southern ghost hunters 01 - southern spirits

I lived in a gorgeous antebellum house. Not too large. Certainly not too small. The white columns out front were tasteful, even though they had chipped in places. The porch was welcoming, if a little weathered. Over the years, my family had sold the estate around the house, piece by piece, so that the sprawling peach orchard and even the grand front drive had given way to tidy bungalows lining the long road to the main house.

Grandma had said it made gossip travel even faster, the way they built houses so close together these days. I always told her that the good citizens of Sugarland, Tennessee needed no help.

Still, I loved the place.

And I absolutely despised letting it go.

"Anyone home?" my best friend Lauralee called from the front of the house. "Verity, are you in here?" She added a few knocks on the front door, out of politeness rather than practicality, since the door already stood open.

We'd endured a stifling hot afternoon, and I couldn't afford to run the air conditioning. I needed any breeze I could get.

"In the back parlor," I called. "Mourning," I added, since there was nothing left in the once-stately room, save for a cooler filled with ice, my tea jug, and a lopsided futon I inherited from a roommate back at Ole Miss. The pink-papered walls and elegant wood accents appeared so strange without rugs and furniture, like a queen stripped of her jewels.

The estate sale was yesterday and the place had been picked clean. The vultures.

"I'm sorry." Lauralee's voice echoed in the empty room. She let her purse and a cloth grocery sack slip from her shoulder to the floor, then she wrapped an arm around me and squeezed, the curled end of her ponytail tickling my cheek.

I gazed up at the ugly black hole where the crystal chandelier had hung for more than one hundred years. "Thanks." I'd come to terms with this. I really had. I turned and looked her straight in the baby blues. "I'd live in a paper bag if it meant I didn't have to marry that bastard."

My friend drew back and tucked a lock of my hair behind my ear. "Seems like he's trying to make you good on your word."

"True. But I'm not done yet." I refused to even entertain the thought.

This past May, I'd scandalized the town when I jilted the most eligible bachelor in three counties—at the altar, no less. It was a disaster. Two old ladies fainted straight out of the pew reserved for the Southern Heritage Club. Then Beau's own mother collapsed, taking down a lovely hydrangea arrangement. I secretly wondered if Mrs. Leland Herworth Wydell III didn't want to be upstaged, even at her own son's ultimate humiliation.

Truth was, he'd brought it upon himself. But I suppose it was quite shocking if you didn't know the details.

I hadn't told a lot of people. I'd wanted to spare my sister.

Lauralee chewed on her lip as she surveyed what little remained in my home. "Tell me you at least made some decent money yesterday."

"I did." I'd sold everything I could lay my hands on and kept only the absolute necessities, namely my futon, my grandmother's pearl wedding ring, and the quilts she'd made for me. It had hurt like a physical pain. I'd had to remind myself that it was only furniture, clothes.
Stuff.
I still had my health. And my friends. Not to mention my family. I brought a hand to my throat, where I used to wear my grandmother's cross from when she was about my age. The delicate gold and silver filigree antique now belonged to my not-quite-mother-in-law. "I still owe more than twenty thousand dollars."

I gazed across the once-grand, now empty back parlor turned family room. I tried to ignore the hollow place in my stomach. Tomorrow, my ancestral home would go on the market. I let out a ragged sigh. "It's dumb, but I keep hoping for a miracle."

A hidden treasure in the attic. Gold under the stairs. Stranger things had happened, right? All I knew was that I couldn't lose this house. I just couldn't.

Lauralee wrapped an arm around my shoulder and gave me a squeeze. "You'll make it. You always do," she said, in a way that made me think she actually believed it. She took in the fourteen-foot ceilings, the crown moldings. "With the money you have left over from the sale, you can make a fresh go of things."

A new start. I certainly needed
something
to change. And yet…

"I can't believe it's all gone." What had taken more than a century to accumulate had become fractured history in the space of a day. "Except for that," I said, pointing to a godawful vase on the mantel.

My friend made a face. "I never even noticed that before."

It would have been hard to ignore. "It was in the attic," I explained. "Where it belongs." The green stones that circled the top were sort of pretty, but a crude, hand-painted scene marred the copper exterior and a healthy dent gouged the lower half. The dotty old relic looked completely out of place on an ornate marble mantel with flowers and hummingbirds carved into the corners.

"Yeek." Lauralee crossed the room for a better look. She attempted to lift the monstrosity, and then changed her mind. It was heavier than it looked, wider at the top and tapered down to a flared base at the bottom. In fact, it reminded me more of an antique Grecian urn. She turned to me. "Is it a spittoon?"

"I think it's a vase," I said, joining her. "Beau gave it to me. He called it an historic heirloom. Looking back, I think he just needed to get rid of it."

In the beginning of our relationship, Beau had given me heartfelt gifts—a pressed flower from the picnic we took on our first date, a little notebook with one of our private jokes written on the inside cover. Later, it was last-minute gas station flowers.

And objects like this.

"It's hideous," Lauralee said.

"A true monstrosity," I agreed. Or else he would have let me return it when I gave him back the ring. "You want it?" I asked, turning the dented side toward her.

My friend let out a snort. "Not unless I can thunk your ex over the head with it."

I shot her a conspiratorial grin. "You'd do that for me?"

She raised her delicate brows. "Nothing would give me more pleasure," she said in a sweet, southern tone that would make you think I'd offered mint juleps on the verandah.

"I suppose I could toss it," I said. I still had one trash can left.

She waved me off. "Keep it out. It's a focal piece. The only one you have. Here." She scooted it over toward the pale shadow where my mother's crystal swan used to be. "It'll draw people's eyes to the fireplace instead of that hideous futon."

"Way to remind me that I'm sleeping in the parlor." No way was I going to try dragging a futon up a flight of stairs.

She crossed over to the opposite wall to retrieve her hemp grocery bag from the floor. "Maybe this will help you forget," she said, holding up a bottle of Malbec.

"Mine," I said, on her in an instant. Although I'd have to tell her Beau took the stemware.

She handed me the bottle and the opener, then pulled out a pair of plastic wine glass tops from her bag. "My kids used the bottoms to play flying saucer frisbee, but I didn't think you'd mind."

I wound the opener into the cork. "Who won?"

"Who knows?" She held out both glasses and I poured.

It was well past cocktail hour in the old south. In fact, the sun was beginning to set.

"Should we retire to the floor?" I asked, a bit punchy with the unreality of it all.

Lauralee handed me a glass. "We might end up there anyway," she said as we both took a seat.

I smelled lemon polish and old wood as I stretched my legs out over the floor I'd lovingly scrubbed. We leaned our backs against the plaster wall and sipped our wine as the shadows lengthened over the room.

It's not like I had any lamps.

"You ever think what might have happened if I hadn't come back home?" I asked her.

I could have gone to the big city after graduating art school. My father died when I was in fifth grade, my mother long since remarried. My sister had bounced around from college to college. I could have found a job at an advertising firm, or at a large company with an in-house graphics department. I wouldn't have been around when Beauregard Buford Wydell decided it was time to take a wife.

This place would have sat empty, but at least it would have stayed mine.

"You belong here, Verity," she said simply, as if it were the only truth.

She had me pegged. I cherished this town and my home. There'd been no other choice for me. Without my roots and my family's heritage, I'd be adrift.

Grandma knew. It was why she left the house to me when she died. The rest of the estate went to my mother, who bought an RV and embraced adventure with my stepfather; and to my sister, who used her portion to pay for her various semesters abroad and half-finished degrees.

But, truly, this place had been mine even before Grandma made it legal.

I took an extra large sip of wine as Lauralee's phone chimed. She handed me her glass and pulled the smart phone from her back pocket. The glowing screen lit her pixie face and what she saw made her frown.

"Trouble in paradise?" I asked as she checked her text messages.

The faint lines around her eyes crinkled at the corners and she sighed. "It's Big Tom. Tommy Junior got his head stuck in the hallway banister again."

I should have faked some sympathy, but it happened at least once a month. The kid was forever getting stuck in something. "Do you have to leave?"

"No." She took her wine back from me. "Big Tom has it handled." She held her glass like a diva at a cocktail party. "Heck, if I was home, I'd be calling him. He's better at prying the railings off."

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