Chapter 22
Ward Vose finished his water and crushed the cup in his hand.
“May I ask about your daughter,” he said, “the one who died?”
“No.”
It wasn’t the answer he was expecting, but I wasn’t going to permit him that intimacy. Even among acquaintances, I was reluctant to speak of Jennifer. I liked Vose less for raising the subject, and since I didn’t know him, I didn’t greatly like him already.
“Okay,” he said.
It didn’t bother me if he considered it okay or not. He toyed with the ruined cup.
“My father once told me that people fragmented when they died,” he said.
“There was a separation of body and soul, but those weren’t the only elements involved.
He believed consciousness was a third, and distinct from the soul, so that a body might decay, and the soul be reunited with its maker, and still the essence of an individual might remain.
To my father, ghosts were that remnant, and he was convinced of their existence.
He claimed that an easeful death meant an easeful consciousness, one that faded away in the moments after the heart stopped beating.
But even a hard death wouldn’t necessarily leave a residue, if it came as a welcome release.
I like to think he was right about that, because he rotted away at the end, all eaten up by his own body turning against itself, and I feel he’s gone.
But an unjust death, or a killing, might cause a consciousness to not want to leave.
Worse, it might not be able to even if it did want, because it died lost.”
Vose gazed at his big hands, which had cradled his son as an infant.
“I think my boy is wandering,” he said. “He died in dark country, killed by another, and whatever is left of him is frightened and angry. I sense his presence, even through these walls. If I could, I’d go searching for him up there in the Kennebec.
I’d call out to him, so he could follow the sound of my voice, and once he came, I’d whisper that he didn’t need to be afraid because I was there, and he wasn’t lost because he was with me.
And then I’d sing him to sleep, like I did when he was in the cradle, sing to him until he was at rest.”
At no point while he spoke did he look at me. I might not have been in the room.
“I can’t summon ghosts,” I said.
Vose peered up.
“Can’t you, now?” he replied, and I wondered what he had heard about me.
“I’ll speak with Alcock,” I said.
“And?”
“That’s all. If he and I can come to an agreement, I’ll give this a couple of days. If I haven’t made any progress by then, I’ll set it aside. Should anything change after that, by which I mean should fresh leads arise, Alcock will know how to contact me.”
“It’s as much as I could have asked for,” said Vose.
“The last thing I wanted for my son was to find himself trapped someplace like this. I held myself up to him as an example of everything he shouldn’t be.
I told him that this was what wasted years looked like.
And what happened? The Spero, that’s what. ”
The door opened and the same guard appeared without being summoned.
“And I was wrong to try to bring your child into this,” said Vose. “I apologize. I thought I could use her to talk you around, if I had to. In here, a man can forget how to behave with decency.”
The guard escorted him out, leaving me alone with the residue of Ward Vose’s guilt.