Read Online Defending the Dead (Relatively Dead Mysteries Book 3) by Sheila Connolly - Free Book Online Page B

right now. That one’s too little.” Ellie pointed at a smaller stone at the end of one row, and Abby read the inscription, all in capitals. “Ruth daughter of William & Abigail Reed aged 3 weeks 4 days died February ye 14th 1704.” Mom and Dad were next to her, but they’d outlived her by many years. How sad. It must have been an important family, to have put up a nice stone for an infant who’d lived so briefly. Looking around at the nearby stones, it was clear that the Reed family had had other offspring, who hadn’t strayed far from Lexington. Little Ruth must have been loved.
    “Can you feel her?” Abby asked softly.
    Ellie shrugged. “Kind of. But she was a baby, so she can’t think in words, you know?”
    Of course, Abby said to herself. “What do you feel?”
    Ellie paused to consider. “She hurts. She didn’t live long, did she?”
    Interesting that Ellie picked up on the emotion, even without words. “No, as you can see. Tell me, Ellie, do you see more children than grown-ups?”
    “I dunno. I don’t think about it, except when I’m in a place. Maybe.”
    “How do you feel when you see them, or feel them?”
    “Sad, sometimes. Most of the time they weren’t happy when they died. What about you?”
    It was only fair to answer Ellie. “I feel sad too, but sometimes it’s the other relatives who are there to mourn them that are sad, not the ones who are buried. I’ve run into people in other places, like houses, but usually only when they’re upset there too. I guess it takes a really strong signal to get through to me. Does that make sense to you?”
    “Yeah, I guess. And it doesn’t happen all the time with me. Just sometimes. Am I weird?”
    How to answer that? “You can see things that other people can’t. Sometimes that makes other people scared or angry, but that’s not your fault. You just have to be careful who you share it with.”
    “Like you, you mean?”
    “Yes, like me. I understand, and so does Ned. But I know how many people don’t.”
    “Mom doesn’t.”
    “I know. It’s up to us to try to help her understand.”
    “Okay.” Ellie bounced up quickly. “Can we go back to the house now?”

7
     
    Abby hadn’t spent much time admiring Ned’s house yet, and certainly not from this angle. It was imposing, and she couldn’t see the shabby bits—the peeling paint, the missing bits of gingerbread—from this viewpoint. It sat squarely on a nice large lot—Abby didn’t want to think what the property was worth, given the location, but then, Ned had a lot of money. She didn’t want to know how much. She was pretty sure he’d bought the place for cash. At least he hadn’t had much competition, despite the neighborhood—it was pretty rundown, and it was going to take a lot of work to bring it back to the state it deserved.
    Nor had she explored the yard much. There was a cellar hatch that opened onto the back—not that she’d checked out the cellar either. Her first impression was that it was damp, dark, and infested with spiders. There were odds and ends left behind in corners, but she felt no need to either check them out or remove them quickly. All that could wait for later, maybe when it was midsummer. It would be cool then, unlike the rest of the house, which had nothing so modern as air conditioning.
    Ellie had gotten ahead of her and was now roaming around the perimeter of the property. She’d found a dead branch somewhere and was poking aimlessly at things. Abby couldn’t see anything that could be harmed by that. “Are you looking for something?” she called out.
    “Nope, just exploring. Were there buildings here? Before, I mean?”
    When was “before”? Ellie could be referring to any century since the town was founded, somewhere around 1712 if she remembered correctly. “Probably. This house dates to around 1870, I think, but it was a town long before that.”
    “And there were probably Indians too,” Ellie said, but didn’t seem to expect an