“Hungry yet?” Connor asked, bringing me a glass of water.
“Silly question. I’m always hungry.”
“Then let me go out and get some tapas. No point in trying to cook something, not when we need to start packing the kitchen tomorrow.”
I nodded, and he went out, promising to be back in a few minutes. That was an optimistic estimate, since it was now verging on six-thirty, and even a Thursday night could be busy, especially on a mild summer evening like this one.
Not that waiting had to be bad. I settled down on the couch and began to reach for the remote, glad of a chance to rest and relax for a few minutes, only to see a pale flicker at the corner of my vision. Startled, I got to my feet, and realized the pale flicker was the ghost Mary Mullen in her white dress, standing in front of the window.
“Mary!” I exclaimed. “I haven’t seen you for a while.”
She didn’t blink. “You’re leaving, aren’t you?”
“What?”
“Here.” Her gaze seemed to wander over the living room, pause on the fireplace, and then move back toward me. “You and Connor. You’re leaving.”
“Well, yes,” I said, feeling inexplicably guilty. “Because of the babies.”
Her expression turned dreamy. “Oh, yes, the babies.” Then the faraway look disappeared so quickly it might have been turned off with a switch. “Why can’t you stay here with your babies? I had two children here. There was plenty of room.”
I didn’t really feel like getting in a discussion with her over the inadequacies of a two-bedroom walk-up when it came to raising twins. Times had changed a lot since she’d had to look after two small children. Fumbling for an excuse, I said, “Well, but it’s much busier here than when you had your little girls. I’m afraid I don’t think it would be safe for the babies. All that traffic.”
She seemed to accept that explanation, nodding slightly as she moved soundlessly from where she stood in the living room to pause next to one of the dining room chairs. Running a hand over the back — or appearing to, anyway, as I was fairly certain she couldn’t actually touch it — she let out a sigh and said, “I still miss them so very much.”
“I know,” I said in soothing tones. But as the words left my lips, I felt the oddest sensation deep within me. Not the babies moving; of course it was far too early for that. No, it was more like the stirring of the prima power, awakening from where it seemed to have slept for the past few days, somehow telling me I needed to do something to help Mary.
But what do I do? I asked of the power, as if it was a separate entity living inside me, rather than a gift I had inherited, one as much a part of me as the color of my eyes or the sound of my voice.
Tell her it is time to stop being alone.
That was all, but I thought I understood. I didn’t want to leave her here with no one to talk to. The chances of someone else who possessed my same gift coming to live in the apartment were very slim. Yes, Connor had mentioned offering it as an affordable rental to any one of a number of Wilcox cousins currently attending Northern Pines, but our plans hadn’t gotten much past the discussion stage. At any rate, no Wilcox I’d heard of was able to speak to ghosts, and so even if one of the cousins moved in, Mary would once again be relegated to watching only, unable to communicate with the living person who shared her home.
“Maybe,” I ventured, trying to find the right words to tell her she didn’t need to exist in this limbo any longer, “maybe it’s time for you to be with them.”
Her fine penciled brows lifted. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that they’ve been waiting for you — waiting such a long time. Your girls need their mother…and your husband needs his wife.”
“But they left me,” she protested, her tone almost petulant. “I waited and waited here — ”
“I know, I know,” I broke in. “But it’s sort of like” — I racked my brains, trying to think of an analogy she’d understand — “it’s like you made a plan to take the train, only you got off a stop ahead of them. So they’ve been waiting for you at their stop all this time, while you’ve been here, thinking that they must be horribly late. All you have to do is go meet them at their station.”
Blue eyes widening, she nodded. “Of course. Ralph was so absentminded, he was always forgetting the timetables for the trains and such. I can see how he would have gone to the wrong place to wait for me.”
The power pulsed within me again, and I asked, following its inner guidance, “What would Ralph be wearing to meet you at the station? And your girls?”