Sheila Connolly - Relatively Dead 02 - Seeing the Dead (14 page)

When she had left, Abby asked, “You never noticed that he never changed clothes?”

Ned smiled. “Hey, I was a kid! I wouldn’t have changed clothes either if my mother hadn’t made me.”

Abby smiled at that image. “So he never spoke to you? Did you speak to him? Or more important, did he hear you?”

Ned’s gaze became distant as he looked at his memories. “I … don’t really know. He seemed to understand what I was saying. But we never made plans—he just showed up when he wanted to. Always by day, come to think of it.”

“Would it have disturbed you if he showed up in the middle of the night?”

Ned shrugged. “I don’t think so. I mean, he was familiar.”

“You didn’t see his—well, his death?” Abby said.

“No, nothing like that. I guess I was seeing him from before he died, when he was just an ordinary kid. Abby, remember, I didn’t really think about it. It was just one more thing that happened in my little world. I had no idea that other people didn’t see such things.”

The waitress reappeared and deposited their drinks and a basket of bread, then shuttled back to the kitchen.

“Everything all set for Saturday?” Abby asked. “Because we’ll have plenty of time to talk about this stuff in the car, won’t we?”

“Valley Forge isn’t all that far from the airport, you know,” Ned said reasonably.

“I plead ignorance. Where are we staying?”

“I found a bed-and-breakfast in the area, a bit farther out in the country. Unless you’re pining for a trashy roadside motel?”

Abby giggled. “Oh, certainly—I’ve always wanted to act out my fantasies with a Magic Fingers bed. Bring quarters.” Then she sobered again. “Ned, I’m not sure what I’m looking for. If I do see Henry, that tells me something, although I’m not sure what. If I
don’t
see him, that may not mean anything. Do spectral apparitions take days off?”

“I really don’t know. I don’t even know if they appear in the rain. At least the weather report says it will be nice this weekend. And spring in Pennsylvania should be ahead of ours. So it will be a pleasant trip, with or without Henry.”

And we’ll be alone together for two days, in a strange place. How will that work?
“Funny how we call these people by their first names, as though we know them,” Abby mused.

“Well, we do, as well as anyone living does.”

“You have a point there.”

They finished up their dinners at a leisurely pace and turned down dessert. Finally Abby said, “I, sir, am going home to read up on Valley Forge. I’ll see you after work on Friday, right?”

“I will be there with bells on, whatever that means. We’ve got a nine o’clock flight out of Boston, and we’ll be back on Sunday by five. Just in time for the parade on Monday.”

“Will you be there? I mean, are we going together?”

“If you want.”

“Well, that’s less than overwhelming enthusiasm!” Abby said.

“I’ve been watching the parade for most of my life, and I don’t like the crowds. But I’ll be happy to accompany you and point out the highlights, if you want.”

“Yes, I want,” Abby said quickly. “I have no idea what to expect, beyond organized chaos.”

“Then plan on my being there. I’ll pick you up, because parking anywhere for miles will be next to impossible, and one car will be bad enough. Wear comfortable shoes.”

“Of course.” Abby hesitated before asking, “Ned, have you ever seen any of your … relatives at one of the parades?”

He shook his head. “No, but I wasn’t looking. If you want my opinion, if I were any of them, I’d stay home. Wherever home is. You and I, we have better luck when we can be alone with them.”

“I agree, but I still want to see the parade.”

“Then we’ll do that.”

14

Friday night Abby and Ned shared a late supper, and then tidied up, taking out the trash so it wouldn’t sit and molder for two days. They went to bed early, although they didn’t sleep immediately. Just touching Ned by accident, rolling over in bed, set off a few sparks, and that was disconcerting. Not unpleasant, but it didn’t lead to a peaceful night.

Saturday morning they were up and out early. It was an hour’s drive to the airport, and even though they had nothing to check in, it turned out that they’d both rather be early than have to rush at the last minute. Abby had packed a bare minimum of clothes—it was, after all, only one night—and at the last minute had thrown in an extra sweater. Did she hope it would be cold, so that she might feel some hint of what it had been like that awful winter at Valley Forge? Maybe, ridiculous though that sounded.

She wondered why she had let Ned take the lead on planning this trip. It had been his suggestion originally, and while she was wavering he had offered to buy the tickets and pretty much take care of everything else. Unfortunately that reminded her of Brad, who had always insisted on taking over and managing just about anything—the unspoken implication being that Abby was incompetent. Brad probably had thought he was being nice to Abby, but Abby had resented being treated like a helpless child. She was an adult, and she could travel by herself if she wanted to. She could certainly charge a plane ticket and rent a car—if she could find the money. She still wasn’t sure how she was going to be able to pay Ned back, but it didn’t feel right to take a handout from him. Why was nothing simple?

All the travel went smoothly—a rare event!—and they arrived in Philadelphia a few minutes early and collected the rental car. “Do you know where you’re going?” Abby asked with some concern.

“More or less,” Ned said, unperturbed. “Would you rather drive?”

“No, no, you go right ahead,” Abby answered. “I have no sense of direction at all.”

“Sorry to hear that. Anyway, it’s not far—well under an hour. We should be there in time for lunch.”

“Good. Please don’t tell me you know all the best restaurants in the area. Wait—have you actually been there before?”

“Once or twice. Not recently.” Ned expertly maneuvered the car out of the airport and headed west. “And restaurants change frequently here, just like they do in Boston. There is a mall nearby, if you crave something familiar.”

“That, sir, is insulting. How long will it take to tour the place?”

“Not very, actually. You see the site, the lay of the land, rather than any buildings. Although there’s one of Washington’s many headquarters there. He had a lot of them. If we get done early, we can check out other places—there were several battles in the general area. And a very nice museum near where Andrew Wyeth lived. Unless you’d rather go the other direction and see something of Philadelphia?”

“Too many choices!” Abby protested. “I think I’d rather keep my head in the Revolutionary War. Yes, I know things happened in and around Philadelphia, and don’t even mention Trenton, but I’d rather stick to one area and get a feel for it. Starting with Valley Forge, where Henry Perry spent some time. I’m sorry, but I don’t feel like this is just a sightseeing trip.”

Ned glanced briefly at her before changing into the right lane. “You’re on a mission.”

“Well, I have a goal: to verify if Henry left anything of himself here. I know, it sounds kind of silly.”

“We can always go sightseeing. I understand why you want to look for Henry now.”

Abby turned in her seat to face him. “Do you? Because I’m not sure I do. I mean, think about it. Six months ago I was leading what I thought was an ordinary life, with a boyfriend. I was going to find a job, and maybe we’d buy a house. Then out of nowhere I start tripping over these phantom people, who turn out to be related to me somehow. Exit boyfriend. Okay, I find the job and a place to live, and I figure out why I’m seeing these particular people, once I leap over a lot of logic. All good.”

“So what’s the problem?” Ned asked, turning onto Route 476 northbound.

“I believed I had a handle on this thing, and then suddenly somebody new shows up in Littleton. And the explanations that you and I worked out so neatly don’t fit anymore. You don’t see Henry. Henry is
my
ancestor, but he’s not related to you. But do you
not
see Henry because you don’t want to, maybe subconsciously? Or because you have no family tie to him? Or is my ability to see these people stronger than yours? I don’t understand, but I want to. Does that make sense?”

“Yes, it does. This whole thing has disrupted your life, and you want answers. So do I. That’s why we’re here. But it may take time to find any answers, and it may involve putting a lot of pieces together. Valley Forge may add a big piece, because you have documents that prove Henry was here, and it was an awful time in the lives of most of the men who spent that winter there, so there should be a lot of emotional residue, if that’s what you’re sensing.” He was silent for a few moments before saying, “Look, Abby, any time you want to drop this, you can, you know. You can turn your back on it, and maybe this ability will fade. Look at me: I clamped down on it for years because I didn’t understand it and I didn’t want it, and it’s only since I met you that I’ve let it come back. It’s not easy. And it’s still only in dribs and drabs, brief flashes. I think I need more practice.”

“How many other people do you think feel things like this? Or see things? I can’t recall anyone ever talking about it, and I haven’t read anything that fits. Of course, I wasn’t looking before. Or maybe lots of people started out with the ability and squashed it, like you did. Or it’s one of those things children are born with, but they can do it for only a limited time, and then their brain changes as they grow and it’s gone. Your mother mentioned something like that. You have any theories?”

“All of what you say is possible. As a scientist I tend to lean toward a physiological interpretation—that we all start out with the ‘receptors,’ if you will, for sensing these residues, but, like you suggested, we either erase them voluntarily or outgrow them. After all, the brain is malleable, to a degree. The trouble is, no one in the scientific community is willing to support serious research, so it falls to the nuts and the fringe scientists to investigate, and they have no credibility within the community so their research, right or wrong, has little impact.”

“You’re depressing me. I guess I don’t want to be alone in this, but at the same time, I don’t want to be labeled as crazy or run around recruiting oddballs, hoping they share whatever this is. And listen at me—even I use negative descriptions of these people, and I’m one of them!”

They drove for several miles, lost in their own thoughts. They passed under the turnpike, and not much farther from there Ned turned, then turned again, and they were there. The parking lot looked ordinary, as did the reception building. Ned parked and turned to Abby. “We should get a map.”

“Can that wait?” Abby asked. “I mean, we can get one, but first can we just drive around?”

“Sure. There’s a road that kind of circles the whole encampment. If you want to see any of the specific sites, either what’s left of them or what’s been reconstructed, you take the roads within the loop. You can pull over anywhere. How much of the history do you know?”

“Enough,” Abby replied with a grin. “I did some homework. Basically, the British forces came up from Maryland with the goal of taking Philadelphia. George Washington’s troops were stationed between the British and the city. Valley Forge was one of the supply sites where Washington stashed food and weapons. In 1777 the British started moving, and there were several battles in September—in what is now Chadds Ford, then in Paoli, getting closer and closer to Philadelphia. There was also one between those two, usually called the Battle of the Clouds, which was kind of a flop because it was raining heavily. The name’s a lot prettier than the battle must have been—all that mud. The British kept pushing east, and they took Valley Forge for a time. They wanted the supplies there as much as Washington did, and when they moved on they destroyed a lot of what was here.

“So they got past Washington’s forces,” Abby went on, “and started to take possession of Philadelphia. Washington fought back but had to retreat to the fringes of the city, and camped out for a month there. In December 1777 he moved his entire army back to Valley Forge, which is eighteen miles from the city, and is a defensible site, which you will see if we ever get moving here. Apparently Washington’s thinking was that it was close enough to harry the British foragers but far enough away to avoid any surprise attacks.

“Of course, the problem then, for both sides, was the supply system, if you consider trying to feed and house and warm the Continental army, some twenty thousand men, plus horses, stuck here in winter. The British and the Americans between them had stripped the countryside of most available resources, and getting more in winter wasn’t easy. That’s why it stands out so much in our collective memory.” Abby finally stopped and drew a breath. “Have I got it more or less right?”

“You have indeed,” Ned said with sincere admiration.

“Thank you,” Abby said quietly. “I’m not sure schoolkids ever think about the problems of feeding tens of thousands of people stuck in one place—all they know is going to the supermarket and buying whatever they want. So my poor Henry Perry was stuck here with his regiment until the spring?”

“Things did get better early in 1778—that’s when Lafayette got involved.”

“So let’s go look for Henry. Did the individual units have specific locations here, or was it every man for himself?”

“Some of each, I think. There are some re-created huts now, and each of those could accommodate six to eight men, but there could never have been enough of them, and wood was kind of precious, as fuel.” Ned started the car and they set off around the perimeter, making a slow circle, then entering one of the roads that crossed the site. It was a pleasant day, if cool, and there were few other visitors around.

Abby tried to imagine what it would be like when it was below freezing and the men were cold, hungry, and sometimes sick. She seemed to recall that they spent their time learning military discipline, which they’d had little of in the beginning. At least that would have kept them moving. “There’s a sign that says Massachusetts,” she said suddenly, pointing.