Defending the Dead (Relatively Dead Mysteries Book 3)

by Sheila Connolly

  “I’d guess she feels that most people her own age don’t understand her, which is probably the truth. What would you recommend? A private school? There are plenty around here, and there’s money to pay for it. Skip a couple of grades?”

  “Skipping grades might work academically, but in terms of social skills, not so much. And kids seem to grow up so fast these days! I looked at the girls who came in with elementary school groups when I was at the museum, and they looked flashier than I did at eighteen. It’s a whole new world—but Ellie seems a bit out of place in it. That’s why I want to get to know her better. It may be she’s just a kid who marches to her own drummer, or it may be the effect of this psychic wavelength. Or a combination. Or none of the above. I won’t know until I spend some time with her.”

  “Fair enough. I’m sorry I can’t join you, but Leslie made it pretty clear that I wasn’t wanted.”

  “That may change—don’t worry about it. You’ll be home for dinner?”

  “Yeah, there’s nothing unusual on my calendar. You’re dropping Ellie off at five?”

  “More or less. I’ll let you know if anything changes.”

  They ate breakfast, and Ned took off for work, only slightly late. Abby pulled herself together, cleaned up the kitchen, dressed, and managed to arrive at the parking lot behind the museum in Concord on time, although she spotted Leslie and Ellie waiting for her. Ellie said a cursory good-bye to her mother and hurried over to Abby’s car. Abby opened the passenger door, but she herself got out and called out to Leslie, “Anything I need to know?”

  “Nope. Sorry, I didn’t have time to pack her a lunch, but I think you can manage. You’ll be back here at five, right?”

  “I will.”

  “Have a good day,” Leslie said, then turned and disappeared into the building.

  Abby turned to Ellie, who once again had already fastened her seat belt. “So it’s you and me, kid. What do you want to do?”

  “I thought grown-ups were supposed to tell the kids what to do, not the other way around,” Ellie said, a look of challenge in her eyes.

  “A lot of the time they do. But you should never turn down the chance to do what you want, if it’s offered to you. If it’s too risky or too expensive or something, I’ll tell you. If you could do anything in the world, what would it be?”

  Ellie took her time in answering. “Climb a real mountain. A high one.”

  Abby nodded. “Interesting. I don’t think it’s going to happen today, but we can put it on the list. What else?”

  “Go fishing for some really big fish? Not like a dolphin, but one we could eat. Just killing nice fish would be wrong.”

  “Again, we could plan on that. Or whale watching.”

  “That’d be cool!”

  “I’ve never done that either, but the ocean is kind of far to go for today. Do you like cities?”

  Ellie shrugged. “Maybe. My school takes us on field trips now and then, and my mom and dad have taken me to Boston a couple of times.”

  “Old Sturbridge Village?” Abby suggested.

  “Mom’s talked about it sometimes. What is it?”

  “It’s like a re-creation of a town from around 1820, I think. All the buildings are the right age, and the people wear costumes. There are craft shops and a sawmill and stuff like that.”

  As soon as she’d spoken, Abby wondered if she had made a mistake. Did Ellie “see” the past, the same way that Abby was seeing Salem now? Or did she see only people, out of context? What was context, anyway? She’d seen the girl in the cemetery in Littleton, but the tombstone had been there for a long time. Did Ellie see past or present, or both at once?

  Ellie didn’t answer right away, and Abby was all but holding her breath when she finally answered. “That might be good. Is it far away?”

  “No, about an hour. You want to try it?”

  “Okay.”

  Abby breathed an inward sigh of relief and started her engine. There was little traffic on the highways, and they arrived in just under the hour Abby had promised. Along the way Abby had asked Ellie about what she liked in school, and what she expected to learn in the coming year. She asked about books that Ellie read, and was pleased to learn that she was reading chapter books on her own. She asked about what movies Ellie had seen or wanted to see. By the time she pulled into the parking lot at Old Sturbridge Village, she felt like she’d been conducting an interview. Ellie’s answers had been polite and not too short, but they hadn’t been exactly spontaneous. And all the while Abby had had the feeling that Ellie was judging her—and finding her wanting.

  “We’re here,” Abby said, and cringed at stating the obvious.

  “You been here before, Abby?” Ellie asked after she’d climbed out of the car.

  “Once, last year. I’d heard about it and I had some free time, so I came out to see it. I didn’t see everything, though.” And Brad had been too busy to come with her. Of course, that was just his excuse. He was so wrapped up in the present—the wonderful world of Brad—that he didn’t have time to explore the past. “Let’s go in.”

  They walked through the admissions building and Abby paid for tickets. On the other side she turned to Ellie. “Which way?”

  Ellie pointed straight ahead. “That way.”

  It was a beautiful day to be outside, particularly in a place as charming as the village. The trees were almost completely leafed out, and a few clouds drifted across a deep blue sky. After a short walk they reached the town green, surrounded by a variety of houses, a bank, a store and a church—all transplanted from somewhere else. There were a couple of oxen being driven from one place to another by a young reenactor. Smoke spiraled from a couple of the chimneys.

  “This is pretty,” Ellie said. “Did it really look like this back then?”

  “Pretty close, I’d guess. I’m sure the people who put it together did their homework. Most towns two hundred years ago had a town green in the middle, with a meetinghouse or church, and a couple of stores, and maybe a few houses belonging to the richest men in town, who wanted to show off. I think they’ve done a good job here. You can’t see the highway or anything that looks modern. It’s pretty quiet. Maybe every now and then a plane might fly over, but other than that you can imagine you’re in another time and place.”

  “Do a lot of people like to do that?” Ellie asked, looking up at Abby.

  “Some do, or this wouldn’t be here. It’s easy to forget how quickly things change, here and everywhere else too. People read books from other centuries, but they have a hard time picturing what the places looked like, or what kind of clothes people wore or what they ate. Of course, in New England we’re lucky, because so much of the old has survived, in the middle of the new. We could go see Plimoth Plantation another day, if you’d like to. That’s where the Mayflower landed and they built a village there too, but the re-creation looks about two hundred years earlier than this. Is there something in particular you’d like to see?”

  “Can we walk around first? And maybe get something to eat? We don’t have to hurry, do we?”

  “Nope, we have all day. We’ll have to leave here about four, but I like your idea.”

  They set off, strolling counterclockwise around the green, enjoying the dappled shade and dodging piles of manure left by the oxen or maybe a horse, one of those pulling the coach that rattled by periodically. Abby noted a place that sold food, and then they reached the end of the green, where what would have passed as a mansion stood proudly. The sign in front identified it as the Towne House.

  Abby stopped abruptly. No, it couldn’t be—could it? The same Towne family? She bent down to read the plaque in front of the building. The house had been built by one Salem Towne, and had originally stood in Charlton, which Abby didn’t know but assumed wasn’t too far away. But Salem Towne had been born in Oxford. Where Samuel Barton had migrated too, along with various other families—including Townes.

  “Abby?” Ellie tugged at her hand. “Are you okay? Y
ou look kind of funny.”

  Abby pulled herself together. “I’m fine, honey. You want to go into the house?”

  Ellie shrugged. “Can we look in the barn? They have oxes, and sheep.”

  Abby suppressed a sigh of relief. She didn’t have to wonder if she’d meet any non-corporeal Townes in their own living room. The odds were slim, but she’d rather not, not right now, not with Ellie. “Sure we can.”

  They admired the animals for a few minutes, and then they completed the circuit of the green. “You ready to eat now, Ellie?” Abby asked. “I thought we could get some sandwiches and something to drink and sit out and enjoy this nice weather.”

  “And cookies?” Ellie asked eagerly. And Abby was happy to see her do something childlike.

  “Of course.” They backtracked to the place selling food and bought what they wanted, and then strolled in a different direction, toward the back of the village, where Abby recognized the sawmill and the gristmill, and the water supply that had provided power for both. They found an empty bench and sat down, enjoying the view of the millpond, and dug into their sandwiches.

  They’d finished half the meal when Ellie said, without looking at Abby, “Did my mom tell you not to talk about the people I see—the ones in the cemeteries, I mean?”

  “Not exactly. Has she talked to you about it?”

  “She tried, but she doesn’t get it. She doesn’t see them.”

  “I know. That’s not her fault. Some people can, and others can’t. It may be inherited—that means passed down from parents to children. We just don’t know enough about it yet to be sure. Do you want to talk about it?”

  Ellie shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “You can ask me whatever you like. I won’t lie to you, but I may not be able to answer your question. But I promise I’ll try.”

  “Okay. Did you see anybody at that big house back there?”

  Oh, crap. Nothing like getting right to the point. “No, but I wasn’t paying attention. Can I ask you something?”

  “Okay. What?”

  “When you ‘see’ people, what do they look like to you?”

  “Normal, pretty much.” Ellie squinched up her eyes and looked out over the millpond. “Well, I can’t see through the other ones, but they’re kind of faint. And they can come and go real fast. Sometimes I can’t see them when I want to, and then they’ll pop up when I’m not looking. Is that what you see?”

  “That’s pretty close. Do you see a lot of them, in different places?”

  “Not a whole lot together. And I don’t go to a lot of places, just around Littleton and Concord, but I’ve seen different ones in different places.”

  “And you know they’re not, well, modern people?”

  “Sure. They’re different. Why were you looking funny back at that house?”

  “I’ll tell you what I think, but you may not understand it. That house was built by a family whose name was Towne, and they came from somewhere south of here, in a town called Oxford. But before that the family lived in Salem, north of where you and I live now. And some of my ancestors came from that family, and mostly I see my ancestors.”

  “Cool!” Ellie seemed impressed.

  Ellie seemed to be handling this a lot better than she was, Abby thought. “Ellie, you know you can’t talk about this to everybody, okay? It kind of scares other people.”

  “Yeah, like my mom.” Ellie looked disappointed.

  “You can tell me, though. Listen, you can do me a favor. When you do see someone, can you write it down? Describe the person, and where and when you saw them? The more information we have, the better we can understand it.”

  “Okay, I can do that. Like a ghost diary.”

  “Exactly.”

  23

  Abby and Ellie completed their leisurely tour of Old Sturbridge Village, stopping in at a farmhouse at the farthest point, where Ellie complained about how many flies there were in the kitchen. Abby had to agree: that was another downside of the past that was never mentioned in history books. They arrived back at the Concord Museum just before five, to find Leslie pacing in the parking lot. Abby felt amused and annoyed in equal parts: had Leslie thought she would kidnap Ellie? And go where?

  Ellie bounded out of the car, looking rumpled and sunburned and pleased with herself, while Abby emerged more slowly. “Mom, Mom, we went to Sturbridge and saw animals and a sawmill and I got some penny candy at the village store!” Ellie sounded like any other tired happy kid.

  Leslie grabbed her daughter in a hug. “Sounds like you had a good time, sweetie. Did you say ‘thank you’ to Abby?”

  “Only about six times,” Abby said quickly. “We had fun. She got lunch, but I told her she couldn’t eat all the candy until after dinner.”

  “Thanks,” Leslie said, not exactly warmly. “We’d better get home. I’ll call you about next week.” She shepherded Ellie into her car and got in herself, then pulled out of the parking lot without a backward look.

  Abby felt deflated. Her time with Ellie had gone well, she thought, and the subject of their shared ability had come up only briefly, and they hadn’t dwelt on it. Leslie would have nothing to complain about there. But from the way Leslie had acted, Abby suspected she still had mixed feelings about letting Ellie see Abby at all. No doubt Leslie would quiz her daughter thoroughly at home before making any future plans. Not that Abby could blame her. They were both feeling their way along.

  She drove home and arrived to find Ned sitting on the front steps. “Waiting for me?” she called out as she shut the car door behind her.

  He smiled. “Maybe. Or maybe I’m admiring the view? Notice I’m not looking at the house, because then I’ll start thinking about all the things that need to be done, especially now that the weather’s nice.”

  “You’ve successfully ignored them this long—why start now?”

  “You’ve made me see it with new eyes. How’d it go?”

  Abby sat down on the top step next to him. “We should get some nice wicker chairs so we can actually sit out here. As for Ellie, about as well as could be expected. We didn’t poke into difficult topics, just kind of skirted around them.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Went to Old Sturbridge Village.”

  “Interesting choice. Why?”

  “Kind of random. I asked Ellie a lot of questions about what she liked to do, and after we’d ruled out mountain climbing and whale watching—hey, don’t laugh! She suggested both of those.”

  “With a straight face? That kid has got a sense of humor.”

  “I’d love to go whale watching with her. I just need to plan ahead for it. So I finally proposed the Sturbridge option and she seemed kind of interested, so I jumped on it. I was there a while back but I don’t know it well, and she’d never been there. Which is kind of surprising, given her mother’s occupation. Anyway, we went and we had a good time.”

  “Curious choice, don’t you think? I mean, they’ve created a town the way it would have looked in the past, right?”

  “Yes, and it’s very convincing, especially when there aren’t a lot of tourists around. Ellie enjoyed the animals.” Abby stopped, unsure about whether to mention the Towne house.

  Which Ned noticed. “What? Did something happen?”

  “Not exactly. If you’ve seen the place, there’s a nice big house at one end of the green. We stopped in front of it, and I realized it had belonged to the Towne family—the same one as in Salem. In fact, the man who built that house was named Salem Towne. I guess I looked startled, because Ellie asked me if there was something wrong, and I guess that kind of led into a short discussion about seeing our past relatives. But neither one of us pushed it. I think that’s a good thing, treating it as though it was normal, at least for some people, like us. I think it makes Ellie sad that Leslie doesn’t share it—maybe she’d actually like to talk with her about it. But that may be expecting too much too soon. Leslie didn’t exactly greet me with open arms when we got back, and she’s
probably grilling Ellie about the details as we speak.”

  “Don’t be too hard on her—she’s got a lot to get used to.”

  “I know. I understand that. But I still feel like I’m walking on eggshells. If it’s any help, I can promise to go somewhere totally neutral next time—assuming there is a next time—like the ocean. Of course, that would be the moment that we’d trip over my seventh great-uncle, who was a mariner who died in a shipwreck.”

  Ned laughed, then said more soberly, “Don’t borrow trouble, Abby. You have any ideas for dinner?”

  “Not a one. Let’s go explore.” Abby stood up and held out her hand, and Ned took it.

  They froze for a long moment, hands clasped, lost in each other, until Ned pulled back. “We probably shouldn’t do this in front of the neighbors. You want to take it inside?” he said, his voice husky.

  “Lead the way—I’m right behind you.”

  • • •

  Over a sketchy dinner that included a lot of lettuce, Ned said, “So you think Leslie wasn’t happy about you and Ellie getting together?”

  “She’s conflicted, I’d say. She knows she should do it, but she doesn’t like it. She’d probably have been happy if she’d never crossed paths with me again, and I can understand that.”

  “But it was Ellie who brought it up, right?”

  “Yes. Of course, Leslie could have said no.”

  “So now that you’ve survived the first round, where do you go from here?”

  “One week at a time, I guess. Maybe by the end of summer things will have settled down between us all. And then Ellie will go back to school and things will change again.”

  Ned forked up a few bites of leaves and sliced carrots and radishes and chewed thoughtfully. “Do you see any resolution to your Salem research?”

  “You mean, do I see an end to it, or am I going to obsess over it indefinitely?”

  “I guess.”

  Abby considered. “I think I need to set a cutoff. I don’t plan to set myself up as the world expert on this. I was never cut out to be an academic, so I don’t plan to write the meticulously researched, multi-footnoted final solution to a centuries-old problem. I can see people getting sucked into exploring nits like, did so-and-so say this on Tuesday or Wednesday? I guess I’m looking for an understanding of the whole, not the details.” She paused to eat for a bit, before beginning again. “Ned, you remember last night, I said that this psychic thing might have come through the Towne line? Which means that in a sense, the Towne sisters were actually witches?”