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  There was a moment of silence. While she waited for his reply she had time to wonder: had she never contradicted him before? Questioned his authority? Suggested, even hinted, that he might be wrong? She honestly couldn’t recall.

  His response was not unexpected, but it wasn’t pleasant. “Like hell I didn’t. You’ve just been too busy thinking about this little job of yours to take care of the basic things around here.”

  Abby stared at him, wondering which part of that attack to deal with first. To her surprise, she found she was angry. Interesting—she wasn’t used to being angry with Brad. She mustered her wits. “Little job? I don’t think that’s fair, Brad. Maybe I won’t make as much money as you do, but the job matters to me. I enjoy it.” She paused to see what effect her words were having. Brad looked mildly stunned, as though a fluffy kitten had bitten him. “And as for taking care of basics around here, I think I’ve done more than my share. Maybe you could pick up some of the slack, you know. I don’t even drink beer. Why don’t you buy it once in a while?”

  Now he was staring openly. Then he stood up abruptly and threw his napkin onto his place. “I don’t need this kind of shit.” He stormed out of the room, and two minutes later she heard the front door slam. Abby hadn’t moved. She wondered idly where he was going. Back to Boston, to play with Bill and Nancy? To a local bar, to get that beer he so desperately wanted, and to nurse his grievances against her? She sighed. Maybe he’d had a bad day and needed to take it out on someone. But she was getting a little tired of being the target for his venting. She had a life too. Had she been unreasonable? She didn’t think so. Had she really never questioned anything he’d said? Abby reflected on that, and then smiled. Maybe she hadn’t, but maybe it was time she started.

  She stood up and carried their plates out to the kitchen. Funny—she was doing all the cooking and all the cleaning up. Brad’s contribution was to call for pizza now and then. Not exactly an equitable distribution of responsibilities, was it? Then she wavered. She’d held her ground at dinner, and Brad had stormed out. If he came back later and found the kitchen in a mess, it would probably just add fuel to the fire. Abby picked up a sponge and started washing.

  And when she was done, she went to the phone and called Ned. There was no answer at his place—of course, it was Saturday night, and he probably had a life. But she left a message.

  “Ned? It’s Abby. Listen, I’ve found out some fascinating stuff about my family, and I’d like to run it by you. Do you have time tomorrow afternoon? Give me a call.”

  She hung up, pleased with herself. She surveyed the kitchen one last time, then went back to the desk in the living room, pulled out her notes, and began writing.

  Ned called shortly after ten. Abby grabbed the phone quickly, thinking that it might be Brad, and was surprised to hear Ned’s voice. And then pleased.

  “Hi, Abby—sorry I missed your call. What’s up?”

  “I went through my mother’s papers today, and you know what? It looks like Olivia Flagg was my great-great-grandmother!”

  “Wow, that’s fantastic! And you had no idea?”

  The sincere enthusiasm of his response was unmistakable, and it warmed Abby. “No. She was married to a man named Samuel Pendleton, and they had a daughter, Ruth. She’s my great-grandmother. Ruth married Samuel Ellinwood, and he’s the great-grandfather who disappeared. Apparently he went out West and died there. My great-grandmother kept his death certificate, and a newspaper clipping.”

  “That’s just great.” He was quiet for a moment, and Abby felt a flurry of panic. She really wanted to talk about how this new information fit in with what she had been seeing, but she was afraid that Brad would walk in in the middle of the conversation and ask who she was talking to so late. Luckily Ned went on, “So—you want to get together, go over this?”

  Abby heaved an inward sigh of relief. “Yes, I’d really like that. I want to see what that means about . . . you know, the other stuff.”

  “Sure. How about after lunch tomorrow? I’ll give you a call and we can pick a place to meet.”

  “Great. See you then.” Abby hung up with a feeling that combined relief and elation. She found she was too keyed up to go back to her research, so she threw herself into a chair and scrolled through the cable channels, finally settling on an old movie she’d seen before. She fell asleep partway through, then got up and went to bed. Brad had still not come home when she fell asleep.

  16

  But Brad was there in bed the next morning when Abby woke up, sleeping soundly, snoring lightly, smelling of stale beer and tobacco smoke. She slid out and went to make the coffee. He appeared a few minutes later, looking rumpled and apologetic.

  “Hey, babe, I’m sorry I snapped at you last night. I was in a lousy mood.”

  Abby smiled at him. “That’s what I figured. But it did hurt that you didn’t take my job seriously.”

  He looked at her, and she could almost see the wheels turning in his head: I apologized and she’s still on my case? Then apparently he decided it wasn’t worth fighting about. “Okay, I get it. I’m sorry. What’s for breakfast?”

  Abby sighed inwardly. One step forward, two steps back, apparently. “How about pancakes?” She began rummaging in the cupboards for ingredients. Without turning, she asked, “You still going to watch football with the guys?”

  Brad was leafing through the Sunday paper, tossing aside the sections that didn’t interest him. “Yeah, sure. Why not? You want to come?”

  “No, you go ahead. I’ve got to get ready for tomorrow.” Abby concentrated on making batter. One problem solved: she was free to meet Ned.

  Brad was long gone by the time Ned called. “Are we still on?”

  “Sure. Where?”

  “I’ll come by in about half an hour and we can decide.”

  When Ned pulled into the parking lot Abby was waiting downstairs, holding her growing stack of research notes against her chest. She climbed quickly into his car.

  Ned glanced at her before putting the car in gear. “You must really be excited about the Flagg connection.”

  “Oh, I am. I was just amazed when I saw that. Uh . . .” She hesitated.

  “What?”

  “I went to the library . . . and then I went back to the cemetery.”

  “And?” he prompted.

  “They were there,” she said, in a small voice, not looking at him. “At least, Elizabeth and Isabel were. I could see them standing by the tombstone, but only when I put my hand on the stone. And then I had to go, because the custodian wanted to shut the gates.” She fell silent, feeling somehow deflated. It sounded so silly when she said it out loud.

  “Interesting.” Ned concentrated on driving for a couple of miles. Abby was beginning to wonder if she’d made a big mistake by calling him, when he went on. “So, do you think the fact that they’re your relatives has anything to do with your seeing them?”

  Abby shook her head. “I don’t know. It makes a weird kind of sense, but I can’t explain it. So what am I supposed to do now? And that might explain the Flaggs, but not the Reeds.” Abby looked out the window. It seemed that they were retracing their path from the prior week. “Are we headed for the coffee shop?”

  “Yes, if that’s okay. It’s quiet, and there’s room to spread out, if you want me to look at your notes.”

  They had left Route 128 and were passing through Newton Lower Falls, when Abby reached out suddenly and grabbed Ned’s arm. “Turn right, here,” she said urgently.

  “What? Why?”

  “I don’t know—just turn.”

  He complied, and they followed a winding residential street lined with expensive-looking houses for a couple of minutes.

  “What now?” he asked.

  “Wait . . . there. Pull over, on the right there.”

  There was a short line of cars parked along the verge, and Ned pulled in at the end of the line. He turned off the engine and turned to face Abby. He didn’t say anything, but waited, his ey
es on her face. Abby didn’t notice. She was staring at a white colonial house ahead of them. She could see a realtor’s sign in the front yard, advertising an open house that afternoon.

  “Can we go in?” she asked, her voice tense.

  “I don’t see why not.” Ned got out of the car and helped her out on her side. He led the way along the side of the road until they came to the front door of the house, which was protected by a small, Early Victorian porch, later than the original house. The main door was open, and he pulled open the storm door to let Abby walk into the small stair hall in the center of the house. Abby walked blindly in and laid her hand on the wooden newel post at the bottom of the stairs. She froze.

  There were people. She could tell that some were real, like the realtor who sized them up as a nice, upscale young couple in the market for a Weston colonial and made a beeline for them. Abby could vaguely hear Ned brushing her off politely. There were other “real people” in the house, Abby knew—she could hear them moving around.

  But then there were the others. Abby rubbed her hand over the worn wood of the newel post, shaped by centuries of hands to an odd irregular form. She saw two people, mainly, a man and an older woman. They appeared to be arguing, although she couldn’t hear them. Damn—if she was going to keep seeing people, couldn’t they come with a soundtrack? The man was the angrier of the two; the woman appeared cold and her attitude didn’t waver. Abby pulled her hand away from the post and they faded. Without saying anything, Abby turned and walked into the room to the left of the hall. A dining room, with wide plain boards forming the wainscoting, clearly old. Abby gave the room a passing glance but kept going, through a door toward the back, into a long, narrow room that was now a kitchen. She stopped in the middle of the room. “Here,” she said, in a near whisper, to no one in particular.

  Behind her she could hear the persistent realtor talking to Ned. “And this is actually the oldest part of the house, built before 1800. It used to be across the street, on the other corner, and if you can imagine, the owner just picked it up, moved it here, and built the rest of the house around it, about 1810. There’s a lot of stuff in the town records, if you’re interested . . .” Her voice faded as Abby moved around the kitchen, looking at the woodwork, and then toward the back corner of the room, where there was a narrow, clumsy stair along the wall. The boards that made up the wall looked like they had come from some ancient barn, and they bore traces of red paint. Abby tentatively reached out her hand and laid it flat against the wall.

  The images welled around her. Many people, again layered, as in the cemeteries. One man seemed more in focus than the other people. She turned partway to look into the kitchen, without taking her hand from the wall. There, halfway across the room. Short—maybe her height. Ordinary-looking, brown hair, brown eyes. And his clothes . . . she’d seen clothes like that recently. In the Concord Museum. In the Colonial Life display. He shifted and dissolved, but there were others . . .

  And then Ned—real, solid Ned—stepped in front of her. “Darling, this lady wants to know if we’d be interested in making an offer. There’s been a lot of interest.” With his back to the realtor, his expression belied his cheery tone—he looked concerned. Abby realized that she was panting, taking short, sharp breaths. Reluctantly she pulled her hand away from the wall, and the real world came back in focus. She straightened her shoulders and took a deep breath.

  “I don’t think so, dear—there’s not enough room for a nursery.” She was pleased to see one corner of Ned’s mouth twitch with suppressed amusement. “But it is lovely. What period did you say it was?” She smiled brightly at the realtor.

  “Between 1790—this part here—and 1812, when it was finished. A lot of the original woodwork survives, which is a big plus. And the renovations have been carefully done . . .”

  Still smiling mindlessly, Abby and Ned drifted away from the realtor, who shrugged and turned to the next likely prospects. Ned guided Abby toward the front door, and then outside. At the corner the property was bounded by an old dry-stone wall, and he steered her toward that. She sat gratefully, and he sat beside her without speaking.

  After a long time, Abby said thoughtfully, “You know, you really are a very peaceful person. Most people would have been bombarding me with questions if I pulled a stunt like that.” She turned to look at him.

  “I figured you’d tell me when you were ready. What happened in there?”

  Abby turned over several answers in her mind before settling on one. “I don’t know. I just knew we had to come this direction, and I knew we had to stop, and go in . . . I saw someone. Well, there were lots of people—a man and woman in the hallway, arguing, but then in the kitchen, one man in particular. I know he wasn’t real, but he was there, and I could see him. And his clothes were . . . old. I’d say colonial.”

  “Ah.”

  “You’re going to tell me I have more homework to do, aren’t you?” Abby demanded.

  Ned smiled. “Well, it would be easy enough to find out who owned the property in 1800. This is Weston—they take their history very seriously, and their records are in good shape.”

  “Shoot—now I have a job and have to work. Cuts into my research time.” Abby realized that this most recent encounter hadn’t shaken her. Maybe she was getting used to whatever this was. She returned Ned’s smile. “And thank you for the job, too—I’m having a great time at the museum, and I really like Leslie.” She shivered—she had almost forgotten that it was fall, at least in this century.

  Ned was quick to notice. “You’re getting cold. Why don’t we go hunt up that coffee and you can tell me what else you’ve got, and maybe we can figure out what to do about this.” He gestured vaguely toward the house.

  “Yes, let’s.” She stood up and took one last look at the house before leading the way back to the car.

  She was silent for most of the short ride to Wellesley. Inside the coffee shop, she let Ned get the coffee and sat back in her chair, after nodding a greeting toward the cemetery across the street. “Hi, guys,” she said—to them or to herself, she wasn’t sure. Ned came back with the coffee and sat down.

  “Now what?” he asked.

  Abby smiled. “I was going to say the same thing. All right, let’s take this one thing at a time. I’ve got William Flagg’s obituary here, and the announcement of Olivia’s marriage—actually, that took place in Boston. And the obituary says that Olivia was living in Connecticut when her father died, so I guess that’s one more piece. I can look at Connecticut censuses, see what that tells me. I’ve got her daughter’s—my great-grandmother’s—birth certification, but I still need to look for my grandmother’s birth record.”

  Ned appeared to be thinking out loud. “Parts of this are pretty straightforward—if something’s not online, you can go to a library in the town you’re looking at and see what kind of local information they have. Or you can write or email the town clerk, or the county, or the state, for vital records. That’s a good start, and you need to do it. But there’s another piece to this, and I’m not sure how you get at it . . .”

  “What?”

  “Well, there are two basic questions here. One: why are you seeing these people? And two: why are you seeing them when and where you are?”

  Abby chewed that over for a moment. “You mean, are they trying to tell me something? Communicate somehow?”

  Ned shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know. I’m trying to keep an open mind. But it’s interesting. And if you assume that there’s a logic to it, don’t you wonder just what that is?”

  “Of course I do, but I’m just beginning to get a handle on it. I have no idea why this started, and I don’t know if this is going to just disappear as quickly as it started. I’m pretty sure it’s not harmful or dangerous—it’s not like I’m going to get sucked into their time or something. I don’t think they see me.” She fell silent. She could feel Ned’s eyes on her face, but she couldn’t bring herself to look at him.

  “Abby, hav
e you told Brad about any of this?” His voice was kind.

  She shook her head. “Brad, uh . . . doesn’t have a lot of imagination. Or a lot of patience. He’s a pragmatist: if he doesn’t understand something, he just brushes it off and moves on. I think he’d just tell me I was broken and I’d better see about getting me fixed.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Why?” Abby looked at him with curiosity.

  He met her look. “Because this can’t be easy for you. And I can see how you might doubt your own sanity, and you need someone around to keep you grounded.”

  “Oh.” She was absurdly touched. He hardly knew her, but he was worried about how she felt. Which Brad wasn’t. “I figured you’d just see me as an interesting scientific experiment—you know, strange woman starts hearing voices, channeling the dead.” She stopped, unsure how to go on.

  “I know it’s not that simple. I don’t know you very well, and I’m not sure how well you can handle it. And you shouldn’t have to do it alone.”

  His kindness brought her near tears, and she didn’t trust herself to speak. She stared at the swirling patterns of the oil on her coffee. In fact, she wasn’t sure what she would have done if Ned hadn’t been there to reassure her. Probably checked in to the nearest mental hospital, or tried to pretend that it hadn’t happened—until it happened again. But she did know that she was glad he was there to listen. Finally she managed a watery smile. “Thank you. For believing. For trying to help. I’m glad you’re here.”

  Ned’s expression was serious, and for a moment Abby thought he was going to say something more. Then apparently he thought better of it and sat back in his chair. “I’m glad I could help. Listen, I think we’ve covered enough for today, and you’ve got to go to work tomorrow. Why don’t you put this on the shelf for the week, let it jell? If you’ve got the time, you can identify the sources for the records you need, maybe write for the ones you can’t get to, but don’t push it. There seems to be a lot happening and pretty fast, and you need time to get used to it.”