“I didn’t know,” he said.
“I learned later that Gen would have been interested in going. In retrospect, I’m glad I didn’t know in time to invite her. She’d met a lot of people involved through the years. She had a lot of close contact with the police—being a social worker and all. And she knew Greta through me, of course.”
Joe couldn’t help himself. He leaned forward. “What do you remember about that night?”
“The lights, the music, the beautiful clothing, the glamour…I was in the entryway when the explosion occurred. They rounded us up and got us out immediately. I remember standing on the street and just being incredulous. I remember the sound of the sirens, the ambulances, the paramedics…and the body bags,” she said. “I am so, so sorry.”
“Thank you. Eileen, do you remember anything strange at all?” he pressed.
She gave him a pained smile. “You lost someone you loved, so you want there to be a reason, a better explanation than a gas explosion. No, I’m sorry. It’s all a blur. I was chatting, there was a noise like thunder. Someone was screaming ‘fire,’ people were panicking…the cops came and we were all ushered out.”
Joe nodded. Just what had he been hoping for?
“Thank you,” he repeated.
Her eyes met his, and her words were desperate. “I have to find Genevieve, Mr. Connolly. Please help me.”
Although her posture still seemed so regal and aloof, he reached across the table and laid his hand on hers. “I will do everything I can,” he told her solemnly.
She almost smiled. And then she turned her palm up and gripped his hand in return. Her touch was strong, and as desperate as the sound of her voice.
They talked for a few minutes longer about Genevieve, and as the girl in the picture began to come to life for him, Joe began to make mental notes as to exactly where he would begin his investigation. First he would go over the basic police work. Then he would move on to where the police, by virtue of their sworn duty, could not go.
There were others in the house.
He knew that from the beginning.
At first it was only a vague sense of awareness. They paid him no mind, seemed not to see or recognize him, but even so, he was aware that he was not alone.
There was the woman in the kitchen, for one. She was always by the hearth, stirring something in what he imagined had been a pot over an open fire. She was pretty and young, and wore Colonial garb, including a little mobcap on her head. He wasn’t sure if she had been an illicit mistress or a servant, but she hummed in a pretty voice as she stirred. Every so often she would suddenly straighten, her face pinching into a mask of pain. She would turn around, and her eyes would widen, and then she would fall…and fade away.
There was the soldier in the entry. He staggered into the house, mingled with the misty form of another individual. He would whisper something about a betrayal, and then he, too, would fall and fade away.
He didn’t want to be one of them. He didn’t want to spend eternity standing by the hearth in the servants’ pantry, laughing pleasantly, looking across the room…and then disappearing in the memory of an explosion.
After a while he realized that in addition to playing out their final moments over and over again, they did more. They recognized one another, though they might not have come from the same time. They mingled now and then.
While he…
He didn’t need to worry about eternally haunting the servants’ pantry. He couldn’t even manage that much. He could only be…aware.
So why was he there? Just to ache? Just to yearn and fear constantly for the woman he had loved? Damn it. Not fair. He’d lived his life as a decent man.
Others had died with him, so where were they? He didn’t have any sense of them whatsoever.
He saw the workmen. Heard them talk. Perhaps it should have been gratifying to have even that much contact with what had once been his world. To hear their anger that he should have died in such a stupid freak accident. They had respected and admired him. Nice to know, except that he was still dead.
Then came the day when the woman at the hearth turned to look at him at last. She even gave him a little smile. Maybe he was somehow real then. She walked over, and it felt as if she touched his cheek, like a sweet sister. “It takes time,” she told him, and smiled again.
All he could whisper was “Why?”
She shrugged sadly. “Justice? Something that must be known? The man who murdered me walked free. Perhaps it’s too late and the world will never know. So much time has passed. But it’s not so horrible, really. Maybe we’re here because we’ve more to learn?”
There was a comfort in her contact. Soon after, the soldier acknowledged him, too.
Then the burning question began in his mind. Why? There had to be a reason why he was here and the others who’d died that night weren’t.