Page 38 of The Forgotten Boy

“You hadn’t been up to the solar before now.”

Diana narrowed her eyes, meeting Clarissa’s gaze head-on. “I take it you have.”

“Yes.”

“Why don’t you tell me about your experiences?”

“Ahhhh.” Clarissa straightened up, satisfaction in her smile. “So you’ve felt it.”

“I … I don’t know what I felt. Searching in the dark, worried about a missing boy—”

“That’s why you felt it! That’s when it happens, when she comes, when you’re as sick with worry as she was once, terrified for the safety of a child—”

“She who?”

“That I don’t know, at least not her name or dates or anything else you would like to know to confirm the reality of what you experienced. Property records get murky past the late eighteenth century. It doesn’t matter. Just tell me that you didn’t feel the same things.”

“The mind is a flexible instrument—” Diana began, and was immediately cut off.

“So you think I’m crazy, just like everyone else does. ‘Poor Clarissa. Locked herself away all these years, she’s grown mad tormenting herself with guilt, creating ghosts to ease her loneliness.’ I know that’s what people think. No one except my father has ever dared say it to my face, although Dr. Bennett hints from time to time. Did he tell you to disregard anything I might say about ghostly sounds and elusive images?”

“He told me that you are one of the most intelligent people he’s ever known, not that I needed telling. You are obviously sane, Clarissa, if understandably sensitive about ghost stories and missing boys.”

“So, passably sane with a very vivid imagination?”

Diana bit her lip, thinking hard about which would do more harm—continuing to evade Clarissa’s original question about the solar, or answering it. “It seems unlikely that I would conjure up precisely the same scene as you did, no matter how vivid my own imagination. I saw … shadows. Outlines of furniture. I heard horses and men, and saw a banner. And I felt—” Diana stopped, searching for just the right word.

She said it at the same moment Clarissa did: “Terror.”

Clarissa’s smile could have powered half of London. It made Diana want to smile back, in spite of the day’s seriousness.

“That doesn’t mean I believe in ghosts,” said Diana. “And I definitely do not believe that the ghost of Thomas is trying to contact you by haunting schoolboys.”

If she’d expected to shock Clarissa by using her brother’s name, she was disappointed. Clarissa simply looked at her with absolute confidence and said, “Nor do I. Of course not. Why would you think that of me?”

Diana floundered for words. “Because … but you’ve been so interested in the sightings, so curious about how I was being haunted … if you don’t think this ghost is Thomas, why do you care?”

“Because Thomas saw him too in the last days before he disappeared. I am certain that my brother was following the ghost boy when he vanished.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

JULIET

2018

On what was Thanksgiving Day back home, Juliet joined the Bennetts for dinner. Rachel had gone all out researching traditional meals and proudly served mashed potatoes, homemade stuffing, and a perfectly roasted turkey.

Rachel made only one apology: “I could not bring myself to make pumpkin pie. Why would anyone want a dessert made out of a squash? You’ll have to make do with sticky toffee pudding.”

Juliet assured her that was no hardship and spent the next two hours playing board games with Antonia, the three little boys, and Noah. He didn’t go so far as to kiss her in front of everyone, but there was enough hand-holding and shared glances going on to make the children giggle and Juliet blush.

Noah had driven her to the farm and gladly accepted her invitation to come in when he returned her to Havencross after dark. There followed an exceptionally pleasant half hour on a squashy sofa in the sitting room across from Juliet’s bedroom—one of the few rooms that held any furniture at all. They only stopped when Juliet’s phone rang.

“It’s my mother,” she said, stretching across him to look at her screen. “And it’s Thanksgiving. I should probably talk to them all.”

He kissed her once more, untangled himself, and stood up. “I’ll see you day after tomorrow. If we’re still on for sightseeing in York?”

She promised, and sighed with a mix of desire and frustration before calling home.

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