3 From the Ashes

by K. J. Emrick

  The headstones on this end were newer, some with dates that were only a year or two old. Aunt Millie’s grave was in here, too, next to her husband Frank’s. Darcy decided to visit it later. Right now she had to search for Angelica’s.

  Up and down two rows Darcy searched, her eyes darting everywhere, catching fleeting movements of gray figures that she knew were the spirits that resided here. They kept their distance today, and she was grateful for it.

  In the third row back from the front, Darcy found a short, squat black stone with the Fender’s names. Angelica on the left, with her date of birth and death, and Louis on the right with just his date of birth and a blank for when he passed on, too. Darcy liked these kind of stones. They spoke of the dedication people had to each other in life.

  Kneeling down at the site, she felt her hand along Angelica’s name. She closed her eyes and reached out with her sixth sense and tried to feel anything of the woman who was supposed to be buried here. Again, there was only that dark emptiness. Nothing. Not only was Angelica’s body not here, her spirit wasn’t, either.

  More proof that she might be alive.

  Darcy opened her eyes to find several faces staring back at her.

  She jumped back with a little squeak and nearly tripped over another gravestone before she got ahold of herself. The misty, blurred figures of two men and a woman stood there, faces indistinct, clothing matching eras of a different time, shifting in and out of focus. They drifted closer to her again and she held up a hand as if to push them back.

  “I don’t have time for you today,” she whispered. “I can maybe come back some other time, all right? We’ll talk then?”

  They stared at her silently. She felt stupid, trying to order them around. They weren’t even really here, in the strictest sense. Anyone else looking where Darcy was wouldn’t have seen anything. Finally, one at a time, they started to fade away until only the woman was left. She was a young, young girl, maybe all of twelve in real life, with wide eyes and a cute face.

  As the girl started to drift apart and disappear as well, Darcy suddenly had a thought. “Wait. Do you…do you know an Angelica Fender?”

  The girl seemed to laugh at her, then shook her head, and with that she melted away.

  Darcy sighed out a deep breath. Well, it had been worth a shot.

  A hand settled on her elbow and made her jump again. Turning, she saw Sarah standing there, an embarrassed look on her face. “I’m sorry,” she said to Darcy, “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “No, no you didn’t. I mean, you did, but it wasn’t…” She inhaled deeply and tried to settle herself. “It’s fine. I just wasn’t expecting to see you. You know, here.”

  “I come here every few days to visit with my mother.” Sarah looked down at the gravesite. “Seems kind of foolish now, if she isn’t even dead.”

  “I don’t know that for sure,” Darcy said quickly.

  “But you’re pretty confident, right?”

  Darcy twisted the antique silver ring on her finger. She couldn’t lie to Sarah. “Yes. I’m pretty confident.”

  Sarah nodded, her blue eyes sad. “I don’t know what to feel about that. If mom’s alive, why did she leave me? If she really died in that fire, then why do I feel that there’s so much more to what happened?”

  “I don’t have answers for you, Sarah. I’ll keep looking until I find some though. I can promise you that much.” She felt a little better when the girl worked up a smile. “Hey, I tell you what. My Aunt Millie’s gravestone is in this same cemetery. Want to come with me while I pay my respects?”

  Together, the two women walked down and over a couple of rows to where Aunt Millie’s white marble stone stood. Next to it was Uncle Frank’s, a man that Darcy had hardly known as a little girl before he passed away. On both of the stones, at the top, Millie had paid to have pictures of her and her husband colored into the glaze on the stone. They had been transferred over to the stone from real photos of them both, and they looked remarkably life-like. Millie’s gray hair was done up in a bun, her eyes sparkled, and she was smiling.

  Darcy knelt and said a little prayer, something she did infrequently but with conviction each time she did. When she stood up again Sarah was staring at Millie’s headstone.

  “Is that your aunt?” she asked Darcy. There was a strange look on her face.

  “Yes, that’s Millie. She was my great aunt, actually, but that’s such a mouthful… What is it?”

  Sarah was still staring at the gravestone. Without answering, she reached into the back pocket of her jeans and took out a slim woman’s wallet. Zipping it open she removed a photo and handed it to Darcy.

  “That’s a picture of my mother,” she explained. “I keep this with me to remember her by. Look at the woman in the photo with her.”

  Angelica had been a young woman in the photo. Long blonde hair swept over one shoulder, and she was smiling at the camera. Standing next to her was a much older woman, her brown hair already mostly gray. Darcy was shocked to see the face of her great aunt Millie staring back at her.

  “Why do you think your aunt would be in a photo with my mom?” Sarah asked. “Were they related? Are you and I related?”

  Darcy shook her head. “I don’t think so. I knew my mom’s family pretty well.” Still, there was something familiar about Sarah’s mother. Something about the eyes, she thought. “Maybe Millie and Angelica were friends?”

  Sarah took the photo back and carefully put it away. “Maybe. I mean they both lived here in town. It is a big coincidence though, don’t you think?”

  “Yes,” Darcy said quietly. “Quite the coincidence, isn’t it?”

  In the back of her mind, though, she had to wonder. Had this mystery just gotten more mysterious?

  In the corners of the graveyard, fog started to lift from the ground.

  Chapter Ten

  Later that night Darcy went over to Jon’s. The mists that had given the town its name began to crowd in along her feet. They always came in when something was wrong, Darcy had found. She was shaken by what Sarah had shown her in the cemetery. She needed to talk to someone about it.

  When Jon opened the door to let her into his apartment she didn’t say anything, she just slipped into his arms and hugged him tight, pressing her face into his chest. She breathed him in and it calmed her. He let her stand there like that for several moments before he broke the silence.

  “What’s wrong?” Jon said as he ran a soothing hand over her hair.

  She sighed that the moment of peaceful comfort was over, and gently pushed past him to let the door close. “Can we sit down? I need to talk to you about this thing with Sarah and her mom. And I really need a drink. Do you have any of that wine left?”

  Jon raised an eyebrow at that but went to the cabinet to take out the bottle of dry red wine they had started a few days ago. Two glasses in his one hand, bottle in the other, he met her at his couch in the living room.

  “Thanks,” she said as he poured her some in the long-stemmed glass. He took a sip of his drink and then leaned back next to her, loosening the top two buttons of the dress shirt he still had on from work.

  He was patient with her, letting her sip and ruminate and take her time before she brought up what was bothering her. “I went to the graveyard today. To look at Angelica’s grave.”

  “That sounds…well actually that sounds dreary.” He picked her feet up off the floor and put them across his lap. Putting his drink down on the coffee table, he took her shoes off one at a time.

  When he started rubbing the soles of her feet she thought she might swoon.

  “Oh, yes, that feels good.” She sipped her wine and let the warmth and pressure he was applying relax her body.

  “So what happened? Did you see Angelica’s ghost?”

  She looked at him, wondering how he possibly put up with her and all her eccentricities. He was wonderful, she decided. That must be the answer. “No, I didn’t see her ghost.” She left out the part a
bout seeing three others. Jon was wonderful, no doubt, but she didn’t want to push her luck. “What I did see was a picture of Angelica.”

  “Oh? How did you see that?”

  Darcy went on to explain to him about Sarah arriving at the cemetery, about seeing Millie’s grave and about the photo Sarah showed her.

  “I told her it was just a coincidence, but now I don’t know. Why would Millie be in the photo with Angelica? What was the connection there? Is it possible that Sarah and I are related?”

  “I don’t know,” Jon answered with a shrug and a very pleasant motion of his thumbs under her right big toe. “I guess you could ask your mom. I mean, she’s in town.”

  “Yeah. That reminds me.” She gave him her other foot to do the same heavenly things to as she dropped her news. “We have a date to have dinner with my family tomorrow night.”

  Jon’s eyebrows rose. “In the middle of all this? Are you sure now is a good time?”

  “No. With my mother, I’m never sure. How about you? Aren’t you still busy with that case?”

  He shook his head and ran his finger up her foot, making her twitch and giggle. “Grace and I finished it today. Bernard Munson was stealing scrap from around town for resale. So my night is free. I meant the stuff with Sarah and her mom.”

  “I know what you meant,” she said, sinking lower on the couch to brush her foot around his chest. “I figure I can spare a few hours for my family. How about you?”

  He smiled at her. Then he caught her foot and brought it up to kiss her toes. “I would do anything for you.”

  Yup. He was wonderful.

  ***

  Darcy went to work from Jon’s apartment the next morning, leaving him snoring in bed as she snuck out before seven o’clock. She wanted to get to the bookstore early so that she could talk to Millie uninterrupted. It had occurred to her last night that she could just go to the source with her questions. She might not be able to find Angelica to ask, but she had Millie.

  She locked the door behind her and then stood in the middle of the store. “Millie?” she called out. It took only a few seconds for the vague shape of her great aunt to materialize, sitting in one of the reading chairs. She smiled at Darcy as if she was encouraging her favorite niece.

  “Hi Millie. Can you help me with something?”

  Her aunt nodded, moving her hands in a rhythmic motion that looked like she was knitting. Darcy remembered how she used to talk with her great aunt for hours at a time about everything under the sun while the woman would sit and work her knitting needles. The memory made her smile.

  “You know Sarah? The woman I’ve been trying to help? Are we related to her at all?”

  Millie shook her head no. She tapped a finger to her nose, and Darcy got the feeling that there was more to tell. Talking with spirits was beyond frustrating sometimes. Some wouldn’t stop talking. Some never spoke at all. Millie was the second kind.

  “Do you know anything about Angelica being alive?” Darcy tried. Millie shook her head again, her face shifting from surprise to sadness and a host of emotions inbetween.

  “There’s something going on here and I need to know what it is.” Darcy took a few more steps toward Millie. She wished she could just reach out and hold her aunt again. She twisted the ring on her finger. Millie looked down at the motion and smiled. Darcy could tell she was pleased.

  “Can you help me with any more information?” Darcy asked. She watched as Millie’s ghost rose and floated to the back of the store, where the office was. At the desk, Millie reached up to the shelf on the wall and with a wave of her hand spilled everything on it to the floor.

  Her aunt turned to her with a smile and a wave, and then she somehow turned sideways and disappeared.

  “Thanks. That was a lot of help,” Darcy said sarcastically, bending to clean up the mess. The shelf had been where she put her personal books, ones she had read and planned to read again, plus some knick knacks that were too solid to be hurt by the fall. As she picked everything up and put it back in place she found something she’d forgotten about.

  Millie’s journal. The little book with its black leather cover had been sitting up there for a couple of years now. Darcy had skimmed through it a couple of times after her aunt’s death, but it had been too painful for her to read properly back then. She had shelved it up there with the intention of reading it later. She hadn’t thought about it in forever. Inside it were her aunt’s observations of the town and its people and her own private thoughts. If Millie had anything at all to share with Darcy about Angelica, it would be in here.

  “Thank you Millie,” Darcy said out loud, hoping her aunt could hear her.

  ***

  In her own very neat handwriting, Millie had filled every page in the book. Darcy enjoyed reading her aunt’s almost poetic observations of the quaint little town she had lived in for most of her life, but that wasn’t relevant to the issue at hand.

  By lunch time Darcy had finished the book. Realising how hungry she was, she closed the shop up and hung out the back in an hour sign. Sue had taken the day off. Darcy hoped she was spending it with Sarah. The girl could definitely use a friend right now.

  Darcy went to the La Di Da Deli. Clara waved to Darcy as she came in, the lunch crowd keeping her busy. When Darcy made it to the front of the line she ordered two sandwiches, one for herself and one for Jon.

  They chatted as Clara made the sandwiches. The subject of the harvest festival inevitably came up. “I’m really excited for the festival this year,” Clara said as she cut the sandwiches in half and wrapped them in wax paper.

  Darcy inhaled the smells of fresh meats and cheeses with a smile. “Why didn’t you open up this deli years ago? Come to think of it why did you live out of town for so long? You could have been making a fortune with this place all along.”

  Clara tensed up visibly as she tried to put the wrapped sandwiches into brown paper bags. “I couldn’t have lived in town before now,” was all she said as she put the sandwiches in a bag.

  Darcy took the food and decided to drop the subject. Clara obviously had her reasons and just as obviously didn’t want to talk about them. For now, Darcy had enough problems of her own to deal with. She paid for the sandwiches and with a last smile at Clara left the deli. She headed for the police station to talk to Jon about what she had learned in Millie’s journal.

  ***

  The desk sergeant buzzed Darcy through to the office. As she entered she could see Jon working at his desk. She stood just inside the doorway and took a moment to take him in. He looked so serious as he worked on the paperwork in front of him. When he finally looked up, his smile lit the corners of his beautiful eyes.

  She walked over to his desk as he stood up to kiss her on her cheek. “I brought sandwiches,” she said as she held the bag up.

  “Fantastic. I’m starving.”

  They sat at his desk and opened the sandwiches. Inbetween bites Darcy told Jon about finding Millie’s journal, overlooking how it had been Millie who showed it to her.

  “It actually clears up a lot of our questions. We’re not related, first of all, but Millie was a close friend of Angelica. She was almost like a daughter to Millie, from what I can gather. Sarah wouldn’t remember it now, all these years later, but Millie and her mother were practically inseparable.” She took another bite of her sandwich and chewed it thoughtfully. Jon finished up his sandwich and scrunched the paper up to toss it in the bin.

  “Okay,” he said. “That’s not really helping us figure out what happened to Angelica, though. Was there anything else of interest in your aunt’s journal?”

  “There sure was.” Her face split into a huge smile. “Millie had abilities like mine. She was able to communicate with the other side. In the journal, Millie said that our power has been passed through the generations and that our family is the oldest one in Misty Hollow.” Darcy had been so excited by this information. It helped to explain why she had such a strong connection with Millie even af
ter her death.

  “Really?” Jon asked her. “She never mentioned it to you?”

  “No, she didn’t, but she always took me under her guidance. She taught me it was all right to be who I am, to experience the things I do. My mother made me feel like a criminal, practically. Millie made me feel like family.” She finished a last corner of her sandwich and then tossed her wrapper after Jon’s. “Who knows? Maybe if she’d lived a little longer she would have told me about her abilities, too.”

  The journal said that apparently Misty Hollow had always been a hotbed for strange occurrences and Millie had been kept just as busy as Darcy was. “The last page of the journal speaks about Millie trying to help Angelica.”

  Jon sat up straighter. “Help her? Help her how?”

  “It doesn’t say,” Darcy said, her disappointment obvious. “Millie knew the reasons and she didn’t see fit to write them down.”

  With a sigh Jon stood up and offered her his hand. “So the search continues. Look, I’ll dig around into what was going on in the town back then. Maybe there’s an answer in there somewhere.” Darcy took his hand and stood up. He kissed her quickly. “Thanks for the sandwich.”

  “No problem.” She looked at the clock that hung on the wall over the door. “I should get back to work.”

  Jon grabbed her hand, though, and pulled her back towards him. “Not yet. You surprised me with lunch. Now I have a surprise for you. It’s out back. Come on.” He tugged on her hand and dragged her out the back of the police station.

  At the door he stopped and said to her, “Close your eyes.”

  “Do I have to?” He nodded and with a grin she let her eyes slide shut. She heard the squeak of the door as he opened it and then he guided her through. She felt the cool air caress her face as he positioned her just so.

  “Okay, you can look now.”