Magnolia Nights

by Ashley Farley

  He offered up a high five. “Now that’s what I call a breakthrough! With any luck, you’ll remember everything you’ve got locked up in that pretty little noggin of yours.” He tapped lightly on her skull.

  Ellie leaned back against the counter. “I used to go surfing with my dad when we went on our annual vacation to Malibu. I feel like I’m riding a wave, and I’m getting ready to lose control, but my adrenaline won’t let me bail.”

  “Then go for it. I’ll be here to catch you if you wipe out.”

  While he ladled batter in small batches onto his griddle, she set two places at his breakfast room table. When the food was ready, they sat down across the kitchen table from each other with plates piled high with pancakes in front of them. “Did you learn anything else of importance in your reading last night?” he asked, forking off a mouthful of pancakes.

  “Nothing specific.” Thinking back over the pages she’d read during the night, once again she experienced that strength that stemmed from her mother’s love for her. “Only that my mother was determined to keep us safe. Her heart was weak, but her will was ironclad. Her determination has empowered me to see this thing through, my grandmother’s evil spirit be damned.”

  She felt cocooned at Julian’s, safe and protected and well cared for. But her answers wouldn’t find her if she was hiding out here. She needed to face them head-on.

  “I have a job to do, Julian, and as much as I appreciate your hospitality, I need to be in my grandmother’s house to do it.”

  He took a sip of his coffee. “I can understand how being there might better help you remember. If you’re not comfortable being there alone, I can come stay with you. I’ll even sleep in your grandmother’s bed.”

  “Now that I’d like to see,” Ellie said with a little laugh. “Lucky for you, Evan Luna is taking her bed away today.” She smiled at him. “You’re a good friend for offering, Julian. But I need to handle this by myself.”

  “You can’t get rid of me that easily. I promise not to pester you, but I won’t ignore you, either. You know where I am if you need me.”

  Ellie glanced at her watch and shoveled another bite of pancakes in her mouth. “I really should get going. I want to be at the house when Maddie arrives.”

  The power had come back on, the roofers were already at work, and the technician had arrived, a day late, to install her cable and Internet. But there was no sign of Maddie. Evan Luna showed up around eleven with Clarence Vargas, a collector he’d enlisted to take away whatever was leftover. While the movers emptied the house of furniture, Ellie packed up the rest of her grandmother’s possessions—her clothing and knickknacks, the formal china, most of the silver pieces except the flatware, and a pair of ornate candelabra she found interesting. With the ceramic urn tucked under her arm, she marched through the park to the promenade. Without ceremony, she dumped her grandmother’s ashes into the harbor. It dawned on her on the walk home that she should’ve checked to see if any laws governed the scattering of ashes. Nothing she could do about it now except pay a fine if anyone reported her. She rinsed out the urn in the kitchen sink and gave it to Clarence Vargas to haul off with the rest of the junk.

  By six o’clock Ellie was exhausted, but as she wandered through the empty rooms, she felt like a thousand pounds had been lifted off her shoulders. She could breathe again without her grandmother’s dreary furnishings suffocating her. She didn’t care what Midge the realtor said. The house would show much better unfurnished. She poured herself a glass of wine and sat down at her desk. Her computer connected to the Wi-Fi without delay, and she spent the next hour searching the Internet for a forty-year-old woman with every variation of Lia’s name she could think of. When she came up empty, she Googled Maddie Washington in the hopes of finding a phone number or an address or some way of getting in touch with her housekeeper. Again, she came up empty.

  She had one more journal left to read. If she didn’t find the answers she was looking for, she had no idea where else to turn.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Ashton

  Dinners in the dining room are torturous affairs for the twins and me. Mother presides over us from the head of the table like the Queen of England presiding over her court. She insists her granddaughters sit up straight in their chairs and use proper manners. They aren’t allowed to be excused from the table until they’ve cleaned their plates of every last morsel of food. I have nothing against my daughters learning good manners. I just don’t approve of Mother’s method of teaching. It nearly breaks my heart to see my three-year-olds turn as green as the peas they swallow whole.

  Usually when Mother invites us to join her for dinner, she has an issue to discuss. On this particular late spring evening, that issue was the girls’ outdoor playtime.

  “You must lower your voices when you’re outside in the garden so the neighbors don’t hear you.” Mother glared at each girl in turn. “Lately, you’ve been playing too loud. I’ll be forced to make you stay inside if you don’t obey.”

  Our backyard resembles a jungle. Mother has let the shrubs and trees grow out of control to keep the nosy neighbors out of our business.

  While the girls finished eating, I talked to them about making a game out of whispering in the garden, but when they went upstairs to change into their pajamas, I turned on my mother. “The girls are three years old, Mother. Other than the garden, they’ve never been outside of this house. They’re too young to understand that they’re being kept here as prisoners.”

  “I beg your pardon,” Mother said in an incensed tone. “No one is keeping you here against your will.”

  I held her gaze. “Then why are you the only one with keys to the security system and the dead bolts on the doors?”

  “We have young children in the house, Ashton. The locks are there for your daughters’ protection.” Mother returned her attention to her Salisbury steak.

  “If that’s so, I’d like to see a cardiologist. I need medical care for my condition. I feel myself getting weaker and weaker.”

  “Go! See your cardiologist.” Mother flicked her wrist as though shooing away a fly. “But take your bastard children with you, because you won’t be allowed back in this house if you leave.”

  I glared at her. She isn’t a pretty woman, at least not in my opinion. But in her younger days, she posed a striking figure dressed in the latest fashions with her dark hair coiled in an elegant chignon. She’s let her hair go gray and cut it man short. She wears shapeless black dresses and matching lace-up, rubber-soled shoes. Her constant scowl has etched deep lines in her forehead and around her eyes and mouth. If I met her on a street corner, I might mistake her for the Wicked Witch of the West.

  “Why are you doing this to me, Mother? Do you hate me so much you want me to die?”

  She brought her fist crashing down against the table. “If death is your sentence, then so be it. God is punishing you for your sins—for running away from home, having sexual relations out of wedlock, and giving birth to your bastard children.” My mother’s gray eyes were wide and wild with an evil glint that made my blood run cold.

  “I have a clean conscience. I loved Abbott, and I’m not ashamed of our relationship.”

  I got up from the table and stormed out of the room, but my mother quickly caught up with me. “Where do you think you’re going? I haven’t given you permission to leave the room.” She grabbed me by the arm, but I jerked free. I walked faster, anxious for the safety of my room, but she matched my pace, step by step, as I climbed the stairs.

  When we got to the top, my mother spun me around and smacked me hard on the cheek. “Don’t you ever walk away from me, young lady!”

  “I’ll walk away from you anytime I damn well please. Just watch me.”

  When I started toward my room, she stuck her foot out and tripped me. I stumbled off-balance, and as I was reaching for the railing to break my fall, my mother shoved me down the stairs. My arms and legs and head banged against the hardwood treads as I tumbled
all the way to the bottom. I tasted blood on my lips when I screamed, “You’re insane! God will punish you for that.”

  I waited for her to come check on me, but she went into her bedroom and closed the door. I hurt too much to move, but I took the pain as a good sign, an indication that I wasn’t paralyzed. My left wrist was bent at an awkward angle, obviously broken, but that appeared to be the worst of my injuries. I lay curled up on the floor in the front hall for what seemed like hours, until I no longer heard Mother’s footsteps moving around in her bedroom over my head. Clutching my broken wrist against my body, I crawled up the stairs, one excruciating step at a time, and through my bedroom to the nursery. Much to my relief, the girls were sound asleep, their arms and legs intertwined in the twin bed they shared. I prayed they hadn’t witnessed the horrific scene that had just played out in the hallway beyond their bedroom door.

  I passed out from the pain and woke the following morning on the floor beside the twins’ bed with two sets of eyes peeking down at me from over the edge of the mattress. Wincing, I rolled over on my side and closed my eyes against the sunlight streaming in through the windows. “Ellie, be a darling and go see if Maddie is here.” Ellie is my go-to child in times of need. Somehow I know, even at such an early age, that my firstborn, if only by eight minutes, is the more trustworthy and the strongest of the two.

  I heard Ellie’s tiny bare feet hit the floor and pitter-patter out of the room. She returned some minutes later with Maddie in tow.

  “What on earth happened to you?” Maddie gasped.

  I silenced her with a shake of my head and glance toward the girls.

  Maddie regained her composure. “Girls, run along downstairs to the kitchen. Sally Bell’s got some fresh blueberry muffins in the oven. I’ll be down in a minute.”

  At the mention of food, the girls scurried out of the room. Maddie helped me up off the floor and gripped my good arm tightly while I limped to my room. “Should I get your gown?”

  “No!” I shook her off. “I won’t give my mother the satisfaction of knowing she sent me to my sickbed.”

  Maddie’s brown eyes nearly popped out of her head. “You mean to tell me your mother did this to you?”

  “Who else, Maddie? I may be weak, but I’m not clumsy. I didn’t fall. She pushed me down the stairs.” I lowered myself onto the edge of the bed. “She’s gone totally insane. I’ve got to get my girls out of this house before she hurts one of them.”

  “Lawd.” Maddie sat down on the bed next to me. “Let us help you, Miss Ashton. I got a little money saved, and I’m sure ole Sally will pitch in.”

  “You’re sweet to offer, Maddie, but I wouldn’t dare drag y’all into this. Neither of you can afford to lose your job. You’ve got your families to take care of.” I glanced at my chest of drawers where I kept my money hidden. “I have some money of my own saved. I just need to figure out a plan.”

  “That don’t look good.” Maddie eyed my broken wrist. “You need to see a doctor.”

  “I will, when I get where I’m going.” I gasped in agony as I drew my broken wrist closer to my chest. “Maddie, be a dear and get me some aspirin and an ice pack.”

  “Yes’m,” she said and hurried out of the room.

  While she was gone, I managed to change out of my clothes and was struggling with the button on a fresh sleeveless blouse when she returned ten minutes later.

  “This just ain’t right, Miss Ashton,” Maddie said as she finished buttoning the buttons. “I done told Sally what happened. We think you should call the police.”

  “We can’t do that! They’ll take my children away from me! I appreciate your concern, but this is not your problem to worry about. I’ll figure out a solution.”

  Maddie wrapped my broken wrist in an ACE bandage and tied it around my neck using a makeshift sling she fashioned out of an old bedsheet. She produced a prescription bottle of pills from her apron pocket. “I found these at the back of your mother’s medicine cabinet.” She pointed at the label. “Says here to take as needed for pain. The doctor gave them to her last year when she strained her back. She won’t miss them.”

  “I don’t care if she does miss them,” I said, popping one of the painkillers into my mouth.

  I heard happy squeals coming from the backyard and wobbled toward the door. “I need to get to the girls before my mother does. She warned them about making too much noise.”

  I leaned on Maddie for support on the way down the stairs and out into the garden. I shushed the girls, reminding them to play quietly, and stretched out on the chaise lounge on the terrace so I could keep an eye on them while they played under the magnolia tree.

  The late spring sun warmed my face, and the medicine eased the pain. I dozed off and on while I formulated my plan. Putting one of Mother’s sleeping powders in her tea at dinner seemed too risky. I racked my brain until another idea presented itself to me.

  Sally Bell served grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup on the terrace. She didn’t say a word but sat close to me while we ate. The silent camaraderie gave me strength. After lunch, I took the girls upstairs for their nap. I tucked them in and read them a quick story before going to my room. I emptied the clothes from the drawer where I kept my money. As best I could manage with one hand, I pulled the drawer all the way out and set it down, bottom facing up, on the bed. Before the twins were born, I had secured my savings account passbook to the bottom of the drawer with packing tape. But when I peeled back the tape, the passbook was gone and in its place was a note written in my mother’s tidy handwriting. You didn’t expect to live here for free, now did you?

  Anger pulsed through my veins, causing the room to spin around me and my heart to flutter. I sank to the bed and lowered my head between my legs, taking deep breaths until the dizziness subsided and my heart rate steadied. I slowly rose and dragged myself down the stairs to the library, where I found Mother paying bills behind my father’s desk. I slapped the note down on the desk. “Where’s my money, Mother?”

  She looked up at me from her checkbook. “Long gone.” She got up from her chair and came around the desk. “It was simple, really, to have your money wired from your account to mine. All I needed was your birthdate and social security number. I’m surprised it’s taken you this long to discover it missing. Seriously, Ashton, you should be ashamed of yourself for allowing yourself to be bullied. Then again, you always were weak like your father. Does it hurt much?”

  I took a step back as her fingers grazed my broken wrist. “Don’t touch me ever again, you crazy bitch! You won’t get away with this!”

  The sound of Mother’s maniacal laughter echoed throughout the house as I fled the room. Trudging up the stairs, I felt the energy draining from my body as my heart grew weaker and weaker. My situation is a lost cause. My mother has gotten away with stealing my savings, and she will undoubtedly get away with so much more before it’s all over. There is no way out of this prison for me. But I will die trying to find a way out for my girls.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Ellie

  Ellie never closed her eyes on Thursday night. She couldn’t find a light bulb to replace the burned-out one in the attic in any of the obvious places in the house. So by the light of Bennett’s battery-powered lanterns, she spent the early hours of the morning scouring the attic for more journals. Her energy was fueled by her rage at her grandmother, frustration at her mother, and bewilderment at Maddie for her mysterious disappearance. She left no box unsealed and no trunk unopened. There were no more journals in the house.

  Eight o’clock Friday morning came and went with no sign of or word from Maddie. She spoke for an hour with her therapist, Patsy, in California, who warned her the worst was yet to come. “You’ve dislodged a stone in the wall that protects your memories. Prepare yourself for that wall to come crumbling down.”

  She felt the urge to work, but the canvas she’d started before the hurricane—the image of the row of houses on South Battery as seen from the park—no l
onger inspired her. She needed to get something off her mind, although she wasn’t sure what. Drawn once again to the magnolia in the backyard and lacking the patience for the slow process of painting, she took her sketchbook and drawing supplies out to the terrace. She settled herself in a chaise lounge and sharpened her graphite pencil to a fine point. As her sketch progressed, the tip of her pencil became fat and dull, perfect for the amount of shading her subject required.

  It was midafternoon when she lifted her head again. The scene staring back at her from her sketch pad was one from her memory, the one she’d been so anxious to get out of her mind. Two little girls were huddled together in the dark, not under the magnolia tree but cowering behind their mother’s bedroom door as they watched the scene unfold in the hallway. I was there that night with my sister. I saw—we both saw—our grandmother push our mother down the stairs.

  She got up and strolled around the perimeter of the garden. She felt drained from her sleepless night and her drawing efforts, but she experienced a great sense of accomplishment as well. Witnessing her grandmother shove her mother down the stairs had indeed been a traumatic event. But was it the traumatic event? She didn’t think so.

  Ellie’s stomach growled, reminding her she hadn’t eaten since dinner last night. She peeled back a banana and wandered through the empty house while she ate it. Horrific memories waited for her at every turn and in every corner. Her grandmother’s shrill voice reprimanding her for the grape juice stain and for disturbing her mother while she rested. Her grandmother had beaten Ellie with the jogging stick for acts as benign as leaving the bathroom light on. Never on the face where anyone could see, but on her bottom and her thighs. Her memory of Lia was the strongest in the nursery they’d shared, her twin’s tangled mass of dark hair and her eyes so full of fear. How had she blocked her twin from her memory for all these years?