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CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER TWO

The weight of the conversation felt too heavy for the small room. More than that, Marie felt like it was almost suffocating to have it there, in the house. It was odd, but it almost felt like gossiping about someone that was in the same room. Both wiping tears away, Marie and Abagail Fortune each grabbed a thermos of coffee, bundled up, and headed outside.

That’s how Marie ended up spending the morning of Christmas Eve on the very chilly beach along Port Bliss, Maine. The cold had bite, but it was not overly bitter. The frigid waves crashed along the shore and though she could feel her cheeks reddening from the cold almost right away, she could have stood there forever. The ocean against the cold somehow felt surreal—like the entire morning had so far. Her mother beside her, hot coffee in her hands, and secrets starting to spill out of a chest that had been closed for nearly thirty years.

“It was your Great Aunt June that opened my eyes to the fact that I had it,” Abagail said. “I was fourteen or so and, as you might imagine, your grandmother did not take kindly to June telling me spooky stories. But I remember there was this one night during my sophomore year of college at NYU, walking back home from a party. I was going through the lobby of a dorm and saw two men standing by a window. They were transparent, and one of them had blood on his face. I knew they were ghosts. I’d seen ghosts before, but these were different, I felt a pull to them, like they wanted help. It freaked me out and I hopped on a bus the next morning. I stayed with June for a few days and she helped me sort it all out.”

“So you’ve had it since you were a kid?” Marie asked.

“I think so. I mean, all kids have imaginary friends, but I would

really

see people that others weren’t seeing. It was usually in smaller, quiet places but every now and then it would be somewhere like on the street or even one time, when I was eight or nine, in a movie theater.”

Marie tried to take all of this in, tried to believe it all. A lot of it sounded like what she had read in June’s diaries. And while it was amazing and eerie to know that her mother had the same gift, it still did not answer the deeper questions. Marie wasn’t so sure her mother wasn’t just using this (if it was true at all) to dodge those questions.

“Okay, so let’s say I believe you,” Marie said. “How does that line up with you abandoning your family?”

Abagail looked out to the ocean and sipped her coffee. The cold breeze was whipping her hair in a way that reminded Marie quite a bit of June.

“Your father knew about what I could do, but I don’t know that he ever believed me,” she explained. “He was never rude or mean to me. Your father was one of the kindest men I ever met and it hurt me to leave him. But I had to. It got to a point where I would hear and see ghosts everywhere I went. Sometimes even when we were at home, I could hear them calling. Your father thought there might be something wrong with me—some mental issues. But I took a variety of tests that all came back clean. It just started to wear on our marriage and…I know it sounds bad and I

do

regret it, but I made the decision to leave. He just kept pressuring me to get more tests. Even June insisted on it for a time. But after a while, I think the trust between your father and I just dissolved. I told myself back then that leaving would be easier on you and your father—and on me, for sure.”

“But you never reached out later,” Marie argued. “You could have at least come to speak to me after Dad’s funeral.”

“And I should have. But by the time I finally came to terms with what was happening to me, I convinced myself it was too late. I stayed away because I didn’t want to come back six years later to disrupt whatever sense of peace and normalcy you and your father had managed to find.” She paused here for a second and then added, quietly: “Do you know the Dairy Queen we all used to go to when you were little? The one where you’d get the mint chocolate chip blizzards?”

The memory of it stung deep, but Marie nodded.

“I sat in my car in that parking lot for about two hours, trying to build up the courage to visit you. But I had no answers for you. The only answers I had were the ones I’ve just given you. I felt embarrassed and ashamed and, honestly, I didn’t have my own answers, either. Not all of them, anyway. So I left, not wanting to be a burden on you. I left…and I’ve hated myself for it ever since.”

“Where did you go?” Marie asked, not wanting to fixate on the part about her hating herself. She then shook her head, stopped walking, and sighed. “Scratch that. Because of the postcards, I know where you went. You went all over—different parts of the world.

That’s

why I said it seemed like you just wanted to travel and not have a family.”

“Oh, I did travel. I travelled a lot. But I was looking for answers the entire time. I was finding people that had this same gift and trying to figure out how to either get rid of it or how to refine it so that it wasn’t so all-consuming.”

“And did you find the answers you were looking for?” Marie asked with only a little bitterness in her tone.

“I think I did,” Abagail said. “And now that I know you have it…maybe I can help you.”

It was beyond appealing to Marie but she was also very hesitant to let her mother know she needed her for anything. Instead, she looked out to the ocean and admitted something out loud that she had only spoke internally to herself since she was a child.

“I felt abandoned,” Marie said. “I felt like you had left me because Dad and I weren’t’ enough.”

“Marie, no…”

Abagail stepped forward, her arms extended, but Marie shook her head. There was still a skirmish taking place inside of her, half of her still wanting to push her mother away, another half wanting to instantly start working at repairing things. It was just too hard to get a handle on.

“No. Not yet. I just…I want to show you something.”

“Okay…”

And without saying anything else, Marie turned away from the sea and started back towards June Manor. She could hear her mother walking across the sand and then, after the little wooden walkways between the beach and the back yard, she could hear her on the grass. She was leading her mother to the outside seating area that Benjamin had finished only days ago. There were two benches, built-in flower beds, decorative rock walls, and a rustic-looking fire pit within the little area. There were other built-in areas for more elaborate flower displays once the weather got warmer.

“How old is the addition?” Abagail asked.

“It was just finished a few days ago,” Marie said. “But I’m showing you this because I’m curious…looking at the house and then at where we’re standing, does this area mean anything to you?”

“No,” Abagail said. “I mean, it looks gorgeous. You’ve done a remarkable job and I think June would approve, but…no. Why? Should it?”

“I don’t know. Come with me one more time.”

This time, Marie led her mother back inside. They went up the patio stairs and back through the kitchen. Both Posey and Rebeka were in the dining room. Rebeka looked almost embarrassed, as if she knew she was in the midst of some huge moment in which she did not belong. Posey, on the other hand, looked to Abagail Fortune with skepticism and gave off protective vibes.

Fortunately, they did not walk into the dining room to give Posey the opportunity to become protective. Marie led her mother into the basement and walked directly to the doorway to the hidden room that had recently been uncovered.

“Did you know this was here, by any chance?” Marie asked.

“This door? No…it looks new. Did you not put it there?”

“Oh, I had it installed when my contractor exposed a hidden underground room when he was doing the additions.”

“Hidden…?”

Marie opened the door and stepped aside to let her mother in. Marie flipped on the light switch the electrician had installed. It was the only electricity in the room. She had seen it enough in the past few days, so it actually looked rather drab to her: the walls of brick and cinderblock, the floor that had been pretty awful when discovered but then mostly repaired with wood by Benjamin. It was a plain room, except for the peculiar shelves on the wall and the chest sitting against the left wall.

“What was in here when you found it?” Abagail asked.

“Nothing but that chest.”

“Anything in it?”

“I have no idea. I don’t have a key and I just can’t bring myself to bust it open.”

Abagail stepped into the room and looked around, amazed. “This house…I always thought it was full of mystery. I mean, June was enough of a mystery, but this house always had a certain feel to it.” She grinned and then glanced back to Marie. “Any more secrets?”

She nearly said yes, thinking of the room that had been hidden, the upstairs bedroom at the end of the hall. But that was where she had kept her strange little timeline, the rough historical map she’d tried to piece together based on her mother’s postcards to Aunt June. For now, she thought she’d keep that to herself.

“A few,” she finally answered. “But for now, I think I’d like to keep them for myself.”

Abagail looked disappointed but did not argue. She walked to the trunk against the wall and ran her hand over its top. She eyed the lock with the sort of anticipation a child might give to a present under the Christmas tree.

“Hey, Mom?” Marie asked. She knew what she was about to ask and had no idea where it was coming from. It certainly wasn’t a product of her heart because her heart was still all over the place. If there was indeed some form of spirit within the human body, she supposed it might be coming from there.

“Yes?” Abagail asked.

“You responded to what you thought was Aunt June asking you to come home. What were your plans after that?”

“I was hoping to spend Christmas with her,” she answered sadly. “Maybe stay through New Year’s. But now…”

“Now you’re going to enjoy a complimentary week-long stay at June Manor,” Marie interrupted. “We don’t exactly have a concierge or bag boy, so go grab your bags.”

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