Chapter 30
Seven months later
Helena Cartwright arrived in early spring, about a month before the wedding, when most businesses on Mackinac weren’t yet open for the season.
Yasmin was simultaneously a complete wreck and totally in her element.
I stayed out of the wedding plans, letting her, Annabelle, and Miranda handle things like dresses, tuxes, a gender-neutral option for me and Sage, flowers, speeches, and the guest list. I would never tell her, but one of the happiest moments in my life was when she asked me to be in charge of the music.
Nate and I escorted Yasmin’s mother to Abaddon from the airport, where she’d arrived on a private flight instead of waiting for the thaw that would allow the ferry to start for the season. After looking Nate up and down, she greeted him warmly.
To me, she said, “Darling, you look just like your mother, and I’m going to pretend that I’m okay with that until we can talk.”
I nodded, and we resumed our walk back to the cottage.
Once there, she immediately told Yasmin everything she thought was wrong about our soft launch plan, the website, the curtains, my hair, Yasmin’s hair, our logo, and the house in general.
My hair was in an awkward almost-to-the-chin stage while I decided whether to grow it into a mohawk, so she was correct about one thing.
After touring the house and garden, inspecting the guest rooms carefully, and surveying the back deck where the reception would be held, Yasmin showed her mother to her room. I couldn’t hear their conversation, but when Yasmin returned downstairs, her eyes were red and puffy.
“Okay?”
She nodded. “Hard but necessary conversation.” She sighed and wiped her eyes, then said, “Why is growing up so hard?”
“I wouldn’t know since I’ve never done it.”
She laughed. The next few days with Helena in the house were easier but not easy.
She clashed with Yasmin over small details and had an infuriating habit of siding with anyone’s opinion except her daughter’s.
The only thing that made the situation tolerable was the fact that she also adored Nate.
I resolved to throw her out of my house if she didn’t approve of the good-natured electrician.
Helena’s relationship with Annabelle was equally fraught.
Somehow, my aunt had a sixth sense about her, making it impossible for the ghost to sneak around her or appear without warning.
She followed Annabelle from room to room, asking her metaphysical questions and seeming to know she was there even when she was invisible.
“It’s impossible, Gibson,” Annabelle whispered to me a day before the ceremony, while she and Yasmin were having a mother-daughter spa day. “She won’t let me—”
“Sneak up on people?”
Annabelle huffed, then proving my point, disappeared.
***
Yasmin Cartwright and Nate Phillips were married in a beautiful ceremony at Mackinac’s famous gazebo.
Yasmin was gorgeous in her flowy black dress; Nate cried the entire time.
Yasmin’s brothers, standing in a stoic line behind Nate, kept their composure long enough to see their sister down the aisle, but started sniffling when the vows began.
Nate’s mother and sister never once stopped smiling, overcome with joy even when there were no cameras in sight to capture their happy faces.
Throughout the ceremony, I longed to hold Annabelle’s hand.
She still couldn’t leave the house without fading, but Adam volunteered to be the wedding filmographer.
He pointed his phone screen at the happy couple and live-streamed the event for Annabelle, who dressed up and watched from the tablet I set up in the living room at home.
My desperation for her ebbed like a tide.
I let gentle waves of feeling tickle my feet, but the need didn’t pull me under. Not anymore.
The reception was held in the garden at Abaddon, which had been outfitted with strings of fairy lights that connected to the house and extended out into the garden.
They filled the backyard with a magical yellow light that snuck into the garden’s dark crevices and made my chest feel funny when I stood back to take in the tableau.
Before I left to put tin cans on the back of a carriage with Yasmin’s brothers, Helena pulled me aside. We sat in the empty front room of the house while the party continued out back. She handed me a package wrapped in simple black paper.
“This is a gift for you. And your ghost,” she said.
I accepted the gift warily. “What is it? You didn’t need to ...”
She waved my hesitation aside. “Just open it.”
Inside was a clothbound book. The cover had a graphic illustration of the moon phases on it. I flipped to the back, which had the text that we’d chanted to bring Annabelle back printed in gold leaf. “It’s beautiful. But why ...”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Gibson,” she said, “open the book.”
I put on a wry smile. “Given my history of family members and old books, I think you’ll forgive me for being cautious.”
Nonetheless, I opened the book to reveal a calendar of sorts, with a detailed listing of months, phases of the moon, and more celestial details for a span of the next twenty-five years.
The dates of upcoming lunar eclipses were marked and circled with a shiny gold ink.
I felt like my ribcage needed to expand several sizes to accommodate the rush of emotions swirling around inside.
“Are you saying—”
“That she can come back again? Of course. Wasn’t that obvious?”
“No! No, it wasn’t.”
Helena smiled at me and patted my knee. I wasn’t sure where Annabelle was, but I couldn’t wait to show her this. She would love the ornate lettering and the intricate binding.
My heart pounded, overwhelmed by the possibility that Annabelle could come back again on the next eclipse. And all the eclipses after that. “I don’t know how to thank you.”
“You don’t need to. You know, before I sent Yasmin here, I consulted tea leaves. The imagery I saw was quite strong.”
“She, um, didn’t mention it.” Even if she had, I probably, no, definitely , wouldn’t have been receptive to hearing about it at the time. “She was focused on the book.”
Helena nodded. “She has always been a very serious child. Very focused.”
“Can’t imagine why,” I muttered.
“The leaves left behind a pattern that suggested to me great love and intense loss. I saw an angel with wings of moss from which new life was allowed to grow and flourish. And I saw a bridge that connected life and death.”
I leaned back against my seat as if pressed down into it. I couldn’t have responded to that if I tried.
Helena continued, “This house, Abaddon Cottage, it’s—”
She looked around at the sitting room. We kept some of the original furniture but cleaned and refinished it.
Yasmin, Annabelle, and I had argued bitterly over the wallpaper, entering a standoff that resulted in a tense three-day stretch in which Annabelle refused to cook for anyone and started throwing things while invisible just to scare us into finding a resolution.
Nate was the one who solved it. We removed the old, peeling, yellowing paper.
The process was disgusting and sticky, and the substances I found under the paper I wished I could wipe from my memory.
But the new pattern we found online, an updated version of the old one, worked perfectly as a trim around a new coat of warm yellow paint.
The look was classic and homey, but updated and clean.
“You’ve made this house into something no one could have predicted,” Helena said. “I’m sure Agatha never intended for strangers to pay to stay here. But it has charm. And it has you in it, too.”
I nodded. Somehow, I knew that if I deflected the compliment, she would call me on it.
“I’ve never doubted my daughter, though I’m sure she says otherwise.
Now that I’m here, and I’ve seen this thing you’re doing together, I don’t doubt you, either.
” My aunt folded her hands in her lap and looked down at them.
“You didn’t have a mother to believe in you as a young adult, and I’m sorry for that.
I should’ve tried to be there for you after she… ”
“I understand,” I said. And I actually did. “I’m not sure I would’ve wanted anything to do with you at the time.”
The grandfather clock we hadn’t discarded chimed, intruding to remind me to keep breathing.
Helena slapped her thighs and stood. “Well, I’ve welcomed several interesting people into my family today.
Old Pete has the most confusing aura of any man I’ve ever met.
Anyway, I wish you all the success in this bed-and-breakfast venture.
You have not grown up to be the person anyone expected Veronica Cartwright to grow into, Gibson. ”
I waited for my hands to stop shaking before I joined the tin-can brigade.
***
Two years later
The owners of Helga’s, neither of whom were named Helga, let us reserve a seat in the bar located directly in front of the band.
Rebecca brought a little stand and put my phone on it.
She propped it up carefully, moving it around to make sure Annabelle could see me through the video feed.
Every week while the bar was open, I set up the tablet in the living room so Annabelle could watch us play from home.
We went through several drummers when Sage left for college.
The new guy, Kevin, was also a dentist that set up shop on the island part time.
He was no Sage, but he was good enough and he showed up to jam every week.
Mike and I rotated bass and guitar based on vibes and mood, pushing each other to become better at both.