Emily's Ghost (7 page)

"I have another possible
explanation of the girl's behavior for you," she said, making a
process of adding a sixteenth of a teaspoon more cream to her
coffee. "Couldn't she have been telepathizing what was going on in
one of the men's minds, yours or the others? Couldn't one of you --
say it was you -- have felt stuck at the seance and been in a hurry
and been thinking the things that Kimberly then picked up and said,
in that ... that voice?"

"You believe in
telepathy?" the senator asked, surprised.

She shrugged. "A limited
form of it, sure. One of my brothers always knew exactly when I was
mad, and why. Another one of them never had a clue. The others fell
somewhere in between. It's my opinion that telepathy is all a
matter of degree."

"How many brothers do you
have?"

"Four. All registered to
vote in New Hampshire, so don't be getting any ideas." Despite
herself, she favored him with her most winning smile. He was so
hard not to favor.

"Do I dare ask how many
sisters you have?"

"Zip," she said, careful
to keep it just as light. "My mother and I used to have to huddle
together a lot."

"But you don't any more?"
He guessed the answer even as he tried to stop the
question.

"Can't. She's not around
any more." Emily sounded cold-hearted and flippant -- anything but
how she felt, which was devastated, even now, two years after her
mother's death. Her mother was her best friend and ally in the
world, and her mother was no more. If ever there were a reason for
believing in ghosts, it would be Agnes Bowditch.

"I'm sorry," he said
quietly. "It was stupid of me to press."

"Oh, that's all right,"
she answered in her breezy way, trying to cover her hurt. "I'm not
going to vote for you for completely other reasons."

He winced at that. The
best defense was a good offense, she told herself; but it brought
her no comfort.

There was a very awkward
lull; she took it as her responsibility to fill it. "I saw a mildly
telepathic girl sitting in a chair tonight," she said. "What did
you see?"

He made a funny
here-goes-nothing face which she kind of liked, and began in a
roundabout way to explain why he was a flake.

"You have to understand
that the nature of channeling has been very consistent across all
cultures through all of recorded history. And you have to accept
that there is a strong desire in all of us for the irrational to
triumph."

"I'm not sure about
all
of us," she felt
obliged to argue.

"Trust me," he said. "Even
you. In the broadest sense, channeling involves any form of
focusing creative energy. Artists channel. Poets channel.
Physicists channel. Rocket Scientists channel."

"And California Dreamers
named Kimberly channel." Emily was losing interest in the
discussion. She hated vague, mystical talk. Who, what, why, where,
when --that's what she was after. Facts. That's what she'd been
taught in journalism school.

"Okay, so my plumber
channels. Senator, why did you go there tonight? Why do you care
about this channeler or any other channeler?"

He pushed his chair back
from the table, balancing it on its hind legs. Emily knew a thing
or two about body language, and she didn't care for the distance he
was suddenly putting between them.
He's
not going to tell me a damned thing about himself,
she thought, disheartened.

"You want a story," he
said at last. "Okay. Here's a story." He looked away, staring over
the caf
é
curtains
into the night beyond.

"Once upon a time there
was a young couple very much in love, and with everything to live
for. He was a rising force in politics. She was a beautiful and
accomplished pianist. No one thought the marriage would last, and
yet for ten short years the two were incredibly happy. They lacked
only one thing, a child, and in the tenth year the woman became
pregnant. Now they lacked nothing."

"But in the tenth year as
well, something in the heavens fell out of alignment," he said in a
baffled, wondering voice. "The man came down with a stupid,
unnecessary attack of appendicitis. He was rushed to the hospital
for an emergency appendectomy. It was no big deal. But the wife
didn't believe that. All she knew was that she had to be at her
husband's side. So she cancelled a concert appearance in Denver and
on her way to the airport, she was killed in a car accident." He
continued to stare out the caf
é
window. "She was so fiercely determined to come,"
he said softly.

Emily had seen the facts
of his life on microfiche, but they had not torn her heart the way
he had just now. "I'm so sorry, Senator--"

He turned to her and
smiled bleakly. "The story isn't finished. The man was lying in the
hospital, heavily sedated and unaware that half a country away his
wife had just slid off an icy highway into an embankment, when he
had a sudden sense of almost euphoric joy. The room seemed to fill
with a kind of whiteness ... a whitish light ... an awesome
brightness ... and he was filled with just ... so much joy. Later,
when he was clear of the sedation, he thought it must have been the
drug. That's when he learned that his wife had died, and
when."

"Ah." It came out of Emily
in a whisper, and there was nothing of triumph in it. But suddenly
she understood the who, the what, the why, the where, the when. She
understood it all perfectly. And in fairness, she couldn't blame
the senator for trying to track down the source of that white light
ever since. It was an extraordinary coincidence. Of course it was
the sedative. But still.

"So when you go to these
sittings, you're" -- she was almost afraid to ask it -- "hoping to
establish contact with your wife?"

"Always, always hoping,"
he said with a sad shake of his head. "And always, always
disappointed."

Emily had to admit that
wherever the voice that took over Kimberly had come from, it hadn't
come from a beautiful concert pianist. "There'll be other
sittings," she said softly, and amazed herself. So much for coming
down hard on him. So much for the downtrodden taxpayer.

She could see, even as she
groped for the right thing to say, that he was forcing himself out
of his condition of pain. He turned to her with that dazzling smile
and those clear blue eyes, and ran his fingers through that shock
of thick brown hair.

"This is the part where
you accuse me of having had a 'hypnagogic hallucination'," he
suggested with a boyish grin.

How did he do it? It was
like turning on a charm spigot.

"I didn't say that," she
hedged, though she was thinking it.

"You're supposed to tell
me that ghosts are always spotted right after people go to bed or
when they wake up."

"Apparently you already
know that," she said, still hedging.

"Ah, what's the use?" he
said suddenly, signaling for the check. "I've gone only to the
best, and the best can't give me Nicole. I don't know why I
continue to try."

Because you loved her with
a love that most women would kill for,
thought Emily, and she was filled with a wistful envy for
this Nicole, this fiercely determined wife and concert pianist.
Emily had never loved that way, and she was absolutely certain
she'd never
be
loved that way. She cared too much about her job, and her job
demanded that she be clear-eyed and hard-edged. A clear-eyed woman
saw all too many flaws in a man, and a hard-edged one turned most
men off. If she wanted high romance in her life, she should've been
a concert pianist. And, of course, rich.

The senator had stood up
to get Emily's chair for her. It was a charming -- or political --
bit of chivalry and it flustered her ever so slightly. She bobbed
up suddenly, and her face ended up very near his.

"Huh. Freckles," he said,
focussing on the bridge of her nose. "For such dark eyes and hair,
you have very fair skin."

"I guess." Were freckles
good or bad with these people? She suspected, bad.

"--skin which I think is
having an allergic reaction to the chain on your necklace." He
traced a feather light but sizzling line across her collarbone,
alongside the heavy chain. "There's a bit of a rash
here."

"Really?" she said,
reaching up automatically to the spot. If there was a rash, it was
impossible to separate it from the trail of heat he'd left behind.
"I can't tell," she said with perfect honesty.

"I'm not sure you want to
keep on wearing that," he cautioned as he held the door open for
her.

"Keep up this kindness,
and I'll be forced to vote for you after all," she teased. The fact
was, she was feeling very vulnerable. Obviously the evening was
taking some kind of emotional toll. The rational thing to do was to
head home at all due speed.

But still she dallied,
there in the clear May night. "Senator--"

"We've been through our
first vocal trance together; call me Lee."

"Senator," she persisted,
ignoring the bantering request. "You didn't have to tell me all
that you did tonight. I know that." She braced herself and threw
out the next observation: "I guess I'm wondering why you
did."

"Why?" He sounded less
puzzled than incredulous. "Is that the only word you know?
'Why'?"

She'd never heard his
how-dare-you tone before. Not that she wasn't familiar with it;
most of the people she investigated eventually hauled it out and
batted her over the head with it. But somehow she wanted Arthur Lee
Alden III to be different. Somehow she was wrong.

"What I mean is, you can't
have told any but your most trusted friends and associates about
your -- your vision, or I would've read about it somewhere. Why did
you tell me, of all people?" Simple question; she thought it
deserved a simple answer.

He just stared at her, so
she answered the question for him. "It's not just because tonight
is off the record. I think it's becausee you were hoping to make me
so sympathetic to your plight, so moved by it, that I'd back off
investigating this side of your character. After all, I'm a woman;
that's what women do -- sympathize. You took a big risk, Senator.
You'd never have tried this with a man."

"Geez, you're paranoid,"
he said at last.

"Nosir.
Not
paranoid," she
countered, throwing an index finger up in the air. "I just want to
know why you told me."

"Fine," he said angrily,
his hand on the door of his BMW. "You want to know why?" He threw
the door open. "I'll tell you why." He got in and slammed the door.
He rolled down the window. "I don't know why. That's
why."

He turned the key, the
engine jumped to life, and he roared off, leaving Emily alone with
the strength of her convictions. Her chin was set, her breathing
coming hard and fast. She'd just reduced a United States Senator to
gibberish; it should've been a moment of triumph.

But it wasn't, and all the
way home she tried to fathom why. Eventually it all came down to
this: she thought more of him for having the courage to face her
laughter than she thought of herself for having the courage to
laugh at him.

It wasn't fair. Lee Alden
had it all, including a good-old-boy understanding with the press
not to expose his fanciful side. Even Stan Cooper left him alone.
And yet not all politicians were immune to scrutiny. She thought of
Gary Hart; she thought of John Tower. Somewhere someone had stood
up and said, "Enough is enough." So why was there this reluctance
to go after Lee Alden? Was it because when you did go up against
him, you felt rotten about it? The way she was feeling
now?

Too bad, kiddo,
she told herself with grim determination.
Learn to live with it.

By the time she squeezed
her car into the lone space left on her street, Emily was
bleary-eyed with exhaustion. It was well after midnight, but that
wasn't the reason she was having to force one foot up the stairs
past the other. She'd just spent a most unconventional evening, and
she considered herself a very conventional girl. This kind of thing
was more of a strain on her system than it was for Shirley
MacLaine.

She was weak with longing
for her bed by the time she slipped her key into the dead bolt of
her door. Muddled and impatient for sleep as she was, after she
turned the key to the left and right she wasn't sure whether she'd
even locked the door before dashing out that morning. Most likely
not; it wouldn't have been the first time. She threw a switch on
the living room wall. As always, her little condo looked perfectly
happy to be what it was: a little condo. Everything was neat and
tidy, because everything had no choice.

Emily ran the place like a
ship, which is why she noticed, even half-asleep, that one of the
silver candlesticks on a small writing table was knocked over.
Automatically she stood it back up; she must've hit it when she
dumped her book-bag on the table that morning. She pulled open a
louvered door to a tiny hall closet to hang her jacket inside, and
wrinkled her nose. Tobacco. She stuck her face in the sleeve of her
jacket, but now the smell eluded her. The Harvard professor, she
remembered. A pipe smoker. The two were practically
synonymous.