Paul, Alison and I all looked at one another. There had to be a connection to Sergeant Elliot! But how to ask Mac?

But then the guest looked a little concerned, and made eye contact with Alison. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Should I be more careful?” he asked, and his eyes darted toward Melissa.

“Don’t worry about it. We’re open to all points of view here,” Alison answered, then looked at me. “Mom, I just realized the drip coffeemaker won’t be working and I’ll have to make coffee on the stove. Could you come into the kitchen and help me with that?”

“Of course.” I stood and followed her into the kitchen, carrying a lit candle. I knew this was a ploy to get me away so we could talk about what was going on.

Once inside the kitchen, though, Alison looked desperately at me. “How do you make coffee on the stove?” she asked.

It was worse than I thought. My daughter actually didn’t know how to boil water. “When the power comes back on, I’m giving you cooking lessons,” I told her.

“Not now, Mom . . .”

“No, when the power comes back on. You need to learn.” I knew what she meant, but I wanted her to know I was serious.

“Teach Liss, not me. There’s still hope for her.”

I filled a teapot with water and put it on the stove, which I lit with a match from the top drawer next to the sink. “I’m teaching both of you,” I said firmly. Then I told her about the measuring cup, but neither of us could come up with a plausible explanation for its migration to Mac’s room. “We’ll ask Paul when we can,” I said.

“What do you think the POW bracelet on Mac means?” I asked Alison just as Maxine was emerging through the wall from the den.

“No clue,” Alison said. “That’s Paul’s department.”

“Did anybody get a close look at the POW bracelet on Mac’s wrist?” I asked Maxine. “Whose name is on it? Was it Sergeant Elliot’s?”

“I don’t think Melissa was able to see it, or at least she hasn’t said so yet,” Maxine reported. “And he’s been moving his hand around too much for me to see. I can ask Paul if you want.” Maxine is always so eager to help; it’s a wonder that Alison sometimes says she’s difficult.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Alison said. “We need to get back in touch with the sergeant.”

Alison got four mugs out from the cabinet, and I got some instant coffee from the pantry section next to the refrigerator. “Four mugs?” I asked.

“Liss likes coffee now,” Alison said. I thought she was a little young, but Alison treats Melissa like an adult, and Melissa acts like one, so I suppose I can’t argue with how that girl is growing up.

The wind was still howling around the house, and we could hear the rain pelting the roof and the boarded-up windows. Alison had checked three times for water in the basement; she had one small gas-powered generator to run the sump pump if necessary, but so far it had not been needed. “Why would Sergeant Elliot suddenly need that bracelet? Why wouldn’t he answer when Paul tried to Ghostmail him?” Alison continued.

“Ghostmail?” I asked.

“I’m trying out a new catchphrase.”

“Fail,” Maxine sang as she disappeared back through the kitchen wall. Alison looked up at the spot, shook her head and went to fill the cups with hot water from the teapot.

• • •

“Fail?” I asked.

“Okay, maybe we didn’t fail,” Marilyn Beechman said. “But you certainly can’t say we succeeded in Vietnam.”

The television behind her in my studio apartment showed helicopters taking the last American troops out of the war. I had thought it would be a time for celebration, particularly among those of us who had opposed United States involvement, so I’d called Marilyn, now working for a local law firm. She’d come over after work for a glass of wine.

“I’m not talking about the country succeeding,” I said. “I’m talking about us. We protested to the point that the government had to end the war. Isn’t that success? I can take off this bracelet now, can’t I?” I reached for the POW bracelet, a little worse for wear, that had rarely been separated from my wrist for three years now.

Marilyn reached over and grabbed my hand gently. “No, you can’t,” she said. “Colonel Mason is still missing. You can’t take it off until he’s accounted for.”

I stopped looking for the corkscrew and turned to look at her. “But he might never be accounted for,” I said. “I mean, I’ve gotten used to wearing the thing, but I don’t want it to be on my arm forever.”

“Oh, they’ll eventually account for everybody,” Marilyn assured me. “It’s just going to take a while for them to figure it all out. They always do.”

“Oh yeah? What about the tomb of the unknown soldier?”

Marilyn scowled at me. “You have a bond with Colonel Mason,” she said, pointing at my wrist. “Everybody who got his bracelet does. You took him on and swore he wouldn’t be forgotten. It’s your responsibility to keep that bond, through that bracelet, until he’s found or declared dead, so he can rest in peace. That’s the deal. You knew it when you put the bracelet on your wrist.”

“You put the bracelet on my wrist, and I never swore anything,” I pointed out. But I already saw the logic in her argument. I had sort of made a promise, even if I hadn’t realized all the implications at the time. And I was already seeing the ghosts of our soldiers—the ones whose bodies had been discovered and flown home—hovering almost everywhere I went. Some of them had been home long enough to change out of their uniforms, having realized they were no longer bound to duty.

There was one outside the apartment as we spoke, circling a streetlamp at about seven feet off the ground. He was still in uniform and seemed lost. I guess, when the only thing you can think to do is circle a streetlamp, you probably don’t have much on your plate. I felt bad for him and would have called out through the window if Marilyn hadn’t been here. No one except my family knew about my gift. In those days, I thought I had to keep it a secret. As you age, you realize that what other people think doesn’t matter.

“You keep that thing on, young lady,” Marilyn reprimanded me. “Don’t worry. It won’t be long.”

• • •

“I got it at Berkley in 1971,” Mac was saying as we sipped the instant coffee Alison had made. It was a trifle on the weak side, but I’m sure it was hard for her to read the proportions on the jar with this lighting. “The bracelet was a way of protesting the war and showing solidarity with the poor guys—and believe me, the rich never went—who were taken up in the war.”

The wind wasn’t whipping quite as noisily around the house anymore, and the gaps between boards on the windows indicated the sun had come up, although it was hardly shining brightly through all the clouds.

There wasn’t any point in being coy. So I simply asked Mac whose name was on his POW bracelet.

He didn’t have to look to answer. “Sergeant Robert Elliot,” he reported. “Lost in Thua Thien-Hue Province, South Vietnam, on November 5, 1970.”

Chapter 7

We would probably have questioned Mac much more thoroughly, but even Paul couldn’t think of the proper follow-up question, so he finished with his coffee, which he’d barely sipped, and no one objected when he decided to go to his room to change his clothes. He said he might try to go back to sleep for a bit first. “There’s no point in trying to go outside, after all.”

Once he was easily out of earshot, Alison looked immediately up at Paul, who was pacing in a tight circle around the chandelier, hands uncharacteristically behind his back instead of stroking his goatee. This puzzle was truly getting the best of him.