Free The Ghost of the Mary Celeste by Valerie Martin Page A

like a gift for music or painting. I can’t just ignore it. I can’t make it go away because other people don’t like it.”
    “Is that what Dr. Chandler says?” I asked, feigning an interest I hardly felt.
    She gave me a quick, hard look. So Dr. Chandler could be admitted to without a fight. “He does say that. But I didn’t need him to tell me.”
    “How did you come to be in touch with him?”
    Here the glance was furtive. “I read an advertisement in the New Bedford paper. He prints a journal; it’s called
Spiritual Condolence
, and I was curious about it, so I wrote to him. Well, his name wasn’t in the advertisement. I wrote to the journal.”
    “To offer your mediumistic services,” I suggested. “Is that the right word?”
    “No, I didn’t do that. Not at first. I just inquired about the journal, about how it came to be.”
    “And Dr. Chandler wrote back at once.”
    She nodded. Something stronger than anger was closing my throat, not at my sister, but at this charlatan in Boston.
    “Oh, Sallie.” Hannah sighed. “It’s such a relief to tell you. I send in messages that I receive, that I don’t always understand, because they’re not really for me, and he puts them in the journal.”
    So my sister was Mercy Dale.
    I took her arm in mine. We’d come to the end of the promontory and stood gazing out at the outer harbor. “I know everyone here thinks there’s something wrong with me,” she said. “And Father is so adamant against those who believe … who believe as I do. He wants us to keep our minds and efforts always directed upon the living, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but why should we turn our backs on those we have known, those we have loved, who are only waiting for us to listen to be heard?”
    “What sorts of things does Mother tell you?” I asked, to show my goodwill.
    “She’s pleased about your engagement.”
    “That’s a blessing,” I said.
    “She’s sad that she can’t reach Father.”
    It’s difficult to describe my feelings at these tender messages, which might as well have been nursery rhymes, for all the import of them. So the dead were as banal as the living, I thought.
    “She is happy in the place where they are,” Hannah concluded. Still holding her by the arm, I turned away from the harbor, and she came along without comment. As we entered Allen Street, she said sadly, “Even you don’t believe me.”
    “I believe you miss our mother very much and wish she was still with us. And I share that wish.”
    “So you think my seeing her is just wishful thinking.”
    “If you like.”
    “Well,” she said lightly. “It doesn’t matter, Sallie. There are people who do believe me. Quite a few of them in fact.”
    “Not just Dr. Chandler,” I said.
    “Many of them are ladies of excellent reputation and good society in Boston. No one makes a fuss there and my gift may provide great solace to many.”
    Again I was at a loss for words.
    “Are you going to tell Father?” she asked.
    We had come to our house and I lifted the latch of the gate. “I don’t know, darling,” I said. “I don’t know what to do. I’m vexed past reason at you for being so credulous.”
    She stepped back, as if struck. “I’m not credulous. I just can’t pretend I don’t see what I see. It’s cruel to try to stop me. If you tell Father, Sallie, I don’t know what he’ll do.”
    “How can I keep such goings-on a secret, these letters to a man you know nothing about, these publications! Does he know your age? No, I thought not. How can I keep this from Father, who is responsible for you to God and man alike?”
    “If I promise to give up writing to Dr. Chandler, will you not tell him?”
    I felt I had been reduced to accepting a scurrilous deal in order to protect my sister from herself, and from Dr. Chandler, whoever he was. “That would be a start,” I said. “Yes. If you promise to cease this correspondence, I won’t tell Father what you have told