by Karen White
I was leaning over the sink with my hands cupped like a bowl when I sensed a presence behind me. Swallowing my aspirin quickly, I spun around in time to see my soldier casually leaning against the wall by the door leading to the back stairs, his booted legs crossed at the ankles. He began to fade until I averted my eyes.
“Good morning,” I said out loud, not remembering if we’d ever really had a conversation when I was a child.
You have grown into a beautiful woman since I saw you last.
The words had not been spoken out loud, but I heard them inside my head as if they had been. His words were heavily accented, and I smiled in recognition.
I felt myself flushing as I leaned back against the sink, aware again of how tall he was, and how his blond hair seemed to gleam from the sunlight streaming through the plantation shutters on the windows. “What’s your name?” I asked, feeling foolish, but not because I was speaking out loud to a phantom. I felt foolish because I should have known his name and didn’t, despite remembering him from the long-ago years of my childhood.
He bowed and I heard his boot heels click together. Is it not enough that I know yours?
I shook my head. “No. If we’re to be friends, it’s only fair if we know each other’s names.”
I felt his eyes on me but I didn’t turn to look, sure I would see a sparkle of amusement in them. Maybe we are not meant to be—friends.
“Melanie?”
The soldier disappeared as quickly as if a light switch had been flicked off at the sound of my father’s voice.
My father came into the kitchen and looked around. “Who were you talking to?”
“No one,” I said. “Maybe you heard the radio from a passing car.”
“Uh-huh,” was all he said. He finally got a good glimpse of my face and bloodshot eyes. “What happened to you? You look like you’ve been pulled the wrong way through a hedge.”
“Thanks, Daddy. I’d rather not talk about it, okay? I drank too much, I know I shouldn’t have, and I doubt I’ll ever willingly do it again. Trust me.” I winced again, remembering snatches of my conversation with Jack.
He pressed his lips together as if forcing himself to reserve comment. “Is your mother here?”
Glad of the change in subject, I said, “No. She’s in New York tying up some loose ends.”
He actually looked disappointed. I crossed my arms over my chest. “Why? I got the impression that she wasn’t interested in seeing you again.”
He walked toward me and shrugged, then stuck his hand in his pocket. “Maybe so. But I have something here that she might be interested in seeing.” He pulled out a small zippered plastic bag with something balled up at the bottom of it. “I know your mother has sent her lawyers to deal with the salvage company responsible for discovering your great-great-grandfather’s sailboat, but I thought a personal visit might get us a little closer to the action. I figured if anybody should be near the site, it should be me since the media doesn’t have any idea who I am—yet.”
I stared at the bag, not wanting to touch it. “Are you allowed to have that?” I looked up. “There’s also the matter of human remains being found on board. I doubt the authorities would want anything removed from the scene until they’ve had a chance to look at it.” I didn’t really care. Old things and their histories had never held much interest for me. All I knew was that I didn’t want anything to do with whatever was in the bag and I needed to try and persuade him to return it.
He raised both eyebrows, succeeding in appearing as innocent as a puppy. “They already have.” Clearing his throat, he held the bag out to me. “The captain’s an old army buddy of mine and thought this should be yours. They’ve already run all the tests they can and taken all the pictures they need. My friend figured it would be better off with you than in some government vault for the next fifty years.”
I stared at the bag while my father held it out to me, waiting me out. He’d been out of the military for a long time, but I underestimated his endurance and his willingness to wait until he saw the right opportunity and went in for the kill. “If you don’t take it, I’ll have to give it to your mother.”
He’d known, of course, the one thing to say. I took the bag, the once-clear sides now cloudy from so much handling.
“Go on. Open it.”
The top pulled apart easily and I could now see a tarnished gold chain, its luster dulled by years beneath the salty water of the ocean. Gingerly, I lifted it out of the bag, my hand stilling as I spotted the heart-shaped locket dangling from it.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” he asked.
“It is,” I said, touching the flat gold locket but sensing nothing except the cold quiet at the bottom of the ocean. Relief rushed through me that I hadn’t been able to see anything else and my fingers closed over it. “Where was it found?”
“Inside the trunk. With the remains.”
The locket slipped out of my hands, landing on a black marble tile, the chain extended like a spider lying in wait.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, stooping to pick it up.
“Come here,” I said, then led the way into the downstairs drawing room where I’d placed the portrait of the girls after bringing it from the Tradd Street house following the closing. I stopped short in the threshold, feeling disoriented—like being on an escalator that suddenly begins to move in the opposite direction. I stared at the painting, my breath suspended. When I’d moved it into the room, I’d placed it facing against the wall. But now the portrait of the two girls faced out toward the room, the eyes of the shorter girl glaring out at me with what seemed to be a menacing grin in the dim corner of the room. I blinked, thinking it must be a trick of the light.
My father walked closer to the portrait, the locket dripping through his fingers. “It’s identical. Isn’t it? It’s a little hard to tell because this one’s so dark, but look at this edging. And here.” He used his thumb to brush hard against the front of the locket, then took out an eyeglass cloth from his back pocket and rubbed it back and forth over the gold. “I thought so. It has an engraved initial, too.”
He held it up, and the stink of rotting fish reached me at the same moment I noticed the initial M rising out of the grime on the locket like a dead thing from the grave. “It could be the same one. Couldn’t it?”
I nodded, swallowing thickly and wanting desperately to run out of the room. But how could I do that in front of a person who’d never believe me? For the first time in my adult life, I wished my mother were there.
“It’s an M—for Melanie,” he said, and before I realized what he was trying to do, he was standing behind me and fastening the locket around my neck. I froze, unable to move as if a great weight were pressing on my shoulders, holding my feet to the floor. The chain felt warm on my neck as if the heat from another’s skin had touched it first. I smelled salt and ocean air and the pervading stench of spoiled fish. I resisted the urge to gag, but not because of the necklace; the necklace felt as if it belonged on my neck, and not just because of the initial. And when I ran my fingers over the large M I had the distinct feeling that whatever rotting presence we’d resurrected from the bottom of the ocean didn’t want me to have it.
“Someone’s at the door,” my father said, and I realized he was repeating himself and that I hadn’t heard him the first time.
I blinked at him. “The door,” he said again. “Would you like me to go get it?”
Eager to leave the room, I backed out, waiting until the last moment to turn my back on the portrait. I threw the door open and found Rebecca Edgerton grinning widely on the other side.
“Good morning,” she chirped, and I wondered absently if she’d ever been a cheerleader. I knew if I’d asked Jack he’d be able to tell me along with a list of all of her injuries and where any scars might be located.
“Hello,” I answered, peering behind her to make sure she was alone. I had no intention of speaking with Jack in the foreseeable millennium, and I especia
lly didn’t want it to happen in front of Rebecca. “Jack’s not here.” I stood in the doorway, blocking her access.
“I know,” she said, her smile now forced. “I already spoke with him and he told me I could find you here.”
“How nice of him. So what brings you out so early?” I blinked hard. The sharp sun that angled through the doorway was like a dazzling dagger to my bleary and swollen eyes, but my vision was clear enough to see Rebecca’s immaculate appearance and freshly manicured fingers. I hid my own behind my back, still trying to flake off the paint that had adhered to my nails much more effectively than to the fat cherubs anchored in marble pear trees on the fireplace surround in my tiny library.
Rebecca looked behind her, then shivered in her pink cashmere coat. “Do you think I could come in? It’s a personal thing that I’m sure you wouldn’t want anybody else hearing. Besides, it’s freezing out here.”
Reluctantly, I opened the door wider so she could enter. As she took her coat off, she examined her surroundings, her fingers stalling on the last button as she caught sight of the heating vents that had been painted black-and-white to match the zebra rug that I couldn’t even bring myself to give to Goodwill for fear they’d be insulted. Besides, with all the painting we were planning on doing, it could come in handy as a drop cloth.
Seeing the question in her eyes, I hastily added, “I had nothing to do with the décor and neither did my family. We’ll be working with Sophie Wallen to return everything to colors actually found in nature.”
She continued spinning, as if trying to get a 360-degree view of the foyer and its kaleidoscope of colors. “This is practically profane,” she said, and I was surprised to hear the anger in her voice. “Some people would die to have the honor to live in a historic home like this, and to think that someone would . . .” Her hands indicated the fuchsia walls. “It defies logic.”
“And good taste,” I muttered and saw her lips curve up in a smile. I watched her for a moment longer, captured by a fleeting glimpse of something familiar that was too brief to recognize.
“Who is it, Melanie?”
“My dad’s here,” I explained to Rebecca, leading the way into the drawing room.
He stood in front of the portrait of the girls as if mesmerized, his back to us. “I see something of your mother and you in the taller one,” he said. “But the shorter one.” He shook his head. “There’s a strong physical resemblance, but there’s . . . something else about her. Something that makes me feel as if they’re not sisters. Cousins maybe?”
I stopped behind him. “Dad? This is Rebecca Edgerton, the reporter who’s doing the story on Mother.”
He faced her and held out his hand to shake. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you. Jack told me all about you.”
I looked at Rebecca, who seemed to be as surprised as I was. “Really?” we said in unison.
My dad frowned as he looked from one of us to the other. “Mostly because of your connection with Emily.”
“Oh,” we said again in unison, but Rebecca sounded disappointed.
Rebecca shook his hand. “Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Colonel Middleton.”
“You’ve done your research,” he said, acknowledging her use of his correct rank. In the past, when he was still drinking and people in bars would look at his insignia and medals and call him General, he wouldn’t correct them.
“It’s my job, sir. I’ve been working on this story about your ex-wife for some time now. You’d be surprised at the information I’ve discovered.”
His eyes flickered over to mine in an unasked question before they returned to Rebecca. “Oh, you’d be surprised how many hidden skeletons we have in our family. Not that we’d share them with you, of course.”
“Really? And I think you’d be surprised how enterprising my methods can be when it comes to digging up family secrets. Not that I’d share them with you, of course.”
To my indignation, my father laughed before beaming at Rebecca in admiration. “Well, I can certainly see why Jack still talks about you.”
Eager to see her leave, I said, “I’ve got an appointment, so if there’s something you came to tell me . . . ?”
Her gaze was chilly as it rested on me. “Yes, sorry. I received a call this morning from one of my sources at the coroner’s office with a pretty good scoop. I’ve already written my story and filed it with the paper with instructions not to run it until I spoke with you first.”
“So if we don’t like what you have to say, you won’t run the story?” I tried to keep the belligerence out of my voice but I couldn’t help it. There was something about Rebecca Edgerton that reminded me of biting into cold ice cream.
“No. I’m only doing this out of courtesy because of your connection with Jack.”
I crossed my arms so that my hands wouldn’t find themselves around her neck. “Then you’d better hurry up and tell us so you can get that story printed.”
Without preamble, she said, “They’ve received the preliminary results of the examination on the human remains found in the sailboat.” She paused for effect. “It’s definitely a female and they estimate she was about twenty years old at the time of her death.”
“That certainly tells us nothing,” I said, keeping my arms crossed.
“Oh, there’s more.” Her eyes brightened like a child’s on Christmas morning. “The top portion of the skull was largely intact, but shows signs of trauma—as if the head sustained an injury by a blow or a fall. That could have been the cause of death.”
I let my arms drop. “Well, then. Go ahead and print it. The media can’t possibly want to ask me about a homicide that occurred a hundred years before I was born. And personally, I couldn’t care less. It’s old news, in other words.”
Rebecca bristled, apparently at my lack of amazement at her researching prowess. “Well, I guess that’s all the information I have to tell you.” She pursed her lips. “I’ll be going, then. Nice to meet you, Colonel. . . .”
Her voice trailed away as a ray of yellowy light struck the stained-glass window. At the same moment, heavy clouds broke away in front of the sun and opened the sky like a door. “That’s—incredible,” she said, her gaze focused on the window with its hidden figures and secret meanings.
I wanted to stop her, to pull her away from it and explain that it was my window and the best part of my childhood—the one thing from the past I had allowed myself to cherish the way some people cherished old things—and I wasn’t in the mood to share it, least of all with her.
“This is really unusual for a house this old,” she said, walking nearer.
My hands balled themselves into little fists, my fingernails digging into my palms. “It’s not original to the house,” I said as my father stepped between Rebecca and me.
Rebecca pulled a notepad out of her purse and began to write. “It looks like it might be late nineteenth century.” She faced me. “Am I right?”
I gave her a grudging nod. “You seem to know a lot about old houses.”
She studied me for a moment, then shrugged. “You pick things up when you’re in this business, I guess.” She returned to jotting notes onto her pad. “Do you know who had it installed?”
“No, I’m afraid I don’t. Why would you want to know?”
She didn’t bother to look at me as she wrote, but I sensed that despite her tone, nothing she said to me was offhand. “You never know what will work in a story, what sorts of little tidbits would make it more interesting.”
I turned to face the window again, surreptitiously tucking the locket back into my blouse, feeling the surprising heat of it on my bare skin, sensing again that somebody had just let it go from a tightly held fist. “Really?” I said.
“Really. It’s what makes a good journalist.” She put her pad back into her purse. “I’ve taken up enough of your time, so I’ll let you go. When I see Jack, I’m going to ask him to go see if Yvonne Craig might know something. She’s a real wealth of information ab
out Charleston and its history, you know.”
“I’ve heard that somewhere.” My dad shot me a warning glance for my sarcasm. It was one thing he’d never tolerated from me and something I’d learned to utilize only when he was out of earshot. I began walking toward the front door. “Thanks for stopping by. Can’t imagine that the news would create much of a media frenzy, but then again Britney Spears’ decision to go pantyless made front-page news. Go figure.”
Rebecca paused by the front door. “Be that as it may, it will be news for some. The Prioleaus have their reputation to maintain and I suppose the discovery of a body, regardless of how old, might be a trifle inconvenient, if not downright embarrassing.”
Her eyes were bright and clear as they regarded me, and not for the first time I felt a twinge of unease. There was something more to Rebecca Edgerton than she was letting on, something more than her connection with Jack or her pursuit of my mother’s story. I moved my hand to my neck to make sure the locket was well hidden inside my blouse, not entirely sure why I would choose to hide it from her.
She frowned slightly. “Do you smell that? I could swear it smells like . . . gunpowder. Yes, that’s it. It reminds me of the smell that hangs over battlefields when they do the battle reenactments.”
I pretended to sniff the air, although there was no need; I’d sensed the presence of my soldier from the moment we’d stepped into the foyer. “No, I don’t smell anything,” I said, opening the door wider so she’d take the hint and just leave.
She smiled. “Well, then. It must be a wood fire in somebody’s chimney. Thanks again, Melanie, and nice to meet you, Colonel,” she added over my shoulder. Returning her attention to me, she said, “And when you see Jack tell him to call me on my cell. He has the number.”
“Sure,” I said, smiling and waiting for my face to crack. It wasn’t until she was at the bottom of the steps that it occurred to me she was the first person besides my grandmother, my mother, and me who had ever sensed the soldier’s presence. I stared after her as she made her way down the walk toward the gate, and as I started to close the front door I became aware that the skin where the locket lay on my chest had become uncomfortably hot.