But if Sergeant Elliot’s fate had never been confirmed, that meant Mac was technically right in keeping the bracelet on his wrist all these years; he was in fact honoring the sergeant’s memory as he understood it.

I knew a number of people who had taken off the bracelets without really confirming that it was time to do so. Having seen so many ghosts over the years, I’d been squeamish about giving mine up, and even when I did decide not to wear it every day, I had never really put it away for good.

So the question that I couldn’t quite articulate yet was about the bracelet itself. The only way Mac’s bracelet would stand between Sergeant Elliot and the next level of his existence (if his claim that the bracelet and the person named on it were linked somehow) would be if Mac had the only bracelet with Sergeant Elliot’s name on it. That seemed impossible—there were many bracelets made with each POW or MIA soldier’s name imprinted on them.

I was about to ask Paul about it when Alison returned to the kitchen, carrying the small box that connected to the Internet. “I hope the towers are up and running,” she said.

“The Internet doesn’t work like a cell phone, Mom,” Melissa informed her as Alison unplugged the refrigerator from the generator and plugged in the network.

Maxine came down from the ceiling in her trench coat, from which she immediately pulled the old MacBook Alison had reluctantly given Maxine to do research on and had rarely seen since. Maxine’s clothing immediately reverted to her usual jeans and a black T-shirt whose legend read, “Yes?”

“What am I looking up?” she asked Paul as she hovered over the center island.

“First, find out anything you can about Barbara Litton, Sergeant Elliot’s ex-fiancée,” Paul told her. “I have a theory, but no evidence yet to support it. That’s your job, Maxie, but if I’m right, it won’t take you long.”

She didn’t respond; she just started clacking away on the keys. “This thing won’t hold a charge for more than a minute,” she told Alison, pointing to the laptop. “Can I plug in?”

Alison plugged the power cord into the generator and handed the other end up to Maxine, who rose a few inches as Alison extended her arm. “Very funny,” Alison said.

“What?”

Maxine grinned as she reached down to take the cord and plug it into the laptop, then began clicking keys again. She seemed very engrossed, so I took the opportunity to mention my confusion about the POW bracelet to Paul.

He listened very carefully, as he always does, and made a pyramid of his fingers under his nose. “Couldn’t it be simply that Mac just kept wearing the bracelet out of nostalgia?” he asked when I was through. “He seems . . . unusually loyal to that period in time.”

“Maybe, but why does that one bracelet make so much difference to Sergeant Elliot?”

“It’s a good question.”

Maxine snapped her fingers above our heads. “Ha!” she shouted. “This is interesting. I looked up Barbara Litton. And guess what?”

“She’s dead, isn’t she?” Paul doesn’t often show off, but I suppose this time he couldn’t resist.

Maxine looked stunned, and a little annoyed at having the spotlight taken off of her. “That’s right,” she said. “She died three years ago.”

“I don’t understand,” Melissa chimed in. “How did you know that?”

“I didn’t,” Paul said. “I suspected. There’s a difference. When I tried to send out a general message and mentioned her name, two people got back to me saying they knew a ghost named Barbara Litton, but couldn’t be sure if it was the same one.”

“That was the interesting information you’d gotten,” Alison said. Paul nodded.

“But I don’t understand,” Melissa said. “Even if Sergeant Elliot’s girlfriend died three years ago, he’s been a ghost for forty years. What does it have to with the bracelet?”

“You’re so smart,” I said to my granddaughter.

“Well, maybe this starts to explain it,” Maxine answered, perhaps trying to get a little bit of the credit she thought she deserved for discovering that Barbara Litton was dead. “I tried to find a POW bracelet with Sergeant Elliot’s name on it online. I looked on eBay and a few other sources—it’s not hard to find them now, and they’re really pretty cheap.”

“It’s truly frightening what you can find out,” Alison told Maxine.

“You have no idea.”

“But you couldn’t find one for Sergeant Elliot,” I said. I wasn’t sure if I was talking to Maxine or to myself; the fog was starting to lift in my head.

“No,” Maxine answered. “And there were plenty with other names on them.”

But before anyone could respond, I began to understand. And I started to think about the chicken.

When I first saw Sergeant Robert Elliot, he was attempting to steal a roast chicken that he couldn’t eat from a pan in Alison’s kitchen. And his explanation, that he was taking it to some homeless friends, was clearly a lie. Later, Mac had found the measuring cup of chicken gravy in his room, even as he’d been pulled from his bed by the wrist that held the bracelet.

“I think the bracelet on Mac’s arm might really be the last one with Sergeant Elliot’s name on it,” I told Paul. “And as long as there’s one on a wrist somewhere, the sergeant is stranded.”

Chapter 9

“I think it might be time to go wake Mac,” Paul said, “because I think you might be right, Loretta.”

“I’ll go,” Alison said and stood.

“Hold on,” Paul told her. “We need to coordinate our plan.”

“Our plan?” Alison asked. “We have a plan?”

Paul didn’t acknowledge her humor. “I think you need an excuse to ask Mac to come out,” he told Alison. “Something that’s not about the bracelet.”

“Tell him you’re making lunch,” I suggested.

“That’s not bad,” Paul continued. “He can’t go out for food in the storm; nothing will be open.”

“Mom?” Alison said. She knew we had no lunch prepared.

“I’m on it, honey,” I said. I went to the fridge, taking a mental inventory of its contents as I went. I took out the challah bread, some sliced turkey and the leftover chicken from the night before, along with some lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise. I’d brought everything but the mayo in my backpack yesterday. “We’ll have chicken or turkey sandwiches. I hope Mac isn’t a vegetarian, but I can work something out for him if he is.”

As Alison left the kitchen to get Mac and I started preparing plates with all the different ingredients so we could assemble our sandwiches personally, Sergeant Elliot appeared in the kitchen doorway with a sheepish expression on his face.

Paul looked up at Robert with a quizzical expression. “Sergeant?”

“I . . . regret leaving so abruptly before,” the new ghost said. “I’m afraid I haven’t been entirely honest with you. That was a mistake.”

“You weren’t really searching for the bracelet, were you, Sergeant?” Paul asked. “You knew Mac had it, and you were trying to get it away from him.”

“I need it,” Sergeant Elliot answered. “What I told you about it was true.”

“You want to evolve, to move on to the next level of existence,” Paul agreed, “but you need that one bracelet. Is it the last one?”

The sergeant nodded. “The last one still being worn. And that crazy hippie won’t let it go.”

On cue, Alison ushered Mac into the kitchen as I started to put the food out on the island, where Melissa had been busy setting four places.

“Come in, Mac,” I said. “We’ve got some sandwiches for you, if you’re hungry.”

“Thank you,” said Alison’s guest. He was dressed in a long-sleeved T-shirt with a peace sign over a tie-dyed pattern and had changed his headband to one in a khaki camouflage pattern. I noticed that Sergeant Elliot’s lip curled into a small sneer.