“Shall we stroll, darling?” she heard Blake ask Minnie.
“We’ll find a place high atop and watch as we sail away, watch the city disappear, and the beauty of the moon upon the water,” Minnie agreed.
Alexi smiled as she hurried on, anxious to get to the elevators and down below where the crew members had their cabins.
She loved having Minnie and Blake on the ship. The Destiny had lost many employees to the ghosts they encountered onboard. People had reported seeing images disappear and things being moved about. Sheet music seemed to do that a lot, according to people who’d had worked on the ship. In fact, Alexi owed her position to the fact that the pianist who’d been preferred by the entertainment director had lasted only one cruise. As a result, Alexi had been hired. She was sure that the musician who’d left— disturbed by the way his sheet music constantly moved and keys played when he hadn’t touched them—would find a job that made him happy. He was a far better pianist than she was. But he hadn’t felt the same need to escape, to live this strange life of fantasy the way she had.
Escape.
She couldn’t escape. Her sister, her brother, her parents, her friends—everyone had told her that. Zach was dead. He’d come back from the Middle East in a box. She knew that. She’d never escape the fact that he was dead. But she could escape New Orleans, their little Irish Channel duplex, and the places they’d frequented for years.
She realized, as she walked, that she’d been on the ship for almost a year. Well, four months on and one off, and then back on,, accepting contract after contract with the cruise line. And although she might not have the astounding talent of some piano bar hosts, she did have a way with a crowd. Perhaps equally important, she never complained about ghosts or poltergeists.
She’d been aware of the dead as long as she could remember. Early on, her mom, —not in so many words, but by careful suggestion, had let her know the sense ran in the family.
And it was best not to share that with others. She was pretty sure her mom didn’t actually see or hear ghosts; with her, it really was a sense. She felt when they were close, felt the happiness that had existed—and the trauma and tears.
As Alexi walked down the hall to her cabin, she passed Clara Avery, one of the entertainer’s in the ship’s main show, Les Miserables.
Clara was supremely talented; she was a soprano with a genuinely impressive voice.
“Hey!” Clara said. “You were back-to-back cruises, too, huh? Did you take some time to get off the ship? Did you see your family?”
“Yes, they came and met me for lunch near the port,” Alexi told her.
“Good.,” Clara hesitated. “It’s been a long time, Alexi. I can’t imagine having your wedding all planned—and him not coming home. But you can’t let your family lose you, too.”
“I know. I know that, really. I see them as often as I can. Honestly. I love my folks. I didn’t see my brother because he’s on tour and Sienna’s in Europe. On vacation. Well-deserved, I imagine.” She grinned. “My poor parents. They’re so...mathematical and scientific! And they wound up with two entertainers and only one doctor, Sienna!”
“I’m sure they’re proud of all of you,” Clara said. She grinned. “I think my dad cried when he found out I wanted to go into theater. But, he’s happy now!”
“And he’s a super guy. They came to the piano bar almost every night they were on the cruise—even when you couldn’t. Your mom is lovely, too.”
“Your folks haven’t taken the cruise yet,” Clara noted.
Alexi shrugged. No, her mother would never be on this ship. She didn’t see the dead the same way Alexi did, but she knew they were there. She worried not just because Alexi was a piano-playing hostess on a cruise ship; she worried because Alexi was on the Destiny.
“The things that happened on that ship!” her mother had warned her. “Terrible! And not just the poor soldiers who died. There were other incidents, too!” The Destiny, like most old ships with interesting histories, had the reputation of being haunted.
There’d been incidents aboard, yes. Such as the night in 1939 when Blake and Minnie had died, murdered in cold blood.
But Alexi wished she could explain that none of the ghosts on the ship was malevolent in any way. She’d come across a couple of soldiers who’d died in the infirmary, Privates Jimmy Estes and Frank Marlowe, handsome young men who’d been taken far too soon, Barbara Leon, a nurse who’d died of an undiagnosed fever while tending to others, and Captain McPherson, who’d dropped dead of a heart attack at his retirement party, which had been held on the ship in 1967.
He still loved to tell her what the current captain was doing wrong.