The Ghost and Wednesday's Child (eBOOK)

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Chapter 1

Traci Lind glanced in the rearview mirror to Christopher in the back seat as she turned onto Beach Drive. She had expected him to wake up by now; they had been driving for hours. As they passed the pier, she noticed the sign for Pier Café. She was hungry.

But before they could eat, she wanted to find Marlow House. From what she’d read online, it wasn’t far from the pier. Slowing her car, she continued down the street, her attention on the row of west-facing houses. Then she saw it. Stopping in front of the distinctive Second Empire mansard house, she noticed the sign out front confirming the house’s identity.

“I got to go to the bathroom,” a small voice from the back seat said.

Traci looked in the mirror; she saw Christopher squirming in his car seat, his little hands attempting to unbuckle himself from its confines. She glanced from the rearview mirror back to Marlow House and realized she couldn’t knock on their front door and start the conversation with we need to use your bathroom. She then remembered the sign for Pier Café.

“Hold on, Christopher.” Traci pulled back into the street while turning around, heading her car toward the pier. “We’re stopping to get something to eat, and you can go to the bathroom there.”

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Traci sat in the booth of Pier Café, looking over the menu, while Christopher sat next to her in the booster seat, eating the oyster crackers a purple-haired server had given them when they first sat down. They had made two stops since leaving California on Thursday, staying overnight in inexpensive motels, their sole sustenance being the peanut butter sandwiches Traci had prepared before leaving for Oregon.

But Traci couldn’t stomach one more peanut butter sandwich, and by the way Christopher picked at the sandwich she’d given him for lunch earlier that day, she suspected he felt the same way.

Traci folded the menu and placed it on the table. She looked at the young boy next to her. Large for his age, most people assumed he was several years older than his four years. His vocabulary and manner of speech was also mature for his age. Mrs. Brown said it was because he spent most of his time with adults.

“Would you like a grilled cheese sandwich for dinner? And some french fries?” Traci asked him.

Christopher smiled up at Traci. “I don’t have to have peanut butter again?”

Traci laughed. “No. You certainly don’t. It will be a long time before either of us wants another peanut butter sandwich.”

The next moment, the server who had given Christopher the crackers showed up at their table. Traci looked up at the young woman with the purple hair, order pad and pen in hand.

“Are you ready to order yet?” the server asked while flashing Christopher a grin before looking back to Traci.

“Yes, I—” Traci began only to stop mid-sentence when the server joined her in the booth. She sat across from Traci on the bench, facing her.

“I hope you don’t mind if I sit down while I take your order. My feet are killing me. I swear, this place has been packed all day. My name is Carla, by the way. Now, what can I get you?”

Startled by Carla’s introduction, Traci stared for a moment but then blinked several times and told Carla what she and Christopher wanted for dinner.

After scribbling down the order, Carla set the pad on the table with the pen atop it. She looked up to Traci, obviously in no hurry to get up and put in the order. “Are you visiting Frederickport? I’ve never seen you in here before.”

Traci smiled at Carla, wondering if this might be a perfect opportunity to get the information she needed. “Yes. We’re traveling through Frederickport on our way to visit family. I need someplace to stop for the night, and a friend told me about Marlow House; I hoped we could stay there. We’ve been moteling it, and frankly, a B and B sounded nice. But we drove by. It doesn’t seem to be open.”

Carla shrugged. “Yeah, I can’t keep up with when they’re open or not. When Danielle and Walt, that’s who owns Marlow House, got married, they closed it down for a while. Was some issue with zoning. But then they reopened, yet now it’s closed again, I’m pretty sure. Danielle had twins not long ago, and I doubt they want to deal with B and B guests right now. And it’s not like they need the money.”

“Oh, well, that’s too bad. I was also hoping to ask them about one of their guests. He’s the friend who told me about Marlow House in the first place. We sort of lost track, and the last time we spoke, he was coming up here. Of course, they may not remember him.”

“Really? I might know him. I’ve probably met everyone who’s stayed at Marlow House. They all come in here.” Carla smiled.

“His name is Chris Johnson and—”

“Chris!”

“You know him?” Traci asked, thinking this was too good to be true. However, not surprising, she reminded herself, considering women always seemed to remember Chris.

“Why, sure. He’s a friend of mine. In fact, he lives on Beach Drive, right down the street.”

Traci sat up straighter. “He lives down the street? At Marlow House?”

Carla shook her head. “No. He has his own house. Although, he has sort of lived at Marlow House off and on.”

“I’d love to see him. Not today, but when I come back through.” Traci didn’t want to sound too eager to see him. People often clammed up when strangers started asking too many questions about friends, especially concerning the friend’s whereabouts.

“You could always contact his work,” Carla suggested.

“Where does he work?”

“At the Glandon Foundation.”

Traci shrugged. “I don’t know what that is.”

“It’s a philanthropic organization in Frederickport. Basically, they give away money.”

“Interesting,” Traci muttered.

“Or surprise him and drop by his house. It’s close to here, on the opposite side of the street from Marlow House. It’s the newest house on Beach Drive.”
* * *

Traci pulled her car up in front of Marlow House, made a U-turn, and parked in front of the house across the street. From what Carla had told her, Chris’s was the newest house on the opposite side of the street from Marlow House. This house was definitely newer than all the others she had passed since leaving the pier.

“Are we going to a motel now?” Christopher asked from the back seat. “I want to watch TV.”

“We have to stop and see someone first,” Traci told him as she got out of the car, slamming the door behind her. She opened a back passenger door and helped Christopher out of his car seat. After closing his car door, she took Christopher’s hand and walked with him to the front door.

By the cars in the driveway, Traci assumed someone was home. After she reached the front porch, she rang the doorbell. A few moments later, a petite redhead opened the door.

“Can I help you with something?” the woman asked.

Traci hadn’t considered Chris might live with a woman now. But that didn’t matter; she had to do this. After glancing around briefly, she looked back to the woman at the door and said, “I’m looking for Chris Johnson’s house. I was told he lived along this section of Beach Drive. They said his house was one of the newer ones and faced the ocean.”

“Umm, we recently remodeled our house, so I guess it looks newer than some of the other houses in the neighborhood. And you are?”

“So this is Chris Johnson’s house?”

“No.”

“Can you tell me which house is his?”

“And you are?” the woman asked again.

Traci stared at the woman for a moment and didn’t answer. Instead, she said, “Come on, Christopher; this is the wrong house.”
* * *

Lily almost called out to the young woman who rushed away, child in hand. But then she heard her sister, Laura, call out to her. Lily’s parents had arrived that afternoon to meet their new granddaughter, and minutes earlier her sister-in-law, Kelly, had showed up with a surprise, the surprise being Lily’s sister, Laura, who had just returned from Europe.

Lily closed the front door and returned to her houseguests, yet she was still curious about the woman looking for Chris, and wondered if she should call him. Laura asked who was at the door.

“I’m not sure,” Lily muttered while walking to the living room window and looking outside. In the background, noisy chatter continued among her family members—with some talking about Laura’s surprise return from Europe, others asking who had been at the door.
* * *

Traci had fastened Christopher back into his car seat and was already sitting in the driver’s seat, ready to put her key in the ignition, when she looked in the rearview mirror and spied a man walking up Beach Drive. She froze. It can’t be this simple, she told herself. Silently she watched as a man who looked exactly like the Chris Johnson she had known crossed the street and headed to Marlow House.
* * *

Upstairs in the nursery of Marlow House, Danielle had just finished breastfeeding the twins. Marie Nichols’s ghost, an unlikely nanny, helped Danielle by changing Jack’s diaper while Danielle attended to Addison’s.

“Are you sure you’ll be okay up here with them?” Danielle asked Marie before picking up a freshly diapered and dressed Addison and kissing her brow.

“Of course, dear. Lily certainly doesn’t need my help; she has her mother over there. And you should go down and have some adult time with your friends.”

Mediums Chris Johnson, aka Chris Glandon, and Heather Donovan, along with Heather’s boyfriend, Brian Henderson, were coming over this evening to have dinner with Walt and Danielle. Brian had insisted on treating this evening and would bring takeout from a new Thai food restaurant in town.

“Thanks, Marie.” Danielle gave each baby a final kiss before grabbing her cellphone off the dresser and heading into the hallway. The moment she stepped outside the nursery, the phone rang. She looked at it. Lily was calling.

“Hey, Lily,” Danielle answered while walking down the hall toward the staircase.

“Hey, Dani. Something weird happened.”

“Weird what?”

“A couple of minutes ago, a woman knocked on the door, looking for Chris. She’s got a little boy with her, and his name happens to be Christopher. He looks to be about six. I’m watching her now.”

“Watching her where? What did she say?”

Lily quickly explained the brief encounter and then added, “She’s still sitting in her car. Chris just walked into your house…wait…she’s driving away…she just turned her car around and is parking on your side of the street…she’s getting out of the car. Looks like she’s taking the boy out of the back seat.”

Instead of continuing to the staircase, Danielle turned and walked into her bedroom. She looked out her window to the street and spied the woman standing by the open door to the back seat of her car, her back to Danielle.

“I can’t see her face.”

“Let me know what she wants. I’m curious.”

“Lily, I came all the way from Europe to see you, and you get on the phone?” Danielle heard a voice say.

“Who was that?” Danielle asked.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you, Dani, Laura’s here.”

“Your sister?”

“Yeah. I’d better get off the phone. Let me know who the woman is.”

No longer talking on the phone, Danielle left her bedroom and started for the staircase again. By the time she was halfway down the stairs, she spied Chris standing in the foyer, talking to Walt. She called out to them. They both looked up and smiled, and then the doorbell rang.

Chris said something to Walt, and the next moment, Chris went to answer the door while Walt walked towards the stairs. Danielle was about to call out to Chris again, she wanted to give him a heads-up about who was at the door, but he had already turned his back to her.