The Ice Cradle (24 page)

I dropped Henry off at a quarter of nine, walked to the Historical Society, and sat for a moment in the cool sea air, waiting
for Caleb to arrive. My time here today was going to be brief. Caleb was bringing packing materials and we were going to spend the morning preparing all the documents and photographs so that I could transport them safely back to Cambridge, where all the work would be done.

Over the next few weeks, I would chip away at all the binding and matting. I would come back to the island sometime this summer, whenever the
Larchmont
Collection was ready to be unveiled. Maybe I could unveil to Bert a whole new me then, too; somebody a little better dressed, with a much better haircut, and—at least temporarily—without a five-year-old in tow.

As I sat on the porch steps, I took up the thoughts I had abandoned last night. As I lay in bed trying to fall sleep, after Bert left around midnight, I still had no idea what to do about the ghost detectives and the ghosts who planned to wow them. Or about the volatile Vivi, or the understandable desire of the lighthouse spirits if not to be actually commemorated, then at least to be protected from an undignified disinterment.

As for Baden, who knew what he wanted or what would make him happy? I could only offer him what I offer every other earthbound spirit I try to help: a sincere effort to resolve the problem that’s keeping him or her connected to earthly life, and one more chance to walk through that bright, shining doorway.

But now, thanks to the miraculous three-pound organ that had worked the night shift while I slept, I had some answers. Well, maybe not answers, but at least ideas.

The first involved the ghost detectives. They were after ghosts, right? Well, I’d give them ghosts! Just not at the Grand View! If I could somehow redirect the attention of the TV
guys with persuasive stories of the haunted lighthouse, then maybe I could get them to do their segment on that, rather than on the Grand View. For that to work, though, I’d need the cooperation of the ghosts at the lighthouse. I didn’t know if my next idea would appeal to them, enough to get them on my side and off Mark’s case, but it was worth a try.

I doubted they really
wanted
to derail the wind farm.
They
didn’t care about politics or piping plovers or property values or historic vistas. Their problem was with the proposed location. But the
reason
the location was so important to them was because it was all they had to commemorate their lives.

What if I offered them something else? After all, I was the person putting together the
Larchmont
Collection. What if I found a way to commemorate each and every person who went down with the ship? Hadn’t the tens of thousands of names chiseled into the Vietnam Veterans Memorial done much the same thing? Maybe we could get a grant for some kind of wall, with every single name engraved in granite, or build a meditation garden or plant a grove of trees or construct a walk that ended at a beautiful private place, where the families of the victims could pause and linger. Something like this might not satisfy each and every disgruntled spirit, because spirits are just like the people they were, and you can’t please everybody. But maybe, just maybe, I’d be able to take the focus off Mark and Lauren and the Grand View. And that’s what I had to do.

Timing would be everything. Before the midday boat arrived tomorrow, I had to visit the lighthouse. I had to locate Vivi and find a way to keep her far away from the Grand View, and that would probably involve the ghost of Jamey and the desperate earthbound spirit who’d taken him. I definitely had to enlist Baden’s help because there was no way I could take on
the dozens and dozens of spirits I’d seen hanging around the lighthouse. He would have to agree to be my go-between, and I hoped I could get him to do it, because I couldn’t imagine any other way of pulling this off.

And there was Henry. And Bert. It wasn’t as though I had nothing to do but solve everybody else’s problems.

I felt tired and overwhelmed just thinking about what I was going to try to do in the next two days, much of it in secret, but I didn’t have time to be tired. I didn’t have a minute to lose.

I found Baden in the room with the evergreen wallpaper, sitting by the window in the bentwood rocker. Caleb had driven me back to the inn with all the boxes we had packed, and together, he and I had lugged them up to my room. Mark had left for Boston on the early ferry, and Lauren was down at the kitchen table paying bills, so as soon as I bid good-bye to Caleb, I went looking for Baden and Vivi. It was Baden I came upon first.

“Hello,” he said politely.

“Hi.” I closed the door securely behind me. “How are you?” I asked, not anxious to get to the reason for my visit.

“Very well, thank you. And you?”

“Fine. Looks like we’re going to get some rain.”

“It does, yes.” There was an awkward pause. Baden ended it by indicating the only other chair in the room. “Sit, please.”

“I don’t mean to disturb you.”

“Not at all.”

I sat down in the chair. “I need to talk to you about something, but to tell you the truth, I don’t know where to start.”

“The beginning?” he suggested.

“Well, I suppose that would be—your brother’s building this house.”

Baden stopped rocking and appeared to give me his full attention.

“And his great-grandson’s deciding to restore it,” I continued. I thought I saw a flash of relief cross his features. I suppose he’d been worried that I was going to grill him about his love affair.

“Please, continue,” he said.

“Mark and Lauren need our help.”

“What can
I
do?”

“It’s kind of complicated,” I said.

“Most things are.”

I smiled and sighed. “So, the ghost detectives are arriving tomorrow.”

“Yes.”

“Are the ghosts still coming?”

He nodded dejectedly. “I’ve attempted to dissuade them. I’ve been unsuccessful.”

“Well, that’s what I want to talk to you about. What if I were to commit to building them
another
memorial. Something real and permanent, like a wall with all their names, or a garden.”

“And move their bones?”

“Do you think the bones are that important? The bones themselves?”

“We have no way of knowing what is important to another human being.”

“Yes, we do. We just have to ask.”

“You’re intending to do that?” Baden said. “Ask dozens of
ghosts if a memorial on the island could take the place of … of what they have now?”

“Not me.”

Baden frowned. He didn’t understand.

“You?” I whispered.

“No.”

“Please?” I begged.

“No. Three times I have tried. Three times I have failed. That’s enough.”

“But you had nothing to offer them before. Now you do!”

“What? A promise? From someone they do not know?”

“Yes,” I replied. “Look, I’m not asking for myself. It’s for
your
great-great-nephew and his wife! I thought you cared about them.” My voice was rising.

“I do care. Very much.”

“Well so do I, and I’m not even related to them!” I was trying not to get angry, but I could feel myself becoming tenser and more annoyed.

Suddenly, there was a knock at the door.

We both froze. I watched the doorknob turn slightly and then the door squeaked open. Outside in the hall stood Lauren.

“Anza?”

“Hi!” I said, way too brightly. I glanced at Baden. He looked paralyzed.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

Oh
, I thought,
just having a fight with myself in this empty room
.

I sighed. I had been hoping to manage all this without having to have the ghost talk with either Mark or Lauren, but
now I had to rethink my strategy. Lauren had just heard me having what must have seemed to be a one-sided conversation.

“I’m talking to a ghost,” I admitted.

She smiled, obviously not believing me.

“Really.”

Her smile faded.

“Sit down,” I suggested, motioning to the bed.

“It’s nothing to be afraid of,” I began, “but you do have a couple of ghosts in this house.”

“We do?” The color seemed to drain from her cheeks. “How do you know?”

So I told her. Everything. I started with the four-year-old me, and Nona, and Vinny Sottosanto and his dog, Lola. I answered all the usual questions about what I can do and what I can’t, what ghosts can do and what they can’t, then I moved on to what I know and what I don’t, and finished up by explaining the white light. All of this took close to an hour. When she seemed not to have any more questions, I asked, “Does this frighten you?”

“No, not really, not the way you explain it.”

“Good. Because there’s no reason to be afraid.”

She nodded. “Who are they?”

“Who are who?”

“The ghosts we have in the house.”

“One is a little girl. Her name is Viveka—Vivi for short.”

“Oh my God! How old is she?”

“Six or so, I think.”

“The poor little thing! What happened to her?”

“I think she went down on the
Larchmont.”

“That’s so sad. But why is she here? I mean, if she was with
her parents on the boat, why didn’t she … what did you call it?”

“Cross over?”

“Cross over, yeah.”

“I’m not sure,” I lied, having decided that very minute not to go into the subject of Jamey, because that might bring us dangerously close to the topic of the ghosts at the lighthouse, which I was determined to avoid. Lauren had plenty to digest already. If I told her about the ghosts at the lighthouse, I’d probably put my foot in my mouth and somehow blurt out the fact that they were planning to descend on the inn en masse.

She sat back in her chair. “Wow,” she said.

“Yeah, I know. It’s pretty wild.”

“So that’s who you were talking to,” she concluded.

When I didn’t answer right away, she added, “The little girl.”

“Actually, no,” I admitted. “It was someone else.”

The someone else was standing in the doorway and had been for much of my conversation with Lauren. I looked over at him, a question on my face. Slowly, he nodded.

“He’s right here with us,” I said.

“Who?” Now Lauren appeared distressed, so I took her hand.

“His name is Baden,” I explained, and before I could say any more she sat up straight and swept her gaze all around, searching for the face she would never be able to see.

“Uncle
Baden?” she cried. “He’s
here?”

“He is.”

“Where?”

“In the doorway, right there.”

I saw Baden stand up very straight and lift his chin. He smoothed one side of his hair down with one hand and then the other side with the other, and a vulnerable, hopeful look appeared on his face. I barely recognized the spirit that stood before us; his hardened, chilly reserve had all but vanished.

“Can he hear me?”

“He can,” I said.

“Hello, Uncle Baden,” Lauren whispered.

His voice caught when he replied, “Hello, my dear.”