by Karen White
“Who was it?” I asked my mother, my voice tight.
She shook her head as she leaned on the counter, trying to catch her breath. “I’m not sure.” She shook her head again, as if trying to clear it, then met my eyes with hers. Hers were wide and reddened, and for a moment it was not my mother’s eyes that stared back at me. She blinked hard before speaking. “But I do know that you shouldn’t be wearing that locket. It’s bad, Mellie. It belonged to—her.” She clenched her eyes shut for a moment. “No, that’s not right. It did—but then it didn’t.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.” I grabbed the locket, unsure of my attachment to it, but not wanting to lose it, either, and felt only cold metal. I felt sick to my stomach, smelling again the odors of stagnant seawater and rotting fish. I wanted to bolt from the room, to deny that this was happening, but I was stuck watching a scene from a horror film whose ending I could only guess.
“We are not as we seem, remember? Maybe it’s all connected.” My mother’s gaze didn’t waver as I struggled to say something glib, to make the memory of the voice go away, to pretend that I couldn’t see and smell things that weren’t there.
“What the hell is going on here?” my father demanded again.
My mother and I just stared at each other in mutual understanding, while my father looked on. It had always been that way with the three of us, and I wasn’t really surprised to see that nothing had changed in the intervening years.
She closed her eyes for a moment, then swallowed before walking toward my father. “Don’t say another word. This is beyond your understanding and your ability to see things that aren’t black-and-white. I will not have this argument again with you, so leave it be.”
My father looked at me for support or argument—I wasn’t sure which—but I could only turn away. I felt like a child again, unable to choose sides between two teams I loved equally.
Pulling her shoulders back and trying to look as regal as a person who was wearing less than a yard of flimsy material could, my mother said, “I’m leaving now so you can tell Melanie what you told me earlier and then discuss your plans for the garden. Melanie will be in charge of that, so you won’t need to deal with me at all. I’m sure we can all agree that’s for the best.” She started to leave, then turned back to my father, and I wondered if he’d heard her voice shake, too. “And I’ve told you before, don’t call me Ginny. My name is Ginnette.”
She took another donut and wrapped it in a napkin before making her grand exit through the saloon doors, trying to disguise her unsteady steps, the sound of her high-heeled slippers fading away as they tapped down the hall.
I stared after her for a long moment, wondering when it had happened that my mother had changed from stranger to ally.
I held up my hand, anticipating what my father planned to say. “Don’t say it because I don’t want to hear it. Let’s just agree to disagree so that we can discuss the garden.”
His gaze shifted to the locket around my neck and then back to my face. He looked wounded, but there was nothing I could do about that. Trying to get him to understand our ability to see things he couldn’t was a lot like trying to get permission to build a skyscraper in downtown Charleston. “Fine, if that’s the way you want it. But all this hocus-pocus . . .”
“Daddy,” I interrupted.
“Right.” He scooped up the photographs on the counter, then held out a chair for me and I sat at the Shaker table, another remnant I recognized from my house on Tradd Street. I made a mental note to have a little chat with Sophie. I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself after hearing that voice. It wasn’t something one easily forgot or pushed aside.
My father sat down next to me and began shuffling the pictures in his hand. He fixed me with a clear-eyed stare that I was still getting used to. I could smell his cologne, and I wondered how long it would be before I stopped expecting the odor of stale beer and sour whiskey that accompanied all of my childhood memories of him.
After a deep breath, he said, “They completed the forensics tests on the remains yesterday and they’re releasing the news to the press later today.”
I stiffened, my leg bouncing erratically under the table.
My dad continued. “The authorities will be in touch to make it official, but my buddy told me that I was allowed to tell you and your mother the results ahead of time as long as you kept it to yourselves.”
“Of course,” I said, my lips dry.
“They determined that the body was definitely that of a female of approximately five feet two inches tall. And that she was between twenty and twenty-four years old at the time of her death.”
I closed my eyes briefly, remembering the voice, knowing he was right. I managed to stay calm. “Anything else?”
He nodded, still flipping through the photographs. That was another thing I’d noticed since he’d been going to AA; his hands were always moving as if attempting to keep them so busy that they wouldn’t notice the absence of a bottle or glass clutched in them.
“You already know about the skull injury, but they also found some sort of genetic anomaly in the hip. He explained it in some kind of medical jargon, but it’s basically a joint issue that can be surgically taken care of today, but back then you would have just lived with a limp.”
I leaned forward. “A limp? Nobody in the Prioleau family has ever limped as far as I know—or had surgery to correct it. I can double-check that with Mother. And with Rebecca. She’s apparently done a lot of research into our family. Maybe she’s found something, too.”
He nodded, his hands still flipping through the photographs. “I’m hoping whoever it was is unrelated to you so this whole thing goes away quicker.”
I met his eyes but could only nod. He wouldn’t want to know that nothing would go away until my mother and I could make her go away. Or until I decided to leave the house on Legare to its ghosts.
I put my hands on his, stilling them. “Can I see the pictures?”
“Sure,” he said, sliding them over to me. “I remembered there were pictures of the garden taken when your grandmother lived here in the sixties and early seventies. I had a box of photos that I took from the house after your grandmother died, and I figured they might be in there.” He tapped the photo on top. “I was right. These pictures will be a great blueprint for me to use to restore the garden to the way it was.”
I began to sift through them, each photograph a memory of the best part of my childhood. There were shots of the herb parterre garden and the climbing Confederate jasmine that clung to the front gates, and the ornamental brick walkways edged with precise boxwoods whose scent always reminded me of home.
But there were pictures, too, of a much younger me sipping tea from real china cups on a wrought iron table, my grandmother sitting next to me on the bench and smiling into the camera. And I noticed how much the adult me now resembled her and it made me smile. I stopped before one photograph of me laughing in front of a statue my grandmother had bought in Italy—and that I had found uproariously funny because the little boy was naked. But the thing that caught my attention most was the diamond-and-sapphire necklace and earrings I wore. I’m sure they were worth a lot of money, but my grandmother never hesitated to let me wear them during one of our tea parties. I remembered, too, how Rebecca had asked me about them and how she’d seen my mother wearing them in a newspaper photo.
“You laughed a lot as a little girl.” His gaze searched mine.
I stared at the picture recalling the time before my mother left, of afternoons spent in my grandmother’s garden, and of early mornings whiled away tucked between my parents in their large bed while they shared the newspaper and drank coffee.
“Yes,” I said slowly. “I did.” I didn’t want to meet his eyes, afraid he’d see the little girl again—and compare her to me.
“It wasn’t such a bad childhood, was it? Despite—things?”
I raised my gaze to meet his, remembering, too, the traveling I’d done with my
father when I’d gone to live with him, of seeing the pyramids of Egypt, the Taj Mahal, the Eiffel Tower, and the Thames River. I’d liked traveling with him; I’d found it easier to forget my mother when we were in exotic places, and my father had always made it a point not to drink until he’d put me to sleep at night. In those dusty hot places, I could pretend that I was someone else.
“No, Daddy. It wasn’t all bad. I have good memories, too.”
His expression of relief made me want to cry, and I had to look away.
My dad pointed at one of the photos. “There must have been something wrong with the camera because every single one of these photographs has the same white spots on them. Never in the same place, but always there.”
I looked to where his finger pointed to a cluster of white balls of light flitting over my left shoulder. Slowly, I flipped through the remaining photographs, noticing the same light splotches on all of the pictures. I didn’t bother to point out to my father that the photographs had been taken by different cameras—some with a Polaroid, others with a 35 millimeter camera. I had a pretty good idea what had caused the blotches, but I wasn’t about to get into another argument with him.
I paused at the last photograph of my grandmother and me. We were in the garden at the side of the house where the beautiful stained-glass window was. I was smiling into the camera with the kind of cheesy smile that only young children can get away with, but my grandmother was facing the window, pointing at it. My gaze traveled to where she pointed and I paused, bringing the photograph closer to my face and wishing I’d worn my glasses.
It must have been about midday because the sun was shining full force on the window. But something about the way the sun hit the glass transformed it into an image I’d never seen before. I’d always marveled at how the stained-glass looked different inside than it did outside. I’d noticed the same thing in churches with large stained-glass windows. But this looked like an entirely different glass layer had been placed on the back of the window, created in such a way as to only show the image in a certain angle of light.
What was so astounding in this image was that it no longer even resembled the one on the inside glass. Instead of random lines and patterns, it appeared to be some kind of aerial impression of a place foreign to me, yet complete with shoreline, trees, and the unmistakable columns of a Greek Revival house. But superimposed over the left quadrant of the image and overlapping the shoreline, was an odd representation of an angel’s head with long, flowing hair and large wings that swept behind the head and came to a precise point. The figure was slightly tilted, so that the point of the wings swept over the water, but its tip was seemingly buried in the land.
I turned the photograph around to show my dad. “Did you notice this one?”
He reached into his pocket for his bifocals—apparently hidden from my mother, although upon my last calculation they were nearly the same age—and perched them on his nose.
“Now, then, isn’t that interesting? It’s a completely different image, isn’t it?”
“Most definitely. I wonder why.”
He handed the photograph back to me and snorted. “Those Prioleaus—always ones for puzzles. Your own mother made me solve a riddle to figure out her answer to my marriage proposal.”
“Which was yes,” I said, unable to stop my grin.
“Yeah, it was.” He rested his chin in his hand and stared at me, but I didn’t think he was seeing me at all.
“You’re right about the puzzles. There’s one on Grandmother Sarah’s tombstone that I can’t quite figure out, although to be honest I haven’t given it that much thought. Nothing like a mother reappearing in one’s life again to reorganize one’s life. Anyway, I don’t think Jack’s seen it yet but he needs to. He’s good at solving puzzles, but don’t tell him I said that.”
“Don’t tell me that you said what?”
My father and I turned in unison to the saloon doors that Jack was holding open to allow Sophie and Chad, their arms laden with what appeared to be fabric and decorator books, into the kitchen.
My father stood and took the pile from Sophie’s arms and placed them on the table before taking the ones from Jack’s free hand and doing the same. Chad’s armful slammed down on the counter and he looked at us apologetically.
“Dude,” he said, apparently to my dad, who fisted his right hand like Chad’s and pressed his knuckles against Chad’s.
“Dude,” my father repeated without a trace of sarcasm, “what’s with the entourage?”
“Can’t fit all Sophie’s stuff in her Beetle or on my Schwinn, so Jack offered to use his pickup truck.”
I raised my eyebrows as I slipped the photographs into my jacket pocket to study again later. “Jack has a pickup truck?”
Jack grinned. “I am a born-and-bred South Carolinian male who can shoot straight, treat his mama nice, and could once hold his liquor. I do believe it’s against the law in the great state of South Carolina for a guy like me not to own a pickup truck.” His grin widened as he looked at me, making the temperature in the room do funny things. “So, what did you not want me to know?”
“That you’re good at solving puzzles,” my dad said.
“That you’re annoying and intrusive,” I said at the same time.
Both men sent me a reproachful look before my dad said, “Melanie was telling me about how the Prioleaus have always been into puzzles. I believe my mother-in-law, Melanie’s grandmother, even had a room here at the house where she kept all sorts of puzzles and cipher books and that sort of thing. Anyway, Melanie mentioned the rhyme on her grandmother’s grave and how she hasn’t been able to make heads or tails of it.” He gave me a sidelong glance. “She mentioned you might be able to shed some light on it.”
With a deferential tone, Jack said, “I’d be more than happy to accompany Mellie to the cemetery to see if I can help. I have been known to solve a puzzle or two.”
“Melanie doesn’t like to go in cemeteries, Jack,” Sophie interjected.
I turned to Sophie, noticing her getup for the first time. “What are you wearing?” I asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.
She twirled for my inspection. “Isn’t it great? A student of mine is from Nepal and she gave me this sari thinking I might like it. A friend had given it to her and it didn’t suit her style.”
I could see why, but I didn’t mention it to Sophie. It was tie-dyed in hues not normally seen in the natural world with weird splashes of rhinestones that looked like someone had vomited them out and not bothered to clean up. Alone, it was an eyesore; mixed with a striped chenille turtleneck, paint-splattered sweats, rainbow-striped toe socks, and Birkenstocks, it was something from which nightmares are made.
“You look amazing, Soph,” Chad said with such a sparkle in his eyes that I almost had to look away. Then he glanced at me and winked, and I knew without a doubt that Chad didn’t care what Sophie looked like on the outside because to him she was the most beautiful woman in the world and nothing she wore could ever change that.
I caught Jack’s gaze and realized with a start that he was thinking the same thing, and I felt myself coloring. It wasn’t because he knew my thoughts or even that he might have caught a wistfulness in my eyes; it was because despite a brash exterior and irreverent quips, Jack Trenholm knew what true love was and could recognize it in other people. Even though I’d come to learn how deeply he’d loved his late fiancée, his behavior usually made it very easy to forget that he had any depth of feeling. I realized I’d felt much better when I thought of him as simply shallow and crass.
I cleared my throat. “You’re right, Sophie. I don’t like cemeteries. But if Jack’s not too afraid, he can go by himself.”
“It’s not being in the cemetery alone that frightens me; it’s the possibility that Mellie might get me into a dark corner, so it might be better if I do go alone.” He flashed a smile at me, making me wonder exactly what all I’d said and done the night I was drunk. In a serious tone, he said
, “I’ll bring my camera and snap a few pictures. That way we can blow them up and separate the words and play with them a bit to see if there might be a hidden meaning in it.”
The thought to do that had never occurred to me, and I looked at Jack with grudging admiration.
Eager to change the subject, I walked over to the books that Sophie and Chad had brought in. “What are all these?”
“Fabric swatches and paint samples,” explained Sophie. “All of the colors have already been approved by the Board of Architectural Review. I know they can only control the exterior colors, but I know that you, under my expert tutelage, will want to do a thorough restoration and use only those colors that might have been used when the house was first built.”
I flipped through several cardboard strips of paint chips, surprised to find that I actually liked the jewel-like hues of Persian blue and mustardy yellows—until I noticed that written on the back of each card were what looked like recipes using things like iron oxide, ocher, milk, and what appeared to be actual berries.
“What’s this?” I asked, holding up a paint chip of a pale green and flipping it over. “You don’t expect us to actually make the paint, right?” I smiled, to let her know that I was in on the joke.
She looked offended. “Of course. Otherwise it wouldn’t be historically accurate, would it?”
I blinked several times, waiting for her to smile to let me know she wasn’t serious. When she continued with a straight face, I slowly put down the paint chip. “I’ll, um, go over these with my mother and let you know.” I knew there had to be at least one paint company that made historically accurate colors in a good old-fashioned factory and that didn’t involve me actually scraping rust from pipes or collecting berries in a field somewhere.
Jack picked up another paint sample and studied it for a moment. “I’m glad you’re changing the color scheme. Every time I walk into the foyer, I want to bark like a circus seal.”
“Don’t let me stop you,” I said, my voice trailing away. A movement out the kitchen window caught my attention, and I turned my gaze to the street, where I spotted Rebecca’s little red Audi convertible pulling up to the curb. At about the same time, I heard my mother’s footsteps approaching from the hallway.