by Wendy Webb
Survival on those unforgiving, desolate plains was a constant struggle, no matter the season. The intense heat of summer punished farmers in the fields who had not so much as a tree for relief. The harsh winds of winter stirred up blinding blizzards that confused and consumed men who knew the land as well as they knew their own souls. By the time Claus was thirty years old, he looked decades older, hardened by the effort of exerting his will against the land, day after backbreaking day.
Harrison, so elegantly named for his English maternal grandfather, knew he wouldn’t be on the farm for long. When he was through cleaning the horses’ stalls and feeding them for the night, he would sink into the fresh straw in the barn’s loft and open his schoolbooks. Education was the only way to escape a life as brutal as the one his father had endured, and so he plunged into his schoolwork with a fever. Shakespeare tonight, then.
Inside the house, his mother, Gloria, was where she always was at that time of day, standing in front of pots simmering on the stove. She and her son talked about his schoolwork, books, literature, and history—things they both loved.
Gloria was determined that her son get a good education, and because of that, she had struck a bargain with her husband years earlier, a bargain she knew was destined to crumble like the lie that it was. The boy would do his chores and help out as much as possible during his school years, she told her husband. After that, he would join his father on the farm full time. She told her husband this although she knew it to be untrue, putting off the inevitable explosion when Harrison’s real intentions, and Gloria’s dreams for him, were finally revealed.
Claus had come in from the fields one evening not long after his son had graduated from high school to find the boy standing in the kitchen with a suitcase. Off to college, just as his mother had planned.
The enormous Claus leaped on his son then, inflicting blow after blow. He was awakened from this all-consuming violence by his wife, who stopped the beating by grabbing her husband’s rifle that hung above the fireplace and firing two shots into the air. Gloria was fully prepared to shoot to kill if necessary. Luckily for Claus, it was not. Harrison left the farm that evening and never returned.
He attended the university in the large city that was a few hundred miles, yet an entire world, away from his home. He earned a business degree and, immediately after graduation, got a job with a large, locally owned shipping company, Canby Lines, hauling grain (some of which his own father had farmed, coincidentally) across the Great Lakes.
In very short order, Harrison’s charm, good looks, business savvy, and, some would say, carefully honed skills of manipulation and deception catapulted him to the position of company president, reporting only to James Canby, a widower who had founded the company and had recently taken young Harrison under his wing. It didn’t hurt that Harrison was romancing Canby’s daughter, Celeste, a plain, shy young thing who had never had much attention from the opposite sex. With Canby’s blessing, Harrison asked Celeste to marry him, thus cementing his position as heir to the company throne.
The union was carefully calculated, but Harrison looked upon it as simple survival. He would do anything to avoid going back to the farm—not that it was ever really a consideration, what with his education and business experience. Even if he had, say, lost this particular job, he could’ve simply walked into another, without going to the extreme of marrying the boss’s daughter. But Harrison’s early life had left him with certain scars that reason and clear thinking couldn’t erase. Thus, when he saw that the road to his own ultimate security began with ingratiating himself with Canby and ended with marriage to Celeste, he simply took the opportunity that was so obviously in front of him.
Not long after the young couple returned from their European honeymoon, Canby suffered a massive stroke at the office. Harrison and Celeste were at his side at the end. His last words were to his young protégé:
“Take care of her,” Canby whispered.
“I will, sir,” Harrison promised. And then the old man was dead.
Harrison meant what he had said. That he did not love Celeste was of no consequence to him. He was indebted to her. Because of their marriage, her father’s company now belonged to him. Not only was he safe from his irrational fear of sinking back into farm life—he had a recurring nightmare that he had turned into his father, German accent and all—Harrison had become the first millionaire on either side of his family tree. He began sending money to his mother every month and continued to do so until she passed away, fifteen years after her husband died of a heart attack in the fields. Those last years were nearly the happiest of her life—rivaling only her first few years of marriage to a carefree, determined young immigrant who had not yet been turned so bitter, so vengeful, so angry by the land he had chosen to farm.
Harrison always smiled when he thought of the fact that Gloria died kicking up her heels at a town dance. She sold the farm immediately after Claus’s death and moved into a small apartment in town, which she decorated in the sort of lively floral prints and gaily striped patterns that her husband would never allow in their home. She did not remarry—why should she listen to someone else complain that she hadn’t washed his stockings correctly?—and instead played the organ at the white wooden church each Sunday morning, volunteered to help with bake sales, fundraisers, and other church events, and organized town dances, held in the high school gymnasium every Saturday night. It was at one of these events, while dancing with a man young enough to be her son, that she slipped away.
She died with a smile on her face, right there in the middle of the dance floor. People thought she was smiling because she was having such a wonderful time dancing, and that was true. But it was also true that Gloria Connor was smiling because, at the moment of her passing, she was greeted on the other side by Claus, young and vibrant again, who took her by the hand, twirled her across the dance floor, and said to her, “I’ve had such a good time watching you these past fifteen years, Gloria. You really knew how to live. Pity that I didn’t. Shall we live it up now?”
Meanwhile, Harrison was busy using the same kind of determination that had gotten him to his lofty position to create a happy life for Celeste. She deserved as much. When he was still a young man, Harrison Connor built his enormous, Victorian-style home high on a hill overlooking the harbor in Wharton. Its most distinguishing feature was its expansive porch that wrapped around three sides of the house, offering a view of the harbor from every direction. Harrison was often seen pacing from one end of the porch to the other, spyglass in hand, watching his fleet of ships steaming toward their destinations.
Harrison might have built a house for Celeste in a larger city, but he built this home in Wharton for the same reason many other people were drawn there—the unusually warm winds. Celeste had never fully recovered from a bout of influenza that had overtaken her shortly after her father’s funeral, and he thought that Wharton’s warm climate would be just the thing to buoy her health. He was wrong about this.
Celeste remained in frail health throughout much of her life, especially after the birth of their only surviving daughter, Hadley. Before the girl was born, Harrison and Celeste kept company with many young couples in Wharton, entertaining, throwing dinner parties, and generally keeping up their social obligations as befitting Harrison’s standing as the town’s largest employer. But after the child came into their lives, all of that ceased. The pregnancy had been difficult and draining for Celeste, and she no longer had the vibrancy and energy necessary to entertain. There were mental issues as well, known only to Harrison. A kind of madness had overtaken her after the birth of their first child. She never came out of it, was never quite right again. It was as though fiction and fact comingled in her mind, and she seemed not to be able to differentiate one from the other.
But Harrison had made a promise to her father years before and would keep that promise. In public, Harrison was fiercely devoted to his wife, despite her delicate condition. Neighbors would often notice him w
alking the length of his front porch, pushing Celeste in a wheelchair, pointing out this ship or that one on the horizon. It was not unusual to find the two of them sitting together on a porch swing wrapped in a quilt, him reading to her, she with her head upon his shoulder. Although plenty of tongues wagged in town about other rich men and their mistresses, there was no hint of impropriety with any of the half dozen maids that kept the Connor household running, the brass polished, the woodwork gleaming, and the child dressed, fed, and escorted to and from school. What Harrison truly felt in his heart was known only to him.
Celeste died when Hadley was just a small child. Despite the doctor’s report that Celeste’s heart had simply given out, whispers of addiction and an overdose of medication spread through the town like wildfire. With Celeste gone, Harrison began to pursue what was really in his heart for the first time in his life. Instead of marrying any of the legion of single women in town who would’ve sold their souls to become his wife, he lavished all his attention on the one person he loved above anyone else: Hadley.
Picnics, boating parties, snowshoeing in winter, horseback riding, hiking along the shore, canoeing—townspeople would regularly see Harrison and Hadley trekking out of doors together and wonder why they, too, couldn’t seem to derive such pleasure from the company of their families as Harry Connor seemed to.
If a child’s success in life is an indication of how well a parent did his job, then Harrison Connor earned top honors. Hadley grew into a fine young woman. She finished school, went on to college (it wasn’t often the case for a girl to receive such an education in those days) and created a happy life of her own. The brown-eyed beauty married a handsome man by the name of Malcolm Granger. They had two children, Fred and Harry. Fred, in turn, had a daughter, Kate, who was now pulling into the driveway of the former home of her great-grandfather.
These days, Harrison’s House functioned as an upscale bed-and-breakfast with a fine restaurant and a comfortable wine bar tucked into what had once been the home’s library. The room’s dark-wood paneling, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, leather chairs, and marble-topped tables made it a favorite with tourists and locals alike. Kate especially loved coming here because of the family history it contained. Pictures of Harrison, Celeste, and Hadley still hung on the walls, and most of the volumes of books in the library had belonged to them. Indeed, much of the home was as it had been in Harrison’s day, having been painstakingly restored.
The house had always been in the Connor family. Hadley and her husband, Malcolm, moved back to Wharton to care for Harrison during his declining years. Hadley doted on her father until the end, repaying him for the love and affection he had lavished on her when she was a child with the kind of reverent caretaking that only such an adored daughter could give. She took ownership of the house and the family fortune after he died. Hadley herself lived well into her nineties, taken care of in her later years by her grandson, Kate’s first cousin, Simon, the son of Hadley’s son Harry. When Hadley finally died, in her sleep in the house that she loved, the house went to Simon, for his loving caretaking of his grandmother.
Simon and his partner, Jonathan, were in the process of restoring every inch of the enormous structure. Every fixture, doorknob, and plank of wood flooring was original, or, as Simon liked to say, a damn good fake. Much of the furniture and accent pieces were original as well (refurbished, of course) and what wasn’t antique blended old and new seamlessly. The only part of the house that hadn’t been restored was the third floor—a ballroom. Simon planned to get to that project in the coming winter when the tourist season wound down.
The grandeur of the place, in addition to its standout restaurant, made it the hottest ticket in town, commanding top dollar for the privilege of spending a night under its perfectly restored roof, though it was Simon’s unwritten policy that close family stayed for free.
“It was our great-grandparents’ home,” he’d say to Kate. “You’ve got as much right to be here as I do. You’re going to pay to stay in this house? Please. I don’t think so.”
But Kate didn’t take him up on this generous offer too often. She and Kevin had spent their honeymoon there, and, a few times each year, they’d come and stay in one of the Jacuzzi suites for a night or two during the off-season, just for the romance of it all.
Walking through the enormous wooden front door of this house always gave Kate a shiver. It was something about the history hanging in the air, the immediate and unbroken ties to her family’s past. The photos on the walls always haunted her—young, vibrant, happy people, smiling in blissful ignorance of the fact that, one day, their great-granddaughter would be looking at those photos, while they themselves lay in their graves.
When she was in this house, Kate could clearly see Harrison and Celeste as a young married couple, their daughter being born, growing up, and eventually dying there. Kate loved walking the same hallways, sleeping in the same rooms, eating meals around the same table as her ancestors had long ago. It gave Kate the feeling that life was so fleeting, over in an instant. A moment ago, Celeste sat here, shepherding her daughter through polite dinnertime conversation as she enjoyed the expansive view of the harbor. A century passed in the blink of an eye, and now it was Kate’s turn to enjoy the view. When she was here, she felt very close to those ancestors of long ago, as if they were still here, living their lives in their own time, just beyond an invisible barrier that Kate could almost, but not quite, penetrate. It seemed like, if she held her breath and became very still, she could feel them, just there. She did not know that, indeed, their spirits and others roamed these halls, sat at these tables, and floated among the guests in the dining room, unable or perhaps unwilling to leave this magnificent house for the hereafter.
That day, Simon was standing in the doorway waiting for her.
“Well, it’s about time.” He enveloped Kate in a bear hug as Alaska bounded inside. They stood, holding each other for a long moment before he whispered, “How are you?”
“I’m good,” Kate said, but knew he wouldn’t buy it.
“Yeah, I’ll bet you’re good.” He pulled back and squinted at her. “Everyone’s good after their world falls apart. Now come over to the bar and sit down and tell me everything. I’ve got a bottle of wine with your name on it. I’m pouring, you’re talking.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
After dissecting Kate’s situation with her husband, Simon crinkled his nose at her.
“There’s something else that you’re not saying. I could tell the moment you got here. Out with it.”
Somehow, he always knew. There was no use trying to keep anything from him.
“I’ll tell you,” Kate said. “But you’re going to think what I’m about to say is really strange.”
“Strange in what way?”
Kate shifted in her chair. “Strange in a ‘Kate needs a straitjacket’ sort of way.”
“Well, this sounds good.” Simon raised his eyebrows and leaned forward. “What is it?”
Kate took a deep breath, wondering if she could actually utter the words. “It’s about something that’s been happening to me.”
“Will you just spill it?” Simon said, refilling Kate’s glass. “You know you want to talk about this, so just say it, already. How bad can it be?”
“The thing is, I’ve been having these dreams.” Kate exhaled, and then the whole story came out in one long, continuous stream. How she had been dreaming of a woman for the past three weeks, how she had found that same woman’s body washed up on the beach in front of her parents’ house, how she knew there was a baby in the folds of the woman’s dress.
She had said it all out loud, told someone else. The strange events of the past few weeks had been given voice. Her experience was a tangible thing now, the words forming substance and becoming something greater than simply a notion in Kate’s head.
“Well?” Kate asked. “What do you think?”
“Why doesn’t this kind of thing ever happen to me?” Simon wailed.
“The dead simply don’t want to communicate with me, and I find it highly offensive.”
Kate laughed out loud. “Either that, or I’m just crazy. There’s that possibility, too.”
“It’s certainly bizarre, I’ll give you that,” Simon said. “You’ve had recurring dreams about a woman’s life. Looking in the mirror in the dreams, you see her face reflected back as your own. You’re her, in a way, in the dream. So it’s very personal, right?”
“Right,” Kate said. “It feels absolutely personal. Intimate. You’re right, it’s like I am her. Or she’s me. In the dreams, we’re the same person.”
“Are you absolutely sure it’s the same woman? The one dead on the beach and the one in your dreams?”
Kate nodded. “Completely sure. It’s her. There’s no doubt.”
“Do we know when, and how, she died?” Simon wondered. “She was in the lake, so, obviously she drowned, right?”
“I don’t know.” Kate winced as the words left her lips and a twinge of heat radiated in the small of her back. “Johnny Stratton is investigating.”
Kate gazed out of the window, looking down the street toward the water. The face of the beautiful, serene woman in her dream, superimposed over the harsh sight of that same face, dead, lifeless, on her beach, screamed inside of her head.
“Johnny’s already questioned me, sort of, in connection with all of this,” Kate went on.
Simon grimaced. “Why would he do that?”
“I reacted rather badly when I saw the body,” Kate admitted. “It seemed to him that I knew more than I was saying.”
Simon reached across the table and took her hand. “You didn’t tell him about the dreams, did you?”
Kate shook her head. “I haven’t told anyone but you. I’m sure he thinks I’m involved in this somehow, but I have no idea what I’m going to tell him when he starts asking more questions.”