by Becky Durfee
“Was it just law enforcement that brought out that reaction?” Kayla asked.
“Police and politicians. She did routinely make comments about the man being out to get them, questioning the validity of taxes and talking about how the government wants to control everybody.”
Zack’s eyes grew wide. “A three-year-old was questioning the validity of taxes?”
Dr. Wilson smiled. “No…a three-year-old was saying the words, but someone else was clearly doing the talking.”
The wheels in Jenny’s head were turning. “You say this started at the state fair. Where was that?”
“Right here in Columbia.”
“But you said they lived a hundred miles away, right?”
“They do, and they did then. They were here visiting family on a mini-vacation.”
Jenny glanced at Zack and Kayla. “Do you think it’s possible that they drove through an area where this spirit had been lingering? Kind of like what Devon did with Matthew?”
“It’s certainly possible,” Zack said. “Where do they live?”
“A small town in Georgia called Milldale, about halfway between Atlanta and Savannah.”
Zack called up a map on his phone, eventually remarking, “It looks like they may have taken Route 1 to Highway 20 to get here.” He glanced at the others. “Do you think we should bring Jenny down the same path to see if she can get anything?”
“It can’t hurt,” Jenny agreed. “Once we get some answers for Matthew, we can start working on that.”
At that moment, as if on cue, Devon appeared from behind his mother’s leg. He looked up at Dr. Wilson and sheepishly said, “Mister? I’d like to look at more pictures, if you have them.”
Chapter 7
Dr. Wilson looked surprised, but only for a second. “Absolutely,” he said professionally, once again opening his file.
Devon moved closer to the doctor, a look of curiosity on his face. “Do you have any pictures of Julia?”
“I do,” Dr. Wilson replied as he flipped through some photographs. He eventually spun one around so Devon could see the image, which featured the same woman Jenny had seen in her vision from the train station but with shorter hair that was fashioned into a sixties-style bob. She was sitting on a bench, smiling genuinely at the camera.
Jenny directed her eyes toward Devon to gauge his reaction. Outwardly, he had none. He simply asked, “When was this taken?”
Wilson spoke without a trace of emotion in his voice. “This one was taken at a family reunion in 1965.”
“1965,” Devon repeated in a whisper. For Matthew, that would have been four years into the future. Jenny sucked in a breath and held it, waiting for an outburst from Devon that never came.
Instead, the little boy raised his brown eyes to Dr. Wilson and commented, “She looks happy.”
“From what I understand, she was happy,” Dr. Wilson confirmed. “Even though she went through a very difficult period after the train explosion, she did eventually go on to feel joy again.”
Devon returned his gaze to the picture, which he studied for a long time. Eventually, he whispered in a much sadder tone, “She looks pretty.”
Jenny released the breath she’d been holding forever, briefly hanging her head. She couldn’t help but feel that she was witnessing a man coming to terms with his own death, realizing his wife and child had survived and lived a lifetime without him. Despite her urge to cry, she put her emotions in her back pocket, aware that any type of interruption could cause Matthew to disappear. The last thing she wanted to do was ruin the moment; there would always be time for tears later.
Devon’s eyes hadn’t left the photograph when Dr. Wilson asked, “Would you like to see more?”
The little boy only nodded.
The next picture Dr. Wilson revealed featured Mary in a cap and gown, wearing a huge smile and holding her diploma. A similar smile graced Devon’s lips as pride beamed in his eyes. “Wow,” he said with awe.
“She graduated with honors,” Dr. Wilson told him.
Devon looked up at the doctor and added, “She always was smart.” Then, with words that ripped Jenny’s heart out, he added, “She’s really that old?”
If only Matthew knew that photograph was taken forty-five years ago.
True to form, Dr. Wilson’s actions remained mechanical. “Let me show you some more pictures.” He sorted through the stack, ultimately landing on one that depicted Mary on her wedding day. She and her new husband were holding hands and looking exhilarated in the foreground with a crowd gathered behind them. He turned the photo around so Devon could see it.
This time, Devon reached out and took the picture into his own little hand. He brought it closer to him, studying every detail. “Wow,” he said again. “Look at her.”
Jenny remained frozen as Devon continued to examine the image. Eventually, he looked up and asked, “Is he a nice man?” He pointed to the groom.
“I’ve never met him,” Dr. Wilson confessed, “but I’m sure he is.”
Devon’s eyes made their way back to the picture, and he continued to look at it lovingly for a long time. His brow eventually furrowed, though, and a look of confusion and hurt took over his face. He leaned in toward the picture, giving it a closer examination, posing, “Who is that with Julia?”
When Devon handed the photograph back to the doctor, Jenny was able to see that in the upper right corner, Julia stood off in the background, looking lovingly at her daughter. A man, who Jenny presumed to be Julia’s second husband, was next to her with his arm around her shoulder.
Jenny’s breathing became so shallow it almost stopped.
“His name is Davis Auerbach.” An eternity seemed to pass before Dr. Wilson added, “He is the man Julia went on to remarry.”
He might as well have said, Devon, there is no Santa Claus. The saddened expression on the boy’s face was heartbreaking, but mercifully it only lasted a few moments. Devon then turned to his mother and announced, “I’m hungry. Can I have a snack?”
A pause indicated that Kayla was having a more difficult time with the transition than her son had. She quickly recovered and offered Devon some crackers, escorting him over to the corner of the room.
Jenny looked at Dr. Wilson with just her eyes, inviting an explanation, despite the fact that she was pretty sure she knew what she had just witnessed.
“He’s retreated,” Dr. Wilson announced. “He clearly will need some time to get used to the idea of Julia with another man.”
“Did you do that on purpose?” Jenny asked. “Show him a picture that had Julia and her second husband together?”
Dr. Wilson turned to her and replied, “I wish I could say yes to that, but I can’t. I was so focused on the image in the foreground that I didn’t look closely enough to the people in the background. Ideally, I would have liked to have broken the news to Matthew a little more gently than that.”
Jenny began to get worried. “Do you think it will pose a problem?”
“I don’t think so. Matthew doesn’t seem to have a score to settle; he just wants answers.” Dr. Wilson’s face looked slightly grim. “Although, I’m sure he would have preferred the answers to be presented a little more subtly.”
Jenny felt overcome by sympathy as she glanced at Devon, although she knew the person she felt sorry for was not currently housed within his body. Her eyes circulated the empty space around her as she wondered if Matthew was there, watching them, licking the wounds of his broken heart. She briefly put herself in Matthew’s shoes, imagining how it would have felt to be shown a picture of Zack looking quite happy with another woman…at the wedding of her child, who, last she knew, was only nine years old. She rubbed her eyes, ultimately running both hands through her hair; she wished she had the ability to provide solace to Matthew somehow, but, unfortunately, he had to go through this alone.
It didn’t seem right.
“Do you think he’ll take comfort in knowing that Julia has passed and he can see her
again?” Jenny asked, pausing before adding, “And that all he has to do to see her is cross over?”
“I’m sure he will,” Dr. Wilson said. “If he’s been looking for her all this time, it will inevitably be gratifying to know that he can finally find her.”
“Shouldn’t we tell him that, then?” Jenny asked, eager to put Matthew out of his misery. “And soon?”
“In due time,” Dr. Wilson replied. “I would like to get him together with Mary before we encourage him to cross. This is such a rare occurrence; we should let all aspects of it play out.”
Jenny released an impatient sigh; she couldn’t help but feel that this was less of a rare occurrence and more of a rare opportunity for Dr. Wilson to gather data. She genuinely wondered if Dr. Wilson’s primary goal was to bring Matthew some answers or to bolster his own research.
Irritation and restlessness stirred within her, so she turned to her husband and posed, “Zack, do you want to take a trip?”
He looked at her with confusion. “To where?”
“Highway 20 to Route 1.”
Zack’s puzzled expression remained. “You want to go now?”
With a shrug, Jenny said, “Sure. Why not?”
“Um…because we don’t have a car. We came down in Kayla’s minivan, remember?”
“We can rent one.” She looked at him with urgency that she hoped he could interpret. “Besides, maybe we can discover some answers about Addy while we wait for Matthew to come back.” The reality was that Jenny found Matthew’s discoveries to be painful to watch, and she preferred not to be around as they unfolded.
“I guess we could try,” Zack replied with surprise still present in his voice. Fortunately, he seemed to understand her desire to leave, even if he didn’t know the reason for it. “I’ll get a couple of waters for the road.”
“I’m not even sure what to research,” Zack admitted as he sat in the passenger seat of the rental car, looking helplessly at his phone. “It’s not like Matthew’s case where there was a fire to investigate, or other situations where I had a name attached to a victim. Here we just have a person from the sixties who apparently doesn’t like authority, which limits it to—oh, I don’t know—an entire generation of people.”
“I haven’t gotten anything yet either,” Jenny admitted, “and we’re about halfway to Milldale, according to my calculations.”
“Are we getting off the highway soon?” Zack asked.
Jenny nodded. “Another couple miles or so.”
Her previous irritation regarding Matthew’s situation had mostly subsided by then, making her feel like it was a topic she could discuss without too much emotion. “So, what’s your take on what’s happening with Devon?”
“My take?”
“Yeah. Do you think we’re being fair to Matthew? Is it right to drag this thing out, exposing him to little bits at a time? Or do you think we should just let him know that Julia’s on the other side and encourage him to cross over?”
Zack thought about it for a moment before saying, “I think if both Mary and Julia were dead, the humane thing would be to tell him to cross immediately. But since Mary’s alive, he may want to see her first. At least, that’s what I would want, if I were in his shoes.” Jenny’s phone squawked out a warning that the exit was approaching. Zack continued, “I imagine that would be a touchy subject that you would have to address slowly…if we just put Devon in a room with sixty-something-year-old Mary, that might be too much for him to handle all at once.”
Jenny contemplated that thought as she turned on her blinker. “I guess you’re right,” she conceded. “I just can’t help but feel that what we’re doing to Matthew is mean. It’s like we’re ripping the band aid off way too slowly.”
“Well, when you consider there’s a possibility the guy didn’t even know he was dead, slow is probably the way to go. To be honest, if anything, I feel like we’re throwing things at him too fast.”
“Really?” The car rounded the exit ramp.
Zack shrugged with one shoulder. “That’s my impression, although it’s only one person’s opinion.”
“You’re probably right. It just may be that I’m a little extra sensitive these days. It’s so hard to tell how much of my emotions are legitimate and how much are pregnancy-related.” She let out a sigh as she merged into traffic on Route 1. “I guess part of what’s bothering me is that we can’t comfort him. Every time he hears news he doesn’t like, he retreats back into his spirit world. It’s not like all the times when I’ve delivered bad news to the living; I can at least console those people. Poor Matthew gets hit with some mind-bending piece of information, and then he’s required to go digest it by himself.”
“He’s not required to,” Zack pointed out, “he chooses to. Maybe that’s just how he operates. Some people are like that, you know.”
While she could see validity in what Zack was saying, Jenny replied, “I still wish there was some way we could comfort him a little bit.”
He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “He’s been wandering around aimlessly for sixty years…I think the fact that someone can finally hear him is probably comforting enough.”
Perhaps Zack was right; Jenny decided to leave that conversation alone. “So,” she began, “let’s try to formulate some kind of theory about this new, authority-hating friend of ours.”
“That’s just it,” Zack replied, holding up his phone helplessly, “I’ve been trying to. There is absolutely nothing to go on. I’ve looked for murders that happened along this stretch in the 1960s, but I haven’t been able to find anything.”
“Not every lingering spirit involves murder,” Jenny noted. “Take a look at Matthew…he just wants to make sure his wife and daughter are okay.”
“Exactly…and that just makes it even worse. If some guy died peacefully in his sleep and simply wants to send a message to a family member, how am I supposed to figure out who he is?”
“You’re not,” Jenny said with a smirk. “I am. You’ve got a ringer on your team, remember?”
“And how much information are you getting?”
Jenny giggled. “Precisely none.”
Leaning back in the passenger seat, Zack said, “That’s what I thought.”
A few miles passed by before Jenny’s mind went back to a familiar topic. “We’re going to be parents in a couple of months, do you realize that?”
Zack kept a straight face as he said, “The thought has occurred to me, yes.”
“Are you ready for this?” She paused before adding, “Am I ready for this?”
“We’d better be,” Zack replied. “It’s too late to turn back now.”
Jenny was having one of her moments where the reality of the situation was nearly overwhelming. A baby. She was going to have a baby. She scrunched her face and said, “I guess we are committed, aren’t we?”
Zack patted her leg and said, “I’ve told you a million times already that you’re going to be a great mom.”
Somehow Jenny’s nerves didn’t subside. Zack’s vote of confidence was great, but how was she going to know what the baby needed when it cried? What if she made mistakes with the baby? What if she held it too much and spoiled it? What if she didn’t hold it enough? Would the child grow up detached?
The responsibility was so great and the stakes so high, Jenny could feel herself drowning in the thought of it.
Her thought process quickly shifted, however, when she felt a wave wash over her. The moment was fleeting but powerful, leaving her to only say, “Whoa.”
“What’s the matter?” Zack asked.
Jenny shook her head as she tried to determine the best way to describe it. “I just felt something…something very strange. It felt like a bizarre mixture of serenity and anger.”
He cocked an eyebrow in her direction. “Like something a hippie might feel if he was upset with authority?”
“Possibly.” She said nothing else in an attempt to keep her mind open for more contact.
>
However, the minutes ticked by, and Jenny didn’t feel anything else. She was beginning to wonder if she should turn around when a second, longer-lasting sensation occupied her body.
She felt enlightened. Sounds were sharper, smells stronger. Worry left her body as she developed an awareness of the clothing on her skin and the gas pedal under her foot. The steering wheel felt smooth in her hands. Words echoed inside her head, as if spoken in a cavern.
That’s what the man would have you believe.
She felt a physical twinge with every syllable spoken, like the words themselves had crashed into her skin. Her soul felt free and light, contained only by the message that had just been uttered, dampening her spirit to the point of making her feel violated. If only the man would stop trying to control her…then she could experience total freedom, the way nature had intended.
Damn the man.
Jenny snapped back into the present with unnerving intensity. She blinked exaggeratedly several times before announcing, “I think I may have just been high.”
“What?” Zack was clearly confused.
“I had a contact…and it was unlike any I’ve ever had before. Everything was so...much.”
“So much?”
She knew that had been the wrong word, but she couldn’t come up with anything better. Despite the fact that she had an expansive vocabulary, at the moment her mind was virtually blank. She shook her head and explained, “My senses were on overdrive. Everything was…heightened.”
Heightened. That was the word she’d been searching for. She felt like she’d had a minor victory when it finally came out of her mouth.
“Heightened, huh?” Zack said with a sly smile. “That does sound like it may have a little outside influence involved with it.”
A tug started to generate within Jenny, causing her to ease off the gas pedal as they headed down the road. She soon felt the need to turn right down a side street, weaving her way through expansive stretches of desolate farm land. After several left and right turns onto roads that became increasingly narrower, she found herself venturing down a path that appeared to be tall grass trampled by tires. Eventually, she pulled up to a huge lawn with an old house that looked like it hadn’t been occupied in decades. A clothes line, complete with an abundance of laundry hanging from it, suggested otherwise.