Why do you care so much, Abby? Olivia had died long before she was born. She’d barely known Olivia’s daughter Ruth or Ruth’s daughter. Why was she obsessing about this, sitting in front of her computer while two people she cared about were enjoying vacation fun and games? They should be outside taking advantage of the lovely late-summer weather. Was it because Olivia had appeared to her? Was there some sort of sliding scale for degree of emotional intensity? Abby had never encountered an ancestral someone just because they’d received a nice birthday present that had made them happy in 1827. Mostly she had felt their pain, across centuries. Intense pain, anguish, grief—call it whatever you wanted. Too bad she couldn’t reset her perceptions to mix in at least a few happy experiences. But that didn’t seem likely.
She shut off the computer and stood up, then marched into the living room, where Ned and Ellie were playing some kind of raucous game that Abby didn’t recognize. She sat down cross-legged next to them. “Guess what?”
Ned and Ellie looked at her, although they probably already knew what she was going to say.
“Olivia owned this house. And she was probably here during the hurricane.”
Ellie nodded. “I figured that. Why was she sitting outside in the rain?”
“That I don’t know, Ellie. And that’s going to be a lot harder to figure out, since she can’t tell us.”
“You think we can? I mean, find out why she was so sad.”
“I’m going to try, but there may not be much to go on.” Abby glanced at Ned, who looked amused. “What would you look for, Ellie? Wait—first tell me if you see people when they’re happy, not just when they’re sad.”
“Yeah, sometimes. Like Hannah, in the cemetery. I know cemeteries are sad because people are buried there, and their families were sad at the funeral. But Hannah was happy to see me.”
“So was Johnnie,” Ned said suddenly. “He may have died a sad death, but when he appeared to me, he wasn’t unhappy. He must have been happy in that house.”
“Wow, you mean he was your friend? Like Hannah?” Ellie said, round-eyed.
“Didn’t I tell you about him? I was probably about your age when I met him—he’d lived in our house a couple of hundred years earlier, and when I saw him, we were about the same age. It sounds like we used to play the same way you and Hannah play. He never spoke to me, though.”
“Cool.” Ellie looked down at the board, then up at Ned. “Can we finish this game before dinner? Because I’m beating you.”
Abby almost laughed. First they’re talking about spirits and then suddenly Ellie shifts right back to winning at whatever it was. Ellie didn’t seem to be in danger of becoming obsessed by all the dead around her.
“We’re keeping it simple tonight—hamburgers on the grill, fresh corn and salad,” Abby told them. “And ice cream for dessert. It won’t take long to get ready. So you’d better whomp Ned quickly, Ellie.”
“No problem,” Ellie said, her eyes on the board.
After mixing up the salad, Abby handed over the cooking chores to Ned, and she and Ellie went out to sit on the porch. “This was nice, wasn’t it, Ellie?”
“You mean being here? Yeah. You didn’t know about Olivia being here, before, did you?”
Abby shook her head. “No, I had no idea. Remember, there’s a whole lot more that we don’t know than we do. So I’m sure there are lots of surprises coming. You don’t see these people at school, do you?”
Ellie shook her head. “No, but that’s a pretty new building. There’s not enough of the past there.”
“Are you looking forward to third grade?”
Ellie shrugged noncommittally. “I like some parts, but a lot of the kids are . . . well, kinda dumb. I’m done with stuff before they really get started.”
“What does the teacher tell you?”
“To sit down and be quiet.”
Poor kid—that was a surefire recipe for turning any child away from learning. “That’s not much fun. Learning should be fun. Do you think you’d be happier at a different school?”
“You mean, like a private school? I dunno. I haven’t met many kids from those. Are they snobby?”
“It depends. There are some schools that are proud of being old and brag about all the important people who have gone there. You know, presidents and writers, those kinds of people. And then there are schools for smart kids, who don’t care about that other stuff.”
“They cost a lot of money, don’t they?” Ellie asked.
How was Abby supposed to explain that Ned could pay for whatever school Ellie should go to? It was not her place to do it. “It depends. Sometimes they have scholarships to help pay for it.”
“I’d like to be at a smart school,” Ellie said with a kind of wistfulness in her voice.
“Well, we’ll see what we can do, all right? But tomorrow we have to go home, and you need to start getting ready for school—the one where you are now.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m taking Kitten with me, aren’t I?”
“Well, we haven’t talked to your mother about it, but we’ll try. Worst case, we’ll keep her at our house and you can come visit her.”
Ellie looked rebellious but didn’t say anything. Abby crossed her fingers that Leslie would be okay with a new family member.
Chapter 18
“What am I going to put Kitten in? Can I just carry her in my lap?” Ellie demanded.
Abby and Ned exchanged a look. “No, sweetie, that’s not safe for anybody,” Abby told her. “Ned, do we have any boxes?”
“There might be one in my car,” he said. “I’ll go look.”
When he’d gone out back to check, Abby asked Ellie, “We’ve got two cars here—which one do you want to ride home in?”
“Ned’s, I guess. Am I going straight home?”
“Your mom and dad want to see you—it’s been a while. So Ned can take you home.”
“But you said you’d help with Kitten. Tell them how good she is.”
“Okay, okay. We’ll stop at our house and drop off one car, then head to Littleton. But we can’t stay—your dad is still recuperating. By the way, it might help if you give Kitten a name. You have any ideas?”
“I haven’t decided.” Ellie looked down at the kitten purring in her arms. “I was thinking, maybe, Olivia?” She looked through her lashes at Abby.
Abby wasn’t sure whether she was pleased or dismayed. If the kitten was named Olivia, she’d be a constant reminder to Ellie of what had happened in the house here. On the other hand, it was kind of a nice remembrance. Although Olivia might not want to be memorialized by a cat. Well, at least Ellie had said she wasn’t sure yet. “You wouldn’t rather call her something like Stormy? Because you found her in a storm?”
Ellie came perilously close to pouting. “I’m still thinking about it.”
Ned returned with a cardboard box. “It’s not very big, but it should do for a couple of hours. Ellie, you want to help me cut air holes in it, for the ride?”
“Okay.” She put the cat down reluctantly, and the cat scurried over to the box and jumped into it to investigate.
“I’ll let you two work it out,” Abby told them. “I’ll make one last sweep of the house, to make sure we didn’t forget anything.” She went upstairs and checked the bedrooms and the bath. There was no evidence of their passing through. She went back downstairs and made sure all the board games were back where they belonged—and the binder about the hurricane—and even peeked under the furniture to make sure that no pieces had gotten batted around. She saved the porch for last.
Outside, she sat on one of the chairs—not the one Olivia had appeared in, but the one next to it. Abby shut her eyes for a moment, to see if she could sense anything, but there was nothing. She’d seen Olivia more than once, at different stages of her life. Would she be back? To have sent such lingering messages, she must have been a woman of strong emotions. It was so hard to look at scant facts from various sources and put together a profile of a per
son a century earlier. Maybe she should focus on Olivia’s husband, who probably had left more of a paper trail. She already had the one anecdote from her mother; were there more to be had? What could she infer from the public records? As far as she knew, they’d moved to New Jersey around 1900 and never left, and presumably they were buried there. Abby, you’re wasting time. Go home and worry about it another day.
Yet Abby lingered a moment longer. “Olivia?” she whispered. “Why were you here?” She didn’t get an answer, but she wasn’t expecting one.
“Abby?” Ned called out from inside. “You ready to go?”
“I am,” she called back. “Do we need to turn in the keys?” she asked as she walked through the house.
“I’ll do that. It’s on the way to the highway. Ellie, you good to go?”
“Yes. I’ll carry Kitten’s box.”
Ned and Ellie—with Kitten—led the way and pulled out first. Abby took one last look at the kitchen and followed, pulling the door shut behind her. Goodbye, Olivia. Nice seeing you again. Olivia didn’t answer.
The ride back to Lexington was a little lonely. She was glad that Ned and Ellie would have some time together, without her. Abby had had plenty of time with the child over the summer, but Ellie should get to know Ned as well. The fact that she was alone meant that she had time to think, but she wasn’t sure she wanted it right now. There were a lot of issues bubbling up. Did Ned resent that she wasn’t working at the moment, no matter what he said? Or was that a sexist assumption? His mother had told her that she had worked as a librarian for years, so Ned would have had the example of a working mother. Abby had always planned to look for another job, but that was complicated by the circumstances under which she’d left the Concord Museum. It would look rather odd if Leslie wouldn’t give her a recommendation. She’d hoped that Leslie would eventually come around. Just because Abby had been instrumental in figuring out what was going on with Ellie had nothing to do with her professional abilities. She truly hoped that Leslie would get over her resentment, because it really wasn’t Abby’s fault. Things had been fairly cordial over the summer, when Abby had been spending a day a week with Ellie—but Abby had been careful not to talk about anything sensitive. Still, there was no schedule.
Ned could probably find her a job, with or without Leslie. Did she want that? She sometimes had trouble reconciling the Ned she knew—a pleasant mild-mannered guy, nice to look at, sense of humor, et cetera—with Ned the titan of industry, but she knew from what she’d read that his company was kind of cutting edge in the field of forensic analysis. And he made a lot of money from it, not that he threw it around or spent it on anything obvious.
Her mother expected them to get married. But then, that was what her mother’s generation—well, most of them—did. Times had changed, and expectations had too. A lot of people didn’t get married these days. Women could support themselves. Women could have babies without a man in the house. There were plenty of choices. So what did she want?
She didn’t know. Here she was, in her mid-twenties, and she thought she would have a plan by now, but then all this “seeing” thing had slammed into her, and she was still trying to come to terms with that. She couldn’t imagine trying to explain it to a stranger, but Ned knew all about it. But did that mean she was stuck with Ned for the rest of her life, just to save explaining? She shook her head, even though there was no one to see. She loved Ned. He was a wonderful guy, and she couldn’t ask for anything more. He was great with Ellie. His daughter. Was that going to be a problem? Her mother had seen it quickly. Ellie would have to know sometime soon.
Did she want to have a child with Ned? The idea scared her. She had always assumed she would have children someday, with the right man, but she hadn’t counted on this extra gene or whatever it was. If they did end up mingling their genes, they’d probably end up with a child who would almost certainly see all the family ghosts hanging around. Abby found it hard to imagine handling that in a small child. Maybe they should move to the desert in Arizona first—she didn’t think she had any ancestors there. But that would be cheating. They knew too much now. And she didn’t have to decide right now, did she? She still needed to get a handle on things.
The ride back to Lexington seemed shorter than she remembered. The traffic wasn’t as heavy as she’d been led to believe, and she pulled into the driveway in just under two hours. Ned’s car was already there.
“Slowpoke!” he called out.
“Speeder!” she replied. “You want to go over to Leslie’s now?”
“Might as well—I told her we’d deliver her daughter around lunchtime.”
“Then let’s go.” Abby climbed into the backseat. Ellie was sitting in the front, with Kitten’s box in her lap, her arms wrapped firmly around it. “Hey, sweetie. How did Kitten like the ride?”
“Fine.”
“Your mom and dad will be happy to see you,” Abby tried again.
“Uh-huh.”
Okay, so that’s the way it was going to be. Maybe Ellie was worried about what she’d find when she got home. Or that Leslie would veto the kitten.
“Everybody ready?” Ned asked as he climbed in and buckled his seat belt. Ellie nodded silently.
“Good to go,” Abby said with forced cheerfulness.
The trip to Littleton took little time. Ned parked in front of the house, and Abby extricated herself from the backseat but hung back, unsure of her welcome. Ned opened the door for Ellie, who refused to let go of her box and its cargo. Leslie opened the door to welcome them; she headed for Ellie first but was stymied by Ellie’s box.
“Hey, pumpkin, I missed you. Can I get a hug?”
Grudgingly Ellie put the box down and allowed Leslie to wrap her in a big hug. Leslie looked at Ned and Abby and said, “Hello to you too.”
“Everything okay?” Ned asked, nodding toward the house.
“Good enough,” Leslie said, finally releasing her daughter and standing up. “Peter got back yesterday, but George gets tired quickly. What’s this?” she asked Ellie, who had picked up the box again.
“It’s a kitten,” Ellie said, tightening her arms around the box.
Leslie’s expression changed quickly. “Nobody asked me about a kitten,” she said.
Abby stepped forward. “It wasn’t exactly planned, Leslie. Last Thursday a nasty storm hit the Cape, and we discovered the kitten under the porch at the height of it. We couldn’t exactly leave her there.”
“You could have given it back to its owner,” Leslie said.
“We tried,” Ned said. “We asked all the near neighbors, and nobody was missing a kitten. Given how young she is, it’s unlikely she wandered far, and what were we supposed to do—poll all of Falmouth?”
“I can’t handle a pet right now,” Leslie said, her voice tight.
“Mom! She’s really nice. She’s quiet, and she doesn’t eat much, and she won’t get in anybody’s way. I can keep her in my room,” Ellie pleaded.
“Ellie, getting a pet is something we should talk about, as a family. Do we want a dog or a cat, or a hamster or goldfish? You can’t just show up with a cat like this.”
A little late to say that, Abby thought. This is not going well. Leslie must be more stressed out than she was willing to admit. She looked ready to pitch a fit about a kitten that her daughter was clearly already attached to.
“But she found me, not the other way around!” Ellie protested. “She’s mine.”
“Ellie, I said no. Not right now. Maybe when things settle down, we can all talk about it.”
“No! I want Olivia!” Ellie all but yelled.
Ned laid a hand on Ellie’s shoulder. “Look, Leslie, we know this is a hard time, and we really didn’t plan this. What about this? We’ll take . . . Olivia to our house for now, until things are calmer. Ellie can visit her there.”
Abby held her breath. Would Leslie see this as an end run, undermining her authority? Or was she just lashing out now, in response to everything that ha
d happened over the past week? She glanced at Ellie, who looked rebellious. She knelt beside her. “Ellie? Why don’t we try this for a little while? Your mom has a lot on her plate right now. We’ll take good care of Olivia for you.”
Ellie looked at Abby, with tears in her eyes. “Promise?”
“Yes, we promise. You need to go see your dad now—I bet he’s missed you.” Abby straightened up and faced Leslie. “Ellie is really attached to the kitten. Why don’t we wait a bit and see how this works out?”
“We’ll talk later,” Leslie spat. “Come on, Ellie—let’s go inside.”
Ellie put down the box carefully and opened it partway. “Bye-bye, Olivia. Be good for Abby and Ned. I’ll come visit as soon as I can.” She closed the lid equally carefully, then straightened up and hugged Abby, then Ned. Then she looked at her mother, her expression carefully neutral, and went inside. Leslie gave them one last glare and followed her daughter.
“Oh, dear,” Abby said after Leslie had shut the door. At least she hadn’t slammed it.
“Well, it wasn’t unexpected,” Ned told her. “We can look out for . . . Ellie did say Olivia, didn’t she?”
“I’m afraid she did. I have no idea what she was thinking. But, yes, I’m happy to take care of the kitten, and see if Leslie calms down.”
“Don’t hold your breath,” Ned muttered as they walked to the car.
Once in the car, they drove a few miles before Abby said, “It was a nice vacation, wasn’t it?”
“It was. Although you and I should take one just for us.”
“You didn’t want to spend time with Ellie?”
Ned was silent for a while. “It’s not that, exactly. Leslie would probably be happy if I never spent any time with Ellie, and I can understand that. That was the original plan. But we made up the rules before we knew about . . . this other stuff. That kind of changes things, and we’re still getting used to that. But that wasn’t what I was saying. I want to spend time with you. Alone. Just the two of us.”
Watch for the Dead (Relatively Dead Book 4) Page 14