by White, Karen
“Thanks,” I said. “Have fun.”
He raised his hand in farewell, then shoved his hands into his pockets and walked away. I caught a movement from the corner of my eye and turned slightly to see the woman and child by the tree again. I turned to face them directly, and they disappeared, the swing still as if they had never been there at all.
CHAPTER 16
I juggled General Lee’s leash in one hand and a tall glass of ice-cold Coke in the other while trying to unlock the dead bolts on the front door. It was almost dusk, and I still hadn’t dressed for my dinner with Marc, but Chad had asked if I’d take the dog for his walk while he accompanied Sophie to their yoga class. I hadn’t the heart to tell him that his insistent courtship of Sophie was a lost cause although they’d taken to calling each other Velma and Shaggy—which I didn’t understand—so maybe all wasn’t lost. I still had visions of throwing rice at their wedding, so I gave in. Besides, since technically the dog belonged to me, I didn’t feel it right to refuse, so there I was, struggling with the door, while General Lee waited patiently with a bored look on his face. I’m sure if he’d had a nail file, he’d have been busy giving himself a manicure while he waited for me to figure it out.
“Can I help you with that, Miz Middleton?”
I turned to see my plumber, Rich Kobylt, coming down the stairs loaded down with all of his gear, apparently leaving for the day. Rich was working in the house so much that I was ready to offer him a room free of charge. “Thank you,” I said gratefully.
He slid the dead bolts and held the door open for me while General Lee and I passed through onto the piazza. I gave him my key and waited for him to lock the door. “Thanks again,” I said. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”
Rich didn’t move to pick up his things, for which I was partially grateful, considering his girth and the looseness of his pants in the rear.
“Miz Middleton, can I ask you something?”
I had a flash of worry that he was about to tell me that I was stuck with the plumbing the way it was or that he was quitting before he’d finished my master bath. “Sure,” I said.
He scratched his rounded cheek covered with dark, three-day-old bristles. “Um, are you the only one living in this house?”
“Yes,” I said, his question taking me by surprise. “Well, except for Mr. Trenholm, who sleeps in the guest room. Temporarily,” I added hastily.
“Yeah, I know that.” He scratched his cheek again as if unsure how to proceed. “I guess what I meant was if maybe your sister or friend was visiting or something.”
I stilled. “No. Why do you ask?”
He laughed weakly. “You’re going to think this is weird, and I hope I’m not jeopardizing my job or anything, but every time I walk past that drawing room, I always see a lady standing next to the big clock out of the corner of my eye. But when I turn to look right at her, she’s gone.”
“What does she look like?” I asked, my voice calm.
“I’ve never seen her long enough to get a good look at her face, but her clothes are old-fashioned. Like the kind they wore in that gangster movie Bonnie and Clyde.”
I felt a bubble of nervous laughter approach my lips but held it back. Louisa, I thought, and then I almost told Rich that it was a good thing that he saw her, remembering what Mr. Vanderhorst had said to me. She only appears to those she approves of. At the very least I supposed Louisa was telling me that she liked my choice of a plumber. “Anything else you remember?”
He nodded. “The smell of roses. It was so strong that I thought my grandmother was standing there. She’s dead now, but I still remember that rose perfume she used to wear.” He sent me a level look. “Miz Middleton, I don’t mean to scare you, but I think your house might be haunted.”
I had another insane urge to burst out laughing. Instead, I managed to keep a straight face. “Do you really think so?”
“Yes, ma’am. Not that I think you need to be frightened of her or anything, because she seemed like a nice enough lady, but I thought you should know. Although . . .” He stopped, his eyes skittering away.
“Although what?”
“Again, Miz Middleton, I don’t want to scare you, and I don’t really like to talk about this to other people too much, but I have what they call a gift about these things. You know, like a second sight. So I see things most people don’t.”
I nodded sympathetically. “Believe me, I understand.”
“I knew you would, Miz Middleton. When you were so nice and understanding about being without water for three days, I figured you’d be nice and understanding about this, too.” He smiled hesitantly. “So, anyway, that lady’s not the only . . . um . . . spirit I’ve seen. There’s something in the upstairs hallway, around those stairs that go up to the attic. It’s a man and he’s not so nice, and I don’t think he wants any of us here—and especially not up in that attic.” His eyebrows knitted as he gave me a serious look. “You need to be careful around him. Although . . .”
“What, Rich? You can tell me.”
“Well”—he scratched the back of his neck—“I just got the strangest impression that the lady downstairs was keeping the bad man upstairs. Like, as long as she was around, he wouldn’t mess with me.”
I swallowed heavily, remembering my own encounters with both ghosts and realizing he was right.
Rich continued. “And I was thinking you should hire one of those psychic people who like to talk to ghosts to come find out what he wants. Then maybe he’ll go away.”
“That’s a good idea, Rich. I’ll look into it. And I promise your secret is safe with me.”
“I appreciate it, ma’am.” He picked up his gear while I looked up at the flaking paint on the piazza ceiling and followed him to the door. Almost as an afterthought, he said, “I’m still having trouble getting the water out to that fountain. I’ve checked all the pipes, and everything’s intact with no leaks or blockages, but I just can’t figure it out. I’m thinking we’re going to have to get some earth-moving equipment and dig a bigger hole out in your backyard.”
I thought of all of my dad’s hard work, of the beauty he’d created in the once desolate garden and I paused. “Why don’t we wait on that, Rich? There’s still so much to be done on the inside, why don’t we concentrate on that, and then see if we really need any water in the fountain at all?”
He held the door open for General Lee and me, and we passed through it, followed by Rich. “If you want, Miz Middleton. It’s your house after all. But I think a fountain without water in it makes as much sense as a light beer. Like, what’s the point, you know?”
I grinned. “I get what you’re saying, Rich. And I know you’re a perfectionist with your work.” Which was one of the reasons why I didn’t completely lose it on the third day we’d been without water. “But let’s hold off on the fountain for now. We’ll come back to it later—promise.”
We’d moved out onto the sidewalk and stood in front of his pickup truck parked at the curb. “Sounds good.” He set his toolbox down by his feet. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then. I’m still not happy with the insulation around the pipes in your new bathroom so I wanted to tinker with it a little tomorrow before we get the drywall people in. I’ll be here around six thirty, if that’s all right.”
I gave an inward groan. Honestly, I should just give the man a key and assign him a bedroom. “That’s fine, Rich. I’ll see you then.”
We said our goodbyes, and I turned with General Lee before I had to witness Rich bending over to retrieve his toolbox.
Since the little dog seemed to know where he was going, I allowed him to lead me. Every once in a while, he’d tilt his head up at me to make sure I was following and then go back to prancing down the sidewalk, his plumed tail swishing over his back like a feathered fan.
Not that I would readily admit this to anyone, especially not to Jack, but in my months of living south of Broad, I’d started to grudgingly appreciate the beauty and charm of this Charles
ton neighborhood, and could almost understand the hordes of tourists who flocked here with their cameras. There was something otherworldly that lingered here in the walled gardens, whose fragrant blooms escaped through decorative wrought iron gates to entice passersby to stop and notice. Or perhaps it was the old houses themselves, having withstood revolution, pestilence, fire, civil war, and civil unrest, and still remained stoic and serene in their classic beauty—true Southern ladies. I was a born and bred Charlestonian, and I would have had to have been completely oblivious if I couldn’t admit to even a tiny bit of pride that this was my city, that the area around Tradd Street was my neighborhood, and that I could almost understand—if not fully embrace—all the crazy eccentricities of my preservation-minded neighbors. I could even appreciate the vanity of a city whose building’s earthquake rods had decorative lion-head caps on them in a typical Charleston nod of adding beauty to functionality.
Occasionally I would even have the mutinous thought that the homeowners here really did believe they were merely caretakers of these properties, protecting our collective history and preserving them for future generations. I wasn’t completely convinced, nor did I want to be. Because I knew better than most that no matter how much you invested in your house and called it yours, you could never own its ghosts.
It wasn’t until General Lee turned the corner onto Legare Street that I realized where we were heading. I tried to pull him back, to explore another block, but he dug in his furry paws and couldn’t be dissuaded. Reluctantly I followed him, then watched with amazement as he stopped in front of the gate at number thirty-three. I didn’t bother tugging on his leash this time. Instead, I stood at the gate next to him and recalled the nighttime phone call from my grandmother about coming to visit her in her garden, and my gaze traveled through the Confederate jasmine vines twisting through wrought iron rails to the small boxwood garden with the stone benches. 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.
I turned to the General Lee, who was looking at me expectantly. “Did Grandma call you, too?”
He tilted his head, his ears hitching up a notch in a look I’m pretty sure was supposed to mean that he was pretending he didn’t understand what I was saying.
I faced the square Georgian brick house with the two-tiered portico on the face, feeling the same way I’d felt when I’d first seen pictures of the Titanic on the bottom of the ocean floor—all the beauty and grandeur that had once held so much promise now lost. Except I’d never been told that my grandmother’s house was unsinkable; I was just told that one day it would be mine.
I had lived there for a time after my parents separated. I had visited it often, sometimes staying there for months while my parents traveled to faraway places where my father was stationed or where my mother would give concerts. I missed my parents, but my grandmother was the sort of woman who made sure that I’d miss her more when it was time to leave.
She didn’t mind if I was loud, or if I slid down the polished mahogany banister, or put on my socks to pretend I was ice-skating in the ballroom. She let me set up my easel in the first-floor drawing room to paint the stained-glass window a Victorian ancestor had added to the house long before the BAR was there to tell him that he couldn’t. The window depicted some epic story that neither my grandmother nor I could ever determine, but the way the sun made the vibrant colors bleed into the room during the late afternoon created a stage for my own imagination.
My grandmother told me stories about ancestors who had walked the hallways before me, and the famous visitors—including the Marquis de Lafayette—who had slept in one of its eight bedrooms. My favorite story was of an elderly ancestor during the Revolution who, when the British captured the house and fortified it, gave the order to set it on fire, even providing the arrows with which the act was accomplished, when the Americans arrived to attack the Redcoats. Luckily for future Prioleaus, the British surrendered before the house could be burned to the ground. The first time I’d heard the story, I’d sighed with relief and tears that my beautiful house on Legare had been saved for me.
The garden was my playhouse, and my grandmother a willing participant as we playacted scenes from old family history as well as scenes of what I would be doing when the house became mine. But that was before my mother left my father and came to live in the house. Before I started seeing in the house people who no longer lived there, people who would tug on my sheets at night to try to tell me something only I could hear. Before the nightmares began and I had trouble knowing when the bad dreams ended and reality returned.
The last thing I remember clearly from my time in that house was my mother coming to tell me that my grandmother had died. I was sitting on the garden bench having lemonade with my grandmother so it was a bit of a surprise to me to know that she was dead.
The nightmares came back worse after that, and then, within a month, my mother had left, and I was on a plane with my father flying to Japan. It wasn’t for a few more years that my father told me my grandmother’s house had been sold to an oil millionaire from Texas looking for a second home. I didn’t cry then about losing my house, and I still haven’t. And I did such a good job of pretending that I didn’t care that eventually even I began to believe it.
I finished the last of my Coke as a quick honk of a car horn sounded from behind us. A new white Cadillac sedan pulled up to the curb, and I recognized Amelia Trenholm behind the wheel.
“What a coincidence,” she said as her window slid down. “I was just on my way to see you.” Two slender feet encased in Ferragamo pumps appeared on the curb first, and then Amelia pulled herself out of the car. “I just love your sweet dog.”
General Lee allowed himself to be scratched behind the ears, helpfully tilting his head to make sure Amelia could easily reach both.
“He’s not really mine, you know. Do you want him?”
Amelia straightened, gazing at me softly as General Lee looked up at me with an expression I could only describe as emotionally wounded. “I would love to have him. But I think you might need him more than I do.”
I jiggled the remaining ice in my glass, and tilted my head before remembering that General Lee did the same thing when pretending not to understand. “You think so?”
“You’ve never owned a dog before, have you?
I shook my head.
She smiled. “Well, then, you’ll understand soon enough.” With a pat on my arm, she walked up to the wrought iron fence, wrinkling her nose. “I can’t say that I approve of all the changes those newcomers made to your grandmother’s garden.”
Confused, I peered into the garden again, finding that none of what I’d just seen was still there. The brick pathways were gone, as were the stone benches and jasmine. In its place were giant cement and glass cubes, stone pillars that I assumed were supposed to resemble the human form, and cacti of every size and shape. I closed my eyes, then opened them again, hoping to make the scene go away.
“It’s hideous,” I said.
“Not as strong as the word I was thinking of, but it’ll do.” Smiling, she faced me. “What brings you here?”
“Taking General Lee for a walk. He insisted we come here.”
Amelia nodded as if she didn’t find it strange at all. “I thought it might have something to do with the house going on the market again.”
“What?”
“Oh. I guess you hadn’t heard, then. It’s not officially on the market yet, of course, but I heard through the grapevine that the owners were considering moving back to Texas full-time. I thought you might have heard.”
“No. I haven’t.”
Amelia’s delicate eyebrows furrowed. “You should call your mother. Let her know. Your father said she’d been trying to reach you, anyway. This would be a good excuse to call her back.”
I studied the spot where my grandmother’s prized camellias had once been and
where a mirrored glass blob now stood. “I don’t want to speak to her. Besides, if she really wanted to talk to me, she would call me directly.”
Amelia was silent for a moment. “I would expect that she wants you to call her so that she knows you’re speaking with her because you want to instead of only because you picked up the phone to answer it.” She paused. “I wish you would talk to her. It’s been a long time, Melanie. I think it’s time.”
I shook my head, trying to release the old bruises of loss and abandonment that were never far from the surface of my skin. One little tap and I felt them both again as if it were only yesterday when I was calling my mother’s name out into an empty house.
“She loves you, you know. She never stopped.”
I sent her a sidelong glance, wondering where I’d heard those words before. And then I remembered. I never stopped loving him. I never stopped. Tell him I love him still.
“Do you happen to have a photograph of Jack’s fiancée?”
Amelia raised an eyebrow in response to my sudden change of topic. “I actually do. I have a photograph of Emily and Jack at their engagement party that I carry in my purse.” She shrugged delicately. “I keep it with me because it’s the last time I remember seeing Jack completely happy.”
“Can I see it?”
“Of course,” she said before going back to her car and retrieving her purse from the front seat. She flipped open the top flap and then unzipped an inside compartment. She pulled out a wallet-sized photograph and handed it to me.
I felt the air leave my lips in a small puff as I stared at the photo. I wasn’t really surprised, of course. Emily was just as I’d seen her leaning over Jack as he slept, weeping tears that only I could see. But Jack, well, that was the surprise. His eyes were warm and candid, not marred by sarcasm or cynicism. He had his arm around Emily, and he was looking at her as if she held all the answers for him, and I began to understand all that he had lost. All that he had stopped looking for the moment she left him.