Chapter 4

Michael Stanton from the Berkeley Psychic Institute came to visit Sybil the next morning at ten A.M. The house was quiet. Alicia and José were cleaning their bedrooms, the children were at school, and Blake was at work.

Sybil told him as soon as he walked in that she had only had time to read a few chapters of Bettina’s book the night before, but it was fascinating, and everything appeared to be there. All she knew about them so far was that Bertrand and Gwyneth Butterfield had built the house in 1902, which she knew anyway. Their oldest son was named Josiah, and he’d been eight years old when they moved in. His sister Bettina was two years younger than he. Their son Magnus was three when they arrived, and he had been killed three years later, in a tragic accident, run over by a runaway carriage at the age of six. A daughter, Lucy, had been born in 1909, four years after Magnus’s death, and she had always suffered from frail health—she had a weak chest, as her older sister put it. Sybil also knew now, from the book, that the daunting dowager in the elegant gown was Gwyneth’s mother, Augusta Campbell, née MacPherson, who lived with them, and she was indeed Scottish. Gwyneth Campbell Butterfield had been born in Scotland as well. The older gentleman in the kilt with the mane of white hair was Augusta’s much older brother, Angus MacPherson. And Bettina had shared that he played the bagpipes atrociously, at every opportunity, and for some reason had come to live with his sister, his niece, and her husband and children in America, and was like an eccentric grandfather to them more than a great-uncle.

Sybil had gotten no further than that, but she shared the information with Michael Stanton, as he walked slowly from one portrait to the next, observing them closely. And for the first time, Sybil noticed that there was a set of bagpipes leaning against Angus MacPherson’s chair in his portrait. Bettina had added that her grandmother had had a black pug named Violet, which Sybil had noticed in the dowager’s portrait before. The tiara she wore in the painting was the same one Sybil had seen her wear the night of the earthquake. It was slightly concealed by her elaborate Victorian hairdo, and she was wearing several long strands of very large pearls.

Sybil didn’t say anything to Michael Stanton while he looked at the portraits, other than to explain who each of them was, which she knew now from Bettina’s book. She told him she had a box of photographs of them too. And then she walked him around the main floor. He stood for a long time in the dining room with his eyes closed, and when he opened them, he followed her up the grand staircase to the bedrooms on the second floor. They toured the entire house before she took him into the sitting room off her bedroom and they sat down. He looked tired, as though he had poured all his strength and energy into what he was trying to discern.

“What do you think?” Sybil finally asked him, and he nodded thoughtfully as he looked at her.

“The spirits are incredibly strong here,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve ever been in a house quite like this. It’s almost as though they’re still alive here, or think they are. I can hear Angus playing the bagpipes, and the old lady talking, the children laughing, and their parents are totally benevolent spirits. The little boy who had the carriage accident is very strong here too. His spirit must have returned here to be with his family, which isn’t surprising since he was so young. He’s full of mischief, and I get the sense that he wants to meet your little boy. And that the others want to meet you. I think the man you saw watching you from the dining room is not ominous. He’s some kind of manservant, who must have spent his entire career working for them here, so his spirit never left. He’s a less significant member of the group.”

“Are they going to stay here?” Sybil asked him uncomfortably.

“I don’t think there’s any question of it,” he told her honestly. “The question is, are you? They’re not going anywhere. They live here, and always have. I’m not sure what part of the house they have settled in. I don’t feel them strongly in the bedrooms or the upper floors. They seem to be mostly downstairs, on the main floor. Their aura is strongest in the dining room, and I think you might see them again there. They might be willing to simply leave the upper floors to you, and share the reception rooms with you. Bertrand Butterfield seems to be a very determined benevolent presence, and his wife is an extremely gentle, kind spirit, unlike her indomitable mother, who is harmless but a force to be reckoned with. And her brother, Angus, must already have been quite old when he got here. I get a sense from him that he’s slightly confused.”

His observations were fascinating, but it was not what Sybil wanted to hear, and how was she going to explain to Blake and her children that they would be sharing their home with the Butterfields for as long as they lived there? For a minute she hoped it was just hocus-pocus, but something very powerful told her it wasn’t, and that Michael Stanton’s reading of the situation, and the personalities they were dealing with, was accurate, even in the spirit world.

“I think that Bettina, their second child and oldest daughter, is the only one in the family who attained a great age,” Michael said, and Sybil knew from the bank that she had died at eighty-four. “Except for Augusta and Angus, of course,” he added, “but their spirits were already old when they arrived in the house. I think Bertrand died somewhere around sixty, during the Great Depression, when they lost their money, and Gwyneth not long after, although she was a few years younger than he. I don’t get the feeling that she died here. She must have passed away after the home was sold. And Bettina’s daughter, whom you mentioned sold the house after her mother’s death, doesn’t seem to be here at all, except as a baby. I don’t think she ever lived here as a child or an adult, and she seems to have no emotional tie to the house. She comes to me as foreign, French probably, and her adult life must have been there. She doesn’t feel American, nor linked to the house to me.”

“Bettina said in the chapter I read last night that she moved to France shortly after Lili was born. Lili was the child of Bettina’s first husband, who died in the Great War. Bettina moved to France with Lili after the war, married a Frenchman, and remained in Paris until she was widowed for the second time. She returned to San Francisco then to reclaim her parents’ home and bought it back from its owners at the time, and lived the final thirty years of her life in the house. But her daughter, Lili, remained in France.” Michael’s psychic sense about them was amazingly accurate. “You know who all the players are now, Mrs. Gregory,” he continued. “What are you going to do?”

“Do you think I will see them again?” Sybil asked, looking worried.

“I think you will. Their spirits are too present not to. They think this is still their home. They may not even understand what you’re doing here.”

“I’m not sure I do either,” she said ruefully. “I feel like we’ve moved into someone else’s home. It will never feel like ours, if they’re attached to it this strongly.”

“They’re spirits, and no longer live people. You should be able to find a way to coexist. It depends on how present they wish to be, and how powerfully they make themselves felt. Spirits can either be very determined or very discreet, depending on how they react to you, and how firm you and your husband want to be about it.”

“I don’t want to have to fight for our turf.”

“Maybe you won’t have to. They’re not aggressive people, most of them seem very gentle, and the children are very sweet.”

“Do you think Bertrand and Gwyneth want to drive us away?” she asked him.

“I don’t get that sense at all. Their energy seems very welcoming and warm. Augusta may give you a hard time”—he smiled as he said it—“but that’s just who she is as a spirit, and who she was then as well. And Angus is entirely harmless, he’s just an eccentric old man. I think he never married and had no children of his own.”

“I’ll have to talk to my husband and find out what he thinks, if he even believes me,” Sybil said thoughtfully, and she wasn’t at all sure he would.

“He may have to see them himself to take it seriously,” Michael suggested.

“If they show themselves to him.”

“I think they will. And Magnus is aching to play with your youngest son.” That worried Sybil too.

“I hope he doesn’t frighten him. Charlie is terrified of ghosts, as I said before.”

“Magnus won’t appear as a ghost to him. They’re just two little boys.”

“A hundred years apart,” Sybil said, still trying to sort it all out in her head. It was a lot to digest. But at least Michael had validated what she knew she’d seen, and told her a great deal more. Along with Bettina’s family history, she had all the information she needed now, but she still wanted to finish the book to learn more about them. She and Blake had bought much more than a house, they had acquired a century of history, and the family that had lived there too.

“I hope you’ll tell me how it all works out,” he said kindly.

“I will,” she said solemnly, grateful for his visit and the light he had shed on the situation they were in, which only she believed so far.

“They’re a very endearing group of people, if you ever get to know them,” Michael said. “My visit may have stirred them up a bit. Psychic contact from me today may bring them forward again. They can feel me, even if they don’t know who I am. It may draw them to you. They can sense you too, and your interest in them. You have a very open spirit,” he told Sybil, and wished her luck before he left. He told her that she was very fortunate to have drawn the Butterfields toward her own light, which he said was very attractive to spirits, who sensed other pure spirits around them. She wasn’t sure that was a good thing, and she didn’t know if she was ready to meet them again. She wanted to talk to Blake first.

She was quiet when the children came home from school that afternoon. She was lying on her bed, reading Bettina’s book, and went to ask them how school had gone. Andy and Caroline seemed to like their new high school, and Charlie was happy at his school and said the teacher was nice, though not as nice as his teacher in New York, but he didn’t know her as well yet. He went to play outside in the garden after that, and Sybil went back to her book to learn more about the Butterfields and their history.

Blake came home from the office looking tired, and said he’d had difficult meetings that afternoon with their bank, and he was happy to see Sybil at the end of his day. It had been lonely for him before they arrived in San Francisco, and he loved having his family around him again.

“What did you do today?” he asked with interest as she got dinner ready and gave him a vague, distracted answer.

“Nothing much.” She was making roast beef, which was a favorite of his. He went upstairs to change from his suit into jeans, and they all came into the kitchen when she sent Charlie to get them for dinner. She wanted Blake to carve the beef, and she’d set the kitchen table with pretty place mats and flowers. But before she could ask Blake to slice the meat for them, they heard noises in the dining room that sounded like a party, voices talking and laughing, and they looked at each other, wondering who was there. All the Gregorys were in the kitchen, and there was no one else in the house.

“Did someone leave a TV on?” Blake asked, looking confused as the children shook their heads, and there was no television in the formal dining room anyway. Not knowing what else to do, Sybil opened the door into the dining room from the kitchen with a feeling of trepidation, sensing what was about to happen. One by one, she, Blake, and the kids walked into the dining room, as all the Butterfields seated at the dining room table, elegantly dressed, stopped talking and stared at them. Sybil knew what it meant and who they were, but it was too late to warn any of her family, even Blake.

“Good Lord! Who are they and what are they wearing?” Augusta said loudly, glaring at them through her lorgnette, and Angus turned to observe them with a look of surprise. He couldn’t take his eyes off Sybil, who was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and ballet slippers. “Are those costumes of some kind?” Augusta asked. She was wearing a gray velvet gown with lace at the neck.

Bertrand had risen to greet them, and looked at Blake with a welcoming smile, as though they had been expected and were properly dressed. His manners were impeccable, his eyes warm, and all of the Butterfield men were in white tie and tails, as they wore to dinner every night, except Magnus, who looked immaculate in a sailor suit. Charlie, his counterpart, was wearing the corduroy pants, sweatshirt, and running shoes he had worn at school. Andy was in khakis and a sweater, and Caroline had on a miniskirt, which Augusta noted with horror. She rapped her brother’s hand with her fan when he stared at her, and he laughed. He had never seen anything like it, but thought it excellent attire for a pretty girl. Gwyneth and Sybil exchanged a shy smile. Gwyneth was wearing a beautiful lavender silk gown and a diamond choker, and Sybil thought she was even more beautiful than her portrait. She had flawless porcelain skin, pale blond hair upswept in a loose chignon, and huge blue eyes similar to her mother’s and Bettina’s. Gwyneth turned to the butler, whom Sybil recognized, standing at attention behind the Butterfields, and Gwyneth spoke to him in the same Scottish accent as her mother, but in a gentler tone.

“Phillips, please set five places for our guests,” she said softly, and he nodded and disappeared to carry out her orders. Blake stared around the room, as did the children, trying to understand what had happened. But the Butterfields weren’t frightening, they felt like friends. Blake glanced at Sybil, and she nodded to reassure him. Blake and Sybil’s children weren’t frightened either. They were fascinated by the Butterfields.

A moment later, Phillips reappeared and set places at the table for all five Gregorys where Gwyneth indicated as Bert chatted good-humoredly with them. The fact that they weren’t dressed for dinner didn’t seem to bother anyone except Augusta, who spoke under her breath to Uncle Angus. He found the women in the group delightful, whatever they were wearing. The families introduced themselves to each other, and Blake was seated between Bert and Bettina, who was a beautiful young woman. Sybil sat between Bertrand and Josiah, their oldest son. Andy was between Gwyneth and Lucy, whom he thought was the most exquisite girl he’d ever seen. She had her mother’s perfect creamy skin and blond hair, and was wearing a demure white evening dress. She appeared to be about twenty, which Sybil knew from the book was the age she had been at the time of her death. Magnus looked to be six, the age he was when he died, three years after they’d bought the house. Caroline was between Lucy and her brother Charlie, who sat next to Magnus on his other side, who looked totally delighted. The two little boys hit it off immediately and were enchanted to discover they were both six.

Augusta continued to gaze at their guests through her lorgnette, with her lips pursed in disapproval and the little black pug at her feet. Angus’s English bulldog was sound asleep near the fire, snoring loudly. Charlie noticed him and laughed. Magnus said the dog’s name was Rupert. And his grandmother’s pug was Violet.

Everyone at the table looked happy except Augusta, who rarely did anyway. She was their collective conscience and always complained about the children’s manners or what they were wearing.

“I have no idea who these people are,” she said in a loud whisper to her brother, as he continued to stare at Sybil and Caroline with a look of delight. He thought them an excellent addition to the meal.

“What a wonderful surprise,” Bertrand said warmly to their guests around the table, which was beautifully set with silver and gleaming crystal. Everyone began to talk at once as dinner was served, and the food was delicious. Blake commented on the excellent wine. Sybil was dying to talk to Gwyneth, but they were too far apart, and she enjoyed chatting with Bert and Josiah about San Francisco and the house. She explained that they had just moved in, and had arrived from New York.

“We built the house fifteen years ago,” Bert explained, which Sybil instantly calculated meant that the year was 1917 for them, exactly a hundred years before the date that night for the Gregorys. The Gregorys had somehow walked back a century when they entered the formal dining room from the kitchen. Bert and Blake talked business for part of the evening, the older children of both families were having fun with one another, and Charlie and Magnus were plotting happily about things they wanted to do together. Magnus suggested they meet to climb the trees in the garden, which sounded like fun to Charlie too. Magnus confessed to his new friend in a whisper that he wasn’t allowed to, but did it frequently.

It struck Sybil as she watched them that if the year was 1917 for the Butterfields, as it appeared to be from their conversation, Magnus had been a ghost by then for twelve years, since he had died in 1905 when he was six. His age appeared to have remained fixed there, at the age he was when he died. It was an extraordinary phenomenon that Sybil wouldn’t have understood if she hadn’t met with Michael Stanton that day. She was less baffled and confused than the others after everything he had explained. But one thing was for sure, the Butterfields seemed to have no desire to frighten them away. They made the Gregorys feel warmly welcomed, like honored guests. And nothing about them suggested that they were ghosts—they appeared to be entirely real, normal people, although their style of dress, conversation, and manners dated back to 1917. But both families seemed to have much in common, shared interests, and enjoyed each other’s company immensely, even laughing at each other’s jokes.

The meal ended too soon, and Bert said quietly to Sybil and Blake that something extraordinary had happened, and he hoped they would join him and his family again very soon, the following night if they were free. No one mentioned the divergence of dates, or the fact that their two worlds had converged in an astonishingly real way that night.

“I hope they come properly dressed next time,” Augusta added and harrumphed loudly, as Phillips appeared with a decanter of brandy on a silver tray, and another one of port, and Bert invited the Gregorys to join them in the living room. Blake and Sybil stood up with the others, and the entire group followed Bert and Gwyneth into the large living room, as Sybil admired Gwyneth’s dress, and they chatted. But as soon as they entered the living room, the Gregorys found themselves suddenly alone. The Butterfields had disappeared, and when they glanced back into the dining room, the fire was no longer lit, the room was dark, and all signs of the meal had disappeared.

“What just happened, Dad?” Andy asked his father, and Blake looked puzzled as he stared at Sybil, and didn’t know what to say to his son. And Caroline was visibly confused as well.

“I think something very strange and very wonderful happened tonight,” Blake said slowly. “We met the family who built the house and used to live here.”

“And still do,” Sybil said softly.

“Can we see them again?” Charlie asked, looking anxious. “Magnus said he’d come to my room to play tomorrow.” And he had promised to show Magnus his videogames, and how to play them.

“Then maybe he will,” Sybil said gently, as the Gregorys walked into the kitchen, still confused. Their roast beef was in the oven, vastly overcooked by then, and Blake looked at Sybil as their children left the kitchen and went upstairs to their rooms to do their homework. It had been a wonderful evening, and they all hoped they’d see their new friends again. No one was upset by having met them, or afraid of them. It had been a positive experience for all.

“What just happened here?” Blake asked her, shocked and mystified.

“They still live here,” Sybil said calmly, and she sat down at the kitchen table with Blake to tell him what Michael Stanton had said.

“They’re such nice people,” he said afterward. “How is this possible? They thought it was 1917 tonight, and it’s a hundred years later for us.”

“Maybe it’s some kind of gift that life is giving us,” Sybil said thoughtfully. “We see history through their eyes and they see the distant future in us.”

“Are you frightened?” he asked her. What had just happened had shaken him, despite how enjoyable it was. And he’d really liked Bert, they saw eye to eye on many subjects they had discussed.

“I’m not afraid anymore,” she said quietly. “I was at first.” And then they laughed about Augusta and Angus, and talked about the children, and Gwyneth and Bert. A little while later, Blake and Sybil went upstairs, after she’d thrown out the burned roast beef and put away their unused plates. There was no way to explain it, or tell anyone else, but all of them agreed, when they said good night to their children, that it had been a magical evening, and they hoped it would happen again. Sybil was almost certain it would. This was only the beginning of a friendship between two families that had been determined by the fates, and would ultimately bless both. She could feel it deep in her soul.