by J. D. Robb
All the late nights and long weekends over the last nine years flashed through her mind; her ambitious dedication and the fatigue and frustration of having to deal with the Old Boys’ Club who seemed hell-bent on proving to women that they can’t have it all—and her sudden shame of having believed them.
Or maybe it hadn’t been the Old Boys at all. Maybe she’d just been trying so hard not to be her own mother that she’d lost sight of all the truly important things in life.
Her laugh was small and ironic. “Wow. You know, I never dreamed I’d be put in the position of having to choose between my job and my life. In fact, until recently I thought my job was my life—but it’s not.” She took a deep breath and several steps toward the door. “Now, I’ve been over my PowerPoint more than once, and I think it speaks for itself. If you don’t want to hear what it’s saying, there’s nothing more I can do here anyway. So I’m leaving. And if that costs me my promotion”—she sighed and tried to swallow the lump in her throat—“so be it. If it costs me my job . . . well, then that would be a big mistake because . . . I’m honest and I’m good at what I do and . . . the loss would be yours.”
She pushed through the conference room door blindly, hoping no one had seen the tears in her eyes. She wanted her job, but she was being driven by a far greater fear than that of losing it: an overwhelming fear of losing the things she hadn’t—until recently—even known she believed in.
Faith. Hope. Love.
Ten
She straddled the line between rational and crazed as she drove out of town to Johnnie’s Bend—not wanting to waste time getting tickets or causing a pileup on the highway. She was still traveling exactly nine miles over the speed limit when she skidded to a halt in front of Hedbo House.
Ryan was on the porch. He looked frantic.
There was a spark of anxiety for her favorite spring silk suit that fizzled out the moment she opened the car door to get out. Her heels made a nervous clattering noise in the muddy road and across the wet sidewalk as she watched him leap from the porch and join her halfway.
“I called the cops. I knocked on every door in the neighborhood. . . . Everyone’s looking for him. I was just going to break a window and go in and look around for him. . . . I just have this gut feeling he’s in there. . . . Where else would he go? But . . . hell, I didn’t know they even had shatterproof glass when this place was built. And the doors are like granite. They don’t build houses like this anymore. But I’ve looked all around . . . have this sick feeling he got in somehow, through some small space or something, and he’s locked inside.” He ran a frenzied hand through his hair. “I’ve called and called, but he doesn’t answer . . . or can’t answer.”
Unable to get a word in edgewise—even if she could think of a word to give—M.J. continued up the walk, separating the keys on her ring until she found the right one for the front door. As usual, the key to the dead bolt worked perfectly, and she’d developed a confidence that the sisters would let her in using the old skeleton key, so she was shocked when it didn’t budge.
“Oh God,” she muttered—a prayer as panic and dread shot through her like adrenaline. A quick look at Ryan’s face, and she knew what she had to do. “I am so very sorry, Ryan. I shouldn’t have lied to you.”
“About what?”
She shook her head. Better to show than tell.
She started to beat on the door with her fist. “Mother! Open the door. Is Jimmy in there with you? Mother! Please? Let us in.”
Another glance up, and she could see the horror and confusion on his face like he couldn’t deal with the loss of his son and the loss of her mind at the same time.
“Mother! Please.”
“I’m sorry, darling. I tried.” Adeline came through the door to join them on the porch. “Odelia tried. But Imogene’s been dead longer than both of us. She has the most power.”
“What? The longer you’re dead, the more powerful you get?”
“What?” asked Ryan.
“Apparently. It seems the longer it takes you to find what you’re looking for, the more power you get to help you find it.”
“So Imogene is the one holding the house up, because without the house she—”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Ryan grabbed her arm. “What’s happening to you?”
Obviously he couldn’t see her mother.
“Mother? Would you mind?”
And clearly she didn’t, as Ryan’s eyes shifted from her face to over her shoulder, they grew larger and larger; his lips parted, and the pulse at the base of his throat began to pound rapidly. Then when Odelia took form behind him and said, “I’m here, too,” he jumped three feet and threw his back against the door.
“Holy shit!”
“I know, I know, and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have lied to you, but I didn’t think you’d believe me, number one. And number two, I was hoping I could help them leave before Jimmy ended up like that kid in The Sixth Sense. Now I see I only made him more curious and more determined to show you they were real and . . . and since she isn’t here and I can’t get into the house, I’m assuming this has something to do with Imogene.”
“Who’s Imogene?”
“She’s our sister, dear,” Odelia told him as Adeline addressed her daughter.
“He found the old coal chute on the side of the house and pried it open with a metal pipe of some kind he’d brought from home. I don’t know if she was unaware of it or if she allowed it, but she went down into the cellar to light his way out when he lost his flashlight. He . . . he was excited to see us. I mean, once he’d seen Imogene, there was no point in us remaining a secret, was there?”
“I guess not. But why won’t she let us in? Why didn’t you send Jimmy home?”
“I thought we were going to. He wasn’t afraid. He was laughing and . . . he’s a charming child. We’re all very fond of him.” She saw that this was little comfort to Ryan and went on. “He asked to see some of Ruffie’s toys.”
“Roofie? You drugged him?” Ryan wasn’t afraid anymore. He was enraged.
“No, no. Rufus. Imogene’s son, dear.” Odelia tried to calm him. “He passed as a child.”
“There’s a kid ghost in there, too?”
“Oh, no. We’re convinced he passed to the Other Side without delay. Children nearly always do, they say.”
“They who?”
She giggled and shrugged. “They who make the rules, I suppose.”
“So you let Imogene take him upstairs to see the toys.” M.J. was feeling sick to her stomach. “Then what happened?”
“We heard Ryan calling for him,” Adeline said. “So Odelia and I went upstairs to tell him it was time to go home. But . . . ”
“Go on. But what?”
“Imogene was rocking him in the chair, like she used to rock Ruffie when he was sick and couldn’t breathe. She ignored us, like she couldn’t hear us, when we told her Ryan was calling for him. She started singing to him, softly, but he could still hear us. He opened his eyes . . . he didn’t say anything, but we could tell he was frightened and confused.”
“Oh for God’s sake.” Ryan turned to the door and began hammering with his fist. “Jimmy. Hang in there, buddy, I’m coming. Don’t be afraid. Daddy’s here. I’m coming for you.”
“Ryan. Ryan.” She dodged his fist even as she tried to catch it with both her hands. “That won’t help. She’s literally holding the house up. Mr. Brown backed his backhoe into it two weeks ago, and it barely unsettled the dust.” She stepped back and looked at them. “But there must be a limit to her powers, right? Do you think she can handle all four of us at once?”
“I should think that I have a good deal of strength, but I’ve never had the need to test it.” Odelia clenched and unclenched her fists experimentally. She turned to the large picture window behind her and, summoning every ounce of concentration she had, dealt it a blow that had the cracked glass wobbling back and forth as if it were made of Jell-O.
�
��Wow.” Ryan’s appreciation was short-lived with Jimmy uppermost on his mind. He instructed them not to move when he dashed off the porch, saying he’d be right back as he ran up the street and around the corner.
“She won’t hurt him, will she?” M.J. asked the sisters as soon as he was out of earshot. “He’s so little and trusting. He must be terrified if she’s not letting him loose. . . . I should never have lied to him . . . to either of them. This is all my fault.”
“How were you supposed to know he’d break into the house?”
“You were doing what you thought was best, dear.”
She sat on the top step in her favorite summer silk suit and put her head in her hands. Her chest felt over-full, and it hurt as if she’d been physically pummeled. It ached to breathe, and it was even more painful when she thought of Jimmy . . . and the hell Ryan must be going through.
It felt like forever but was only a matter of minutes before they heard Ryan’s quick steps jogging back toward them. He was carrying a long-handled sledgehammer. His jaw was set with a scary determination that only a parent of an endangered child could muster.
“You take that window,” he shouted to Odelia. “I’ll work on this one.”
“Wait a second.” She got to her feet and stepped back onto the porch. “Mother, you go up and do what you can to distract her. Tell Jimmy his dad’s here so he won’t worry.” Adeline disappeared. “I’ll do what I can with the door.”
She and Ryan looked to Odelia for a go sign, and after a second or two, she gave the nod. M.J. turned the old key in the lock and jiggled the knob and threw her body against the door, over and over, until her teeth began to rattle. Ryan took swing after power-packed swing at the window on her right, knocking out tiny shards of glass here and there. And Odelia plowed first one fist and then the other above her head against the window on M.J.’s left, causing ripple after ripple in the old, shattered panes.
She finally sagged against the door to catch her breath, and a few minutes later Ryan let the hammer thump on the porch to get his second wind. That’s when they heard the high-pitched ringing noise from Odelia’s window, like a shrill scream that grew louder and louder until they covered their ears and then suddenly stopped.
Odelia turned her head and looked at them in surprise, and then everything happened at once. There came a fine cracking noise like footsteps on fine ice; Ryan grabbed her arm, turning her away from the window, bent her low over the arm he had around her waist, and covered as much of her body as he could when the window finally exploded, blasting glass in every direction.
“My goodness.” Odelia sounded pleased and proud of her efforts, while they unfurled their bodies. Had there been more time, she would have taken a moment to relish the concern in Ryan’s eyes as they scanned her head to toe for injuries, but as it was, she set it aside for now with the tiny hope of his forgiveness and turned to follow him through the window.
“My God, Ryan, you’re bleeding!” She grabbed the back of his shirt to stop him; it was peppered with dime- to quarter-sized red spots. He jerked away.
“Forget it. I need to get Jimmy.”
Calling for an ambulance occurred to her, but it was the last thing they needed at the moment unless Ryan was in serious danger. She grabbed his shirt again. “At least let me look. Jimmy needs his dad, not a corpse and”—this seemed to get through as he held his arms in the air and let her make a full inspection of his upper torso—“I don’t know how I’d explain to him that you got shredded and bled to death protecting me from the . . . Oh, here’s one. Is that better? The rest seem to be stuck in your shirt. Nothing too deep. Here’s another. Okay. Okay?”
“Okay,” he said, looking down at her as she passed below his right armpit to stand before him. He lowered his arms, and when his hand came even with her chin, he pinched it gently between his thumb and his fist and tilted her face up to his. “When this is over, we’re going to have a long talk about keeping secrets from each other in the future. Okay?”
His expression and tone were unsmiling and stern, and she was thrilled. “Okay.”
But she wasn’t so elated that she for one second forgot the peril Jimmy was in . . . or how ill-equipped she was to deal with it. She hiked her skirt up high enough to step through the window casing behind Ryan—her heels making the move particularly tricky—and made straight for the stairs once inside.
The door at the end of the hall opened easily. Odelia and Adeline stood to one side of their sister, their expressions empathetic and disapproving at the same time. They looked at M.J. helplessly when she entered and remained silent.
Imogene sat in the high-backed rocker with Jimmy cradled in her arms, the afghan of muted colors pulled up around her shoulders and tucked securely about his young body.
“Jimmy!”
“Dad!” The boy turned his head at his father’s voice and started to cry at the sight of him. Ryan started to charge forward . . . then flew out the door and halfway down the hall. Staggering, he got to his feet again and after a second or two started back with the same determined step.
“Wait.” She put her hands on his chest and stopped him with her body. “Please. Let me try.”
He cast her a look that was hard to decipher but didn’t push through her. She dropped her hands and turned to the sisters.
“Imogene,” she said softly. The ghost ignored her, pulling Jimmy closer and trying to soothe him instead. She caressed his brow and the outer side of his face. He shivered. “Imogene, he’s cold. You need to let him go now so he doesn’t get sick. He’s frightened. Imogene?”
“His lips are turning blue.” Ryan started forward again, and again she stopped him.
“Imogene, I’ve figured it out. At least . . . I think I have. While I was driving over here . . . I was thinking . . . I think I know what you lost in this house. I think I know what you all lost here because . . . because I’ve found it.” She had Odelia and Adeline’s confused attention. “Please. Let Jimmy go so we can talk about it.”
Imogene raised her head at last and looked at her—ready to listen but far from willing to let Jimmy go. It was a start. A small one, if the grief and yearning on her face were any indication.
“I know it must feel so good to be holding a young boy in your arms again. Like a miracle, maybe . . . if you believed in that sort of thing. But you stopped believing in . . . well, everything, didn’t you? At first it was just your ability to mother another child, and then it was your husband and your marriage that you abandoned; then you moved back here and lost your faith in everything else—God, life . . . yourself. I bet in all the time you’ve been dead you haven’t really looked for what you lost because you had no faith that the Other Side even existed—your life was a misery of loneliness, guilt, and pain, so why shouldn’t your afterlife be? And yet”—she held up her index finger and stepped closer to Jimmy—“and yet you gave up on living because you had no faith in an afterlife . . . but here you are. Think about it, Imogene. If you were wrong about there being nothing after death, then maybe you’re also wrong about there being nowhere better to go from here.”
She took a breath and another step toward Jimmy, watched the thoughtful expression on her aunt’s face, then walked up next to the chair and placed the palm of her hand on Jimmy’s chilly cheek to warm him.
“I’m no theologian . . . I don’t know how it works. But I do know that for some things, so many things”—she glanced at Ryan and then down at Jimmy—“and for all the really important things in life, you have to believe and have a little faith and trust. Otherwise, nothing ever changes. You don’t change.” She slipped her hand through the emptiness of the afghan and took hold of Jimmy’s arm. “Let go of Jimmy now. He’s not what you need to ease the anguish in your heart.”
Jimmy must have felt the tension in the ghost’s arms slacken, because he reached up and took M.J.’s other hand, then lowered his feet to the floor and stepped away from the chair. Quickly, she put her body between them and pushed him toward
Ryan, but he was reluctant to go. Instead, he peeked around her leg and addressed himself to Imogene.
“When you get to heaven, you can talk to my mom. She’s been there a long time, and she’ll know what you should do.”
She stared at him a moment then gave him a small smile with a smaller nod to go with it.
All the women watched father and son embrace until a queer popping noise finally registered in their minds, and they looked back at one another.
“What is that?”
“Quick, dear, finish telling us what we lost. I believe the house is beginning to falter.” Odelia and Adeline stepped closer to Imogene, silently encouraging her to maintain her hold on the house until M.J. was finished.
She turned to Ryan. “Go!”
“Not without you.”
“I’ll be fine. I’ll come as soon as I can, but take Jimmy out of here before one of you gets hurt. Please. They won’t let anything happen to me.” She smiled in the light of her own new-found faith. “I’ll only be a few more minutes. I promise.”
Now it was his turn to have faith—in her—and despite the misgivings in his expression, he picked Jimmy up and headed for the stairs.
Still smiling, she turned back to the spirits of her mother and aunts with tears in her eyes. She was going to miss them.
With plaster dust floating down from the ceiling as the house began to tremble slightly, she shook her head at Odelia. “How long did you wait before you gave up all hope of becoming the second Julia Child . . . of being the world-famous chef, Odelia Hedbo?”
The sweet little woman giggled. “My stage name was going to be Heddy. High Times with Heddy Hedbo. And instead of bon appétit! I’d toast with real wine to my audiences’ health and wealth! More Hs, you see.”
“And when did you realize your dream might not come true? Before or after your father died?”
Some of the joy drained from her face. “I kept getting older and older, and he kept living longer and longer . . . but Julia didn’t appear on The French Chef until she was fifty-one.”
“So you still had a little hope. And when your father died?”