“Spontaneous human combustion, less the fire.”
“Of the most unusual sort. Earlier today, it was a pure shock to the system when my mother finally agreed.” Pete paused. “My father wasn’t exactly on board, but my mother and I concluded that removing myself from their lives is the only realistic solution, unless . . .”
“Unless what?”
“Unless I can fix it—my past. Until now, I’ve managed my past life by running, mostly into present-day war zones. It wasn’t the greatest plan.” A false smile rode his face. “Whatever gets you through the night, right? I never imagined the thing that would push me over the edge, make me seek the whole truth, would be losing my family.” Pete’s voice cracked in a way he hadn’t heard since he was thirteen. “It can’t be the answer. There has to be a greater purpose to everything I’ve endured—if I want my life back. If I want a murder solved,” he said, paraphrasing her uncle’s words.
Apprehension turned to concern. Em shuffled from her end of the mattress to his. Her hand folded over Pete’s, and he felt the connection again, something beyond conventional touch.
“I don’t believe I can alter the past. But if I could find closure, maybe at least the past stops showing up.” He looked at the floor. “I might get my family back. Maybe I figure out how to keep from turning into the man . . . monster who did that.”
Em started and stopped several sentences. “You said you only relive one scene with Esme. What happens there?”
“It, uh . . . it takes place in a single room. It’s both surreal and vivid.” As he spoke, Em’s hand had stayed tight around his. “Objects are a big part of what I see, but my point of view is limited.”
“Okay, so tell me about the things in the room, if that’s an easier place to start.”
He nodded, guessing this was her psych-educated NYU persona talking. “There’s an English painting over the mantel. Then a cat and a clothesline. The clothesline goes from the window to the bedpost.” He pointed to the one Em had fashioned. “There’s a mirror—I see my own eyes, look right into them after I . . .” He couldn’t say it, taking a cowardly detour. “The doll. Of course. I almost forgot to tell you about the doll.”
On the benign mention of a doll, Em let go of his hand. Anxiety shifted from him to her. She spoke slowly, a question she didn’t want to ask. “What, um . . . what doll?”
Pete shrugged at the memory he considered least offensive. “In the room, there’s a china doll on a chair. Another reminder of who Esme was, or just a thing she loved. I say that because I don’t have the same feeling of attachment about the cat. But the doll.” He sighed. “I know how much the doll meant to Esme.”
Em catapulted from the bed, abrupt enough to make Pete stand too. In one step, she was at the closet. She opened the door to a narrow hole, as jam-packed as the room—clothes, a pile of shoes at the bottom. But it was an upper shelf she reached for. Turning, she held a china-faced doll that he recognized. His mouth gaped, though air stopped moving in or out of him.
“The doll doesn’t belong to Esme, Pete. She belongs to me.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
Pete had seen the doll hundreds of times, maybe a thousand. He’d know the doll anywhere. But Pete had never touched the china-faced doll, and he was cautious. He wasn’t sure if it was a ghost gift that had fallen into the wrong hands, or even more unlikely, if it rested in the hands of the rightful owner. Em cradled the doll; it wore the layered gown, though admittedly it was yellowed. Its pleated bonnet was as he’d seen it, bowed under the doll’s chin. The lashes looked real, and the glass of her aqua eyes was like a crystal ball, so telling.
He imagined the sight couldn’t resonate more if Em held a real infant that belonged to him. Pointing a shaking finger at it, Pete quickly retracted his hand. His throat went dry and his mind dizzied. “Where . . . where did you get that?”
“My uncle. Zeke gave her to me when I was five or six. Being she was an antique, he impressed upon me how valuable she was. Every time I saw him, he’d ask if I was taking care of her. Kind of an unusual thing for a grifter uncle to say, don’t you think?”
“Yeah. Kind of. Where . . . do you know where he got it? Was it here, New York?”
“My mother always insisted he bought her in an antique store in Boston.”
“Unusual place for a grifter uncle to shop.”
“Yeah. Kind of.”
“And you kept the doll all these years?”
“Amazing how the value of something increases when the giver is dead. For more than a few reasons, I’ve always felt attached to the doll. Mary—that’s what I call her—we go way back. But . . . maybe not as far as the two of you. Could you tell me, Pete?” Her voice strained. “Is this the doll in Esme’s world?”
“I . . . yes.” He gulped. “It’s the doll in the room.”
“Great. One small mystery solved.”
“Or we just made a huge one even larger.”
“You have a point. Would you like to hold her? Mary?” She held out the doll.
“You mean touch her.” Pete stared at Esme’s doll. He viewed her as greater proof of his other life, even more so than the influenza antibodies found in his blood. The cloth-covered keepsake in front of him resonated differently compared to the blood in his veins or the war medal that bore his initials. Em had pulled the doll close again, crooked in her freckled arm.
Tentatively, he reached. The raw mark of his blistered fingertips stopped him. He balled his hand into a fist. “No. I don’t think so. I don’t want to touch her.” He retreated to the bed and started to tuck the photos of Esme back into the camera bag. Em stood there, stiff as the damn doll. “I can’t do this.”
“Like hell. You’re going to do this.” Her abruptness was unnerving, like this was somehow her problem. “I haven’t even gotten to the best part, Pete St John, and I’ve been waiting a while now. A good long while.”
“Listen, I’m usually the one who does the creeping out, so—”
“So welcome to a turn from the other end.” Em came closer, and the doll remained like a fragile infant in her arms, her protectiveness obvious.
Maybe this was why he gasped out loud when she pushed up its dress and snapped the doll’s leg from its body.
“Don’t worry. It goes right back on.” Its insides were connected by cording, keeping the leg attached like a lifeline.
He half expected the doll to cry out, but it stayed like the physical dead, still and wide-eyed.
“I’ve taken her leg off many times,” Em said. “The first time, though, that’s the one I remember most clearly. It’s the one I want to tell you about.
“I was seven. My mother and father, my brother, Kieran, we flew from Las Vegas to Boston. I got bored on the plane, started fiddling with the doll. You know, the way a little girl might. My mother was asleep next to me. I imagined I was in a good bit of trouble. At first I thought I’d broken Mary. Sitting there like that, I held Mary straight up over me, her leg dangling. When I did, this fell out.” With two fingers, Em reached inside the small, hollow body. Retracting her hand, pinched between her index and middle fingers was a folded piece of paper. It was as yellowed as the doll’s dress. “I can open it and read it, or I can just tell you what it says.”
Hot. When did the room get so fucking hot? Sweat prickled on Pete’s back and dripped from his brow. The bedroom flipped from eclectic to suffocating.
“I’ve read it so many times. Of course, it only took once to memorize it.” She opened the note anyway, and he could make out words, printed in pencil. “‘Emerald, today you meet Phin. Solve his troubles. Where Esme failed, you must succeed. Don’t let his past prevent your future.’ An attention getter, don’t you think? Even at seven.”
She followed the creases on the paper and refolded the note, tucking it back inside the doll, adjusting the leg. Her whole face had gone solemn; even the freckles seemed to pale. “I’ve never told anyone about the note. Not until this moment. I’m n
ot sure why—maybe it felt like a secret I was supposed to keep. Until now.”
Pete’s stomach took a hard roil.
She continued on, like she’d been rehearsing the scene for some time. “To be clear, I don’t speak to the dead, and I can’t tell the future. But I have been hauling this doll—and a few other things—around most of my life. I couldn’t leave her behind when I came to New York. In fact, I’d go as far as to say she’s the reason I was so adamant about coming here. God knows Vegas has its share of onstage opportunities. LA is a hell of a lot closer to home. You don’t have to come to New York to get a degree in psychology. Yet here is where I ended up.” He started to speak; she cut him off. “And I’ll tell you one more thing. I’ve always strongly suspected that the doll connects to you.”
“Phin. You’ve said that name to me before.” He widened his eyes, a small memory pushing back into his brain. Something his own mother had recently recalled. “When you flew to Boston, you came to my house. I remember. It was right after Zeke died. You were out on the porch. You had the doll with you then. There was so much going on, so much in my head. But I remember that you freaked me out. You called me—”
“Phin,” she said matter-of-factly. “And you might explain it as a slip of the tongue by a little girl who’d read that name a few hours earlier.” She held the doll up as if in evidence. “It’d be the rational explanation, if it wasn’t for—”
“Your name. It’s written on that piece of paper.”
“Exceeds a little weird,” she said, the relief of her long-awaited announcement evident.
“You knew all this back at the bungalow, in the diner.”
“News flash, Pete. You don’t make a great first impression. And since I’ve been in possession of a note claiming that my future hinges to your past, or Phin’s . . . well, you can see my—”
“Disbelief?”
“I was going to say ‘hesitation,’ but okay. While you’ve offered me a lot of information, apparently I’ve brought my own to the table.”
“Which seems to keep turning.” He paused. “All this time, while I sat here and told you this story, you knew about Esme.”
“Apparently before you ever did. Phin too. Care to enlighten me? Because I’ve been really curious about him.”
“Phin. I’ve never heard the name before. Esme, she doesn’t speak when I’m . . . there. I mean, you said the name to me years ago, but it didn’t mean anything then.”
“Does it now? Now that you’ve had . . . what? Sixteen years or so to process your past? Because I’ve had plenty of time. Added to everything you’ve told me and the things I didn’t know, it seems like Phin can only be one person.”
“Me,” he said softly. “Who I was. The name I went by. The same first initial on the war medal, a P.”
“Well, doesn’t this give new meaning to putting a face to a name? As for what I knew . . . yes. I wanted to hear your side before I shared mine.”
“Feels good, doesn’t it?”
“What’s that?”
“To have crazy validated.”
“I can’t disagree. But I want to know something else. I want you to confirm bits and pieces of stories I’ve heard. It has to do with my cryptic note, how or why it might exist.” She hugged the doll and its insider secrets. “The one that appears to be—”
“A foretelling.”
“Interesting word choice. Any idea how something like that might work? How a seven-year-old girl ends up with a note hidden in a doll that would rival any message in a bottle.”
“Yes.”
“Yes?” She looked unprepared for the confirmation.
“My grandfather. The note does seem like something he would have recorded. It’s, um . . . messages that predicted future events, provided by specters. He kept them all in a leather-bound letter box that . . .” He stopped; it was too cumbersome. “Prognostications. That’s basically how Peter Ellis’s gift worked. He recorded messages from the dead.”
“You’re named after him. Charming footnote.”
Pete made a face. When his hand wasn’t touching hers, or Em’s touching his, “simpatico” definitely wasn’t the go-to word between them. “But even if my grandfather did write the note, which does seem addressed to you . . .”
“Seem? Let me know when you meet your next Emerald.”
“Okay, it is written to you. But how does a note end up inside a doll that in all likelihood Peter Ellis never came in contact with?”
“The doll did exist during his lifetime.”
Pete shook his head. “No. He didn’t put it there. All his ghost gifts, they live in the letter box. My grandfather, he was . . . well, society labeled him as disturbed. I can’t imagine he had the forethought to put one of his messages inside a doll. One that ultimately ended up in your possession.”
“This letter box. Is it still around?”
“Yes. My mother has it. Before that, her grandmother, Charley, was the box’s caretaker. I don’t know its origin. As for any message . . .” Pete paused, the ethereal world smacking him upside the head. “Your uncle.”
“Zeke?”
“Yes. He stole ghost gifts from the letter box.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s true. Stole . . . borrowed with intent, however you want to put it. It all ties to what got him killed. Zeke made a career out of taking and benefiting from my grandfather’s predictions. It’s not such a leap. What if he came across that note, with your name on it? Like you said, Emerald isn’t so common. But it is your name.”
“It would have caught his eye, been a red flag.”
“And with his grifter life, he may have put a note—that he couldn’t make sense of—in what he deemed a safe place.”
“I see your point. It’s not like the note says I should avoid deep-sea diving or taking a trip to Europe.”
“But Zeke knew enough to realize the note meant something. Is there a reason he wouldn’t have given it to your mother?”
“Uh, more than I care to count.” She arched her fair eyebrows. “Take your pick: lifelong anxiety issues, depression, to wildly scattered on a good day.”
“I see. So the doll, at the very least, is a gift that was also a hiding place. But then, when you end up a murder victim . . .”
“The best-laid plans . . .”
“Can go awry.”
Em squeezed the doll tighter and looked at Pete. “Okay, so if we put it all together . . .”
And this time, Pete felt something in her gaze that was as profound as her touch. “Wait. You don’t have all the pieces. You don’t know what I did to Esme.”
“It’s not . . .” Em glanced at the strip of photos, Esme’s battered face. “That?”
He shook his head in the smallest stroke. “There’s a reason I recorded the date of her death, Em, took those pictures. They’re mementos. The things a depraved mind will turn into keepsakes. Esmerelda Moon died young, so tragically . . .” The tight room seemed to be out of breathable air. “Because I killed her. That’s what I relive over and over.”
Her gasp was small, but she couldn’t hide white-knuckled fingers in a death grip around the doll. “You killed her?”
“I shot her. I relive that scene clearly as I’m living this present-day moment with you.” Pete went on, filling in the rest, how Esme would fall to the floor, the way he’d scoop up her bloodied body and carry her to the door. “Right there, every time, it all slips the other way, and my equally violent reentry to this life begins.”
“I, um . . . I’m not sure what to say.”
“The smart thing to say is that you want to think this through. Put all your pieces together. I’ve deciphered my share of messages from the dead, Em. I know their validity. I’m well aware what I’m capable of. Your note, that prognostication, what if it refers to a future I might steal, the same way I stole Esmerelda Moon’s?”
She looked between Pete and her own exit. “What was your grandfather’s track record with prognostications? Did
many come to pass?”
“Accurate. They were pretty damn accurate.”
Em considered the doll and the paper prognostication that bound the two of them. Then she looked at Pete. “I don’t need to think about it. I’ve had plenty of time to live with that note, what it implies. ‘Don’t let his past prevent your future.’ You’ve presented some unexpected possibilities, Pete. But if my future is at stake, the last thing I’m going to do is nothing.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE
It didn’t take long for Pete and Em to formulate a plan, which centered on locating death records from January 1919. For such a large place, New York was fairly organized, and the quest landed the two at New York City’s municipal archives. But hours later, a microfilm search had yielded little more than sore necks and tired eyes. Pete leaned back, having scoured records from Brooklyn and Queens while Em fished through Manhattan, Staten Island, and the Bronx. “I thought for sure we’d find something. Not a name, nothing.” He shoved closed the drawer of reels that exceeded their target year. “Not one moon among a million stars.”
Em rested back in her chair and rubbed her hand around her shoulder. She smiled at him.
“What?”
“That was kind of poetic. Not one moon . . .” She cleared her throat. “Sorry. Off track.”
“No. Maybe we are—way off track. Think about it. If I’m reading my past life actions accurately . . .” Pete struggled for the steps that might have followed murder. “It could be there’s no record of Esme’s death because . . . well, maybe I dumped her body in the East River, buried her in some patch of field just past Brooklyn.”
“Transporting her how? It might have been 1919. It may even have been nighttime. But to carry a bleeding body through city streets unnoticed?” She shook her head at him. “Unless you had an accomplice.”
Her words prompted an image in Pete’s head: Oscar Bodette wearing his raccoon coat. He shook it off, the photos he found obviously creating a moment of déjà vu. “As far as I know, I acted alone.” Then he said in a flip tone, “Wouldn’t that be the MO for any good sociopath?”
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