That night, like so many others, Tabby’s mother’s words didn’t seem to hold any truth. It was always in those liminal moments when the mind was not quite in the land of the wake, nor yet the oblivion of sleep. The dead would come, first soft and slow like a gentle snowfall, then mounting into a roaring and furious squall. They always wanted the same things: resolutions to problems unresolved in life, last words that had gone unsaid. The dead who had no such unfinished business never bothered her; they simply moved on to whatever it was that came after.
After escaping her aunt and uncle, Tabby had never told anyone of her strange and frightening ability, but if she had, this is what she would have described: A darkness like the deepest of sleeps, a soundless, stale void without confines. The outside world snuffed to nothing like a candle flame drowning in a pool of wax. With great force of will she could pull herself out of the void, but it took a tremendous effort, both physically and mentally.
She hated it. She hated the sickly sweet smell of rot, the sightless eyes. She hated that her mind was not her own, that she was nothing more than a vessel for outpourings of grief and anger.
Kicking off her quilt, she padded across the tiny room to the window. Below her, mist wreathed the cemetery, headstones just visible like buoys bobbing in the harbor. Passersby might think that the dead slumbered without regard to the outside world, that their trials were over. How comforting a thought that must be, what a solace when pondering one’s own mortality. Tabby alone was privy to the burdensome truth that told her otherwise. When she finally crawled back into bed, her sleep was thin and fitful.
* * *
“Tabby, did you hear what I said?”
Tabby was sitting at the rickety table in the front room that served as their parlor, a rainbow of threads spread out before her as a weeping willow slowly took shape on her embroidery frame. When the scene was finished, it would depict a widower mourning at the grave of his beloved wife, the trailing leaves of the willow echoing his tears. Tabby was quick with a needle and thread, and though the memorial embroideries were not as fashionable as they once had been, they brought in some much-needed income. And, if she concentrated on the stitches hard enough, her mind was tight as a ship, with nary a crack in her defenses against the dead.
Frowning, she looked up Eli’s words. “What was that?”
“I said that it looks like rain and I haven’t been out to collect the old bouquets in weeks.” Eli had been bent over his account book, but now he was peering at her. “Are you all right? You looked a thousand miles away.”
Warmth flooded Tabby’s cheeks and she ducked her head, concentrating twice as hard on pulling her green thread through the linen. Her mind hadn’t been a thousand miles away, only a few yards, actually. She’d been thinking of young Caleb Bishop and the way he carried himself with such confidence, how he radiated charm. She was thinking of the way he made her feel as if she was the most important person in the world—no, the only person in the world—when he spoke with her. But at Eli’s question she quickly pushed such foolish thoughts away.
“Just trying to get this stitch right,” she said lamely.
Eli gave her a lingering look of doubt and then slowly unfolded himself from his chair. “Well, I’d better go collect them if we don’t want the rats finding them first.”
“Oh no, you won’t,” she said, jumping up. Eli’s back had gotten bad over the past few years, and she didn’t like the idea of him stooping over more than he already needed to. “I’ll take a basket and do it. Besides,” she added, giving him a sly look, “I saw Miss Suze yesterday, and she said she had a pie she wanted to bring over for you.”
At the mention of the older woman’s name, Eli obediently dropped back down in his chair. “Is that, ah...is that so?”
Eli was a quiet man who kept his own counsel, even from his daughter. Tabby didn’t know everything of what went on in his mind, but she knew enough that she recognized the look Eli gave Miss Suze from the Baptist church as pure, unadulterated longing. Miss Suze was a widow with six grown children, at least a dozen grandchildren, and a propensity for making enough food to feed a small army. Occasionally she invited Eli and Tabby to dine with her, and Tabby always enjoyed the boisterous family meals.
“I don’t know why you don’t just ask her,” Tabby said. “It’s clear that she holds you in high esteem.”
“It’s not that simple,” Eli said with a deflective grunt.
Tabby thought it was the simplest thing in the world. Miss Suze always made a point of sitting near Eli in church. Eli was a well-respected man in the community, never married, and clearly had feelings for her. Perhaps their living situation in the boarding house wasn’t ideal for a married couple, but surely they could make it work?
As she was turning to fetch her shawl, Eli reached up and clasped her hand. “My Tabby cat,” he said, his long face creasing with a smile. “You’re a good girl. I don’t know what I would do without you.”
She looked down at her pink hand in his big brown one. The hands that had raised her were strong and capable, but she couldn’t help but notice the knuckles were starting to swell with rheumatism. Eli had always been clever with a knife, and carved intricate figurines and talismans, including the death’s head pendant that Tabby wore around her neck. He hadn’t been a young man when he’d found her, and that had been twelve years ago. She often wondered how long he would be able to continue his work when it required so much labor. From what he had told her, he was the only one willing to take on the job as caretaker after this particular cemetery had fallen out of fashion with Boston’s wealthy elite. The cemetery was filled with hundreds of unmarked graves of slaves and the African community, and Eli had left his job as a fishmonger and stepped up when no one else would. “Someone’s got to care for them, remember them,” he had told her. Because that was what Eli did; he cared for things that were broken and forgotten.
Brushing his cheek with a kiss, Tabby squeezed his hand. “And I don’t know what I would do without you.”
* * *
Thick banks of clouds were rolling in from the harbor, but the day was mild and perfumed with the fresh scent of pollen when Tabby stepped outside with her basket on her elbow. Spring in the cemetery meant lush grass beneath her feet, tulips and narcissus clustered about the old stones, and flowering crab apple trees that begged to be climbed—even if she was much too old for such things.
“Tabby!”
She spun around to see a young woman waving at her coming up the street. Tall and raven haired with ivory skin, Mary-Ruth turned heads as she walked by, but also cleared a path, like Moses parting the Red Sea. Tabby watched as one little boy, braver than his friends, darted right up to her to try to touch her skirt. Mary-Ruth stuck her tongue out at him, which sent him scuttling back to the safety of his playmates. Children always seemed to regard her with equal parts fascination and terror, as if she were some beautiful angel of death.