The House on Tradd Street

by White, Karen

  I was shaking now, angry beyond reason as I turned back around and began running up the stairs. Jack tugged on my arm, jerking me back and bringing me to a halt. “He is using you to get to something. I-I’m not sure what, but it has something to do with this house. I’m guessing he looked for whatever it is at Magnolia Ridge, and when he didn’t find it, he assumed it’s here in this house.”

  I jerked my arm away but Jack didn’t back down. He continued. “I’ve been asking around town and found out that Marc Longo is deeply in debt and needs some cash flow. My own mother will tell you how he stiffed the AIDS charity they were talking about earlier. He’s never paid up. He’s got creditors crawling out of the woodwork.” He leaned toward me. “He wants something, Mellie. And he’s not the kind of guy who takes no for an answer.”

  My chest tightened, the familiar feeling of disappointment filling the space, and I twirled around and began running up the stairs. “Is it too much for you to believe that an attractive and intelligent man could possibly be interested in just me?” I swallowed, embarrassed to hear the tears in my voice. Was I really that desperate? I paused on the top step, trying to catch my breath. “Okay. So what if his motives aren’t so honorable? At this point in my life, I don’t care. He’s attractive and attentive, and he likes taking me out. We’re both having fun and not planning a wedding, for crying out loud.” I took a shuddering breath, trying not to sound as desperate as I felt. “Look, I’m a big girl, and I can take care of myself. Did you ever stop to think that maybe I just want to have a little fun with a good-looking guy? Is that so wrong?”

  His voice was soft behind me. “Would it be too difficult for you to believe that I care about you and don’t want you hurt?”

  I was too angry and upset to believe anything he said, and I wanted to hurt him as much as he had hurt me. I turned back to face him as I grasped the banister. “Why did your fiancée leave you, Jack?”

  His face remained impassive but I saw the light dim in his eyes and knew I’d reached my target. At first I thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then quietly, he said, “She told me that she didn’t love me. That she had never really loved me.”

  Any satisfaction I would have felt evaporated quickly at the hurt and loss that filled his eyes. “Jack, I . . .” I had a split second to register the familiar putrid smell around me before the words were knocked out of my mouth by the distinct feeling of two ice-cold hands punching me in the back, sending me toppling forward straight into Jack. He managed to break my fall with one arm while holding on to the banister with the other.

  “You’ve got to stop throwing yourself at me, Mellie,” he began before I felt another shove aimed at the middle of my back, sending us both sprawling down the stairs toward the marble floor. Jack pressed his arms around me, twisting himself so that he landed on the hardwood stairs, taking the brunt of the fall. Our momentum carried us down the stairs at a growing speed, and I sensed Jack trying to turn us around so that we wouldn’t land headfirst.

  Then, just as suddenly as the push from behind, we stopped abruptly on the last step. Jack’s face was less then an inch from mine, so close that I could see the beads of perspiration gathering on his forehead. “What the . . . ?” I felt the rapid rise and fall of his chest as we lay pressed together where we’d landed. He didn’t try to move me off of him, his arms still wrapped around me. In a different situation, I might even have enjoyed it. “Are you all right?”

  Too stunned to speak, I nodded, taking a mental inventory of all my limbs. I already felt the bruising in the two places the unseen hands had made contact with my back.

  “How did that happen, Mellie? You were standing still, and then all of a sudden you were flying at me, as if you’d been pushed.”

  My teeth began to chatter, and he tightened his arms around me. “I’m—I’m just clumsy. I trip easily.”

  He stared at me for a long moment, his breath warm on my cheek. Neither one of us attempted to move.

  Jack continued. “And I could have sworn that somebody—or something—just broke our fall. It felt like we landed on a pillow.”

  I clamped my teeth down to prevent them from chattering before I spoke again. “I can’t imagine what that could have been,” I said, our noses touching along with just about everything else along our fronts.

  “Really?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Really,” I said.

  “So there’s nothing else going on here that I should know about. Nothing that’s putting you—or me—in danger.”

  I shook my head, beginning to smell the scent of roses again. My chattering stopped.

  “You’re not aware of any . . . spirits who might be trying to get your attention for one reason or another, assuming you believe in that kind of thing.”

  Again, I shook my head. “No, of course not.”

  The sound of something solid hitting the floor in the adjacent drawing room startled both of us, but neither one of us moved. We’d both heard that sound before, after all.

  Jack had pulled back slightly and was staring at my lips in a way that made my skin feel tight around my bones. “Well, if it’s all the same to you,” he said in a quiet voice, “I’m going to continue to stick around to protect you from yourself, all right?”

  I nodded, not able to find the breath required to speak.

  “Yo, dudes. Sorry to interrupt, but I think the little guy needs to go pee.”

  Jack and I scrambled to standing positions, then stood on opposite sides of the stairs to watch nonchalantly as Chad carried the dog downstairs, his Birkenstocks quiet on the treads, which is probably why we hadn’t heard him coming from the attic.

  Chad’s gaze drifted from me to Jack and then back again as a slow smile spread across his face. As he walked to the front door, he called over his shoulder, “I’ll knock first before I come back in.”

  As soon as I heard the front door shut, I walked to the drawing room, Jack close behind me. In front of the grandfather clock, lying on its back with the faces of the two people staring up at us, was the framed photograph of Nevin Vanderhorst and his mother.

  Jack picked it up and looked at me. “So there’s nothing out of the ordinary that’s going on in this house.”

  “Not at all,” I said, not meeting his eyes as I plucked the frame out of his hands and replaced it on the side table, where it had been last time I saw it less than an hour before.

  Remembering that I was still angry at him, I left the room without another word and headed up the stairs, feeling his gaze on my back the entire way.

  CHAPTER 15

  The weeks passed quickly, the days filled with sawdust, the smell of fresh plaster and the tread of feet. I was on a first-name basis with an electrician, a plumber, a roofer, an arborist (on account of the oak tree outside developing a fungus my father couldn’t identify), a feng shui decorator (Chad’s recommendation), an exterminator (thanks to the colonies of termites calling the foundation their home), and a massage therapist (to deal with the various muscle pains and frequent headaches these relationships caused). My manicurist and hairstylist had begun calling and leaving worried messages, assuming I had been in a horrible accident or had died since in the past these two scenarios would have been the only excuses I’d allow for me to miss an appointment.

  We had managed to roll up the Aubusson rug in the drawing room—and found nothing of interest underneath in the floorboard, despite a thorough examination—and sent it away for repairs. We found a temporary home for most of the furniture in the room (except for the grandfather clock) at a newly restored home in the Ansonborough district that was being opened as a house museum. Sophie brought in a colleague and expert in the grad department of historical restoration at the University of Pennsylvania to come look at the ceiling from where the chandelier had taken its suicidal leap. This was the same guy who had been behind the restoration of the grand hall ceiling at Drayton Hall and had won some award for an article he’d written about it.

  Even I was
impressed as I watched him and one of Sophie’s grad students take plaster casts of the existing medallion to be used in replacing those pieces that had been destroyed utilizing the same techniques and materials that had been used to make the original. I watched as they drilled a series of small holes along existing cracks, into which they injected some sort of epoxy filler with huge syringes to prevent further damage and prohibit chunks of ceiling plaster from falling on unsuspecting room occupants.

  Leaning more toward conservation than preservation, Sophie had wanted to leave the ceiling as it was after the repair work was done—without hiding the cracks or painting over the repair job. But since I was a Realtor, my goal was to sell the house for as much money as I possibly could. And most people didn’t want to see cracks in their ceilings, no matter how authentic it looked.

  It wasn’t as if I didn’t allow compromises, though, as long as they made sense. I’d allowed Sophie to consult with experts and use real plaster instead of Sheetrock in most of the restoration. But I also stood firm when it came to gutting the kitchen and bathrooms, and adding a bathroom to the existing master suite. She’d looked at me as if I were a Hun destroying a village of widows and orphans—or, as she put it, not respecting the original builder’s vision of the house. I shouldered her disapproval as the first wall was knocked down between my bedroom and the next to expand the space and make room for plumbing, but even I felt a little tremor of loss as the dust from the plaster exploded into the room, little puffs of dust raining down like ghosts.

  To appease Sophie, I followed her instructions on the meticulous and painstakingly correct procedures for stripping wallpaper and paint, which involved impossibly tiny razors and awkward knives, regardless of how time-consuming they were. I was kneeling in front of the drawing room’s fireplace, digging a putty knife into what seemed like twelve layers of paint in an attempt to uncover what looked to be a giant breadfruit tree, when Jack entered the room, his own putty knife held aloft.

  “Sophie said you might need some help.”

  “I’m beginning to think that an ax might be more effective than this stupid putty knife. I’ve worked on the same spot for over an hour, and I’ve managed to remove all the layers of paint from an area the size of a golf ball.”

  We stood together, examining the old fireplace. Even I had to admit that the detailing was truly a work of art and not something that I had ever seen in contemporary homes, regardless of their cost. Elaborate fluted columns capped with Corinthian capitols and rosettes flanked each side of the fireplace and supported the surround, on which foxes and hounds dashed around a series of breadfruit trees. My admiration would have been greater if I wasn’t the one in charge of removing thick layers of paint from between the leaves on the trees, which at that moment seemed less defined than their artist had originally intended.

  Jack stood beside me and regarded my handiwork. “Good job, Mellie. At this rate we’ll be done with this mantel next December sometime. At least you’ll be getting lots of practice. How many fireplaces are in this house, anyway—three?”

  “Six,” I said, feeling slightly nauseous.

  Jack stepped forward to stand on the opposite side of the fireplace from me, and raised his knife. Alarmed, I held up my hand, imaging Sophie’s horror if a piece of tree trunk or hound head got lopped off. “Do you know how to use that?”

  He raised his eyebrow in that wicked look of his that always managed to surprise my blood flow. “I’m pretty handy with my tools.”

  I paused in my work and sent him a withering look.

  “Get your head out of the gutter, Mellie. I meant that I currently live in an eighteen fifties rice warehouse converted to condos that I restored all by myself, so I’m familiar with scraping paint from old mantels.”

  I returned my focus to my work, feeling myself blush up to my hairline. “I knew what you meant, Jack. You’re just immature enough to think otherwise.”

  He chuckled softly, making me laugh, too, but I kept myself focused on the hideous green paint.

  We worked in companionable silence for a long while, the only interruptions our gruntings as we encountered a particularly stubborn chunk of paint and the sound of Sophie’s instructions to Chad downstairs regarding hand sanding the balustrade.

  We were working on the flat surface of the mantel, supposedly the easiest part, and were standing fairly close to each other as we worked on opposite sides. After our close encounter at the bottom of the stairs, I had become hypersensitive to his presence, sort of like me being an infrared camera and him being the heat source. I scraped my fingers several more times with my knife thanks to Jack, and I kept reminding myself that the pain in my thumb was all his fault.

  “Any more phone calls?” Jack paused next to me but I didn’t look up.

  I thought about lying for a moment, but decided I’d already done enough of that. “Yes, actually, there have been. About two or three a night now. Last night, I finally decided to unplug the phone when I went to sleep.”

  “What if there’s an emergency?”

  I enjoyed hearing the concern in his voice. I felt mollified, somewhat, since feeling his presence in my house at night kept the fear from pressing in around me. There were things in the dark—things I didn’t want to see. And knowing Jack was around helped me keep them at bay. Not that I would ever tell him, of course.

  “I keep my cell phone on the table next to me in case I need to reach someone in the middle of the night. I keep it on vibrate just in case they decide to call me on that number.”

  “Still no idea who it could be?”

  I shook my head. “No, which is weird since nowadays I thought any number could be traced. Maybe if I got the police involved they could, but it’s probably just some kid, and I don’t want to ruin his life over something like a prank call.”

  This was only half true. Since the phone calls had begun the week before, it had been nothing more than an annoyance and an interruption to my sleep. The male person on the other line would disguise his voice and ask for me by name and then breathe heavily until I hung up. The caller ID on my phone simply said “not a known number.” I’d neglected to tell Jack about the last phone call I received—just after I pulled the cord out of the wall.

  I had just drifted off to sleep when the phone rang. In my half-asleep mode, I forgot that the phone was no longer connected to the wall; otherwise I probably wouldn’t have answered it. The third time it rang, I picked it up, ready to unload a few expletives that had never crossed my lips before. But the breathing this time was different, lighter. Like a woman’s. And when I heard the voice, I collapsed back on my pillow, my limbs suddenly boneless. “Hello, Peanut,” came the crackling voice on the other end of the phone, “I’ve missed you.”

  Only one person had ever called me “Peanut,” and she’d been dead for almost thirty-four years. “Grandma?” I whispered, my hands frozen as they grasped the receiver.

  “You need to stop by, Peanut. Come sit in my garden and have a sweet tea like you used to. It’s going to be yours one day, you know. So you might as well come by and sit for a spell to see how well it fits.”

  The receiver banged against my ear as the hand clutching it began to shake. “Grandma?” I said again through suddenly parched lips.

  “You need to call your mama, Peanut.” The line had gone all staticy, making it hard to hear. When I heard her voice again, I pressed my ear to the receiver, her voice sounding far away. “She misses you so.” The voice faded away and the line went clear, leaving nothing but dead air.

  I threw the phone into the corner of the room, then huddled under my covers until dawn started to creep through the blinds.

  Jack lifted his forearm and rubbed it against his hair to dislodge a large paint flake. “If it’s all right with you, I’ll keep a phone in my room, so if the prankster calls again, he’ll know that you’re not alone. That might be all we need to discourage him.”

  “Thanks,” I said, hoping Jack wouldn’t get any phone
calls from my grandmother, too. Even I didn’t think I’d be able to explain that.

  We turned back to scraping, and I slid a glance over to Jack, wondering why he was so silent. I saw his jaw ticking in rhythm with his scraping and knew he was struggling hard to remain quiet. Finally, he said, “Has he kissed you yet?”

  “Who? General Lee? I don’t let him close enough.”

  Jack smirked. “I guess that means no, then.”

  “How do you know he hasn’t kissed me?”

  He faced me and I met his gaze. “I do now, don’t I?”

  Too flustered to answer, I dug my knife into another latex layer, picturing Jack as I filleted the paint.

  “Don’t you think that’s a bit odd, Mellie? You’ve spent a weekend at his beach house, gone with him to dinners or the theater or some event about three times a week, and then hung out here with him just about every other evening. Either he’s gay, or there’s something else.”

  I dropped my knife and looked at him. “Why would that make him gay?”

  Jack turned to face me, and his eyes seemed darker than usual. “Because if a guy has spent that much time with you and still hasn’t even kissed you, there must be another explanation.”

  I opened my mouth to defend myself, then ended up only stammering as I realized what Jack was really saying. I clamped my lips together and focused on picking up the jewelry knife Sophie had given me to pry old paint out of the intricate carvings of bread tree leaves.

  Jack kept looking at me. Softly, he said, “So I’m guessing there’s something else.”

  I couldn’t decide whether I should be flattered or angry, so I kept quiet.