Sheila Connolly - Relatively Dead 02 - Seeing the Dead Page 3

  “At the bridge itself, three British, two minutemen. It was worse at Lexington, before—lost eight minutemen there. The Brits didn’t expect to find any opposition, so when the guns came out, they kind of hightailed it back to Boston, which is about twenty miles from here. They were seriously outnumbered. For the overall battle there were 273 British dead or wounded, and only 95 on the patriot side. We counted that as a victory. Our little band of farmers routed the famous British army!”

  The more Abby heard, the more questions popped up. She was ashamed at how much she hadn’t learned in school, or had never given any thought to. Here she was supposed to be making history come alive to local schoolchildren, and all she had was a dry list of facts to give them. Well, she was going to do something about that! “Do your, uh, minutemen have to do their own research on their families?”

  “It’s not a requirement, although some of the guys like to do that kind of thing.”

  “Who makes the clothing?” Abby asked.

  Jack grinned. “You want me to say the wives do it? Well, that’s true some of the time, but these guys do know how to sew. Listen, I’d love to talk some more, but a lot of us have a whole list of things to do today, and this is our only practice time. If you want to talk more, give me a call—Ned knows where to find me.”

  “Thanks. I’ll do that.”

  Jack turned back to Ned. “Good to see you again, man. One of these days I’ll talk you into joining us.”

  Ned shook his head. “I’m not good with muskets. I’d rather stay behind the scenes and work on supplying ordnance to the troops, and hiding the rest of it from the Redcoats.”

  “Yeah, right—and miss all the fun?”

  Ned just smiled. Jack walked away, shaking his head. He gave a backward wave, and then he was swallowed up by the minutemen.

  “Now what?” he asked Abby.

  “I guess I get a picture of all the names on that stone—and then we get out of the way and let the men with their big guns do whatever they do.” Abby hesitated a moment. “Do you have a problem with firearms?”

  Ned shrugged. “Only in principle. The war that started here in Massachusetts—I’d have to say it was a just war, although it’s not clear that anybody wanted it to be a shooting war. At Lexington and Concord, people are still arguing about who fired the first shot. And in schools, on television, in movies—we’ve romanticized the whole thing. The evil British military machine in their pretty red coats, rolling roughshod over the poorly armed, untrained but scrappy colonists? And the colonists won? It makes a great story, but the reality is not as tidy.” His gaze was still fixed on the men on the green, who had achieved some semblance of order.

  Abby had to admit that she’d bought into the popular mythology—but was it really wrong? Practically speaking, the patriots should not have won. But as she remembered it, the English were far away and it became too difficult and expensive for them to manage a war on a distant continent, so they just kind of folded. Or maybe that was oversimplified too. She clearly had some reading to do; maybe Ned could recommend some good sources.

  “You hungry?” Ned asked.

  “Not really—we had a big breakfast.”

  “How about we drive around a bit, starting with the route these minutemen followed to get to the bridge at Concord? Or anywhere else that strikes your fancy?”

  “I’d like that.” She linked her arm through his and they strolled back to his car.

  Ned started driving, and after a couple of minutes Abby realized he was headed back toward Concord. “Is this the road the Littleton men would have followed?” she asked.

  “More or less, allowing for modern improvements. I thought you’d like to see how far it is.”

  “I still have trouble imagining doing it on foot, but I guess people were used to that. And I can’t picture fighting a battle when you couldn’t communicate with your soldiers. Whoever was running it all couldn’t even be sure who would show up!”

  “All true. The British were better armed and better organized, no question. Have you seen the bridge site?”

  “Well, I do drive by it every day on my way to and from work, but I haven’t actually stopped. What’s to see?”

  “A bridge,” Ned said, smiling. “No, not the original one, but a pretty close copy. You’d better see it now, because as we get closer to Patriots’ Day, more and more people want to stop. And school groups.”

  “Then let’s stop and enjoy the solitude,” Abby said.

  Ned pulled into a parking lot near the street and stopped. They both climbed out of the car and began walking toward the bridge and its statue of a patriot standing guard.

  “Daniel—” Ned began.

  “—Chester French,” Abby completed his sentence. “That much I do know—he had a studio in Concord for a while. Besides, it’s kind of famous. So the British approached from this side, and the minutemen gathered on the other side?”

  “That’s about it, in simple terms.”

  “I guess we could go over to the other side, then.” Abby started walking across the bridge—but when she arrived, she stopped suddenly. Damn, she should have thought about this. This was the battle site, and her ancestors, however many there were, had gathered here and watched their enemy approach. She could feel them around her—plural. So not just the guy from Littleton, but others as well. She felt their fear, their uncertainty. The men were so not ready for what Abby knew was to come, yet here they’d made their stand.

  She shut her eyes, concentrating on sounds. On one level, modern cars whizzed by on the modern paved road only a couple of hundred feet away. On another level, she could hear the clink of metal on metal, the whinny of a horse some distance away, the low rumble of male voices. Was she experiencing what her forbears had seen and heard? How else could she explain it? An overactive imagination? Any time in the past century, if she’d told what she was seeing and hearing, well-meaning doctors would have dosed her with something to shut off the voices in her head. Now she knew better than to tell anyone—well, except Ned.

  She opened her eyes again, and he was standing in front of her, looking worried. “Abby? What’s going on?”

  “You don’t see them? Hear them? Feel them?” she whispered.

  “You do?” he countered. She could only nod.

  “Let’s sit down. Unless you’d rather get away from here?”

  “Let’s sit, please. I’ve told you, they don’t frighten me—they don’t even know I exist, which I guess in their world I don’t. Didn’t. You know what I mean. I feel some of what they feel, but it doesn’t work the other way. What’s scary is that it’s happening at all. I should have guessed that somebody up my line, or lines, would have showed up here, but I wasn’t ready for it.”

  They’d reached a sturdy bench and sat down, facing the bridge. A few people came and went, strolling around, admiring the view, snapping pictures, and ignoring Abby and Ned, except to smile politely if they passed too near.

  “You don’t have anyone here?”

  Ned shook his head. “You know our family house—it’s on the other side of Concord. I’d have better luck picking up some memories over there, I think—my ancestors were probably harassing the retreating troops.”

  “But when you were growing up, you never sensed anyone there?”

  “Not that I recall. But I didn’t want to acknowledge that anything weird was going on. I wanted to be an ordinary kid. Well, as ordinary as a brainiac can be in school.”

  “You’re saying it’s a good thing I didn’t find out about this, uh, ability until I was an adult?”

  “In a way. And then you found me to walk you through it.”

  “What am I supposed to do with this?” Abby said softly, almost to herself.

  But Ned heard her. “That’s up to you. You can choose to ignore it. You can move to Arizona, or some state where you’re sure you’ve never had a family member, so it won’t happen again. You can drink too much or take drugs and hope that makes it go away.�
� He stopped.

  Abby turned to face him. “Is that what you want me to do? Make it go away?”

  Ned shrugged. “Up to you.”

  “No!” Abby snapped. “Maybe that’s what you chose to do, but you didn’t know what was happening, and didn’t want to know. I can’t just ignore this. Maybe it’s a brain tumor and it’s going to get worse. Maybe I’m going to open a psychic shop in Concord and spout mumbo jumbo to tourists. But I can’t pretend it’s not happening.” She studied him for a moment. “Why have you been so afraid of it?”

  He thought for a moment before answering, although Abby had to believe he’d considered this all before. “Because I don’t understand it? Or I can’t control it? I’m a scientist, after all.”

  “And scientists explore these things, they don’t shut their eyes to them. Don’t you want to know why this is happening, to us, to you?” Abby was working up a good head of steam. No way was she going to let him sit on the sidelines when he knew better than anyone what she was going through.

  He looked down at his feet. “Abby, until now I thought I was the only one. I thought I was crazy.”

  “What about your mother?” Abby shot back. “She’s got some of it too. I felt that when I met her at Thanksgiving.”

  “Our culture is more accepting of women who profess this kind of ability. Maybe that’s a put-down—oh, she’s just being a silly woman—or maybe it’s an acknowledgment that women are more sensitive to this kind of thing. But I’ve never met another man who would admit to anything like this.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  He looked at her then. “Abby, I don’t know.”

  4

  “I’m sorry. I know that doesn’t help you much,” Ned said. “Maybe we should go get something to eat? Maybe food will help.”

  “Someplace where we know none of our ancestors might have stopped in? I’ve already got my suspicions about the Concord Inn.”

  “How about McDonald’s? Unless your great-grandfather was Roy Kroc.”

  Abby summoned up a weak smile. “I think that would be safe enough.”

  They walked back to the car in silence. They got in and drove in silence, away from Concord, away from history. They found an anonymous fast-food place in a strip mall and parked in front of it, went in and ordered, then sought out a quiet table in a corner. On a beautiful early spring Saturday, most people apparently didn’t want to be cooped up inside, so the place was half empty.

  After a few minutes, Abby broke the silence, surprising herself. “Ned, do we have a problem?”

  “You mean, us? Between us?”

  “Yes, that’s what I mean. Do you want to take a break? Stop seeing me?”

  Ned looked up from his pile of french fries, startled. “Why would I want that? You’re the closest thing to a soul mate I’ve ever found. Maybe that’s not the right term, but you know what I mean. I want to spend more time with you, not less.”

  Abby nodded. After all, he had invited her to move in with him, sort of, but she still had questions. “But for the right reasons?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I walked into your life and the first thing I did was spark all your romantic, chivalrous instincts. I made you want to help me.”

  “But that’s not all it was,” he protested.

  “Maybe not, but that’s what happened first. And then I told you this ridiculous story about seeing dead people, and you told me to go do my homework. Did you ever consider teaching?”

  “What?” Ned said, confused by Abby’s abrupt change of subject.

  “You’re good at telling me what to look for and how to interpret it when I find it. You know your local history. You’re smart. You could have taught. Maybe high school or college age?”

  Ned looked uncomfortable. “I thought about it briefly, but to me it was too much work handling people. You know—all the stuff not related to the teaching. Maintaining control in a classroom, grading papers, dealing with the administration. You must know that. How the heck did you manage to control a classroom full of kids, particularly in a city?”

  “To tell the truth, sometimes I don’t know. But I did it. And I enjoyed it. It was really satisfying when I finally captured their attention and they learned something, even if it didn’t last. I was sorry to leave.”

  “Brad didn’t like it, right?”

  “Yes, but for the wrong reasons. He thought my job wasn’t important enough, and it didn’t pay enough. He maneuvered me into something that met his standards, but I didn’t like it nearly as well. Obviously in hindsight, we didn’t want the same things.”

  “He wanted money and power, or at least control, and you wanted to help people,” Ned stated bluntly.

  Abby cocked her head at him. “That’s oversimplified but more or less true. You could argue that writing grant proposals for worthy projects was helping people, but I missed the one-on-one contact. I missed people.”

  “Maybe you’ve always had an ability to ‘read’ people but didn’t realize it.”

  Abby considered that idea, and what he meant. “And you’re saying you don’t?”

  He shook his head. “Not really. I’m better with things than with people. That’s why I’m a scientist. I can be analytical and I can solve problems. I can devise and carry out experiments. What I can’t do, at least not well, is communicate with other people. And empathize. I don’t connect with people.”

  “Except me.”

  “Well, yes. But what we’ve got I don’t begin to understand and I can’t explain.”

  “And that’s a problem for you. Or maybe I mean a puzzle.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  Abby sat back in her seat and looked out the window, at the busy parking lot, at the people going about their ordinary business, being normal. Somehow she’d slipped out of the “normal” slot, but now she didn’t know where she fit.

  She and Ned had come together because she had started seeing things. She’d had this kind of vision, and then he’d appeared. He’d been curious, and she could understand that. Maybe he’d thought or felt that if he could help her find a way to understand what was happening to her, he would understand himself better. How convenient for him, when a test subject dropped in his lap.

  And then they’d discovered this other thing—the intense connection that was triggered by physical touch, yet which she thought had a mental, even psychic component, and that he shared it. Had she been wrong? Had she been so hungry for simple affection and physical contact, after dealing with the strains of her relationship with Brad, that she’d blown it all out of proportion? And had Ned been no more than a horny geek who’d fed off her hunger? Was any of this real?

  She was tired of being led around by the nose, of catering to someone else’s needs and wants, of playing someone else’s game. That was what Brad had done to her: robbed her of her will, made her question her own identity and judgment. Was Ned any different?

  She stood up abruptly and gathered up her trash. “Can you take me home now?”

  “What?” Ned appeared startled. “Well, if that’s what you want. I thought we could—”

  “I’m sorry, but I need some time to think. When we’re together, things get too … distracting.” She stood there, unsmiling, waiting.

  He finally stood as well. “All right,” he said quietly. “I’ll take you home.”

  The trip back to Abby’s house was silent—the silence so thick she could almost see it. More than once she started to say something, but then stopped herself. She was not going to be the one to smooth things over, not again. She was not going to make nice, just to keep the peace. She didn’t want to hurt Ned, who had done nothing wrong, but she needed time to work things out for herself, and she knew she couldn’t do that if they were together.

  He pulled into her driveway and stopped, then turned to her. “Abby, can’t we talk about this?” The look on his face nearly broke her heart.

  “Ned, I’m sorry, but this is something I have t
o work out for myself. Maybe we let things go too far, too fast. I met you at a rocky time in my life. I mean, really—I start seeing ghosts, I get a new job, I dump my boyfriend, I have to move. All of those are major stressors, and don’t psychiatrists say not to take on too much at once? Well, I didn’t see a choice, and I’m happy about the job and getting Brad out of my life.”

  “And where do I come into this?” Ned said, in a tone that was ridiculously reasonable.

  “I don’t know. That’s what I need to think about. I know you’re important to me, but I don’t know where you fit. Can you understand that?”

  Ned sat back in his seat and stared out the windshield. “I think so. I’ll try, anyway. But I’m not going to believe that this is over—any part of it. I’ll give you all the space you want, but I’m not going away. You know where to reach me.”

  “Thank you,” Abby said hoarsely, then scrambled out of the car before she started to cry. She stood in the driveway, watching as he pulled away—and wondering what she had just done.

  Once inside, she wandered aimlessly from room to room. They were nice rooms, but they weren’t hers. She’d have to make some sort of decision in the next month or two, but now she resented having a deadline imposed on her. As if there wasn’t enough chaos in her life—she’d have to pack up and move again?

  If she had met Ned without all the other baggage she was dragging along, would they have clicked? Or would they have passed by each other without even noticing? He was a good guy, of that she had no doubt. But he did withhold part of himself—how big a part she wasn’t sure yet. He had been secretive about her experiences—damn it, Abby, can’t you decide what to call these things?—and while she understood why he had done it, she still resented it, just a little. As for the physical side of things—which, to be fair, had come late in the game—well, he was a guy, wasn’t he? Maybe he’d been putting her on; maybe she’d been the only one to feel anything unusual.

  She didn’t really believe that. But she knew she had to back off for now and figure out what was going on. And thinking about the man on the green in Littleton was better than wondering how she was screwing up what had promised to be a great relationship. All right, she had research to do. Where to start? She ignored the little voice inside that kept saying “coward.” She had to admit that she was avoiding looking too hard at whatever she had with Ned. Was that so wrong? If it was real, it wouldn’t go away just because she took a little time off. And she wasn’t required to apologize to anyone for that, least of all herself.