Ghosts of the Missing

by Kathleen Donohoe

  Libby asked me if I knew the story of Elspeth and Bevin, and what they reported happened to them in the woods.

  I did, I told her.

  “Everyone thinks it was ghosts of the foundry workers and the maids, going to Mass one morning.”

  “That’s what people have said,” I agreed.

  “They’re wrong.”

  I moved closer to her. It was as if she were the feverish one and I could feel the heat radiating from her.

  “Are they?” I asked.

  Her voice quivered. “Elspeth was my mother’s grandmother. My mom always says she’d never believe anybody else if they told the story Elspeth did. But Elspeth and Bevin got it wrong. They didn’t understand what was really happening.”

  “What was really happening?”

  Libby picked up a red leaf from the ground near her foot and twirled it by the stem.

  “Do you know what a time-slip is?” she asked.

  I shook my head, though I guessed, and dreaded, what she was about to say.

  In a time-slip, she said, the past and the present merge. There were plenty of stories about people it had happened to.

  Two women tourists who were walking in the gardens of the Palace of Versailles in 1901 were suddenly surrounded by men and women in powdered wigs. They saw Marie Antoinette. In the 1970s, two men were driving down a highway when a car from the fifties appeared next to them from out of nowhere. The woman driving was frantic, looking from side to side so dramatically the car was swerving. Her hairdo was the way they wore it back then. The men signaled her to pull over so they could help her. Then the car disappeared.

  Most time-slip accounts were about people falling into the past. But some were glimpses of the future. A pilot was flying over an airport, getting ready to land. This was during World War I, and he looked down and saw that the airport was different. He didn’t recognize the kinds of planes there. He never saw anything like them before, and didn’t again, for another twenty years.

  Elspeth and Bevin had not heard the parish ghosts that night, but the search for Rowan, eighty-four years in the future.

  “Libby,” I said weakly. “No.”

  She lifted her chin, another Rowan gesture. “What do you remember about the weather the day Rowan disappeared?”

  That morning, the weather had been the talk of Moye House. Such a perfect autumn day. But winter arrived with the night.

  Elspeth and Bevin had described an ordinary October night. And then it began to snow.

  If there was something in these woods that allowed that to happen then, a portal of some kind, then maybe something similar had happened to Rowan. Only she had gotten trapped. She couldn’t get back.

  “Libby, I don’t—”

  “Look!”

  Libby reached into the back pocket of her jeans and took out what I could see was a sepia photograph.

  “It’s getting dark,” she said fretfully as she handed it to me. “I should have shown it to you inside.”

  I took it. The photograph was creased, as though it had once been folded and the edges were yellow. Of the five women in the picture, three of them appeared to be in their twenties or early thirties, and the two on either end of the group were younger, girls between sixteen and eighteen, I’d guess.

  “This was taken here,” I said, surprised.

  The women were standing in front of the chapel, the door open behind them.

  I wondered for a moment if it might be a portrait of Moye House’s maids and kitchen girls. The solemn expressions, the way they had their hands folded demurely in front of them, made me consider it. But though they were dressed similarly, tight bodices and full, long skirts, their dresses were different shades of light and dark. Nor were they wearing aprons. Not in uniform, then. Still, it might have been taken on a Sunday, after Mass.

  “Do any of them look familiar?”

  I moved the picture closer to my face. Round faces, thin faces. Homely, average. Only the woman in the center could be called pretty. I studied her, trying to decide if that was objectively true or if I only thought so, because of her position in the photo and because of all of them, she was the only one with even a hint of a smile. Yes, I decided, she was the beauty of the group, but certainly not familiar to me.

  I paused at the girl on the far left, touched her with the tip of my pinkie. She was the only one whose hair was not gathered in a bun. Rather, it was pulled back from her face (tied back with a ribbon? some old-fashioned version of a barrette?). She was slightly in profile, the only one who had not been looking directly at the camera. A small white dog sat at her feet, also gazing off, looking at the same thing the girl had been, I guessed.

  I looked up at Libby, fidgeting beside me.

  “Her,” she said almost gleeful. “Yes, that one.”

  “What about her?”

  “It’s Rowan,” Libby said.

  Although we were outside, I felt suddenly claustrophobic, as if the trees had leaned in to listen, collectively drawing their breath.

  “No, it isn’t,” I said, shaking my head. “Libby, no.”

  “She looks like Rowan’s age progression,” she said.

  I looked again and saw that yes, there was a slight resemblance in the shape of the face, the eyebrows.

  “Helen Dunleavy—” I said, though I had no idea if it was possible there could still be a resemblance, so many generations removed.

  But Libby was shaking her head. “I asked at the historical society if they could tell when it was taken, and the woman said probably around the 1880s, based on the clothes and the type of photo. That’s too late to be Helen. And it’s not either of her daughters. We have their pictures.”

  “People look like other people out of nowhere all the time,” I said. “Total strangers. They just do.”

  But Libby was shaking her head. “Rowan thought it looked like her. That’s why she kept it. I know it.”

  I handed the photo to Libby and she put it back in her jacket pocket.

  “Where did you find it?” I asked.

  “In a book. Mom gave away Rowan’s clothes a long time ago, but she kept things like her hairbrush, her pillow, her books. It’s proof,” she said.

  “Proof of what? Time travel?” I said it gently, afraid she would think I was mocking her.

  “It was in a book about magic. I found the picture in between two pages that have spells on them. I think Rowan found the picture, and no, I don’t know how or where, but she knew it was her and she put it in the book. She knew there was something weird in these woods. And she came out here and—something happened.”

  A book of magic. I closed my eyes briefly, trying to remember. This spell will make you think you’re beautiful. Rowan, laughing.

  “A Charm for Lasting Love,” I said.

  “Yes,” Libby said, surprised. “That’s it.”

  “She took that from Moye House,” I said. “It belonged to our library.”

  “I don’t care. I’m not giving it back.”

  “I’m not asking you to,” I said. “But it’s an old book. Rowan probably found the picture stuck in it.”

  “So? She still could have figured it looked like her.”

  Yet Rowan had never seen the projection of herself as a grown-up.

  “Maybe,” I said, to appease Libby. “But you don’t know that would have meant anything to her.”

  “Fine, think I’m crazy. But where is she, then?”

  “I don’t think you’re crazy. And I don’t know where she is.”

  “The past is the best answer,” Libby said. “What I’ve figured out is better than what the police think. You know what it means, then? If I’m right?”

  “It means that she died a very long time ago,” I said.

  Because a Rowan who had traveled back in time to the nineteenth century was just as out of reach as a Rowan who had been killed in this one.

  “Sure, technically,” Libby said. “But what it really means is that she might come home someday, if sh
e can find her way back.”

  I looked down at the ground, littered with leaves whose edges were beginning to brown and curl. Libby’s theory, I knew, wasn’t entirely about inventing an adventure for Rowan instead of accepting her death. Libby must have wanted the last fifteen years of her own life erased and redrawn. And I could hardly argue.

  I drove Libby to the train station. She had taken the train one stop from Onohedo, where her mother lived, and walked from there to Moye House. I offered to take her all the way home, but she vehemently refused, and I guessed she did not want to risk her mother seeing her get out of my car. Whatever lie she had told about how she was spending her afternoon clearly could not include a ride home.

  By the time I got back to Moye House, it was dark.

  I went in the servants’ door and began climbing the stairs, the pill organizer from Leo in my hand. The stairwell smelled of smoke, and though there was nowhere to go but up, it seemed that I was following the scent. Right before the bend, I stopped. I didn’t move until he called my name.

  Leo was sitting on the step beside the window, hunched over, his clasped hands dangling between his knees. He straightened when he saw me, and I sat beside him so our shoulders touched. His clothes, his skin, smelled of smoke. The crew had been burning leaves, I guessed.

  Leo listened as I told him what Libby believed.

  “Should I call Evelyn and tell her?”

  “Why the hell would you do that?” Leo asked.

  “Because it’s crazy,” I said.

  “If it makes her feel better, let her think it. She’s a kid. She’ll outgrow it.”

  I decided he was right. I was not Libby’s sister. To shred her fantasy was not my responsibility. Better that I leave her be, let her nurture it, trusting that she would set it aside someday when she realized it was time to accept the probable truth.

  I showed him the pill organizer. “Thank you again.”

  He smiled tiredly. “It’s not jewelry.”

  “When do I ever wear jewelry?”

  He shifted so he could see me, as if to check.

  “You cut your hair.”

  “A long time ago,” I said. “It was much shorter, to my chin. It was supposed to be a bob, but it’s so straight it looked stupid. I’m growing it again.”

  He laughed. “I liked how it was.”

  My hair had been very long then, halfway down my back.

  Then. When we were together. As together as we dared to be. Never going out in public in Culleton, not willing to face the heads turning.

  How could she?

  How could he?

  This was what we’d told each other would happen, but I wondered now if it would have been as bad as that.

  “Last time I saw you, you were talking about leaving town,” I said.

  “I was asking you to leave with me,” he said. “You don’t remember?”

  “I was already gone.”

  “To college. I was talking about never coming back. Crazy talk.”

  “Why is it crazy?”

  “Nothing would change,” Leo said. “Walking down the street, nobody would know me. But all somebody’s got to do is Google my name and they find out the rest. Might as well be here, where at least some people don’t believe the worst.”

  I turned and rested my forehead on Leo’s shoulder.

  20

  Adair

  September 1995

  Rose Day was for the members of the board and donors to Moye House, a cocktail party timed for the September bloom of the rose garden.

  My dress was ivory with rosebuds on the sash. It was the prettiest thing I owned. Only the thought of not ever getting a chance to wear it propelled me to put it on and go outside. Michan never insisted I go to these events, but I knew that he liked me to come.

  I’d look forward to the party until I actually took the two stone steps up into the rose garden and walked the gauntlet of appraising eyes. The collective gaze consumed me, kind and curious, and I retreated, afraid of being a disappointment, of failing to inspire.

  I had circulated a few times, answering the dull questions about school put to me because no one knew what else to talk about. Rowan came through the white gate. She was wearing a blue dress with a flouncy skirt that was slightly too big for her. Her hair had been released from its ponytail for the day, and she had her bangs clipped back with two pink barrettes that were so small they might have been Libby’s. She was wearing her glasses, though, and they alone kept her familiar.

  When I joined her, she said, “You should have said you wanted to invite me, so I came anyway.”

  Michan was in the center of a cluster. He spotted Rowan and cocked his head, amused. Party crashing at twelve? But I saw that he was pleased.

  We walked around the garden, me trailing Rowan. Rowan, whose mother had helped plan the event, pointed out the good food and the famous writers.

  When the party had been under way for an hour, thunder rolled across the sky. The sound seemed to come from Degare, as though the mountain had arched its back. The staff, who had been instructed what to do if the forecasted storm came to pass, immediately began the work of moving the party indoors.

  As they gathered bottles of wine, gripping the necks between their fingers and scooping the glasses with their other hands, the rain came in heavy drops, sending up theatrical shrieks from the guests. Some people decided to leave, but most simply followed the caterers and waitstaff into the house, many doing their part by carrying platters of crackers and cheese, glad to be seen as helpful, to continue the festivities with all the comradery of people bonded by adverse weather. Now they could talk and drink on the first floor of Moye House, out of the humidity and away from the bees.

  Rowan and I tagged along, until Rowan tugged my elbow and we diverged from the throng heading up the back terrace. She led me around the side of the house and through the servants’ door.

  We sidestepped the laughing guests clustering in the kitchen. I opened the door that hid the servants’ staircase and we stepped through it, Rowan first and then me. I closed it and we stood in the near dark.

  Rowan started walking up the stairs and I followed without even trying to argue.

  Years ago, on Wednesday afternoons during the school year, students used to come for tours. They’d come in the servants’ door and take these stairs all the way up to the attic, where the servants’ quarters were restored to how they’d looked in the mid-1800s. Four women had slept in the attic room: the parlor maid, the cook’s assistant, the laundress and the maid of all work.

  But the tours were too disruptive, Jorie decided. Moye House could not be both a writers’ colony and a museum. One or the other. Yet the exhibit had never been dismantled.

  After the third floor, the staircase pitched sharply and the light from the window on the second-floor landing disappeared.

  “It’s like being blind,” Rowan said in wonder. “They would have carried lanterns, I guess, or maybe plain candles?”

  “Candles, probably,” I said. Lanterns or lamps seemed too rich for servant girls.

  There was no door at the top of the stairs. We stepped directly into the room. One window faced north, the other south. Two narrow beds were on either side of each window, covered with one thin blanket. There was a small table with a basin and pitcher on it.

  Rowan approached the wardrobe and ran a hand over the door.

  “This looks like the one in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.” She turned the key in the lock and back again.

  Rowan opened the wardrobe and, with a brief exclamation, turned, holding a white apron on a hanger.

  “This isn’t real, is it?” she asked.

  I knew if I laughed, Rowan would be annoyed. “No. It’s from a costume shop. If it were real, it’d be a hundred years old.”

  “So? Clothes can last a hundred years.”

  Rowan put it on and tied it in the back. The hem was at her ankles. She walked around the room while I lay on one of the beds.
>
  Two sets of servants’ bells hung on the wall, near the door. One was attached to a bell pull in the master bedroom and the other ran all the way down to the kitchen. The rain was incessant on the roof.

  “Whoever rang the bell that night of the sleepover wanted us to come up here,” Rowan said matter-of-factly.

  I could have asked who she thought would be calling to us, or why, but I didn’t like to think about that night. With daylight, the fright had been replaced by a sense of foolishness. We had heard some sound and assigned it to the servants’ bells.

  “I bet this was the nicest place they ever lived,” I said, to change the subject.

  My head ached, as it often did. I knew if I closed my eyes, I’d fall directly into a deep sleep.

  “The summers would have sucked, though,” Rowan said. “It doesn’t get hot in Ireland, not like here.”

  I closed my eyes, and Rowan laughed.

  “Are you falling asleep for real?”

  “I’m tired.”

  Rowan lay down on the opposite bed, taking off her glasses.

  “You’ll be at school on Monday?”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “You look fine,” Rowan said.

  She sounded angry and I opened my eyes, with anger of my own rising.

  “They want me to try medication again.”

  It’s time to take steps, the doctor had said somberly at my last appointment.

  I could have supplied Rowan with a T-cell count and explained the difference between good and bad, high and low, falling, falling, falling. But that was too much work, and I thought she wouldn’t even try to understand.

  “Okay. So you’ll take medication,” Rowan said.

  “Maybe,” I said, rolling over on my side.

  “Michan won’t let you not take it,” Rowan said. “No way.”

  I said nothing. He’s a fighter! The McCrohan brothers had heard this their whole lives. Michan told me that my father, especially, had hated how this was said of the sick, as if they’d contracted their disease for the very purpose of proving they could beat it.

  I liked to imagine some Grim Reaper arriving to pick me up with a box of candy in hand, only to find himself jilted because I’d gone ahead alone.