Bone White Page 4

  “I feel like I’m going to turn around and see Horace standing there.”

  An odd glimmer flits across Nancy’s face, like a fast-moving wisp of summer cloud.

  “Have people seen him here?” Emerson asks in surprise. “His ghost, I mean?”

  “Do you believe in ghosts?”

  “No.”

  “Neither do I,” Nancy says firmly, setting Emerson’s bag on a wooden luggage rack with tapestry straps. “Some people assume that all historic places are haunted. They see what they want to see, hear what they want to hear.”

  “What, exactly, do they see and hear . . . here?”

  “The usual—apparitions in old-fashioned clothing, that kind of thing. And they hear footsteps, creaking, voices . . .”

  Unsettled, Emerson clears her throat. “Voices?”

  “It’s just the wind in that big old maple right outside the window,” Nancy assures her. “We tried to get a permit to take it down a few years ago, but it’s on a historic tree registry. You have to jump through hoops just to have it trimmed, so we haven’t in a while. When the leaves brush against the screen, it sounds like someone whispering. Anyway—I’ll show you the bedroom and bathroom.”

  Through an archway, a four-poster canopy bed awaits, covers turned down.

  She’d begged her father for a bed like that when she was a little girl. He responded as he always did when she wanted something they couldn’t afford—ice cream, gymnastics lessons, money for new shoes . . .

  Rather than say no, he’d prop his beefy elbow on the table, beckoning her spindly arm for a wrestling match. “Beat me, and you get a yes.”

  He never let her win.

  “You have to get stronger,” he’d say with a shrug.

  “How am I supposed to do that?”

  “Lift some weights. Do some pull-ups.”

  Now, at last, she has her canopy bed, if only for this brief interlude. The linens are a dark charcoal shade, not quite black, not entirely gray. A plush white robe and spa slippers sit at the foot. In the adjoining marble bathroom, votive candles line a narrow ledge above the claw-foot tub, and apothecary countertop jars are filled with luxury brand toiletries.

  Back in the main room, Nancy shows her how to control the television, concealed in a tall cabinet, and points out the placard that has a phone number for the night manager, should she need anything after hours.

  “So there’s no one on site?”

  “Just the guests. And the ghosts,” she adds with a grin. “Any other questions before I leave you to unpack?”

  “Is there a safe?”

  “No. We’ve never had a problem here, but if you have valuable jewelry or electronics you’re worried about, I’d be happy to lock them into my desk downstairs.”

  “No, that’s okay. I was just curious.” She wasn’t worried about jewelry or electronics, but the far more valuable—to her, anyway—old letter she’d carried from California.

  “If you’re hungry, the restaurant is open until eleven, and the food is very good.”

  “That’s great. Thanks again, Nancy.”

  “My pleasure. Good night!”

  Emerson closes the door after her, and tilts her head against it. Eyes closed, she takes a deep breath that transforms into a yawn. Some decent food, maybe a little wine, a hot bath, bedtime in this sumptuous suite . . .

  When was the last time she got a full night’s sleep?

  It’s been months. Almost a year, really.

  Last summer, she packed her dead father’s existence into cartons just as generations before her had done. She didn’t seal them, just folded the flaps and piled them into her car. Back in her small Oakland apartment, she stacked the boxes in a corner of her bedroom. There was no other space.

  Nightmares hidden within that cardboard mountain seemed to seep into her brain as she lay in its shadow every night.

  We shall never tell . . .

  Other years, she’d slipped back into her Northern California life as comfortably as she did her softest fleece after a hot LA summer. This year, nothing seemed familiar. She felt adrift on a wreckage-strewn foreign sea until Roy appeared on the horizon like a rescue ship.

  Now that she’s found her way to Mundy’s Landing, her engagement ring seems to have transformed from life buoy to anchor. What if she wants to stay? Would he be willing to come with her?

  The question is overshadowed by a more important one: Would she want him to?

  Roy Nowak left California before dawn Monday morning, the day after his fiancée flew to her history teachers’ conference in Washington, D.C. The day after he discovered he’d been right all along.

  Last minute cross-country flights were well beyond his budget, so he got into his truck and started driving east, stomach churning along with his thoughts. He was on the road all day and straight through that first night, so tense that he’d bitten his nails until there was nothing left but ragged ridges embedded in swollen flesh.

  Late yesterday afternoon, he stopped at a motel on the outskirts of Columbus and slept in his clothes, intending to rest for only a few hours before getting back on the road to make it to New York before Emerson did.

  His wakeup call never came. That’s what you get for staying in a dive. That, and bedbugs. It was nearly nine when he finally woke up this morning, itching furiously from little red bites all over his arms.

  Ah, the irony. He raked his useless fingertips along his skin in a futile effort to scratch the red bumps before grabbing his phone to text Emerson.

  She asked why he was up so early, thinking he was back home in Oakland.

  Can’t sleep when UR far away, he texted back.

  Her only comment was a heart.

  He returned the heart, and asked, RU still in DC?

  Yes. Morning session starting. TTYL

  Talk to you later? Really?

  She didn’t pick up when he called her from the road, weaving in and out of traffic, doing thirty miles above the speed limit. Instead, she texted that she was with conference colleagues and couldn’t talk. The next time he tried her, she picked up but said she was about to get into a cab to the airport.

  “Which flight are you on?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “You don’t know your flight?”

  “I don’t have the number in front of me.”

  “Well, which airline?”

  Again, she claimed she wasn’t sure, that her ticket info was buried in her suitcase.

  “Then which airport?” He clenched the phone in one hand, steering wheel in the other, itching—literally—to scratch the bug bites.

  “Which airport?” she echoed.

  “There are two. Dulles, or National?” He propped the phone to his ear with his shoulder, attacking the rash with maddeningly useless fingertips. “You must know which one, if you’re on your way!”

  “Dulles.”

  “Where are you landing in New York? JFK? LaGuardia? Newark?”

  “Why are you asking me this? Why do you sound so crazy? I feel like you’re—”

  “Crazy? I’m your fiancé! Don’t you think I deserve to know where you are?”

  Dammit. He shouldn’t have lashed out at her.

  Double dammit—he’d just blown past a state trooper hidden in bushes on the median.

  “You need to know where I am every minute of every day?” Emerson was saying. “You need to stop—”

  He quickly apologized, hearing sirens behind him and spotting the trooper’s red lights whirling in his rearview mirror. “Just promise you’ll call me when you land. I worry.”

  She promised.

  But she hadn’t kept it.

  So much for his plan to intercept her in New York. How could he, without a clue which flight she was on, or even where she was landing?

  Instead, he navigated the bottleneck at the Lincoln Tunnel into Manhattan and kept going, heading north, toward the Bronx.

  She still hasn’t answered his texts, and her phone rings into voice mai
l.

  Does she know? Is she avoiding him?

  His fingertips have rubbed the bug bites raw and bloody. Still, his skin crawls with itches he can’t reach, hot little stabs taunting from deep in his flesh. The bugs must have hitched a ride, burrowed into the folds of his clothing.

  He needs to wash these clothes, and everything in his duffel bag, in hot water. He needs a meal, a shower, some ointment. No skeevy motel this time—just a few hours’ reprieve before he heads north to Mundy’s Landing.

  Off Pelham Parkway, he drives around block after block for fifteen minutes before squeezing his pickup truck into a vacant parking spot. He taps the bumpers of the cars parked in front and behind him, barely noticing, not caring.

  The streets teem with traffic and people, the warm air thick with sweat and pungent spices and accented voices. Roy backtracks to the address he’d thought to scribble down before he left home, just in case. He grips his phone in his fist, willing it to ring.

  Where the hell is she?

  Does she know, somehow, that he’s on her trail?

  But how could she know?

  She couldn’t—unless, of course, she’s having him followed.

  He finds himself looking over his shoulder as he approaches the familiar four-story building, searching the crowded sidewalk. So many people, and none of them seem to notice him, but you never know.

  He rings the bell for apartment 5B and waits for the familiar “Who is it?” to crackle over the intercom.

  It doesn’t come.

  She, too, is out of reach, or ignoring him.

  He sits on the stoop rubbing his knuckles along his arms, pushing fresh pinpricks of blood into smears from wrist to biceps.

  “Looking for someone?”

  He looks up to see an old woman regarding him from the doorway.

  “Yes, Sylvia . . .”

  Crap. What is her last name?

  Schmo. That’s what he calls the men who come and go in her life—Joe Schmo. It’s easier than learning a new name every couple of months, though she did marry the latest one.

  “She lives in 5B,” he tells the woman, standing to extend his hand in a proper greeting. “I’m Roy Nowak.”

  “Josephine Pikalski.”

  She’s not as old as he thought. Middle-aged, but her face is worn and her hair is gray and straggly. She’s had a hard life. Who the hell hasn’t?

  “Nice to meet you, Josephine,” he says, shaking her hand with his blood-streaked one.

  “Call me Jo.”

  Ah, another Jo Schmo. That strikes him as oddly hilarious. A strange, snorting little laugh escapes him. Seeing her expression, he considers explaining that the stress is getting to him—the road weariness, this damned rash, his MIA fiancée . . .

  He asks where Sylvia is.

  “Out. You just missed them.”

  “Out for the night?”

  “Out of town. Atlantic City.”

  “On a weeknight?”

  She shrugs. “It’s payday.”

  He curses under his breath. Some things never change.

  “Do you know when she’ll be back?”

  “Who knows. I’m feeding her cats.”

  “Then you have the key. Can you let me in, please?”

  “What’re you, kidding me? I can’t go around letting strangers into her apartment.”

  “But I told you, I’m Roy Nowak.” Seeing her blank look, he adds, “Sylvia’s son.”

  “How do I know that?”

  “How do I know you’re really Jo Pikalski?”

  “Ask anyone. I’ve lived in this building thirty-four years.”

  Right. And Ma hasn’t even lived here for three months.

  Roy shakes his head and turns away.

  “You’re welcome,” the woman calls pointedly from the stoop.

  He was supposed to thank her? For what?

  He ignores her, striding away, eager to get back on the road and head north, to Mundy’s Landing.

  Letter

  Miss Savannah Ivers

  c/o Anthropology Department

  Hadley College

  Hadley, NY 12579

  June 13, 2017

  Dear Miss Ivers:

  I am Ora Abrams, curator of the Mundy’s Landing Historical Society. I read with interest yesterday’s Tribune article featuring this year’s most accomplished Hadley College graduates. Congratulations on earning your undergraduate degree in forensic anthropology, and on being awarded the prestigious Sahir Malouf research grant. I knew the late Professor Malouf very well when he was on the faculty, and he often assisted me with museum research over the years.

  I understand that you are spending the summer working in the lab, and wonder if you might be interested in discussing a confidential project for which I will compensate you very well.

  I have enclosed my business card with this letter. Please call me at the historical society to schedule a meeting for further discussion of this venture.

  Sincerely,

  Aurora Abrams

  Mundy’s Landing Historical Society

  62 Prospect Street

  Mundy’s Landing, NY 12573

  Chapter 3

  At eighty-two, Miss Aurora Abrams shouldn’t be driving at all, let alone at night. Not according to her physician, David Duncan III, the man responsible for her growing not-to-do list. At her most recent checkup—almost a year ago now—he said she shouldn’t be doing a lot of things that make life worth living, like eating chocolate-covered cherries for breakfast, having a bedtime nip of brandy, or continuing to work at the museum.

  “You only go around once, Doctor.”

  “Yes, but we don’t want to fall off the ride before it’s over, do we, Ms. Abrams?”

  “That’s Miss Abrams.” None of this newfangled women’s lib “Ms.” stuff for Ora, though she contradicts based on her mood, or whether she likes the speaker.

  She doesn’t care for Dr. Duncan, who lacks the folksy, relaxed bedside manner of his grandfather, Ora’s longtime physician, whom she fondly called Dr. Dave.

  David III occupies the late David I’s office, on the second floor of a redbrick building on Market Street. Westerly Dry Goods used to be on the first floor, but now it’s a clothing shop called Tru Blu. Every time Ora passes the silly sign, she wonders what the new owner has against the letter E.

  Everything changes. Not for the better.

  “Time to hand over your car keys,” Dr. Duncan said.

  “Hand them over to whom?”

  “Figure of speech. At your age, reflexes aren’t what they used to be. Neither are your senses, or your memory. You’re a danger to yourself and to others on the road.”

  “Nonsense! I’ve always been a cautious driver. I’ve never—”

  “Nothing personal. Happens to all of us sooner or later,” he cut in, attempting to temper his rudeness with a smile and a pat on her hand. “You’ll adapt.”

  “How do you expect me to get where I need to go?”

  “I’m sure plenty of people will be willing to give you rides, and—”

  It was Ora’s turn to interrupt, tartly. “Have you forgotten that I have no family, Doctor?”

  Never married, no children, and her last living relative, Great-Aunt Etta, passed away years ago. It was Dr. Dave who signed Aunt Etta’s death certificate, and Papa’s, too, both times coming to pay his respects with tears flooding his hazel eyes.

  Such a good man, a true humanitarian.

  His grandson merely shrugged under Ora’s gray-eyed glare. “You’re well-loved here in town. Your friends will be happy to help you get around.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of burdening my friends.”

  Undaunted, he handed her a schedule of the local bus service for seniors,

  Ora handed it right back. “I don’t go to those strip malls on Colonial Highway. Chains drive our mom-and-pop stores out of business. I shop locally.”

  “Well then, you’re all set. The Commons is within walking distance for you. You can g
et your daily exercise while you’re at it. Two birds, one stone.” Young Dr. Duncan smiled at her.

  Ora didn’t smile back, resenting the implication that elderly people only venture out for doctor appointments and shopping errands. Her business—professional and personal—takes her to plenty of interesting locales beyond the town proper.

  Tonight, she’s following a dark stretch of Route 9G toward Hadley College, located a few miles north of Mundy’s Landing. She finds herself gripping the steering wheel as yet another pair of headlights swing around an oncoming curve and bear down on her.

  Why on earth are all the other cars giving off such a blinding glare tonight?

  If she hadn’t canceled her six-month checkup with Dr. Duncan, ignoring reschedule reminder calls from his nurse for months now, he’d blame her age and failing eyesight.

  Hogwash. Headlamps are simply brighter on the luxury cars driven by all these fancy Hudson Valley newcomers, privileged sorts who don’t bother to turn off their high beams for opposite-bound traffic.

  If only they wouldn’t drive so fast. Ora is in as much hurry as anyone this evening, yet cars are zooming up to tailgate in the rearview mirror before flying recklessly past on the two-lane road.

  The latest gives her several nerve-jangling honks before crossing a solid line to get around her, resulting in a horn blast and harrowing swerve from an oncoming pickup truck.

  Oh dear.

  Ora turns on her hazards, eases her sedan onto the shoulder, and shifts into park. Her rib cage is cramped with anxiety, and she struggles to take a deep, calming breath.

  Papa had a terrible accident on this rural two-lane highway many years ago, when another car slid into his path during a blinding snowstorm. Both Papa’s legs were broken, and the other driver was killed.

  That, Ora reminds herself, has nothing to do with this. The weather is perfect, and she’s been driving this road without incident for sixty-five years now, though it’s been a while since she’s navigated it after dark.

  “I know it like the back of my hand,” she often said—until recently, when she realized she barely knows the back of her hand.