by Lyla Payne
Unlike some people.
I eye Aunt Karen.
“Of course. Sorry we’re late. The ghost tour ran long.”
“More like you harangued the poor guide afterward with your silly debates about long-dead issues and people. I know you, my dear.”
“Let them inside, Karen, for heaven’s sake.” My uncle Wally’s trombone of a voice booms into the foyer, careening off the expensive but cracked tile and rattling the crystals in the giant chandelier. He appears a second later, the arrival of his only child one of the only things known to man that will stir his generous proportions from his favorite recliner. “Hello, my darling girls. How was your night on the town?”
“I got Amelia drunk,” I announce, letting him fold me into a giant hug. It feels like a bear is clutching me to its chest and I relax against him for a moment. There have been so few men in my life that made me feel safe.
“That is not funny, Graciela Anne Harper. You know she’s with child.”
“Anyone with eyes knows she’s with child, Aunt Karen. I was joking.” I give her a bright smile. “I did get myself drunk, but it’s mostly worn off.”
She frowns again, creasing deep, practiced lines around her lips. “Well, come on inside. We’ve got some midnight snacks for you in the kitchen, and we’d like to talk to you, Amelia.”
My cousin’s shoulders slump forward, and I know she was hoping—like I was—that we’d be able to beg off the conversation tonight and face it with fresh spirits in the morning.
The thought makes me turn, checking for the good doctor. He’s bent over, inspecting the way some of the fireplace bricks have settled unevenly over time. He seems utterly fascinated by anything and everything, and the thought pops into my head that he’s only ever been heard in Dueler’s Alley and in the Thomas Rose House in town. Has he not been anywhere else in two hundred years? If he’s intent on following me all the way home and demanding assistance in some marginally legal, possibly dangerous resolution to his life’s work, maybe I should try to deter him.
Heron Creek can’t possibly be the vacation he’s been dreaming of all this time.
“Graciela, why are you staring at the fireplace? Move along.”
Aunt Karen prods me through the dark hallway filled with worthless antiques into the brightly lit eat-in kitchen. It’s not part of the original structure but an add-on from some point in the intervening centuries, and the space gleams with incongruous stainless steel and granite, like some sort of massive snake curled up in here all shiny and new, its old skin piled up to form the rest of the house.
The table is set with pimento cheese spread, pickles, crackers, vegetables and dip, a pitcher of sweet tea, and another of coffee that’s most definitely decaf. Amelia drops into a chair, her face blank and a little pale. I’ve never been pregnant, so it just now occurs to me that walking all that way tonight might have been rough on her feet, because I am an asshole. She stares mutely ahead as her mother putters, making her a plateful, piling on enough food for Uganda to have a midnight snack. She sets it in front of her daughter as I slide onto the chair across the table and put a few crackers and a knifeful of pimento cheese on my plate.
Sweet tea is one of the few Southern things that never appealed to me, but there is absolutely no point in drinking coffee without caffeine. It breaks one of my life rules—if it doesn’t have caffeine or alcohol, it’s not worth drinking. Aunt Karen doesn’t offer me any beverage alternatives, so I get up and fill a glass of water from the filtered tap before sitting back down. She shoots a few urging glances with Uncle Wally, who brought his laptop to the table, probably so he can ignore said pointed looks. I send her a few mental messages of my own, mainly to take a hard look at her worn-down daughter and let the lecture wait until morning.
She doesn’t take the hint from either of us, not that there was ever a snowball’s chance in hell that she would.
“Amelia, your father and I want you to move home.”
And there it is, a blunt-ass, ugly rock sitting in the middle of the table.
“Mother, is there any chance you can let me sleep on this conversation and come up with a polite response in the morning?” She uses both palms to rub her cheeks. “I’m not in any frame of mind to discuss this right now, but I hear you and I will consider it.”
I know she must have already considered it. She’s done nothing but stew in her own brain juices for weeks.
“This pimento spread is great,” I say around a mouthful, hoping to distract my aunt, if only for a moment.
Uncle Wally shakes his head, a slight smile on his lips at my garbled speech. Aunt Karen barely spares me a glance. It’s hard for her to, with her eagle talons fastened so tightly on to Millie at the moment. “We also wanted to know if you’ve spoken to the Middletons about the … about your pregnancy.”
Amelia’s head snaps up, pinpoints of bright red dotting the apples of her cheeks. My heart stammers to a stop against my rib cage, a painful tumble that doesn’t let me breathe until it starts beating normally again. The Middletons.
“No. Why would I?” she asks, the words drenched in denial. In righteous indignation.
“They’ve written you a letter. I wasn’t sure if you were in touch.”
Why hadn’t it occurred to me that Jake’s family would be interested in the baby? In being a part of his life? I don’t know much about them, but based on the monster of a son they raised, I’m inclined to think the worst. The horror on my cousin’s face confirms my assumption.
While this issue never flitted through my overcrowded mind, I’m surprised it hasn’t already lodged in hers. Amelia’s a planner. An overthinker, overpacker, overorderer. This is an event that surely was inevitable to her.
Thoughts of Mrs. LaBadie, about her insinuation that the ancient voodoo curse could use any vessel, any person, to accomplish the relentless pursuit of its goal—to destroy Amelia’s baby—ring in my ears until whatever my aunt is saying disappears completely. The old witch had insisted that even she was merely a tool of the conjure woman who had lived on the plantation owned by Anne Bonny’s second husband. The man despised her and her son with Calico Jack Rackham so much that he insisted their stronger line never outlive his own. Even though Anne sent the boy away and ripped out her own heart, it hadn’t been enough to placate him.
“They sent me a letter?” Amelia sounds confused, as though English is no longer her native tongue. Her gaze doesn’t lift to her mother’s face, instead staying trained on her fingers as they toy with the gaudy cheese spreader. “What does it say?”
“It’s your letter, kiddo,” Uncle Wally grunts, casting a glance toward his wife that suggests they’ve had this conversation previously. “We didn’t read it, but I think you should be prepared for the fact that they’re going to want visitation.”
“Visitation,” Millie repeats.
“We’ll help you in whatever way we can, of course. But with their resources … it’s probably best if you try to work it out with them without involving the courts.” He grimaces, as though admitting that they don’t have the money to take on the Middletons in court physically pains him, but there are few families in the entire country who do.
“Okay.”
A strange, heavy silence descends on the kitchen. It closes my throat and I drop the last of my crackers back on the plate, struggling to chew the one already in my mouth. The lost expression on Millie’s face breaks my heart and I want to rip up that letter, tell my aunt and uncle to give her some damn space, and take her home to our grandparents’ house on the river as though it can make all of this go away.
The truth is that Heron Creek doesn’t have the magic it did when we were children. It’s just a place, one I love, but it’s not capable of shrouding any of us from the troubles that follow us back from the outside world. It didn’t mend my anger and insecurity over my broken engagement. Will didn’t wait for me. Grams and Gramps couldn’t live forever there.
I glance at the hovering, almost-see-through
ghost slumped on a stool at the granite island, looking totally anachronistic in his eighteenth-century clothes, and know the town limits aren’t going to keep him out, either.
“I’m going to stay in Heron Creek with Grace,” Amelia announces, her voice thin but unwavering as she meets her mother’s gaze, then her father’s. “I might change my mind after the baby comes, depending on what I work out with Jake’s family—” She chokes on his name, takes a moment to compose herself. “But I’m more comfortable there.”
Aunt Karen opens her mouth, no doubt to unleash a litany of protests, but stops when my uncle puts one of his beefy hands over hers and gives it a squeeze. It’s one of the few times in my life I’ve ever seen her actually listen to one of his suggestions. I’m so glad, because I’m afraid Millie might fall to pieces if her mother goes into one of her tirades about me and the backwater town where her parents decided to settle. Maybe she sees how near her daughter is to that edge, too, and that’s why she holds her tongue. It would be a miracle.
When she presses her lips into a thin line, draws several breaths in and out through her beaklike nose, and then gives a curt nod, it appears I’ll have to reevaluate my official stance on miracles.
And maybe the South will rise again, Yankees be damned.
“Your old room is made up for you. Why don’t you get some sleep,” she says, surprising us all.
The relief that washes over Millie is palpable, releasing tension in her limbs and in the air with almost-audible pops. She stands up, shooting her mother a grateful smile before telling us all good night and disappearing from the kitchen. I’m keen to beat a path right on her heels because I’m tired, and also because I have no desire to spend time alone with my aunt.
Of course, she has other ideas.
Her hand is as cold as a dead fish when it covers mine. “She’s not well, Graciela.”
I meet her hard green gaze, so like her daughter’s. Like my mother’s, like mine. Like Anne Bonny’s. Generations of women intent on getting their own way.
“I know that, Aunt Karen. I’m not blind, and I promise you that even though my own personal philosophy on dealing with issues is more of the ignore it-and-hope-it-goes-away variety, I’ve been encouraging her to talk about it. If not with me or you, with someone.”
“And?” Her tone suggests she doesn’t think I’m doing enough. Am not good enough, not up to handling this.
The fact that I’ve had the same insecure thoughts doesn’t escape me.
“And she’s promised to think about it. She’s not in denial. She’s not unaware that she’s depressed right now or that she needs to figure things out before the baby is born.” I shake my head, letting her see my own worry and frustration. “She wants more time, and honestly, I don’t think that’s a crazy request. It’s only been a couple of months.”
“Yes, well, she only has a couple more months before that child is going to be dependent on her, and she’s going to need all her wits to deal with Jake’s family.” Her lips twist. “I don’t see a reason to keep them from seeing their grandchild, honestly.”
You mean you don’t see a reason to turn your back on their money.
Spitefulness fills me, black and greasy. It’s gross and awful and not the way that I want to feel toward some of what little family I have left in the world. Aunt Karen just makes it so damn hard to be a nice person.
“I don’t know that much about them. I trust Millie to do the right thing, and I think you should, too.”
She grimaces at my nickname for my cousin, one that stuck mostly because of how much she hates it.
Uncle Wally grunts his agreement, a tired smile on his lips that infects his eyes and cheeks and all the wrinkles that go deep into his jowls. “You go get some sleep, too, Graciela. We’ll clean up.”
He means Aunt Karen will clean up, but I’m too anxious to go check on Amelia to care that she’ll bring up the way I don’t help around the house in conversations for at least another two years. She’s appalled that Millie and I have kept Gramps’ housekeeper on even though they’re paying for it—Uncle Wally said it’s fine—but neither of them know it’s because poor Laura lost her full-time job at the water-treatment plant over at the Naval base last year and her fifth grandchild was born with some serious developmental delays. It may only be fifty bucks a week, but she needs it more than the Coopers.
“Thanks, Uncle Wally.” I plant a kiss on his cheek and head upstairs. “Good night.”
I know that Aunt Karen has made the guest room up for me, but I forgo the clean, crisp, lonely sheets to sneak down the dark hallway toward Amelia’s old room instead. This house is almost as familiar to me as my grandparents’. Even though Aunt Karen allowed Millie to spend the summer upriver in Heron Creek, there were often duties—important or deemed important—that called her back here under her mother’s roof. She always begged me to come along. I’d never liked it, but I did love Charleston. And used every opportunity to get under my aunt’s skin for fun.
It’s times like these that I wonder how much anything has really changed. Maybe we can go back to being those girls, carefree, with big, trusting eyes turned toward the future.
We can’t un-know about the curse, though. If it’s real or if it’s not … it’s in our blood now.
The ghost of Dr. Joseph Ladd sits on the floor in the hallway, his legs crossed Indian style. He’s not moping like the guy in my bedroom back home—Henry Woodward—but allowing me the space to talk to Amelia without him there. It’s very considerate, a quality that is not, in my experience, to be taken for granted among the haunting inclined.
It softens my heart toward him further, and I squeeze my eyes shut. Maybe if I can help people like him, like Anne, this gift—or whatever I’m going to call it—could be something that brings purpose to my life.
It’s almost scary to think that, to decide to embrace it, to want it. Because what if I do and they go away? What am I then, but the same not-special, borderline-alcoholic mess that arrived in Heron Creek this past June?
When I open my eyes, the doctor’s handsome face looks older somehow. His eyes have a knowing glint to them, as though he’s read my mind, and as unsettled as that idea causes my gut to feel, it’s sort of okay. If someone has to know about my pathetic inner monologue, at least it’s someone who can’t talk.
“I’ll try to help you, okay?” His eyes pop open at my statement, jaw falling a little slack. I guess he had been following me on the hope that he hadn’t imagined our little moment in the alley. “I can see you. You can’t talk to me, as you’ve figured out, but I’ve got some practice figuring out your … type, anyway.”
He nods, a smile spreading across his face that doesn’t quite look convinced. There’s a desperation clinging to him like a heavy winter cloak, dusting his hair and swirling about his ankles. It’s different than Anne’s—less purposeful, less angry, more exhausted—but just as potent.
Just as sad.
“We’ll work on it, okay? Just not tonight.”
He nods again, eyes trailing to the closed door at my back. The Whistling Doctor will be my first ghost, if he stays this way, to actually give a shit about how his demands on my time affect my life. That will be nice for a change, and it’s making me less begrudging about offering to help him with whatever’s got him stuck here.
That settled, I nudge open the door. The room is dark, and the smell of old, drying potpourri spills out into the hallway before I close the door behind me. Millie’s wrenched open a window, even though the Coopers always, always have the air-conditioning on full blast, even on nights like this when summer finally gives us a break. She doesn’t move at the sound of my feet or the thud of my overnight bag on the floor in the bathroom. There’s no way she fell asleep that fast, not with everything on her mind. There are two types of responses to depression. Me, I sleep all the time. Can’t wait to get back in bed, live for crawling between the sheets and shutting out the world in favor of dreams. Amelia’s the other sort. The kind
that goes manic.
I brush my teeth and tug my hair out of its sloppy ponytail, not bothering with my hopeless tangles. My phone buzzes on the counter and I glance down, my heart jumping at the sight of Beau’s handsome face on the screen. I sweep it up, unable to stop my smile, and press accept.
“Hey, handsome.”
“Hey, yourself,” he replies, and the smile in his voice makes my toes tingle. “How are you?”
“Good.”
“Why are you whispering?”
“Amelia and I drove down to Charleston for dinner and a ghost tour, and we’re staying the night at her parents’ house.” He grunts, sounding surprised. “I know, but Aunt Karen has been bugging her to visit and she wanted backup. It’s a good thing, too.”
“Why, what happened?” Concern finds its way through the phone and for some reason, the fact that Beau’s worried about Millie with all he’s got going on makes me want to cry.
“Stuff with her in-laws. I’ll tell you all about it next time I see you.” I pause, not wanting to let him go just yet. Wanting to make his night better because he called me. “I’ll tell you about my new ghost then, too.”
He groans, but sounds amused. “You know, maybe you should put ghost tours on the back burner for a while.”
I snicker, thinking of Dr. Ladd and how excited he became when I saw him. “I’ll take it under consideration, although I think this guy is glad I went.”
“Wait, now I’ve got two men competing with me for your attention?”
“You offer me a few things they don’t,” I tease. “And you’re warmer.”
“I wish you were here right now. I’d remind you just what those things are,” he growls, his voice wrapping around me and sending shocks down my spine.
I shiver, biting my lower lip until my body lets my brain take control again. “I wish I was there right now, too.”