Defending the Dead (Relatively Dead Mysteries Book 3) (23 page)

“Do a lot of people like to do that?” Ellie asked, looking up at Abby.

“Some do, or this wouldn’t be here. It’s easy to forget how quickly things change, here and everywhere else too. People read books from other centuries, but they have a hard time picturing what the places looked like, or what kind of clothes people wore or what they ate. Of course, in New England we’re lucky, because so much of the old has survived, in the middle of the new. We could go see Plimoth Plantation another day, if you’d like to. That’s where the
Mayflower
landed and they built a village there too, but the re-creation looks about two hundred years earlier than this. Is there something in particular you’d like to see?”

“Can we walk around first? And maybe get something to eat? We don’t have to hurry, do we?”

“Nope, we have all day. We’ll have to leave here about four, but I like your idea.”

They set off, strolling counterclockwise around the green, enjoying the dappled shade and dodging piles of manure left by the oxen or maybe a horse, one of those pulling the coach that rattled by periodically. Abby noted a place that sold food, and then they reached the end of the green, where what would have passed as a mansion stood proudly. The sign in front identified it as the Towne House.

Abby stopped abruptly. No, it couldn’t be—could it? The same Towne family? She bent down to read the plaque in front of the building. The house had been built by one Salem Towne, and had originally stood in Charlton, which Abby didn’t know but assumed wasn’t too far away. But Salem Towne had been born in Oxford. Where Samuel Barton had migrated too, along with various other families—including Townes.

“Abby?” Ellie tugged at her hand. “Are you okay? You look kind of funny.”

Abby pulled herself together. “I’m fine, honey. You want to go into the house?”

Ellie shrugged. “Can we look in the barn? They have oxes, and sheep.”

Abby suppressed a sigh of relief. She didn’t have to wonder if she’d meet any non-corporeal Townes in their own living room. The odds were slim, but she’d rather not, not right now, not with Ellie. “Sure we can.”

They admired the animals for a few minutes, and then they completed the circuit of the green. “You ready to eat now, Ellie?” Abby asked. “I thought we could get some sandwiches and something to drink and sit out and enjoy this nice weather.”

“And cookies?” Ellie asked eagerly. And Abby was happy to see her do something childlike.

“Of course.” They backtracked to the place selling food and bought what they wanted, and then strolled in a different direction, toward the back of the village, where Abby recognized the sawmill and the gristmill, and the water supply that had provided power for both. They found an empty bench and sat down, enjoying the view of the millpond, and dug into their sandwiches.

They’d finished half the meal when Ellie said, without looking at Abby, “Did my mom tell you not to talk about the people I see—the ones in the cemeteries, I mean?”

“Not exactly. Has she talked to you about it?”

“She tried, but she doesn’t get it. She doesn’t see them.”

“I know. That’s not her fault. Some people can, and others can’t. It may be inherited—that means passed down from parents to children. We just don’t know enough about it yet to be sure. Do you want to talk about it?”

Ellie shrugged. “Maybe.”

“You can ask me whatever you like. I won’t lie to you, but I may not be able to answer your question. But I promise I’ll try.”

“Okay. Did you see anybody at that big house back there?”

Oh, crap. Nothing like getting right to the point. “No, but I wasn’t paying attention. Can I ask you something?”

“Okay. What?”

“When you ‘see’ people, what do they look like to you?”

“Normal, pretty much.” Ellie squinched up her eyes and looked out over the millpond. “Well, I can’t see through the other ones, but they’re kind of faint. And they can come and go real fast. Sometimes I can’t see them when I want to, and then they’ll pop up when I’m not looking. Is that what you see?”

“That’s pretty close. Do you see a lot of them, in different places?”

“Not a whole lot together. And I don’t go to a lot of places, just around Littleton and Concord, but I’ve seen different ones in different places.”

“And you know they’re not, well, modern people?”

“Sure. They’re different. Why were you looking funny back at that house?”

“I’ll tell you what I think, but you may not understand it. That house was built by a family whose name was Towne, and they came from somewhere south of here, in a town called Oxford. But before that the family lived in Salem, north of where you and I live now. And some of my ancestors came from that family, and mostly I see my ancestors.”

“Cool!” Ellie seemed impressed.

Ellie seemed to be handling this a lot better than she was, Abby thought. “Ellie, you know you can’t talk about this to everybody, okay? It kind of scares other people.”

“Yeah, like my mom.” Ellie looked disappointed.

“You can tell me, though. Listen, you can do me a favor. When you do see someone, can you write it down? Describe the person, and where and when you saw them? The more information we have, the better we can understand it.”

“Okay, I can do that. Like a ghost diary.”

“Exactly.”

23

Abby and Ellie completed their leisurely tour of Old Sturbridge Village, stopping in at a farmhouse at the farthest point, where Ellie complained about how many flies there were in the kitchen. Abby had to agree: that was another downside of the past that was never mentioned in history books. They arrived back at the Concord Museum just before five, to find Leslie pacing in the parking lot. Abby felt amused and annoyed in equal parts: had Leslie thought she would kidnap Ellie? And go where?

Ellie bounded out of the car, looking rumpled and sunburned and pleased with herself, while Abby emerged more slowly. “Mom, Mom, we went to Sturbridge and saw animals and a sawmill and I got some penny candy at the village store!” Ellie sounded like any other tired happy kid.

Leslie grabbed her daughter in a hug. “Sounds like you had a good time, sweetie. Did you say ‘thank you’ to Abby?”

“Only about six times,” Abby said quickly. “We had fun. She got lunch, but I told her she couldn’t eat all the candy until after dinner.”

“Thanks,” Leslie said, not exactly warmly. “We’d better get home. I’ll call you about next week.” She shepherded Ellie into her car and got in herself, then pulled out of the parking lot without a backward look.

Abby felt deflated. Her time with Ellie had gone well, she thought, and the subject of their shared ability had come up only briefly, and they hadn’t dwelt on it. Leslie would have nothing to complain about there. But from the way Leslie had acted, Abby suspected she still had mixed feelings about letting Ellie see Abby at all. No doubt Leslie would quiz her daughter thoroughly at home before making any future plans. Not that Abby could blame her. They were both feeling their way along.

She drove home and arrived to find Ned sitting on the front steps. “Waiting for me?” she called out as she shut the car door behind her.

He smiled. “Maybe. Or maybe I’m admiring the view? Notice I’m not looking at the house, because then I’ll start thinking about all the things that need to be done, especially now that the weather’s nice.”

“You’ve successfully ignored them this long—why start now?”

“You’ve made me see it with new eyes. How’d it go?”

Abby sat down on the top step next to him. “We should get some nice wicker chairs so we can actually sit out here. As for Ellie, about as well as could be expected. We didn’t poke into difficult topics, just kind of skirted around them.”

“What did you do?”

“Went to Old Sturbridge Village.”

“Interesting choice. Why?”

“Kind of random. I asked Ellie a lot of questions about what she liked to do, and after we’d ruled out mountain climbing and whale watching—hey, don’t laugh! She suggested both of those.”

“With a straight face? That kid has got a sense of humor.”

“I’d love to go whale watching with her. I just need to plan ahead for it. So I finally proposed the Sturbridge option and she seemed kind of interested, so I jumped on it. I was there a while back but I don’t know it well, and she’d never been there. Which is kind of surprising, given her mother’s occupation. Anyway, we went and we had a good time.”

“Curious choice, don’t you think? I mean, they’ve created a town the way it would have looked in the past, right?”

“Yes, and it’s very convincing, especially when there aren’t a lot of tourists around. Ellie enjoyed the animals.” Abby stopped, unsure about whether to mention the Towne house.

Which Ned noticed. “What? Did something happen?”

“Not exactly. If you’ve seen the place, there’s a nice big house at one end of the green. We stopped in front of it, and I realized it had belonged to the Towne family—the same one as in Salem. In fact, the man who built that house was named Salem Towne. I guess I looked startled, because Ellie asked me if there was something wrong, and I guess that kind of led into a short discussion about seeing our past relatives. But neither one of us pushed it. I think that’s a good thing, treating it as though it was normal, at least for some people, like us. I think it makes Ellie sad that Leslie doesn’t share it—maybe she’d actually like to talk with her about it. But that may be expecting too much too soon. Leslie didn’t exactly greet me with open arms when we got back, and she’s probably grilling Ellie about the details as we speak.”

“Don’t be too hard on her—she’s got a lot to get used to.”

“I know. I understand that. But I still feel like I’m walking on eggshells. If it’s any help, I can promise to go somewhere totally neutral next time—assuming there is a next time—like the ocean. Of course, that would be the moment that we’d trip over my seventh great-uncle, who was a mariner who died in a shipwreck.”

Ned laughed, then said more soberly, “Don’t borrow trouble, Abby. You have any ideas for dinner?”

“Not a one. Let’s go explore.” Abby stood up and held out her hand, and Ned took it.

They froze for a long moment, hands clasped, lost in each other, until Ned pulled back. “We probably shouldn’t do this in front of the neighbors. You want to take it inside?” he said, his voice husky.

“Lead the way—I’m right behind you.”

• • •

Over a sketchy dinner that included a lot of lettuce, Ned said, “So you think Leslie wasn’t happy about you and Ellie getting together?”

“She’s conflicted, I’d say. She knows she should do it, but she doesn’t like it. She’d probably have been happy if she’d never crossed paths with me again, and I can understand that.”

“But it was Ellie who brought it up, right?”

“Yes. Of course, Leslie could have said no.”

“So now that you’ve survived the first round, where do you go from here?”

“One week at a time, I guess. Maybe by the end of summer things will have settled down between us all. And then Ellie will go back to school and things will change again.”

Ned forked up a few bites of leaves and sliced carrots and radishes and chewed thoughtfully. “Do you see any resolution to your Salem research?”

“You mean, do I see an end to it, or am I going to obsess over it indefinitely?”

“I guess.”

Abby considered. “I think I need to set a cutoff. I don’t plan to set myself up as the world expert on this. I was never cut out to be an academic, so I don’t plan to write the meticulously researched, multi-footnoted final solution to a centuries-old problem. I can see people getting sucked into exploring nits like, did so-and-so say this on Tuesday or Wednesday? I guess I’m looking for an understanding of the whole, not the details.” She paused to eat for a bit, before beginning again. “Ned, you remember last night, I said that this psychic thing might have come through the Towne line? Which means that in a sense, the Towne sisters were actually witches?”

“I know you said it, but I’m not sure what it means.”

“I’m not either. I guess my question is, how aware of this were they, and how careful were they to conceal it? I mean, within a small community, where a lot of people were probably interrelated, if any particular person seemed to know too much or too quickly, wouldn’t others come to look on them with suspicion? Wouldn’t it be a short step from that to thinking those people had some kind of second sight or special knowledge?”

“It’s possible. It is curious that three women in the same family, albeit pretty widely separated in age, would be accused. By all accounts, before the craziness started they were regarded as upstanding members of the community. They were married, they had children, their husbands were respectable citizens. So if—still a big if—they shared this particular trait, it could have jump-started some suspicion. So tell me this: how did Abigail Williams come to focus on them?”

“I don’t like Abigail Williams,” Abby said, surprising herself.

“You sound like a schoolkid, Abby. Okay, I’ll bite—tell me why.”

“I told you I saw her, twice, right? Once in court, and again on Gallows Hill.” When Ned nodded, she went on, “She smirked. She preened. She was very pleased with the mess she’d made. I suppose it’s understandable. In a time when women had limited power, and children even less, suddenly she’s managed to tear apart the whole community. She points a finger at someone and the whole town quakes. Heady stuff.”

“Kind of like a mean girl today?”

“Exactly, although there was a lot more at stake back then. Girls of her age—and eleven or twelve was probably pretty close to being an adult in those days—can wield a lot of power within their own circle. Although I’m kind of surprised that in a not-wealthy farming community, the young girls had time to hang out and get into mischief. I’ll bet the boys were out doing farm work pretty early.”

“Most likely,” Ned agreed.

Abby went on, “There are always toadies who will suck up to the head of the clique so they can feed off that power. They want to be part of the in crowd, or at least on the fringes.”