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Chapter 15

She closed her eyes. His arms went around her, pulling her close. His fingers stroked her hair. She resisted only a moment. Then she opened her eyes and looked into his face. As he kissed her, she imagined it was Charles’s mouth covering hers.

 —Jane Austen, Constance, manuscript

“Do you believe in ghosts?”

Walter, who was dicing carrots, stopped chopping for a moment. “I don’t know,” he answered. “Do you?”

He resumed his knife work. The nick-nick-nick of the knife against the wood was annoying. Jane’s nerves were already frayed, and the sound grated on her ears as if someone were rapping ceaselessly on a door. Who can it be (cried I) who chops these unoffending vegetables? she found herself thinking. She wished he would stop.

“I used to see them,” she said, speaking more loudly than usual to be heard above the noise. “When I was a child.”

Walter finished the carrots, swept them into a pan, and picked up an onion. “Really?” he said. He didn’t sound incredulous or mocking, and Jane wondered if he’d even heard her. “My grandmother believed she could see ghosts.”

Jane was making the salad to go with dinner. She’d been told to tear the lettuce into smaller pieces. She’d done such a thorough job that she now had a pile of what resembled wet green confetti. It was useless, and she quickly deposited it in the trash can before Walter could see it. The conversation was not going as well as she’d hoped, mainly because she had no idea how to begin.

“Yes,” she said. “Several times. Once it was a man who stood on the stairs of a church, and another time it was a little girl who appeared in our garden. She said she was looking for her cat. She said its name was Mogger.”

“She spoke to you?” Walter said as he cut the onion in half. Although she was several feet away, Jane’s eyes began to water almost immediately.

She nodded. “Isn’t that odd?”

Walter shrugged. “Who can say?” he answered. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

“Hamlet was mad, of course,” Jane replied. “But the sentiment is appreciated.”

“Why are you asking?” said Walter. “Have you been seeing ghosts?”

Jane shook her head and tore violently at a fresh piece of lettuce. I wish that were all it was, she thought. To Walter she said, “No. It’s just that today Lucy was talking about something to do with them and it made me realize that I don’t know much about what you believe about … things,” she concluded inadequately.

Having finished with the onion, Walter rinsed his hands and dried them on a dish towel. “Things,” he repeated.

“Yes,” said Jane. “Things.”

“Like ghosts,” Walter said.

“Ghosts,” Jane agreed. “And … I don’t know. God, I suppose. Heaven. Hell. What happens when we die.”

Walter raised one eyebrow. “Those are big questions,” he said. “I think I’m going to need a drink if we’re going to tackle them. Would you like one?”

“Please,” Jane answered.

Walter took two glasses from a cupboard and selected a bottle from the half dozen cradled in the wine rack. He uncorked it and poured some into the glasses. He handed one to Jane.

“This has about another thirty minutes,” he said, nodding at the lamb stew that was bubbling on the stove. “Why don’t we go sit down?”

Jane gratefully abandoned the disastrous salad and joined Walter in the living room. He’d lit a fire, and the room was warm and smelled faintly of pine smoke. Under other circumstances she would have felt relaxed, but considering what she was about to do, she could enjoy none of it.

“Do you want to start with ghosts and work our way up to God, or start with him and work our way down?” Walter asked as he sank into the cushions of the couch. Jane began to seat herself in one of the chairs, but Walter patted the place beside him. “Sit here,” he said.

Although she’d been hoping to keep some distance between them, Jane did as Walter asked. However, she sat as far away from him as she could without appearing to be rejecting him. He turned sideways, his arm along the back of the couch, and looked at her. “God or ghosts?” he asked.

“God,” Jane said. “Might as well get the biggest thing out of the way first.”

Walter rested his glass of wine on his knee as he spoke. “I was raised Episcopalian,” he began. “Mostly we were Christmas and Easter Christians, but I did like all of the ceremony.” He chuckled. “At one point in college I actually considered the seminary, until I realized it was only because I didn’t think I could afford grad school. If it weren’t for a scholarship, I might very well be delivering sermons instead of refinishing wood floors and restoring Victorian façades.”

“So you don’t believe in God, then?” Jane asked.

Walter drank some wine before answering. “There’s no way of really knowing, is there?” he said. “It’s not as if it can be proved one way or another.”

“A bit like ghosts,” said Jane cautiously.

“Except you say you’ve seen and spoken to them,” Walter reminded her. “Some people believe they talk to God on a regular basis, and that he talks back. Just because you or I don’t doesn’t mean they’re lying.”

“Very true,” Jane said. “So then do you think that things—creatures—might exist that to most people seem completely impossible?”

“Give me an example,” said Walter.

Jane thought for a moment. “Unicorns,” she blurted. “Angels. Werewolves. Vampires.” She clamped her lips shut on the last word, so that it came out almost as a whisper.

“Now I know what brought this on,” Walter said. “You and Lucy were reading those Posey Frost novels to each other, weren’t you? I know you said you think they’re trashy, but I had a feeling you couldn’t resist.”

It took a moment for Jane to realize that he was making reference to a wildly popular series about a woman who was a celebrated designer of lingerie by day and a monster hunter by night. They were terrible novels, but they sold out as quickly as they came in. Jane had tried to read one but had given up after the first fifteen pages when the heroine, the sultry Vivienne Minx, had dispatched a demon with a corset stay.

“You caught me,” said Jane, making a face that was supposed to look comically guilty.

Walter thought for a moment. “People certainly love to pretend that those things exist,” he said. “But whether they do or not, who’s to say?”

“Arrgh,” Jane growled. “You’re impossible.”

“What do you want me to say?” asked Walter, holding his hands up. “Do I think it’s possible that there’s a God, or ghosts, or … werewolves? Sure. Anything is possible. But have I seen one? Do I know that they exist? No.”

“Fine,” Jane said. She could tell that that was as much as she was going to get out of him.

“Don’t be mad,” said Walter.

“I’m not mad,” Jane said in a voice that contradicted her words. “I just think that if we’re going to continue seeing each other, we should be able to talk about anything.”

“We are talking,” Walter said. “Are you sure there’s not something else you want to say? Do you really want to know what I think about God?”

“No,” Jane said. “I mean yes. Not about God. I don’t really care what you think about God.”

“Then what is it?” Walter asked.

Jane turned and looked at him. It was now or never. “There’s something you need to know about me,” she began. “Something important. It’s about who I am. It’s about what I am.”

“What you are?” Walter said. “I don’t get it. What are we talking about here?” His eyes widened. “You’re a Scientologist!” he said. “That’s it. Or Wiccan! Hey, that’s fine with me.”

Jane held up her hands. “No,” she said, stopping him. “I’m not any of those things. I’m …”

Walter was looking at her questioningly. Jane looked into his honest, kind eyes and saw that he believed with all his heart that whatever she told him he would be able to handle. That’s how much he cares for me, she thought.