“There we go,” she murmured to the screen. She brought up his profile and found an email address but no phone number.
One thing she’d learned in her business was that even people who should know better often didn’t appropriately privacy-protect their online information. A quick further search discovered Miller’s address, which was current and confirmed by the most recently updated white pages database. In under ten minutes, she had everything she needed to know to get in touch with him. It was one of the easiest searches she’d done in a long time, but now Ginny sat back in her seat and wondered what she would do with that information.
He had a right to know. He obviously didn’t care about the furniture or other things in his father’s house, but surely he’d have wanted something personal of his sister’s. Even if he hadn’t wanted anything to do with his dad when he was still alive, he at least deserved the chance to have what his sister had left behind.
She dialed the number as she went upstairs. A woman answered just as Ginny entered the library to look at Caroline’s box.
“Hi, can I speak to Brendan Miller, please?”
The beat of silence lasted way too long. “Who’s calling?”
“This is Ginny Bohn, I—”
“Who?”
Ginny paused. Brendan Miller hadn’t come to the settlement. She had no idea if he was married, but this woman sounded like a suspicious wife. She tried again. “My name is Ginny Bohn. I bought his father’s house?”
Another long pause. “Yes? What about it?”
“Is he there?”
“No. He’s not. Can I help you?” The woman’s clipped tone didn’t sound the least bit helpful.
Ginny tried anyway. “I’ve found something in the house.”
“He doesn’t want anything from there, he told me.” Another pause, then a resentful sniff. “I told him there were a lot of lovely things in that house that we could use, but he refused to have any of it. I said that even if he didn’t want it, maybe the kids would, someday. I mean, it was family heirloom stuff.”
“Oh, honestly…I don’t know anything about that, really. There were only a few things we asked remain in the house anyway.” She thought suddenly of the ugly table she didn’t like, but the thought of offering it to this unhelpful and snide-sounding stranger was suddenly unpalatable. “But I’m not talking about—”
“Whatever. It was his father’s stuff. I guess if he didn’t want it, who am I to say a word?”
Ginny had been on this ride before, the up-and-down roller coaster of marital resentments. She understood how it felt to feel marginalized, she totally did. Yet nothing in this woman’s attitude made Ginny sympathetic.
“It’s not furniture,” she said quickly before the woman could continue complaining. “It’s something personal.”
The pause this time was longer. “Like what?”
“I’d really like to talk to him about it, if you don’t mind.”
That was the wrong thing to say. An audible, choking gasp poked Ginny’s eardrum. The woman spat her words like bullets, “I do mind, as a matter of fact. What did you say your name was again? What sort of personal business do you have with my husband?”
“It’s his sister’s suitcase,” Ginny said before the woman could go off on her some more. “I thought he’d want it.”
“My husband doesn’t have a sister.”
“No, well…um, so far as I know, she’s…gone.”
“Who did you say this was again?”
Irritated, Ginny sighed. “Is there a better time I can reach him?”
“No. Don’t call here again. My husband didn’t have a sister.”
With that, Mrs. Brendan Miller hung up and left Ginny’s jaw hanging open.
What a bitch.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The Ouija board had been spectacularly easy to get. Ginny simply ordered it online, and it arrived within a couple days. It was different than the one she remembered from slumber parties as a kid. This one was smaller, with glow-in-the-dark letters and planchette. Still, it had the same setup with YES, NO, GOODBYE and the alphabet curving across it.
Peg, on the other hand, could not be convinced to use it. “No. No way.”
“Peggy, c’mon. We used to do it all the time as kids. Remember?”
“I remember. But I’m not doing it now.” Peg shook her head and then her finger. “And you shouldn’t, either. What are you thinking, bringing that into your house? Don’t you know that you could attract…something?”
“There’s already something.” Ginny put the box aside and set the board in the middle of the dining room table.
Peg huffed. “Oh, Ginny. Come on.”
Ginny paused to look at her sister. “I’m serious.”
“You have mice or squirrels in your attic, that’s all—”
“Mice and squirrels might get into the food in the pantry,” Ginny said. “But they wouldn’t use a mug and then put it back in the cupboard.”
“Well, neither would a ghost, for crying out loud.”
Ginny raised a brow. “How do you know?”
“Ghosts are spiritual entities or whatever. They don’t need to use a mug.” Peg waved at the Ouija board. “And this is just asking for trouble.”
“You used to love this game!”
“It’s not a game,” Peg said seriously. “I mean it, Ginny. Father Simon spoke about it a few months ago, because of the kids getting in to stuff like that for Halloween. It’s a bad tool. It invites bad things.”
Ginny sighed and pulled the board toward her. She put her fingertips on the plastic planchette and moved it experimentally around the board. “Father Simon is kind of hysterical.”
Peg made a snuffling noise of protest, but her expression said she knew Ginny was right. “Don’t be disrespectful.”
“Didn’t he also give a sermon about how couples should watch more television together because it prevented arguments?”
Peg’s mouth worked on tamping back a smile. “Yes. He did.”
“And how’s that working for you and Dale?”
Peg didn’t answer for a moment, then said reluctantly, “We fought over the remote.”
Ginny slapped the table in triumph. The planchette bounced and slid, skewed toward the board’s grinning sun. “See?”
Peg shook her finger at Ginny again. “He’s the authority on spiritual matters, and if Father Simon says Ouija boards are dangerous and bad, I believe him. Besides, didn’t you see The Exorcist?”
“It’s a movie, not real life.”
“Paranormal Activity?” Peg asked, as though that somehow was less fictional.
“Did they even use a Ouija in that?” Ginny scoffed. “Also, just a movie.”
Peg frowned, her expression shadowed. “You don’t remember, do you?”
“What, the movie? Not much. I fell asleep, except for the last couple of minutes. Which were some of horror cinema’s finest,” Ginny admitted. “But no, I don’t remember the rest.”
“Not the movie. The Ouija board. The one at Gran’s house.”
“I do remember it. That’s why I got this one.”
Peg sighed. “But you don’t remember what happened with it. Obviously, you don’t. Or else you wouldn’t be sitting there with that thing in front of you.”
This had the flavor of a story. Ginny perked, leaning closer to her sister. “What happened?”
“I don’t really want to talk about it.”
Ginny tossed a ball of the plastic wrapping that had been on the box at her. “Bitch!”
Peg laughed, though it trailed into an uneasy sigh. “It was some creepy, scary stuff, Gin. You were maybe…ten? Eleven?”
Which would’ve made Peg seventeen. Ginny remembered being ten, vaguely. It was the year of the short haircut. Being mistaken for a boy wa
s the most traumatic thing for Ginny that year, certainly no strange paranormal thing.
Unless she’d just forgotten about it.
“We were at Gran’s for Christmas. The big party, and we were staying over for the rest of the week, along with Roberta and Dana and Carla.” Peg paused. “Or maybe Dana wasn’t there, I don’t remember. No, I think she was on some youth group trip. Or had she already gone off to college? No, she had to be there, because—”
“Is it important?”
Peg shook her head, focusing. “Oh no. Anyway, we were all staying over until New Year’s.”
“Gran had another party, didn’t she?” Now Ginny was remembering a little more. “She always had the Christmas Eve party, but she had that New Year’s thing one year.”
“Just the one,” Peg said ominously.
Ginny rolled her eyes. “She had other New Year’s Day things. I remember going there for pork and sauerkraut.”
“Sure, just the family. But not a big party with neighbors and stuff. She always said it was because having two big parties so close together was too much work.” Peg gave Ginny a significant look. “But I think it was because of what happened.”
“Jesus, Peggy. What happened?”
Peg frowned. “Ginny, please.”
“Sorry.” Her apology was automatic but sincere; she didn’t have to drink the Kool-Aid to understand that her sister liked the flavor.
“We were all playing with that thing.” Peg gestured at the board. “Roberta found it in one of the closets upstairs. It was probably Uncle Jimmy’s.”
“What, along with the collection of biker mags?” Ginny snickered.
Peg laughed too. “Yeah. Anyway, she brought it downstairs after Gran went to bed. We were all supposed to be in bed too, but you know we never were.”
Nighttime in Gran’s house during Christmas vacation had created some of Ginny’s favorite childhood memories. Sneaking cookies, playing endless games of Monopoly and Clue by the light of the tree. Everyone had new pajamas, the fabric still stiff. The older kids played their portable boom boxes, fighting over who got to pick the next cassette.
“So Roberta brings this thing down into the living room, and we set it up near the tree. By the train set. Dana and Carla went first. They held it on their knees, sitting crisscross applesauce.”
Ginny laughed at the term. She hadn’t heard that in years. Her cousins, fraternal twins, were usually the first to try anything new. “You’re taking a long-ass time to tell this story.”
“Do you want to hear it or not?” Ginny nodded, only slightly chastised, but Peg was determined to draw it out. “I need a refill.”
“Oh, Peg. C’mon!” Ginny’s protests were met with Peg’s unwavering stare and her raised coffee mug. “I’m the pregnant one.”
“And you know I don’t know how to use that fancy coffee thing you have.”
Ginny narrowed her eyes, but got up. In the kitchen, she fussed with the coffee pods to brew her sister another cup. On a whim, she opened the cupboard to see if any other of her dishes had gone missing or been moved around, or if any other gifts had been left in their place. Today there was nothing.
Maybe she really was just crazy.
Peg came into the kitchen. “You’re a terrible hostess. I need something to eat.”
Ginny removed Peg’s full mug and replaced it with hers while she brewed some cocoa from another pod. Then she took both mugs and sat at the table while she watched her sister dig into the fridge. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were trying to stall.” Ginny gave Peg a significant look over the rim of her mug. “So come on. Spill it. What, you think I’m going to get too scared or something?”
Ginny had always been the kid who stayed up late reading scary books under the covers with a flashlight, who snuck downstairs to watch horror movies after her parents went to bed. Halloween had never seen her in a princess tiara or a cowgirl hat. Halloween was for zombies and witches and vampires. One year she was a werewolf, complete with ears and furry paws, a bloody and mangled red cape around her neck like a scarf. She’d won first prize in the parade. There wasn’t much Peg could tell her about supernatural things that would scare her.
“You’re the one who thinks she has a ghost,” Peg pointed out. “I don’t want to freak you out.”
“I’ve faced worse fears than ghosts.” Ginny meant to say the words lightly, teasing, but they came out solemn and serious and heavy. She swallowed hot cocoa too fast, and it burned her tongue. She turned her face from her sister’s.
Peg reached for her hand anyway. “Right. Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
Ginny shrugged again and blew on her cocoa, though now she no longer had the taste for it. “So. This story?”
Peg grimaced. “Fine. So we were all downstairs playing with the board, and you’d been upstairs sleeping or reading or something, I don’t know. But you came down when we were doing it, and you wanted to play. So, you sat down across from Carla and put your fingers on that plastic thing—”
“The planchette.” Fascinated by this story she couldn’t remember, Ginny leaned forward.
“And it started to move.”
Ginny waited, but Peg didn’t say more. “And?”
“It started to fly all over the board, all wild. Carla accused you of moving it, but you said you weren’t! And it went all over; it started spelling out words and stuff. We all got freaked out. You took your fingers off it, and it stopped. You put your hands on it, and it went again, crazy, until it flew right off the board.”
“Wow.” Ginny laughed. “Sounds like I was pulling a fast one on you all.”
Peg was silent for a couple seconds. “Maybe.”
“Or what? Maybe it was Satan?”
“You were a devil,” Peg told her.
Ginny tossed a balled-up paper napkin at her. “Hyuck, hyuck, hyuck. Very funny.”
“You don’t remember?”
“Vaguely. But probably only because you just told me about it.” Ginny turned her mug around and around in her hands, pressing her palms to the heated porcelain. “I’m not sure what was so freaky about it.”
Peg hesitated, but pressed on. “You said it wasn’t you doing it, making it move. That it was the lady in the blue dress.”
“Sounds terrifying.”
“You insisted it was the lady in the blue dress, and she wanted to tell Carla something important, but Carla was so scared by that time that she wouldn’t put her hands on the planchette. You were sitting there and it started moving again, we assumed you were pushing it of course. Trying to scare everyone. But it was going slower, more controlled, and we could read what it was saying. Over and over, ‘Don’t go to Boston’.”
“Wow. Weird.”
Peg nodded and took a minute to sip from her coffee like it gave her strength. “You know what happened, right?”
“If I knew,” Ginny pointed out, “would I be asking you?”
“Carla was supposed to go to Boston for a dance competition. Which you probably knew. I mean, everyone was talking about it. But she got so freaked out she didn’t go.”
“And what happened? Let me guess, the plane she was supposed to go on crashed or something.” Despite herself, Ginny got a shiver.
Peg shook her head. “Nope. Nothing happened.”
“Well…what on earth? Why would that mean anything then? I was probably just messing with her!”
“She didn’t go to Boston that weekend, and, instead, she went to Buffalo with her mom, shopping. They were in a car accident. Carla was driving.”
Ginny wrinkled her nose. “I remember that.”
“The car was totaled but they were okay. But, one thing they never talked about, Carla only told me once and it was just after Peter and June got married, and they had that reception in that creepy inn, remember? And everyone was talking about h
ow it was haunted, and what weird things happened, and Carla refused to stay there, she went and stayed at the Holiday Inn?”
There were benefits to having a large family—all the stories that started and ended with “you remember?” being one of them—but not right now. Ginny waved an impatient hand. “Yes, I remember.”
“Carla told me that a steel rod from the truck that hit them went all the way through their windshield, all the way through the car. If her mom had been driving—because her mom’s a few inches taller, right?—she’d have been decapitated. But Carla was driving because—”
“She didn’t go to Boston.”
“Yes!” Peg crowed, triumphant, and slapped the table hard enough to make their mugs jump. “Because you told her the lady in the blue dress said not to!”
“Oh, Peg.”
“The lady in the blue dress, by the way, is in a picture in Gran’s house. It used to hang up in the dining room, but she took it down when she remodeled.”
“So, I saw a picture of a lady in a blue dress and wanted to freak out Carla, and I made up a story that happened to have some weird repercussions.” Ginny waved her hand again. “You can’t say it had anything to do with it. I mean, you can never know what might’ve happened. Only what did.”
“I thought you of all people would be excited to hear that story.”
Ginny laughed. “But you’re the one saying it’s the devil’s tool! Sounds to me like it saved Aunt Dina’s life.”
Peg clearly hadn’t thought about it that way, because she opened her mouth to say something, but stopped. Then started. Stopped again, while Ginny laughed. “It’s still not a toy,” she said finally. “And I think if you use it to contact whatever’s in this house, you’ll regret it.”
“So you believe me, there’s something here.”
Peg hesitated again. “I don’t know.”
“Fine. Don’t believe me. But if there’s not a ghost or spirit or something in here…” Ginny paused to draw a shallow breath that wanted very much to be a sob, “…then it must be my husband trying to gaslight me. Which do you think I’d rather have it be?”