“Okay. You win,” she said. “I respect your right not to pursue answers.” Aubrey went about busywork: closing her journal, tidying the items inside the box on her bed, shuffling loose pages into a stack.
“Wait. What’s that?” Pete cocked his chin in her direction.
“The box?” She pointed to the most obvious item.
“No. The papers.”
Aubrey reached for a single sheet of white paper, which included a color photo of a house that had belonged to her grandmother Charley. “A newer piece of my past. Kind of ties in with what I’ve been working on. It’s an e-mail from a law firm in New Mexico. It seems Charley owned a property, a house on the east end of Long Island.”
“Long Island?” There was an uptick in Pete’s tone. “That’s a few worlds away from Albuquerque, New Mexico.”
“It’s part of the reason it took so long for the legalities to play out. Charley owned a house with Truman Heinz.” She furrowed her brow. “And/or Oscar Bodette.”
“Oscar?”
“Yes, Oscar. The details are unclear. Apparently, after they both passed, the deed transferred to Charley. But it was never properly recorded. For some reason, she never updated her will to reflect it. When her estate was settled . . . what? Ten years ago?”
“About that. A day shy of her hundredth birthday.”
Aubrey smiled at the woman and her longevity. For a time, she’d clung to a sweet fantasy that part of her grandmother’s gift had been eternal life. On the eve of her birthday, she’d passed peacefully in her sleep. Upon learning of her grandmother’s death, Aubrey had held back a sea of tears, remarking, “Charley kept insisting she didn’t want any one-hundredth birthday fuss. I suppose she got her way.”
She cleared her throat and returned to the paper. “With no one inquiring about the house, it sat for years. Charley could be secretive, and the house doesn’t surprise me all that much. If I remember . . .” Aubrey had to think hard for tidbits about Charley’s surplus of husbands. “Truman’s carnie roots were Midwest. At some point he hooked up with Oscar. Eventually, it became the Heinz-Bodette troupe.”
“When did all this occur?”
“Oh, gosh. Which part? I think the modern-day troupe came into existence around World War II. You know that Charley was married to both men—Oscar, twice.”
He shook his head. “No, I didn’t. How did that happen?”
“If I have the story straight, Charley and Oscar divorced amicably. He was a good bit older than her or Truman, who she married next. When Truman passed unexpectedly, freak Ferris wheel accident,” she said, recalling distant details, “Oscar turned back up, and they rekindled their May-December romance.”
“You’re kidding.” That much got a smile out of him. “Tell me more.”
“Charley always told me she loved both men equally and they drove her equally mad. Anyway . . .” Aubrey picked up another paper, this one bearing a law firm letterhead. “Fast-forward several decades. That’s where the attorney chain letters come in. Seems the property was declared abandoned by Suffolk County and sold at auction. With one last title search, lawyers finally connected the house to Charley and subsequently me.” She squinted at the fuzzy image of a small wooden structure surrounded by woods. “Maybe it’s the era, but the house looks kind of rugged. Not the sort of place Charley would have liked to spend her off months. But the attorney’s point, if I’m understanding all the legal mumbo jumbo . . .” She picked yet another paper brimming with text. “Is that the sale can’t proceed until I sign off—if that’s what I want to do.”
“So just a yes-or-no question?”
“Not quite. The attorneys go on to say the house is jam-packed with memorabilia. Sounds like troupe members used it for storage or a respite in the off season. I do vaguely recall talk of a ‘house back east.’ I remember Charley offering use of a house to Zeke Dublin and his sister now and again.”
Pete stared at the photo. “Bungalow. It looks more like a bungalow.”
She hadn’t thought about it. “Okay, bungalow.” From beneath a stack of legal papers, Aubrey produced a map of Long Island. “Whatever sort of house, it’s located right on the North Fork, a town called East Marion. If I want to sell, I have to arrange to dispose of the contents or come get them, which I don’t have the energy to deal with right now.”
“You could call one of those estate companies, have them toss most of it, sell anything of value.”
“How would I know what’s of value unless somebody sees it? And what kind of value? Monetary or a memory? Could be both.” She stared at the facsimile photo. “Maybe it’s filled with the fame and fortune the Heinz-Bodette troupe never realized.”
“More like mayhem and mysticism.”
“Possibly.” She held a different paper out to Pete. “This is a rough manifest of its contents. The place sounds like a living Heinz-Bodette archive.” She poked at the map. “I googled the directions. If you take the New London ferry, it’s not far.”
“Send Pa.”
“I would, but you know his Ink on Air schedule. He’s busy with the newsmagazine.” Aubrey eased back into the pillow. “Unless maybe you’re intrigued enough to—”
“Love to help, Mom. But as noted, I’m booked on an Icelandair flight.” Pete grinned at his mother, the same rare but genuine expression that belonged to Levi. “We have some time right now. Want to tell me what else you’re working on?”
She poked at the journal. “It does, in part, tie back to the information from the lawyers.” She pointed to the paper still in Pete’s hand. “Your father’s been encouraging me to write another book. But I can’t even settle on fact or fiction. He suggested I be my own ghostwriter, chronicle my early years with the carnival. He thinks it would be cathartic and a page-turner.”
“He’s probably right.”
“Maybe. But can you even answer the question, would it be labeled fact or fiction?”
“So you invent an entirely fresh genre. I’d read it.”
Aubrey nudged at the fabric-covered box. Pete looked between it and the old leather-clad letterbox, which sat on the dresser.
“Is that box like your father’s, full of future predictions?”
“Nothing so fascinating. I only bought the box a few weeks ago at HomeGoods. I thought it was pretty.” She removed the lid. “Inside are small things that belonged to Charley. I wanted them somewhere prettier than a plastic bin.”
They were both quiet. In her younger years, Charley had been the reassuring constant in Aubrey’s life, the person compelling her “dear girl” to make a life for herself regardless of ghosts and unknowns. Aubrey always wondered if she’d done enough to be that person for Pete.
She looked at the bandage around his hand, something like the force field her son kept around his heart. Covered, closed off. Her handsome, troubled, exquisitely gifted son. For better for worse, a complex Ellis–St John combo.
“You were saying, Mom? All this might play into a book idea?”
“It’s barely an idea.” Aubrey closed the lid. “Never mind about it. Maybe we could just have lunch downtown or go for a walk.”
His smile emerged again, so like Levi’s it gave Aubrey hope. Maybe the toughness ingrained in the father had been passed on to his son.
“Are you going to offer to buy me an ice cream cone too?”
She supposed every mother was susceptible—the urge to baby her adult child. “Fine. We’ll look through the box.” She shrugged. “It’s nothing terribly mysterious. Charley kept a few journals throughout her life.” She plucked one from the box, opening it randomly. “Look, she even mentions the Long Island house.” She pointed to the paper Pete still held, which read something like one of Aubrey’s old real estate listing sheets. She grazed her fingers over Charley’s handwriting. “She goes on about her dreams—the living connected to the dead. I suppose writing was an outlet for them. She mentions my father now and again, which is interesting.” Aubrey pursed her lips. “Like all diaries, clearl
y these were never meant to be read.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because in this one”—she held up a different green-leather-covered diary—“she goes into stunning detail about her Niagara Falls honeymoon trip with Truman.”
“Oh, we can so skip that part.”
“That’s what I did, but not before I got to . . .” Aubrey’s face warmed.
Pete changed the subject as his free hand dove past hers and into the box. “Hey, this isn’t Charley’s. It’s yours. It’s a ghost gift.” He sat up taller on the bed, holding a vintage postcard.
Aubrey didn’t do more than glance at a ghost gift that had been part of her larger collection for years. “You know, I had both this box and my ghost gifts out not long ago—just trying to see if anything connected. I must have put it in with Charley’s things accidentally.” She looked Pete’s way as her son’s gaze moved across the old card. “You’ve seen it before, Pete. It’s just a ghost gift I’ve never been able to place.”
Aubrey knew the image like the cover of a treasured book: a watercolor scene that showed off a millpond bay and a long wooden pier, a gazebo poised at its end. A faded postmark noted New York, NY, June 1918. This alone had labeled it a ghost gift in Aubrey’s mind—a postmark, yet no address. No sender, no recipient. No mess—“Wait. How is that . . . ?” She reached for Pete’s arm and drew the card closer. “That is unbelievably weird.”
“Mom, when you say ‘unbelievably weird,’ it freaks me out a little. What?”
“I must be mistaken. I’ve had this card for . . . well, it seems like forever. I don’t even recall when or where it turned up. It always had a postmark.” She turned it over, showing Pete the stamped date. He turned it back. On the front were preprinted words: “Dock, Foot of Gillette Avenue. Bayport, LI.” Aubrey blinked at cursive handwriting that filled the bottom edge. “It’s never had a handwritten message. You don’t remember?”
Pete shook his head. “I know the postcard. I couldn’t have told you what it said.” His gaze shot to his mother’s. “Or didn’t say.” He read from the card, “When I spent two weeks on this beach, I didn’t dream of you then. E.M.”
Aubrey blinked at her altered ghost gift. “I swear. This card has always been blank.” She ran her fingertips over feminine cursive that did not look fresh, but as aged and worn as the postcard.
Pete drew a breath that expanded like a flame drawing air, enough to spark a fire. “Esme.” He didn’t simply speak her name; it was more like a force that welled up from deep within.
“Esme? What about her?”
“The initials. The E.”
Aubrey shook her head at his conclusion. Even she had her limits with ghostly interpretation versus wishful thinking. “Pete, the E could stand for anything . . . Ellen, Elizabeth . . . even a man, Edward, Evan. And as far as I know, you’re unaware of Esme’s last name.” With a paper object now in either hand, Pete jolted up from the bed. Aubrey thought it was the way people moved when they saw a ghost. “Let’s borrow a little Levi logic here. After what you experienced this morning, you don’t think it’s possible that you’re projecting?”
“Possible.” He looked at his mother. “If it weren’t for one thing.”
“What’s that?”
His gaze detached from the card and ticked around the room.
Aubrey knew the look, what her son was experiencing. “What do you hear?”
“Her.” He looked at his mother. “For a third time. Esme. She says, ‘It’s me.’”
CHAPTER
FIVE
Pete validating the postcard, making a connection to Esme, was enough to get Aubrey up off the bed. “Esme. You just heard her again, clear as I’m hearing you? You’re sure?”
“You’re seriously going to ask me that? And according to you, the postcard never bore a message before today.”
“You’ve got me there.” Aubrey glanced down at the card. “But you think the card means what? You believe the girl who’s haunted your visions, your . . .” Levi and Aubrey had been vigilant about not using the word “dream” to describe Pete’s visitant episodes. “You think your other life connects to an old postcard that I’ve been carting around for decades?”
“It’s suddenly not just any postcard, Mom. Not even your everyday ghost gift. You said it yourself, you’ve wondered for years what it meant, why you have it. Maybe Esme’s the reason.”
Aubrey wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to further ideas about Esme. As it was, she’d never told Pete about the blue star, the ghost gift she’d recorded herself. It’d been her own prognostication, taking a message from a girl named Esmerelda. In the back of her mind, Aubrey had always known Esmerelda and Esme were one and the same.
When Aubrey was five, the ghostly girl had told her to draw a house with a red roof bordered by the sea. That she should keep the paper safe until she needed it. Aubrey’s father, Pete’s grandfather, had made certain that happened. Years later, the information on the paper star had saved her son’s life, leading Aubrey, Levi, and the authorities to Pete.
He’d been taken, held hostage in a scheme to cash in on her father’s ghost gifts, his foretellings. To keep Pete quiet, his captors had pumped the drug propofol into him. While her son had recovered from the physical effects of the anesthetic, the drug had also proved to be a mental trigger. It widened Pete’s access to another life, inviting in Esme and the strong emotions of being in love with her, the clear visual of having killed her.
But as years went on, Aubrey had come to question Esmerelda’s motives. Did she want Pete alive so she could spend this life tormenting him? For many reasons, Aubrey was both grateful to and skeptical of the mysterious Esme.
“I’ll go you one better,” Pete said. “There’s something else.” He dropped the vintage postcard and legal papers onto the bed and darted from the bedroom. “Hang on a second.” His feet thundered down the stairs like they hadn’t for years. But the sound stopped halfway. Seconds later, he came back up. In Pete’s hand was a framed collage Aubrey had put together. They were small paintings he’d sent home some time ago. He laid the framed collection on the bed and placed the vintage postcard beside it. “Do you see any similarities between your ghost gift and the pictures I painted?”
The postcard could be described as both a photograph and a watercolor painting—she’d never been able to decide, the skill applied was that unique. It was uncanny, the sameness between the pictures Pete had produced and the postcard that was most certainly a ghost gift.
“Pete, if you touch the postcard, do you feel anything, maybe heat?”
Cautiously, with his gauze-wrapped hand, he picked up the postcard. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “But is it that surprising? Messages from the other side, they’ve always been more . . . in my face.” These were facts Aubrey knew. While her gift had reliable subtleties, Pete’s was wired differently, sometimes producing these telltale signs, more often showing up like a chatty stranger on a street. He dropped the postcard on the bed and picked up the legal correspondence again. “Uh, Mom . . . does it have to be heat?”
“No. Not always. Sometimes it’s a—”
“Vibration,” they said simultaneously.
At present, Aubrey’s bed held an unlikely collection of her life. Things that would not normally intersect. She imagined the cumulative energy it could produce. “Pete . . .” She thought for a second, then dove. “I know you’re totally against any past life regression therapy.” Aubrey held her hand up to his incoming objection. “But there was a time in my life where I had to find a way to take control. Our gifts, they may differ.” She held out her pockmarked arm. “As hard and deliberate as taking charge was, in the end, I was so much happier.”
“But a lot of that took Pa. You’ve said it yourself.”
“That’s not untrue. And I’m also not saying Grace is your Levi. So let’s get that out of the way. But you do trust her. She does seem able to grasp—”
“A phenomenon that most clock
-punching and even think tank minds would label absurd?”
Aubrey went around it. “Grace has a great capacity to think outside the box—at least your box. Give her credit for that.”
“Your point being?”
“Instincts and experience.” She eyeballed her son. “Which I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss. Given the convergence of physical elements”—Aubrey pointed to the bed, the paper he held—“in addition to your sudden presence, it seems to me that it demands a call to action. You’d be foolish to ignore it.”
“And?” He crossed his arms.
“And what?”
“We’ve been doing this awhile. I know there’s more.”
“I believe everything that’s happened since you arrived home, especially hearing Esme’s voice, is a bread crumb trail. I’ve been deciphering ghost gifts most of my life.” She studied the bed harder, folded her arms. “What more do you want in terms of an enticement or temptation? This is as strong a merging of evidence as I’ve ever seen.”
“Okay, but it still doesn’t—”
“Pete. If you’re waiting for them to skywrite it, if you want them to tell you it all turns out just fine . . . we don’t live in that world, do we?”
He didn’t agree verbally but didn’t argue either.
“Take Grace and go to Long Island. See if this bungalow . . .” She squinted at a structure that looked more like a shack. “The objects inside, combined with these, and your admitted ghostly nudge, offer any insight to your life.”
“Past, present, or future? Could you be more specific?”
“I’m afraid my clairvoyant edge won’t help you here. The best I can do is motherly advice.”
Pete scanned the pieces of Ellis family history with a sober stare.
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