“I’m still not quite sure. Most spirits are kind and gentle. I can’t explain what happened. The spirit, it was agitated. Something frightened it….” She paused, deep in thought; her smile dimmed like a flame under glass. “I apologize if I disturbed you. I know Mary Ann and Carolyn are angry at me and both think I was playing a prank on them.”
“Don’t worry about them. I want to make sure you’re well.”
“I’m fine. Although I suppose this won’t do much for my reputation. ‘Eccentric’ Virginia Somerset. My father will be livid if he hears I terrorized my housemates.”
“I’m sure no one will talk about you.”
“Back in California they did.”
“What did they say?” I asked with interest. Ginny didn’t talk much about California, even if she’d lived in a swanky neighborhood full of movie stars. “Did you do something scandalous?”
“Well, there was this one boy, a couple of years ago, before Edgar. Terry was his name. He was adorable and he stole his cousin’s car and we—” She shook her head and laughed. “No, I’m not going to tell you that tale, you can’t keep a secret.”
“I can!”
“Never, Carolyn wheedles it out of you in seconds. I’ve seen it.”
“No. Come on, tell me.”
“I won’t. It was an affair of the heart, my first boyfriend. He was wild, very different from Edgar. My father didn’t like him,” she said, and she looked down at the floor thoughtfully. “My father says I embarrass him. I wear the wrong clothes and I make a mess of things. That’s why he’s happy I’m here, far from him.”
“Ginny,” I said.
She smiled. “Don’t feel sorry for me. I’m quite glad to be away from home, working on my art. I have you and the other girls. I suppose I worry sometimes that things might change. After my mother died, I was terribly sad and lonely. I’m different now and I’m so glad. I’m in love with Edgar. I’m engaged, which is terribly exciting. Did I tell you what he said when he asked me to marry him? He said he’d make me perfectly happy.”
“You think you can really be perfectly happy?” I asked.
“Yes. With Edgar. I wasn’t happy in my father’s house after my mother passed away. We stopped being a family. But I’ll have a new family now, a new home.”
“Yes, you will,” I said, and the words were jagged in my mouth.
She rose and looked out the window. I looked, too. Santiago was still downstairs, smoking. He must have felt our eyes on him, because he looked up. He gave us a wave; Ginny gave him a nod in return. Santiago looked away, crushed his cigarette under his shoe, and walked off.
That is what I saw, that is what I remember, that is the cornerstone of the theory that she loved Santiago. Yet, when you analyze it, it means nothing. I saw two people talking, I saw a girl coming back to her room. She revealed no breathless affair to me; instead she talked about her boyfriend.
The other evidence that bolsters the idea of a secret relationship between Santiago and Ginny comes from Mary Ann. She said she’d seen a young woman standing outside in the snow with her arms wrapped around Santiago. The woman wore a coat that might have been Ginny’s gray coat. Except it was late in the evening, and Mary Ann wasn’t sure the coat was gray. Nor was she sure the girl was Ginny, because she had a scarf and a hat.
Although it was common practice in those days for all women to wear hats, Ginny eschewed such fashions. She preferred to walk around bareheaded, her long hair streaming down her back. Then again, it wouldn’t have been difficult for Ginny to grab a hat if she wanted. I had hats, Carolyn had hats, Mary Ann had hats. Even in the cold of winter, when it would have been more advisable tobe wearing earmuffs and a warm beanie, it might have made perfect sense to don a nice hat.
It might have been some other girl with Santiago that day. It didn’t even have to be one of the students who roomed at our dorm.
But let’s pretend for one moment that the couple is Ginny and Santiago. Mary Ann gets but a glimpse of them. She thinks the woman has wrapped her arms around the man’s neck and is pulling him down for a kiss.
Let’s assume they are indeed lovers. Why have I no notion of this? We share a dorm room, we share meals, at night we talk. In the days before her disappearance Ginny is strange, but she is not racked with the anxiousness of a young woman thinking of elopement. Instead she lives in fear of unseen forces, of evil lurking in shadows.
She speaks of black magic and curses. She’s not receiving letters from a secret lover. In those final days before her disappearance, she’s terribly isolated.
I want to believe that the meeting I saw through my window was the meeting of a boyfriend and girlfriend. I want to believe that the couple Mary Ann saw hugging in the snow was Ginny and Santiago. I want to construct a simple, ordinary answer to this puzzle that has haunted me all these long years. Yet there are too many threads that remain unresolved.
For you see, that evening when Mary Ann notices the couple, she yells at them playfully.
“Ginny, you’re a fast one!” she yells.
But Ginny doesn’t answer, she doesn’t turn to look at Mary Ann. Instead, the couple walk away, giving their backs to her, without acknowledging the intruder. Mary Ann huffs, she thinks it very poor form for Ginny to act like that, and she hurries into the dorm. It’s starting to snow again, and the couple are walking away. Snowflakes cling to their coats. They take a turn and disappear around the corner of the house.
At no point does Ginny react to her name being called and at no point does Mary Ann see her face. So even though weeks laterMary Ann will say that Santiago and Ginny were probably having a love affair, her evidence is scant. And even though I saw them speaking outside that day, I can only replay the memory without arriving at a definite conclusion.
Was it a prosaic dime-store romance that drew Ginny away? Or were there darker forces at work? The séance is but one of the eerie unexplained elements that haunt my narrative. Further mysteries occurred.
