“It reminds you of something?”
“Yeah. Something like a cattle-prod poke at the past.” He was unable to connect it to more, and despite the unnerving ambiance, Pete remained present in the barn with Grace. “I’ve seen this truck before.”
“This truck?” she said as if there might be an alternative. She pointed to the second canvas, which still covered most of the vehicle.
Pete reapproached and pressed his hands to the canvas, closing his eyes. “I can prove it.”
He turned his back to the truck. “You look.” He pulled the second canvas back like a curtain, revealing more of the truck’s side. Dust rose up around him, a puff of magician magic. “On the door. It says ‘Oscar Bodette’s Traveling Extravaganza.’ Doesn’t it?”
Grace stepped back. Her expression was confirmation, and he could see her struggle for logical explanations. “Well, wait. Didn’t you tell me a story or two about your great-grandmother and her carnival life?” She pointed at the truck’s door, which Pete still didn’t look at. “Is it possible you saw all this as a little kid and you’re just recalling . . .”
He shook his head. “My everyday childhood, that’s crystal clear. I’ve never been here, to East Marion or this house. The writing is yellow, isn’t it? Yellow cursive outlined in red.”
Grace’s jaw slacked. Unusual, he thought, for her to be speechless. Pete finally allowed himself visual confirmation. She trailed her fingertips over the words he’d described, bending and squinting to make out the more faded embellishment. The red was more vivid in Pete’s mind. Here it was mostly chipped away.
Pete nodded, affirming things he knew. The vintage truck had a flatbed frame, raised metal sides, and an arched, open metal covering. While it was old, the truck would have been considered a relic by the 1940s. Definitely pre–World War II.
“Oscar Bodette.” Grace drew her fingers away from the faded but legible paint. “Why is that name vaguely familiar?”
“He was my great-grandmother’s second husband and also her fourth, if I have the story right.” Grace blinked at him. “Oscar Bodette founded the carnival troupe—or at least what would become the Heinz-Bodette troupe.” Pete drew in musty air and exhaled an unsteady breath. “This ‘Traveling Extravaganza’ . . .” He gestured vaguely. “It must have come before the carnival of my mother and great-grandmother’s era. That’s the part of the story I know, the carnival where my mother grew up, Charley’s history. It’s where you heard the name Oscar Bodette.”
“Okay, but as far as I know, you’ve never associated your other life with facts from this one. Your mother’s, or even your great-grandmother’s past.” In the sticky air of the barn, Grace rubbed her hands over her folded arms. “What is it you think we’ve found, Pete?”
“You’re right. I never connected my own family history to my past life. I’ve never even considered it. But with the things inside the house, this truck—” He stared at the vehicle as if it might hold the secrets to the universe. Well, at least his universe.
“The saddle,” Grace said. “O.B. It belonged to Oscar Bodette.”
“No, Grace. The saddle belonged to me.”
“Pete, be reasonable. You can’t deny the initials branded into that leather. Maybe you were only projecting about the saddle belonging to you.”
“The saddle was mine!” His words were fitful, like a child grabbing for the thing he wanted. Pete raked his hand through his hair. “Or it belonged to whoever I was.” He realized how he sounded. Surreal, wobbling on a sliver of rationality. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap.”
She waved him off and turned around the dank space. The truck looked to be the barn’s single clue.
“I’m more confused than when we got here—or more than usual,” Pete said. “For me, that’s saying something.”
“Okay. Well, I don’t think staring at an old truck is going to help. Why don’t we go back inside the house, take one more look around, and then check into the motel?” Grace pulled her phone from her pocket, poking at the device. “It’s only a few miles from here. Oceanfront,” she said. “It should be nice. Maybe the sea air will help, a walk on the beach.”
But Pete wasn’t listening, his head crowded with voices and visions that didn’t connect to Grace. They didn’t connect to the time in which he stood. He moved away from her and closer to the truck. A myriad of vocal rumblings persisted, but he couldn’t single any one out. It was more like the noise you might hear in a packed open-air space. The beach. He pictured a crowded beach. Instinctively, Pete’s fingers locked around the metal door handle, and a wave of yesteryear assaulted him. His heart pounded like the muscle wanted to leap from his chest and into another being, another time. The physical lure was wildly intense and felt more real than the ground beneath his feet. For a moment, for the first time in Pete’s life, there felt more accessible than here.
Grace’s voice snapped him back. “Pete!”
He turned abruptly but didn’t let go of the truck’s door handle. “What?” He blinked at her.
“Did you hear me?”
He shook his head. Sweat moved in tributaries down his spine, across his back. He glanced at his dirty, damp hand and released the handle. The frustrated look on Grace’s face grounded him.
“I said, someone else just pulled up the driveway.”
The confluence of events exasperated him—those in his head and the ones playing out in front of him. Regardless, Pete followed obediently as Grace strode toward the house. But as he walked, he kept glancing over his shoulder. It was the first time Pete ever wanted to hurl himself at his other life rather than run from it. He tried to think like Levi, assemble a rational perspective and align facts. It all kept slipping from his grasp. With a last look back, Pete tripped over a fallen branch, and staying on his feet became the objective.
It didn’t last long.
Oscar Bodette? What the fuck did he have to do with Pete’s other life or Esme? The only information he knew was vague stories Charley had told—ones he honestly hadn’t paid much attention to. There was the small anecdote his mother had conveyed, Charley’s scorecard of marriages. But that was recent history compared to Pete’s past life. A man in his eighties. Aubrey had said the second time Charley married Oscar, he was in his eighties. That alone was decades ago. Pete did the rough math, guessing the carnie mogul was around during the World War I era.
Instead of looking over his shoulder, he turned in a full circle. It was more than he could get his head around—the idea that Esme might connect to the physical world in which he now stood. Yet as he and Grace closed in on the bungalow, it seemed a given. Pete’s past life and this one had found a point of convergence.
CHAPTER
EIGHT
At the edge of the driveway, Pete stopped moving and rubbed dirty fingers across his eyes. The disturbances radiating from the barn faded, though his heart continued to pound. He found himself planted firmly in the present day—a place where, ordinarily, a lackadaisical state of mind could get him killed. But it was Pete’s lifelong fears that charged back in, and he wanted nothing more than to get away from Rabbit Lane and rush into the nearest war zone.
A beat-up compact car thwarted his escape. He stared at the vehicle, which elicited no more vibe than a pain-in-the-ass roadblock. The door to the house was ajar and an obvious shuffling about could be heard. “This is probably more action than that house has seen in forty years,” Pete said, walking past Grace, who was now the more hesitant of the two.
Inside the house, near one of the many bookcases, a girl was crouched on the floor. She was scavenging through shelves as if foraging for food. Possessed or possessions? It appeared to be a toss-up as to which thing drove her. She looked up, glancing about like this was a hotel lobby, Pete and Grace being guests invading her claimed space. “Oh. Hi.” She crouched into a tighter ball and examined a low shelf.
“Hi?” Pete said. “Uh, what are you doing?”
“Looking for a photo album.”
Pete thumbed over his shoulder. “There’s a Walgreens about six miles back. They might sell them.”
She rocked back on her heels. The heat of the room, or her hot pursuit, left her face as red as her hair. A thick braid was pulled over one shoulder, wisps of it sticking up and out as if trying to break free. She wore jeans and a white shirt with sleeves that puffed like snowballs. Perspiration trickled down her cleavage, vanishing into the cotton fabric and tiny buttons that trailed the front. Pete was sure it was only the oddity of the sight that made him notice.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
He did a double take, thinking she was calling him out on his mental excuse for staring.
“I don’t want a new photo album. I’m looking for an old one.”
Grace shrugged and whispered, “Sorry. A brick shy falls entirely into your wheelhouse.”
“Thanks,” he muttered. “Um, do you mind telling me who you are, since this is my . . . well, my mother’s house.”
She sprang to her feet, the books gathered in her lap clunking to the floor. “Oh! Oh my God!” Her reaction was so acute it felt as if she’d stabbed him with her exclamation. “You’re Pete.”
Pete couldn’t place it, but he’d heard her say the last part once before. “I am. But I still don’t have a clue who—”
The girl’s pink lips smacked shut, though her hazel gaze wound up and down him. He felt ogled, a curious object she’d unearthed. She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. “You, uh . . . you don’t remember me. Not at all?” Her speech was hybrid, a hint of British intonation, but definitely stateside. It made her even harder to place. “I’m Ailish. Montague.”
When he didn’t react, her awe deflated. She lowered herself back onto the floor, rejoining dust and chaos. His initial impression was runaway teenager—but not quite. She looked slightly older than that. Pete thought of Monte Carlo and the Bay of Kotor, the Great Blue Hole in Belize, exotic locations where he’d earned pit stops and might have run into someone like her. Nope. No gingies with pearl-white skin, a smattering of freckles, jumped to mind.
“Your mother called mine.” Her stare softened, a more timid glance moving between the books and Pete.
His brain slingshot to Surrey and some girl he might have insulted or ditched in the eleventh grade. The odds were good enough. He glanced at Grace. No. The girl he’d hurt, the one destined to carry that acute memory, stood beside him.
“My mother is Nora. Nora Montague.”
The girl. What was her name . . . Ailish? She smiled. Pete reeled, if only internally.
“Dublin. Maybe that much rings a bell?”
Because locations, often bells, drove all of Pete’s memories, he pictured lush, rolling pastures of green, a castle with a bell tower. But he realized he’d never been to Ireland. Then his brain connected the word Dublin to a person. “Oh, right. Zeke Dublin. You’re his daughter.”
“Niece. I’m Zeke’s niece.” Her tone was irritated, as if he should have her family tree memorized. The girl returned to pillaging the bookcase, though her mad hunt had eased. “My uncle didn’t have any children. He never married. He died.” She stood again. She took in the surrounding mess—which she’d managed to make worse—then bull’s-eyed Pete. “He was murdered.”
The claim triggered facts, but they had nothing to do with a homicide. Pete’s most concrete memory of Zeke Dublin was purely spectral. “Right. Your mother . . . your uncle, they traveled with the carnival when my mother was a girl. Zeke Dublin, he—”
“He was in love with your mother. Always. At least that’s the story Mum tells.”
Pete shook his head at her insistent delivery—like how could he be unaware of such a tender memory? In Pete’s mind, only one man fit such a mold. Although he did recall a rough patch between his parents. Pete was twelve or so and strongly resembled his mother in terms of the gifts he possessed. Of course, he was far more like his father when it came to personality: pure stubbornness. Interesting how DNA could be set in bone.
At the time, he and his father had moved out of the house on Homestead Road. It was an unpleasant period, Pete experimenting with control and the depth of his gift. In the end, a physical change of address hadn’t helped much. That was where Zeke Dublin came in.
Zeke was Pete’s first visual manifestation of a specter. He cleared his throat, guessing a mention of that ghostly encounter would not facilitate this conversation. “Right. I remember hearing something like that about your uncle. But it still doesn’t explain what it is you’re doing. The attorney who was here said someone else would be coming by, but—”
“But he didn’t mention me specifically.” She sank back onto the floor. “Maybe your mother told you I’d be coming. Or you just knew.”
“No to both. My mother didn’t say anything about . . .” Pete pulled his phone from his pocket. Several unread texts scrolled past.
Spoke with Nora Montague, Zeke Dublin’s sister. Daughter already in NYC. May come to house to look for photo album. Be nice.
So much for pleasantries. “You came all the way from the city to look for a photo album?”
She bobbed like a cork, treading from one bookcase to the next. “How do you know I came out from the city?”
He held up his phone. “Missed texts.”
She cocked her head at him. “Mums will always catch up with you.”
“Sorry . . . but are you from here or England? I’m hearing—”
“That’s my dad’s influence. He’s a Brit. I spent a good bit of time with my granny. She lives in the UK. North of London.”
Rambling, Pete decided, appeared to be her first language.
“Or the inflection, maybe it’s just a habit of my trade.”
“Your trade?”
“I’m an actress.”
Pete hid a smirk at what sounded like a grandiose claim.
“I can offer up a dozen different dialects on cue. Sometimes that one sticks.” She stood again and books carelessly thudded onto the floor. The girl dipped into a dramatic curtsy, her hand billowing before her in a subject-like gesture, speaking in a fast, full-on upper-crust English accent. “Emerald Ailish Montague, holder of dual citizenship and four odd jobs located in Her Majesty’s former lands, Manhattan to Coney Island.”
The mention of Coney Island slammed into his ears, and Pete breathed deep.
“One does what one must while on a quest for fame, fortune, and expensive dramatic instruction, courtesy of Kimball’s exclusive and renowned studio for thespians, Midtown location.” Pete and Grace traded a look. She continued, slipping into a dialect more befitting Eliza Doolittle. “And if ya blokes won’t let me finish me business, find this bloody picture book, I’ll miss this evenin’s audition, one that Kimball’s fancies as a fine fit for me.” But she paused, her gaze, which seemed devoid of other characters, clinging to Pete. “Four spectacular solo bars in a Hoboken revival of Cats.” And quick as she’d been transformed, the redheaded American actress, possessor of dual citizenship, returned. “I need to find this photo album.”
“Maybe we could help,” Grace said. “What sort of photo album are you looking for?”
“One that belonged to my uncle . . . my mother. Mum said she lost track of it during their carnival days. It’s all she had of her family, her parents. She and my uncle spent some off season time in this house. My mother lives in Nevada, so with me in New York . . .” She looked up at the two of them. “Can you piece the rest together?”
“Yeah. I think I’ve got it,” Pete said. “Your grandparents, did they also travel with the carnival?”
She eyed him, as if again her past should be obvious. “No. My grandparents were murdered too. Apparently it runs in the family.”
Pete wasn’t sure whether or not to believe her—although the moment she acknowledged grandparents, voices seeped into his head. Other sounds followed. The girl continued to stare, like she’d forgotten about the photo album. She’d been fiddling with the elastic at the end of
her braid, and the stretchy tie slipped off. Instead of putting it back on, she pushed it over her hand and onto her wrist.
It was Grace who reacted, murmuring a sympathetic, “That’s awful. I’m so sorry.” Ailish’s sad story also thrust Grace into aid-worker mode. “Really, maybe it’d be faster . . . better, if we helped you look.”
Grace stepped forward and Pete grabbed at her arm. The sound of the grandparents didn’t abate, violent noises connected to their demise. The only positive here was that the specters he heard were linked solidly to Ailish, not the bungalow or him. Gunfire pelted his brain, glimpses of violent deaths. Pete tasted blood. It was a strong contrast to the girl’s quirky demeanor. Clearly, her remark about their deaths hadn’t been a wiseass comment. Pete’s angst increased and the urge to leave clobbered him. “No. We have to go.”
Grace pointed to Ailish, whose fingers had shuffled through the braid, undoing it. It left her hair looking like a foxtail lying over her shoulder. The girl drew a breath like she might say something more, but only bit on her lower lip and returned to her task.
“But shouldn’t we . . . ?” Grace shut up; the look on Pete’s face was enough to override Ailish’s mission or sad tale. “I guess we’re not staying. We, uh . . . we need to check into our hotel.”
“I’ve only come for the photo album. That’s all—apparently.” A gulp rolled through her throat, and Pete got the distinct impression she was lying. “I’ll go as soon as I find it.” She stood, heading across the room to more bookcases and cluttered shelves.
On her way, she hesitated at the saddle. It was as if it had galloped into her path, just as it had Pete’s. She moved her fingers across the coffee-colored object. “Pretty.” She looked at the two of them. “Don’t worry. I won’t steal anything, and I really need to get back to the city. Your mother knows where mine lives.”
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