Once She Knew

by Sheila Connolly

  So much anger, so much pain.

  She knew she was standing in the same place in the same room, its tall windows draped in opulent swags of peach-colored damask, its fireplace surrounded by colorful tiles, flanked by columns. She could make out the gleam of polished silver on the sideboard, the colorful arabesques on the fireplace tiles.

  But now there were people in the room, and Abby strained to hear any words. An older woman—in her fifties, maybe?—sat at the broad mahogany table in the center of the room, her hands flat as if to stop them from trembling. Without wavering, the woman watched a man pacing nervously on the opposite side of the table. He was slight, with a receding hairline, balanced by a luxuriant mustache. His suit collar was stiff and high, a stickpin anchoring his broad tie. He looked both sheepish and belligerent. She—who was she?—looked down to see a blanket-wrapped baby in her arms.

  “Miss? Are you all right?”

  Abby nearly jumped out of her skin at the touch of a hand on her elbow. The man from the hallway had come up behind her.

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Maybe you should sit down.”

  Abby was fighting between embarrassment and the lingering remnants of the irrational fear that had swept over her. “I, uh . . . I’m fine. It’s just that you startled me. I’ll go now.” Abby wanted nothing more than to escape from this stranger’s kind attention.

  He still held her elbow, watching her face. “Please, no. There’s no rush. Why don’t you sit for a minute, just to be sure you’re all right? Come on.” When she didn’t resist he led her not to the parlor but to the smaller sitting room. Apparently he agreed with her that it was a friendlier room, she thought. He settled her into a wicker chair plump with cushions. “Now, just stay there for a moment. I’m going to make a cup of tea. All right?”

  Bewildered, Abby nodded. She sank back into the chair. Ned disappeared toward the kitchen, and she could hear the sound of water filling a kettle, the clink of china, a refrigerator opening and closing. She closed her eyes and made a conscious effort to relax. What on earth had happened? And then the memory came back. She shut her eyes: to remember it better or to blot it out? She wasn’t sure.

  She opened them again when Ned reappeared with a silver-plated tray bearing a teapot in a tattered cozy, two cups, a sugar bowl, a milk pitcher, spoons, and a delicate flowered china plate with some store-bought sugar cookies. He set it down on a low table next to Abby’s chair, then took the chair on the other side of the table. Leaning forward, he studied her face.

  “All right, now. I wish I could say you were looking better, but you’re white as a sheet.”

  Abby stared at him for a moment, and then to her horror she burst into tears. Even as she attempted to control her sobs, she felt a moment of pity for poor Ned, stuck with this dripping female that she didn’t even recognize as herself. He was trying so hard to be helpful, and she just kept making things worse. Wordlessly he handed her a small napkin from the tea tray, then sat back to wait out the storm. Finally, Abby swallowed a few times, blotted her eyes, and ventured a watery smile.

  “I’m sorry. This is so not like me. But . . .” She hesitated, afraid that if she went on, he would think she was loony. Oh, well, what the heck—she didn’t have anything to lose. “When I walked into the dining room, something weird happened. It was like I was watching a film of people in that room, except . . . they weren’t real. They weren’t there, were they?”

  She looked at Ned to see how he was taking her odd statement. He didn’t look contemptuous. In fact, he looked curious.

  “Interesting. Was there something that triggered it, or did it just start up out of nowhere?”

  She gave an inward sigh of relief. He wasn’t going to laugh at her. “All I know is, one moment I was about to walk into the dining room, and the next minute I was watching some kind of melodrama. There were three people there, and one of them—the one I was seeing through or something—was holding a baby, and they were all upset. Well, not the baby, but the others were.”

  “Did you recognize anyone?” Ned asked, concentrating on pouring two cups of tea. “Sugar?”

  “And milk, please. No. They were dressed like people were a hundred or more years ago. Is that part of the house tour? Some hidden projector shows you what life used to be like in the house?” That would be such an easy solution—but it hadn’t felt like that. She accepted the cup of tea that he held out to her, and when she took it, she realized her hands were trembling. She tightened her grip on the cup and sipped cautiously. It was hot and delicious. “Is this Darjeeling?”

  He nodded.

  “It’s good.” Now that Abby was feeling almost normal, she was beginning to wonder about this man. “Don’t you have to watch the door or something? And how come you know where all the tea things are? Do you live here?”

  Ned laughed. “It’s okay. It’s nearly time to close up, and I doubt that anyone else is going to show up today. Saturday’s usually the big day. Anyway, I’ve done this for a couple of years, so I know the house. Actually, no one lives in it these days—it belongs to the private school next door, and they use it for functions, entertaining, and such, so they keep it stocked with basic supplies. Not that I’ve ever had to deal with a problem like yours until now, but I’m glad that I was prepared. Tea and sugar make most problems better, don’t you think?”

  He has a nice smile, Abby thought.

  “You sure you’re all right?” he asked again.

  “I’m fine. I probably tried to do too much today, and it caught up with me. I’m just embarrassed about causing you so much trouble.” She sipped again at her tea, at a loss for words.

  “Well, don’t hurry. We can sit here until you’re sure you’re all right. Do you live around here?”

  “I just moved to Waltham last month, and I read about the house tours, and I thought it would be nice to see some of the big old places like this. They’re beautiful.”

  “They are grand, aren’t they? This city’s had its ups and downs—there was a lot of industry here in the nineteenth century. Watchmaking, mostly. You’ve heard of the Waltham Watch Company? This was the place. You saw the Paine house? A lot of that was built by H. H. Richardson, and Frederick Law Olmsted designed the grounds. You know—Richardson’s the one who designed Trinity Church in Boston, and Olmsted laid out Central Park in New York.” He looked at her expectantly, and Abby wondered if she was supposed to know what he was talking about.

  “Yes, I started with the Paine house today. It’s gorgeous. But I guess I didn’t do all my homework. You certainly seem to know a lot about the houses. Are you from around here?”

  “More or less. I work in Lexington, and I’ve lived in the area for most of my life.”

  “What do you do?” Not an original question, but it was the best Abby could do.

  “I work for a company that does DNA analyses—that’s my day job. But my avocation is historic architecture, and New England history. That’s why I help with the house tours, things like that. It means I get to see more of the behind-the-scenes stuff than I would if I was just a visitor. You know—attics, basements. The bones of the old houses.”

  Abby was silent for a few beats. Then she said slowly, “What’s the history of this place?”

  Ned lifted the teapot, and when she nodded, he refilled her cup, and his, then sat back. “Well, it’s kind of interesting. For most of the nineteenth century, it belonged to a family named Hawley. They had a nice big farmhouse here. Then in the 1890s, a successful businessman named Flagg bought it and started making some major changes, at least to the way it looked. The structural core is still the farmhouse, but everything that you see, inside and out, is late Victorian.”

  “He certainly threw himself into the decorating part—I’ve never seen so much gingerbread in one place!” Abby said, smiling.

  “Yes, he was determined to put his stamp on it. I can show you some of the newspaper articles about it. William Flagg brought in woods from all over the country,
and if you look around, you’ll see that every doorknob is different. There’s some really beautiful work here.” He took another sip of his tea. “And then something happened—after about ten years, he ups and sells the place to the school next door. After all the fixing up he’d done.”

  Abby’s curiosity was piqued. “Did he lose all his money or something?”

  Ned shook his head. “He may have—I haven’t done any detailed research. But I do know that he stayed in Waltham—in fact, he ended up living in a smaller house about a mile south of here, for the rest of his life, and he’s buried here.”

  “Did he have a family?”

  “Yes—a wife and two daughters. The younger one went to the school here. His wife outlived him, but she’s buried next to him. Don’t know what happened to the girls.”

  Abby shut her eyes for a moment, trying to remember. “Was one of the girls a lot younger than the other?”

  Ned looked at her quizzically. “Yes, I think so. Why do you ask?”

  “Because that’s what I saw. There was a man and a woman, and I think they were fighting, or at least they were very angry. And there was a younger woman with a baby. I didn’t think the baby was hers, from the way she held it. Like she wasn’t used to babies.” Was that baby the one they raised as a daughter? And why was the wife so angry?

  Ned gave her a long look. Finally he said, “I see. That’s intriguing.”

  “You don’t think I’m crazy? Or at least hallucinating?”

  He shook his head. “No. I’ve seen—or felt—too many odd things in old houses to brush off experiences like yours. Have you ever had an experience like this before?”

  Abby shook her head vehemently. “No, never. In fact, people have accused me of having no imagination. I’m usually the practical one in any group—you know, the designated driver, the one with the maps and all. That’s why this is so weird.”

  Ned was silent. Abby watched him anxiously and wondered what was going through his mind—like calling in professional help to take her away. She was relieved when he finally spoke.

  “Miss, uh—you know, I don’t even know your name?”

  “Oh, right. Abigail Kimball—mostly Abby.”

  “I’m Edward Newhall, mostly Ned. Well, Abby, you’ve certainly come up with a pretty puzzle.”

  “Why? What do you think that . . . experience was?”

  “At a guess, I’d say you stumbled on a past scene that somehow got stuck here. No, that doesn’t make sense. You had a vision of something from the past? Or you have an extremely overactive imagination that filled the room with people, like it was a play. Are you sure you’ve never been here before?”

  “Never. I’ve never even been in this state before, or at least not since I was a kid, and then it was just passing through on the way to somewhere else. I’ve only been here a few weeks, and I’ve been so busy getting settled that I haven’t seen much of the neighborhood, much less Boston.”

  “What brought you here, if you don’t mind telling me?”

  “I came with my boyfriend. He got a job offer, and in a couple of weeks, here we were.” Was it her imagination, or did Ned look a little disappointed when she mentioned the “boyfriend”?

  If he had, he recovered quickly. “Well, Abby, do you want to explore this phenomenon a bit further, maybe find out who you were seeing, or would you rather just go home and try to forget the whole thing?”

  Abby thought for a moment, teetering in indecision. And then it seemed as though she heard her own voice: No, I’m not just going to forget about this. I want to know what happened, and why. “If I wanted to learn more, what would I do?”

  He smiled. “Well, first of all, you could go to the library in town here, find out as much as you could about this place, and about the family. You should talk to Jane Bennett. She runs the local history section, and she’s very good. And there are a lot of local records—microfilms, city directories, that kind of thing. Unfortunately only a portion of it is online, but the library’s a nice place to spend time. There might even be pictures of the people who lived here—maybe you’d recognize someone.”

  Abby shivered. “And if I found pictures and they really were the people from my dream? What then?”

  “Well, at least you’d know something, that what you saw was real. Look, why not stop in at the library and see what you can find—if you have the time, that is. Do you have a job yet?”

  Interesting that Ned assumed she’d be looking for a job. Well, she did plan to, once she and Brad were settled. Their current apartment was merely a stopgap until they could find a house—or one they could afford. “No, I’ve got the time right now.”

  Ned looked pleased. “Then maybe we could get together over the weekend and compare notes? If you’re not busy.”

  Abby thought about her own total lack of plans. No, she was not busy. Brad had already declared he would be gone, playing golf with his buddies. “Sure. Where?”

  “How about we meet at the library, on Saturday at ten?”

  “All right. Oh, I should get your number, in case something comes up.” Like Brad’s foursome was canceled.

  He pulled out a wallet and extricated two cards. “Write your name and number on the one—you can keep the other one. I’ll put my home number on the back.” He scribbled on the back of one, then handed the two to her. She wrote her number on the back and handed it to him, and he carefully stowed it in his wallet.

  Abby stood up and looked around. No strange figures lurking in the sunny corners, at least in this room, which caught the light of the setting sun through the big front windows. She didn’t want to go back to the dining room and see if there was anyone there. Brad would be wanting his dinner. What was she going to tell him about this little misadventure?

  “I really should be going now. But I will go to the library, I promise.”

  Ned stood as well. “So I’ll see you Saturday. And you can tell me then if you’ve seen anybody else during the week.”

  “Like a ghost, you mean? I hope not. Saturday, then.”

  He saw her to the door. I didn’t ask him if there was somebody waiting for him at home. She didn’t remember a wedding ring. But it didn’t matter: this wasn’t a date, this was a history consultation. And she had something to do now—a trip to the library to do research, and then the meeting with Ned on Saturday. Things were looking up.

  Excerpt from Monument to the Dead

  Keep reading for an excerpt from

  Monument to the Dead, the next book

  in the Museum Mysteries series

  by Sheila Connolly.

  1

  Adeline Harrison was dead.

  I couldn’t remember when I first started reading the obituaries in the paper, but now I did it daily, and that’s how I saw the news.

  I had unfurled my morning paper as my commuter train rumbled out of the Bryn Mawr station. It seemed almost a shame to spend the ride reading when the June weather outside was so perfect. It seemed a shame to be inside at all, but I had a demanding job, and there was no way I could take a “nice weather” day, not when I was president of the Pennsylvania Antiquarian Society. I had to set a good example for the rest of my staff, and we’d already had a “spring fever” party of sorts, on the outdoor balcony adjacent to the staff room. I made a bargain with myself: I’d read the paper until we came close to the city of Philadelphia, then I would allow myself to enjoy the view of the Schuylkill River where the train tracks ran alongside it, before the tracks plunged into and then under the city itself.

  I scanned the front page for new crises, then turned to the Local section. As a member of the cultural community of the greater Philadelphia area, I had to keep my eye on cultural and other events that might affect the Society, not to mention opportunities to take advantage of new trends and new funding. We had a meager endowment and received little funding from the city itself, so I always had to be ready to sic my development staff on any opportunity that presented itself. And I had begun to rea
d the obituaries—not out of ghoulishness, but because our board, our donors, and most of our members are well past the half-century mark. I regret the passing of each one, though selfishly, I always hope that the Society would be remembered in their wills. Of course, that remembrance could take the form of family heirlooms (possible treasure, but equally possible of only sentimental value), or it could be a financial bequest (much more welcome).

  Today yielded only one such notice: former board member Adeline Harrison. She had left the board not long after I had first joined the Society as director of development a few years ago, but I remembered her for her alertness, her surprising grasp of our collections, and her kindness to everyone. I was surprised to see that she had been eighty-six years old; I would have thought her at least a decade younger. The obituary was long and glowing; she had been a member of many local institutions over the past few decades. I made a mental note to send some sort of condolence, or at least delegate Shelby Carver to handle it. Shelby had taken over my position as director of development when I was bumped upstairs (down the hall, more accurately) to Society president. With her well-bred Southern background, Shelby was very good at following up on such social niceties.

  I looked up to find the train skirting the Schuylkill River, so I put aside my paper. There were a few scullers out on the water, catching the cool of the morning. The Dad Vail Regatta was a few weeks past; then the river had been crowded with competing sculls. Now it was peaceful, and as always it reminded me of the Philadelphia artist Thomas Eakins’s sculling pictures. If you stood in just the right place on the banks, it didn’t look much changed from Eakins’s day.

  The train stopped at 30th Street Station, and then we went underground. I got out at Suburban Station and climbed the stairs out into the fresh air of City Hall Plaza. Well, as fresh as Center City air could be, but this early in the day it was still fairly clean. I set off, glad for the walk to the Society. I stopped for a cappuccino before I mounted the stone steps and pulled open the heavy metal door. Front Desk Bob, a former policeman but quiet about it, was already in place behind the reception desk, getting ready for a new day, and we nodded at each other as I headed for the elevator to the third floor, where the administrative offices were. While I waited for our lone, elderly elevator to make its stately way to the ground floor, I saluted the monumental statue of Edwin Forrest that stood guard over the hallway. Edwin had been a superstar in his day, a larger-than-life actor who had risen from the slums of Philadelphia to command adoring audiences all over the United States and even Europe, scattering scandals in his wake. The statue was also larger than life (the sculptor had kindly added a couple of inches to Edwin’s actual physical stature), and the actor appeared dressed in Roman garb as Coriolanus, one of his favorite Shakespearean roles. It had been occupying its rather dreary location since before I began working at the Society, but I had become increasingly fond of him since I had taken over running the Society. At least he didn’t complain or demand something from me, the way some of my employees did.