The House on Tradd Street

by Karen White

  “Yes,” I said. “Sometimes they do.”

  “Like that guy in there.”

  I nodded, then looked away toward the house again and knew I couldn’t put it off any longer. “Emily loved you, Jack. She never stopped.” I listened at his sharp intake of breath but couldn’t bring myself to look at him.

  “You’ve . . . seen her?”

  “A few times, always around you. That’s how I figured out at first that it wasn’t Louisa. She . . . she wanted me to tell you that she only left because she loved you. And that she loves you still.”

  I watched as he swallowed and turned away. “Did she tell you why?”

  “No. I found that out on my own. When your mother told me that Emily had moved north to New York, I had a suspicion. So I made a few phone calls.”

  He faced me, his eyes meeting mine, and his face looked like the ones you see on TV of survivors interviewed following some unforeseeable calamity.

  “The Mayo Clinic is in Rochester, New York.” I stopped for a moment to let that sink in, but his face remained impassive. “I found out from her boss at the paper that Emily had a cousin who lived near Rochester, and that’s where Emily went after she left Charleston.” I was quiet for a moment. “Her cousin told me that Emily had lymphoma, Jack. By the time her doctors here discovered it, it had already spread inside of her. She went to the Mayo Clinic to see if she could participate in a few clinical trials or investigational treatments.” I reached for his hand and felt how cold it was. “There was nothing they could do for her. I’m pretty sure after her original diagnosis she knew she wasn’t going to make it, which is why she left you so badly. She didn’t want you to suffer, so she tried to make you hate her.” I fought back my own sob as I thought of my mother and how I’d never been able to get over losing her. “Hate’s a lot easier to get over than love.”

  He kept his gaze focused on the windshield, a vacant stare seeing something I couldn’t. “I did my own research and found out about the cousin in Rochester. That was about the week after she left when I was still so angry. And then I realized that I didn’t want to know where she was. She didn’t want me anymore, so it didn’t make any difference whether she was here in Charleston or someplace else. There was only so much humiliation I could take. It just didn’t occur to me that she could be . . .” He squeezed the steering wheel so tightly that it made his knuckles turn white, and then he let his hands drop to his sides. “Do you know where she’s buried?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t. But I could find out if you like.”

  “Maybe later.” Jack sat absolutely still, as if by moving he would shatter into tiny pieces. I knew that feeling, so I did the only thing I could—knew it because it was the one thing I missed the most after my mother left. I reached for him and held him in my arms as his body shook with unshed tears. I couldn’t take the pain away, but maybe in the sharing of it, I could at least help him begin to heal.

  CHAPTER 21

  I left Jack in the car, unsure what he would do next but knowing he wanted to be alone. He’d brought my purse to me at the hospital, so I dug to the bottom for my house keys, then stood in front of the door for a full five minutes before finding the courage to unlock it and step inside.

  The acrid smell from the electrical fire hung heavy in the air, soot and dust covering the flat surfaces like an explosion of ash. Footprints had beaten paths through the grit on the floor, calling to mind the footprints of history that had marched across this same floor, and the thought made me smile. It wasn’t that long ago that I would have only seen the dirt and the expense involved in hiring extra people to help Mrs. Houlihan in the cleanup. I frowned, realizing that I still needed to do that, but that the money would most likely have to come from my own pocket for now.

  I stood in the middle of the foyer and looked up the graceful stairway to the large chandelier hanging above the two stories. “I’m glad you’re all right,” I said quietly to the house, feeling something thick and heavy in the pit of my stomach as it dawned on me how very close I’d come to losing all of it.

  “Me, too,” said Jack from behind, and I whirled to face him. “I’m glad you’re all right,” he repeated.

  The color had returned to his face and a little of the sparkle in his eyes, too. I smiled tentatively at him. “I haven’t had a chance to thank you for last night.”

  “I get that a lot,” he said, the old familiar grin splitting his face.

  I punched him gently on his shoulder. “For saving my life,” I said. “Thank you.”

  “I’m glad I could help.” His face sobered as he narrowed his gaze, making me want to step back from the intensity of his eyes. “But I need to thank you, too. In a way, you’ve saved my life, too.” He paused, his eyes seeming to darken as he peered at me. “I’ve always listened to family members of missing people talk about how not knowing is almost worse than knowing the truth, and I never believed them. I do now.” He rubbed his hands over his face, bristling the hair around his forehead, giving him a look of vulnerability that I’d never seen before on him. It warmed me, seeing this softness in him, but I realized I could never let him know.

  Jack continued. “It’s sort of . . . freeing in a way. Like I’ve finally been given the go-ahead to grieve and to move on.” He looked at me oddly. “It was strange, hearing you tell me something I must have already known. Like my mind had accepted it long ago, and I’d already gone through the five steps of grieving—but I needed to hear it from somebody else before I could give myself permission to move on with my life.”

  “Good,” I said, smiling up at him. “I’m glad I could help.”

  He stepped a little closer. With a low voice, he said, “The whole time I was sitting in my car, with all of this going through my mind, I couldn’t help but think about how your eyes turn from hazel to green when you’re annoyed—which happens a lot. Or excited—which doesn’t happen enough.”

  A slow, steady curl of heat unfurled in my stomach, washing into the rest of my bloodstream like a wave heading onshore. Without even realizing what I was doing, I closed my eyes and tilted my head back, waiting to taste his lips again and wondering if it could even be better than when he was giving me mouth-to-mouth.

  A loud cracking noise followed by the sound of wood slapping against wood brought my eyes full open in time to see Jack’s eyes up close and in a similar state of surprise.

  “What the . . . ?” Jack grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the drawing room, where the noise had come from. There, lying in front of the tarp-covered grandfather clock, was the perfectly dust-free picture of Louisa and Nevin. The same framed photograph that I had stored with the other accessories from the room in one of the bedrooms upstairs.

  I bent to pick it up. “It’s Louisa, I’m sure.” I paused, sniffing the air. “Do you smell the roses? That means she’s nearby. She’s been trying to tell me something for a while now, but I just can’t seem to figure it out. Something to do with her and Nevin—I just don’t know what.”

  “Or maybe,” said Jack, beginning to roll off the dusty tarp covering the clock, “it has something to do with the grandfather clock since that’s what it keeps hitting.” He strained to get the cloth over the top of the clock, dropping it in a blue puddle at our feet.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Do you remember those photographs I’ve been taking of the clock? I finally picked them up at the developers.”

  I felt a little tinge of excitement, and wondered if my eyes were turning green. “Your mother was pretty sure that the face wasn’t original to the clock, so it’s possible somebody in the Vanderhorst family had it changed. But why?”

  “Exactly what I thought, so I was a little surprised when the photographs turned up nothing. The little demilune inset showed only a series of signal flags, apparently in a random order which couldn’t be made into a message no matter what combination I tried. Anyway, my mother said that all of the other Johnstone clocks had dairy scenes, but this one
was replaced with a maritime theme—showing the firing on Fort Sumter.” He grinned at me. “That was where the first shots were fired in the Civil War.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “I know that.”

  “Well, you once told me that you were blissfully ignorant of history, so I wanted to make sure.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m from Charleston. I’m required to know about Fort Sumter—all native Charlestonians have to, or they throw you out of town.”

  Jack snorted. “Yeah, something like that. Anyway, at first I thought this had probably been done just to commemorate a part of history this house and its inhabitants had witnessed. But when I examined the face more closely,” he said as he twisted the small brass knob and pulled open the glass door over the clock’s face, “I realized that a large number of lines that are worked into the painting are three-dimensional, raised up from behind just enough that they can be detected by feel but not by sight.”

  Tucking the frame securely between my arm and my side, I moved to stand next to him, and ran my index finger over the mast of a large ship where he indicated, and felt the telltale ridge. “You’re right. But what would be the purpose of doing that?”

  “I bought some art paper and a wax stick, removed the hour and minute hands, and rubbed the wax over the ridges.

  “Like a tombstone rubbing,” I said.

  “Exactly.”

  “So what did you find?” I was getting impatient. “Did it tell you where the diamonds are? Or what happened to Louisa?”

  He gave an exaggerated sigh. “You remember how I asked you if you could just ask the ghosts your questions and let them answer? And you said something like it’s not that easy? Well, it’s the same thing here. If it were easy, we wouldn’t be trying to figure this out now because somebody else would have figured it out a long time ago.”

  “Good point,” I said, slightly mollified. “But what did it say?”

  “Gibberish, actually.” He pulled out a piece of paper from his back pocket. “I copied it here.”

  I unfolded the page and saw a string of thirty-two letters from the English alphabet, without spaces and without any discernible order: IFANKRNGMFEFIVEEMNROQNPDKNIASRKE. I looked up at Jack. “Is that supposed to mean something?”

  “It’s a substitution cipher—a basically simple one, as long as you know the key word that makes the code work. Every spare moment I’ve been trying different words to see if any of them work, but nothing seems to fit.”

  “So that’s what all those cipher books were about in the attic—and why you wanted to borrow them.”

  “Pretty much.” He had the decency to look sheepish. “If I’d discovered anything, I would have told you, you know. Even if I’d known you would be pissed off at me for the rest of my life.”

  I looked at him with as much hurt and recrimination as I could muster but didn’t say anything.

  “Anyway, the books are all from the last century, which makes me think it was Robert Vanderhorst who changed the clock face.”

  “Which means that whatever is revealed by the clock could be about either Louisa or the diamonds.”

  “Or both,” said Jack, carefully closing the clock face again. “And there’s one more thing.” He turned the old key in the wood casing of the clock and pulled the heavy hinged door open. “I found a secret compartment inside here.”

  “And you didn’t think to show this to me earlier?”

  “I didn’t see the need. It’s empty.” He knelt in front of the opening that revealed the clock’s inner workings while I peered behind him. Reaching to the far left side, he pressed a button that was flush with the inside cabinet, and made of wood. It had been invisible to the bare eye and most likely could be found only by touch. A small door popped open, and Jack moved back, allowing me to see better.

  I stuck my hand in and felt around the inside of the small compartment, knocking on the bottom and sides. The top was open, a dark tunnel going up inside the clock. “I guess you’ve already figured out that there’s no space between the walls of the compartment and the outside of the clock.”

  “Yep. And I’ve stuck a flashlight in the hole at the top, and it looks like it goes straight up to the pediment. I’m thinking that if this was ever used to hide the diamonds, they’re long gone now.”

  I stood up and shut the hidden compartment, then closed the glass door, turning the key slowly until it latched. “There’s something else—something I remember from last night when you were giving me CPR in the garden.”

  He raised an eyebrow but I didn’t take the bait. “I saw her . . . Louisa. She was kneeling by the fountain, pushing back the grass, as if to show me those Roman numerals. Since the fountain didn’t exist when Louisa lived here, I’m assuming Robert had it built. And that the numerals meant something to him.”

  “I think you’re right. I’ve been playing with the numbers, and so has your dad.” He sent me another apologetic look. We’ve been trying to discover if they correspond with any birthdates, ages, dates in history, or anything significant to the Vanderhorst family. And nothing. We’ve found absolutely nothing.” He ran his hands through his hair, something I began to suspect he did a lot of when trying to work through a problem. I imagined he did it a lot while he was working, like a writerly habit, and I found it just a little bit attractive. He turned to me. “I’d like to see the picture of Louisa and the diamond while we’re here. I might be able to tell from the size and shape whether it’s what we’re looking for.”

  “Assuming they’re still around to be found. But, sure—the albums are upstairs. I’ll show you before we leave. And I’d also like to see what you have as far as the clock cipher is concerned. I’m actually pretty good at puzzles.”

  “Have at it,” said Jack. “I’d be more than happy to show you my wax rubbings.”

  I made a move to elbow him, forgetting that I still held the framed photograph pressed between my elbow and my side, where I’d tucked it to touch the clock face. The frame fell to the floor, the backing separating from the picture and glass. As I bent to retrieve it, I noticed lying under the glass a torn piece of paper that had evidently been stuck between the photograph and the backing of the frame.

  “What is it?” asked Jack as I picked it up and straightened.

  “I’m not sure. It looks like part of an envelope.” The side with part of the flap still intact was blank but when I turned it over, a name and partial return address was scrawled on it: Susannah Barnsley, and then the words, Orchard Lane. I held it up for Jack to see. “Neither name rings a bell for me.”

  “Me, neither.” He flipped it over several times, apparently deep in thought. “I’ll bring this to my friend at the library to see what she can figure out. Who knows: Maybe this Susannah might still be living.” He frowned. “But now I’m left to wonder if it wasn’t the clock at all that Louisa was trying to draw our attention to.”

  “It’s not always apparent what a spirit is trying to say. And sometimes they’re not trying to say anything at all and just want attention.”

  “Great. So that piece of envelope could just be something to make the picture fit better in the frame and mean nothing.”

  “Or this Susannah Barnsley, whoever she is, and assuming she’s still among the living, could know where the diamonds are. Or where Louisa is.”

  “Or maybe we’re both just crazy for believing that dead people can make contact with the living.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “Or not,” said Jack with his trademark grin. “Why don’t you take me upstairs and show me the picture of the diamond? Then I’ll head out to the library while you get some rest. Hopefully, by the time I get back, we’ll have heard from your dad and Sophie.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” I said as I headed toward the stairs while Jack followed behind me. I stopped and turned around to face him. “Why are you calling me by my full name?”

  His eyes widened innocently. “Because you told me to.”

  “Oh. I d
id, didn’t I?” I chewed on my bottom lip for a moment as we continued to watch each other closely. Finally, I turned around and headed toward the stairs. “Well, you can stop it now. It sounds . . . odd coming from you.”

  I heard the smile in his voice. “Yes, ma’am.”

  We walked up a few steps, then Jack spoke again. “By the way, that was almost kiss number two, just in case you’re still counting.”

  “I’m not,” I said as I made my way up the stairs, feeling Jack’s eyes on me the entire way to the top.

  I was exhausted by the time Jack left after having seen the picture and verifying that the diamond Louisa wore was most probably one of the fabled diamonds. The near-sleepless night caught up to me as I opened up all the windows upstairs to create a cross breeze, and then, instead of driving back to my condo, I curled up on the sofa—feeling somewhat safer in the light of day—in the upstairs drawing room and fell into a dreamless sleep.

  I’m not sure how long I slept, only that when my father shouted my name, I slid off the couch in a panic, hitting my head on the TV tray set up in front of it. Rubbing my head, I sat on the floor and scowled up at my father. “Daddy, I’m not a recruit. Please don’t ever do that to me again.”

  “Sorry, sweetpea.” He smiled apologetically, offering me his hand. “I guess I’m a little out of practice. And I was a little too excited to wait for you to wake up on your own.”

  Feeling my own excitement, I let him pull me up and sat on the couch. “What did you find out?”

  I noticed the humidor tucked under his arm and watched as he placed it on the table. “Mr. Sconiers was able to develop the roll of film while I waited—probably because there were only three photographs exposed on the entire film.” He opened the lid and withdrew three black-and-white two-and-one-quarter-inch-square photographs, just like the ones I’d seen in Louisa’s albums. He handed them to me. “Tell me what you think.”