Emily's Ghost

by Stockenberg, Antoinette

And then she noticed the eyeglasses tethered to the side of Hattie's wheelchair. On a hunch she unhooked them from their place and handed them to Hattie, who put them on automatically. Emily leaned over, propping one hand on her knee, and held up the necklace as close to Hattie as she could. "Was this yours?" she asked, forming the words carefully with her lips.

  Hattie adjusted the spectacles on her small, aquiline nose and peered closely. Then the map of wrinkles that made up her face rearranged themselves into a wonderful, happy grin. "My necklace!" she cried. "I thought it was gone!"

  She reached up to tweak her hearing aid and said, "Where did you find it?"

  "I bought it," Emily screamed, and poor Hattie clapped her hands over her ears.

  "Don't shout! I'm not deaf!" she said, wincing.

  Emily lowered her voice to normal and explained how the necklace had ended up with her.

  "That's exactly when I was in the hospital," Hattie said, exasperated. "My niece must have sold it at the Penny Sale. What a scatterbrain she is! There was a box in my closet full of things I planned to put out for the sale. But I'm damned sure that wasn't in it. Well, I must buy it back. How much did you pay?" She reached under the afghan and with shaking hands brought out a worn leather change purse.

  "Oh, dear," Emily said apologetically. "Please, I need the necklace just for a while yet. But when I'm done, I'll bring it back to you. I really do promise." Emily tried not to think about the cost of that promise as she said, "For now can you tell me anything -- it's so important -- about the necklace?"

  Having been reassured that the necklace would soon be hers again, Hattie relaxed, and she and Emily had a nice little chat, helped along by the lemon tea the director herself brought them.

  "My uncle discovered that necklace in 1910, the year I was born, hidden between the walls of his house," Hattie began. "Uncle Eric was enlarging a dressing room so that my mother, who was about to have me, could live with his wife and him while my father was at sea. He was a good man, Uncle Eric; my mother always said so. It's just too bad that he lost everything in the Depression."

  Hattie took a sip of lemon tea and went on. "He gave my mother the necklace at my baptism. Said if it weren't for me, he'd never have known about it anyway. My mother left it to me when she died fifty years later. And that's all I know about it. Except that it ain't worth nothin'. Jeweler told me that." She gave Emily a look only New England Yankees understand: a little bland, a little sorry, a little shrewd.

  "What an interesting story," Emily said, hoping to find out more. "Your uncle sounds like a kind man. How did he lose everything?"

  "I told you," Hattie snapped. "In the Depression. It was bound to happen, with or without the crash. Uncle Eric was the kind of man that gave away everything that wasn't nailed down. He and Aunt Alice took in boarders, but half the time nobody paid. It was Uncle Eric's father that had all the ambition. That would be Great-uncle Henry. I never knew him myself, but my mother told me she distinctly remembered someone toasting 'the next governor of the state of Massachusetts' at Christmas one year. Course, Great-uncle Henry Abbott never did make it to the governor's office."

  Abbott. The remembered name leaped up at Emily from the yellow pages of one of her legal pads. "Henry Abbott? Mayor Abbott, could you mean?"

  "Oh, yes," said Hattie matter-of-factly, "he was mayor, all right. Mayor of Newarth. Then he got too big for his breeches and ran for governor. Now tell me, who'd elect a small-town mayor to govern a great big state like Massachusetts? But that was Great-uncle Henry all over, my mother used to say. Always wantin' what he couldn't have. Always hobnobbin' with the rich. There never was that kind of money in our family, even before the Depression."

  Emily was now in overdrive. Mayor Abbott had played cards at Talbot Manor every Thursday night. Fergus had said so. There was no question that he must have known Hessiah Talbot. The question was, where did his son Eric and the necklace fit in? "Did Mayor Abbott ever offer any theory about how the necklace ended up between the walls of his son's house?"

  "Great-uncle Henry was long dead by the time I was born," Hattie said. For the first time since Emily had first set eyes on her, the frail old woman seemed uncomfortable. Her head shook slightly as she said almost angrily, "Great-uncle Henry killed himself, the fool. He was forty-five. Wasted half his life. Just threw it away." Hattie shivered and pulled the yellow afghan up higher on her lap.

  "Do you remember anything about your uncle Eric's house?" Emily asked softly, partly to change the subject.

  "Not much. I was three when we moved away from Newarth, and we never went back. It was a big old house, expensive to heat. Uncle Eric never could have afforded to live there without taking in boarders. I sometimes wonder how Great-uncle Henry managed to keep the place up before he shot himself. Yet they said he lived like royalty."

  Emily's eyes opened wide. "Do you mean the necklace was found between the walls of Mayor Abbott's house? That it was his house you were born in?"

  "Wasn't his house then. It was Uncle Eric's. I told you."

  Hattie was tiring, that was obvious. Her head was beginning to droop. She was clearly losing interest in the subject. Emily replaced her china teacup carefully in its saucer and stood up. "I'm very, very grateful to you for seeing me, Mrs. Dunbart," she said. "And I want you to know that I will bring the necklace back to you as soon as I've finished writing the story I'm working on."

  "That would be nice," Hattie said wearily. Her head drooped ever closer to the ruffled collar of her dark blue dress. "Now go away . . . shoo . . . I'm cold."

  By the time Emily gathered up her canvas bag to leave, Hattie had fallen into a nap. Emily tucked the yellow afghan gently into the sides of the wheelchair and tiptoed away, leaving Hattie like a small, thin finch perched in a thicket, huddled against the coming snow.

  Chapter 14

  Emily found a quiet bench nearby in Ocean Park and tried to summon up Fergus. He was a ghost, not a genie in a bottle; she understood that. Nonetheless, she was using up her time and her money on his problem, and it seemed to her that the least he could do was to be there when she called. "Fergus. Fergus!" she hissed from her park bench. Three young boys on mountain bikes pedaled past and stared; she heard their snickers as they burned rubber getting away.

  She had no idea where she'd lost Fergus. Had he even been on the ferry? Did the forty-five-mile rule really work? Was it all –- after all -- a dream? She gazed across the dried grass of the treeless park at a benign ocean curling gently on a slender strip of beach. It was a beautiful day for a swim . . . or a sail . . . or a garden party. It was a beautiful day for just about anything except sitting alone and hissing at air.

  The heck with him. She whipped out a small notebook and began jotting down details of her interview with Hattie Dunbart before she forgot them. It had been a great day's work. Emily trusted Hattie's memory even if the director didn't. And Hattie had remembered two very critical pieces of information: Mayor Abbott had owned the house where the necklace was eventually found, and Mayor Abbott had committed suicide

  Why would someone kill himself? Either he was fatally depressed, or he carried a heavy load of guilt. If only Hattie had known the address. It would have saved Emily the trouble of wading through years of recorded deeds, which was next on her list. Maybe Abbott's descendants still lived in the house; maybe they had even more useful information than Hattie.

  Emily closed her notebook, put the cap back on her Bic pen, and put them away. Her chores on the Vineyard were done. Now it was time to do a bit of shopping, and find an inn, and have something to eat before the twilight concert.

  "Fergus . . . Fergus, come on."

  There was no response. Emily wandered through all the rainy-day shops, priced some rooms, treated herself to clam cakes and an ice-cream cone, and still -- still! -- there was no Fergus. He was around, she was convinced of it. But it brought home the frightening possibility that at any moment he could be called back to Noplace.

  Monday, first thing, Newa
rth City Hall, she told herself.

  But that was Monday, and this was Saturday. It was still a long time until twilight, and Emily was feeling alone and out of sorts. What was the point of planning a day on an island if there was no one to share it with? What was the point of doing anything, good or bad, if there was no one to share it with?

  Uh-oh. Blame it on Fergus, but this was very new thinking. You like your singleness, she reminded herself. It's efficient. Remember?

  For a moment Emily really did try to remember. Then something snapped, and she hopped into a standing cab. "Lee Alden's place, please. He told me you'll know where it is."

  "That I do," the cabbie said as he swung out into traffic.

  Emily didn't really come to her senses until the cabbie pulled off State Road onto a narrow lane, and by then, of course, it was too late. The cab stopped in front of a white rose arbor buried under riotous climbing pink roses that nearly knocked her down with their scent. Fergus would know the name of the rose, she thought as she paid the cab. Right now she desperately missed him and his common-folk ways.

  She paused for courage under the arbor and stared through the full-moon opening at an exquisitely proportioned Greek Revival house, crisp and white and trimmed with black shutters, and set off to perfection by a perennial border bursting with yellows and pinks and whites. A towering oak tree covered the south end of the property with restful shade, and a row of shivering poplars hid the house from its neighbor to the north. It was less than a mansion, much more than a house. It spoke of good taste and sound judgment, and Emily knew that whoever had it built a century and a half ago was a man who knew exactly what he wanted.

  Emily lifted the latch on the arbor gate and with a pounding heart started over the flagstone walk. The front door was open and she could see, through its screen, that it lined up with a set of French doors at the back of the house that led onto a lawn where people were gathered. What could have possessed her to think she'd be welcome among them? She decided to cut and run; it wasn't too late. She turned to flee and was startled by two children, a boy and a girl of about eight or nine, popping out from behind a butterfly bush.

  "She's here!" the boy cried out to the company, although no one could possibly hear him. "I'll take your bag," he said to Emily, relieving her of the canvas carryall. "Uncle Lee said to be on the lookout for you, and I was!"

  "No, I saw her first!" the blond girl said, with little hopping jumps in place. "Can I carry your hat? You're Emily," she said, the way she might if Emily were Santa Claus. "And I'm Jane. And my brother isn't Dick; he's Richard. Everyone has to call him Richard or he gets mad. This is so pretty; can I try it on? But I won't try it on if you don't want me to. So if you say no, you don't have to feel bad."

  "Jane never stops talking," Richard said with disgust. "If you want to say something, you have to wobble your hands in front of her face, like this," he added, flipping them back and forth in front of his sister the way brothers have a way of doing.

  Emily, overwhelmed by the welcoming committee, laughed and said, "I'm pleased to meet you both, and yes, Jane, you may wear the hat, and thank you for the advice, Richard." She wobbled her hands back and forth in front of his eyes. "Did I do it right?" she asked innocently.

  Richard stopped in his tracks, gave her a quick and somewhat suspicious appraisal, and then burst into a grin. "Yeah. Like that. I'll take this bag to your room and show you where it is."

  "No, I'll show her where her room is."

  "No, you can show her where to freshen up."

  "Okay! No, but first you have to meet everyone," Jane insisted, turning to Emily. "Or would you rather freshen up? Your room almost has its own bathroom. Yours is the best room; you can see Woods Hole from it. Only grown-ups get to use it. Uncle Lee says when I'm fourteen I can sleep in it, but not Richard because he'll always be a pig."

  She made an awful face at her brother, and he waved his hands furiously in front of her nose, and before Emily knew it, they were being descended on by half a dozen more children in the two- to six-year-old range, galloping across the rolling lawn. Behind them, at a slower pace, came a slender and still quite beautiful woman leaning gently on the arm of the man who had told Emily, "Don't think. Just come."

  She saw at once that Lee Alden was in his element. He seemed neither besieged, as he had at the fund raiser, nor tense, as he had on the ferry. He'd changed from the workaday clothes he'd worn on the ferry to a pair of khakis and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled back. His blue tie was loose and flapping uselessly in the sea breeze; his hands were in his pockets. The look in his eyes was filled with satisfaction, the smile on his face relaxed and tender with love for the ones he so obviously held dear.

  Emily paused spellbound and waited, her lips parted with a greeting that seemed unnecessary to deliver. The wind whipped her skirt around her legs and blew her big straw hat off little Jane's head; the girl let go of Emily's hand with a laughing screech and raced her brother in hot pursuit of the cartwheeling object. The toddlers followed the example of the rest of the children and cried, "Emly, Emly, Emly" over and over, jerking their short, fat arms excitedly, oblivious to what an "Emly" was but drooling with anticipation anyway.

  Emily was surrounded. The kids were everywhere, jumping and tripping and tugging at her skirt, shouting their names -- Sarah and Will and Becky and Missy and Rob -- and making polite conversation between adults a laughable concept.

  "What a wonderful welcome!" Emily cried over the tops of their curly heads.

  "That's because I told 'em you were bringing Milky Ways for everyone," Lee said, his eyes dancing with blue light.

  Emily looked her dismay, and Lee laughed and said, "Mother, may I present Miss Emily Bowditch," in his best prep school manner. "Emily, this is my mother, Margaret Alden."

  Mrs. Alden tapped her son's forearm in tender reproach and extended a firm hand to Emily. "He's an awful tease. Just ignore him; we all do," she said with a warm smile.

  Emily nodded, her eyes just catching Lee's in a glance, and said, "Many happy returns, ma'am." She saw in Mrs. Alden's violet-blue gaze the most basic message of all: Don't be afraid; we will not harm you. Emily smiled, flushing slightly, and took in the hazy panorama of Vineyard Sound and the bluff-marked islands to the north. "What a magical place this is," she said shyly.

  One of the little ones -- Becky or Missy -- wrapped her arms around Lee's knee and asked plaintively, "Is Emly gon' do magic now?"

  Lee looked down at the moppet clinging to his leg and said, "In a little while, sweetheart. Run and show Emily how well you can swing."

  The child ran off, accompanied by two or three other little show-offs. "Magic?" Emily repeated as the three adults made their way toward the brick terrace adjoining the house.

  "I told them that a beautiful fairy princess named Emily was coming," Lee said as he held out a chair for his mother, "and that she would bring magic with her."

  "But I left my wand and stardust in the cab," Emily protested, feigning the dismay she really felt.

  "I for one think you're quite charming, even without the wand," interjected Mrs. Alden.

  "Which is what I told the kids," Lee agreed. "Come with me, Emily, and we'll scare up my sister. Excuse us, Mother."

  Lee took Emily inside the house, fending off little clinging creatures with secret whispered promises that all seemed to end with "later."

  When they were alone, Lee turned to her. "I'm glad you came," he said in his quiet way.

  "I'm glad you asked me," she answered in kind.

  "You look very nice," he said with his gently ironic smile. "Still."

  He was giving new meaning to the expression "Less is more." Yet she wouldn't have traded his simple compliments for all the diamonds in Amsterdam. There was something in his voice, something in his eyes. Nine simple words, and they sent a thrill that rolled over her and through her and set her very soul vibrating. Oh, she had it bad, all right. She was just now realizing how bad.

  She stood t
here in confusion, wanting him to do something, not quite knowing how to make it happen, stalling for time. "Gee . . . I . . . this . . ."

  He brushed her lips with a feather-light kiss. "I know. Me, too." Then he took her hand and said softly, "Come meet the rest of the clan."

  They passed through a series of rooms bright with sunlight and chintz and needlepoint rugs scattered on wide-board floors. Fireplaces were everywhere. Even now she smelled the sooty, sweet scent of burned-up wood; apparently nights on the Vineyard were cool. The furnishings, a comfortable blend of Federal and country, were not exactly in museum condition. Everything had been kicked, moved, sat on, stood on, rubbed, polished, pushed, shoved, and rearranged until it fitted the house like an omelet in a pan. There were no hard edges left anywhere, only soft, worn, loved ones.

  The kitchen itself was a delight, functional and unadorned, with unmatched pieces of scrubbed pine and a massive butcher-block island. There was a view through twelve-light windows of an herb garden to the west and the hazy blue sound to the north. The three women who were cleaning up and setting out a birthday cake had obviously done it together before. When Lee and Emily walked through the door, they all looked up as one.

  "Just in time!" said the oldest, a plump woman in a housedress and an apron who was lining up cups and saucers on a massive tray. "You carry this right out there, Lee. Your mother likes her coffee hot, and you're just dawdlin', I see." She gave Emily a shrewd but not unfriendly look.

  The second woman was about Lee's age, beautifully dressed in wrinkle-free linen and quiet gold jewelry. "It's true, Lee. Just because we taxpayers pay you money to sit around and do nothing all week doesn't mean we'll let you get away with it on weekends. You heard Inez. Move along." She gave him a gently ironic look that Emily had seen before, through eyes that matched his shade of blue.

  The third woman was in her mid-thirties, dressed in white slacks and a boat-neck striped shirt. Her blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she had an absolutely dazzling smile. "We ran out of pink candles, Lee; I had to add blue. It makes it so obvious that I've gone into a third box," she said, making a funny, guilty face at Emily.