'Come on, Charlie, you're not his mother,' said Lenny Danarts, from the Granitehead gift store, impatient to be served.
I picked up the new TV Guide from the rack, waved Charlie goodnight, and pushed my way out of the store with my arms full of shopping. It was still windy outside, but the rain seemed to have eased off, and there was a fresh smell of ocean and wet stony soil. The walk back to Quaker Lane and up the hill between the elm trees suddenly seemed like a very long way, but I hefted my packages and started off across the parking-lot.
I was only halfway across, however, when a cream-coloured Buick drew up alongside of me and the driver tooted the horn. I bent down and saw that it was old Mrs Edgar Simons, a frail and rather dotty old widow who lived just beyond Quaker Lane in a large Samuel Mclntire house that I had always envied. She put down the passenger window and called, 'May I offer you a ride, Mr Trenton? It's an awfully stormy night to be walking home with your arms full of groceries.'
'I appreciate it,' I said, and I did. She opened up the trunk for me, and I stored my packages away next to the spare wheel, and then joined her inside the car. It smelled of leather and lavender, an old woman's perfume, but not unpleasant.
'Walking to the store is the only exercise I get,' I told her. 'I always seem to be too busy for squash these days. In fact, I always seem to be too busy for anything but work and sleep.'
'Maybe that's a good thing, keeping busy,' said Mrs Edgar Simons, peering out over the long rain-beaded hood of her car. 'Now, is it clear your way? Can I pull out? Edgar used to give me such a hard time for pulling out without looking. I went straight into a horse once. A horse!' I looked northwards, up the highway. 'You're okay,' I told her, and she pulled away from the parking-lot with a screech of wet tires. It was always an interesting and slightly peppery experience, accepting a ride from Mrs Edgar Simons. You never quite knew if you were going to arrive at the place you wanted to go, on time, or at all.
'You're going to think me a frightful old busybody,' she said, as she drove. 'But I couldn't help overhearing what you were saying to Charlie in the store. I don't have many people to talk to these days, and I do tend to eavesdrop more than I ought to. You don't mind, do you? Say if you do.'
'Why should I mind? We weren't discussing any State secrets.'
'You asked Charlie about his son coming back,' said Mrs Edgar Simons. 'And the funny thing is, I knew exactly what you meant by coming back. When dear Edgar died — that was six years ago next July 10 — I had the same kind of experience. I used to hear him walking around in the attic, for nights on end. Can you believe that? And sometimes I would hear him coughing. You never met dear Edgar of course, but he had a distinctive little cough, clearing his throat, ahem.'
'Do you still hear him?' I asked her.
'I do from time to time. Once or twice a month maybe, sometimes more frequently. And I still have the feeling when I walk into certain rooms in the house that Edgar has only just been there, that only a moment ago he walked out of another door. Once, you know, I even thought that I saw him, not in the house but in Granitehead Square, wearing a peculiar brown coat. I stopped the car and tried to go after him, but he disappeared into the crowds.'
'So — after six years — you still have these feelings? Have you told anybody?'
'I talked to my doctor, of course, but he wasn't very helpful at all. He gave me pills and told me to stop being hysterical. The funny thing is, the feelings vary in strength, and they also vary in frequency. I don't know why. Sometimes I can hear Edgar clearly; at other times he sounds so faint it's like a radio station you can't quite pick up. And the feelings seem to be seasonal, too. I hear less of Edgar in the winter than I do in the summer. Sometimes, on summer nights, when it's very mild, I can hear him sitting outside on the garden-wall, humming or talking to himself.'
'Mrs Simons,' I said, 'do you really believe that it's Edgar?'
'I used not to. I used to try to persuade myself that it was all my silly imagination. Oh — look at that stupid girl, walking in the road with her back to the traffic. She'll end up dead if she's not careful.'
I looked up, and glimpsed in the light from our headlamps a brown-haired girl in a long windblown cloak, walking by the side of the highway. We were approaching the bend that took us around the western side of Quaker Hill, and so we passed the girl comparatively slowly; and as we passed I twisted around in my seat to look at her. It was beginning to rain again, and it was very dark, and I suppose I could easily have been mistaken. But in the fractions of a second in which I could see her through the tinted rear window of Mrs Simons' car, I was sure that I saw a face that I recognized. White, white as a lantern, with dark eye sockets. A face like the blurry face at the cottage window; a face like the girl who had unexpectedly turned around when I was photographing Jane by the statue of Jonathan Pope. A face like the staring secretary in the Salem sandwich shop.
I felt a prickle of shock, and incomprehension. Could it be her? But if it was, how? And why?
'No consideration, these pedestrians,' complained Mrs Simons. 'They stroll around as if the roads were theirs. And who do they blame if they get struck by a car? Even if they're almost invisible, it's the driver who gets the blame.'
I kept on staring back at the girl until she had disappeared from sight around the curve. Then I turned around in my seat, and said, 'What? I'm sorry? I didn't catch what you said.'
'I'm just grumbling, that's all,' said Mrs Edgar Simons. 'Edgar always said that I was a terrible fussbudget.'
'Yes,' I said. 'Edgar.'
'Well, that's the strange thing,' Mrs Edgar Simons told me, abruptly resuming our conversation about hauntings and visitations. 'You see, I've heard Edgar, and I even believe that I've seen him; and now you seem to think that your Jane may be trying to come back to you. Well, you do, don't you? And yet all Charlie could say was that you must be imagining things.'
'You don't blame him, do you?' I asked her. 'It must be pretty hard for anyone to swallow, anyone who hasn't actually felt anything like it.'
'But for Charlie to dismiss it, of all people,' she said.
'What do you mean?' I asked her, frowning.
'I mean nothing less than that Charlie has had the same feelings about Neil, ever since the poor boy died. He's been hearing him walking about his bedroom; he's even heard his motorcycle starting up. And seen him, too, from what I gather. I was quite surprised when he didn't tell you about it. After all, it's nothing to be ashamed of. How can it be?'
'Charlie's seen Neil?' I said, in disbelief.
'Quite so. Over and over again. That was the principal reason why Mrs Manzi left Granitehead. Charlie always says that it was something to do with her not being able to give him any more children, but the truth was that she couldn't bear to feel that her dead son was still walking around the home. She hoped that if she moved away, he wouldn't follow her.'
'Does Charlie still hear Neil now?' I asked.
'As far as I know. He's been much less forthcoming of late. I think he's worried that if too many people start taking an interest in Neil's reappearance, they might frighten him away. He loved Neil, you know, more than his own life.'
I thought about all this for a little while, and then I said, 'Mrs Simons, I very much hope that this isn't a joke.'
She peered at me with eyes like freshly-peeled green grapes. I pointed urgently forward, towards the front of the car, to remind her that both of us would be much better off if she looked where she was going, instead of at me.
'A joke?' she said, in a voice which started at middle-C and went all the way up to C-sharp, an octave above. She looked at me again, blinking, until I said sharply, 'The highway, Mrs Simons. Look at the highway.'