I’m late for the next afternoon’s appointment. Geist is waiting in the foyer, and he greets me with coltish energy. Viviette, eyes averted, collects my damp cloak. I’m annoyed to see her. If I don’t know the difference between one of heaven’s own angels and an ordinary housemaid, then how easily might I be fooled again?

“You don’t have to be so coy,” I tell her. “I recognize your face.”

In answer, she stares up at me with eyes hard and dark as coal, and I realize there’s nothing shy about Viviette at all.

“Miss Lovell,” says Geist. “At last.”

“Please excuse my delay,” I say. “Ice on the tracks put the trains off schedule.”

Geist shrugs. “At least you are here in one piece. This way, please. There is something I want you to see.”

“No, I can’t stay,” I protest. “I only want to pay the balance and to collect the photograph for my uncle.”

“A minute, a minute.” Geist pinches hold of my forearm, ushering me down the hall and into the same sitting room where we’d gathered two days before. He points to his ornate French mantel clock, its face adorned with sturdy pink and gold cherubs.

“Behold!” His voice trumpets.

I peer closer. “Yes, I see that your clock is wrong. It is stopped at half past twelve, when it must be nearly…three o’clock?”

He harrumphs. “Thirty two minutes past twelve. And ” He pivots me by both shoulders so that I’m staring into the opposite corner, up at the moon phases and dials of his grandfather clock.

“Thirty-two minutes past twelve,” I read.

“Precisely.”

“I’m not sure how this concerns ”

“ and I hadn’t noticed it, either, until you all had left. Think, Miss Lovell! Two days ago, at twelve thirty-two, in this very room, you experienced some sort of emotional chaos. It penetrated you so deeply, in fact, that you fainted.”

I turn from the clock. “You’re telling me that my fainting spell stopped time?”

“No, no, no.” Geist taps his fingertips together, urging my conclusion. “Twelve thirty-two. The very moment when William Pritchett made contact with you, yes?”

I freeze. “Sir, you are playing games with me,” I say. “You stopped these clocks yourself.”

“What?” He looks puzzled. “But why would I do that?”

“Why, because…because you know I took the Harding photograph. That I recognized your angel, Viviette, and you caught a change in my manner.” I rush on as his chicanery becomes clear to me. “Yes, you saw a change in me as soon as I reentered the room. You knew I’d seen the photograph. And now you’re scrabbling to make me a believer again.”

“A believer?” He looks baffled. “To what end?”

“Many of us have lost loved ones to this war. Photographing their so-called spirits makes for easy business. Your reputation is everything. You need to convince us of your worth so that you can run your shop.”

“Ah. I see.” Geist pulls at his beard. “That would be clever of me. But you are incorrect, Miss Lovell. I didn’t touch either of these clocks. At twelve thirty-two you received an impression of Corporal Pritchett, did you not?”

“I couldn’t confirm that time exactly,” I tell him. “And Will is always in my thoughts.”

“Tell me, how did you experience this… thought? In an ice-cold chill? As a bright burst of energy, or perhaps a flash of radiant ”

“Please, stop.” But Geist seems so certain, and I am so taken aback by his certainty, that I blurt out the very question that has been chasing itself around my head. “Mr. Geist, just say you might be correct. Why would Will’s spirit contact me in your home? A setting that was special to neither of us?” My voice is pained. “I’ve sat for hours in Will’s rooms, walked his paths, and paced the bridge we crossed nearly every summer day. He is nowhere. Nowhere but at rest.” I draw myself to my full height, which is not very much.

“A spirit cannot choose his domain,” says Geist.

“On that I think you’re wrong.”

His shaggy eyebrows lift. He’s listening. I wish my voice were more dependable. “My twin brother, Tobias, alters my perceptions daily. His spirit is folded into mine. He haunts me. I am his domain.”

I anticipate that Geist, a man who makes his living grasping for spectral signs, will be intrigued by my revelation. But the photographer is dismissive. “Miss Lovell, how did your brother pass?”

“Of dysentery, a few weeks after he’d joined up.”

“My sincere condolences.” Geist allows a moment. “But don’t you think you absorb Tobias’s identity because he is already so beloved by you? It’s not that he haunts you. It is that your memory won’t let him go. Simple as that.”

I shake my head. “But I’m equally unwilling to let go of Will.”

“Aha. And that is where I can show you the distinction.” Geist rocks back on his heels, adapting a more philosophical tone. “Miss Lovell, have you ever swum in the sea?”

“Yes.” I feel my body tense, remembering the smell of brine, the chop and tug of the water, my abject fear of drowning, a sensation that can frighten me even today. “A few summers ago Uncle took us all to Nantucket.”

“And you know the difference between the wave and the undertow?”

I nod.

“Then you will understand my metaphor.” Geist speaks with care, as if worried that I might miss a word. “For if memory is the wave that buoys our grief, haunting is the undertow that drags us to its troubled source. I don’t speak lightly when I tell you that William Pritchett reached for you because he has unfinished business in this world.”

“Mr. Geist, how can you be so sure?”

“I’ve worked as a medium for many years and have learned some, shall we say, tricks of the trade. This was no trick. Corporal William Pritchett was with us that day, in this room, at thirty-two minutes past twelve. The sensation was very strong and very real.” The air seems to vibrate with his conviction.

Geist presses his advantage. “Let me photograph you. For I am sure ”

Another photograph. So Geist thinks I’m holding my own purse strings. That I’m a proper Boston heiress, easily parted with my generous allowance. “Mister Geist, really. I must go. And rest assured, the tricks of your livelihood are safe with me. I’m no gossip.”

Not quite true, as I have already confessed plenty of Geist’s mischief to Mavis, who is a gossip. Not that she could tell anyone who’d care.

His lips thin with displeasure, but he leads me to the hall, where he retrieves the brown-wrapped parcel. “These are two albumen prints from the original negative. One is yours. I thought you might want a copy for yourself.”

“You are very kind.” In my head I am already adding it to my book.

“Take the time to examine it.”

I open the packet to examine the cardboard-backed prints, identical but for a slight shift in hue.

Drained of his rosy pink cheeks and blue-green eyes, Uncle Henry appears bald and dull, whereas Aunt Clara’s jellied bulk affords her a dignity that eludes her in real life. From the way Quinn stands, one hand on the back of the love seat, he could be my protector.

I stare at my own image and feel as though I hardly know myself. The angel Viviette hovers above us.

“But how did it happen?” It confounds me. “Viviette wasn’t in the room.”

“Her image is fixed on another negative,” Geist explains, sheepish and proud at once. “I have many. Some of aged grandmothers, or babies and children, or young men dressed in the uniforms of soldiers or sailors. I tailor to a wide variety of loss. A sitter can be convinced that the spirit in the photograph is an exact likeness of one who has passed. We spiritualists call that “recognition.” None of my Union boys matched your Will, but I suspected your aunt would respond strongly to an angel. And so I simply exposed Viviette’s plate briefly through the printing process so that she would superimpose upon the next photograph.”

Scornful as I am of the gimmickry, Geist’s aesthetic impresses me.

“We had some luck,” Geist comments, staring over my shoulder. “A cloudless day, a perfect diffusion of light.” He pauses. “Viviette looks ethereal.”

I have to agree. She is radiant.

And yet something’s not quite right about the angel maid. I look and look from print to print, but the difference is maddeningly elusive.

My doubts tug at me long after I have paid the balance and left Geist’s townhouse to begin the long walk from Scollay Square to South Side Station, where I will purchase a ticket for a second-class bench on a train that won’t get me home until dark.


11.