Embers

by Antoinette Stockenberg

  "That's good news," Meg said, glad that the event wasn't turning out as depressingly as she'd feared.

  Allie hiked herself up onto the kitchen counter in a fluid motion that Meg had seen a thousand times before. She gave Meg a thoughtful look, sighed, and said, "You know what I realized? It's not the same between Lisa and me as it is between you and me. On the one hand, Lisa and I share this — let's face it — heavy-duty problem. We should be really close, and in that way we are.

  "But on the other hand," she said, "I just can't be there for her the way you are for me. I can do a certain amount, but I just can't give her the same — I don't know — guarantee, that you give me. You know?" she asked plaintively. "You're just so ... there when I need you. So rock solid. There's no one I could ever trust as much as I trust you. I hope it always stays this way between us."

  She looked so terribly young, kicking her heels absently into the cabinet doors, so terribly open and earnest. Meg had the sense that she was looking through her sister's violet eyes and seeing straight into her soul.

  "If you need me to be there, I will be, Allie," Meg said, her voice a little unsteady in her throat. "You know that."

  Allie cocked her head and studied her older sister. "You've never really screwed up, you know that? I drank, and now I have to go through life looking over my shoulder. But you never gave in to your emotions, you never gave up, even after Paul died."

  "I am woman; hear me roar," Meg said lightly. She felt like a complete hypocrite.

  "I mean it, Meg. You're just so ... indominatable."

  Meg shrugged, embarrassed. "You could argue that it's an obnoxious character flaw."

  Allie laughed. "Uncle Billy's always said so."

  "I rest my case," said Meg, opening the fridge and digging through the fruit drawer for the most bruised apple. "So what're you up to now?" she asked casually over her shoulder. Meg hadn't seen Tom's car all day — and she'd been keeping track.

  "Nothing much. I think we're going to a movie," Allie said, assuming that her sister knew who the "we" were. "What about last night? What happened? You sounded so weird on the phone."

  Meg threw her sister a good apple, then took a paring knife and with surgical precision began cutting out the brown spots in her own. "Promise not to laugh. And promise not to tell. Not that it matters," she said, feeling the color rise in her cheeks. "It'll be all over town anyway once Millie recovers from her fainting fit."

  "Fit? What fit?" Allie asked, chomping down on the glossy red fruit. "Millie was fine when I left," she said through a mouthful of apple.

  Meg turned to her sister and said in a taut, deadly serious voice: "Promise. And then don't interrupt. I mean it."

  Allie nodded solemnly and took another bite of apple, and Meg told her what had happened with as little drama as possible, trying without success to make it seem like just another gathering over tea. Her sister never once interrupted, which itself was a little scary. Allie was famous for jumping into the middle of other people's sentences, more often than not making them lose their train of thought. It drove their father especially nuts.

  But now, not a word. Meg was managing only too well to frighten her sister into silence.

  "As soon as I could stand up, Tom escorted me back here," Meg said, wrapping up her tale. "It was so embarrassing; I felt like when the police brought Terry home last fall for skipping school," she said jokingly. She skipped the part about the near-kiss; wild horses couldn't have dragged that bit out of her.

  "Meggie. Oh, Meggie," said her sister, her face pale with anxiety. "You know what this means, don't you?"

  "Yeah. Never eat chili for an afternoon snack."

  Allie jumped down from the counter and grabbed her sister by the arm. "Don't do that," she said angrily. "Don't make fun. Not now. This isn't about Zenobia and her band of merry men. This is about you, Meg. Don't you see? Grandmother is communicating to us through you. She's been trapped in the dollhouse for half a century —"

  "Let's say I humor you. Why the dollhouse?"

  "How do I know? And now that the house has passed to you, she's ... she's ..."

  "Moving out?" asked Meg wryly.

  "Stop it!" cried Allie, visibly cringing. "Speak with more ... more ... reverence, for pity's sake. God. I can hear you and Tom now, having a big snicker over this. You're both so strong, aren't you? Two of a kind. The homicide cop and the family boss. I suppose it goes with the territory, not being afraid of —"

  "Ghosts?" Meg jumped in with the dread word before her sister could, saying it out loud, doing exactly what Allie claimed she was doing: being a big, brave sister. The truth was, Meg had spent the night in a state of disengaged terror and was doing her best to own up to it.

  "Allie, if you think this hasn't affected me, you're nuttier than an airline snack. Trust me, I'm bringing more than enough reverence to this affair. The truth is, I'm frightened. I don't know what to do. It's not like Miss Manners has written Rules of Etiquette for being possessed or entranced or whatever I was. I mean, am I supposed to just ... let Grandmother settle in, and try to make her comfortable? Would it be rude to ask how long she plans to stay? And how exactly would I go about doing that, anyway?"

  "You're still making fun. You can't not make fun," said Allie, slamming her hand on the counter.

  Meg lifted the core of Allie's apple and tossed it in the garbage can, then took a sponge and began wiping down everything in sight. She didn't know why; it was something to do.

  "What do you want me to do?" she asked, scrubbing furiously. "Get exorcised? Then where would she go? If she exists. It exists. Whatever. And the worst thing is, I can explain this all rationally. Tom is right, it can all be explained rationally. A couple of visits to Orel Tremblay ... a little research, a little imagination ... and bingo! I'm a channel!"

  She picked up a dirty glass from the sink and plunged her soapy sponge into it, taking out her frustration on the dried-out milk inside.

  The glass broke — exploded, really — in Meg's hand, cutting her and releasing a stream of blood down the side of the porcelain sink.

  "Shit," she said, dropping the broken glass like a hot coal. Allie zoomed in on the cut, holding her sister's hand under running water so that they could survey the damage: a triangular tear, not so bad that it needed stitches.

  "How did I do that?" asked Meg blankly.

  Allie ripped off a paper towel and wrapped it around her sister's finger. "Who says you did it? Maybe Grandmother didn't like your snotty attitude. Can you blame her?" She reached inside the corner cupboard for the bandages and took out three.

  "This is out of control," Meg muttered as Allie peeled away the wrappers.

  "Take off the towel. That's the thing about the spirit world," Allie said, wrapping the bandage quickly around the cut. "You can't prove it is. You can't prove it isn't. I say let's play it safe." She wrapped another bandage around Meg's index finger, and then another.

  Meg snorted. "The only way to play it safe is to buy stock in a pharmaceutical company," she said, flexing her thoroughly splinted finger. "Too tight," she decided.

  "Too bad." Allie scooped up the wrappers and tossed them, then began rinsing down the bloody sink. "Obviously we've got to do something about Gordon Camplin. Anything. Maybe if we just flat-out accuse him — in private; that would be the safest thing — that might be enough to satisfy Grandmother. You think?"

  "What're you asking me for? You're the parapsychologist in the family."

  "I thought you wanted to nail Camplin," Allie protested, surprised.

  "Because I think he's guilty, knucklehead, not because I'm afraid of ghosts. Because no one should be allowed to get away with murder. Because it's the right thing to do!" Meg said passionately.

  She threw her arm around her sister and sighed. "And, yes, because of Grandmother. Then or now, she deserves better."

  After that, Allie went to her room to crash for a couple of hours and Meg agonized over whether or not to walk next door to see Zenobia.
She didn't want to do it. It was like having to go back and ask for directions after you've purposely thrown away the road map. She was still hemming and hawing when she saw a large group of departing guests, all with their bags, making their way to several cars parked behind the Elm Tree Inn. Zenobia was at the head of the pack.

  In a panic Meg rushed out the back door and flagged down the spiritualist. "Do you have a minute before you go? It's about last night," she said, arriving at Zenobia's car in a breathless state.

  Luckily, Zenobia's passenger was a laggard. "I have at least that long," the older woman explained with a sigh as she dropped her leather bags in the trunk of her BMW. She turned and fastened her clear-eyed stare on Meg and said in her rich, warm voice, "But Tom specifically told me that you didn't want to be bothered about it."

  "I didn't. But I do. Or I would. If I only knew — what happened, Zenobia?" she burst out. "Were you responsible for my behavior?"

  "You mean, did I perform a feat of ventriloquy?" Zenobia said good-naturedly. "Oh, no, dear. What we all heard was a trance voice."

  "Which is?"

  "Which is when you allow an etheric-world intelligence to use your voice to transmit information."

  Meg was scandalized. "I didn't allow anyone — thing — to use my voice!"

  Zenobia's expression became troubled. "I'm sure you don't mean that, Meg. I'm sure what we saw was not an involuntary intervention."

  Meg, suddenly cautious, asked, "What if it was?"

  The silence that followed was pregnant with foreboding. Zenobia frowned and said, "When a psychic phenomenon occurs to someone who didn't deliberately will it — well, that event is usually blamed on what we call 'lower-quality entities.'"

  "Oh? Are they like blue-collar ghosts or something?" Meg quipped. But her knees had begun to go wobbly again.

  Zenobia looked sympathetic. "I see you have mixed emotions about what happened to you. You shouldn't have, my dear. It's a gift to be sensitive; most people function on only the most ordinary plane. They hardly tap into the universe at all. Be grateful that you're able to see so much more."

  "But what about those lower-quality entities?" Meg persisted.

  Zenobia's shrug was no more than a lift of one eyebrow. She fingered the keys on the key ring in her hand and plucked the one for her BMW. "The lower-quality entities are just that: base, inferior entities of the etheric world. It's true, they can be quite dangerous."

  Meg felt the blood drain from her body; she wanted to sit down but she didn't dare ask for the time to do it.

  "But you must understand," Zenobia said with a reassuring smile, "that mediumship is based on the principle of like attracting like. A lower-quality entity will be attracted only to a medium of low morals and bad lifestyle, and that, my child, is clearly not you.

  "By the same token, no superior etheric intelligence would ever impose itself against a medium's free will. Because of that, I deduce that you yourself must have been willing to have your grandmother — it is your grandmother? — communicate through you. On some level."

  Zenobia's logic seemed irrefutable. But Meg had never been keen on formal logic in high school, so how would she know?

  "So you think I'm a sort of natural-born medium; that I in fact willed my grandmother to appear?" Meg said it in a whisper, embarrassed even to be asking such an outrageous question.

  "Oh, yes, definitely. As I say, you're clearly not what we call a medium for trivial communications. But you must be very careful of your ability, Meg," Zenobia said seriously. "I'll tell you exactly what I told Tom: You need to practice self-discipline. It would help to develop your psychic abilities in a more formal way. I understand there's a trained medium in the area with whom you can meet regularly."

  Meg's jaw fell open. "You're asking me that?"

  Zenobia sighed, and then she smiled. "Please be careful, dear," she said, laying her hand gently on Meg's forearm. "Be very careful," she repeated. "If you need advice, feel free to call me anytime. Would you like my card?"

  "No ... no, that's all right. I'm sure Julia has your address," Meg added, not to be rude. "There's just one other thing. Did you understand what ... what was said in French?"

  "Oh, yes," answered Zenobia. "The voice said, 'Why won't you leave me alone? This is so wrong; I'm a married woman and I have two sons. How can you do this to me when you know I need this position? Please don't do this to me.'" Zenobia said it with the unshakable calm of a UN translator.

  "I see," said Meg unhappily. The statements were all very consistent with what Meg already knew — or guessed. They didn't prove or disprove anything. The facts weren't nearly as much of a problem for Meg as the French.

  Zenobia opened the door of her silver sedan and tossed her Gucci handbag in the back, then slid into the driver's seat. "You can learn to use your ability to achieve quite astonishing things, Meg," she said through the open window. "I do mean that."

  Meg wanted to know what someone like Zenobia could possibly consider astonishing. "Well, thanks," she said with a wan smile. "I suppose it could come in handy when the phones go down in winter storms."

  It was a shade too irreverent for Zenobia; she gave Meg an impatient look, waved to her passenger who was packed and out of the inn at last, and turned the key. "Good luck, dear," she said. "You surely will need it."

  Chapter 12

  The evening was wet and foggy, not much good for anything. Wyler, feeling aimless and bored, tossed his book aside and decided to wander over to the Inn Between, for no other reason than to hang out.

  Hang out. He despised the very expression. Hanging out was what mall rats did, and street gangs, and bums with no real purpose in life. For the last twenty-five years Wyler had made a point of always having a purpose in life, whether it was going to night school or learning to play the sax, mastering the game of chess or becoming a force on the basketball court. Even today, he made himself read a work of nonfiction after every work of fiction.

  And yet here he was: hanging out.

  What the hell am I doing? he wondered as he knocked on the kitchen door of the Inn Between. I know this can't go anywhere.

  But he was drawn to the warmth of the Atwells family like a cat to a radiator. They had ... something. Something he'd never quite experienced first hand, although he'd read about it plenty of times in novels. And ... they had Meg.

  But it was Allie who came running to get the door. When she saw him, her face lit up with what he could only call a triumphant smile. "Tom! Great! We're playing Monopoly, but Comfort would really rather knit. You can take her place. Hey, everybody! Look who I found!" she called out, dragging him by the hand into the front room.

  On their way there, she turned and whispered in his ear, "I've missed you. Why haven't you come around?"

  Simple question; too bad it didn't have a simple answer. "I've been boning up on a case," he said in an easy lie.

  "A case!" she said, shocked. "This doesn't mean you're going back soon?"

  "Eventually," he admitted, greeting the rest of the family with a sweeping "Howdy, folks." His glance settled on Meg, her face flushed with color, sitting opposite Lloyd at a Monopoly board.

  For the last several days Wyler's thoughts had drifted back to her constantly. Whatever she'd experienced at that bizarre memorial service had been intense and unforgettable. And yet when he'd called her the next day, she'd acted as if she'd forgotten all about it.

  "Oh, that," she'd said. "You were right. It turns out that long ago, my father knew a little French; so who knows what bits and pieces I may have picked up?"

  She'd been cool to him on the phone, and he'd chalked it up to embarrassment over that emotional outburst in the shed. This evening, however, cool had turned to cold. Meg looked away from him and said to the others, "The game's just about played out, anyway. It's obvious that Allie's going to win. Why don't we just call it a night?"

  "Not so fast," said Allie. "I want all of the Boardwalk. Sit back down, Meg. Comfort, you're excused. Right here, W
yler," she added with a sly smile, patting the seat of Comfort's chair.

  Lloyd rolled up his sleeves and said, "Leona Helmsley, here, is right. It's not over till it's over."

  Wyler, who'd played Monopoly maybe three times in his life, focused on bringing himself up to speed in the game while Allie babbled like a sweet-running brook, and Lloyd rolled the dice as if the fate of the Inn Between depended on it.

  Meg, who was on his right, hardly said a word. She seemed completely preoccupied with the mole on her brother's forehead. Wyler made one or two conversational overtures; she ignored them. Annoyed by her indifference, he said, "By the way, I saw Joyce Fells today at the Shop 'n Save."

  That got a reaction. Meg's brows twitched sharply and her lips shaped themselves into one of her extra-polite, pissed-off smiles. "Oh, really?" she said, plopping her little metal car six spaces forward.

  "Are you sure?" asked Allie. She leaned forward over the board, her eyes wide, her voice eager.

  "Lotsa pink. Lotsa blue. Yeah, I'm sure," Wyler answered.

  "Oh, Meggie, you know what this means," fretted Comfort, her knitting needles clicking a mile a minute. "It means she wants the dollhouse. It means she's going to fight for it."

  "We assumed that," Meg said, frowning over the exorbitant rent she was having to pay her sister. "So what?"

  Lloyd grunted and said, "So you know what a lawyer is gonna cost you per quarter hour?"

  Meg glanced at their father, dozing peacefully in his rocker over a fishing magazine. "Nothing's happened yet," she said in a hiss to the rest of them. "It's not today's problem. End of discussion."

  She saved her most infuriated look for Wyler, who decided that he didn't deserve it — or the cold shoulder she'd been giving him all night. He could understand her feeling a little uncomfortable after her so-called trance in the shed. He himself was feeling anything but comfortable with it, despite the rational explanations he'd offered her.