What the Dead Want(25)

You are inspiring, James, realizing your own convictions and dreams even as you help those around you. You are in my thoughts constantly, your smile, your wit. And your courage. I long to be beside you. And hope that it will be soon.

Because I have news: I have been accepted at Troy Female Seminary! This is still a secret as I am working up the courage to show my father the acceptance letter. You are the only one I have told! You were right about all of it. And I cannot thank you enough. I will be sad to be away at school while you are home in Mayville. But Troy is close to Canada, and close to other stops on the route. We should be able to get even more done. Help even more people, as we will both be living on strategic points.

Know that we are together always. And that when I come home with my education it will be as we have always dreamed.

Your friend eternally,

Fidelia





THIRTEEN


AROUND FOUR THIRTY IN THE MORNING THE MEDICAL examiner arrived at the Greens’ house. He’d been to the scene and determined Esther’s death to be suicide. Gretchen noted that he looked tired and a little unsettled, but not like he’d walked through a gauntlet of ghosts or strange creatures with hooves. He said that her body would be taken to the Palmer Funeral Home downtown. The next of kin would have to go make arrangements.

Gretchen couldn’t believe he’d just gone into the house by himself. Maybe she really had been hallucinating. Too open to Esther’s crazy suggestions about ghosts? Too hungry or drunk, too willing to see the kinds of things her mother believed in? But Hawk was seeing these things too. There had to be more to the story.

“Suicide’s not as rare in the elderly as you might think,” the medical examiner said somberly. “Someone like your aunt, tough old lady, lived on her own for so long. The idea of not being able to care for herself . . . well, people like that often make their own decisions about when it’s time to go.”

It was only when his car pulled out of the drive and the taillights faded into the night that Gretchen realized there were no other adults around. Esther had mentioned something about the Greens having a famous mother, but besides this visit from a haggard man in a dark suit, they seemed to be on their own.

“Where are your parents?” she asked Hope.

The siblings looked at one another.

“Gone,” they said in unison.

The word resonated, cold and familiar in Gretchen’s head.

“They passed just before I turned seventeen,” Hawk said. “Car accident.”

“I’m so sorry,” Gretchen said, thinking about Esther’s admonishments to be careful, saying accidents were the number-one cause of death around there.

“We are too,” said Hope, nodding her head. “They swerved off the road to avoid hitting a little boy.”

“What was the little boy doing out in the road all by himself?” Gretchen asked.

“Playing with a rope,” Hope said. “That’s what the only witnesses said.”

“They didn’t find him at the scene,” Hawk said. “He must have run off.”

Gretchen thought of the photograph Esther had shown her just an hour ago, of her mother, with Piper running through. She wanted to say something about it but thought she would sound crazy.

“You’ve been living here by yourself?” Gretchen asked.

“Not really,” Hawk said. “Esther spent a lot of time over here, looking out for us once they passed. She’d been good friends with our mom.”

Gretchen felt the lonely resignation in their words. The kind of missing that would not go away. It felt like one more layer of sorrow for all of them.

“Was your mom a photographer too?” she asked.

“She was a historian,” Hope said. “Used to be a professor when we were small, before we moved back here—to where she was from. She wrote books about American history.”

“Did you ever read Uncommon Ground?” Hawk asked.

“Your mother is Sarah Green?”

“Was,” Hope said, but she looked proud, not sad, when she said it.

“I read that book in tenth-grade history.”

“Everyone did,” said Hope.

“Whoa,” Gretchen said. “I can’t believe your mother is Sarah Green. That book is amazing.”

Hawk smiled, clearly thinking about his mother, then suddenly, as if he could actually feel Gretchen’s hunger, he said, “You must be starving. Let’s see what we have in the fridge.”

While Hope and Hawk were in the kitchen, Gretchen tried futilely to call her father and then Janine on Hope’s cell phone—she hung up after six rings trying to reach her father. Janine’s phone went right to voice mail, but Gretchen couldn’t think what kind of message she should leave, so she just hung up.

Hope warmed up some leftovers and they sat at the kitchen table eating rice and kale and chickpeas and tofu. It was surprisingly delicious, and Gretchen, famished from a day with no food, ate heartily.

“Are you allowed to just live here by yourselves?” Gretchen asked.

“Well, I’m eighteen,” Hawk said. “So yeah. But Esther was our legal guardian, after our parents died. We were able to stay in our house and at school here in Mayville because of her.”

Gretchen’s stomach felt hollow, thinking about all the loss Hawk and Hope had been through. She didn’t know what happened to her mother, but she had her father—even if it was every couple of months—and she had Janine. She wondered how anyone could let Esther Axton become a legal guardian to children of any age.