The Haunting of Brynn Wilder: A Novel

by Wendy Webb

  “You are stronger than you know,” she said. “Love never dies, Brynn. Love is all there is.” And then she disappeared, fading from view little by little until she was gone. And I knew, in that moment, a part of me was gone, too.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Dominic and I were standing on the deck of the ferry, crossing to the island. It was a bright, blue day, and we brought a picnic lunch and a bottle of wine with us, along with our blankets and paperbacks.

  We settled into our favorite spot on the beach for the afternoon. We floated in the water, our arms and legs entwined, and soaked up the sun. As the day wound down, we found ourselves at Jimmy’s, dancing the evening away, just as we had that first time. On the dance floor, we lost ourselves in each other’s eyes, seeing eternity in that one moment.

  It was perfect. A great gift. One I would cling to for the rest of my life, although I didn’t know it then.

  As often happened on Lake Superior, the weather turned in an instant. Clouds rolled in, making our blue day into a potentially stormy night. We hurried to the ferry and stood on the deck, watching lightning sizzle through the darkening sky as the ferry chugged away from the dock. Thunder rumbled in the distance.

  When we were about halfway across, a young man who had been standing on the other side of the deck began to climb over the rail.

  “What are you doing?” someone called out. “Get off there!”

  Everyone on the deck froze in horror. I reached for Dominic, but he was already rushing across the deck. When he neared the man, he slowed down and put his hands up.

  “Listen, brother,” he said, his voice calm and low. “You don’t want to do this. Whatever it is, we can figure it out.”

  The man turned to Dominic. I’d never forget the look on his face. Utterly vacant. As though there was no spark behind his eyes at all, as though his soul had already left, and he was an empty shell.

  “Come on, brother,” Dominic said, holding out his hand. “Give me your hand.”

  As everyone on the deck held their collective breath, the man simply fell backward, hitting the water with a terrifying splash.

  What was more terrifying came next. Time slowed to a crawl. I watched as Dominic climbed over the rail. He turned back to me, nodded slightly, mouthed, “I love you,” and jumped in after him.

  The skies opened up, and rain poured down as lightning crackled and thunder roared, as though the very lake and all the heavens were crying out in anguish.

  I didn’t know what happened next. All I remembered was a jumble of images. Floodlights. Coast Guard ships. A lot of yelling. At one point, I tried to go over the side after the man I loved, and somebody wrestled me away from the rail and got me out of the rain. Somehow, I ended up at the ferry dock in Wharton. Kate and Nick were there—who called them, I don’t know.

  They tried to get me to go back to LuAnn’s, but I wouldn’t leave the water’s edge. The rain poured down, stinging my face and eyes, but I didn’t care. I wanted to be with him.

  “Come on, Brynn,” Kate said, pulling me away from the lakeshore. “You’ll catch your death out here.”

  Oh, how I wished that were true.

  I stood there, watching the lights of the Coast Guard ships as they searched for Dominic. I stood there as the sun came up and divers went down into the water. It had become a recovery. Not a rescue. I stood there until the divers came back to shore, shaking their heads.

  His body was never found. Lake Superior doesn’t give up its dead.

  I had no idea how I got back to LuAnn’s, but I collapsed into our bed, which still smelled of him. I did not leave that bed for days.

  Kate and Simon hovered. Gary and LuAnn, worried, called Jason and Gil, who rushed back to Wharton. Beth read to me as I tossed and turned. Together, the force of all that love got me out of bed and helped me put one foot in front of the other.

  When I did, I walked back into my old life. I called the head of my department and made arrangements to come back, midyear.

  I didn’t want to talk about Dominic, or to have any kind of service for him. I fended off people’s well-meaning words of sympathy. I’d be living his funeral every day for the rest of my life, and I didn’t want to share that pain with anyone.

  The day I packed up and left, taking Dominic’s clothes with me, LuAnn and Gary saw me off.

  “This place is a part of you now,” LuAnn said. “It’ll be waiting for you to come back.”

  “Everyone comes back,” Gary said. “We’ll be seeing you.”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  A lifetime has passed. I am sitting here by the fire, remembering it all, the strange and otherworldly summer of my Illustrated Man, a summer of incredible love wrapped up in heartbreak and loss.

  It was the summer I learned to go on living after unspeakable grief, the summer I learned there is more in this world than we can imagine with our expanded minds, or experience with our five (or, as dear Alice taught me, more) senses.

  It was the summer I learned I had more questions than answers, and that I could be okay with the great unknowing. I had to be, to go on living for the life that began growing inside of me.

  I named him for his father, and for me. Dominic James Jr. was now a grown man, a wickedly funny, gentle, intelligent man, with a wife and children of his own. They were my reasons for staying alive this long. Like the woman in Cornwall, the widow of the Widow’s Cottage, who has stayed in my heart all these years, I needed to put one foot in front of the other and move forward for my—our—child despite losing the love of my life.

  But now my time is here. It is my turn. I exhale at the thought of it. I came back here, to the boardinghouse, to room five. We had a date. And I intended to keep it. I wonder if he’ll remember.

  I’m holding the sheet of paper in my lap. It had fluttered out of my copy of The Illustrated Man when I unpacked it, all those years ago.

  “Meet me in room five,” it said. “You’ll know when the time is right.”

  Now the time is right. I fold it and tuck it back into my copy of the book. My stomach is in knots at the idea of seeing him again.

  Snow is lightly falling outside. I push myself out of my armchair to put another log on the fire, and I groan. These old bones. Aging is not for sissies.

  As I sink back down into my chair, I realize I am tired, deeply tired. I have been for days. The end is near, now. I can sense it. That’s why I am here. But I am not afraid. How could I be, after all I have seen?

  I take another sip of my tea—it has gone cold, but I have no energy to turn on the kettle for hot water—and lean my head back. I close my eyes, listening to the crackling of the flames. And I begin to drift into the in-between time. My body feels like it’s floating on a gently undulating sea.

  The room had been dark except for the firelight, but all at once, a warm shaft of light appears, shining down from the ceiling.

  A young woman walks into the room. She is watching me, afraid. I am amused by this. What does she think I am, a ghost? And what is she to me, if not that?

  I look closer, and recognition flows through me. She is no ghost. She is me. Time has doubled back on itself, and back again. I am the woman in room five.

  I must tell her to cherish him. To hold him as long as she can. To not get on the ferry that fateful day. To not let him go. I try, but I can’t speak to her. I’m not sure why. The book is sitting in my lap, and I hold it out for her to see.

  Ah, yes. She sees it. I see it. She will love him. I can feel it.

  I wish, with all my might, that I could change what happened. Influence her. But I don’t think it works that way. And besides, I have something more important to do. Something more immediate.

  He is coming.

  After she leaves my room, I see him. Hazy at first, and then swimming into focus. He is walking toward me from . . . where? I don’t know where. Out there. Elsewhere.

  But he is smiling. That movie-star smile. Wearing a black T-shirt and jeans. The love of my life.


  He is just the same as he had been the last time I laid eyes on him. Strong, broad-shouldered. Devastatingly, devilishly handsome. Time has not aged him a day.

  Now that he is standing right in front of me, I cannot speak. I can barely breathe. He is here. My heart seizes up at the sight of him. My love. My true love is here. I want to run to him, to throw my arms around him and hold him close, finally, after a lifetime, but I can’t move. My body won’t let me.

  He is Dominic, but he is also something else. My stomach seizes up, as though I am in danger.

  “There she is,” he says, his voice like velvet. “You remembered our date. I wondered if you would.”

  “I’ve missed you,” I squeak out.

  The sight of him is too much, after all this time. I have thought of nothing else, no one else, all these years, when I’ve allowed my mind to drift.

  When I haven’t been feeding a toddler or watching baseball practice or crying at his graduation or dancing at his wedding. For my—our—son’s life, I was fully present, and I was grateful for every moment of it. I forced myself to be. What I did, who I thought of and cried about during my alone time, was my business.

  “I’ve missed you, too,” Dominic says, tears welling up in his eyes. “More than you realize. But it’s just a minute in time.”

  It didn’t seem like that to me. It seemed like—it was—an entire lifetime.

  “He’s a good boy,” Dominic says. “Man. You were the best mother to him.”

  He peels off his shirt, and I gasp at the sight of him. I never did get used to his beauty, those mystical tattoos. They are shimmering, moving, filled with color and life. I see the image of myself, there, over his heart. So that’s what it is, then. The images are of the people he helps cross over.

  “Are you ready to step out of that shell, honey?” he asks. “You’ve had a really good run with it. Now it’s time to let it go.”

  I know what he’s asking of me. I nod. “I can do without the aches and pains,” I say. “The incontinence, too. Nobody tells you about that, and yet one day, there it is.”

  He laughs, and the music of it lights up the room. I feel my years start to fall away. They are disintegrating into dust.

  I see wings appear behind his back. The scarab wings from his tattoo, in all of their intricate, colorful glory. I gasp at the sight of them. They’re like Tiffany stained glass. I can barely stand to look at the intense, awful, fierce beauty.

  And then it hits me what he is. Life coach, indeed.

  “Are you an angel, Dominic?” I ask him.

  He grins. “It sounds sort of dramatic when you say it like that.”

  “No,” I say, unable to stop staring at him. “It sounds sort of magnificent. Fallen, I assume?”

  “Hey, now.” He gives me a mock scowl. He flaps his wings petulantly, and a whoosh of air flies over me.

  “A scarab, then? You know they’re also called dung beetles, right?”

  The look on his face, aghast, disgusted, causes me to laugh. Oh, how I have missed that look. The laughter makes me feel young. No, not feel young. Become young. The years are melting away. I glance down at my hands. Not the gnarled hands of an old woman. Not anymore.

  “Listen now,” he says. “Get serious. I’m trying to show you the majesty of this thing.”

  I’m drinking in the easy conversation we always used to have. It is life to me. Oh, how I have missed this man.

  “Stop your missing,” he says, as if hearing my thoughts, a wide smile on his face. “I’m here. Right here. I’ve always been here. So have you. Are you going to take my hands again or what?”

  I reach out my hands, but don’t clasp his, not yet. “So, this is how this works?”

  He exhales an exasperated sigh. “This is how it works. For you, it’s a little different because, like it or not, you’re my love. My partner. You get the special treatment.”

  “Not everyone gets to see the wings?”

  “I swear, lady,” he says, shaking his head. But he can’t help smiling from ear to ear.

  All at once, I don’t feel like teasing anymore. The gravity of what is about to happen begins to settle around me, like a shroud.

  “Will Dom be okay?”

  “He’ll be okay. You’ve seen to that. And I’ll see to him. Just like I’ve always done.”

  “Will it hurt?”

  “Okay, this is why not everyone gets the special treatment. All of this yakking. Take my hands, already. It will not hurt. I promise. But I might pinch the heck out of you when you get over to this side.”

  I lock eyes with him and place my hands in his. I step out. Just as easy as that.

  “I thought it would be painful,” I say to him.

  “Nah,” he says. “Nothing to it.”

  “So, what now?” I ask him. “It’s sort of anticlimactic. I mean, I thought there might be a choir or something.”

  He shakes his head and smirks at me. But then he grows reverent, gazing at the body slumped in the chair by the fire. He leans down and cradles her in his arms, carrying her from the chair to the bed. He lays her down gently, and tenderly folds her hands together, smoothing her hair. He kisses her forehead and makes the sign of the cross.

  “I don’t like to leave them slumped over,” he says. “They deserve some dignity. Especially her.”

  Then he reaches out and twirls me around, and I see that the shroud of old age is gone. I am young again, vibrant, healthy, just like I was that summer. He takes me into his arms, finally, after a lifetime, and I drink in the aroma of him. He puts his lips on mine, and I want to stay like that forever.

  And all at once, I know. We will stay like this forever. I pull back and look him in the face, and I see it all. I see the timeless connection of our two souls.

  “What do you say?” he says, low in my ear. “Do you want to do it all again?”

  “Yes,” I whisper. “Yes, I want to do it again.”

  “I thought you might. It’s about love, baby, and we do that right.”

  “Our son, too? Will we see him again?”

  Dominic smiles. “You’re getting how this works. Finally, if I may say so. Yes, we’ll see Dom again.”

  “We had a daughter, too. From another time. I dreamed about it.”

  “She’ll be along. Don’t worry about that.”

  “Were there any others? Other children from other times?”

  “Only those two souls,” he says. “They’ll always be with us, honey. That’s how it works for us.”

  “Can I pick the place this time?”

  His amused face makes me laugh. “Now you want to pick the place. Where?”

  “Cornwall?” I ask. “In a little cottage where we were happy before. Can we do that?”

  “We’ll see.”

  “We need to have longer together this time around,” I say. “It was way too short last time.”

  “We’ll do that, honey. But right now, some people are waiting for you,” he says, leading me out of room five. We walk down the dark hallway and to the stairs. Under the closed door below there is light. We descend the stairs arm and arm, and he opens the door for me, smiling from ear to ear.

  The room is filled with people, my people. Everyone who has gone before.

  They are all smiling at me, clapping and cheering. There are my mom, dad, and grandma, vibrant and healthy and young. And my brothers. LuAnn and Gary, holding martinis aloft. Jason and Gil and dear Alice, free of the disease. She waves at me. Relatives, friends, students, everyone who has ever loved me during this life is here.

  The force of the love in this room nearly knocks me over. I realize, that’s everything. Love. That’s all there is. I look up at Dominic’s beautiful face, his dancing eyes, his devilish grin.

  It’s happy hour.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  What a joy to come back to Wharton! I was so delighted to find myself poking my nose into what was happening across town from Harrison’s House. When I told my editors I was setting an
other tale in this otherworldly town where I had set Daughters of the Lake, they immediately said, “Ooooh! Is Simon in it?” Back by popular demand, one of the most beloved of my characters lights up the pages of this story, too. My friend Ken Anderson, the inspiration for Simon, was thrilled. I was, too.

  To my agent, Jennifer Weltz, I feel profoundly blessed to have you in my life. Your friendship, support, guidance, and all of the laughter you bring into my world mean more than you know. You and everyone at the Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency have my never-ending gratitude for all you do for me.

  To my team at Lake Union: Danielle Marshall, Faith Black Ross, Alicia Clancy, Ashley Vanicek, my eagle-eyed copy editors, and everyone else who works on my books, I am so lucky to have each one of you in my corner. Some authors dread the editing process. I love it! Faith and Alicia, I love reading your comments. Your insights are spot-on, you make me laugh, and you make the story stronger. And, Ashley, you are an absolute joy. All of you at Lake Union are not only stellar pros, but you make my life more fun, too.

  To the independent booksellers and librarians who champion my books—thank you from the bottom of my heart. Anytime you’d like me to bring my dog-and-pony show to your place, I’m happy to come. (I might just bring my dog, FYI.) I love meeting readers, hearing their thoughts, and telling a ghost story or two.

  As people who follow me on Facebook or Instagram know, some of the inspiration for this book came from my real life. Here’s just one example.

  One summer a few years ago, something unusual happened at the house next door to mine. A lovely, beautiful, graceful, funny, gentle woman in her sixties, who had early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, came to live with my neighbors, who happened to be her former husband and his partner. Rather than this woman having to spend her last months in a nursing home, they took her in. It was one of the most breathtaking acts of love I had ever seen.