What the Dead Want by Norah Olson Page B

ask you to send me some books. You know too well that the quality and variety of books here in Mayville leaves something to be desired and I fear becoming a sheltered country mouse! My father has even forbidden me a subscription to the N EW Y ORK E VENING P OST. Were it not for our friendship, James, or the conversations with the ladies who tend the sheep at Elias’s, I would be even more badly informed.
    Yours,
    Fidelia

NINE
    â€œM AYBE SHE DIDN ’ T TELL YOU ABOUT WHAT WAS GOING on here because you were too young,” Esther said, answering Gretchen’s question and swirling her drink with a bony finger as she settled into a chair that had long since lost its original form.
    Gretchen shook her head. She was a city girl. She’d seen more strange things just riding the subway with her parents before she was five than most people see in a lifetime. And her mother told her all kinds of things when she was very young; about ghosts and psychics and what the Chelsea Piers were like in the seventies. It wasn’t like her mother kept things from her. She wanted Gretchen to bestrong and able to take care of herself, to think for herself. There had to be a better reason her mother had been silent on nearly everything Axton-related.
    She took the tiniest sip of the gin fizz Aunt Esther had made her. This liquor tasted flammable or like it would make her blind. Gretchen thought maybe another reason this tough, smart white-haired old lady never made it out of upstate New York all these years was because she was an alcoholic.
    Esther held up her glass in a toast and Gretchen took her picture.
    â€œOkay. So tell me about it,” Gretchen said. “All of it. Did you ever visit when my mother was a kid living here?”
    â€œNo,” Aunt Esther said. “In those days, I was traveling.” She rattled the ice in her glass and downed the clear liquid. “When your mother’s parents moved, they just gave the house to me, didn’t even want to sell it, or have anything more to do with it. Piper’s death had taken so much out of them. Mona had some little tumble, tripped on a rope, and they made their decision to leave; move on and concentrate on giving your mother a good life.
    â€œWhen I first came back, I thought I would simply pack up everything, sell it, and move to New York City. But after a little while of poking around here I knew the house needed me.” Esther got a distant look on her face andshook her head almost imperceptibly. “I failed it, Gretchen, I failed the house. But I stayed as long as I could.”
    It was clear that she had indeed “failed the house” in some way—in forty years she’d not managed to do anything practical, like rent out rooms or renovate—but to say the house “needed her” seemed crazy.
    Why wouldn’t someone living alone have sold some of the furniture or artifacts? The place was full of antiques and architectural salvage, and the vintage clothes alone could make thousands in New York. If Janine had inherited this house, it would be shipshape by now and they’d be sitting on some fancy modern furniture watching TV and eating takeout while landscape architects put in a placid Japanese garden in place of the crazy overgrown yard.
    Gretchen was waiting for the details Esther had promised. But the woman just took another sip of her drink and seemed to be lost in thought.
    â€œThat’s a beautiful piano,” Gretchen said, trying to change Esther’s mood, get her talking about something relevant again.
    â€œSome of the keys stick a little, but Hawk tuned it just two months ago and it sounds fine. He’s quite a musician. Plays a mean banjo, has a good ear. It should be fine for another year. But you’ll have to take better care of it. I’ve left instructions about all of this, of course, for when I’mgone. All of it. And you’ll need to talk to Hawk pretty soon, I figure. He and