“No, don’t worry. Lots of places serve lobster rolls, and they’re already cleaned by then.”
“Okay. Not bad.”
After they’d eaten, they resumed their stroll. The place was such a mixed bag: high-end art galleries and stores selling nice silver jewelry jostling against comic book stores and places offering tacky tee shirts. And the water was around them, only feet away.
“Why’s it called Provincetown?” Ellie asked suddenly.
Abby was caught off guard. “Uh, I don’t know? It wasn’t in the beginning, because there were Indians here long before any English settlers arrived. I think the whole place was called Cape Cod for a while, but it wasn’t until after Plymouth Colony and the Massachusetts Bay Colony joined up that it was given a separate name. And that is just about all I know.”
“Okay. But there’s no province here, right? Or a guy named John Province or King Province of England or something?”
“Nope,” Abby said, laughing. “I think I can safely say that. You ready for saltwater taffy yet?”
“Sure. Why is it called that?”
Abby felt on safer ground explaining the history of the candy. “I’ll tell you what I know, but I’m not really a walking encyclopedia.”
“That’s okay—I can look it up online.”
“No, no, I’ll be happy to tell you. First thing you need to know is that there’s not salt water involved in it.”
“Then why do they call it saltwater taffy?” Ellie asked reasonably.
“Well, that’s not real clear. It first became popular in Atlantic City, in New Jersey. Then some guy got a trademark for ‘saltwater taffy’ and tried to make other people pay him for it, but the government didn’t like that so they eliminated the patent. Taffy just means it’s stretchy, and it’s stretchy because it has corn syrup and glycerin in it to keep it soft. You have to pull it to get air into it. Would you believe people used to do it at home?”
“Sounds messy,” Ellie commented.
“Probably. So then they made a long skinny rope and cut it into small pieces and wrapped up the pieces individually, or they’d all stick together. And if we’re very lucky, we’ll see them doing it at the shop we’re going to.”
The store that Abby remembered was on the main street, on a corner, which gave it banks of windows on two sides. Since it was still prime tourist season, there was a man inside working at a machine, which appeared to be doing the pulling of the taffy. For a while Abby and Ellie stood outside watching the man work quickly and efficiently. Finally Abby said, “Let’s get some to take back for Ned. For your mom and dad too, if you want.”
“Can I pick which colors?” Ellie asked, pointing to the staggering array of choices inside the store.
“Of course you can.”
They spent a happy half hour trying to choose and ended up filling two one-pound boxes with an assortment. After paying, they walked slowly back to where Abby had parked. Ellie fell asleep on the ride back to West Falmouth, worn out from sun and candy and walking and seeing so much. Abby wished she could pull over and take a nap too, but she was the grown-up here. They’d had a good day, just like two normal people who didn’t see ghosts. As she drove, Abby wondered idly just how many of her ancestors she was likely to run into throughout Massachusetts. From what little research she had done, it was clear that her families, up the tree, had landed and then spread widely across the state of Massachusetts, with a few excursions into neighboring states, so an encounter could happen anywhere, in theory. But there was one apparent restriction: those ancestors she could see had to be in a place and under great stress to leave a mark that she could perceive. Certainly fleeing a pack of angry Indians shooting arrows at you would be stressful, but unless you stopped to face your pursuers and clung to a tree while they filled you with arrows, you wouldn’t leave a mark. Abby considered whether that tree would have absorbed anything, and then if the tree had been cut down and the wood used . . . She shook herself. She didn’t need to go that far to find those ancestors. It had been bad enough in Salem, where the anxiety level across the town had been extraordinary when her ancestors lived there centuries before. If she walked the streets of Plymouth, would she find crowds of worried ancestors? They’d certainly had some hard times when they first arrived. It seemed absurd, but there wasn’t much she had been able to rule out so far.
How could she help Ellie deal with this? She herself had been lucky as a child, growing up in New Jersey, since apparently none of her ancestors had lived (or died or suffered) where she had grown up. Of course, that hadn’t prepared her at all to run into them when she moved to Massachusetts. There was no one to blame, since her mother didn’t possess this ability and so couldn’t have warned her. Ellie was here, and there were plenty of family ties for her. But she was still a child, which meant she was open to a lot of experiences and impressions that people generally filtered out as they got older. And what would happen when she reached puberty? Better or worse?
These thoughts kept her occupied—and awake—all the way back to Falmouth. She was relieved when she pulled up behind “their” house and parked. When the car stopped moving, Ellie roused herself. “Are we there?” she said sleepily.
“Yes, we are. You had a good sleep. You hungry yet, or would you rather take a walk?”
“Let’s walk. You think there’s a path to the beach?”
“Maybe, but I don’t know how far it is. But that’s okay—if we don’t find it in a couple of minutes, we’ll just turn around and come back. Deal?”
“Deal.”
Ellie set off at a good pace, and Abby marveled at Ellie’s energy; give her a short nap and she was off again like a wind-up toy. Not that Abby felt old—or only when around children. There was what looked like an informal path, but either the beach was farther than they’d hoped or the path didn’t lead anywhere. “Ellie?” Abby called out to her, since she’d forged ahead. “Let’s save this for another day, okay?”
Ellie turned to look at her, then trudged more slowly back. “Okay. Tomorrow?”
“Let’s see what the weather looks like. What do you feel like eating for dinner?”
“Not lobster!” Ellie said, grinning.
They turned around and went back the way they had come, this time looking more carefully at the houses along the way. Most of them looked like they dated from around 1900, or not much earlier. Funny to think of this prime piece of real estate being no more than a windswept spit of land a century before. Still, most of the houses were not pretentious, although a couple were—or had once been—kind of over the top. Fancy gingerbread probably wouldn’t stand up too well to the winds and salt spray here, which made the houses seem plainer, less fanciful.
It was still too early to cook when they reached their cottage. Abby poured drinks, and they went out to sit on the porch to admire the view. Ellie got bored with that quickly and went down to the bulkhead to peer into the water. “I see a crab!” she called out, excited. “It’s swimming sideways!”
“That’s what they do, I think. You want to catch one?”
“For a pet?”
“No, for dinner.”
Ellie shook her head vigorously.
Abby relaxed into her chair. There was something about the weather that felt different. The light was still kind of—she struggled for a word—diluted, like there was a lot of moisture in the air. Or maybe there were very thin clouds very high up that signaled the leading edge of the storm. She jumped up to retrieve her cell phone, where she had loaded a weather app, and checked what was going to happen. She read through the local forecast without learning much she didn’t already know. She would describe the entries for the next few days as cautiously pessimistic. Yes, there would be rain—that much was clear. There would be winds, and they might be strong. Or not. There was a small chance of coastal flooding, but not everywhere. Abby had no idea whether her current location was prone to flooding.
She checked for messages and found that Ned had texted briefly
. “Storm getting stronger.” That was all—no help. Was stronger a problem?
Suddenly she remembered the binder she had found earlier, with all the firsthand local reports of the Hurricane of 1938, which was still one of the benchmarks for New England storms. Would it scare Ellie to read through it? Heck, would it scare her? She decided to stroll around the perimeter of the house, just to see what was what. No nearby trees to fall on the house: that was good. There were in fact wooden shutters for the windows, and they looked original—which meant they were over a century old. How well would they stand up to a storm? On closer inspection, Abby determined that they had been well maintained, but they were still old. If worse came to worst, it would probably be better to close them than not, because closed they might provide some protection, but open they might fly away and bash somebody else’s property.
Ned hadn’t come out and said that he wanted them to head home before the storm. He’d left it up to her. The weather service was not crying “disaster!” For now she was content to stay put and wait and see. Which, one could argue, might make it too late to change plans. Did she really want Ned to call her and demand that she leave immediately? He was not the kind of man who would do that—he trusted her intelligence and judgment. But she had pitifully little experience with major storms. What to do?
Make dinner. That she could handle. “Ellie, you want to help me cook?”
Ellie can scampering back. “Okay. I saw another crab. The water’s not real deep right there.”
“Depends on the tide, I guess. Do you know about tides?”
“Some. The tide kind of follows the moon, right?”
That discussion carried them through the making and eating of a simple dinner of grilled sausages (Abby’s compromise to Ellie’s suggestion of hot dogs), fresh corn, and local lettuce. When they were clearing the table, Abby asked, “Do you remember any big storms, Ellie?”
“Like the snow last year?”
“Kind of, although winter storms and summer storms aren’t exactly the same. What do you remember?”
“Mostly it kept snowing and snowing, and it was so cold that the wind blew it all around, so every time Daddy shoveled, the path got covered up again. It went on for a long time.”
“That it did. Anyway, I was asking because we might be getting a big storm here, and I’m trying to decide if it’s safe to stay in this house or if it might be smarter if we left before it started.”
“This is an old house, right?” Ellie asked.
“It is, probably over a hundred years old. Why?”
“Then it must have been through plenty of storms and it seems to be in pretty good shape.”
“You’re right. In fact, it came through the biggest storm of the last century pretty well, I think.”
“Do you remember that one?” Ellie asked.
Abby laughed. “No, I’d have to be ancient. That one took place in 1938, long before I was born. There’s a book of newspaper articles about it in the living room, that somebody collected. We could look at that—if you promise it won’t scare you.”
Ellie looked out the window. “Doesn’t look like there’s a storm, does it?”
“No, it’s still far away, but it’s big and it can move fast. Depends on a lot of things.”
“Can we wait until morning before we decide?” Ellie asked.
“I think that’s okay. I’ll talk to Ned and see what he thinks.”
“Okay. Can I see that book?”
“Fine—you can look at that, and I’ll talk to Ned.”
They adjourned to the living room, and Abby located the old binder that she had set on the dining room table earlier and handed it to Ellie, who sat down on a faded couch and started leafing through it. Abby took her phone out to the porch. The sun was setting, and the sky looked kind of bleached out. The sun was not red, anyway. What was the old saying? “Red sky at night, sailors’ delight. Red sky at morning, sailors take warning.” She hit Ned’s number.
“Hey, there,” he answered quickly. “How’re you holding up?”
“We’re fine. We spent the day looking at a lighthouse and a nice empty beach and Provincetown. I made Ellie taste a bite of lobster, and we watched saltwater taffy being made. Think I’ve warped her for life?” Abby joked.
“I doubt it. Listen, about the weather . . .”
“What?” Abby said.
“It looks like it’s heading out to sea, but you’re pretty exposed there. Are you comfortable with that?”
“Ned, I’ve never known you to worry like this. I’m not playing ostrich here, you know. From the weather reports I’ve just looked at, all we’ll get is wet, with some wind. This house is sturdy and well maintained. We’ve got real shutters, not just those glue-on plastic ones—I checked. We can close those. We’ve got flashlights and batteries if the power goes out. It’s just a storm. Oh, and Ellie and I are going to look at the album about the last big hurricane, which was truly awful. That should make this weather look like a little sprinkle. So could you maybe back off?”
Ned sighed but didn’t argue. “All right. I’ll try to get away Friday if I can. Saturday definitely. Call me if you’ve got trouble.”
“I will.” Abby refrained from saying that if they got into trouble on the Cape, there was no way Ned could get to them. But the thought that he wanted to was comforting. “By the way, you might want to nail down a few bits on our house before you leave. I wouldn’t want anybody to get whacked by a piece of flying gingerbread.”
“Oh. Right. If I have time. Love you!”
Abby signed off in a pensive mood, trying to figure out why Ned’s anxiety level was so high. Normally he was fairly laid-back. Of course, he’d been working hard lately, so maybe he was more tired than usual. And now Ellie was here on the Cape, and if anything happened to her—not that that was likely—then he’d take the blame. So he was being cautious, right? Over-protective? Was there really anything worth worrying about?
Then Ellie called out, “Hey, come see this!”
Chapter 8
The yellowed clippings in the old album and the grainy images they contained seemed somehow unreal, like they’d been fabricated. The descriptions of the Great New England Hurricane were mind-boggling. Unlike a lot of storms, this one hadn’t lost strength when it made landfall, but kept right on going, with sustained hurricane-force winds. The storm surge had averaged fourteen to eighteen feet, and on parts of Cape Cod the tides had reached as much as twenty-five feet. Areas of Falmouth had been under up to eight feet of water. Some areas of the state had received as much as six inches of rain, which of course had resulted in a lot of flooding. Nearly nine thousand homes had been destroyed, and almost twice as many damaged. The fishing fleets of southern New England were all but wiped out. At least five hundred people had died; some estimates put it closer to eight hundred.
Abby kept shaking her head in disbelief. One of the worst aspects of it all was that at least one member of the then United States Weather Bureau had seen what was coming and tried to warn people, but he had been overruled by older and wiser heads. It was as though the official forecasters couldn’t even find the storm or estimate its size. Surely things were better now? There were all sorts of tracking systems and satellites. It couldn’t happen again. Could it?
Abby checked the weather forecast on her phone again. Still no sense of urgency, but it seemed to her that the estimates of wind speed and rainfall accumulation had both increased. Dusk had fallen. It was probably too late to go knocking on the neighbors’ doors and asking what their opinion of the coming storm was. If they were renters, they probably didn’t know any more than she did. Did her “woo-woo” powers predict weather? Abby stilled for a moment to see if she could sense anything, then laughed: no. Ridiculous. She “saw” human experiences, but she couldn’t follow giant weather patterns.
“It’s getting late, Ellie. How about a bath?”
“Do I have to?” Ellie whined, sounding like every other kid Abby had ever babysat for.
“Yes. Look at your feet—they’re gray.”
“All right, I guess,” Ellie grumbled. She followed Abby up the stairs, where they experimented with the vintage bathtub until they could make the spigots produce hot water. The bathroom, like the rest of the house, was spotlessly clean, and well supplied with fluffy bath towels, soap and a variety of bubble baths, which Ellie seized on quickly. It didn’t take long to fill the tub, with more bubbles than water. Ellie was unself-conscious about shucking off her clothes and climbing in, and Abby kept an eye on her, only to make sure she didn’t slip. She wondered idly if Leslie had packed enough clothes for a week or more, or if she’d have to find a way to do laundry. Maybe someone had hidden a tidy stackable washer/dryer in the house somewhere? There was no basement, since they were so close to sea level, but there were probably closets she hadn’t explored yet.
Finally Ellie, clad in an oversized tee shirt, was tucked into bed with a book. Abby kissed her on the forehead and went back to her own room, where she tried for a while to read. Once again her concentration failed her, so she decided to take a quick shower and go to bed herself. As she passed Ellie’s room, she could see that the light was off.
The wind picked up during the night, loud enough to wake Abby. She lay listening for a while. There was a loose shutter somewhere—she wasn’t sure whether it was on their house or a neighbor’s, but it swung back and forth, hitting the side of whichever house. Abby was startled when Ellie suddenly appeared and slipped into bed beside her. “Scary,” was all she said. Abby didn’t protest; she was glad of the human company, not that the two of them could do any more together than Abby could on her own. Still, having that small warm body next to her, trusting her to keep her safe, was oddly comforting. Abby listened while Ellie’s breathing slowed as she fell asleep quickly.
Watch for the Dead (Relatively Dead Book 4) Page 6
