“It isn’t what he does. It’s the idea that he’s there.”
She’d shrugged again, the way she always did when she’d decided that I wasn’t making sense. On-screen, the hero of the film, having just lost his wife and daughter in a car crash, was returning to his now-empty apartment, standing lonely at a window, looking out while distant echoes of their voices and their laughter tugged his memory.
Rachel had retreated in her blanket; drawn it up and close around her head and shoulders like a winter shawl. “Sometimes,” she’d told me suddenly, “I wish there really were such things as ghosts.”
And then I’d understood.
I’d understood the blanket, and the movies, and I’d known whose ghost she wanted to be there with us. I’d wanted him there, too.
But it was one thing to think about ghosts in the abstract. It was another to be sitting here now in my office, on my own, and feel the crawling sense of certainty that I was not alone.
To distract myself, I picked up the notepad where I had been jotting down prompts for my speech, but the feeling grew so strong that I couldn’t bring myself to look up from the paper. With the notepad clenched within my hands, I kept my focus fiercely on the few lines I had written until all the words were blurred, because I knew—I knew—that if I dared to lift my gaze above the notepad’s edge there would be something there to see.
It was a sudden, all-consuming dread.
I felt the thudding of my heart inside my ribcage; felt it pressing upward until it was hard to breathe, and so I caught my breath and held it.
Go away, I told the thing that stood in front of me, in silence. Please, just go away.
The oscillating fan swung back and swept a puff of cooling air across my desk that ruffled the loose pages of my notebook and the damply curling strands of hair that clung against my neck. And then it passed me by.
My office door, which had been standing fully open, creaked a little on its hinges. Paused. Then creaked again, and in a slow arc so deliberate that it seemed controlled by someone’s hand, it swung and closed itself.
And gently, very quietly, the knob clicked shut.
? ? ?
The Privateer Club didn’t strike me as the kind of place that any self-respecting privateer would ever frequent. It was bright and airy, all light wood and windows, with white curtains and white tablecloths and views of the white sailboats moored along the slips of the marina.
Here and there were accents of bright brass and summer blue, and Lara had made sure I’d fit in perfectly by dressing me in patriotic tones—the cool white blouse that flared above the blue-striped skirt, and those red high-heeled “power shoes” that clicked across the polished floor as I walked to the lectern.
I hadn’t needed to rely on them for confidence, so far. The Sisters of Liberty, as Sam had promised, had turned out to be a remarkably welcoming group. They had greeted me warmly and given me lunch and had put me at ease. And for all that I’d worried, my grandmother wasn’t among them.
I didn’t know why, and I hadn’t asked. All I was sure of was that there was nobody here who resembled the photographs I had looked up on the Internet over the years. My relief had been blunted by faint irritation she hadn’t been even a little bit curious to come and see what I looked like. She was this group’s president, so there was no way she wouldn’t have known I was coming to speak today. Whether her absence was meant as a snub or was simply her way of avoiding me, I didn’t care.
Really. I didn’t care.
I reminded myself of that as I smiled out at the roomful of faces and started my talk.
That was easier, too, than I’d thought it would be. I had a projector, a screen, and a slideshow, and organized notes. By the time I had outlined the Wilde House’s history and started explaining how Benjamin Wilde’s wife had written a full room-by-room list of all the home’s contents to keep them from being destroyed or removed while the house had been occupied by British officers, I’d hit my stride and felt fully relaxed.
“It’s so rare. We’re so lucky to have this,” I said as I clicked to the next slide to show them an image of one of the document’s pages. “Most inventories were taken after someone died, so they don’t necessarily tell us where things were when they were in actual use. We don’t know, for example, if a painting or table that’s listed as being in an upstairs room was being used in that room or had been moved there for storage. And in many cases there are no inventories at all, so when a family gets divided—”
Here I stopped, and paused a moment because something was occurring at the centre of the room. People were rising, moving, murmuring, and shifting to make space for someone new to take a seat. A late arrival, with distinctive short white hair, a flash of jewellery, and a stylish lilac pantsuit.
There was no mistaking who it was. Even without the fuss everyone made and the way they all parted for her with such deference, Elisabeth Van Hoek just had the kind of face you recognized.
I met her cool eyes levelly a moment and then let my gaze move on. My hands were shaking slightly but I knew that was adrenaline—the classic “fight or flight” response. I wasn’t going to give this woman who’d disowned my dad the satisfaction now of seeing me do either. Resting my hands on the top of the lectern, I picked up as smoothly as possible where I had paused.
“So when a family gets divided, their possessions get divided, too, and we don’t have a record left of what was lost, or where it was originally in the house. That’s why, when Captain Wilde’s wife made this inventory, she was giving us the most amazing gift—a snapshot, in a way, of what the whole house looked like on that day. And we can try to re-create it.”
There, I thought. I had my balance back. I carried on through the remaining slides, explaining how we meant to go about refurnishing the house, retrieving some items from where we knew they’d ended up, and buying others where we could, and filling in the gaps with custom replicas and reproductions.
“We’ll be appealing to the public and inviting them to sponsor or donate the things we need, and we’re looking at getting some inter-museum loans, but that still leaves us with this amount we’ll need to raise for the purchases.” Showing the next slide, the breakdown of finances Dave had projected, I said, “I do realize you’ve been very generous already in giving to our restoration fund, and I’m aware that your bylaws set limits on what you can give for that purpose. We really appreciate all that you’ve done. But this would be a separate project, meant for education.” Education was central, I knew, to the Sisters of Liberty’s mission, so I let the emphasis of that one word hang a moment. “We’d be very honoured,” I told them in closing, “to have your support.”
With those words, my attention had settled again on my grandmother, and for the second time she looked right back at me. It was impossible to guess what she might be thinking.
Then the woman who’d first introduced me came forward again to the lectern to thank me, and after that several more women approached to discuss the museum and what we were doing. They closed up the space between me and my grandmother. Offered me more tea, and let me refocus on why I was there.
So I spent the next few minutes chatting, and making new social connections, and trying to be less aware that Elisabeth Van Hoek was sitting three tables away. And next time I dared to glance over, she wasn’t. The chair where she’d sat was pushed back at an angle and empty, and scanning the room I caught no glimpse of her lilac pantsuit. My grandmother, as she had been for the whole of my life, was not there.