Revealing the Dead Read online

  Abby made another pot of coffee and started cleaning. Amazing how far plaster dust can spread, she thought as she dusted and vacuumed. Should she bring down some of the games that Ellie kept in her “official” guest room upstairs for Danny to play with? Not that there were many. Or should she let Danny choose his own? Would he be bored, listening the to grown-ups talk? Or she could park him in front of the television or with a video, if Samantha approved.

  When everything was more or less polished, she went to the kitchen to put together an apple cake, and to make a beef stew, which could simmer for hours on low. She was going to assume that both Samantha and Jack ate meat; if they didn’t, they could pick out the potatoes and carrots. She couldn’t second-guess everything.

  Abigail, why are you so fidgety? She wasn’t really sure, but she knew she was nervous about trying to explain this whole psychic thing, when she didn’t fully understand it herself. She’d seen enough people draw away when she’d even hinted at something unseen, and she hated to lose friends, even those she barely knew. But she was the one who’d asked for this get-together!

  Finally she showered and went back to her computer. Should she print out a family tree, as she imagined it? Or would that be too technical for her audience? No, she decided—she should save that to give them if they didn’t walk out on her, that crazy lady who sees ghosts.

  She was still at the dining room table, with lovely smells of apple and cooking beef drifting into the dining room, when the front doorbell rang. She got up quickly to answer it, and as she expected, it was Samantha and Danny. Abby took a step back to let them into the hall. “Come on in! I’m glad you could make it on such short notice.”

  Samantha smiled wryly. “We don’t get a lot of invitations, so we’re both glad to come.”

  “That’s right, you haven’t lived here long. It must be hard to meet people when you’re working full-time,” Abby said.

  “It is, but that’s nobody’s fault. Have you lived here long?”

  “I moved to Massachusetts from Pennsylvania almost two years ago now, following a guy, but that relationship didn’t work out. I met Ned at about the same time, and he helped me find a job with Leslie Walker, who was his fiancée a few years ago, and that’s how I know Ellie.”

  Ned chose that moment to appear. “And this is Ned,” Abby said. “You haven’t met before.”

  Ned gave Samantha a warm smile. “It’s great to meet you, Samantha. Ellie enjoys getting together with Danny, it seems. I hope you got the plaster off of his clothes yesterday.”

  Samantha smiled back. “It took some scrubbing, but it’s all good. Danny really loved watching the plumbers working. He hasn’t stopped talking about it.”

  “Ned, could you check on dinner, please?” Abby asked. She had to admit she was nervous about what might happen when Jack arrived. “Anyway, Samantha, Leslie and I had some issues, and I ended up losing the job and moving in with Ned, in this house. That’s the very short version! But I do have a lot of New England ancestors, going back a ways. In fact, Ned and I found that we were related, a long way back. It’s a small world.” There, she’d planted the seed. The full explanation was going to be more complicated. “What about you?”

  “Born and raised in the Boston area. Married my high school sweetheart and we had Danny. Then my husband died in an auto accident about five years ago, and the two of us have been on our own ever since. Isn’t that right, Danny?”

  Danny had been looking at nothing in particular, but at the sound of his name he looked up at his mother. “Yes, just you and me,” he said obediently.

  “Goodness,” Abby said, “where are my manners? First of all, is Danny okay hanging out with us? Because that’s fine with Ned and me, and he knows me and the house. Or he can watch a movie or play with the games he saw the other day.”

  “If you’ve got a video for his age group, that’s fine.”

  “All right—we can look in a minute. Second, would you like something to drink? Alcoholic or something soft? Juice?”

  “Juice would be good,” Samantha said, then added softly, “I stopped drinking when my husband died—the driver of the other car was drunk.”

  “I’m sorry.” Abby glanced briefly at Danny, who didn’t seem to be paying attention to them. “Danny said the other day that he didn’t remember his father.”

  “That’s right. Although sometimes I think I hear him talking to Andrew, when he doesn’t know I’m listening. He has an active imagination, but he doesn’t always share what he’s thinking.”

  “Walk with me to the kitchen,” Abby said, and led the way. “When was Danny diagnosed?”

  “When he was two, which I gather is pretty typical. But we lost Andrew not long after that, and I didn’t handle the whole mess well. Maybe I could have done more to help Danny, but Andrew didn’t leave much money and I had to work.”

  “That can’t have been easy for you. But Danny seems to be coping well. Except for those mean girls at school.”

  “Ellie’s been a big help there—she won’t take any guff from anyone.”

  “Is cranberry juice okay?” Abby asked, peering into the refrigerator.

  “Sure. This is such a great house! So much room, and nobody’s messed around with it. I hate it when people modernize a place without thinking about its history.”

  “So do I! It’s just wrong. What would Danny like?”

  “Juice is fine for him. And I can pick a movie for him, if you’re busy with dinner.”

  “Most of the cooking is done. That’s the nice thing about stew—once it’s cooked, you can just let it sit, and it usually tastes better that way. So, where do you work?” Abby asked as she filled a glass for Danny and handed it to him.

  “I took the first thing I could find when we got here—school was about to start and I needed to settle somewhere. I’m a bookkeeper for a small company in Concord. Or maybe I should say I’m the bookkeeper for the company. There’s more work than one person can handle, a lot of the time, and that’s why I need to find people to look after Danny without bleeding me dry.”

  “It must be hard, for both of you.”

  Samantha shrugged. “It is what it is.”

  “Why don’t you go look at our selection of DVDs, unless you’d rather try Netflix. They’re all in the back parlor. We actually have two parlors, but we rarely use the fancy front one.”

  “Okay, I’ll take a look.” Samantha and Danny headed out to the hallway. Abby heard them talking, and then Ned joined them in the parlor to show them where the DVDs were. She busied herself with cleaning up the last few dishes, then retrieved the china from the glass-fronted cabinet in the dining room and distributed it around the table, after removing her computer and notes.

  She was finishing up when the doorbell rang again: Jack. When she opened the door to him she found he had come alone. “Bill couldn’t make it,” he said apologetically, “and my wife had a church meeting this evening. Hope you don’t mind that it’s just me.”

  “Of course I don’t—I’m happy you could come. Actually I had an ulterior motive for inviting you, and it works better if it’s just you. You remember Danny, from the other day? I asked him and his mother to join us tonight. She’s new to town and doesn’t have a lot of friends here yet. I’ve seen her now and then because Danny and Ellie go to the same school, and she dropped Danny off here on Friday, but I can’t say I really know her. And there’s something else, but I don’t want to get into that until we’re settled. Can I get you something to drink?”

  Jack look uncomfortable, but he tried to rally. “Would you have any beer?”

  “Sure, a couple of kinds. Ned likes to experiment with new ones. Take a look in the fridge and see if there’s anything you like.”

  Jack headed in that direction but stopped to look at the laundry room. “You did a nice job in here.”

  “Thank you. I’m glad it’s all come together so fast.”

  Samantha returned to the kitchen, minus Danny, with Ned trai
ling behind her. She stopped at the sight of Jack standing by the refrigerator. “Oh, hello. Have we met?”

  “I’m Jack Maguire, the plumber who just put in Abby’s new powder room.”

  “Ah! You’re one of the plumbers that Danny met on Friday, and he hasn’t stopped talking about you since. He loves anything mechanical. I hope he didn’t get in your way.”

  “Not at all. Speaking of that young man, I mentioned to Abby here that he was the spitting image of some members of my family, back when they were his age. I brought some of the family pictures along.” Jack fished into his shirt pocket and pulled out a small stack of old photographs. “There aren’t many—my grandfather came over to Boston in 1905 and learned a trade, but he never had much time or money for pictures. When he did have any taken, he fitted in as many relatives as he could—he was still sending copies back to the family in Ireland. Not that anyone thought to label the people in the pictures, but you’ve only to look at them to know they’re part of the family. Let me show you.”

  Jack spread out the pictures on the kitchen table, which Abby had just wiped clean. Abby and Ned exchanged a glance over the table, then came closer to look at the pictures. The resemblance to Danny was in fact startling—the same chunky build, the same dark hair with light eyes, although the heights differed a bit.

  Samantha leaned over to look. “You’re right—Danny would fit right in that group.”

  Danny wandered back from the parlor. Had he gotten lonely? Abby wondered. Then the boy came over and leaned closer to see the pictures. “Is that me?” he asked.

  “No, sweetie,” his mother told him. “Those are part of Jack’s family.”

  That was a cue if I’ve ever heard one, Abby thought. She cleared her throat. “Actually, I think there’s a good chance you might be from the same family, back a couple of generations.”

  “Why do you say that? Not just because Danny happens to look like some of Jack’s Irish relatives?” Samantha said.

  “Nothing as simple as that. Can we sit down? This may take some explaining. I know tomorrow is a workday, and I don’t want to take up too much of your time, but let me lay out what I think and you can go home and think about it yourselves. Is that okay?”

  “Does this have to do with the wrench and the putty knife?” Jack asked. Samantha looked confused.

  “I think it does. Can I explain? Then you can ask anything you like. Samantha, before I jump in, do you know who your parents are? Your grandparents? And what about your husband’s?”

  Samantha looked bewildered but game. “My parents and grandparents are all still living. They’ve been in New England for a long time, but they live in New Hampshire. My husband was adopted, and he never knew anything about his background. He never got interested in all that DNA testing stuff—he said it didn’t matter.”

  So far, so good, Abby thought. She decided she should focus on Danny’s father for now, but first she had questions for Jack.

  “Jack, you said your aunt—your father’s sister Mary—worked in this house, right?”

  Samantha turned to look at him. “That’s quite a coincidence,” she said.

  “She did work here, back in the 1930s or so,” Jack replied. “You saw her in the census, Abby, didn’t you?”

  “I did,” Abby said. “And you told me there was a sad story connected with that, which we don’t need to talk about right now. The kind of story that families didn’t like to talk about. And then she disappeared.”

  “That’s right. Why’re you poking around with this?” Jack asked.

  “Because of how you reacted when you saw her room, the first time you were here.”

  “I just had a funny spell, that’s all,” Jack said. “Not the first time it’s happened.”

  “I think there may be more to it, Jack. And Samantha? I think this involves you too. Look, what I’m going to say sounds kind of crazy, I’ll admit, and you don’t have to believe me. Just think about it.” Abby took a deep breath. “I think your aunt Mary had a baby, after what happened to her. Probably at someone’s home, because she wasn’t married. She was pretty young at the time, and she may not have survived. In any case, she never contacted your family, right?”

  Jack nodded. “No one of us ever heard from her again. And the baby?”

  “I think the baby was adopted, maybe not officially. But he was taken in and raised by a family. I found a census record for a child of the right age, in the right place. I know, it’s a long shot, and Boston was a big place, but it seems to fit. The family’s surname was Allen, and they called the baby Andrew. He grew up and married and had a child named Thomas, and Thomas had a child named Andrew.”

  Samantha was staring at Abby. “And now you’re thinking that my Danny was descended from Jack’s Aunt Mary?”

  “I know it sounds unlikely,” Abby said, “but I think I do.”

  Chapter 30

  Sunday

  Abby watched her guests’ faces and let them digest what she had said. Danny leaned against his mother and she wrapped her arm around him protectively.

  Finally Samantha spoke. “My husband’s name was Andy—Andrew. But that doesn’t mean he’s that one. Danny thinks anyone with that name could be his father.”

  “Andrew was my daddy,” Danny said solemnly, and fell silent again.

  “There’s more to the story, Samantha,” Abby said.

  Samantha stood up and paced around the room. “Is this some sort of scam? A trick? Or are you just trying to annoy me? I thought you wanted to be a friend.”

  “I do. And I’m not asking for anything. I just wanted you all to know what was going on. If you never want to see me again—if it’s too much to handle—I’ll understand. But hear me out first. Please?”

  Samantha sat down again, looking wary. Danny looked unperturbed. Jack kept staring at the boy but didn’t say anything.

  “Thank you,” Abby said. “Let me start by saying that I have some psychic abilities.”

  Samantha jumped out of her chair again. “Oh, for heaven’s sake! This is ridiculous. You may not be out to trick anybody, but you’re definitely a flake.”

  “Please, Samantha! Just listen. And let me go backward. Jack was here earlier last week, so we could talk about various projects around the house. We had decided to start with moving the powder room on this floor, and we were tearing out some of the old stuff in there and he found an old wrench. When he picked it up, he dropped it like a hot potato.”

  “Felt like I’d stuck my finger in an electric plug,” Jack said. “Thing of it is, I recognized it—it belonged to my grandfather, who was a plumber like me. He always marked his tools so they wouldn’t get mixed up with other people’s. I’ve still got a lot of ’em at home. But he’d never done any work in this house, as far as I know. Then Abby got onto the computer and looked up a census, and she found that Mary Maguire was listed as a servant here in 1930. I had an aunt Mary, but I never met her, and nobody in the family talked about her, except when they thought the kids weren’t listening. They said she’d had some trouble with the son of the owners, and Grampa went after him with a wrench. But nobody was ever charged with anything. Do you see where I’m going with this?”

  Samantha had been leaning against the wall, but she grudgingly came back to the table and sat down again. “I can see how you’d string a bunch of ‘maybes’ together and make a story out of it.”

  “Look,” Abby said, “I know we don’t have a lot of facts, and I’m making a lot of guesses. We know Mary left home not long after that and nobody in the family ever heard from her again. Maybe when the baby was born she gave a fake name, so there was no official record of the birth. But there was a child who was adopted by an Allen family in a Boston suburb—that’s on record, and the date for the child fits. They gave the baby the name of Andrew.”

  “And you’re saying that my Andrew—Danny’s father—was this baby’s, what, son? Grandson?”

  “It would have been his grandson, given the dates,” Abby sai
d.

  “Okay, so you’ve strung together a few facts. Why should it be true? Why should I believe you?”

  “Because of what happened when Danny met Jack here. You want to tell that part, Jack?”

  “All right. I told you about the shock I got when I took hold of Grampa’s wrench, right? So Friday I was working on the plumbing back there and I dropped a putty knife, and your Danny picked it up and handed it to me. And when I took hold of it, I got the same shock, between him and me. And you felt it too, didn’t you, Danny?”

  “Jack, he’s a kid!” Samantha protested. “With an active imagination! You’re trying to ask him if he made some psychic connection with you through a putty knife?”

  “Yes, I am,” Jack said calmly. “Listen, Samantha. I’m an ordinary guy. I’ve worked with my hands all my life, and I’ve never felt anything like that before. Not with my own kids, not with a stranger. If it had happened only the once, I could have written it off as an odd event and forgotten about it. But then it happened with the boy, right in front of me.”

  “So shake his hand and tell me if it happens again. He’s right there,” Samantha said angrily.

  Jack got up and moved to the chair next to Danny’s. “Do you mind if I shake you hand, Mr. Allen?”

  “That’s silly—Mr. Allen was my dad. I’m just Danny.” He thrust his hand out, and Jack took it. Samantha stared at the pair of them like a hawk.

  After a few seconds, Jack smiled at the boy—a smile that was sweet and sad at the same time. “Thank you.” He let go of Danny’s hand and looked at his mother. “I’m pretty hardheaded, but say what you will—there’s something between us. I feel it, and it’s not just in my head.”

  “And I felt it too,” Abby said softly, “the first time I met him, at the school. And so did Ellie.”

  “Is she . . . ?”

  “Yes, she is. If she and Danny spend any time together when you’re around—and I hope you’ll let them—you’ll see how they communicate, and it’s not always with words.”

  “Ellie’s my friend, Mom,” Danny chimed in. Clearly he’d been paying attention. How often did he “hear” things that weren’t said out loud?