What the Dead Want by Norah Olson Page B

told! You were right about all of it. And I cannot thank you enough. I will be sad to be away at school while you are home in Mayville. But Troy is close to Canada, and close to other stops on the route. We should be able to get even more done. Help even more people, as we will both be living on strategic points.
    Know that we are together always. And that when I come home with my education it will be as we have always dreamed.
    Your friend eternally,
    Fidelia

THIRTEEN
    A ROUND FOUR THIRTY IN THE MORNING THE MEDICAL examiner arrived at the Greens’ house. He’d been to the scene and determined Esther’s death to be suicide. Gretchen noted that he looked tired and a little unsettled, but not like he’d walked through a gauntlet of ghosts or strange creatures with hooves. He said that her body would be taken to the Palmer Funeral Home downtown. The next of kin would have to go make arrangements.
    Gretchen couldn’t believe he’d just gone into the house by himself. Maybe she really had been hallucinating. Too open to Esther’s crazy suggestions about ghosts? Too hungry or drunk, too willing to see the kinds of things hermother believed in? But Hawk was seeing these things too. There had to be more to the story.
    â€œSuicide’s not as rare in the elderly as you might think,” the medical examiner said somberly. “Someone like your aunt, tough old lady, lived on her own for so long. The idea of not being able to care for herself . . . well, people like that often make their own decisions about when it’s time to go.”
    It was only when his car pulled out of the drive and the taillights faded into the night that Gretchen realized there were no other adults around. Esther had mentioned something about the Greens having a famous mother, but besides this visit from a haggard man in a dark suit, they seemed to be on their own.
    â€œWhere are your parents?” she asked Hope.
    The siblings looked at one another.
    â€œGone,” they said in unison.
    The word resonated, cold and familiar in Gretchen’s head.
    â€œThey passed just before I turned seventeen,” Hawk said. “Car accident.”
    â€œI’m so sorry,” Gretchen said, thinking about Esther’s admonishments to be careful, saying accidents were the number-one cause of death around there.
    â€œWe are too,” said Hope, nodding her head. “Theyswerved off the road to avoid hitting a little boy.”
    â€œWhat was the little boy doing out in the road all by himself?” Gretchen asked.
    â€œPlaying with a rope,” Hope said. “That’s what the only witnesses said.”
    â€œThey didn’t find him at the scene,” Hawk said. “He must have run off.”
    Gretchen thought of the photograph Esther had shown her just an hour ago, of her mother, with Piper running through. She wanted to say something about it but thought she would sound crazy.
    â€œYou’ve been living here by yourself?” Gretchen asked.
    â€œNot really,” Hawk said. “Esther spent a lot of time over here, looking out for us once they passed. She’d been good friends with our mom.”
    Gretchen felt the lonely resignation in their words. The kind of missing that would not go away. It felt like one more layer of sorrow for all of them.
    â€œWas your mom a photographer too?” she asked.
    â€œShe was a historian,” Hope said. “Used to be a professor when we were small, before we moved back here—to where she was from. She wrote books about American history.”
    â€œDid you ever read Uncommon Ground ?” Hawk asked.
    â€œYour mother is Sarah Green ?”
    â€œWas,” Hope said, but she looked proud, not sad, when she said it.
    â€œI read that book in tenth-grade history.”
    â€œEveryone did,” said Hope.
    â€œWhoa,” Gretchen said. “I can’t believe your mother is Sarah Green. That book is amazing.”
    Hawk