Free We Hear the Dead by Dianne K. Salerni

Make yourself useful and set the table.”
    Leah was tall and large boned, but her years of living lean had not allowed her to attain the girth of Mother. At thirty-four, she still held a flush of prettiness in a face that was a little too round but lit up by lively gray eyes. She wiped her hands on her skirt apron and surveyed the kitchen as though it were her domain while we hustled about doing her bidding. “Where is Father?” she asked, suddenly realizing his absence.
    We all continued at our assigned tasks in silence for a moment while glancing sidelong at Mother. After an awkward pause, she lifted her chin and met Leah’s eyes significantly. “He moved out to the new house to finish it.”
    My sister arched an eyebrow. “He’s living there alone?” At Mother’s brief nod, Leah shook her head and shrugged one shoulder before turning to resume slicing the potatoes.
    David put his head in through the back door and handed me a bucket of water from the pump. “Does she want to see the bones?” he whispered to me.
    â€œNot before supper, David, thank you!” Leah called out. “I’ll come out to the barn and pay my respects later, if you don’t mind.” I fetched up beside her with a freshly filled pot and let her slide the sliced potatoes into the water. Then she looked up and met my eyes, murmuring in a lower voice, “I will want a few words with you later, as well.”
    I nodded mutely.
    ***
    At supper that evening, Leah told us how she had left Rochester the very day she learned about the hauntings involving her family. She went first to the Hydesville house, only to find that we had all moved out.
    â€œThroughout the trip, I kept thinking that there had been some mistake and I would find that Mrs. Little’s relative was ill-informed or a malicious gossip. But the neighbor in Hydesville, your Mrs. Redfield, was quick to regale me with stories about your resident ghost and about the spirit sittings you have held here at the farm.”
    Mother was eager to tell her own story and launched into a long-winded version of the same tale she had told Mr. Lewis. David and Betsy interrupted to share their own little pieces, and Lizzie nodded along wholeheartedly. When they explained that the spirit rapping occurred only in the presence of her sisters, Leah turned her head to give us a most skeptical look.
    Kate stared back with her innocent gaze. “We were awfully frightened at first, but now that we have come to know them, the spirits do not trouble us at all. They so terribly want to be heard.”
    â€œIndeed,” Leah replied dryly. “I can hardly wait to satisfy their need.”
    Although we had agreed, for Betsy’s sake, to suspend the spirit circles, it was decided to make an exception in honor of Leah’s arrival. After the supper dishes had been cleared and after David had taken Leah to visit the bones in the barn, we drew the curtains in the parlor and extinguished all but a single candle.
    The spirits would be subdued that night. I had grown accustomed to concealing a block of wood within my petticoats on which I would knock with my hand in the darkness of the parlor. Tonight, with Leah watching, I could not dare. Mother began as she always did, by summoning the spirits. When they had signaled their presence with a loud rap, she began to ask the usual questions.
    â€œAre we in the presence of spirits from beyond the veil of life?” Two raps.
    â€œHave you any messages for us this evening?” Two raps.
    Mother smiled triumphantly and looked significantly at her eldest daughter as she asked, “Do you have a message from my grandfather Jacob Smith this evening?” Two raps.
    This great-grandparent, whom I had never known, was a special favorite of Leah’s, but she sat impassively as we waited out the rapping through the alphabet, which eventually spelled out: Welcome my little Annie Leah.
    Leah’s only