The attic probably hadn't been entered since Gramma Emily died, Andrea thought as she rubbed her nose against the smell of dust and stale air. It was long past time someone came up here and cleared out all this junk.
Andrea had been upstairs for two hours going through boxes and trunks. The hard work kept her mind off Eric and her guilt for not calling him when she arrived last night.
This was the first time she'd been away from home without him or any of the kids. It was also the first time in a year she had gotten a good night's sleep. She hadn't had to sleep in the living room so that Eric was comfortable, listen to him moan in his sleep or lay awake worrying where the mortgage payment was coming from.
At least the company had finally taken full responsibility for the accident and they'd paid far more than she'd allowed herself to imagine. Now, they wouldn't have to worry about losing the house if he was never able to work again.
Andrea nearly dropped the milk glass vase she'd pulled out of an old trunk. If Eric was totally disabled...she couldn't let herself think about that. Things had to get better.
Already her relationship was changing from that of friend and lover to caretaker and nurse. This was not what she signed up for.
Her cell phone rang and when she saw Eric's face on the screen, she was tempted not to take it, but her better nature prevailed.
"Hi, honey. How are you?"
He hesitated, then in a small voice said, "A lot of pain today. The doctor called last night."
Andrea stiffened. A doctor calling on a Friday night didn't sound like a good thing.
"The damage to my back is permanent."
All the air left the attic. "No."
"Look, sweetheart," he said. "I know this isn't what we hoped for, but maybe he's wrong. We'll get a second opinion, go to a bigger clinic in a bigger city, something."
Andrea nodded, too stunned to speak. This couldn't be happening to her. It wasn't fair.
"Andy? Sweetheart? Are you still there?"
"I'm here, Eric."
"It'll be okay. You do what you have to up there. I'm fine here. We'll talk when you get home."
She hung up the phone. "If I come home."
She set the vase on the floor and sat down, her back against the attic wall, not trying to stop the tears that rolled down her cheeks.
That was it, then. The injuries were permanent.
Eric might have meant what he said about finding another doctor and getting another opinion, but they both knew it wouldn't change anything. His company had hired one of the foremost back specialists in the country to try and prove that he wasn't too injured to work, and yet, they'd ended up paying nearly two million dollars in damages.
Her husband, at forty-five, was never going to be able to take care of himself again, and they would never be able to have the kind of love life they'd had before.
"So, you're going to leave?"
Andrea looked around. She'd heard the voice, clear as day, but she was alone.
The stress of all this must be getting to her. She decided to go downstairs and fix a cup of tea. That should help.
"You're just going to ignore me, too, like you do your problems."
Andrea froze in the process of standing and looked around again. The sound seemed to be coming from around the milk glass vase she'd just set down, but...
"Don't freak out," the voice said. "I'm not going to hurt you."
"I'm losing my mind," Andrea muttered as she slowly lowered herself to the floor again. "Everything's finally getting to me. I'm hearing voices and talking to myself."
"Oh, grow up. You're not losing your mind. Everyone talks to themselves at one time or another. Sometimes it's the only intelligent conversation you have all day. And, besides, you're talking to me."
"I don't even know who you are. Are you the vase?"
"Maybe I was a little premature about the not losing your mind part." The voice sighed. "Of course, I'm not the vase. That's crazy. I'm Hannah Marie Banks, your great-grandmother."
Andrea shook her head slowly. "You're dead. I mean, she's dead."
"Why do you keep staring at that old vase? I can't believe that thing is still in this attic. Didn't your grandmother ever throw anything away?"
"Um." Andrea stood. In the warm attic, she felt as though ice were flowing through her. Maybe this was what going mad felt like. It wasn't so bad, actually.
"Why are you going to leave your husband?"
"What? You heard that?"
"I've been alone in this attic for thirty-five years. Even when Helen was alive, she didn't visit me."
"Why are you talking to me?" Andrea wasn't sure if she were confused or unconscious, but she wasn't quite afraid anymore. She still couldn't see anyone, but she figured if something was going to harm her, it would have already.
"You spent more than five minutes up here, and I heard what you said about not going home."
Andrea sighed. "Ah, my conscience. I get it. Well, I refuse to feel guilty so you can just go away." That explanation made her feel better, and she went back to emptying the trunk in front of her. Maybe she could sell some of these things.
"Don't feel guilty. See if I care, but I do still want to know why you're leaving him."
She shook her head. "Nope. I'm not having this conversation." Then she shook her head. "Conversation. I'm talking to myself and calling it a conversation. I guess I need more than one good night's sleep."
Suddenly an ice cold breeze whipped through the attic, stirring up dust and causing the tattered curtains to blow against the still shut windows.
Andrea looked up and standing before her was a woman, about her age, dressed in a gray plaid swing dress.
"Hannah?"
The woman looked down at herself. "Oh, I hoped I'd appear like I did in the 20s. I was quite the flapper back then. Mother didn't approve of course, but she was always old-fashioned."
"I don't believe this. Are you really here or am I hallucinating?"
"Okay, Andrea, listen closely. I don't have a lot of time to do this."
"Are you going to pass over or something?"
Hannah rolled her eyes and sighed. "Really? Pass over? Something you got from those paranormal romances you read, right?"
"I thought...wait, how did you know that?"
"Your grandmother told me. She thought they were quite horrifying. You did know that, right? I guess it's true what they say about every other generation understanding each other better than the consecutive ones." She shook her head. "I'm terribly sorry I missed that craze in fiction. I think I would have rather liked reading about ghosts and vampires and such."
"You said you didn't have much time. Why? Aren't you dead and just hanging out here?"
"You think because I'm dead I don't have anything else to do but haunt this place? I came here to see you and I want to get back. I don't like being away from Raymond."
"Raymond? You mean Grampa Ray?"
Hannah smiled. "My husband."
"But he died before you did."
"Yes, but I still love him. Love lasts, you know. Real love, anyway. It isn't something you can just turn on or off."
Andrea looked at the woman, or ghost or hallucination, in front of her. "Sometimes it dies. Sometimes it just fades away."
Hannah shook her head. "I don't believe it. If that's what you think has happened to you and Eric, then I would say you never loved him in the first place."
"And you'd be wrong. Eric is...Eric was the most wonderful man I've ever met. He stole my heart the first moment I saw him, and he never gave it...well, it wasn't really his fault. Things happen."
"What things? He cheat on you? You fall in love with someone else? Some charmer who offered to take you away from your drudgery?"
Andrea scowled. "No, nothing like that."
"That's what happened to me."
"What?" Andrea blinked. "What are you talking about? I know your story. You and Grampa Ray got married when you were sixteen and you were married for fifty-three years when he died."
Hannah nodded. "Yes. Fifty-three years, but they weren't always easy years. You know why I got married at sixteen? He was going off to fight in World War I, or what we called 'The Great War.' He was twenty-five, and my parents didn't want me to marry him. They thought he was a dreamer with no future."
"But you got married anyway?"
Shrugging, Hannah said, "We eloped only a week before he left for the war." She sighed. "It all seemed so romantic to my friends. They treated me like the heroine of some tragic story. I was a young wife whose husband was off at war." She shook her head.
"It didn't seem all that romantic to me. Here I was, barely older than a child, and I was a wife. I was living with my in-laws as my parents said I'd made my bed and I had to lie in it. I had to get a job as a waitress to make some money. The excitement of running off to marry the man I love wore off pretty quickly."
"But he came back safely." Andrea had gotten so engrossed in Hannah's story she nearly forgot she was talking either to a ghost or her own imagination.
Hannah shook her head. "No. He came home but he was paralyzed from the waist down. I was seventeen and he was twenty-six, and the doctors said the physical part of our marriage was over. I was already pregnant when he came back or we never would have had any children."
Andrea had no memory of her great-grandfather as he died before she was born, but she'd seen pictures of them downstairs, on the piano and hanging on the walls.
Great-grandfather Raymond had always been in a wheelchair.
"It must have been hard for you," Andrea said quietly.
Hannah nodded. "Yes. It was hard. I was still a teenager and suddenly, I have to start taking care of this man who, truth be told, I barely knew. He had learned a little about how to care for his own needs and as time went on, we figured out ways to make him more independent, but at first, neither one of us knew how it was all going to work out."
"And yet, you stayed with him."
At this Hannah laughed and sat down on one of the trunks nearby. Andrea wasn't sure how, as a ghost, she was able to keep from slipping right through the lid. Or on through the floor for that matter. Possibly it was just a specialized kind of hovering.
"He was in a hospital for eight months after he got home. Eight months I went to see him every day, hoping and praying he'd get better. I never saw any improvement. The doctors and nurses told me it would take time and that he was getting stronger day by day, but I didn't see it.
"His attitude was terrible. His nurses told me that I needed to try to cheer him up. Every day I'd waddle into his room with the booties or blankets I was knitting for the baby, and I'd smile and tell him how much better he looked, he'd just stare at me and say, 'Why do you keep coming here? Why don't you find a real man to give you what I can't?'"
"He wanted you to leave?"
"Of course he didn't. He was in pain, and he didn't think life was ever going to get better. Frankly, neither did I at that time. All the time I was trying to cheer him up, I was thinking, 'How am I going to care for a baby all by myself?' He wouldn't be able to work and I was going to have to do everything for him. It seemed like an impossible task."
Andrea felt her blood run cold again, but this time not out of fear but out of recognition. She wondered if Hannah could read her a mind. It all sounded like what she was going through.
"What happened?" she asked.
"Well, the baby was born. Barbara was beautiful, but I didn't see it. I guess today you'd call it postpartum depression. We called it the 'baby blues' but you were supposed to get over it and get on with it.
"At that time, you weren't allowed to bring babies into the hospital and for a while that gave me an excuse not to visit Raymond. I couldn't listen to him feeling sorry for himself when I was feeling sorry for myself, too."
She sighed. "Six weeks after Barbara was born, I met Harold. He was a war vet, too, but he'd come home whole. He was at the hospital visiting a buddy, not Raymond, and we'd sometimes run into one another in the cafeteria or in the hallway. At first, we'd just talk. It was nice to be with a man who wasn't complaining about pain or the nurses or asking me why I was late or why I had to leave so soon.
"Harold and I eventually began meeting on purpose. We started talking about our lives and a few times I'd tell my mother-in-law I was going to see Ray but I wouldn't leave the cafeteria.
"I told Harold all about Ray and what had happened. He told me I was too young and too pretty to be chained to a man who couldn't be a real husband to me."
"Did you have an affair?" Andrea asked.
Hannah shook her head. "Not a physical one, but I have him in my heart. At that time, nice girls just didn't sleep with men they weren't married to, and Harold was a complete gentleman. He'd buy me coffee and we'd just talk."
She stood and floated to the window of the attic. "I don't know when it started, exactly, but we planned a future together. We talked about going to Paris and London and Rome. I'd always wanted to be an artist even though I'd never really done anything about it. I'd never even told Ray that dream, but I share it with Harold and he promised to take me to all the great museums in the world."
Hannah floated over to where a dress in a plastic bag hung. "This was the dress I wore the day I left Raymond. I had left home planning to stop by the hospital to see him. Barbara was with her grandmother. I saw Harold in the cafeteria and he hugged me. Then he showed me two train tickets. He'd made reservations for us to go to Reno where I could get a divorce. Then we could go anywhere in the world and get married."
She smiled, but it was sad. Andrea wondered if ghosts could cry because it looked like that was what Hannah wanted to do.
"I was so excited. I told him we'd have to go by the house and get Barbara. That's when Harold froze. He said we couldn't take the baby. He didn't want children. He just wanted me."
Andrea could only stare. The idea of leaving her children nearly crushed her heart.
"What did you do?" Andrea knew what Hannah had done in the long run; she'd stayed with Raymond, but she sensed there was more to the story.
"I didn't know what to do. Harold was handsome and kind. He was willing to take care of me. Understand that I could only see a future where I spent all my time caring for Raymond. Feeding him, clothing him, bathing him. I was young; I wanted to see the world and Harold offered me all that."
She sighed and looked at Andrea. "You understand this, right?"
Andrea couldn't meet her eyes. While she wasn't a new mother in her late teens, she had a lot more life to lead and she could only see herself living as a caretaker for the rest of it.
"I do understand."
"I left the hospital with him. I didn't think about Barbara or Raymond. I figured they'd be okay. His mother had the baby and she'd take care of him when he came home. They didn't need me."
"Didn't it break your heart to leave your daughter?"
"It did, but I didn't think about it right then. I guess I thought I'd come back for her when things settled down. I thought I could convince Harold to take her."
Hannah shook her head. "Settled down. Harold didn't want a settled down life. We went right from the hospital to the train station. I didn't have even a change of clothes with me. He said he'd buy me everything I needed when we got to Reno. It was so exciting, so impulsive."
"But you didn't get to Reno."
Hannah shook her head. "We got to the station. I saw a woman pushing a man in a wheelchair. They were laughing about something, and suddenly I could see how much she loved him. I couldn't understand it. I watched her tuck a blanket around his legs and button his coat for him, but still, she was smiling. They talked and held hands. As I watched he kissed her cheek and she patted his hand. I saw that she made him happy and he needed her for that more than for pushing him around. She did what she did because she loved him, not because she had to."
She came over to the trunk by Andrea and sat again. "I still loved Raymond, but I'd forgotten that. Harold didn't need me to make him happy, no matter what he told me, but Raymond needed to know that life would get better and I was the only one who could show him that. I needed to stop thinking about me and think about him."
"But what about your happiness?" Andrea asked.
"Happiness is temporary," Hannah said. "I realized as I sat in that train station that I wasn't happy. Not right then. How could I be? I'd abandoned my husband, my daughter, my whole family. What would they think of me? How could I live with myself? I told Harold what I was thinking and he told me not to worry about it. Everything would look better when we were in Paris.
"That's when I realized that he wasn't thinking past the next adventure. As long as he was having fun, that was all that mattered. I wondered if he would be there for me if something happened. I knew then that Raymond always would be. Raymond loved me. I think all Harold wanted was just someone to have fun with.
"I wanted more than that."
Andrea looked at her hands. Hannah was right.
She and Eric had been together 25 years and it hadn't all been fun. When her father had lung cancer and she'd stayed with her mother at the hospital for days, Eric had taken time off from work to make sure the kids got fed and off to school every day.
When Andrea's appendix had burst and the surgery site had gotten infected, Eric had not only stepped in to take care of the kids, but he'd learned how to change her bandages and clean the wound. That was the first time he hadn't gotten sick at the sight of blood.
Together they'd gotten through diapers, teenagers, broken curfews and dented fenders. They'd survived frightening phone calls from their children in the middle of the night, funerals of close friends and family members, unemployment and scary medical issues.
Through all that, and the good times, too, Andrea knew there wasn't anyone in the world she'd rather have spent it with.
It was unworthy of her and unfair to Eric for her to even consider not being right by his side.
Forgetting that Hannah was still there, Andrea pulled her cell phone out of her pocket.
When Eric answered the phone, she said, "Honey, I'm coming home tonight. Mom's house has been empty for six months. It'll still be here for awhile. I want to be with you now."
"I'm glad, baby. I missed you last night. I hate sleeping alone."
She smiled. "I know, babe. Me, too."