Search for the Dead Page 3

  “Fine,” Abby said firmly. “Which day? My schedule’s pretty clear.”

  “It’s Thursdays. The thing that got dropped, I mean.” They finalized arrangements for times and dates, and hung up quickly. Abby wasn’t surprised at her abruptness—Leslie still had mixed feelings about Abby, and she didn’t like to be beholden to anyone. Her efforts to warm things up between them, for Ellie’s and Ned’s sake, was a slower process than she would like.

  “So?” Ned asked.

  “Leslie needs some help with after-school care for Ellie. Plus, apparently Ellie asked to spend time with me. I hope that’s a good thing.”

  “You mean, you hope Leslie’s okay with that?”

  “Yes. It’s a shame that Leslie can’t do for Ellie what I can, because otherwise I wouldn’t have to worry about getting between them at all. But this thing of ours is something that can’t be taught or transferred, and there’s no biological link to Leslie, only to Ellie.”

  “Leslie knows that, Abby.”

  “I know she knows that with her head, but that doesn’t mean she feels good about it. Still, I think helping Ellie outweighs making Leslie happy. Don’t you?”

  “No question. Even if psychic powers were not exactly what Leslie was expecting from her--our child. So, where were we?”

  Over the last of dinner they reviewed what Abby had found during the day, and eliminated some recognized phenomena as irrelevant or too difficult to test. Not that Abby was sure how to test what she was experiencing. You either saw these long-dead people or you didn’t. Would taking pictures in a different way be of any use? Ultraviolet, infrared, or even X-rays? In any case, the goal was to figure out what biological or genetic trait made it possible to see them for some people and not others. It wasn’t shared by most of the humans in the world, apparently, or else they’d quashed it at an early age. Did that make it go away permanently, or was it just dormant? Most societies weren’t exactly friendly to people who saw dead people, so most learned to keep quiet about it. Abby had even had to have a talk with Ellie about that, in case Ellie got impatient with her friends who couldn’t “see.” It was hard to explain to a child that it wasn’t wrong to have that ability, but showing it tended to scare other people, and scared people often lashed out. Abby faced a real challenge trying to help Ellie make the most of this odd ability without alienating her parents, her schoolmates, her friends, and even total strangers. It wasn’t going to be easy while she was growing up. Abby was in fact dreading Ellie’s teen years, when things were already made difficult by raging hormones.

  “What about you, Ned? Have you come up with any ideas for testing or analyzing this thing?” Abby asked, after a long lull.

  “A couple of thoughts. One: the kind of equipment that would be useful tends to be expensive and not always easy to get access to even if you have the money. It’s not exactly something I can buy for the company and write off as a business expense. Not that I would anyway, because it doesn’t fit into any of our current practices. That means I’d have to buy it myself.”

  “Is that a problem?”

  “No, but that’s only part of the issue. I can buy it, but where do we put it?”

  “Ah, I see. Are any special conditions necessary?”

  “Yes, and it’s a lot more than adequate space and some heavy-duty wiring. You have to have a room that has no vibration whatsoever, and that’s shielded from any outside magnetic sources.”

  “Yikes!” Abby said. “So I guess the basement won’t work.”

  “Nope. It’s damp, with low ceilings. Not ideal. The attic is too low, and the other rooms aren’t big enough. And in a wood-frame house like this one, everything shakes, even if you don’t notice it. So it looks like I’ll have to rent some place to set things up, if I want to go ahead with this.”

  “Okay,” Abby said cautiously. “How long would that take?”

  “A few weeks, I’d guess, to find a location and to order the equipment and set it up.”

  “Can you install it yourself, or do you need an electrician or a technician or whatever?”

  “I’d rather have it done right. There are some people we’ve used at the company for new installations, who I can hire for this one.”

  “Great. Did you have something else? Or should I ask first, how do you know which equipment you need if we aren’t sure what we’re looking for?”

  “Good question, but I’ve got a guy in mind who’d be perfect to help point us in the right direction. I haven’t talked to him yet about this, but he’s wicked smart, with a Ph.D. from MIT, and I’ve known him for years. But he’s not much of a team player and he hates the corporate life, so instead he creates things. He’s made a lot of money doing it—he holds a few critical patents. I think he’d be interested in helping us out—this kind of a project would appeal to him.”

  “Will you have to explain what we’re trying to do?”

  “Of course, because he might have to modify some of the equipment.”

  “Does he have . . . I mean, can he see or feel or sense anything out of the ordinary?”

  “I never asked, but I can and will. I think he’d find the question funny, but he’d take it seriously.”

  “Ned, are you going to tell your people at work about what we’re doing? Are you going to take official time off, or just kind of come and go without explaining?” She hadn’t seen his office, hadn’t met any of his staff, and really had no idea what he did day to day.

  Ned must have followed her thinking, because he looked contrite. “I’m sorry, I keep forgetting you don’t know the place or the people. You want to come by and introduce yourself?”

  “As what?” She hated to hear that coming out of her own mouth. She wasn’t angling for a commitment, much less a proposal, but somehow having Ned say “my friend Abby” felt wrong.

  “What would you like me to say?” Ned said carefully.

  “I . . . don’t know. When I was living with Brad, I guess I was the Girlfriend, but I thought that was kind of demeaning.” Looking back now, her whole relationship with Brad had been kind of demeaning, and she knew she’d been right to break it off. “I don’t know how he explained us to the people he knew at work.” Or how much he had said to Shanna, who Brad had been sleeping with for a while before Abby found out. Now, after some time had passed, she thought that Brad and Shanna probably deserved each other: they were equally shallow and ambitious. “Does your staff know anything about me?”

  “Only that I’m happier than I have been. I think the minute they see us together they’ll figure it out.”

  “I don’t need labels, Ned. I know what we’ve got.” The dishes didn’t really need doing right now, so she held out a hand to him. He took it, and they were lost in each other again.

  “I’ll do the dishes in the morning,” he whispered in her ear.

  She could only nod.

  Chapter 4

  Leslie had notified the school that Abby was authorized to pick up Ellie, and Abby was waiting in the parking area when Ellie tumbled out the door of the school on Thursday afternoon. Abby was glad to see that Ellie was talking with a couple of other girls, who peeled off toward one of the waiting school busses. Ellie spotted her quickly and hurried over, and Abby opened the front door for her.

  “Hey, Abby,” Ellie said, fumbling for her seat belt.

  “Hey, kid. Good to see you.” It had only been a month since they’d spent time in a summer house on Cape Cod together, with some unexpected extras—like the kitten that Ellie had brought home with her and persuaded her mother to accept. “How’s Olivia?”

  “She’s good. Mom’s mad at her because she likes to sharpen her claws on the furniture. I keep telling her that Olivia makes less mess than Petey, and we’re stuck with him.”

  “He’s, what, four now? In preschool?”

  “Yeah. And then half-day aftercare.”

  Abby started up the car and pulled out into the slow-moving parent traffic. “You have homework?”

 
“Not much yet, but some. Do I have to do it right away?”

  “Is there something else you want to do?” Abby countered, wondering if Ellie had a hidden agenda.

  “Hang out with you. Maybe talk,” Ellie said, looking out the front window rather than at Abby.

  Ah, talk. Abby wondered how much Ellie had shared with her mother about what had happened at the Cape Cod house. Leslie was still struggling with the whole concept of seeing dead people. She was a no-nonsense person, and none of what her daughter was seeing fit in her worldview. “Sure, that’s fine. I bet we’ll find some cookies at the house. And you’re staying for dinner, right? Ned wants to see you too.”

  “Cool.”

  “How’s school?” Abby asked.

  “Okay.”

  “You like your classes?”

  “Some of them.” Ellie wasn’t volunteering a whole lot.

  “Which ones in particular?” Abby prodded.

  “English. History, maybe. Not math.”

  Abby laughed. “I understand that. I never liked math much either.” She signaled for a turn. “Made any new friends?”

  “You mean live ones? You sound like my mom. She thinks I’m going to get all weird and end up one of those kids nobody talks to.”

  “Are you?”

  “I’m not that dumb. And I don’t tell people about . . . that other thing.”

  “Normally I wouldn’t recommend hiding a big secret from people who you want as friends, but I think that’s the right thing to do, under the circumstances.” For now. Maybe forever.

  “Good. Like I said, I’m not stupid.”

  They were silent the rest of the way to the Lexington house. Since Abby had taught school (before Brad had decided that teaching wasn’t prestigious enough for her, even though she had enjoyed it), she knew not to push too hard. A new school year, a new building, new friends—that was enough for Ellie to process in the first few weeks of school, without throwing psychic experiences into the mix.

  Once Abby had parked at the house, Ellie skipped ahead of her and waited impatiently for Abby to unlock the door. Then she raced to the kitchen and started hunting for the promised cookies. “In the box on the table,” Abby told her. “You want milk? Juice?”

  “Coffee?” Ellie eyed her slyly.

  “I don’t think so. Hey, stay a kid as long as you can. Being a grown-up is harder.”

  Abby provided plates, and they settled at the kitchen table with their cookies—and milk for Ellie. “What was all that stuff in the dining room?” Ellie asked after a few bites.

  “Mostly research I’m doing on that, uh, thing of ours. That something we want to talk about?”

  “Yeah. I can’t say anything to Mom and Dad. Is that what you call it? The Thing?”

  Damn, we really do need a name for it. “It’s easier than saying ‘psychic ability’ or ‘paranormal properties.’ The formal name is ‘apparitional experiences,’ but we need to call it something simpler and shorter. Do you have any ideas?”

  Ellie took a moment to consider. “I guess app-ex sounds kind of dumb.”

  “It doesn’t really have the right feeling to it—sounds too technical. What do you think of ‘seeings’?”

  “Maybe. Can I think about it?”

  “Sure. But before we get into talking about the research, can I ask you something?” Abby fumbled for the right words. “Your mom told me that you asked to spend this time with me after school. Was it about all this?”

  Ellie finished her first cookie and started on a second. “Kind of. I know Mom tries to understand, but it makes her unhappy to talk about the thing. You and Ned are the only ones who I can share it with.”

  “And you need to talk about it. I get that. I’m glad you think we can talk. Has anything changed? Is there anything new? I know it hasn’t been that long since I saw you, but you’ve had a busy few weeks.”

  “You mean, am I seeing dead people wandering around the school? Nope. But I’ve been thinking about what happened on Cape Cod, and seeing Olivia, the one who used to be real. I mean, I saw her. Olivia—the cat—saw her. You saw her, because she’s your relative. Why did I?”

  Ellie wasn’t sticking to the easy questions, was she? “That’s a very good question, and it’s something I—and Ned—want to understand. Right now I can’t tell you why you saw her, except that children seem to see these things more easily than adults. Maybe everyone can when they’re young, but people tell them they’re crazy so they shut it down and bury it, or it just goes away. I don’t want that to happen with you. I know it’s confusing, and there’s a lot you don’t understand—and I don’t either—but I think it’s a kind of gift, and you shouldn’t just throw it away. Unless of course you want to?”

  Ellie chewed her cookie slowly, taking small bites, and didn’t answer right away. After she swallowed, she said, “No, I don’t want to, I guess. I’m scared I’m going to make a mistake and say something, like if I see somebody I don’t expect, and somebody notices I look surprised when they don’t see anything, and then they ask questions, and I don’t know what to say.”

  “I understand, Ellie. I know it’s hard, and you’ve got a lot else going on in your life without trying to watch out for slips like that. I’ll help any way I can.”

  “Are they ghosts?”

  Another questions Abby hadn’t answered for herself yet. “Well, that depends on how you define ghosts. From the reading I’ve been doing, I know that things like this—seeing dead people—have been happening for a long time, historically, and I think ghosts are people who come back from wherever they went, and can connect somehow in the here and now. Or at least this group of people called spiritualists believe that, and try to have conversations with people who have passed away. What you and I see happened in the past, so we can’t be part of it and we can’t change it. And we can’t talk to those people. Does that make sense?”

  “Yeah, kind of. But can somebody do both? And what about Hannah?”

  Hannah, a child who had died well over a century before but had somehow hung around the cemetery near Ellie’s home, was definitely an anomaly. Or Ellie was. Either way, the two girls, past and present, had found a way to play hide-and-seek with each other, sort of. As had Ned, when he was Ellie’s age, with his friend Johnnie. “I really don’t know, yet. Maybe. That’s why Ned and I have decided to use science to see if we can make sense of it all.”

  Abby explained what their plan was—leaving out the part about looking for a genetic connection: she had to have a heart-to-heart talk with Leslie before filling in Ellie on the details of her birth.

  When she was finished, Ellie said, “Cool. So you’re going to hook up electrodes and things to people’s heads and see what lights up?”

  “That’s some of it. We’re still working on the details, and that’s really Ned’s department. He knows people who may be able to help.”

  “Can he tell them why he’s looking for whatever it is?”

  “I don’t really know yet. We’ve just starting working this out.”

  “Am I going to be part of this testing thing?”

  “We hope so, but only if your mother approves.”

  Ellie’s face fell. “Will you ask her?”

  “Of course. We aren’t trying to hide anything from her. But we’re doing this on our own, quietly. Ned’s going to take some time off to work on it.”

  “What does he do? For work, I mean,” Ellie asked.

  Abby knew that Leslie didn’t talk about Ned much with her daughter, but that was understandable, given the circumstances. “You know what DNA is?”

  “Kind of. I think we’re going to talk about it in our science class later this fall. And a lot of people on TV use it to solve crimes, right?”

  “They do, don’t they?” Abby paused for a moment, trying to figure out how to explain DNA to a child. “Okay, everybody is made up of cells, right? And what a cell is and does is determined by the DNA inside it, and I’m sure you know there are lots of different k
inds of cells. But at the same time, everybody’s DNA is unique to them, so if you find a sample somewhere, you know that person has been there.”

  “Like blood on a knife and stuff,” Ellie said.

  “Yes. And people who are related have similar DNA, but there will always be a few differences between theirs—well, I’m not sure where identical twins fit. Anyway, a few years ago, when he was younger, Ned started a company that runs tests on DNA, and the company has done very well. A lot of police departments send him samples to test for them, and even the FBI, and some doctors use the company for their research. The company does some of its own research too. There’s a lot more competition now than there was when he started, but he was in the right place at the right time—he got into it early.”

  “Does he make a lot of money?” Ellie asked.

  Well, Abby realized, she’d opened the door for that question. “More than a lot of people do. But he’s earned it by being smart and working hard. And he’s fair to the people who work for him—he pays them well.”

  Ellie nodded. “Okay. That’s good. But that’s another one of those things I’m not supposed to talk about, right? I can’t say, gee, he’s rich. Does he make more money than Daddy?”

  “I don’t know how much your daddy makes, so I can’t say.” Change the subject, Abby! She stood up. “You want to help me make dinner?”

  Ellie didn’t seem to object to the abrupt change in the conversation. “What’s it going to be?”

  “I don’t really know yet. Why don’t we look in the refrigerator and see what we’ve got?”

  Together they rummaged through the refrigerator and decided on hamburgers with buns, plus a green vegetable. “Do you like vegetables, Ellie?” Abby asked. They hadn’t paid much attention to balanced nutrition while they’d been on the Cape—other things had gotten in the way.