Chapelwood (The Borden Dispatches #2)(116)

(LETTER ADDRESSED TO SIMON WOLF, BOSTON)


On Christmas Eve, my sister brought me new stockings and a cap she knitted, and a gingerbread loaf she baked in our mother’s old oven. She sat with me for an hour and took some tea, and she listened patiently while I tried to explain things she would never understand—things I should never attempt to burden her with. It’s unfair of me, but I feel like these secrets, these numbers, these mysteries . . . they overflow, and they spill out whether I want them to or not.

I wish poor Leonard had not left me. I wish you would come back. I attempted to write you a letter once before, but the gray lady said that Camille never sent it. She burned it in the oven, where she baked the gingerbread loaf.

I wish I had someone to listen and learn when I tell the truth. So I am trying this again, and I will slip this missive to the orderly, George, for he has always been kind to me. Maybe you will read this. I hope you read this. I hope you write me back, or better yet, return.

In this place, I am going as mad as they think.

The great heart has sounded its beat, and is silent again for another span of lifetimes. The balance is restored, and the pattern is repaired, for now. That uncertain in-between place, that muddled place where the monsters come from, and where the monsters return to—but so do the angels and heroes who tiptoe too close to its edges—that place has never been nearer, or more dangerous.

The gray lady was one of its monsters. Lizbeth Andrew might have become another, but she was lucky—she was strong, and she flew close to that sun but not so close that her wings ever failed her. She kept her balance. She only passed to the other side, where the ordinary dead may wander, yet linger close if they choose.

The two women are separated for infinity. It’s not what either of them wanted, but it’s what the pattern required.

You need to know, Mr. Wolf—you, too, have touched the middle distance. You spent enough time in the sixth room that you must surely smell of it, to those who know what that clinging miasmic scent must mean. Now you must cling to your sanity and your soul. You might be called upon again one day to put them on the line against some force of unbalance. You and the girl, Ruth. You’re the only two who might answer such a call. For I am no longer able, and everyone else is dead, or otherwise gone.

Everyone.





Ruth Stephenson




BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS JANUARY 1, 1922


Pedro understood.

It was never really a love match anyway, though I felt fond enough toward him to live with him. We made a go of it, but it wasn’t going anywhere, and we both knew it. Neither one of us was too broke up about it.

I sold my parents’ house, and me and Pedro split the money. He said maybe he’d go back to Puerto Rico, but I don’t know if he ever did. I said I was going to travel, but I didn’t know where. He didn’t ask any questions after that. We’d run out of things to talk about, anyway.

I’d lied a little bit, when I told him I didn’t know where I’d visit. I knew good and well where I was going. I had a train ticket and everything, but I didn’t mention it. From there on out, where I went and what I did was a secret. Nobody’s business but my own.

That’s what Inspector Wolf told me, when he answered the phone call I made from George Ward’s house to that office in Boston. He said to come on out, and he’d meet me at the station.

He was as good as his word.

He ran me through the office of their “Quiet Society,” as they call it. He introduced me to a man named Drake, and told him that I was the most promising medium they’d brought on board since some lady whose name I didn’t recognize or remember. I’m not sure how I feel about being called that. Consorting with spirits is supposed to be bad, and not just for Catholics, but for everyone else, too. Except the spiritualists. I’ve met a few of them now. They don’t seem so bad, but I don’t want to join them.

I hope you don’t take it too personal, Father, but I’m not sure I want to be a Catholic anymore. I just don’t know about God. If He’s out there, I don’t know if He cares what we do or how we do it. I don’t know if it matters.

Inspector Wolf—he says to call him Simon, but I don’t find it easy—says that there’s a school of thought that says I should believe and practice the faith anyway. If I’m wrong, I’ve lived a righteous life, and that’s the worst that comes of it. If I’m right, I get to go to heaven.

I don’t think that’s wrong, but I think it’s sad.

I would like to see you again. That’s one reason I keep wearing the cross, and the little Saint Jude medallion you left me. He’s the patron saint of hopeless causes, that’s what you told me. I don’t think any cause ever got more hopeless than mine.

Simon says I’m too hard on myself.

I guess it’s getting easier to call him Simon after all.

? ? ?

Anyway, he took me into his office for something he called “orientation,” which just meant that he was telling me who everybody was, what everybody did, and what was expected of me—if I was going to work here. It was overwhelming, but exciting, too.

It’s nice to be excited about something again. It’s been a while since that happened.

His office is about as big as a bedroom, with bookshelves that go all the way to the ceiling; I bet he can’t even reach the top ones without a step stool. All over his desk there are folders and photographs, charts and maps, and all kinds of things held together with paper clips and tape. He has a coffee cup full of pens and pencils, and when he opened his top drawer, it sounded like he had a flask in there and at least a couple of glasses. He didn’t offer me anything, and I didn’t ask.