Finding the Way Back (10 page)

“You know, I’ve always been interested in the
paranormal,” Mom said as she smiled at Emmett sweetly. “So where do
we start?”

“No, there is no ‘we,’” I said, gesturing in
a circle with my hand. “Connie and I are going to handle it. They
do this stuff at night anyway and you don’t want to be wandering
around the house in the dark with all this clutter lying around.
I’d hate to see you fall and break a hip or something.”

“Gee, you make me sound like an old lady,”
she said, pretending her feelings were hurt.

“Really, Mom, it’s no big deal. You can stop
by in the morning and we’ll let you know what we find out. We’ll
probably just spend hours walking around in the middle of the night
and not even find anything.” I was mostly concerned with her
meddling, but thought she would take it better if I hinted that it
might actually be boring. “Besides, the more people we have
wandering around in the dark, the more likely we are just to be
hearing one another.”

She frowned at me but seemed to give in.

“What my friends and I will do,” Emmett
began.

“Under my supervision,” I interrupted.

“Uh, yes. Anyway, we set up cameras in a
couple of places in the house. They aren’t professional cameras but
they sometimes pick up things. We walk around with EMF readers and
take readings,” he started to explain.

“That’s electromagnetic field detectors,”
Aunt Shelly leaned in toward my mom and whispered. “They measure
increases in electromagnetic fields.”

“I know that,” Mom retorted loudly. “I do
watch TV, you know.”

“That’s right.” Emmett’s patience seemed to
know no bounds with us, although he did speak quickly before
additional comments could be lobbed at him. “We also bring a
recorder to pick up electronic voice phenomena, or EVP for short, a
digital thermometer, and occasionally the guys use a laser grid
scope.”

“How many friends are you bringing?” I asked.
“What I mean is, I don’t want the entire town to know we have a
ghost. After all, if we intend to sell this house it could hurt its
reputation and resale price if everyone says it’s haunted.”

“Just two other people. It’s really just a
small group of us, and we do keep our hobby quiet. We don’t
necessarily want to broadcast what we do in our off time to anyone
we know in our professional lives. We do have to keep our day jobs
and not everyone is tolerant of paranormal beliefs.”

“Okay, that sounds reasonable to me. How
about it? Everyone happy?” I asked.

“Except for us not being involved I’m happy
with it,” Aunt Shelly replied. Everyone else nodded.

After Emmett left, the four of us started our
meeting about remodeling the house. I went and found a notebook and
then settled myself on the kitchen chair. I turned to my mom and
aunt. “So first, do you have a budget we need to keep in mind
because Connie and I have some ideas on raising money.”

“We have given it some thought, but why don’t
you go first with your ideas,” my aunt responded.

“I know you will want to go through the boxes
here but none of us have the space to keep most of the possessions
so—Connie?” I motioned to my cousin.

“We think we could sell some items on eBay or
Craig’s List, maybe have an auction, and then possibly for the rest
of the smaller items we could have a garage sale. Unless you want
to donate them to charity,” Connie finished.

“Those are great ideas,” my mom began. “I
know there are a few items we each would like to have but on the
whole I agree that we should sell most of the things. I know there
are actually a lot of expensive objects amongst the riff raff. I
would like to see everything before it’s sold.”

“I agree. I also only want a couple of
mementos,” my aunt said. “Do you think you would know what was
valuable as you went through the boxes or do we need to find some
sort of expert? We can come help some, but we do have other
commitments so we can’t be here every day. After the sorting out,
we would just like to be consulted about the remodeling. We don’t
want to do any of that work.”

“I’m not sure we would know every item of
sentimental value, but I’m fairly sure that between Connie and me,
we could figure out the approximate value of most things. We’ve all
been antique hunters for years. I was thinking we could get a
dumpster and throw out the obvious trash. Then if we cleared an
area we could stage the items for you to come by and review. We
could also take photos of things we know have value, number them,
pack the items in marked boxes and then you could review the photos
and decide what you want and what goes,” I added.

Mom and Aunt Shelly looked at each other, and
I prepared myself for their objections. Instead, my mom totally
surprised me and went along. “That sounds like a terrific plan,”
she said. “I think you should start in the basement. It’s mostly
junk down there.”

“That’s true, Tess, but I don’t think we
should stage anything that’s nice down in that damp area,” my aunt
added.

Their general agreement to my plan gave me
energy. “I agree. So I thought we could start in the study. If we
cleared that out we could stage items there. It’s a room we could
live without indefinitely,” I concluded.

We all agreed on the plan and decided we
would start together that day after lunch, just to see how it would
go. If the process seemed to be working, mom and Aunt Shelly could
be comfortable leaving us to the details and Connie and I could
manage it on our own from there. Connie went off to order the
dumpster. Aunt Shelly and my mom went off to pick up a carry-out
lunch, and I ran out to pick up sticky tags, boxes and wrapping
bubbles. It was ironic that we had to buy cardboard boxes with so
many already in the house but we had to have smaller ones for
mailing and a few empty ones so we had somewhere to place and sort
the items as we took them out of the older mildewed boxes. Now I
was starting to get excited. Who knew what we were going to find?
It was like a treasure hunt. And the organizer in me loved the
prospect of turning chaos into order.

Chapter
Eleven

After clearing away lunch, I headed upstairs
with my cell phone. I needed to call and make an appointment with
the lawyers to sign my divorce papers. I’d been holding on to the
past for way too long. For the first six months after Simon left I
wanted him to come back. I thought he would come to his senses and
remember when it was good between us. The next six months I was
working on figuring out where to go with my life. Unfortunately, I
didn’t come up with much until my mother and aunt intervened.

Stopping on entering the master bedroom I
could feel there was something different, something kind of off. It
was quite cold but the heating vents were often covered by boxes. I
looked around but I didn’t see anything out of place, or at least
any more out of place than it had been before. All the piles of
boxes and stuff sitting around were making me anxious. I couldn’t
wait to have a spot cleared out, so I would have someplace where I
could relax.

Finding my Vera Bradley bag I had bought when
I was doing my latest retail therapy, I dug around for my address
book. I searched through it for several minutes and totally jumbled
everything in my bag without finding it. However, I did find some
credit card receipts I had been looking for the month previously.
Normally I would just lose them before the statement even came. I
could feel myself getting tense as I let out a loud sigh. Did
everything have to be so difficult? Dumping my entire bag on the
bed and sifting through it, I finally found the book hidden between
some papers I’d stuffed into the bag at the last minute. After
feeling my jaw begin to clench I forced myself to relax. I needed
to clean out the inside of this bag anyway. Fifteen minutes later,
it was cleaned, sorted and organized again, helping to lower my
feeling of anxiety that was brought on by the disorder.

Picking up my phone, I again got the strange
feeling something was wrong with the room. I sat on the bed and
looked around the bedroom again. There was nothing I could put my
finger on.

I looked down at my cell, and noticed there
were several messages. I decided to wait to listen to them until
later. No doubt they were mostly the messages from Simon trying to
call me. I looked through my address book until I found the
lawyer’s number. Taking a large breath, I punched the numbers on my
phone.

“Dillon, Marks, and Andrews. May I—,” I heard
a receptionist begin on the other end and then nothing. Ugh, my
phone had dropped the call. Looking down at the screen, I was going
to redial when I noticed the screen was black. Dead. I could have
sworn I just charged the stupid thing that morning. The
rechargeable battery must be going.

Traipsing back downstairs with my phone and
charger I went in search of Connie. “Do you mind if I borrow your
phone? Mine’s dead.”

“No problem. It’s plugged in on the counter
in the kitchen.”

Backtracking again, I plugged my phone in and
took Connie’s back upstairs with me. I sat on the edge of my bed,
redialing once again. Why did the simplest of things have to take
so long?

This time when the call went through I
quickly asked for an appointment. The receptionist indicated that I
could get in first thing in the morning of the next day due to a
cancellation.

“Great, let’s get it over with,” I answered.
Just as I was saying goodbye the screen went black. I tried to turn
the phone on again. It was dead. Good thing I’d just finished my
call. Apparently Connie was no better than me at keeping her phone
charged.

I could hear the women chatting downstairs in
the living room as they waited for me. Connie was amusing our
mothers with stories from her vacation. I wished I had friends who
lived in North Carolina who would invite me to stay with them for a
week. Rejoining them I said, “Connie, your phone is dead. I’ll plug
it back in.”

Connie got up and followed me into the
kitchen. “What do you mean it’s dead? How did that happen? It’s
been charging all morning.”

“Really? It went dead for me just as I
finished my call. Maybe it wasn’t plugged in fully.”

“Laney, I do know how to charge my phone,”
Connie answered irritably.

“Sorry, I was just thinking of reasons for it
to die so quickly.” Connie’s fuse seemed as short as mine. Maybe
she was getting a migraine too.

“Well, whatever,” I continued. “Let’s get
started with the inevitable and get going on that room. What time
are Emmett and his friends coming?” I asked.

“Around five,” Connie answered. “I thought
we’d have pizza delivered.”

“Perfect. I got some beer when I was out
also. You know that’s most men’s currency.”

Connie giggled. “Isn’t that the truth?”

That was one thing I loved about Connie, she
never held a grudge. She might be irritated with me one moment but
then her sense of humor would switch back on the next.

We set up a station for our mothers in the
living room, putting two kitchen chairs in front of the long coffee
table. Connie and I decided we would bring boxes or items to them
and then they could sort them the way they liked.

It was difficult to see much of the study, as
it was loaded with boxes of books almost shoulder height. I could
see built-in oak bookshelves running to the ceiling behind the
boxes, and woolen, plaid curtains at the two windows. The rest of
the room was obscured by the boxes. The books I could see on the
shelves looked like they would be the most interesting, with
colorful leather and cloth bindings facing the room. Both windows
had built-in window seats with green cushions that invited one to
sit and read.

I lifted a box on top of one of the piles
closest to the door and put it on the floor in front of me so I
could see what was inside. It was a smaller one and I hoped it
would be an easy beginning. Looking inside I found newer paperback
mysteries. I lugged it into the next room for Mom and Aunt Shelly
to inspect.

“Paperbacks,” I proclaimed, putting it on the
coffee table. Both heads bent to look into the box. My aunt moved
out of the way so my mother could pull two from the top. My mother
and aunt looked at one another and nodded almost imperceptibly.
They had this uncanny silent communication where they didn’t even
have to exchange a word to understand what the other was thinking.
“Would you put two empty boxes next to my chair, I’ll look at each
book and we will have a keep box and a go box,” my mother
directed.

“More mysteries,” Connie said, coming into
the room and setting the box in front of her mother.

Walking back into the study, I scrutinized
all the boxes packed in the room. “You don’t suppose it’s all books
do you?” I asked Connie.

“Well, it was his study,” Connie said. “I
suppose after he filled the shelves, he just kept putting them in
boxes. I wonder if he read them all or just collected them.”

Taking more boxes out into the living room we
found my mom and aunt hard at work looking over each title and
sorting them into the two new boxes.

“We are getting rid of most of them so far.
You can carry the full boxes out to my SUV. Shelly and I will take
them over to the second hand book store to see if they want them.
We should look up the older books online to see if they have any
value. I know our father used to like signed books so we’ll have to
check each one. He used to have a full set of Lincoln Finds a
General that he always treasured. It took him forever to find
volume four. We want to be careful not to let things like that just
be taken to the used book store. How does that sound to you,
Shelly?” My mother was in high gear and hardly took a breath.

“Perfect,” Shelly answered. “That way we
would be getting some boxes out of the house right away and we
would only be touching them once and deciding right away.”