Sophie stuck out her lower lip as she looked in her rearview mirror and flipped on her signal before pulling out onto East Bay. “Oh, absolutely. I seriously doubt it will take long at all.”
I sent her a dubious look but refrained from mentioning that my house was a never-ending construction zone despite her earlier assurances that the renovation would last less than six months. I’d reconciled with both parents, gotten married, had two babies, and added a stepdaughter since we began work and the house still wasn’t completely renovated. I simply didn’t have enough breath in my lungs, so I kept silent and stuck my face in front of the air-conditioning vent.
I was relieved to see that Rich Kobylt and several workers were at the house when we pulled up. Not that I was convinced the spirits would leave us alone if we outnumbered them, but it bolstered my nerves before I walked up the steps to the front door. I stood in the foyer, listening to the now-familiar sounds of construction in various places in the house—sawing, hammering, the metallic clank and squeak of ladders and scaffolding. It took me a moment to realize that I was listening for something else, too. And then I heard it. Or maybe I felt it. I was semirelieved that the curtain had been pulled back so there were no barriers between me and the spirit world, and I knew it would be only a matter of time before it showed itself to me, too.
“Anna?” I whispered, preferring not to be surprised by an appearance. “Hasell?” I said a little louder. The soft tread of bare feet on the floor above us let me know that I’d been heard. Hasell, I thought. But she didn’t want to be seen, not yet. I could sense the presence of the other spirit, the one I was convinced was poor Anna, and I wondered if she was the one holding Hasell back. And I wondered why.
I followed Sophie up to the second floor, feeling someone watching us as we proceeded down the hallway to Button’s bedroom. I held my breath as I walked in and focused my gaze on the thankfully empty chair where the Edison doll had been found.
“Any word on the value of the doll yet?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Not yet. John took it to an antique doll show in Cleveland, which is probably why we haven’t heard from her recently. Isn’t there some rule about spirits not being able to cross water?”
“I really don’t think there are any ‘rules.’ And if there were, I’m sure there would be one against old dolls dematerializing and then appearing where they’re not supposed to be.”
“Good point,” she said, walking to the tall mirrored armoire and opening it up. “If you’ll pull out the albums, I’ll go find a box we can load them in.”
I almost begged her not to leave me alone and to suggest we stick together, but she’d already left the room. Making sure the bedroom door was wide-open, I knelt on the floor in front of the armoire and peered inside. Stacked neatly together were three columns of dark brown leather albums with gold-embossed years on the spines spanning from 1960 through 1985—the year the lake was flooded. I pulled them out one by one, careful not to tear the bindings, then stacked them in three piles, loosely organized by decade but not by year. I knew Sophie would be expecting me to sort them by year, and it killed me not to, but it would be worse to prove her right.
Sophie returned, lugging two medium-size boxes with the name of a grout compound stamped on the outside. “I made a bet with myself that you’d have them organized by date by the time I came back.” She dumped them in the middle of the room. “I win.”
“Ha! They’re only sorted by decade, not by year. But we probably should before we give them to Jayne so it’s easier for her to go through them.” I neglected to add that I wouldn’t be able to sleep knowing they’d been tossed haphazardly in a box.
Sophie knelt next to me and grabbed the first album. “Did you look inside any of them yet?”
“No,” I said sheepishly. “I was too busy organizing them.”
She opened the cover of the one from 1960. “It looks like these were all photos taken at the lake house. If they were once kept at the lake, I’m guessing Button decided these albums would be worth saving. It’s kind of sad, though, seeing as how there’s nobody left who might find these photographs meaningful.”