Grandma Gwenny settled into her usual friendly silence. She never started a conversation, preferring to let others take the lead. Today was the exception. Taking Merry by surprise, Grandma said, “Meredith Brynn, I’ve never heard you abstain from talking for this long in my life. The silence in here is deafening.”
“How can you hear someone not talking?” Merry asked. They both smiled.
“I can hear that you have a hornet’s nest buzzing around in your head. Is this about Owen? I see that Owen will be well, although I’m not sure he’ll get over this right now. At least he’s well now. Are you ill? Worried? Constipated? In love?” Meredith glanced up. Her grandmother said, “I guess that was the bingo.”
“I can’t talk about it,” said Merry. “I don’t know why.”
“I’m sure you have a good reason,” said her grandmother.
“Let me just ask you this. Is it possible to feel as though you’ve known someone all your life when you’ve just met?”
Grandma Gwenny got up to open the oven and pull out a tray of muffins she’d set to heat. “I suppose that’s true of everyone who falls in love, at least in the best of all possible worlds.” She added, “It doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t get to know him in real life though, despite how you feel.”
“I don’t know how I feel. This is all new,” Merry said, and Grandma Gwenny hugged her. Then Adam rolled into the room, his four or five cowlicks standing at attention on his head, his jeans and T-shirt clearly left over from the previous night. As soon as Drew left, Mallory had checked on Adam, who was asleep crossways on their parents’ bed, having taped all the windows of his and their room with drawings of skulls and writings of “POISON” in red marker, for no reason Mally could discern. Adam hadn’t done anything so childish in years.
“I’m saved!” Adam exclaimed. “Somebody’s finally here who knows how to make real food!”
“Not only that,” said Grandma Gwenny, “let’s get this place cleaned up for your parents.”
“Grandma!” Adam complained, mouth full. “I have fifteen minutes before I catch the bus.”
“But I’m driving you, so you have an hour. Go up and jump in the shower, and I’ll give this place a shake. Your parents are going to be busy. Owen is coming home today. Your mom has school tomorrow. And Wednesday, there’s a small funeral service at Mountain Rest Cemetery. I guess Sasha will stay with Owen.” She paused and tried to change the subject. “Why does your father still have Christmas lights up outside?”
“We usually leave those up until Easter,” Mallory said.
“A funeral?” Merry said. “Who died?”
Grandma sat down at the table with her cup of tea. “It’s no one you know. But it’s a very sad story. It’s someone I used to have babysit your father, actually all the kids. This boy died a long time ago. Actually in the Vietnam War. But he was MIA—do you know what that means?”
“Missing in action,” Merry murmured.
“Yes and it is only now that they have found enough of his things ... that is ... his remains to identify him and to bring him home to be buried. Nearly forty years later. It’s so very sad. Helene Highland suffered and hoped all this time that Ben would be found in prison, alive.”
Mallory glanced at Merry. She looked like a much younger kid, Adam’s age and scared of the dark. Mally asked, “Were there any other kids in the family?”
“Of course there was David, his older brother. I’m not sure if there were any children younger than Ben. His parents weren’t social friends of ours. I do know that someone named a son after Ben.”
“That’s it!” Merry cried, leaping out of her seat and executing an impromptu Herkie. “He must be a relative, here for the funeral! That’s why he’s here!”
“Who’s here?” Grandma Gwenny asked. “Why so much joy over someone’s child being buried?”
Meredith scraped her dishes and ran from the room, dropping a kiss on Grandma Gwenny’s head.
“Grandma,” Mallory said, as Gwenny began wiping down the countertops, “you mentioned that person named Ellie the other night.”
“Yes.”
“Well, you said you knew who that was.”
“One of my old people is disabled, and Carla takes her to church. They’re very, very conservative Catholics. My friend told me that Carla hopes somehow to get in touch with Ellie somehow in a vision or through prayer.”
“Ellie is ...?”
“Elliott, her baby son. Carla’s husband was killed in a car accident just after they moved here from New Jersey a couple of years ago. Elliott was hurt badly. He was at a children’s special care hospital in New York City. And they were just about to bring him home, or so I gather, when he suddenly got an infection,” Grandma said. She went on, opening the door to set a few bags of trash in the lidded cans outside the back steps. From beneath the sink, which was kept baby-proofed, she took a roll of towels and some glass cleaner. She explained how Carla was at the hospital day and night and was in fact holding her little boy when he suddenly stopped breathing. There was even, according to Grandma, a horrible rumor that Carla had some role in Elliott’s death because she didn’t want to raise a baby who would have had very special needs because of an injury to his brain. “No one really thought that. But my friend says she lost her reason for awhile and had to be hospitalized herself.”
“So Carla is crazy?” Mallory gasped.
“Mallory Brynn. Grief that overwhelming and a period of depression are hardly crazy. I’ve met her once or twice, and she seems like a very devoted mother to her daughter. She still grieves for her baby. It hasn’t been that long. And she’s just not like most people. If that were against the law, I know people who’d be in trouble,” Grandma Gwenny said with a measuring look at Mallory. “What’s with your sister and her reaction to the Highlands’ son being buried?”
“It’s a long story,” Mallory said with a sigh. “And I think it’s going to get longer.”
TWICE IN A LIFETIME
The next afternoon, when her second practice of the day ended, an exhausted Merry met Mallory, who was waiting for her at the door of the house.
“Let’s go upstairs,” Mallory said. Her tone was commanding, serious.
“I want to see Owen,” Merry told her. “Hi Ant.”
Adam was in the kitchen, just a few feet away from the girls, elaborately spreading peanut butter on bread. He was spreading it so slowly that he might have been applying the final touches to the Mona Lisa. Merry could almost see his ears lengthening as he strained to hear his sisters’ conversation. Mally caught Meredith’s glance. This discussion, which she had blown a math test to plan, was nothing for Adam’s ears. And she knew that he could tell that simply from their tone of voice.
“Mom and Dad won’t be home for another hour at least. So ... renow itsap,” Mally said in twin language. “Renow itsap renow.” Meredith, her pointed chin stuck straight up in the air, did hurry up, as Mally instructed in twin talk, flouncing up the stairs. By the time Mallory had Adam set up with his long division, Merry was supine on the bed in a quite good pantomime of actual sleep.
“That might work for some people,” Mally said. “Not me.” No answer. “Sit up and tell, Mer.” Meredith reluctantly unrolled herself from her bed.
“So, this is the answer. Your Ben is the son or the grandson of the guy who died in Vietnam. Okay. Why am I dreaming about him? I don’t have those dreams about just anyone. Unless that person is a threat to someone. But I don’t feel like he’s a threat.” Meredith didn’t open her eyes. “Explain. Tell me. I’m on your side.” Mallory decided to go to the point. Since she saw the future, she had very little experience with ghosts; Merry, however, saw them all the time—had since she was little, happily watching their Brynn ancestors bustling around the house and through the walls. So she asked, “What does a ghost look like, Meredith?”
“Where did that come from?”
Mallory lay down on her own bed. “I just want to know.”
??
?Like anybody else,” Meredith said. “They don’t float or wear sheets. Some of them wear, you know, what they wore when they were buried, long white dresses.”
“Are they scary?”
“Not so much.”
“Even when you were little?”
“I didn’t see them so much when I was really little. I just barely felt them, and I wasn’t scared.”
“What about now? What about since we got older?”
“There were a couple who scared me,” Merry said thoughtfully. “There was a man in the garage when Dad was doing the addition. I don’t know who he was, but he had on a long black coat and a black hat, and he said, ”Go away from here, people!” He had a thick, funny accent, like an English accent but garbled up. But it was like I heard his voice later and just saw his lips move first. And he looked kind of like a slow movie. Very strange. I was probably Adam’s age. I was so scared I wasn’t scared, you know? I just told him to get out of our house, that this was the Brynn house. And he said a funny thing.”
“What?”
“He said this: ‘Where is my Mary? I don’t know these Brynns.’ Then he just vanished, bit by bit.”
“Like the Cheshire cat?”
“No, idiot ... like fading, just getting more and more see-through, like a little at a time.”
“Oh,” Mallory said. “Tell me about the other time.”
Meredith carefully got up and knelt by the window. “I don’t talk about the other one.”
“To me?”
“Even to you.”
“Merry, please. I think I saw a ghost. I think I know who it is. I have to know what makes a person sure it’s a ghost. The only person I ever knew who saw ghosts is you.”
“I don’t want to talk about her.”
“It’s a her.”
“Yes.” Merry turned back. “She lived here.”
“In Ridgeline?” Mallory asked, pulling her quilt around her shoulders.
“In this house. In this room. It wasn’t a room, though, then because it was the attic.” Instinctively, Mallory pulled her feet up off the floor.
“In our room?”
“I came up here one night, and this was really a long time ago, looking for my school pictures from when I was in kindergarten for Spirit Day. I saw her sitting by the window. Sitting on a little stool. She wasn’t more than sixteen, and she had long, blond hair, longer than Sasha, down to the ground almost. She was drinking something out of a little cup. Medicine. But then she fainted or fell. And I knew she was dead.”
“She killed herself? In our room?”
“Mallory, I don’t think that she meant to. I don’t know how I knew. But she took more than she was supposed to. I don’t know what it was. I was scared because I was seeing a dead person die. But mostly, just sad. I could see the letter she had.”
“A letter?”
“Yes. I walked toward her, but I couldn’t get close enough.”
“You didn’t run?”
“No, I’m used to this. I walked slowly toward her and it said ... someone was writing about coming home. But not to you. I have the deepest respect ... and something or other. And then I heard her say, ‘Oh, please no.’”
Mallory got up. “She was dumped. I bet she did it on purpose.”
“I would know, I think. I like to believe she was just trying to put it out of her mind.”
“Was she on your side or my side of the room?”
“Yours,” Merry said, and Mallory sprang up off the bed as though she was blocking a shot on goal at soccer.
“She’s nothing to be scared of. I’ve seen lots of ghosts. Grandma’s Gwenny’s twin, Vera. I’ve seen her ten times at least. She loves us. I’ve seen Grandma’s mother. Twenty others at least. Those were the only ones I was ever scared of. And I was scared about them, not of them.”
“Describe Ben,” Mallory said as she brushed out her hair and got into her pajamas. Merry described the boy with the curly blond hair and big shoulders, the boy who, Mallory now realized, had been in Mountain Home Cemetery, near where she and Drew often made out. “I saw him tonight Merry. I saw him when I passed out for a second. Mer, I think maybe he’s the boy who died. I just think that. I don’t know when. He died a long time ago, I think.”
“That’s crazy,” Meredith said. “He’s here because of what Grandma said.”
“Oh? Are you sure?”
“Mallory, I knew you were going to say something like this. First, I don’t believe it here.” She pointed to her heart. “He didn’t talk like those other ones. It wasn’t like he was under water or something. And second, it wouldn’t matter. I would love him anyway. That’s all there is to it.”
“Meredith! Let’s at least check it out. Let’s find out who Ben is.”
“I don’t care who he is,” Meredith said firmly.
“Let’s go to the funeral.”
“NO. I went to my last funeral when David Jellico ...”
“Then you don’t really believe he’s real.”
Merry rolled over and pushed her face into the pillow. “Fine,” she said. “Fine, fine, fine.”
THE SECRET OF BEN
Later that same day, they all spoiled Owen when he got home.
His little arms were scored with the tracks of welts where doctors had tested him for life-threatening allergies, to things such as peanuts and shellfish. Next week Dad was taking him to St. Therese’s Research Hospital in New York for a second round. The doctors in Ridgeline confessed that he needed a specialist. One of them told Campbell that allergies were “specific and unusual” and that anything in the air or sky could be affecting Owen. The doctor also admitted that the vomiting symptoms weren’t usually provoked by allergens, although again, in rare cases, it was possible.
Tuesday was a teacher’s in-service, so the girls were home. Sasha was there when Mallory woke up, as Campbell had to set out for class at seven. Mally had planned to take Adam for some practice soccer drills, but it was cold, so she took the lazy route, dressing in black flannel velvet pants and a roll-neck sweater and carrying a book downstairs. That night at school was the All County Tournament, the last basketball game of the year. Campbell had only school today, no work, so she would be able to see Sasha and Merry cheer. There had been three practices in the past two days, and there was an early practice today as well. The All County was a big deal.
But Sasha didn’t have to work out with the squad, as Meredith did. She told Mallory, “I’ve practiced that last tumbling run until I could do it in my sleep.” The tumbling run looked like something out of the Olympics. It was a round off to a full front flip and an immediate back flip, ending in a split. When she did it, the other girls watched as though Sasha were one step from the medal stand. Now, she picked Owen up, hugged him, and then set him down on the floor as she told Meredith, “I have to go by my other job for awhile today too. They have a funeral tomorrow, the poor things.”
“Is it the Highland funeral?”
Sasha paused a moment and then said, “Why ... yes.”
“We’re going to that,” Merry said. “The Highlands were friends of the family I guess. I hate funerals, although I’ve only been to one.”
“Part of life, I reckon,” Sasha said, prying a small tack out of Owen’s chubby fist. “I don’t think we want to play with thumbtacks, slugger.” Owen began to scream and cartwheel in a circle, his little face puffed and red. Quickly, Meredith bent down to pick him up.
“Don’t do that, Mer,” Sasha said. “He’s not hurting. He’s just mad.” Sasha urged Merry further to tell everyone not to make such a fuss. “He’ll just start to have real tantrums. Y’all will have to stop treating him like the sick kid. Please. He’s such a sweet happy little guy.”
But even Sasha wasn’t immune to spoiling Owen a little. She had brought Owen a red bus in honor of his first big word, which was “kitty bus.” By saying this, he correctly identified the ByWay bus in his own language, meaning “city bus.” Sasha had found a hard plastic model of a
London bus, which was at least the same color, and Owen ran it all over the walls and the floor making engine noises. Sasha sat down and played with him and patiently let him run the truck up and down her arms while she changed him. Then she took him upstairs to give him his bath. About half an hour later, she came back down with Owen in his duck towel.
“Where’s that pan of mine?” Sasha asked them. “With the apple crisp?”
“I ate a lot of it,” Adam said, coming into the kitchen and handing Sasha the saucepan. So it was hers, Merry thought. Was Sasha the one who locked the door? Adam lied, “It was really good. There was a semi-desperate food situation this weekend.”
Sasha laughed and began pouring organic soymilk into sterile bottles. Campbell had switched over from formula to soy because Owen still liked milk bottles in the morning and at naptime. Campbell said it was dumb that doctors said babies had to be off the bottle by exactly one year or before.
“Are you going to try out for cheerleading squad in college?” Merry asked Sasha.
“Sure. Along with nursing,” said Sasha. “Everything I can do to help me get a scholarship.”
“Do you know where you’re going to college yet?” Merry asked.
“I don’t know. Probably Texas A&M. They’re big into cheering, and I am still a resident there. I didn’t try for early acceptance because I might have to work a year after graduation. Your mama says she’ll help me get a full-time job at the hospital if I start off with a few classes at the tech college. She even said I could live here without paying rent if I help with Owen. She’s so sweet.”
“We could squeeze you in somewhere! I’ll take Owen. You have to go, don’t you?”
“I really do. I know Mallory wanted to take Adam out.”
“It’s okay. He’s sleeping late anyhow,” Meredith said. “He’s almost a teenager.”
Sasha said, “I’m so glad you guys are here because I absolutely must get on to my other job. I usually never have to go during the day, but the lady I help is in a bad way.”