I looked at Jakob.
“Are you coming with me?”
He shook his head. “I don’t want to press my luck. But I’ll see you again.”
“Anytime I want?” I asked.
He pursed his lips in concern. “I’ll let you know first, how about that?”
He sounded uneasy, like there was something he wasn’t telling me, but I was so tired from getting all the other information out of him. There had to be some secrets left and I was OK with that.
I was OK with everything now. I was pregnant after all.
With a small wave, I held my breath as a precaution and stepped through the pressured air until I was engulfed by cold and snow and exhaust and colorful books that lay at my feet.
I turned around to see a car putter past the alley. That was it.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Jakob ended up being right about everything he warned me about. It started with the increased abilities, these changes in myself. Before visiting the Otherside, I was vaguely aware of the world around me. Oh, I paid attention all right, but never enough attention it seemed, for now I was seeing ghosts everywhere. But perhaps it wasn’t a matter of my eyes opening, maybe I was giving off a stronger energy now that I had been to their world and back.
Either way, it didn’t matter. There were ghosts where there weren’t ghosts before. No longer did I contend with random boys in my classroom or drowned girls, but people, all the time, from all walks of life. They never approached me or talked to me, but they watched me. They always watched me.
I don’t have to tell you both how god damn unnerving that is. It was no wonder that my sanity would crumble one day and crumble it did. Another point for Jakob’s perceptiveness.
But I’m getting ahead of myself here, as we all know how that story ends. The visit to the Otherside brought about seeing ghosts but it also brought about a strange…I don’t know the term for it. Kinetic ability? I found that under periods of extreme duress, I was able to manipulate objects by my emotions. One day, after a particularly rough fight with Ludie, I thought about smashing the plates in my kitchen. I was so unbelievably mad. The next thing I knew, the plates in the good China cabinet came crashing down. At first the actions were uncontrollable and random but as the years went on, I began to assert some aspect of power over them. They were still unpredictable when my emotions were high, but when I was calm I could do minor things like move chairs and make books float in the air. It was a rather pointless ability to me, but it was mine now.
Of course, the other things that Jakob was right about were more life-altering. I could handle ghosts and rattling pans, but I couldn’t handle Ludie when he skipped out on our life together.
I know I shouldn’t have been surprised, but there was a part of me that wanted to prove Jakob wrong, and desperately so. I wanted Ludie to love me like I had him, but his heart was no magnet at all. When I told Ludie I was pregnant and that I was going to keep the baby, he withdrew from me. At first he told me that he would be there for me, support me emotionally as he assumed I would still be with Karl and raising it with him. But when I said to Ludie that I was going to admit to our affair and request a divorce from dear Karl, he panicked. Ludie loved me but only in that noncommittal way that suited his lifestyle just fine.
When I was seven months pregnant, Ludie sent a letter to my house. I cried and cried as I read it at the kitchen table, grateful that Karl wasn’t home. Ludie told me he had found work in a popular off-Broadway play in New York and that he was going. In fact, as I read the letter, I realized he was already there. He signed off by saying he’d think of me always and our child, but that he was doing the right thing. He would go and make more money, get famous, and come back for us one day.
I don’t need to tell you that the one day never came.
The only thing that kept me going during this time, this second round of heartbreak, was looking after the baby and waiting for her to be born. I had decided to call her Ingrid, after Karl’s mother. It was the least I could do, considering she wouldn’t ever be his child.
Did Karl ever suspect? I am sure he did. Looking back, he had to have known I was having an affair. Near the end I was quite careless and on the days when I had been with Ludie, I noticed Karl could barely look me in the eyes. And of course when Ingrid was born, that was another sign right there. Ingrid had pale blonde hair and bright blue eyes, just like Ludie. She was a gorgeous, lithe-like creature and grew to have no resemblance to Karl at all.
But Karl, good, sweet Karl, he never said anything to me and he loved Ingrid as if she was his own. When he was around, he would dote on her as often as he could.
However, because there was an extra mouth in the family to feed now and caviar wasn’t what it used to be, especially when a company such as IKEA opened up, Karl had to start another business (marine instruments) and spent the majority of his time working. He felt bad for never being around and told me we could hire a nanny, but I didn’t want to do that. Ingrid was all I had and I wanted to spend every minute with her, doing everything for her that I could.
Oh, I loved that girl so much. She was so beautiful that people would stop on the streets and stare at her. I couldn’t help but marvel at her big sapphire eyes, her perfect nose, heart-shaped face and high cheekbones. Her hair was white blonde and stick straight with just the right amount of thickness and shine. She was stunning, just as her father was, and I dressed her in outfits I created myself, indulging in my wardrobe cravings again.
Ingrid was the belle of the ball and fairly smart too. But there was something about her that was slightly off-putting. I felt just the tiniest bit afraid of her. It was completely irrational, but there were times that Ingrid would look at me, even at four years old, and I felt…judged. It was as if she was looking down at me, at her own mother. At other times, it’s like I wouldn’t even show up on her radar and she was looking through me, as if I were a ghost.
Sometimes I would lie in bed at night and wonder why I never saw any love from her eyes. Ingrid seemed to take interest and delight in other things. She liked fashion and must have gotten that from me. She liked being on her father’s knee and pretending she was riding a pony. She had friends, she giggled over boys and laughed at cartoons. But when it came to me, it was like a switch went off. Smiles disappeared, laughter stopped. Oh, she was a polite girl because I raised her to be and she would talk with me about her day and tell me stories. But she was missing something crucial. She was missing the mother/daughter connection.