The Lady in Residence

by Allison Pittman

  Dini chewed, thinking. He was right, of course. Not even she, if held to the fire, could confess an unyielding belief in ghosts. Always, the question wasn’t what Hedda heard, but who. Dini knew the how of it: a phonograph most likely projecting a voice, a chemical blown like an air dart. But again, who? Dini had read the account so many times, she could quote passages without prompting. Still, she remained unable to solve the mystery, to put the torment to rest.

  She brought her attention back to Quin, finding him once again tapping away on his phone’s keyboard. Trying not to bristle at his distraction, she shifted her position in the booth, the squeaking of the vinyl seats louder than she anticipated.

  “Sorry,” he said, putting his phone back on the table. “Maybe talking through all of this with me will illuminate something new. Plus, who knows? I might have some important missing factors.”

  “I hope so.”

  “Speaking of …” He opened the drawstring of his bag and brought out a plain manila envelope. “Look inside. She signed it to him.”

  Heart racing, Dini opened the envelope and took out a photograph. It was roughly four inches by six and featured Hedda as a young woman, obviously sitting for a portrait with a professional photographer. She was looking over one shoulder, boldly into the camera’s lens. The giddy anticipation Dini had felt in sliding it out of the envelope was short-lived, however. She’d seen this photo a million times, for it served as the frontispiece of the book.

  “This was in the box?”

  “It’s yours now.”

  “Thank you.” She held it closer. “The photographer’s studio dated it in the corner—1914. She didn’t write her memoir until the late 1960s. Published in 1971. I always knew she used an old photo of herself, but this was taken before she even arrived in San Antonio. Years before. If your great-great-grandfather had a copy, she must have had two prints of it.”

  “And the writing on the back?” Quin reached over to flip the photograph. “It matches what she has written at the front of her book.”

  Truth and love must bind themselves to the same stone.

  “Yes,” Dini said. “That’s part of it. In the book she writes, ‘When truth and love wrap themselves around the same stone, together they can propel it to fly, or drag it to the lowest sand.’”

  “ ‘In truth is beauty and beauty is truth. That is all ye need to know.’”

  Dini looked and said, “Hey, math teacher quoting Yeats,” before returning to the image on the flimsy cardboard. For the first time in a long time, Dini saw something new. Not a new face, but a new time. No wonder Hedda Krause looked so elegant in this photograph—her chin up with pride. She was a woman of prosperity at the time, a wife to a man of substance. This was who Hedda had been before the story started, before being relegated to the shadows. In this photo, she and Dini were the same age. Seeing this Hedda put a bit of salt in the sea of sweet familiarity. Dini had a new light in her brain, blinking in anticipation for the next one to make a new path. A whole new thread to the story she knew so well.

  “I have to see more,” she said, and when Quin didn’t reply, she dragged her eyes away from Hedda’s image to find him tapping on his phone keyboard again.

  “What’s that?”

  “I said”—and then she stopped until he looked up at her—“I have to see more. Everything you brought. Let’s go, just promise you won’t make me run.” She held out her foot, showcasing the heel of her boot. “I’ll never make it.”

  “I—” He glanced at his phone, then back at her, his expression dampening Dini’s enthusiasm. “I can’t. I have—something’s come up.” He rummaged in his bag, produced a leather money clip, and peeled off a twenty. “Breakfast is on me, of course. Thank you for making me change my order.”

  His words and demeanor didn’t match the morning. He sounded like this was over when, really, it hadn’t quite started.

  The battered book still sat in the middle of the table, more to his side than hers. He picked it up with the reverence it deserved. “I’m not leaving. I’ve just had something come up now. Something I have to…deal with. So—we can meet up again? Later?” He brought out his phone again and handed it to her. “Text yourself so I’ll have your contact, and I’ll text you when I’m free later today. Fair?”

  The phone showed a blank message screen to an empty number. This she filled in, then tapped down to the waiting box and typed: DINI, I KNOW ABOUT THE CHRISTMAS PICTURE. MEET ME IN THE LOBBY BY THE COWBOY PAINTING. Q

  She handed the phone back, leaving the message as a draft. “Don’t send this until it’s true.”

  He read it, smiled, and tapped the screen. Within seconds, Dini’s phone buzzed in her bag. She nearly bounced in her booth. “You know about it?”

  “I’ve seen it. I have it.”

  “Is it—wait. Don’t tell me. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  He shook his head at the rapid redirection of her response. “You never asked.”

  “Aha,” she said, triumphant that he still had so much more to learn. “Give me your phone.”

  Without question, he did, and as she prepared to write a new message, it vibrated, and a ribbon of text unfurled across the top. YOLANDA: WHAT’S YOUR ETA? DYING OVER HERE.

  The heart-eyed emoji made it clear that the sender of the text, Yolanda, wasn’t literally dying. Wasn’t lying somewhere, pulse dangerously low, world going dark. Yolanda was dying the way Dini had, during those moments when she didn’t think Quin was going to show. Or like the way her heart stopped when he stood to leave with such finality.

  She closed the message app and handed the phone back. “Just text me whenever.”

  “Might be this evening.”

  Dini worked to keep her face neutral. Should she mention what she’d seen? Something flippant like, Are you sure Yolanda will survive? But she had no right, no reason—when all she cared about was the Christmas picture. Well, maybe not all …

  “Evening’s fine,” she said, hoping to hide her disappointment in a cool-girl shrug. “I have stuff to do too. So anytime after six?”

  “Sounds perfect.” He wrapped My Spectral Accuser back in its towel and stashed it in his bag before standing. “Can we call it? Six o’clock.”

  “With the Christmas picture?”

  “It’s a date.”

  “No, it’s not,” she said, picturing Yolanda’s name and the kissy face emoji. “It’s the next part of the story.”

  Chapter 7

  Excerpt from

  My Spectral Accuser: The Haunted Life of Hedda Krause

  Published by the Author Herself

  The first traces of Christmas brought a lift to my spirits. My late husband was a man of great sentiment, and during the three Christmases we spent together, I joined him in crafting elaborate celebrations. We hosted evenings of wassail and caroling. Our cook worked for days on the meal; we spent hours in church. I secretly studied the hymns so I could join in the singing both in the pew and on his arm as we caroled with friends and neighbors. I learned that I was never so beautiful as when surrounded by evergreen and candlelight. The first time I ever read Scripture aloud was by a roaring Yule log, the house clouded with its scent, after my husband placed a Bible in my lap and claimed he hadn’t the sight or strength to do so.

  So, when the tree was erected in the middle of the lobby—one tall enough to reach through the encircling balcony of the second floor—I saw it as an escape from Sallie’s grip. I read Dickens’s classic A Christmas Carol, sipping tea while a dozen employees bustled about with steps and ladders, hanging baubles and draping tinsel. Surely, I thought, while filling my mind with the Spirits of Christmas, no wandering soul would materialize during such a holy season.

  Bert took to concocting punch bowls of mulled wine for the guests, and I imbibed convivially, listening to their stories and feeling the warm spices lull me into an almost unbearable melancholy. Even the children (I’ve never much cared for them) tugged at an unexcavated sentimentality. I sang carols
around the piano, standing shoulder to shoulder with strangers, and thanked Mr. Sylvan for the small box of chocolates (and Bert for the large bottle of brandy) and signed my name to a lovely card, which I addressed to the stepsons but did not send.

  As I hoped, the spirit of the season kept my pernicious spirit at bay. For as long as the tree was in the lobby, I slept with the soundness of a saint. Silver, gold, and evergreen proved to be the secret to breaking the spell. Light returned to my eyes, color to my cheeks. I wore my finest gowns, my most elegant jewels.

  On Christmas Day I walked the perimeter of the second floor, the treetop level with my eye, and looked down upon my fellow guests, imagining myself mistress of this place. After all, many of the faces were familiar to me—local people who enjoyed the fine dining and attended events in the ballroom, as well as visitors from out of town here for a festive holiday. Sometime in the early hours of the morning, a decorative screen had been erected beside the tree, with an upholstered chair stationed in front of it. I watched a well-dressed couple—not quite comfortable in their finery—step up, he sitting on the chair, she posed beside him, one hand on his shoulder. Such a familiar tableau. Then a familiar figure stepped into view: the photographer who had taken my picture at the Empire Theater all those weeks ago.

  J. P. Haley looked slightly more professional than he had the night at the theater—his long hair combed back and secured, his suit less rumpled, his face shaved clean. Today he had an assistant working with him, a slender young man wearing a knitted vest under his jacket and a driving cap pulled low—almost to the point of touching his heavy brows. It was his job to corral the subjects and group them attractively, deciding who should sit, who should stand, and which pretty child should sit on Papa’s lap. When I approached to add my name to the list, he looked at me, and my breath caught at the color of his eyes. They were truly gold, unlike any I have seen before. Beautiful, I might have called him, if not for the perfectly trimmed moustache and beard that framed his thin, unsmiling lips.

  “I’d like a portrait,” I told him. “Hedda Krause.” I spelled the name, having none of the reservations I’d had when Haley took my picture at the theater. Who would see this but me? True, it might be worthy of being hung in the window of his studio—assuming he had a studio—but such a display would not reach outside the streets of this city.

  When my turn came, Haley said, “I think I’d rather capture you standing,” and bade his assistant whisk the ornate chair away. There was much positioning after that to capture the fullness of the tree, the right collection of ornaments, the right amount of light. I was wearing a choker of red beads with a silver-backed jade clasp resting on my collarbone, matching red beads dangling from my ears. Neither the necklace nor the earrings were particularly valuable, save for the jade in the clasp. We’d purchased it from a Native shop and paid a high price for it, along with the cuff I wore. I took pains in my stance to keep my hands clasped loosely in front of me, the largest stone of my bracelet on full display. I meant to keep my face frozen against the light and heat of the flash, but Haley spoke some direction.

  “A softer expression, maybe? Sweeter? Imagine you’re one of the angels smiling down on the holy infant.”

  I tried to comply, thinking of women I’d seen in magazine advertisements gazing softly at the babe in their arms. I had no aspirations of experiencing such a thing, but I tried my best, and soon the air was full of the familiar smell of exploded light, and my eyes burned as the spark faded.

  “It might be a week or more before I’ll have it printed,” Haley told me as he slid the plate from his camera and handed it gingerly to his assistant. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to add some tint.”

  I didn’t mind. My late husband and I had delayed too long getting a proper portrait painted, so my image had never been captured in color.

  And so I waited, lifting champagne toasts to the New Year, biding my time as the needles fell from the tree until it was finally stripped and hauled away the day after Epiphany. I was watching the entire process from the second-floor balcony and noticed the top of Haley’s head the moment he stepped in from the street. With a squeal befitting a child receiving a gift, I raced down the stairs and met him at the desk. Only later would I mark how he watched my approach with both sadness and trepidation.

  “Oh!” I exclaimed, dragging up some vestige of coquettishness. “A late Christmas present for me?”

  “Yes,” he said, refusing to meet my eye. “Take it as such. I won’t be charging you. Truth be told, I don’t know if I should give it to you at all.”

  And then he was gone, disappeared like a puff of dark dust. Upon closer inspection, I saw the package had been wrapped, sealed, and tied with the string circled three times around. Unable to open it with my own power, I walked to the desk and asked Mr. Sylvan to lend me his letter opener. Silver and sharp, it weighed heavy in my hand as I sliced through the string and along the sealed edges.

  “It’s my Christmas portrait,” I said as much to myself as to Mr. Sylvan. I unwrapped the layers and uncovered the image printed on heavy paper. I felt myself frown at first. Haley had promised a tint, but I saw nothing but ordinary black and white.

  Then the image blurred in my trembling hand.

  “Mrs. Krause?” Mr. Sylvan’s voice lurked beyond the roaring of the rush of blood in my ears.

  I dropped the image to the desktop and braced my hands beside it. A sob caught in my throat, perfectly timed to Mr. Sylvan’s un-Sylvan-like gasp.

  The Christmas tree, it seemed, had failed in its spell to protect me from the ghost of Sallie White. For there she was, in the photograph. Right behind me. Her hand resting on my shoulder.

  Chapter 8

  Dini scanned the crowd. Families gathered with blankets and lawn chairs, leaving a nonlinear, narrowly winding path. Her phone buzzed in her hand, Arya’s face on the screen. Dini swiped. “Where are you?”

  “Look toward the raspa truck. We’re in front of it.”

  Dini imagined a grid and made a purposeful search, finally seeing Arya distinctly. She and Bill had staked out a prime spot near the stage where three guys in ratty jeans and T-shirts rambled around plugging in cords and rolling amps. Dini picked her way through, dodging children and muttering apologies to adults who came to inexplicable dead stops in front of her.

  “There she is,” Arya crooned, setting Bea free to run and collide with Dini’s legs.

  “Hey there.” Dini touched the top of Bea’s head. “You just saw me yesterday, remember?”

  “I told her we could go get a treat as soon as you got here.” Arya had been lounging on the blanket in front of Bill but now stood with the agility that comes with a daily yoga discipline. “So, it’s not so much about you as it is the shaved ice and sugar.”

  “Completely understandable.” Dini offered a distant high five to Bill, who stood to greet her. He wore baggy cargo shorts, frayed at the hem, and a Jazz Ramblers T-shirt that was probably once a vibrant yellow but had now faded into something soft and undefinable. He brought out his wallet, extracted a few bills, and handed them over to Arya.

  “What flavor do you want?” Arya asked, taking the money.

  “Are you kidding?” Bill crouched, made his hands into grasping claws, and growled, “Tiger blood.”

  Bea screamed and ran the circumference of the blanket while he chased her, roaring.

  “Every time,” Arya said, grabbing Bea’s hand on the next lap. “He doesn’t even like it. Just gets it to make her scream.”

  “It’s a safe scream,” Dini said, falling into step beside her friend.

  “So.” Arya nudged her arm. “Tell me about breakfast.”

  “It was…good.”

  “He showed up?”

  Dini had forgotten her one, panicked text to her friend. “He did.”

  “And?” Arya let Bea run ahead a few steps with the warning to stay where she could be seen.

  “He gave me a picture.”

  “His picture? St
range for a first date, but let me see—”

  “Not his picture, obviously. Hedda’s. The same from the front of her book. Only now I know that picture has been cropped, because the original is dated—October 1914. Three years before coming to San Antonio. And the inscription written in the front of the book? It’s handwritten on the back of the photograph. But it’s not written in Hedda’s hand.”

  “Do you ever stop to think how sad it is that you can recognize the handwriting of a woman who’s been dead for a hundred years?”

  “She hasn’t been dead for a hundred years,” Dini said, long past being defensive about Hedda. “This is something new. I always thought the quote was about her jewels and her love for her late husband and the truth about what—what happened. But now? They might not even be her own words.”

  They had arrived at the raspa truck. A hand-lettered sign written on poster board listed all the flavors of shaved ice available, with index cards of additional choices tacked along the edge.

  “Read them to me!” Bea whined, tugging on Arya’s long linen skirt.

  “I’m not going to read them all to you,” Arya said with a sigh, intimating she’d tangled with this request before. “Tell me what you want, and I’ll bet they have it.”

  Dini scanned the list. “Why write ‘blueberry’ and ‘raspberry’ and ‘blueberry-raspberry’? We all know we can combine flavors. Without the combinations, they’d knock this list down to”—she calculated—“twelve flavors. Tops.”

  “You do this every time,” Arya said with the same edge of maternal impatience.

  “And I’m right every time.” She pointed at a decorative card. “Bea? Do you want to try a unicorn raspa? It’s every flavor of the rainbow. And unicorns fly. So tigers can’t eat them.”