Finding the Way Back (27 page)

I sighed and lay full out on the couch.
“Maybe I should have tried harder to get him back. He was lovely
when we first got married. Attentive, witty, and fun. Maybe it was
partly my fault he got the way he became.”

“EEwwww. Do you hear yourself?” Connie
barked. “Are you crazy? You are an attractive, intelligent woman.
Why do you tell yourself these things? He was an overbearing bore
the first time you brought him around. And you know what else? He
hit on me once after you were married.”

Jumping to my feet I stared at her, “What did
you say?”

Connie softened her voice. “I swore I’d never
tell you, but Laney, you have to see things realistically. He was a
dog, he is a dog, and it has nothing to do with you.”

She was right. I needed a dose of reality and
I think in that moment I got it. My biggest problem was how I saw
myself. He took advantage of my low self-worth and he would
continue to do so if I let him. Well, not anymore. From now on, I
was in charge of my destiny. I wasn’t going to allow myself to be
the victim anymore.

* * * *

Dean showed up late in the afternoon to go
over all the evidence from the night before. I let him do his thing
while I retired to my bedroom to replay the afternoon over and over
in my head. I threw on sweat pants and an old tattered t-shirt and
lay down on the bed, replaying the incident with Simon and Emmett,
wondering how to approach my mother about her father, feeling
guilty about the end of my marriage. It was a relief to have a room
to go to that was cleaned out and comfortable now.

Before long, Connie came to check on me while
I moped. She walked into the room and slid up onto the dresser.
When we were growing up, sitting on dressers or countertops was a
favorite form of rebellion as it drove our mothers wild. Now, it
made me smile, thinking of all the shared history, the
idiosyncrasies no one else would understand.

“So, what are we going to do from here?”
Connie asked.

“I’d like to crawl in a hole, but that
probably wouldn’t help,” I answered dejectedly.

“Good job slapping Simon across the face. I
wasn’t sure you had it in you.” Connie reached over and picked up
the photo we had found of our grandmother and studied it.

I had to laugh. Connie could always make me
laugh. “Thanks. It was a long time coming. Hopefully he’ll just
leave me alone now.”

“I hope so too. What are we going to do about
your mom? Do you think it’s true what Ruth and Louise said?” Connie
put the photo back and pulled her feet up to sit cross-legged.

“I don’t know what to think anymore. We
should talk to our mothers in person. Maybe we could talk to your
mom first then we could go see mine. Maybe your mom already knows
about the rumor.”

“It was a long time ago and we don’t know if
Ruth is remembering things that really happened,” Connie said. “You
know how things get jumbled up over time, especially with a woman
that age.”

“I’m not sure. I have a feeling it’s true. Do
you think it will change our mothers’ relationship? They would be
only half-sisters really.”

“Laney, don’t take on responsibility for
everyone else and their lives. They will be fine. Their
relationship is built on love and respect, nothing will change
that,” Connie said, sliding off the dresser. “I have something for
you.” She went out of the room and came back carrying a book. “I
think this will help you.”

I smiled at the cover and sat up. It was a
self-help book on accepting yourself. I had read a lot of positive
thinking books in the past. What was one more going to say that
could help? I took the book from her and looked through the
chapters.

“I threw this in my suitcase when I knew I
was coming to see you. This book really helped me personally. It
didn’t fix all my problems or relationships but it did show me how
to love myself and stop judging myself,” Connie said, going back to
sit on the dresser.

“Okay, okay, I get it, I’ll stop moping.” I
leaned up against the headboard. “How mad do you think Emmett is at
me? I swear, Simon ruins everything. Even if the divorce isn’t my
fault, it’s hard to just let it go so quickly. We were together for
ten years. I thought I would have children with him, would grow old
with him.”

“I know, but don’t look back so much that you
forget to move forward. You’re young, independent, strong, and
eventually I know you will be happy. You’ll probably always be a
pain in the ass, though.” We laughed together.

Dean yelled up the stairway. “Hey Connie and
Laney, I’m leaving now. I didn’t find anything from last night’s
investigation but we’ll be back tomorrow night.” Connie jumped down
and we both moved to the top of the stairway.

“Thanks, Dean. See you tomorrow,” Connie said
as we walked down to the kitchen. “What do you say we get some
sandwiches and eat in front of the television?”

I made us sandwiches as Connie opened a bag
of potato chips and got us each a glass of wine. Bringing our
picnic to the living room, we sat down on the couch.

Paging through the channels, Connie turned on
a home remodeling show she wanted to watch.

“Oh please, I don’t think I can take a
remodeling show tonight. Let’s just watch an old sit-com or
something—anything else,” I pleaded. Convincing her to turn on
another show was easy—finding a sit-com we both liked turned into a
squabble, but we finally settled on I Love Lucy.

“So do you want to catalog some of our finds
while we’re sitting here?” I asked Connie, remembering she had
wanted to work on our sale some more.

“I don’t think I can bear it. Let’s get back
to that project when we’re rested. Maybe we can work on it sometime
tomorrow. Right now I just want to veg,” Connie said.

Only half my attention was on the screen as I
sat watching. Looking at the cupboard next to the TV, I realized I
never had checked it out. I wandered over and pulled the door open.
Inside there were four shelves. On the top of a bunch of old
National Geographics sat an old photo album just waiting to be
found. “Eureka!” I yelled, startling Connie who was looking at an
old magazine.

Grabbing the photo album I took it back to
the sofa and sat down. Connie and I scooted together on the couch
and opened the book with eager anticipation. The first two photos
were of an unsmiling couple in their wedding finery. He had dark
hair with large eyes, with a finely shaped long nose and high
cheekbones, and a full mustache covering his mouth. He was wearing
a dark suit with a bow tie, and was quite a handsome man. The woman
had lighter colored hair, she also had high cheekbones, and you
could tell her eyes were lighter, probably blue, even though it was
a black and white photo. She wore a tiara of flowers, and a
high-necked, long sleeved, white dress. They made a lovely
couple.

“Who do you think they are? They’re not our
grandparents, maybe great-grandparents?” Connie asked.

“Could be our grandfather’s parents. For that
matter could be either, we know our grandmother was blond but I
suppose that doesn’t mean her parents were.”

On the facing page were the same couple
singly in other poses.

“Do you think we look like them?” I
asked.

“The black and white picture makes it kind of
hard to tell, plus it’s faded pretty badly. I can never really see
resemblances from photos anyway,” Connie answered.

We turned the page and looked at another
married couple. They were also unsmiling.

“Don’t you wish they’d been able to smile? I
think they all look old and crotchety,” I said, and Connie agreed
with a nod.

None of the photos in the book were labeled
and we were unable to guess who anyone was.

“Isn’t it funny that we’ve never really been
interested in our ancestors before? I remember doing a family tree
when I was growing up for school but I just slapped some photos in
and took the project back to school. These photos do seem familiar,
but I don’t remember who they are.”

“I think it’s something that comes with age,”
she answered. “People tend to be self-centered when they are young.
It’s hard to think of older people as interesting. It’s like you
can’t see them as young and real, and having the same hopes and
problems that you do. Instead you only remember them as the old
people who tell you what you should and shouldn’t be doing, and how
difficult things were when they were young.”

Disappointed that we didn’t know who anyone
was, we put the album down. “We can take the album along when we go
visit my mom tomorrow. Have you talked to your mom yet?”

“I told her we were going to come over and
talk to her tomorrow. I thought we should talk to her about it in
person,” Connie said.

“Good idea. I think I’m ready for bed. How
about you?”

“Right behind you.”

Chapter
Twenty-Nine

Someone was in my room. Before I opened my
eyes I could feel the presence. The music started very softly, just
a tinkling so faint I wasn’t sure if it was real, but then it
started to grow louder. I lay completely still, holding my breath,
too scared to move. A voice started singing with the music.
“
We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when
.”

I sat bolt upright, my heart beating as if it
would leap out of my chest. In the corner of the room was a light
glow that was getting brighter. In the glow I could see the faint
outline of an old vanity with a mirror, as if I was seeing it
through an opaque screen. Sitting on a stool in front of the vanity
was a woman brushing out her long blonde hair. An old portable
record player stood on the vanity top playing the music. I
recognized it now. It was the Vera Lynn record I had found broken
in my grandmother’s closet.

Gazing into the mirror, the woman’s eyes met
mine and she smiled sweetly at me. It was the woman I had seen on
the first floor. My grandmother. She wore a pale blue peignoir set
that I had seen hanging in the closet. It flowed out from her body,
and she turned away from the mirror to look me in the face.

“Hi ya’ Sweetie,” she said. The room got dark
around the edge of my sight, I felt heat course through my body and
my head started to spin. I lay back on the bed, closed my eyes and
took a deep breath. She’ll be gone when you open your eyes, I told
myself.

Squinting, I peeked through my eyelids to see
if I could still see her. She was still there. I sat up again and
tried to speak. “I thought you were a dream,” I panted, my mouth
going dry.

“Nope. I’m here. I was hoping you would take
this better, after all you’ve seen me several times now. I’m not
really that unexpected am I?” she asked.

Pinching myself, I wondered if I was dreaming
or having some sort of mental breakdown. Then I realized I had been
feeling presences since I’d moved in. It was time to accept that I
was able to talk to ghosts. Weird. I closed my eyes again trying to
feel the energy. Yup, it felt like there was a little fireplace in
the corner giving off heat.

“Still here,” she said watching me. “This is
why we don’t show ourselves very often. There are so few people
that can handle it.” She turned back to the mirror that wasn’t
really even in the room. “Do you know how much energy I had to
store before I could create this whole scene?” she asked,
indicating the vanity and record player.

“I don’t even know where to start. Are you my
grandmother? Why do you appear to me? Am I clairvoyant? Why are you
making the vanity and music appear anyway?” I was bursting with
questions.

“Yes, I am your grandmother. Why you?
Because, yes, you have a special affinity, it’s easier for me to
appear to you. It takes more energy to appear to someone else who
doesn’t have the same ability as you. I’m not really sure why. I
loved this vanity, and the music meant a lot to me at one time so I
love hearing it again. I thought you’d be impressed if I gave you
an entire vignette.”

She faded a bit and the vanity disappeared.
She moved to sit on my bed. “We can’t waste any more time. I’m
almost out of energy but I wanted to introduce myself to you. I’ll
have to save more before I can come back.”

“So why haven’t you moved on?” I asked, as
she faded some more.

“I’m not ready yet. Oh drat, I shouldn’t have
showed off, I must have mistaken how much—” she said as she faded
into nothingness.

I put out my hand to feel for her. Not even a
glimpse or a flicker, just a cold spot where she had been
sitting.

It took quite a while before I could settle
back down to sleep. I decided against waking Connie as it wouldn’t
change anything, just rob her of sleep. How was I going to explain
this? I not only saw an apparition, but it actually spoke to me. I
lay there thinking of a million questions I wanted to ask. It
seemed odd that I wasn’t scared of her when she appeared to me,
because I had been before when other things occurred. Maybe it was
because I didn’t know what was happening before.

* * * *

Connie woke me in the morning and we got
ready to visit our mothers. Now, I was sorry the first question I
had asked my grandmother hadn’t been about my mother’s father. As
always, hindsight was twenty-twenty. Before locking up the house I
remembered to grab the photo album we had found and walked out to
my car.

“Someone should mow the yard or we should
find someone to do it. It’s getting to be a field out here,” Connie
said on the way out. I was thinking about how I was going to bring
up last night’s visit in a way that wasn’t going to make me sound
crazy. Connie had seen our grandmother the first time so it
shouldn’t be so hard.

I got behind the wheel and started the
engine. Turning off the radio I started, “I have to tell you about
something that happened last night. I need you just to listen
without interrupting and then you can yell at me or whatever.”