by Karen White
I pointed down the road. “She’s there. She went to the cemetery.” I looked back at Rebecca. Her shivering had slowed with the car’s heater blowing full force, and she’d managed to prop herself against the side door. Her color hadn’t improved but at least she was still conscious.
“Yes,” she managed from a dry mouth. “The cemetery. I saw Ginnette there. In a dream. I didn’t know what it meant, until now.” Lightning shot across the sky, making her skin and eyes look jaundiced. “She’s—not alone.”
Jack didn’t wait to be persuaded. He pushed down hard on the gas pedal, and we lurched forward, but I wasn’t paying any attention to the sound of rocks grating against the metal of my car. All I could think about was that my mother was in trouble, and she needed me.
I remembered the box in my hand again, and looked down at it. “Is Rose’s locket in here?” I turned to face Rebecca in the backseat. “Is that what you were looking for?”
Rebecca groaned as Jack hit a pothole, jarring her injured leg off the seat. I helped her right herself, struggling against the jolting car. She shook her head. “I wasn’t sure what was in there. I just knew that the figurehead in the window pointed to the house. And the code in the window and on the gravestone, about the sins hidden in the fireplace bricks, it had to be in the house.”
I flicked open the latch on the box, then lifted the lid, pulling it back to allow the feeble light to show me what was inside. Blinking up at me was an emerald-cut ruby cocktail ring, and a diamond butterfly hairpin—both items I remembered from the insurance claim from the Ida Belle. They’d been lost along with the sapphire-and-diamond necklace and chandelier earrings that were now in my mother’s possession.
I held the box up to show Rebecca. “You did all of this for the jewelry? If you’d just told me, I would have given it to you.”
She shook her head, wincing in pain as she did so. “I wasn’t looking for hidden treasure, if that’s what you mean. I wanted—my heritage. There’s an oil painting in my mother’s house of my great-great-grandmother—Alice and Nora’s grandmother. In it, she’s wearing the sapphire-and-diamond necklace and earrings. When I saw your mother wearing them on television, I needed to find out how you came into possession of them. I thought”—she took a deep breath, as if riding a tide of pain—“I thought you knew, that you were hiding the truth deliberately.”
I brought the box back to my lap and shook my head. Then, looking down at it again, I noticed a tarnished silver baby rattle, nestled amid the jewelry. I held it up to my face and rubbed the handle with my thumb, exposing a monogram: NSC. I didn’t know what Nora Crandall’s middle initial was, but I would bet everything I owned that it started with the letter S.
I closed my eyes for a moment, realizing that Jack’s theories about my ancestors were at least partially correct. I opened my eyes and spotted one more thing at the bottom of the box, a yellowed piece of paper that looked as if it had been torn out of a book.
Using my short and torn fingernails, I worked at the edge of the paper to release it from its snug fit, managing to pull it off the bottom of the box without tearing it. Carefully, I unfolded it once, then turned on the overhead light. It was written in the same handwriting as the journal, and I realized with a start that that’s where it had probably come from, but the page had been removed undetected. Moving it closer to the light, I began to read out loud:
It is now two days past the great earthquake that struck Charleston. No one knew for certain what it was at first, and Rose and I thought that a bombardment had started again from the dreaded Yankees that poor Father always talked about. But Father has been gone now for almost a year, and I am glad that he is not here to witness my shame.
I am putting this all down on paper, to record the truth, to ensure that future generations will not be led into thinking ill of me. The truth always has a way of coming out, and this is my way of recording events so that they be known in their entirety. Later, when I have figured out everything, I will leave a trail to this place to be discovered in due course.
Everyone is calling the earthquake a disaster, and there are few who would disagree. Yet I call it a fortuitous event; an event that allowed me the chance to right a wrong, and to hide my sins.
On the morning of August 31, Charles was scheduled to call on Rose and to take her driving. We have been putting off telling her the truth about us, knowing how miserable Rose would make our lives if she knew. For that reason alone, we delayed letting our feelings be known, biding our time until the right opportunity presented itself.
It was a hot summer day, so I had given the servants the day off, knowing Rose and I would need nothing except for our dinner, which Cook promised to return to prepare later that day.
Earlier that morning, Rose cornered me in my sitting room, insisting that we play a trick on Charles. I didn’t want to, knowing that it could only lead to disaster, but Rose was insistent in the only way she knows how, like a spider ready to bite. I agreed, and was surprised when Rose made me swap lockets with her to complete the deception. She then settled herself on the settee in the drawing room until Charles called, whereupon Rose began to build her web.
I stood outside the door, listening, and realized shortly afterward that Rose had suspected all along, and was only waiting for Charles to admit it and embarrass himself. And then go after me.
I could not listen anymore and escaped up the back servants’ stairs, collapsing into tears of despair at the top. Charles is my one true love, and of all the things I have given up for Rose, he could not be one of them.
I heard them arguing, and then the front door slammed and I waited, knowing she was going to look for me, and dreading the confrontation that would follow. I huddled where I was, hoping against all hope that she would not find me in the servants’ wing. But like all evil, it finds what it seeks.
Despite her small stature and deformity, she has an almost inhuman strength. She hauled me up by the elbow and slapped me, drawing blood from my lips. I told her that I was sorry, that we had never meant it to happen, but then she turned the tables and began accusing me of stealing everything she had ever had—her father’s affections, her friends, even the clothes on my back and the food that I ate. She had me pressed against the stairwell wall, and that is where I was when she spotted the R locket she had given me to wear. Her face contorted into an expression of pure hatred, and she accused me of wanting not only what she had, but to be her. And she was going to tell the world that I was not a Prioleau at all, that I had been found on a beach when I was a baby and adopted by my father as a companion for her. She told me about the jewelry and the baby rattle that was found with me, which she now kept in a box in her dressing table because it was her insurance if she ever needed to keep me silent, her payment for having been forced to share everything with me since she was a girl.
I told her it was all lies, and that I would gladly relinquish everything if she would just let me leave with Charles. Her anger consumed her at my ready answer, and she grasped for the locket around my neck and pulled. It was clear to me that her intention was to propel me down the stairs. But instead, the unthinkable happened. The chain snapped in her grasp and she fell backward down the stairs, somersaulting until she reached the floor below, her head bent at an unnatural angle.
I ran from the house, and caught up with Charles and brought him back to the house, where I confessed everything to him, including the fact that I was not a distant cousin as I had always been led to believe. It was us together who decided what we would do, and we promised to each other that we would never regret any of our actions.
We placed Rose’s body in a trunk we found in the attic and loaded it into Charles’ carriage and brought it to Belle Meade. It was my idea to use the Rose as her coffin. We loaded the trunk onto the sailboat, then I took it out to deep water where we scuttled it. Charles followed me in a rowboat, and took me back to shore, where we looked back across the smooth ocean to where our sins lay hidden within the waves.
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And then the earthquake came, and it was such an easy matter to claim that I was Rose and that Meredith had perished. With all of the destruction and chaos, nobody seemed to notice anything different than they might have otherwise. There were no other heirs, yet if Rose had known the truth of my origins, I was afraid others might as well and I would lose everything that I loved. Everything that my adopted father had loved and had wished for me to have.
I plan to go away for a time, so that people will forget the differences between Rose and Meredith, and come to accept that I am Rose. If I’m gone for long enough, I can claim that I sought treatment for my affliction and can now walk unassisted.
Charles will wait for me, and when I return, we will be married and we can put the past behind us. I can only pray that Rose has forgiven me. But forgiveness never came easily for her, and I can only hope that her vengeance cannot reach beyond the grave.
My one regret is that we sent her to her eternal rest wearing my locket, and I in possession of hers. I found it at the bottom of the stairs with the broken chain where she’d dropped it, and I had a horrible premonition that she would want it back. Although she claimed everything I owned was rightfully hers, she took great pride in her locket. I suppose it is because it was given to her by her father, who showed her little affection, but regardless it is hers. And I have no doubt that if she is able, she will come back for it.
I looked up, and saw that we’d reached the clearing my mother had spoken about. We’d climbed to higher ground, so there was no standing water, and tall pines sheltered the twenty or so graves within the boundary of a peeling wrought iron fence. Through the filter of the rain, I saw the shadowy ghosts of Prioleaus long since gone, but their attention wasn’t focused on me.
I shoved the page back into the box and slammed it closed. “I know what she wants,” I said, my mind suddenly clear, the remaining puzzle pieces suddenly snapping into place.
“What who wants?” Jack looked at me as if I were hallucinating.
“Rose,” I said as I opened my door. “Pop open the trunk.” I turned to the backseat to check on Rebecca. Her skin shone with a cold sweat, but her eyes were open and regarding me quietly.
With a quick nod, she said, “Be careful.”
I ran to the back of the car and retrieved the shovel that I kept in my trunk for times when I needed to put up my own signage for open houses. I ignored the look on Jack’s face as I passed him with my shovel.
“Mother!” I called, my words stolen by the wind. But it didn’t matter because I’d already seen her; I’d followed the ghosts of the ancient Prioleaus to where my mother knelt in front of a small marker in the corner, digging into the moist earth with her bare hands. I ran toward her. “Mother,” I called again, and this time she looked at me.
She was soaked through and shivering, her lips tinged with blue. I knelt beside her and took off my sodden sweater, then threw it over her shoulders thinking it had to be better than nothing. “What are you doing?”
We both turned to look at the marker: MEREDITH PRIOLEAU. B. 1870 D. 1886. But this marker, unlike the memorial in St. Philip’s cemetery with the heart locket and the initial R, had no further inscription. Meredith had assumed, correctly as it appeared, that anyone who’d made it this far would have figured it all out by now.
Ginnette placed a cold and trembling hand on mine. “We must hurry. She’s here. She’s here now, and her anger is feeding her hatred.” Her troubled gaze met mine. “She doesn’t want to go, not while we’re still living.”
I stood and placed a hand on her shoulder and helped her stand. “Step back.” She saw the shovel I held and took a step backward. “You should go to the car,” I said. “The heater’s on and it will get you out of this freezing rain.”
She shook her head, wet strands of her hair that had fallen from her chignon whipping her cheeks. “No. We can only do this together.” She suddenly pitched forward as if unseen hands had pushed her, and I managed to break her fall before she hit the ground. “Hurry, Mellie. Please.”
While she huddled nearby, I lifted the shovel, but stopped midstrike, surprised to feel resistance. I turned, and saw Jack with his hand on the handle. “Let me do this. Stay with your mother.”
I stared at him for a moment as the rain cascaded down his face and plastered his shirt to his chest. I started to argue that this was my battle and he’d already opted out, but he leaned forward and kissed me hard on the mouth, surprising me into making me let go of the shovel. He sent me a dark gaze before driving the shovel into the wet and weeping earth.
I knelt by my mother and put my arm around her, holding her close. Unseen hands pulled at our hair as the wind and another unknown force pushed at our backs. I struck out a hand, angry that she wouldn’t show herself. “Stop it!” I screamed to the pelting rain.
Ginnette grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “Focus, Melanie. I need you to focus. I can’t do this without you and she knows it.” She closed her eyes tightly, and I saw how rivulets of water clustered on the tips of her eyelashes before spilling over. “We are stronger than you,” she said loudly, then said it again, squeezing my hand.
“We are stronger than you,” we said in unison as Jack dug into the mud, unearthing a hole that quickly filled with water. I felt my mother’s warmth and her strength at the place our hands were joined, noting that the torturing hands had gone. A sense of triumph filled me, and I squeezed my mother’s hand tighter as a sign of victory while I turned to her with a smile.
But her face was drawn and ashen, and she was looking past me to where Jack had stopped digging. “No, Mellie, not yet. Don’t let your guard down. She’s waiting!”
Jack shouted, and I turned from my mother in time to see him hold up what appeared to be a square ivory box. I watched as he held it up so the rain could rinse off the dirt, then pried open the lid. He dug his fingers inside and held up the locket, the broken chain dangling between his fingers.
Dropping my mother’s hand, I reached for it.
“Mellie, give me your hand!” I could barely hear my mother’s voice as she shouted over the renewed force of the wind.
As I turned I heard Jack call out a warning and from the corner of my eye, I saw the flash of light hurtle down from the sky, striking the earth in front of me. I watched in horror as Jack and my mother were knocked from their feet, then realized that I was already on the ground, my mouth tasting dirt and burnt ions. A warm trickle oozed down my forehead and right before I closed my eyes, I realized that I must have hit my head on a stone.
I lay on my back as the rain poured down, but it wasn’t touching me. I felt dry, and warm, as if I’d been pulled in from the storm and wrapped in a soft blanket, and I heard my grandmother nearby, telling me to get up. Groggily, I turned my head, a blood-searing scream in my ears, and I saw Rose. Her skin was white and waterlogged from being on the bottom of the ocean floor for so long, her eye sockets empty but projecting rage. Small fiddler crabs scuttled in and out of her mouth and empty eyes, scavenging for food.
The screaming evaporated into a high-pitched whine, and was replaced by her voice, the same terrible voice I’d heard in the kitchen. She left you, Melanie, because she never loved you. She is jealous because you are stronger. Go to sleep, Melanie, and let me take care of her. Let me punish her for what she did to you.
I turned my face from the stench of rotting sea creatures, toward the sound of my grandmother’s voice calling my name. And then I heard my mother’s voice, edging its way out from my past. Sometimes we have to do the right thing even if it means letting go of the one thing we love most in the world. Closing my eyes and blocking out the sounds of all the voices, I searched for the dark quiet inside of me, and remembered my mother’s words. And after more than thirty years, I understood. Finally, I understood.
I stuck my fingers into the earth, trying to claw my way from the hideous apparition, but I couldn’t move. I scratched harder, trying to crawl away, screaming and screaming as her icy breath
brushed the nape of my neck. A door appeared in the darkness, with fingers of light escaping around the edges like a halo, and I struggled to a stand, suddenly certain that if I reached the door, the evil I felt at my back would go away, and I wouldn’t need to be afraid anymore.
“Mellie!” somebody called in the darkness, but I wasn’t sure who.
I was moving in slow motion, trying to reach the door. I kept my gaze focused ahead of me, knowing that if I turned I’d see Rose again and that if I had to look in her eyes, I would die. I scrambled toward the door, but instead of moving faster, I was swimming in a sea of black fear, roiling up against my skin like thick crude oil, the smell hot and rancid and stinking of rotting fish.
“Mellie!” I recognized my mother’s voice this time. In my fear and need to escape, I’d forgotten she was there; I’d forgotten what she’d told me about fear and strength and our need to fight together.
I stopped struggling, staring at the door that seemed no closer and panting as if I’d run for miles.
“Mellie,” my mother’s voice called again, but not as strong this time. Almost, I thought, as if she’d given up.
The evil thing moved behind me again, telling me to go to the door. To open it where I’d find safety. But I felt my mother’s presence, too, and it was stronger, and sweeter, and full of truth, and I stopped struggling, and I remembered her telling me not to listen to the voice. With one last look at the door and its beaming light, I turned around ready to face the encroaching darkness that nipped at my heels.