While Pete remained curious about what had become of Esmerelda, his thoughts defaulted to Em. She dominated, and this was a strange thing. Quickly as Em had stepped into his life, it seemed she was going to fly right out of it. He got out of the car, no longer pondering the fate of one woman, but two.
On the front porch, Pete knocked on the door, feeling like an unwanted salesman. Aubrey opened it, looking shocked, not terribly pleased to see him. It was the most bizarre feeling to have your mother come at you like she’d hit you with a shot of mace, run you right off her property if she could. “Mom, just hear me out. I have something important to tell you.” The screen door stood between the two of them. “The first thing is thank you. Thank you for doing what you did, insisting that leaving was the answer. If you hadn’t, I might not ever have hit the right bottom. Found the motivation to figure out what I didn’t do to Esmerelda Moon.”
This piqued her attention, and the front door remained ajar. She was skeptical but clearly anxious, and Aubrey told Pete to wait there. She called Levi, who was in the middle of recording the voiceover for his next Ink on Air segment. It took some time for him to arrive home from the Boston studio. In the meantime, Pete waited alone on the back deck. His mother wouldn’t even come outside until Levi arrived.
Finally, his parents approached. Without a word, she placed a glass of ice water in front of Pete and the two of them sat. Pete couldn’t decide who wore the more incredulous expression.
Step by step, Pete took them on a guided tour of his past life. Everything he’d physically unearthed, the factual news clippings about Phineas Seaborn: war hero, photographer, painter, someone whose very life could be documented.
“Phin . . . Seaborn,” Aubrey said as if trying to apply a different name to her own son.
Pete went on to reveal Emerald Montague’s dreams and the doll. He spoke of Zeke Dublin’s unexpected role and one last prognostication. He paused, the words of the note coming out of his mouth in a wistful cadence. “Emerald, today you meet Phin. Solve his troubles. Where Esme failed, you must succeed. Don’t let his past prevent your future.”
“Pete?”
His distracted gaze drifted back to his parents, who’d said his name simultaneously. “Sorry . . . right.” Softly, he dubbed Em the caretaker of dreams, a distant but vital wayfarer in the life of Esmerelda Moon.
After detailing more discoveries and conclusions, Pete arrived at the climax of his tale. “It was incredible and unnerving, from the moment I looked out from that dresser mirror and Phin looked back. Then it was like we were one person, seeing and doing the same things. I was stunned when I was allowed to step into the hall, when Esme opened her eyes and looked up at me. I don’t have any words to describe what went through my head on that city street. Everything from Oscar being there—wearing the damn raccoon coat—to realizing he’d orchestrated the whole death scene. I didn’t kill Esmerelda Moon, but Benjamin Hupp certainly would have. He would have hunted her down, and he absolutely would have murdered Phin.”
“Wait,” Levi said. Pete knew the tone. His dogged father/reporter would want to prove or deny every wild bit of the story his son had just told. Levi stood, hitting contacts on his phone. “Get me Louise in research, please.” He walked to the far side of the deck, leaving Pete and Aubrey at the table.
His mother sank back in her chair. “Oscar Bodette shot him. Charley’s Oscar? He killed this Benjamin . . .”
“Hupp,” Pete supplied. He scrolled back on his phone to the dimpled, dashing image of Benjamin Hupp. “He looks like a player, even for his generation. Because we know the rest of Oscar’s life, obviously he was never caught. But I’m not sorry if I don’t feel like Oscar got away with murder. I think I’m only sorry Phin . . . I didn’t get the chance to pull the trigger.”
“Or maybe it was meant to be, Pete,” Aubrey said. “Maybe Oscar thought Phineas Seaborn and Esmerelda Moon had endured enough life-and-death struggles.”
“Could be. I guess it’s safe to assume Charley never knew.”
“Or she never spoke about it.” His mother stared into the preserve. “I should give those old diaries of hers a closer look.”
“Everything I’ve said, you do believe me, right?”
Aubrey answered with a sigh and a yes. The two spoke for several more minutes before Levi returned to the table.
“Thanks, Louise. Sure,” he said. “A full vetting would be great, but that’s excellent information to start. You’re the best.” He ended the call.
“What was all that?” Aubrey asked.
“Louise from research. She came up with some stunning basics on Benjamin Hupp.”
“Did she? When Em googled him, she came up with nothing.”
“Em?” Aubrey said.
“Yeah . . . Em. What?”
She smiled. “Nothing. Just the way you said it—familiar, relaxed . . . different for you.”
“Anyway . . .” Pete huffed at her motherly observation. “Looking for information that old, what would you expect?”
“I’d expect I needed a research analyst with resources that exceed a simple search engine. Luckily,” Levi said, poking at his phone, “I’ve got one at my fingertips.” He read from his screen, glancing between mother and son. “This from a 1919 New York City police report: ‘In the early-morning hours on January twenty-fifth, heir and socialite Benjamin Hupp was discovered shot to death in the middle of Lexington Avenue.’ It goes on, but apparently his killer was never apprehended.”
“That’s amazing,” Aubrey said.
“Why?” Levi took his seat. “Because the info came by way of human, documented facts instead of an otherworldly channel?”
Aubrey smiled and leaned forward, coming closer to Pete than she had since his arrival. “Okay, so I’m absorbing most of this. But why, Pete, why all the years of tormented reliving, the same scene again and again, if you . . . Phin,” she said, trying the name on for the third or fourth time, “ultimately save Esme?”
Pete opened his mouth to answer, but it closed. He sank back into his own chair. “I don’t know, Mom. I didn’t say I had a resolution for everything, but at least I know now that I helped her. I didn’t hurt her. That’s huge.”
“I agree,” Levi said. “Aubrey, what is it you’ve said to me now and again, when stumped by the other side? ‘I’m not that special.’ You admit to not having all the answers. Can’t the same thing be true for our son?”
Aubrey’s gaze shifted between them. Pete lurched forward in his chair, snatching the word from his mother’s mouth. “No.” He pointed at her. “She’s going to say no! I don’t care what you say, Mom. You can’t throw me out of this family. I’m not going. In fact, I may take a damn desk job in Boston or buy the house next door.” He thrust a hand toward the Langford home, just past the fence line.
“Well, it’s hard to argue with that sort of determination. And clearly it’s been a world-rocking couple of days. I suppose all we can do is see where it takes . . .”
But her words petered out as Pete peered over the tall fence that separated the two properties. “Home,” he said.
“That’d be here,” Levi offered, a note of sarcasm evident.
“No. Last night. Oscar said Esme was going home. She said the same thing.” He looked at his parents, thinking of hundred-year-old clues and what became of Esme. “Oh my God. It’s not possible.” Pete picked up his camera bag and scavenged through it.
“Pete, what are you looking for?” Aubrey said.
“Something Grace gave me before I left.” He found an envelope at the bottom, wrinkled, nearly forgotten. “This.” He tore into it, finding a few stapled sheets of paper, Town of Surrey letterhead. “Mom, have you ever looked into the history of our house? Do you know who owned it—say, a hundred years ago?”
“Not offhand. Compared to some homes . . . well, houses in Surrey date back to the early 1700s. I don’t think of ours as that old.”
“Maybe age isn’t the point,” Pete said. She and Lev
i peered at the pages, Pete running his finger along a list of names and dates. It started with the most recent, Levi’s name being added to the deed a number of years ago.
“Rathbun,” Levi said. “Odd name. Looks like they owned the house for a lot of years. Oh, I see how long, the sold date anyway.”
Aubrey cleared her throat. “Yes. Those were the owners Owen and I bought the house from.” She tapped her finger on the page, her expression softening. “I remember seeing the house the first time. It needed work, but it just kind of spoke to me.” She looked into Pete’s and Levi’s faces. “Oh, come on. ‘Spoke to me’ like the average person says. You know, like an outfit you have to have, a piece of abstract art.” She rolled her eyes at them. “Not everything has a psychic translation, guys. Sometimes I do have a response to things not induced by the spiritual world.”
“In my experience,” Levi said, “that’s a damn short list. If you think about it, I’m not even on it.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. We would have ended up together regardless of Missy Flannigan . . .” She hesitated. “Or your brother.” She gave him a queer look. “Okay, so you’re not the best example. Anyway, there was something about this house. I was so drawn to it.”
“Mmm, and did your computer-brainiac ex-husband feel the same?” Levi asked.
“Actually, no,” Aubrey said. “I had to convince Owen to buy it. In fact, he never even sold our Boston loft. I was the persistent one.”
Pete flipped to the second page. “Look at this. Go back far enough and the records are handwritten photocopies. It notes here, ‘Deed transferred to Lowell Slade, March 8, 1915, formerly of Penacook, New Hampshire.’ Reads to me like he was gifted the house.”
Levi turned the paper toward himself. “A gift. That’s not an inheritance.”
“Backward as it is,” Aubrey said, “it might be indicative of the era. Men taking precedence over women. Property could very well have been something transferred from one man to another, and—”
“Property,” Pete said, the word reverberating in his head. “Oscar said something about property.” He looked at his mother. “So did Esme.” He lightly closed his eyes, trying to will a conversation forward. But in the hours since last night, Esme had grown distant, if not vague—stars once bright as a moon, then all of it swallowed by a cloud-covered night.
“Property.” Levi said this, and Pete felt the pages slip out from under his fingertips. When he opened his eyes, Pete and his parents were looking at the third page of the recording of deeds. “Elias Moon, he owned the house from 1896 to 1915.” Blurred in the margin, Levi read the words. “Gifted to Lowell Slade upon his marriage to Hazel Moon.”
“Home,” Pete said. “That’s what they meant. Here.” Pete looked up at the lovingly maintained and modernized craftsman, but also a house full of history and secrets.
“Oh my God,” Aubrey said, her fingers fluttering over her mouth. “It can’t be.”
It was Levi and his pragmatic logic that drew the mind-boggling conclusion. “It’s not your mother who’s exacerbated your visits to the past, Pete.”
Pete looked across the backyard, his gaze traveling onto the vintage structure that had underscored his life. “The Long Island bungalow and a Manhattan scavenger hunt, they were clues. The answer was right here all along. It’s this house.”
“And every spirit connected to it,” Aubrey said.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-TWO
Pete and his parents moved warily about for the next few hours. He supposed they were all trying to process information in their own way. It was a difficult trick, being as the house surrounded them. Pete ended up alone on the porch. Dusk was closing in as he swung passively on the swing, staring, not at the front yard, but at the house’s siding. A wiry shadow rose, the image of a juddering, hunched-over reaper with a thousand moving fingers. The figure grew more intense on the pewter-colored clapboard. Pete stopped swinging, then he sighed, shaking his head. It was only the sun dipping behind the front yard’s red maple, a spooky display of peek-a-boo light and stray clouds.
Humor subsided, and he sat a little longer, trying to untangle a lifetime of crossed ethereal wires. In the meantime, Levi called Louise again and Aubrey texted Grace. His parents put one strong-willed woman in touch with another, with both women combining their resources. A short time later, Pete sat up straighter, seeing Grace’s blue Prius gliding into the driveway. She came up the front walk with a folder in her arm.
“Hello, Pete.”
“Grace. Thank you for coming . . . for helping.”
“No matter our past, you know I couldn’t resist the idea of helping you resolve yours. Naturally, I was surprised to hear you were back. After the way you left . . .” She paused. “Well, when Aubrey told me the whole story, it’s just amazing.” Her gaze ticked along the frame of the now-suspect house. “By the way, that’s some research guru Levi has working for him.”
“I’ve heard him talk about Louise. Apparently her skills nearly fall into the sixth sense category. So the two of you were able to put something together?”
“I’d say so. I supplied her with what I knew and helped with additional Surrey info. Within an hour we managed to . . .” She sat in one of the vintage metal chairs. “Well, just wait until you see.”
“Let me get my parents.” But as Pete stood to retrieve them, Aubrey and Levi came outside, saying hello to Grace and thanking her for dropping everything and teaming up with Louise.
“Really,” she said. “I didn’t mind at all.”
His mother sat in the empty chair. It was a slow sink, running her fingers through her hair and looking out into the yard.
“Mom, are you all right?”
“Yes. I think so.”
“Aubrey?” Levi said.
“It’s nothing.” She glanced at Pete, then Levi. “Actually, physically, I feel better than I have in a good long while. But there’s something . . .” She pressed her fingers to her forehead. “A presence has been batting at me since Pete arrived home. It’s weak but adamant, like a bird fluttering its wings against glass.” She shook her head. “I can’t identify it. It’s just . . . there.” She glanced at the folder. “Grace, please go on.”
“Like I was telling Pete, it was really all Louise. She’s amazing!”
“She is,” Levi said. “Louise is expert at tracing genealogy. She worked for Scotland Yard and headed one of those website ancestry services before ending up in my office. She wanted a narrower framework for her skill set.”
“I see,” Grace said with interest. She handed Levi the folder. “You look.”
Grace stood and leaned against the porch rail, Levi taking her seat. Pete shifted to the far end of the swing for a better view. “Lowell Slade. It’s his history,” Aubrey said. “Oh my. This is remarkable.”
“He was drafted into World War I. According to this, he died in the Battle of Amiens, August of 1918. I remember . . .” Pete stopped—his mouth, his brain. He realized he couldn’t recall the battle with the clarity he might have a week ago.
“He was drafted,” Grace said, “but according to Louise, records indicate he died of trench foot. She said it was quite unusual, not to get the disease, but to die from it. Men who did, it was widely believed they spent so much time hiding in trenches and foxholes their trench foot went untreated, going from gangrene to death.” She glanced at the house. “Sorry to say it, but I don’t think the house’s former owner was anybody to brag about.”
“What about Hazel Moon, Elias?” Aubrey asked.
“Was there any mention of Esme?” Pete said, aiming at the question that perplexed him most.
“We did find a record of her birth, which you’d already surmised—right here in Surrey. There was even a record of her high school graduation.” Grace leaned forward and sifted beneath the papers to produce a photocopied image, which she handed to Pete. It was faintly warm to his touch. “She graduated in 1914 from Davis Thayer. That was Surrey’s old high school.” Th
e facsimile photo depicted a small group of young men and women, all similarly dressed.
“Esme.” Pete immediately pointed to a girl in the middle row. She wore a simple white dress, a giant bow at the back of her hair. Photos of her, while still an amazing sight, didn’t deliver the wallop of emotion he’d felt over the years. It was melancholy, reverence—the feeling of having fallen out of love with someone. He looked back at the photo and at Grace. “There’s no death record for her?”
She shook her head. “None that Louise or I could locate. The father, Elias, he died in 1918, a combination of alcoholism and flu.”
“Of what?” Levi said.
“Remember, this was at the tail end of the great pandemic. Surrey actually kept a record of people who had the flu and lived, and those who died. It’s what killed Esme’s mother in 1914, prepandemic, and I guess a full determination couldn’t be made on her father, so it lists both.”
“And the sister?” Aubrey asked.
“Her records were the most complete. We found Hazel Slade listed as having had the flu in early 1919, but she doesn’t die until 1968, when the house is sold to a family named—”
“Rathbun,” Aubrey said.
“That’s right.” Grace shifted her shoulders. “So for as much as I’ve brought you intriguing information, I didn’t figure out what everybody really wants to know—what happened to Esmerelda Moon.” She glanced at Pete. “I guess I fell short again.”
Levi and Aubrey traded a glance. They thanked Grace profusely, took the folder she brought, and disappeared from the porch into the house.
Grace flashed an uncomfortable smile at Pete. “I see my ability to clear a room is in good working order.”
“No. It’s not that.” Pete stood. “They’re just overwhelmed with everything they’ve learned today—including the fact that they might not have to give up a son.”
“So what do you do now, just spend the night? See if anything goes bump?”
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