I stopped looking for the corkscrew and turned to look at her. “But he might never be accounted for,” I said. “I mean, I’ve gotten used to wearing the thing, but I don’t want it to be on my arm forever.”
“Oh, they’ll eventually account for everybody,” Marilyn assured me. “It’s just going to take a while for them to figure it all out. They always do.”
“Oh yeah? What about the tomb of the unknown soldier?”
Marilyn scowled at me. “You have a bond with Colonel Mason,” she said, pointing at my wrist. “Everybody who got his bracelet does. You took him on and swore he wouldn’t be forgotten. It’s your responsibility to keep that bond, through that bracelet, until he’s found or declared dead, so he can rest in peace. That’s the deal. You knew it when you put the bracelet on your wrist.”
“You put the bracelet on my wrist, and I never swore anything,” I pointed out. But I already saw the logic in her argument. I had sort of made a promise, even if I hadn’t realized all the implications at the time. And I was already seeing the ghosts of our soldiers—the ones whose bodies had been discovered and flown home—hovering almost everywhere I went. Some of them had been home long enough to change out of their uniforms, having realized they were no longer bound to duty.
There was one outside the apartment as we spoke, circling a streetlamp at about seven feet off the ground. He was still in uniform and seemed lost. I guess, when the only thing you can think to do is circle a streetlamp, you probably don’t have much on your plate. I felt bad for him and would have called out through the window if Marilyn hadn’t been here. No one except my family knew about my gift. In those days, I thought I had to keep it a secret. As you age, you realize that what other people think doesn’t matter.
“You keep that thing on, young lady,” Marilyn reprimanded me. “Don’t worry. It won’t be long.”
• • •
“I got it at Berkley in 1971,” Mac was saying as we sipped the instant coffee Alison had made. It was a trifle on the weak side, but I’m sure it was hard for her to read the proportions on the jar with this lighting. “The bracelet was a way of protesting the war and showing solidarity with the poor guys—and believe me, the rich never went—who were taken up in the war.”
The wind wasn’t whipping quite as noisily around the house anymore, and the gaps between boards on the windows indicated the sun had come up, although it was hardly shining brightly through all the clouds.
There wasn’t any point in being coy. So I simply asked Mac whose name was on his POW bracelet.
He didn’t have to look to answer. “Sergeant Robert Elliot,” he reported. “Lost in Thua Thien-Hue Province, South Vietnam, on November 5, 1970.”
Chapter 7
We would probably have questioned Mac much more thoroughly, but even Paul couldn’t think of the proper follow-up question, so he finished with his coffee, which he’d barely sipped, and no one objected when he decided to go to his room to change his clothes. He said he might try to go back to sleep for a bit first. “There’s no point in trying to go outside, after all.”
Once he was easily out of earshot, Alison looked immediately up at Paul, who was pacing in a tight circle around the chandelier, hands uncharacteristically behind his back instead of stroking his goatee. This puzzle was truly getting the best of him.
“Sergeant Elliot asked us to search this house for a POW bracelet with his name on it,” he said, seemingly more to himself than anyone else. “Before we could do a proper search, it showed up on your guest’s wrist. What can we deduce from this?” He didn’t seem to expect an answer from us, which was fortunate.
“It looked like the old guy had been pulled out of bed by that lady ghost last night,” Maxine chipped in. “Do you think she was trying to get his bracelet off?”
“I don’t know,” Paul said through clenched teeth.
Melissa looked thoughtful, and also a little worried, as Paul’s agitation was pretty clear to everyone in the room. Maxine, hovering in the corner near the ceiling, chewed her lower lip and scrunched her eyes as if trying to see through the candlelight better. Alison sat down on the easy chair Mac had vacated and looked at me. “You’re going to have to teach me how to make instant coffee, Mom,” she said. “I can’t even manage that.”
“You do everything wonderfully, honey,” I told her. “I’m sure the coffee was just sitting on the shelf too long. Those expiration dates are really bogus, you know.” All of which was quite true. She smiled, but I don’t think she believed me.
“Could it be that Mac just happened to get a bracelet with Robert Elliot’s name on it?” Melissa asked. “They made lots of them, right?”
Paul shook his head. “Your grandmother says many groups did, but it’s too big a coincidence. An investigator should allow for coincidences, but never trust them.”
“Isn’t it about time you got in touch with Robert again?” Maxine asked Paul. “He can’t just leave us here in a hurricane to sort through his personal business.”
Paul’s mouth twitched. “You’re probably right, Maxie.” Without another word, he sank from the chandelier through the floor. It was an elegant move.
“He’s off to check the Ghosternet,” Alison said to herself. She stood up. “Probably time to turn on the radio and see where we stand.”
Melissa brought in the car-shaped radio and we listened to the news reports about the storm. It wasn’t encouraging. Millions were without power, and we were advised not to expect the lights to come on anytime soon. The weather forecast had improved somewhat, but power lines were down, whole homes on the shore had been destroyed by wind and water, and the winds would not die for at least another day.
Alison sighed. “I guess we can’t take down the window boards yet,” she said. “But I’ve checked on the basement, and so far we’ve been lucky; there’s only a tiny amount of water down there. We haven’t needed the sump pump yet.”
“Will the basement flood?” Melissa asked.
“If it hasn’t by now, I don’t think it will,” Alison told her. “Don’t worry.”
“I wasn’t worried,” Melissa said, although I’d bet that she was. “I was just wondering why it would be bad at other houses near here and not as much for us.”
“I think it’s the dunes in the back,” Alison answered. “They were built up a couple of years ago—was it when you owned the house, Maxie?”
Maxine turned abruptly, as if startled. “What? No, it was before I bought the place. They were already there. A beach erosion project, they told me when I bought it.”
“That probably kept the worst of the storm away from the house,” Alison told Melissa.
Maxine looked thoughtful. “I’m going to check on the roof,” she said, and ascended into the ceiling. That’s always been one of her favorite places to get away and think.
“That sounded like quite a branch in the backyard, Alison,” I told her.
Alison nodded. “I don’t have a chain saw, but maybe Tony will be able to come by. I hope their place is okay.”
Paul rose up from the basement and immediately told Alison, “I think I got through to Robert Elliot. He might be on his way here now.”
“You ‘think’?” Alison asked.
“It’s not a precise thing,” Paul reminded her. “It’s more like impressions, feelings, not direct communication. Sometimes I have to interpret a little.”
Since the wind seemed to be coming from the back of the house, off the ocean, Alison decided to see if the rain had abated to the point that she might take down some of the boards on the windows at the front. “We’ll need as much light as we can get while the power’s out,” she said, picking up a hammer from a toolbox she’d taken out of a hall closet. She saw Melissa head for the toolbox and held up a hand. “Hold up, young lady. Not a chance you’re going out there yet,” she said.