Foretold (A Ghost Gifts Novel Book 2)

by Laura Spinella

  “I don’t get it,” Yvette said. “How do those people connect to Paul Revere?”

  “Anthony Revere.” Aubrey touched one of the photos. “From Swampscott, Mass.”

  “Copy that.” Piper had been standing near the edge of the fireplace. She motioned toward the photos. “They’re all descendants of the famed midnight rider and Revolutionary War hero.”

  “Huh,” Levi said. “If I recall my history, Revere had two wives and sixteen children. I’d imagine he has a good many descendants.”

  “About a dozen of whom were in town at a reunion,” Piper added.

  “Okay . . .” Aubrey ran her fingers through her hair. “That makes the historic Mr. Revere’s appearance more understandable. Although it hardly explains his ability to supply me with a forewarning about future events.” Her gaze darted between the random photos. “Go back to my father, Charley. You asked if I thought our gifts . . . yours, mine, my father’s, they all work differently. But what does today have to do with—”

  “Prognostication. That was my Peter’s gift. From what you’ve said, it appears your gift has taken on certain aspects of his. Until now, your gift has always been about spirits seeking you out to bring closure, messages. Or it has been with rare exception.”

  Absently, Aubrey drew her hand over her pockmarked arm—the result of a less positive ethereal meeting.

  “It’s different for all of us,” Charley said. “When it comes to my great-grandson . . .”

  Levi and Aubrey exchanged a look.

  “As intense as young Peter’s gift appears, he’s still figuring it out, isn’t he?”

  “We’re not going down that road,” Levi said. “But yes. Pete’s gift is different. Part of it centers on his dreams—like Charley. Yet it’s far more intense. But like I said . . .”

  Aubrey bristled at his stern tone. Their movements seesawed as she picked up the tequila shot and he placed an empty Scotch glass on the coffee table.

  “Charley,” Levi pushed on. “Tell us more about how you interpret what happened today. How Aubrey’s gift suddenly seems like her father’s.”

  “It’s alike,” Piper said, moving closer to the group. “Today proves that to you, doesn’t it, Mrs. Bodette?”

  “My granddaughter tells me you’re a clever girl.” Piper half smiled, clearly absorbing the word “girl.” “And a correct one at that.”

  Aubrey was leery of her conclusion. Most memories of her father were not warm recollections but impressions of a man most people had labeled insane.

  Yvette wrapped her arms around herself; Aubrey saw goose bumps rise. “I only met your father a couple of times,” she said. “I’d just joined the troupe. He and your mother, they brought you to visit Charlotte—you were just a baby. Peter, he was such a nice man. But . . .”

  Aubrey tilted her head; conversations about Peter Ellis were rare.

  “Have you ever met anyone who wore worry like a layer of skin? That was Peter. Darkness was never more than a flicker away.”

  The concern on Charley’s face deepened. “Yvette is on point, Aubrey. I’ve never shared the exact nature of your father’s gift because . . . because navigating your own gift was burden enough.” Charley made a cumbersome lean toward her granddaughter. “Until your grave forewarning from Mr. Revere, the need to be specific about Peter’s gift didn’t strike me as necessary.”

  Aubrey recalled tiny moments from their life in Greece. It was her mother’s homeland, and where she’d taken her husband and daughter to live when Aubrey was just a toddler. The move had been her mother’s desperate attempt to ease the nightmare of her father’s psychic gift. A few memories were crisp: Aubrey’s hand in her father’s, the two of them walking along rural roads, passing by goat herders and a distant mountain village. Lush scenery gave way to visceral memories: her mother’s fears, her father’s sad, haunted life. The imagery was beautiful, but Peter Ellis’s pain was most vivid in Aubrey’s mind, the way his gift had tortured and dominated. “Seems like maybe we’ve arrived at necessary, Charley. Wouldn’t you say?”

  Charley nodded stiffly. “The spirits who visited your father, they visited for the sake of prognostication. And I’m afraid, to a large extent, those forewarnings were not good news.” Aubrey traded a glance with Levi. “You know how you sometimes draw or write things that are guided by a hand other than your own?”

  Aubrey hummed under her breath; Piper answered. “Like the Lily North case. You drew the Edsel . . . well, an old-fashioned car. Then you asked for a permanent marker.”

  “I kept underlining the car I drew until I put a hole right through the paper.”

  “The trapdoor beneath the car,” Levi said. “It’s how Edith Pope finally indicated the girl’s location.”

  “Score one for the psychics and good guys,” Piper said. “Before Aubrey intervened, we tore that car apart, thinking it was the key.”

  Aubrey turned back to her grandmother. “Charley, tell me more about my father’s gift.”

  “That’s quite a long story. Much of it is stored in a leather-bound—”

  “Letter box.” It was just enough to prompt memories of a five-year-old Aubrey. “I remember seeing it at the top of their bedroom closet. There were photo albums my mother kept up there. She’d take the albums down every so often, look through them.” She thought for a moment longer. “But never the box; she never took it off the shelf.”

  “I imagine Ena kept her distance from the letter box. I’m sure your mother associated much of their misery with it, or, more to the point, its contents.”

  “Why? It was just a box.” Aubrey focused on the floor. “It was brown, leather covered, with a piece of strapping tied around it. Or am I imagining that?”

  “No, your recollection is quite right,” Charley said. “You’re also correct about it being a letter box. You’d be lucky to find one on those Internet sites nowadays, letter writing being such a lost art. It belonged to Oscar, my second and fourth husband. He was always mysterious about its origins. But he would never part with it. Perhaps it belonged to his family.”

  “What, um . . . what do you suppose his family kept in the box?” Piper’s tone was poised at DEFCON 1.

  “Why, letters, I imagine.” As Charley answered, Piper lowered her radar, and Aubrey hid a sliver of a smile. “Back then, years ago, missives were customary correspondence, as were letter boxes to store them. I gave the box to Peter when he was quite young.” Her wrinkled brow wove tighter. “I’m not sure why, but I recall an incredible urge for him to have it. It wasn’t until then that I knew to worry.”

  “Charley.” Levi shimmied forward in his seat. “What did Peter use the letter box for?”

  “Ghost gifts.” She looked from Levi to Aubrey. “From the time he was fifteen or so, that’s where he kept them.”

  “But my father’s ghost gifts, they weren’t about closure.” Aubrey’s lungs burned; she thought they’d burst from the ambivalent breath she held. It wasn’t quite like discovering you possessed a horrid genetic disease. On the other hand, it also wasn’t like learning you’d inherited a stunning gift, like the ability to paint or play the violin.

  “So Peter’s ghost gifts and this letter box,” Piper said. “It sounds like the equivalent of parents learning what their kids keep on their laptops nowadays.”

  “Perhaps, if not for a few distinct differences,” Charley said. “My son had no choice about the messages he kept inside. He couldn’t unplug them or erase history before it happened. Peter couldn’t stop the ghost gifts from bombarding his life, knowing of horrific twists of fate in advance. Nor did he possess any ability to prevent them. The burden that came with his ghost gifts was life altering. And now, with what happened today, receiving such a spectral foretelling . . .” Charley drew a tremulous breath and looked into her granddaughter’s eyes. “It seems to me, my dear, that burden has become yours.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  An hour passed, really a lifetime for Aubrey—her father’s life. Aubrey
wanted details, and Charley complied, telling ghost stories, the most literal kind. Peter Ellis had been compelled to write things down, sometimes draw them—the visiting specter haunting him until he submitted. Many messages were tragic, events like a devastating earthquake in Turkey, decades ago, or the seemingly unconnected names of several dead girls from Cape Cod. This disturbing bit of information piqued both Piper’s and Levi’s attention. Levi noted, “I know that story from the Hartford Standard Speaker archives. My mentor at the paper was the lead reporter. It was the 1960s. The Costa serial murders terrified the region. The guy was convicted of three of the killings and suspected of four more.”

  Charley offered a tiny nod of agreement. She went on, explaining that some predictions were more specific than others. “For instance, the Cape Cod murders—the victims were names Peter scribbled on heart-shaped pieces of paper. He only tied it all together during our New England stops the following summer. Peter read about the murders in the newspaper. He was horrified when he saw that the names matched those he’d written down.”

  Levi shifted in his seat. “Jesus . . . heart-shaped papers . . .”

  “Why is that significant?” Yvette asked.

  A swallow rolled through Levi’s throat. “Costa—he removed the heart of each victim. Crime theorists compared his methods to Jack the Ripper.”

  “And so you begin to see my Peter’s many dilemmas and demons.” Reverently, Charley closed her eyes.

  “Lord help him . . . ,” Piper said. “If he’d gone to the police or press with that information . . .”

  “Precisely.” Charley opened her eyes, looking soberly at the group. “Peter would have appeared strongly suspect, if not worse.” She pressed her swollen, fisted hands to her mouth. “I don’t think it was my son’s ghostly encounters that wreaked havoc with his mind. It was more the burden of doom. The Cape Cod murders were particularly hard on him. I believe that event ignited his journey toward madness, the inability to cope.

  “And with each passing year, Peter’s ghost gifts became more pronounced. At first he tried to navigate the future. For instance, before the earthquake in Turkey, Peter went to the authorities. He was clever enough to approach the prediction from a pseudo-geological standpoint, claiming he’d been doing some seismic testing in the mountains. All the Turkish government did was hand him over to the American embassy. They promptly escorted him to the border.”

  “But surely,” Aubrey said, “at some point he could have proven an overall pattern about his predictions.”

  “Perhaps. If the various messages had been consistent and specific. The majority were too vague. They alerted Peter to tragedy but only provided enough information to label him a fool or . . .”

  “Madman.” Piper said it absently, focused on nothing. She blinked at the faces staring into hers. “Apologies. I didn’t mean to say that out loud. But being on this side of the law, I can see it. It’s what I’d say right now if I hadn’t witnessed Aubrey’s hand in things like Lily North’s rescue.”

  Charley’s cloudy gaze met Piper’s. “I understand your position more than I care to. It broke my heart for Peter, to see his life unravel so bizarrely.” She looked at her granddaughter. “But your friend is correct, Aubrey. Madness. It’s how nearly everyone viewed your father. In the end, it might have been the truth.”

  “Imagine,” Levi said, “his point of view. No one will listen, no one believes you. Charley, have you ever considered the endgame, why Peter’s gift existed?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “I was thinking, if Aubrey’s gift is to bring closure, communicate between the dead and living, maybe her father had the same obligation. Maybe because he couldn’t do that, it exacerbated his burden.”

  “That’s an interesting assertion. And I’ve had more than a few decades to ponder the possibilities.”

  “Charley,” Aubrey said, “were my father’s messages all tragic?”

  “Actually, no. A good number were of a more frivolous nature—horse races, a variety of sporting events.” Charley laughed, surprising her audience. “I always thought of those messages as recompense, not that Peter pursued any of them.”

  “Because?” Piper asked.

  “Probably because he was too troubled to consider it. Years ago, Oscar and Truman,” she said, referring to two of her three late husbands. “Then Carmine. We tried to interpret the messages, put order to them. Some we did; many appeared to be gibberish. But you should know, among the decipherable predictions, all came to pass—even those dated after Peter’s death.”

  “After his death?” Levi said. “The predictions exceeded his life span?”

  “By quite a bit.” Charley’s head bobbed. “Inside the letter box, on bits of red paper, the numbers nine and eleven appear over and over—at least a dozen times. I remember Aubrey’s mother calling me, crying into the phone. Apparently, whatever entity compelled Peter to notate those numbers, he found it particularly disturbing.”

  “Jesus,” Piper gulped. “I guess we can all see why.”

  Levi poked at his glasses, inching to the edge of his chair. “The 9/11 terrorist attacks, that happened years—”

  “After my father died,” Aubrey said, finishing his thought.

  Charley shifted her stiff shoulders. “Another precarious component of my son’s gift. But until today, what did it matter? Good predictions or bad, I know what they cost Peter. After he and your mother died,” Charley said to Aubrey, “I considered burning the box.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because the letter box and messages were such an integral part of the son I’d already lost. Because I feared that destroying it would somehow be a bigger mistake than keeping it.”

  Aubrey wished Charley had burned the letter box. It might make what was happening a little less real. She rose from the sofa, turning the information over in her head: Was this fateful family history repeating? Her own future, was it destined to be assaulted with tragic insights, events she had little hope of preventing?

  Maybe today, at the Prudential Tower, she’d gotten lucky. Aubrey looked out the front windows before glancing over her shoulder. Luck? She wanted to laugh. Levi had sunk into the leather recliner, where he ran his hand over a five-o’clock shadow and a brooding expression. She returned to the dark street view. She thought of Pete and the past year, the serious friction that had turned her relationship with Levi into something unrecognizable. Add another layer, she thought, to the things wedging their way in between herself and the man in her living room.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Everyone filed out, and Aubrey shut the door, standing with her back to it. That left Levi alone near the fireplace. She was marginally surprised he hadn’t left with the others. His gaze shifted between her and a small sea of framed mantel photos. Over the years, the collection had grown. She knew Levi had been touched when Aubrey included the photo of his brother and himself posed in front of a British naval plane; he’d grumbled a bit when she insisted pictures of his parents be added to the collection. Right now, he seemed focused on photos of their son—a boy who was the mirror image of Levi, except for his eyes. Pete’s eyes were all Aubrey’s, her father’s, and her grandmother’s. Given the moment, it seemed like a wildly telling Ellis family feature. Levi shook his head. “Just I when I thought there couldn’t possibly be anything more to navigate.”

  “Pete doesn’t have to know anything about this.”

  He faced her. “Doesn’t he? Your grandmother . . .” He pointed at the door. “She just rolled in here and delivered a huge chunk of your father’s past that she kept from you. It might have been good to know going into . . . I don’t know . . .” He flailed an arm upward. “Your life—such as it is.”

  “To what point, Levi? So I could add my father’s demons to my list of concerns? I think, given the circumstances, Charley did the best she could. Through no fault of his own—and now with a clearer picture as to why—my father didn’t provide the best examples for
handling afterlife encounters.”

  Levi shoved his hands into his trouser pockets. It was a rare submissive gesture. “I didn’t mean to snap.”

  She understood. It wasn’t the frustration of the day, or what they’d learned about Peter Ellis, but another facet to be factored into the Ellis family gift and what it might mean.

  “You’re right.” His tone was more even. “There’s no reason to tell Pete. In fact, it’d probably be a bad idea.”

  “How is he? I’d like to know.”

  “Coping some days. Dreaming most.” His gaze zeroed in on Aubrey. “Continually confronted by entities unknown.”

  From the time their son was two, maybe three, it was clear that Peter St John had inherited a version of the Ellis family trait. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as clear as eye color or a cleft chin, his gift reading more like a hybrid strand of DNA. “So I take it Pete’s theory about himself isn’t panning out. Removing me from his life doesn’t change who he is.”

  “Not so much. But you know that was never my suggestion. You know I didn’t encourage him to come live with me.”

  “You didn’t discourage him.” Aubrey picked up a toss pillow and did just that, heaving it onto the sofa. “I told you both. My mother took my father to live in the country thinking it would change things. Levi, when will you accept that the afterlife is not influenced by an earthbound address?”

  In rhythmic frustration, he tapped his fist against the mantel. “Every time I think I have a handle on the peculiarities of our life, things tip the other way.”

  “Thank you for the insight.” Aubrey folded her arms. Levi turned, facing her. “I wasn’t sure you still considered it our life.” He reverted to the mantel view, Aubrey absorbing the conflicted vibe pulsing off him.

  “To answer your question about Pete, he’s doing okay. There’s nothing new . . . nothing significant to report.”

  “Come on, Levi. He’s my son too!”