Widow's Tears (21 page)

Of course, there could be no hope of saving the fine rugs and heavy furnishings—the Steinway piano, the mahogany dining table, Augustus' walnut desk—although all over Galveston, people were trying to do just that. But several of Rachel's favorite crystal pieces were paraded upstairs, and the lavishly engraved silver trays that had been wedding presents, and some of the Haviland china, as well as Augustus' most precious books and the big globe from the library, where Matthew and his father spent long winter evenings tracing out the journeys of Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand Magellan and the lost Henry Hudson.

Before long, though, it was clear that the parade would have to end. The water that had risen to the fifth gallery step while Rachel had been talking to Mr. Cline had reached the seventh step before Matthew blew out his candles. It was sweeping across the gallery as the parade got underway and beginning to flow under the front door as Rachel swung into the second march, “The Liberty Bell.”

But they bravely kept on. When the water flooding across the main hallway was several inches deep, Mrs. O'Reilly clapped her hands and called out, in her rich Irish brogue, “Let's all take our shoes off an' play like we're at the beach!”—which of course delighted the children, who were having too much fun to notice that the walls were shaking constantly now under the brutal cannon-like battering of the wind and that the
ocean
was rising inside their house.

The parade continued for another little while, and on the last trip, Matthew carried little Angela in his arms. When all the children were upstairs, Mrs. O'Reilly appeared in the doorway of the music room. By this time, the water on the first floor of the house was knee-deep and still rising.
Mrs. O'Reilly was barefoot, and her skirt—the one Rachel had loaned her—was tucked up into her waistband. She had an ax in each hand.

Rachel stopped in the middle of “The Washington Post” and stared, her heart in her mouth. “Axes?” she whispered. “Whatever
for
?”

“Chop holes in the floors,” Mrs. O'Reilly said in a matter-of-fact tone, holding out an ax. “I helped my mother do this in the Indianola hurricane. The water comin' up through the holes will weigh down the house some—hold it on its foundation, maybe enough to keep it from gettin' lifted up and pushed over.”

Rachel got up from the piano and closed the lid carefully. She ran her hands over the smooth, shining wood one last time, then raised her voice. “Patsy,” she called, “please keep the children upstairs now. Tell them that Mrs. O'Reilly and I will bring the rest of the sandwiches and cake and we'll all play another game.”

“I think we'd best hurry,” Mrs. O'Reilly said urgently. “Might not be much time left.”

“Thank you,” Rachel said, and reached for the ax. At that moment, with a splintering crash, the front gallery was ripped from the house.

Upstairs, little Angela began to wail.

Ruby's car was parked beside the frame double garage, not far from the Rawlings' cottage. Her phone in one hand, Ruby opened the door and slid onto the seat, then put her key in the ignition and turned it.

Click
.

She turned it again, with the same result. And again. And again.

“Rats,” she muttered, remembering that the car had behaved the same way—refusing to start—on the hill, at the same time she had seen the woman with the basket of flowers. Was there a connection?

“Uh-oh,” Claire said softly, standing beside the car. “Sounds like a dead battery.”

Ruby tried again, then gave it up and got out of the car. “I just replaced the battery a couple of months ago. I don't think that's the problem, Claire.”

“Well, then, what is it?”

Ruby looked over her shoulder. They were some distance away from the house. Seen from this angle, its odd angles and out-of-proportion, out-of-kilter hodgepodge of towers and turrets were once again apparent, silhouetted against the gathering of dark clouds, the color of bruised flesh, that filled the sky to the southeast. Somehow, the house seemed closer than it was, seemed almost to lean toward her, watchful and expectant. And sad, bitterly, hopelessly, desperately
sad,
as if it were built not of wood and stone and slate but of the wreckage of broken dreams.

Ruby felt the gooseflesh break out on her arms. She shivered and turned back to Claire, trying to sound casual. “Let's try your car.”

“Sure,” Claire said, taking her keys out of the pocket of her jeans. “We can charge your phone first if you want, so you can text your message.” She headed toward the garage.

But Claire's car—a beat-up, old gray Ford Focus—wouldn't start, either.

“I don't understand this at all,” Claire muttered. “It was running just fine two days ago when I went for groceries.” She looked up at Ruby, suddenly understanding. “Really, Ruby, it's got to be the gh—”

“Don't say it,” Ruby interrupted grimly. “Just…don't say it.”

Claire tried several more times, then got out of the car. “Not saying it isn't going to make it not true.” She was making an obvious effort to stay calm. “Something—the ghost or something else—doesn't want us to use our phones. Or our cars.”

Ruby frowned, thinking that if China were here, she'd suggest a more mundane and logical explanation. “It could be Sam Rawlings,” she said. “Maybe he jimmied a wire or something.”

“But why?” Claire asked, closing the car door. “I mean, he no doubt has his reasons—sick or stupid or whatever—for beating up on his wife. But he has no reason at all to monkey with our cars. And anyway, Sam couldn't be responsible for the phones not charging.” She shook her head ruefully. “Sorry. Afraid we're back to the ghost. And I don't know about you, but I'm more than a little nervous about being out here without a way to go for help, if we had to. The county road is seven miles away and the main road is farther than that. And none of these roads are high traffic. We could wait for hours and not see a single car.”

Ruby didn't like the idea of being isolated, either. And Claire was right about Sam Rawlings. He might have disabled the cars, but the cell phones were another matter entirely.

The two of them had left the garage and were walking down the gravel path toward the Rawlings' house. The place might have been nice once, and with a coat of paint and some shutters, it could be nice again. But the front
yard was full of ragged weeds, and the window blinds were drawn down to the sills, giving the house a lonely, dispirited look. A junked riding mower, minus its wheels, crouched in the dirt. From the direction of the chicken coop came the sound of a hen cackling, celebrating the laying of another egg. Not far from the fenced coop was a garden. A row of hollyhocks was blooming along the fence—the only cheerful thing in sight.

Claire cast a disgusted look at the house. “When the Rawlingses get back, I'm going to tell them they've got to do some cleaning up before I put any money into paint and repair. This place is a mess.” She sighed. “But I really think you're right about getting Mr. Hoover to fire Sam, Ruby. It seems like the best thing to do—for me, at least. For Kitty, it'll probably be a different story. Getting fired is likely to make Sam's problems even worse, and he'll take out his frustrations on her. He might not find another job right away, either. Mr. Hoover can give him a recommendation if he wants to, but not me. Not after the way he's treated his wife.”

At this point, the path forked, one branch curving back to the Rawlingses' house, the other heading up the hill toward the woodland. Claire gestured in that direction. “If we're going to the cemetery, that's the path we need to take. You can see the iron gate from here. That's where I saw the ghost that morning, with her basket of flowers.”

Ruby cleared her throat. “I guess maybe it's time we gave her a name. ‘The ghost' seems a bit too generic.” She glanced at Claire. “We know for a fact that she isn't your great-aunt Hazel. Right?”

Claire nodded. “Right. She couldn't be, because the first time you saw her, Aunt Hazel was still alive. She wouldn't be dead for another twenty or twenty-five years. Old Mrs. Blackwood is the only other person who has ever lived in this house—at least, so far as I know. Unless we find out differently, we could call her Mrs. Blackwood.” She smiled wanly. “If that's wrong, maybe she'll tell us who she is.”

They were walking up the path now, away from the house, toward the cemetery. Ruby thought about ghosts for a minute, wishing she knew more about them. Were there general rules for the way they behaved? Or did every ghost—or spirit, or entity, or manifestation, whatever it was called—make its own rules to fit the situation in which it found itself? What about appearance, for example?

“You said that Mrs. Blackwood was in her nineties when she died,” Ruby said. “But the woman we've seen is much younger. I couldn't see her face, but I'd guess her to be in her thirties. If she's the ghost or the spirit or whatever of old Mrs. Blackwood, you'd think she'd be stooped and walk with a cane and her hair would be white, not dark. This one goes around looking like a Gibson Girl.”

“True,” Claire said thoughtfully. “Judging from her clothing—the big sleeves of that blouse and the length of that skirt—I'd say early 1900s, wouldn't you? Maybe even the 1890s.”

Ruby nodded. “And I'm wondering why she's making all this fuss now—the appearances, the harp, the pans in the kitchen, all that stuff. Is there a reason for it, or is it just something she likes doing?”

“Or maybe she's been doing it all along,” Claire suggested, “but the house has been empty. Nobody's been around to hear.”

“Except Mr. and Mrs. Hoover,” Ruby said, remembering what Monica had said. “Maybe she doesn't
want
anybody around. Maybe she's trying to get everybody to leave, so she can have the place to herself.”

“Or maybe she's trying to get our attention,” Claire replied, “and she's like…well, waving a flag. Ringing a bell, playing a harp, banging pans. Maybe she wants something from us. Or needs something.” In a helpful tone, she added, “I suppose you could ask her. Since you're the one who saw her first. And since you're psychic.”

“Since she lives in
your
house,” Ruby replied pointedly, “it would be
good if you could do the asking. Anyway, you've seen her, too, which means that you must be psychic as well. I told you, Claire. I've never tried to communicate with the dead—or the undead.”

“Dead, undead.” Claire shoved her hands into the pockets of her shorts and hunched her shoulders. “I'm not sure I understand the difference.”

“The dead are dead and they know it,” Ruby said. “They stay dead. The undead are a different story, at least from what I've read. Some of them were taken by surprise and they haven't yet figured out what happened. Or maybe they're stubborn and simply refuse to accept the fact that they're dead. Or they have a job to do, or a mission, and they can't be at peace until they've finish it.” Her attention was caught by a half dozen wheeling turkey vultures spiraling upward in the darkening sky, carried on a thermal ahead of the coming storm. “And some are just plain stuck. Betwixt and between, as it were—between there and here, then and now. We think time is linear—that it's always moving forward—but maybe that's not always true. Maybe time sometimes loops back on itself and repeats. Or gets trapped in a loop, so that the same thing happens over and over again.”