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  “I’ve been in a similar situation,” Greg admits. “I dated someone for two years who basically didn’t understand why I prefer to teach history of other countries when I could focus on the good old US of A,” he smirks. “In fact, she really didn’t understand the point of teaching history at all. She was a ‘live in the moment’ type of person and couldn’t fathom why I’d want to spend so much time in the past, especially when I wasn’t actually at work. I wanted to travel to England and Scotland to explore the history in person. It wasn’t work to me, it was fun. For her, it wasn’t. She was straightforward, to the point, focus on right now. I like to look at the more obscure side of things, investigate, route for the unsuspected scenario.” “What was her name?” Why I feel the urge to know this, I’m sure, other than the fact that I’d told him Brent’s name. Somehow her name feels imperative to his story. “Annie. We broke up two years ago. I don’t think I’ve been on a date since.” “You don’t think? Wow, any date you have been on must have been pretty unmemorable,” I joke. Then I wonder if he considers dates so inconsequential that he doesn’t even bother remembering them. But I tell myself to stop being so negative and defensive. Nothing he’s said indicates that he feels that way. In fact, he’s opening up about his feelings and his vulnerability. It doesn’t fit with someone who uses women and tosses them aside. “Well, after the break up, I had a couple of close female friends that I confided in. We’d hang out, grab food and a beer somewhere. Completely causal, at least to me. I assumed it was just dinner or a drink between friends. At least one of them seemed to see it differently. She got pissed when I kindly explained that it was simply a relaxed night with a friend.” “I think that’s kind of female nature, unfortunately. Women read into everything, I’m sorry to tell you,” I smile, feeling apologetic for my gender at the moment. Then, realizing he may think I’m referring to myself, I clarify. “That’s why I don’t have a ton of female friends, other than my sisters, my best friend Amanda, and now Grace. I’m too much of a straight shooter.”

  “Well, Ms. Straight-shooter, what’s your verdict on me?” I meant what I said, but for once, I am caught completely by surprise. “What do you mean?” I ask, stalling. “Well, are you 100 percent convinced I’m not a serial killer? Perhaps that I’m a nice, decent guy even?” I sigh in relief that he’s not asking me how I actually feel about him, because truth be told, I’m not sure myself. “Yes,” I concede, “I would say you’re a nice, decent guy, and I have to agree with Grace that you’re not a murderer.” “Phew!” he wipes his brow in mock relief. He must come to the same realization as I have, that we’ve been here for hours and not looked at the photos much. “We should probably get back to digging through that box. See if we can find out any more about that door of yours, huh?” “Speaking of that, do you mind if I take a picture and text it to Nan? I think she’d be interested to see it open.” “Not at all, take pictures of whatever you’d like. It actually might serve as good backup, and the more eyes on it, the better as far as I’m concerned.”

  We spend the next hour or so digging through the photos, me jotting down notes in my trusty notebook. When we feel we’ve racked our brains enough with theories and potential scenarios, Greg offers to walk me home - an offer I take him up on, since I’m still not overly familiar with the area. I’m about to walk into my cottage when he puts a hand on my arm once again. “Hennie, how would you feel about having dinner tomorrow night? I actually managed to get the entire weekend off work, and it would be nice to see you when we aren’t rummaging through dust and cobwebs.” I don’t have an excuse to decline, and, seeing the corner of his eyes crinkle like they had when he’d introduced himself, I can’t manage to say no. “That sounds good.” “Great! Pick you up at 7?” “Perfect,” I nod. “Oh, and Greg?” I call over my shoulder to him. “Picking women up for dinner confuses them. It might be why that friend of yours thought it was a date. Just for future reference,” I smile, letting him know I’m teasing. “Hennie,” he calls back, “I don’t think I’ve offered to pick anyone up for dinner in two years.” He winks as he turns the corner to head back to the main road.

  Chapter 7

  I ponder Greg’s comment in spite of myself. I don’t want to think of our dinner as a date. He probably just wants to talk about his grandfather’s work, or maybe just needs company. Sure, he bartends and sees a lot of people, but that isn’t the same as one on one conversation with a person with shared interests. And I have to admit, we did have a lot in common. His house, though renovated, had seemed a bit lonely, and he probably just wanted to get out.

  I decide that working on a my lectures and then settling in on my book will help distract me. I have to admit that I’ve gotten enthused by the story of the house, and, while I am writing plenty, I haven’t worked on the novel as much as I’d hoped to by this point. I make a fresh pot of coffee and head upstairs. As the type of person who likes to tackle the least desirable tasks first and get them out of the way with, I turn on my webcam to begin my virtual lecture. The last one had discussed our fascination with the macabre and our inkling to be drawn to tragedy. To continue on our need for the “dark side”, I decide to focus on the topic of restlessness - why contentment, or even happiness, often seems so unsettling for us.

  “You’re probably all familiar with the saying ‘the grass is always greener on the other side,’ I begin. “Some may argue that this stems from greed. We always want more than what we have. Others may argue the unknown is tantalizing, and that in brief moments, intrigue is more powerful than contentment or even overall happiness. There may be some truth in this. We have become a society focused on instant gratification, and long term happiness may not give us that same momentary rush as something new and unique.” I pause, considering how to best word my theory without the emotions of my own circumstances getting in the way. “I believe, however, that much of this is based on fear. We’re programmed to believe that good things, including contentment and happiness, can’t last. Some of us may believe we don’t deserve happiness. This is untrue, of course, because we all do.” I know there is going to be at least one person who brings up the point that murderers and rapists and the like do not deserve happiness, but I decide to address that when the point is raised. I have no desire to get into a religious debate about sin and salvation if I don’t have to. “Many who have struggled emotionally and mentally feel guilt. It’s not uncommon for people to be blamed for their conditions, causing the sufferers to feel they don’t have the same rights as others. We live in constant fear of having our happiness taken away from us. In some instances, we even feel guilty for our happiness. When we suffer a loss or tragedy, for instance, we feel guilty if we laugh or smile, even for a moment. We feel there’s something wrong with us, and so we are restless. We don’t let ourselves enjoy even a moment of happiness. It may last, or it may not - we have no way of knowing - but our nature is to feel fearful as a method of self-defense. If we don’t, we often talk ourselves into fear.”

  I know I’m describing my own life, as much as I try not to let the lecture get personal. I was devastated when Brent left. Logically, I knew life must move on but emotionally, I didn’t know how. In a blink of an eye, the rest of my life as I’d known it was gone. Now, eight months later, I am getting lost in tales of disappearances and suspected murder, investigating with new friends, and possibly even going on a date. How can that be? Yes, Brent has moved on, or tried to. He keeps in touch occasionally, and even once said he missed me and wondered if he’d made the right decision. But then he also said he’d done what he felt he had to because he didn’t feel the love he once did, and didn’t want to tie me down and hold me back from the rest of my life if it wasn’t with him. He wants to be friends, so he says, but I wasn’t there yet. At least I hadn’t been for months. Yet still, I feel guilty not thinking about him constantly. Some days, like today, he barely crosses my mind at all - at least until just now. I get mad at myself. I didn’t leave him, he left me. He’d fallen
out of love with me. I don’t owe him anything. We don’t hate each other, not by any means, he just doesn’t love me. Shouldn’t he want me to be happy? He says he does, though it isn’t always convincing.

  I finish the video lecture and move on to my articles. I’ve finally run out of the extra I’d written ahead of time in preparation for the move, and I actually need to produce two per week now. I decide I’ll get them both done tonight, given the caffeine high I’m running on and the adrenaline from producing what I feel is my best lecture of the term this far. I decide to use my lecture theme for one of my articles. If I orient it specifically to those battling mental illness, it will fit perfectly with the one publication. For the next, I change subjects and decide to focus on ghosts from the past, both physical and emotional. I’ve not done a ton of work in parapsychology, so I take it from another angle. Instead of focusing on the presences themselves, I write from the perspective of the observer. Why, aside from being in the “right place at the right time”, do some of us experience ghosts, while others don’t. What is it about our psychological makeup and beliefs that determines this? The response to this one could go either way, I think. It’s a topic that I know the publication will find intriguing and controversial, both characteristics that draw their target readership.

  As I finish sending the article drafts to the respective editors, I realize I never texted Nan back as I’d promised to do last night. “Sorry,” I write, “I completely thought I’d replied.” “Busy ghost hunting?” she replies almost immediately. The reference to the article I’d just submitted makes me slightly uneasy, but I shake it off. “Wait, until you see this,” I write, attaching the picture I’d found at Greg’s earlier. “What do you notice?” “The door! It’s open!” She clearly thinks it as significant as I do. “I saw it immediately too.” My phone rings, and I’m not surprised to see Nan’s name pop up on the caller ID. She’s always been better with talking than texting. As soon as I pick up, she starts speaking. “Where’d you find this? What a great picture of the girls.”

  I realize I haven’t told her anything about Greg and dread doing so. She was never the biggest fan of Brent, and desperately wants me to move on. I am unsure enough of the Greg situation, though, and had hoped not to verbally introduce him to my family just yet. I choose my words carefully. “Remember when you texted me right before my dinner with Grace?” “Yes, the text you were too busy and popular to reply to,” she jokes. “Well, turns out Grace knows the bartender at the restaurant from way back. He overheard us talking about the disappearance of the family and actually has some interesting connections.” “Hmm,” is all Nan says, leaving me unsure on how much she is perceiving from my attempt at a nonchalant tone. “His grandfather was a rookie on the police force when James Sheffield, the girls’ father, was chief. After the fire and the Sheffields’ disappearance, his grandfather started his own investigation of sorts. The police, as we’d concluded, didn’t seem to care to look into it much, and Greg’s grandfather didn’t understand why. His Grandfather stopped by to visit Julienne and the girls a few times, and started collecting his own evidence. This picture is either one he collected, or one he took himself. I’m not sure which.” “And he just, what, had this at the bar with him?” she asks, sounding understandably skeptical. “No, smartass,” I tease. “His grandfather died seven years ago and he’s now living in the same old house. He’s slowly been going through all of the old things in the attic and found a box of photos and notes that his grandfather had gathered from that time.” “So how’d it fall into your hands?” Not surprisingly Nan isn’t biting at the casual references when it comes to Greg. I think about lying, saying he’d given it to Grace, but I know she’ll know by my tone of voice that it isn’t true. I’ve never been good at covering up the truth, even slightly. “We went through the box and I took some notes, some pictures of the photos, to see if anything jumped out at me.” I hope that by including the ‘we’ she assumes I meant Grace and I. It seems to work, because she stopped pressing me about Greg, at least for the time being. Nan is astute, and has a long memory. I have no doubt that if she has any suspicions, she’ll bring him up again.

  “Find anything interesting? Besides this photo I mean?” “Kind of. I noticed that Julienne looks miserable in almost every photo. She seems so sad. Except for in a couple of photos with Edward Sharpe. In those, she looks genuinely happy.” “Sharpe? Really? How’d he get those pictures?” For once, I think I’ve shocked Nan. “Apparently after the Sheffield’s disappeared, Sharpe quietly took Julienne and the girls under his wing. Greg’s grandfather told him that Sharpe was there a few times when he stopped over, and the girls seemed to adore him. The oldest, Lilia, even seemed to have a bit of a schoolgirl crush on Sharpe.” “Well that’s a completely different picture than the one the police painted,” Nan replies. “The rest of the police I mean.” I wonder that she is so interested in the story. I know the door intrigued her when she was staying here, but I assume that was because she was in the room and having weird dreams. Perhaps the dreams spooked her enough to feel the need to find an answer. “There’s something else I found odd,” I continue. “There’s a closeup photo of Edward and Julienne outside of what looks to be the old movie theater here in town. They must have been on a date of sorts. They’re all dressed up. It’s clearly a candid shot, unless they’re very good actors, and Julienne looks absolutely delighted. And breathtakingly beautiful.” “When was it taken?” Nan jumps in. I am excited to be able to share this kind of information with her and have her actually interested. It’s a bit of a rare treat. “I’m not sure. But the thing is, it is very close up. Someone was watching her, probably following her.” “Could it have been Greg’s grandfather?” Nan asks. It’s a question I’d asked Greg, trying to put it in a way that didn’t sound accusatory, and he swore that it hadn’t been. But he also said his grandfather felt that every man Julienne met was smitten with her, and he didn’t specifically mention himself as an exception. Still, I reason, if he had been following her and had taken it, why leave it with Greg? He could have destroyed it before passing along the photo box. “I don’t think so. It would make him look like a stalker. Surely, he’d have taken it out before he gave Greg the box.” “Unless he forgot about it,” Nan replies, though she doesn’t sound convinced. “That’s possible…” “But if not, that adds another person to the mix,” Nan muses. “Someone clearly following her for personal infatuation or investigation.” “Unless,” I think aloud suddenly, “she wasn’t the subject of the photo.” “You mean Sharpe?” Nan catches on. “Perhaps. He’s such an enigma. All anyone agrees on is that he came over from Oxford, apparently following Julienne for one reason or another.”

  “So back to the door, did this guy’s grandfather know anything about it?” It’s just like Nan to jump from topic to topic and it makes me smile. “Not that I know of. I showed Greg the picture and he doesn’t seem to think anything of the door. Or rather hasn’t heard anything specific about it.” I add, knowing the door is a soft spot for Nan. “But he said he’d take a look at it. He’s pretty handy, so perhaps he can get it open.” “If he’s so handy, what’s he doing bartending?” Nan probes. Damn, I chastise myself for providing more personal information about Greg. “He actually teaches British History at a college nearby. He’s just bartending during the summer to make a little extra money. He’s trying to fix up the house his grandfather left him.” “Ah, that makes more sense.” Nan replies. “What does?” I ask, now curious, but a bit apprehensive of hearing her answer. “Nothing,” she withdraws. Even sharp-tongued Nan knows that men are still a delicate subject for me. “Well, perhaps next time I come to visit, we can go to the bar and meet up with Grace and this bartender friend of yours. They both sound quite interesting. I’m glad that you’re making friends. Honestly, I’ve been worried about you being alone up there.” Her voice had soften, and I know that despite her attempts to get insight into Greg, she is genuinely happy for my meeting new found friendship
s

  “You’re coming to visit?” I am excited at the prospect of having Nan here with me again. I have to admit, as much as my new life is moving forward at a quick pace, I miss my family. “I’m happy to, if you’ll still have time for me,” she teases. “I’m thinking the last weekend of the month?” “That would be great! I’ll make sure the spare room’s ready. Oh, and I found this cute town up the road about 20 minutes. I think you’ll really like it, if we have the time,” I can hear the anticipation in my voice, and that I’m on the verge of babbling the way I do when I was overly happy about something. “Excellent! I’ll let Len know I’ll be out of town that weekend.” Len is a name I haven’t heard before, and I’m not sure if it was Nan’s way of telling me she’s seeing someone or a secret that slipped out. By the silence on the end, I gather it’s the latter and decide to let it pass. She’ll tell me when she was ready, if he’s anyone of consequence. Nan is notorious for getting three or four weeks into a relationship, making men fall madly for her, and getting scared off and leaving. “I can’t wait to see you,” I simply say, letting her off the hook in hopes that it might encourage her to do the same for me when it comes to Greg. “Me too. I had so much fun last time.” I am unused to this emotional Nan, and wondered if Len is the reason behind it. I smile to myself. Perhaps people can change, I think.