide by jumping overboard in 1946. But she has me convinced she didn’t jump. I think maybe she was pushed. She was posing as a Belgian war bride and she got found out the day before the ship was to dock in New York.”
“But even if she didn’t jump, that has nothing to do with you.”
“I think maybe it does. This time everything feels different. She’s different. She’s not like other Drifters. I want to help her.”
Nadine tossed the clean shrimp into a bowl. “Are you sure that’s a good idea? Who knows what you might find if you go poking about.”
“I’m hoping I’ll find the truth.”
“And then what?”
Brette said nothing. She didn’t know what she thought might happen next.
“I’m just surprised, Brette,” her mother continued when she still said nothing. “Considering what happened at the baby shower, I thought you were still keeping all of this hidden away. You told me you had gotten very good at ignoring it.”
“I know. But I’ve been thinking about . . . things. About why I have this gift. I just want to help this one. I feel like I am meant to.”
“But you could be making a terrible mistake. What if you’re wrong? Aunt Ellen said—”
“Aunt Ellen is of no help to me now!” Brette said, louder than she meant to. “There’s no one else to talk to and I need to figure this all out. That’s the real reason I wanted to talk to you today, actually. I need to know something. And I need you to be honest with me.”
“Of course, Brette.”
“I need to know if you and Dad talked about what it might mean to have a daughter when you decided to have kids.”
Nadine’s face was again expressionless. She said nothing, but Brette could see she was contemplating something.
“Keith wants us to have a baby,” Brette went on. “He’s aware of the risk I pose, but he says he’s okay with it. I’m not sure I am.”
“A baby,” Nadine whispered.
“Yes, a baby. I need to know if you and Dad talked about it before you had me. I need to know how you decided. Did you have to convince Dad or did he convince you? And how did you know you would be comfortable with whatever the outcome was? Did you talk to Grandma about it? Did you go to her like I’ve come to you right now?”
Nadine turned her head to look out the window above the sink. A blue band of ocean was visible in the distance. “I did. I did go to her.” Her mother’s voice sounded far away, as if she’d floated back to another time and place.
Brette waited for her mother to continue.
“And I was worried, just like you are right now,” Nadine went on. “Maybe worse than you are because she had it. She had the Sight. And I saw what it did to her.”
“What? What did it do?”
Nadine paused a moment and then shrugged. “It wearied her. She had compassion for every one of those lost souls she saw. Every one. She wanted to help them, but Ellen told her they had to find their own way to where they belonged. Ellen was older and my mother looked up to her, so she did what Ellen said. It’s very hard to be able to see something that makes you sad and be unable to do anything about it.”
“Is it true that Grandma opted out of treatment for her cancer because of the Sight?”
Nadine swiveled her head slowly around. “Where did you hear that?”
“That day I saw the little boy in the attic, Aunt Ellen left my bedroom door ajar when she went to tell you about him. I think she wanted me to hear what she was saying in case you tossed her out of the house.”
“Aunt Ellen thought that was why she didn’t want the chemo. Maybe she’s right. I don’t think we can know for sure. When the doctors found the cancer it was already advanced. But yes, I think maybe my mother was ready to be set free of everything here on earth that caused her pain.”
The two women were quiet for a moment.
“What did Grandma tell you when you asked her about whether to have a baby?” Brette asked.
Nadine inhaled deeply. “She told me that the lost souls had taught her better than anything else that life is precious and worth having. She said that if your dad and I wanted to bring new life into the world, that was always a good thing and could never be bad.”
Brette let this elevated notion settle about her, noting how warm it made her feel inside. And yet, still she sensed caution. “You waited a long time to have me,” she finally said.
A slight smile curved Nadine’s lips. “I did. I had to be sure I’d be okay with whatever happened. Your father wasn’t convinced the Sight was real at that point. I think he thought my mother and Ellen were just overly imaginative. But he understood that I was worried about it. We both wanted to be sure we were ready for whatever was in store for us. Prospective parents should be prepared for any kind of outcome when they decide to have a child. I would advise you of that even if the Sight didn’t run in our family.”
“And when the doctor said it’s a girl, what did you think?”
The smile on Nadine’s face widened. “You know, all I thought was how beautiful and perfect and wonderful you were.” She turned to Brette. “I still think that.”
Brette smiled now, too. “Why don’t we ever talk about this?”
“Because for a long time I didn’t want to, and then when I thought maybe we should, you didn’t want to.”
The light moment stretched thin and wafted away.
“But I’m realizing that I have to talk about it,” Brette said. “I
t’s part of my life. I’ve got to figure out how to live with this. Especially if I am going to be a parent.”
“I know you do.”
“If you had to do it all over again, would you still have me?”
“A thousand times yes.”
“Even if you knew I’d be born this way?”
“But we don’t ever get to know those kinds of things about our unborn children, Brette. That’s the beauty and burden of having a child. You don’t pick and choose the one you think you want, you are handed the one God gives you.”
The sound of a car pulling into the driveway caused the women to turn their heads toward the open front windows.
“They’re back,” Brette said.
“Does Keith know you and I are having this conversation?”
Brette laughed. “Keith insisted we have this conversation.”
Nadine reached out to her daughter and squeezed her arm. “You and Keith will be wonderful parents.”
“I’m glad you think so.”
Nadine hesitated a moment before picking up a shrimp. “Are you still going to try to figure out what happened to that German woman?”
“I am. I need to know what I am meant to do with this ability if I am going to take the risk of passing it on to a child. I’m having to figure this out on my own. There’s no one to ask. Pardon me for saying it, but I am all alone in this. There’s no one else to go to for advice.”
Nadine held the shrimp’s pale gray body in her hands. “That’s not exactly true.”
Brette had started to pick up her wineglass, but she stopped. “What do you mean?”
Her mother didn’t look at her. “I mean there’s someone else.”
“Someone else?”
“Cousin Lucille had a daughter.”
“What?”
“Aunt Ellen didn’t want you to know about her. She didn’t think she was safe to be around, and I promised her I wouldn’t tell you. And then when you got older, I felt I had to respect the distance you wanted to keep around it.”
Brette stared at her mother, openmouthed.
“She lives in Oregon,” Nadine said, finally looking at her daughter. “At least, she did.”
“And she has the Sight?”
Nadine exhaled heavily, and Brette could feel the weight of guilt mixed with mother-love in that breath. “Yes.”
Thirty-three
Brette had grown up believing Aunt Ellen’s cousin Lucille was the perfect example of what would happen if she indulged in the Sight. While Brette was acclimating her six-year-old mind to the reality that she could see ghosts, what had troubled her most after Aunt Ellen left Willow House were the remembered snippets of the conversation on the other side of the nearly closed door. Ellen had been talking the way adults did when they were upset, saying her words like each one ached a little when spoken. Cousin Lucille’s name had come up for the first time in those tense sentences, as did the words ostracized and institutionalized—chilling words she did not know—and terrified, which she did. Ellen’s tone, as well as her parents’, had been quite different when the three of them came into her room a few minutes later with their cotton-soft voices and tender assurances. Lucille hadn’t been mentioned then.
The second time Lucille’s name came up was when Aunt Ellen died and Brette was given the letter. Ellen had written that Cousin Lucille involved herself too much with the Drifters she encountered. It was the reason that Lucille was committed to a mental hospital and died young at fifty-three.
Lucille was the unmentioned, token family black sheep, whose strange life and early death were never spoken of at extended family get-togethers, events that Nadine and Cliff rarely attended because they were always held in the Midwest or farther east. Cliff’s side of the family knew nothing at all about the Sight, and Nadine’s family now consisted of just one brother, two nephews, and a scattering of second cousins whom Nadine wasn’t close to, most of whom—including the brother—thought the so-called family gift was just the stuff of legend. Lucille was the cousin who went crazy, not the cousin who’d been able to see into the spiritual dimension and who let it get the best of her.
It had never occurred to Brette that Lucille might have had a child, and a daughter, no less.
Now as she stood in the kitchen with her mother, she was filled with equal parts relief that she wasn’t the only one in the family with the Sight and astonishment that Nadine had kept this knowledge from her.
Cliff and Keith were standing in the kitchen now, too, looking from one woman to the other.
“Everything okay in here?” her father said.
“Does he know?” Brette said to Nadine.
“Do I know what?” Cliff set the grocery bag on the counter. One artichoke rolled out. Its pointed leaves made it zigzag toward the shrimp cleanings before it came to a wobbly stop.
When Nadine didn’t immediately answer, Brette filled in the blank. “Cousin Lucille had a daughter.”
Cliff looked from Brette to Nadine. “What brought that up?”
“So you knew, too?”
“I promised Ellen a long time ago I wouldn’t say anything,” Nadine said. “When you were young it seemed to both your dad and me the right thing to do.”
“Who’s Lucille?” Keith said.
“My great-aunt Ellen’s second cousin,” Brette answered. “She had a daughter that is apparently like me.”
“No. Not like you,” Nadine said quickly. “Maura is nothing like you.”
A few seconds of silence hovered in the room. A sense of quiet betrayal clung to Brette. She wanted to shake it off but didn’t know how.
“Ellen told us it was best you didn’t know about Maura. And she didn’t want Maura knowing about you,” Nadine said. “How were we to know otherwise, Brette? We weren’t given an instruction manual, either.”
Brette felt Keith move closer to her. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked.
“The same reason you never asked if Ellen was correct when she said there was no one else. You stopped asking questions, Brette. We weren’t going to ask them if you weren’t.”
“Did she try to contact Brette or something?” Cliff said, his brow furrowed.
“No. I just mentioned it now because Brette seemed distressed about having no one in the family to talk to about it.” Nadine turned again to Brette. “We’ve tried to do our best, Brette. We didn’t know that what you can do was affecting you and—” Nadine cast a quick glance at Keith. “And your decisions.”
All the years Brette had thrust the Sight to the furthest recesses of her consciousness had come with a cost, she now realized. What she didn’t want to talk about, her parents weren’t going to bring up in conversation.
“Where is she?” Brette said. “Why didn’t Ellen want me knowing about her?”
Nadine paused a moment before answering. “I don’t know where she is. Twenty years ago she lived in Oregon, that’s the last place I knew of. I think Maura was born when Lucille was in one of her homeless stages. Ellen told me Maura was just like Lucille. She had the gift and she liked having it. She was taken away from Lucille when she was ten or eleven and spent the rest of her childhood in foster care. Maura was apparently as reckless with the Sight as Lucille had been. Ellen assured me Maura would only be a danger to you, Brette. We trusted Ellen because we had to. I have had no one to talk to, either. I really thought I was doing right by you.”
As her mother spoke, Brette’s resentment diminished. It wasn’t her parents’ fault that she had spent the last dozen years pretending she was just like everyone else.
“It’s okay, Mom,” Brette said. “I’m sorry if I sounded like I was angry. I just . . . It would be really nice to talk to someone who knows what it’s like.”
“I’m sorry if I should have told you sooner, Brette. I’ve only ever wanted to protect you from harm. I’ve never
known for sure what was safe and what wasn’t. And it has killed me that I haven’t.”
Nadine seemed on the verge of tears, and Brette got off the stool and folded her mother in her arms.
“No, I’m the one who’s sorry. I know it can’t have been easy.”
“We thought we were doing the right thing,” Nadine said, as they broke away. “I can try to find her if you want.”
“Sure, Mom. That’d be great.”
“Okay. Can we change the subject now?” her father said. “Maybe talk about something happy?”
Brette and her mother shared a smile as Keith and her father grabbed beers from the fridge.
Brette turned to her mother. “I’m not going to do anything stupid with this situation on the Queen Mary. I just want some clarity. You don’t need to worry about me.”
Nadine laughed lightly. “That’s like telling the sun it doesn’t need to shine,” she said.
• • •
ON THE DRIVE HOME A FEW HOURS LATER, KEITH ASKED IF BRETTE and her mother had a good conversation up to the point of Nadine’s surprise revelation.
Brette told him what her mother shared about deciding to have a child.
“She had fears about getting pregnant, just like I do, but in the end she believed that her mother was right, that having a baby is being a part of life renewing itself,” she said. “I just don’t want to burden a child unnecessarily, Keith. I really don’t.”
“But we could have a boy. Or we could have a girl who won’t have it.”
“And if we do have a girl and she does?”
Keith was quiet for a moment. He kept his eyes on the road ahead as he formulated his answer. “We will love her. And she won’t have to grow up feeling alone like you did. She will have you to help her understand how it works. And how it doesn’t.”
“But I don’t even understand it.”
“That’s not true, Brette. Not anymore. I think you’ve pushed this ability aside because you had no one to come alongside to help you manage it. But now you’re figuring it out. I don’t know what it’s like to see what you can see and I don’t understand it, not scientifically or any other way, but I do know I love you, every part of you, even that part. I want you to make peace with it, Brette. And if you think finding this woman in New Mexico will bring you the answers you’re looking for, then I want you to go. And I’ll gladly take off tomorrow and go with you.”
A Bridge Across the Ocean Page 24