My mother and I didn’t talk about the blue dress incident until it happened again. It was just a regular day. I walked through the house and saw a man and woman sitting in the formal living room. Embarrassed, I immediately went to find my mother. I had no idea we had company. Important company too, it appeared, as the man sitting on the sofa was wearing a suit and had a fancy mustache and the woman was wearing a pretty blue dress with her hair twisted up in a bun. He was handsome. She was lovely. I had no clue who they were or why they were here. I simply found my mother and did what every shy kid does when being introduced to strangers, I pressed my face into her back and tried to disappear. “What on earth is the matter with you?” she asked me, like I’d entirely lost my mind as she lifted her elbows to try to look at the impossible angle of my hiding place. I said nothing, too shy to ask who the company was. She finally grasped me and pulled me out from behind her, “What is wrong with you?” She sounded genuinely concerned, like a mother who knows when something is really wrong with their child. Then I saw nothing. The couple was gone. Just gone. This jerked me out of my shyness and into shock. “Hey! Where’d they go?!” I exclaimed with my mouth gapping open in surprise. “Where did who go?” My poor mother, honestly clueless. “The lady in the living room. And the man...” I flew to the window as if I’d see them walking down the driveway but I knew I wouldn’t see them. I described them to my mother. She seemed determined. She had me draw them. I loved to draw. When I was done, I handed her the picture and she went silent and sent me to my room. Hours later she came for me and she was covered in dust and cobwebs. She sent me to sit with my dad and soon came back holding two pieces of stiff, thick cardboard. They were covered in dust and cobwebs, too. “Babe, look at what I found in the attic; tintypes of your grandparents,” she said to my dad. She turned them around and there they were, the very people I’d seen that day sitting in our living room. I think my heart stopped. To this day, she says she never saw me go so pale. She’d suspected who they were for a while. She’d seen flashes of blue, here and there for a little while before I ever saw my great grandmother’s reflection. She never let on she thought we were being haunted. She didn’t want to scare me or put suggestions in my head. Later she told me she took care of it. When no one else was around she simply asked them not to scare me again, but they were welcome to watch over me if wanted to. I never saw them after that, only occasionally felt a familiar presence.
