Chapter 30

 

Sunday

 

Abby watched her guests’ faces and let them digest what she had said. Danny leaned against his mother and she wrapped her arm around him protectively.

Finally Samantha spoke. “My husband’s name was Andy—Andrew. But that doesn’t mean he’s that one. Danny thinks anyone with that name could be his father.”

“Andrew was my daddy,” Danny said solemnly, and fell silent again.

“There’s more to the story, Samantha,” Abby said.

Samantha stood up and paced around the room. “Is this some sort of scam? A trick? Or are you just trying to annoy me? I thought you wanted to be a friend.”

“I do. And I’m not asking for anything. I just wanted you all to know what was going on. If you never want to see me again—if it’s too much to handle—I’ll understand. But hear me out first. Please?”

Samantha sat down again, looking wary. Danny looked unperturbed. Jack kept staring at the boy but didn’t say anything.

“Thank you,” Abby said. “Let me start by saying that I have some psychic abilities.”

Samantha jumped out of her chair again. “Oh, for heaven’s sake! This is ridiculous. You may not be out to trick anybody, but you’re definitely a flake.”

“Please, Samantha! Just listen. And let me go backward. Jack was here earlier last week, so we could talk about various projects around the house. We had decided to start with moving the powder room on this floor, and we were tearing out some of the old stuff in there and he found an old wrench. When he picked it up, he dropped it like a hot potato.”

“Felt like I’d stuck my finger in an electric plug,” Jack said. “Thing of it is, I recognized it—it belonged to my grandfather, who was a plumber like me. He always marked his tools so they wouldn’t get mixed up with other people’s. I’ve still got a lot of ’em at home. But he’d never done any work in this house, as far as I know. Then Abby got onto the computer and looked up a census, and she found that Mary Maguire was listed as a servant here in 1930. I had an aunt Mary, but I never met her, and nobody in the family talked about her, except when they thought the kids weren’t listening. They said she’d had some trouble with the son of the owners, and Grampa went after him with a wrench. But nobody was ever charged with anything. Do you see where I’m going with this?”

Samantha had been leaning against the wall, but she grudgingly came back to the table and sat down again. “I can see how you’d string a bunch of ‘maybes’ together and make a story out of it.”

“Look,” Abby said, “I know we don’t have a lot of facts, and I’m making a lot of guesses. We know Mary left home not long after that and nobody in the family ever heard from her again. Maybe when the baby was born she gave a fake name, so there was no official record of the birth. But there was a child who was adopted by an Allen family in a Boston suburb—that’s on record, and the date for the child fits. They gave the baby the name of Andrew.”

“And you’re saying that my Andrew—Danny’s father—was this baby’s, what, son? Grandson?”

“It would have been his grandson, given the dates,” Abby said.

“Okay, so you’ve strung together a few facts. Why should it be true? Why should I believe you?”

“Because of what happened when Danny met Jack here. You want to tell that part, Jack?”

“All right. I told you about the shock I got when I took hold of Grampa’s wrench, right? So Friday I was working on the plumbing back there and I dropped a putty knife, and your Danny picked it up and handed it to me. And when I took hold of it, I got the same shock, between him and me. And you felt it too, didn’t you, Danny?”

“Jack, he’s a kid!” Samantha protested. “With an active imagination! You’re trying to ask him if he made some psychic connection with you through a putty knife?”

“Yes, I am,” Jack said calmly. “Listen, Samantha. I’m an ordinary guy. I’ve worked with my hands all my life, and I’ve never felt anything like that before. Not with my own kids, not with a stranger. If it had happened only the once, I could have written it off as an odd event and forgotten about it. But then it happened with the boy, right in front of me.”

“So shake his hand and tell me if it happens again. He’s right there,” Samantha said angrily.

Jack got up and moved to the chair next to Danny’s. “Do you mind if I shake you hand, Mr. Allen?”

“That’s silly—Mr. Allen was my dad. I’m just Danny.” He thrust his hand out, and Jack took it. Samantha stared at the pair of them like a hawk.

After a few seconds, Jack smiled at the boy—a smile that was sweet and sad at the same time. “Thank you.” He let go of Danny’s hand and looked at his mother. “I’m pretty hardheaded, but say what you will—there’s something between us. I feel it, and it’s not just in my head.”

“And I felt it too,” Abby said softly, “the first time I met him, at the school. And so did Ellie.”

“Is she . . . ?”

“Yes, she is. If she and Danny spend any time together when you’re around—and I hope you’ll let them—you’ll see how they communicate, and it’s not always with words.”

“Ellie’s my friend, Mom,” Danny chimed in. Clearly he’d been paying attention. How often did he “hear” things that weren’t said out loud?

Samantha stared at her son. “Danny, can you answer a question for me?”

“Sure, Mom.”

Samantha glanced around the group before going on. “Do you talk to your father? Or see him?”

Danny nodded. “Sure. Not all the time, but sometimes.”

“You never told me,” Samantha said.

“You always get sad when you talk about him, so I didn’t tell you. And I don’t think he can talk to you, because you can’t hear him. He doesn’t exactly talk to me in words, but I can hear what he’s thinking.” Danny spoke in a matter-of-fact voice, as if talking to his dead father was an ordinary thing to do.

“And how do you and Ellie talk?”

“Ellie’s better at it than me. Mostly we talk out loud, but sometimes I hear words from her.”

Samantha glanced at Abby. “Ellie?”

“She’s not related, but she’s been communicating with some of her relatives all her life—without her mother or father knowing it.”

“Dead relatives?” Samantha whispered.

“Yes. It seems to be a hereditary ability. I’ve talked to a number of mine, since I moved to Massachusetts. And I think I told you that Ned and I are related, back several generations. Whatever it is seems to hang around for a long time. But as far as we know, we can’t do it with random strangers. Ellie told me she could link to Danny, and I get a little spark from him, but that’s all.”

Samantha leaned back in her chair and seemed to wilt. “I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.”

“Please don’t cry!” Abby said. “It may be strange, but there’s nothing evil about it. Look, I already know that Danny’s a very smart boy, but sometimes he has trouble dealing with the real world. This ability can help him with that, if he works at it.”

“And what about his teachers? Are they going to label him a psycho?”

“I won’t kid you—you have to be careful. Ned and I, we’ve been doing some research since we learned about this, and we can see that a lot of people distrust it. I can’t blame them. And it can be hard to handle for the person who has it. I had some ancestors in Salem, I found. Two of them were hanged as witches while my direct ancestor watched, and let me tell you, that was painful, even after centuries. Strong emotions, both good and bad, linger for a very long time.”

Samantha turned to Jack, who had sat watching her silently. “What about you? You’re the other new kid with this. How are you handling it?”

“It’s been only a few days. And I don’t go around like with an antenna, seeing if I can pick up somebody else. But let me ask you this: how does it happen that we all met? My aunt Mary, who I never knew, suffered in this house. I came here because Ned’s mother happened to hire me for a plumbing job a while back, and I didn’t even know she had a son then. Abby here takes care of Ellie one afternoon a week, and Abby just happens to be there at the school and meets Danny. You bring him over here on a day I happen to be here, and look where that’s brought us. I’m not going to try to guess the whys and hows, but tell me there isn’t a reason behind our coming together?”

“You’re thinking God, or Fate, or something like that?” Samantha demanded.

“I’m not going to try to guess. Can’t we just say ‘something we don’t understand’ for now?”

Samantha was shaking her head. “I can’t do this. My husband’s dead. I’ve got a child who I love with all my heart, but he’s got problems that he’ll never outgrow. I moved here so he could go to a good school, but I don’t have any friends here—or anywhere else, really. My job sucks but I sure don’t want to move again right now.”

“Samantha,” Jack said, “you’ve got a family now. Maybe we’re all three generations twice removed, but we look after our own. The Maguires would welcome you, since there’s a good chance that Danny’s one of us. And you don’t have to talk about this other thing unless you want to.”

“How are you going to deal with it, with your family?”

“I don’t know. Most of my family has hard heads, and they’d laugh at me. But that doesn’t make it any less real. And if it’ll help you with your son, you need it.”

Everyone sat in a stunned silence for long minutes. Then Abby said, “Ned, you’ve been awfully quiet so far. You have anything to add?”

“I didn’t want to interrupt. I haven’t talked to Jack or Samantha, although I’ve watched Ellie and Danny together and I like what I see, for both of them. And you don’t know me. I’m a scientist, and I own a small tech company. I didn’t know I had this thing. But I did have a friend when I was about Danny’s age who wasn’t really there, but I never asked anybody about him, and he just kind of disappeared after a while. And when I got older I stopped thinking about it at all.

“Then I met Abby, or she kind of fell over in front of me, and it all came back. She’s going to be mad at me forever because I didn’t tell her about it for a long time, because I was using her as a test subject. Believe me, I’ve apologized over and over. Now, before you get scared, I’m not interested in this because I want to make a lot of money or get famous. I do it because I want to understand it, because I have it and Abby has it, and apparently so do you both, and other people we know. It’s one of those things nobody really talks about, but it’s real. Abby wants to use this ability as a way to help kids like Danny, make it easier for them to communicate with other people. I think it’s a great idea, but we haven’t worked out any details yet.”

He leaned forward in his chair. “We’d love to have Danny involved, because he’s already Ellie’s friend, and he’s smart, and he’s still open to the idea. But you don’t have to get him involved unless you’re comfortable with it. And there’s no deadline, except I think it would be a shame to tell him to forget about it. Look, he says he’s talking to his father. Maybe he’s hallucinating, but maybe it’s real, and it’s the only way he’ll ever know him. You want to tell him it’s wrong and he shouldn’t? At least give him the chance. And trust him.”

“I need some time to think about all this,” Samantha finally said. “I know you mean well, and I know you believe what you’re saying, but it’s a lot to wrap my head around right now. Can we just set it aside for the moment?”

“Of course. Listen, does anybody want to eat? Or I could just send you home with stew and cake—I won’t be offended.”

Jack cocked at eyebrow at Samantha and smiled. “You look like you could use a good home-cooked meal, and I’m sure the boy would like it too. What say we keep our talk to easier things, like how the Patriots are doing this season?”

Samantha managed a watery smile. “Deal. But I’ve never had much time to watch the games on Sunday, so you’ll have to explain some of the rules to me.”

Jack turned to Danny. “Does that suit you, young man?”

“Well, I’m hungry, but I don’t know much about football. What do I call you?”

“Hmm, good question. How about Grampa Jack? But maybe not in front of my family, at least for now. And Bill would be kind of a cousin, but you can call him Bill. All right?”

“That’s good . . . Grampa.”

“Can I dish up now?” Abby asked plaintively. “Because I’m starving too.”

Ned stood up. “I’ll help.” He followed Abby to the kitchen, while Samantha and Jack stayed at the dining room table and began to talk tentatively. He said quietly, “Well done. If ever I need to do an ad campaign, I’d hire you. I think you won them over.”

“I hope so. Samantha needs a family, and so does Danny, and it looks like somehow we found one for them.”