Chapter 15

“Nora, he’s seen me!” Trixie said.

“Right,” I said softly. It had taken all my self-possession not to turn around and talk to the ghost as soon as I heard her speak. Albert was still watching me expectantly.

“Why doesn’t he see me now?” Trixie moved from behind me to put herself squarely in front of the elderly man. She leaned down and waved a manicured hand in front of his face to no apparent effect. “Hello! Hi there!”

Albert cleared his throat. “Of course I don’t expect you to believe me,” he said. “But maybe one of these days you’ll see her yourself.” He tilted his head and peered at me from behind his thick round glasses.

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” I told him.

Trixie turned to me, hands on hips, her face a study in exasperation. “Why, I’m here just as plain as the nose on his face!”

“All right, then.” He stood. “I should get these posters up, don’t you think?”

  

Back upstairs in the office, I put the ledger on the desk and tried to calm a pacing Trixie.

“I don’t understand!” she said. “If he could see me once, why can’t he see me all the time?”

“I don’t know,” I told her.

“And why can you see me when he can’t?”

“I don’t know.”

“For heaven’s sake! If anyone can see me and talk to me, I’d suppose it would be a person I knew when I was alive, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know.”

“Will you please stop saying ‘I don’t know?’ I know you don’t know!” She threw herself into a chair and tossed her head to move a stray lock of hair off her face.

“I think,” I said hesitantly. “I’m not sure, but I think it may have something to do with getting conked on the head by that light fixture.”

She stared at me. “You think that’s why you can see me?”

“It only started after I woke up,” I said. “You were right there in the room with everyone else when I came to.”

She sat up, pointing at me. “Random Harvest!” she declared. “You’re just like Ronald Colman!”

“Except that was amnesia,” I said. “But I see what you’re getting at.”

“Oh, Nora.” Her eyes widened in alarm. “Whatever you do, don’t get conked on the head again.”

“I’ll try not to,” I assured her.

“Hmm,” something seemed to occur to her. “I wonder what would happen if Albert got conked on the head.”

“Trixie! He’s a ninety-year-old man!”

“Older than that, if he was ten when I died,” she mused.

I gave her a look.

“All right, fine. I promise I won’t conk him.” She sighed. “But, gee it would be wonderful to talk to someone about the old days.”

“I know,” I said. “Do you remember him?”

She thought about it. “There were so many kids running around all the time. You know that kiddie matinee he mentioned? Every Saturday we’d show two serials, then cartoons, then some B-movie monster picture or gangster picture or something, and then a feature, or even a double feature. The neighborhood kids would be here all day long.” She smiled, then seemed to think of something. “Say, I wonder who his mother was. He said she came to the pictures all the time, and I might remember her more than a little boy.”

“I’ll ask him her name,” I promised.

She nodded, chewing her lower lip in thought.

“Trixie,” I said. “There’s so much I don’t understand about how this works.”

“You mean about being a ghost? That makes two of us.”

“I know you said you can’t help it when you go away,” I said.

She nodded. “It just happens. Poof.”

“Right. When you’re startled or frightened. But you didn’t go poof when Todd Randall showed up yesterday. I think I was more startled than you were.”

“Gee, that’s true,” she said. She tilted her head. “I wonder if it was because I was so darn mad at you.”

“Oh!” I hadn’t thought of that. “Maybe you were too mad to be scared?”

“Maybe. I was plenty steamed.”

I cleared my throat. “About that. I’m sorry I hurt your feelings. It just honestly never occurred to me that you could be real.”

“Oh, honey, that’s okay,” she said. “It seemed less crazy to think you were crazy, right?”

“It did seem to be the more logical explanation.”

“Logic is for the birds,” she said.

“In this case,” I agreed. “Here’s another question: Who do you think the guy on the horse was?”

“You mean the gentleman who came for me when I died?”

I nodded.

“I don’t know. He was nobody I knew, that’s for sure.”

“Do you think he comes for everybody?”

“No,” she said, drawing her brows together. “Different people come for different people. I have a notion that it may be someone from your family who comes. You know, to sort of welcome you, and take you to…well, that’s another thing I don’t know. Would he have taken me to heaven, do you think?” She looked wistful.

I swallowed. “Knowing you, I’m sure of it,” I said.

“Aw.” She smiled. “Thanks, Nora. That’s nice of you to say.”

“Could he have been someone from your family?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “My mother and father were both still alive, so I’ve wondered if he might have been my grandfather. My mother always said what a refined gentleman he was.”

“Did he keep horses?” I asked.

“Didn’t everyone, back then?”

That was a point. Then something caught up with me. “Trixie, you said different people come for different people. How do you know that?”

“Oh,” she said. “Because of that fella who died in the basement. Someone different came for him.”

I think my heart stopped.

“What?”