Ocean cracked up. “Okay, ew. Definitely not the zombie version.”
“Nineteen,” Jo said simply.
“No way.” It flew out of her mouth before she could reel it in.
Nineteen. That was practically nothing. Four years from now. Less than a driver’s license and a couple AP classes away.
Her thoughts spiraled. Nineteen meant…no college. No late-night drives with music too loud. No dumb mistakes with cute boys. No figuring stuff out at two in the morning with your best friend at the park. None of it.
Jo had died before all that.
Ocean swallowed. That realization hit harder than she expected.
“Oh my god,” she breathed. “That’s so sad. When did you die? How did you die?”
“October of 1918,” Jo said gently. “Spanish flu.”
“You died from the flu?” Ocean blinked. “Didn’t they have doctors back then? Meds or something?”
Jo gave a faint, sad smile. “They had doctors. But not much they could do. Folks didn’t really understand how it spread.”
This reminded Ocean of COVID. No one in her family got sick, but she still remembered the lockdowns, school shutting down, masks and being stuck at home for months. She’d liked the break at first. More time to read and hang online. But that was also when she started noticing how much her parents bickered. How tense things got. How maybe they didn’t even like each other that much.
“One day you were feeling fine,” Jo went on. “The next…you weren’t. I took ill in the afternoon and didn’t live to see the morning. No doctor came to see me. And even if one had come, it wouldn’t have changed a thing.”
Ocean shook her head.
“Later on, I heard that in New England alone, close to fifty thousand people died in just a few months,” Jo said quietly. “Whole families gone. Schools shut down, churches turned into makeshift hospitals. Folks were too scared to touch the people they loved. You coughed and doors closed in your face.”
“But you were so young.”
“It didn’t matter. Sometimes being young and strong only made it worse. Your body fought too hard, and that’s what did you in.”
Ocean hesitated. “So…were you living in this house? Is that why you’re still here?”
“It’s because I died here.” Jo shook her head. “I didn’t live here. I was staying with my friend Esme, Clare’s grandmother. She was twenty then, a year older than me. But the truth is, I wasn’t just visiting. I’d run away from home.”
“You ran away at nineteen? Why? Pregnant?”
Jo laughed. “No! Henry was off fighting in Europe. That would’ve been quite the miracle.”
Ocean sat up straight, wide-eyed. “Who’s Henry?”
Jo’s eyes got sad and she glanced over at the letters. “Henry is…was… my intended. The man I wanted to marry. But that wasn’t going to happen. My parents had other ideas. They never approved of him.”
“Why?”
“Money. Status.” She frowned. “In New York, families like mine only wanted their daughters to marry with their own kind. Old money, well-connected, the right last name. Love didn’t matter so much.”
“That’s so sad.”
“It gets worse, I’m afraid. With the war on and Henry overseas, my parents took advantage of him being gone. They arranged a match with a dreadful, older man I barely knew. Without telling me. He met all the requirements: wealthy, respectable, a New York pedigree going back to the Revolution. It was all about status and appearances for them. When I found out, I told them it wasn’t going to happen. But it didn’t matter how much I said I wouldn’t do it. They just ignored me and forged ahead with their plans. So, the night of the engagement party, I went out the back door, took the train from New York to Harbor View, and walked from the station to Esme’s house. To this house. My parents had no idea where I’d gone.”
“Wait. You lived in New York, and Esme lived here?” Ocean frowned, thinking of how easy it was for her and Ivy to text back and forth every day. But back in 1918? “How did you two even know each other?”
“My family had a summer house here. On Fourth Street. Esme and I had been friends since we were knee-high. Every summer, we were thick as thieves. She was the one person I could count on. I knew she’d never turn me away.”
“So, was Henry from New York?”
