“Don’t obsess, right?” Abby laughed. “Don’t worry. I just want to understand what’s happening to me.” Abby struggled to find words. “It’s sort of like I’ve been tone-deaf all my life, and now suddenly I understand music. It means I have to rethink some things about myself. But that’s not a bad thing.”
“I think you’re handling it all remarkably well. As you go through your research, think about what connects these people, to each other and to you. If this were just random, you’d be overwhelmed with them. Massachusetts has been settled for a long time, and there are a lot of dead here.”
“Right, figure out the connection.” She finished her coffee. “Ready when you are.”
As they were driving back to Waltham, a thought struck her. “You ever watch the old Star Trek episodes? The originals, I mean?”
Ned grinned. “Of course. I’m a geek, right?”
“The closest thing I can think of is that this all feels sort of like a Vulcan mind meld. I mean, I touch something and suddenly I hear and see things, like the thing was a transmitter of some sort.”
“I see what you mean. Interesting idea. Maybe there is something physical about it. One more thing to think about.”
17
After Ned dropped her back home, Abby tried to put her latest “episode” out of her mind, because she actually did have some work-related material to review. She settled down at the desk and retrieved the course packet for her tour the next day. She was pleased with the overall quality of the materials—not only was the information interesting and well-assembled, but the spiel and the handouts were well suited to a restless elementary school audience. She jotted down a few ideas for possible future changes, but for the moment she was content to work with what she had in hand. Still, she had to admit that every time she came upon a fictional image of the colonial residents of Concord, she recalled the man in the Weston kitchen. She could see him so clearly, down to the buttons on his shirt. A none-too-clean shirt, she added to herself. If he had been a fantasy or a hallucination, he had been a grubby one.
Brad came back about seven. Abby had fixed a casserole, and they shared a subdued supper, each lost in his or her own thoughts—or trying to avoid any more conflict. Brad seemed uncharacteristically quiet, but Abby was glad of the peace and didn’t prod him. She had enough to think about without adding his complaints, real or imagined.
As her workweek began, Abby came to feel that she had stepped onto a moving carousel, and all she could do was grab a seat and hang on. Not that she was unhappy, but she was so busy she didn’t have time to think. And she liked being busy—she had forgotten how much she enjoyed using her mind for something more challenging than how to sort the books on the shelves. The people she met at work were all very welcoming; the surroundings were lovely; the commute was tolerable. She came home at night drained, and she would not have been surprised if Brad had accused her of being a zombie, except he didn’t seem to notice anything different. One night he was keyed up, talking about what he had done that day; another night he was moody or outright surly, and nothing was right. But mostly his noise washed over Abby, and she smiled, and cooked, and washed dishes. She did her best not to think about her “seeings,” and only now and then would a face from the past flash in her mind’s eye. She would get to them, in time, she promised silently.
The bits and pieces she had were busily assembling themselves independently in some dark, quiet corner of Abby’s mind. Samuel Ellinwood had married Ruth Pendleton, that she knew. Her grandmother Patience had been born a year after their marriage. And then, before her grandmother had been old enough to remember him, Samuel had vanished, abandoned his family, never to look back. Why was that? What would have driven him to do that? Everything she knew about her great-grandmother Ruth suggested that she had been a strong-willed woman—hadn’t she managed to erase poor Samuel from the family?—but would his desertion alone have been enough for her to push him away forever?
They’d been married in the twenties, but Ruth hadn’t been born until the Great Depression had begun. Did that have anything to do with it? Was Samuel a poor provider? One of the many who had found himself out of a job, with no idea how to get back on track? But they’d had only one child to support.
Or had they?
Abby was washing dishes when she reached that question, and she stopped, oblivious to the running water. She knew of only one child—but what about the vision she’d had sitting in what she now knew was her great-grandmother’s chair? Had there been another baby, one who died? Had that been the last straw for Samuel? And how was she supposed to find out, if her great-grandmother had never even said where they had lived?
Abby shut off the water, leaving the dishes half done, and went to the computer. She knew that she could access the 1930 census online, so she called up the right website and slowly typed in “Samuel Ellinwood,” with no state. There appeared a list with several Samuels, and a few variant spellings, but only a handful appeared in New England, and only one in Connecticut. She clicked on that one and realized her hand was trembling. The record came up on the screen. Yes, it was the right Samuel, and listed wife Ruth, and infant daughter Patience—her newborn grandmother. She had a place for them, where they had been, three-quarters of a century earlier.
Which didn’t answer her question about another child, but at least now she could write to the right county and ask if there had been any other children born to Samuel and Ruth Pendleton within a few years of 1930. And she had a feeling she knew what the answer would be, whenever it came—because she’d seen the baby. Almost against her will, she stood up and walked over to the swan chair and slowly sank into it. No, there were no new visions, but she knew what she’d seen, and she wouldn’t, couldn’t, forget it. I’m sorry, Ruth—sorry about the baby, sorry that Samuel didn’t live up to your hopes and expectations and ran away.
Brad’s voice shattered her mood. “Hey, Abby, you look like someone stole your favorite teddy bear. You all right?”
Abby quickly brushed away a tear that had been trickling down her cheek. “Sure. Just tired, I guess. I was thinking about my family, whoever owned this chair.”
“It’s a nice piece—bet it’s worth something now.”
“Brad! It’s an heirloom. I don’t care what it’s worth—it means something to me. How can you put a price tag on it?”
He held up both his hands in protest. “Hey, I didn’t mean anything. I was just making conversation. Geez, I can’t say anything to you without you biting my head off.” He picked up a magazine and pointedly started reading.
Have I been that touchy lately? Abby couldn’t think of many examples, at least not since that little blowup they’d had last Saturday. As far as she could tell, she’d been her usual quiet and amiable self. So why was Brad so sensitive about it? She had no idea. Maybe his fragile masculine ego was still smarting from the withdrawal of one hundred percent of her attention. Poor baby—he’d just have to learn to live with less.
She was still at the computer, so she decided to find out where Connecticut state and town birth records were kept and send out that request tonight, while it was fresh in her mind. And then it occurred to her that she still hadn’t found Elizabeth Flagg’s maiden name, or where she and William had been married. She had a birth year for her, from the tombstone, but that wasn’t a lot to go on. Abby turned back to the censuses—maybe she could follow William back through them, at least find out in which decade Elizabeth first appeared with him. After another half an hour she had most of what she needed.
She knew that William had been living in Waltham in 1890, since he showed up in the Veterans Census, but in 1880 he was in Lynn, and in 1870 in Ware, as well as in 1860 and 1850. Further back than that she could not go, since only his father’s name would appear, but she had gotten the basic outline. Elizabeth Flagg was first listed as his wife in 1870, which made sense—William would have married after he was discharged from the Union Army. And Olivia appeared with them—they hadn�
��t waited long to have a child. Why hadn’t there been any more? Olivia was born barely a year after their marriage, and then nothing. Well, Abby amended, nothing until the mysterious appearance of Isabel. She sighed—how did one ever untangle family stories like this, with so little to go on? But at least now she could look for a marriage in Ware, sometime between 1865 and 1870. It was another step forward—or backward, as it were.
“Yo, babe, you planning on going to bed sometime?” Brad’s voice came from the bedroom. Abby looked at her watch—after eleven. Where had the time gone?
“I’ll be right in,” she replied. She shut down the computer, giving it a final pat, then went around the room turning off the lights. She paused at the kitchen for a moment, contemplating the unfinished dishes. Oh, well, they’d still be there tomorrow.
* * *
After a few more days, Abby felt as though she had been working at the Concord Museum forever. She liked the kids in the school groups that came through, and she found she liked history far better than she remembered. She also felt as though she was harboring a slightly guilty but pleasurable secret: her bizarre link to the past. That was never going to go on a résumé!
But during the week, she had had little time to even think about that, much less do anything about it, apart from a few random stabs at computer research. And she needed to do more, much more, if only to preserve her own sanity. It was unnerving, not knowing when another “episode” would happen. She would like to be able to predict them a little better—to figure out what triggered them, and then at least have the option of avoiding those triggers—or seeking them out. She had to admit she was ambivalent. Part of her wanted these weird happenings to just stop as quickly as they had started; another part of her wanted to see what was going to happen next.
At least she could be systematic. She had a family tree, one with a lot of blanks on it. She needed to fill in the blanks. There were specific ways to do that, and here she was in the middle of all the original sources and later information she could hope for—if she could only figure out what she was looking for. So far she’d been “haunted”—she shied away from using that word—by people from two different families, the Flaggs and the Reeds. The simplest and most logical conclusion would be that those two families were connected, although she hadn’t yet figured out how. If they weren’t linked, then there was no way of telling if there would be other appearances, and how many. Abby wasn’t about to go looking for others. Right now she needed to sort out the ones she knew about. She’d sent off her query about Samuel and Ruth’s other child, but she didn’t expect an answer for at least a week.
She was mildly curious about the marriage of Olivia and Samuel Pendleton, but there were no real questions there, so she could put that on the back burner. That left her with the task of finding Elizabeth’s maiden name. For that, she needed to find marriage records—but where? William and Elizabeth had been married and were living in Ware in 1870, but how was she going to find time to get to Ware, halfway across the state, when any official records offices were open? That was the problem with having a real job: no time to do all the other interesting things in the world. So she’d have to settle for writing more emails and hoping someone would be kind enough to answer her within a year or two. At least for the Reeds who were buried in Concord, she could use the Concord library, and she could do that on a weekend, or maybe during a lunch hour, if she was very quick. Somehow Abby doubted that any part of this research was going to be quick, but she had to start somewhere, and she was impatient.
Another thing that she could do was check the record for the Reed plot in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. It turned out that the cemetery was managed by the Town of Concord, and Abby called the office from work early one morning. A very pleasant woman answered, and Abby tried to explain her interest.
“Where’s the plot?” the woman asked.
“Uh, how do you describe locations?” Abby hadn’t really thought about it.
“Well, lot number, if you have it. No? Well, then, where is it physically? Near town?”
“No,” said Abby dubiously, “it’s nearer the back gate. You know Authors Ridge?” Now there’s a stupid question, Abigail, she chided herself. Of course she does. “If you go down the hill from there, there’s a loop at the bottom of the hill. The Reeds are sort of in the middle, on the side near the Authors.”
There was a moment of silence, punctuated by some computer noises. “That’s Sleepy Hollow Avenue. Got it. William Reed, died 1899, right?”
“That’s the one.”
“Okay, we’ve got the plot record. Do you want me to send you a copy?”
“Could I come by and pick up a copy?” Abby ventured hesitantly. “I work here in Concord.”
“Sure, no problem. Give me a few hours to make a copy. And there’s a five-dollar charge. I can leave it in an envelope at the desk, if you want.”
“That would be wonderful. Thank you.”
Abby hung up with a feeling of accomplishment. She wasn’t sure what the record would tell her, but it was one step forward, at least.
She picked it up at lunch the same day. Unfortunately, it didn’t tell her much. There were eight people buried there, four Reeds and four people with other surnames. She could assume that the women at least were Reed offspring, although why they were buried with Mom and Dad, rather than with their husbands, she couldn’t guess. She filed the record away in her swelling folder.
18
Saturday Brad was up early, before Abby.
“You look energetic,” she said sleepily. “Did we have plans?”
“Uh, no. Bill wanted to get together for some pickup basketball, before it gets too cold, and I said I’d show up. You’ve got errands and stuff, right?”
“Sure. And I thought I might go to the library in Concord. What time will you be back?”
“Hey, I don’t know. Late afternoon, maybe. I’ll call you.”
Abby lay in bed, watching Brad carom around the small bedroom. “Do you want to do something tomorrow, maybe? We could go look for some pick-your-own place, get some apples. Or maybe see a movie—we haven’t done that in a while.”
“Sure, babe, whatever you want. I’m all yours. Or, no, wait—the Patriots are playing early tomorrow, and it should be a good game. They’re on a roll.”
Abby sighed inwardly. “That’s what I’ve read. You want me to pick up some snack stuff for you?”
“Just make sure we’ve got beer, okay?” He exited with a flurry, and again Abby heard the outer door slam shut behind him. Well, here she was, with another free day on her hands. Good thing she had a plan for it, because obviously Brad didn’t want to spend the time with her. Why was that? she wondered. Earlier in the summer she had thought it was because she was just boring, occupied as she was by packing things, arranging for utilities for their new place, picking out curtains—all the minutiae it took to keep daily life going. But now she had a job, and she was afraid that Brad was bored with her because she just wasn’t paying enough attention to him. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. You can’t win, Abby. She threw off the covers and climbed out of bed.
Errands done, she headed for Concord shortly after lunch. At the library, she meandered her way through the historic lobby with its imposing statue of Ralph Waldo Emerson, then asked the woman behind the desk where the local history materials were kept. She was directed to the lower level. The term “basement” would be an insult to the expansive, well-lit space that occupied most of the floor. Clearly there was substantial interest in local history and local families of Concord. Hesitantly Abby approached the woman in charge, who looked up from the papers in front of her.
“Can I help you?” A cheerful smile softened the standard question.
“I hope so. I wanted to find some information about the Reeds who are buried in the cemetery here.”
The woman stood up. She was notably taller than Abby. “You came to the right place. What do you know?”
“Not much—only
what I’ve read on the tombstone.” And the faces I’ve seen, Abby added silently. That won’t help much.
“Well, then, I guess we’ll start with the basics. When did they die?”
And they were off and running. The librarian explained what the seemingly endless arrays of books covered, including a wealth of histories and records from towns other than Concord. Abby made a mental note to figure out what other places she wanted to investigate—it would certainly be handy if this turned out to be one-stop shopping for all her genealogy needs. On the other hand, there was just so much here, she wondered if she could ever cover it all. She realized the woman was winding down.
“So, why don’t you start with the vital records? They might be a bit early for these people, but you never know.”
Abby smiled at her. “Thank you. Can I yell if I need help? I’m kind of new at this.”
The woman laughed. “Sure. That’s what I’m here for. And we get a lot of people like you here. Happy hunting!”
Abby made another circuit of the perimeter and pulled out a few volumes. Taking them to an empty seat at one of the glossy wooden tables, she settled down, laid out her materials, and dug in. Three hours later she knew that William Reed and Mary Ann Corey had announced their intentions to wed in the church in Concord, but there was no record for their marriage—they must have been married somewhere else, then. The banns said William had been from Newton, and Mary Ann from Concord, but Abby couldn’t find any other references to those Reeds in Concord. She was surprised: she hadn’t thought that people wandered around that much in the middle of the nineteenth century. She supposed she would have to look in surrounding communities—but then, she wasn’t even sure which they were. She needed to find a map.
A touch on her shoulder startled her, and she looked up to see the librarian. “Any luck?”
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