Double Spell (14 page)

“My dear Alice, So sorry to hear about broken hip,
hope mended, don’t up too soon.” (How the twins giggled at this distant cousin using these same shortcuts – only more – Aunt Alice always used.) “Looked up record you asked. Herewith: great-grandmother née Melissa Sabiston married John Howarth. He died 1857, buried village churchyard. No record here. (“Oh,” said the twins, disappointedly. “Now wait,” Aunt Alice cautioned.) Six children recorded: Anne Elizabeth, Melissa Jane born 1850 (“Oh,” cried the twins, a very different sound from the last disappointed oh, “then that’s the one who married William Armitage in 1870.”) William born 1852, James born 1853, Alice born 1855 died 1856.” (“How sad,” said Jane.)

Here Aunt Alice’s voice began to get excited.

“Now,” she said, “listen.” Elizabeth read over her shoulder: “Anne Elizabeth m Rob’t Drover of Ntgmshr (my grdfthr).”

“What on earth does all that mean?”

Aunt Alice translated: “Anne Elizabeth married Robert Drover of Nottinghamshire (my grandfather).”

“Your grandfather?” asked Jane, completely bewildered.

“No,” said Aunt Alice, “hers.”

“Oh.”

“Wh. went to India,” the letter went on in its own kind of shorthand the twins insisted was like reading one of their mother’s lists of moving instructions or grocery shopping.

“Jas m Amy Armstrong also Ntgmshr (probably related) Melissa J emigrated Canada 1868.”

“You see,” Elizabeth sang, “you see, there she is!” “– and must have taken mother because no burial record
here. Hope have been help must fly, Anne.”

“Well,” said Aunt Alice when the twins said nothing, “get me the Bible.”

“But what about Hester?” asked Elizabeth. “How come she lived in the house and ran it and everything?”

“Don’t know,” said Aunt Alice again, “but there she was. Maybe they took her in. Old maids had to live somewhere in those days. Didn’t go to work. Had to accept charity.”

“Then it never was her house,” said Jane.

“And she had to live in it,” Elizabeth added, almost to herself. “She had to live in it all that time. You know, I am sorry for Hester. I really am.”

“I know,” said Jane. “It must have been awful. No wonder there’s still a memory of her.”

“I wonder if that’s what ghosts really are, memories,” said Elizabeth, “leftover memories, left loose because they weren’t finished. Then when someone comes along and finds them and finishes them, they disappear.”

“I’m going to give her back her brooch,” Jane decided. And she did. She wrapped it up in a new piece of blue cotton cloth and put it deep down in the hole where the twin doll had been hidden all those years. And, after that, they seldom talked of Hester.

They never learned, search through records and historical documents though they might, what finally happened to Melissa. There was no record of her death or burial and it made the twins sad. They felt as though Melissa had never stopped grieving. They never found out, either, how the
little doll came to be in the Antiques, Dolls Mended shop.

There were many things the twins never understood about all of it but there was no doubt that it changed the way they felt and thought about each other.

It was Jane who said it.

“It’s true,” she said, “what I told Hester.”

“You mean about being two halves of a person?”

“Yes, two halves and that’s that.”

“I suppose it is.” Elizabeth thought for a minute. “I mean if that’s the way we are I guess that’s the way we are, isn’t it?”

“Maybe it isn’t so bad.” Jane picked up the two wooden dolls from the window seat.

“We’ll have to paint them both,” she said, smoothing her hand over first one chipped head and then the other.

“Yes,” Elizabeth smiled at Jane. Jane smiled back. A smile? two smiles? two half-smiles? They didn’t care.