He pulled the bedclothes off of my bed, then slipped me gently onto the mattress and I fell back, ready to sink into blissful sleep again.
I felt him sliding my shoes off. “You can’t go to sleep yet,” Jack said. “Your clothes are still wet. You need to take them off.”
“That’s the oldest line in the book,” I mumbled, burying my face in the pillow.
I felt myself being dragged up by my arm. “And I’ll admit to having used it myself more than once, but this time I’m actually serious. Hang on.”
He left the bed to go into my adjoining bathroom, and I took the opportunity to flop back down on the mattress.
He returned, holding my thick flannel nightgown and a pair of wool ski socks. “I found these behind the door and something tells me this is what you wear to bed.” He thrust them at me. “Put these on. I’ll turn my head, but let me know if you need any help.”
I snorted, a little louder than I’d intended, and somehow managed to remove my dress and underclothes with surprisingly little damage to them or any furniture and slipped on my nightgown, leaving Jack the job of putting on my socks because every time I leaned forward to do it I fell over. Then I lay back in my bed and allowed Jack to pull the covers up to my chin.
He went into the bathroom again and returned with two aspirin, a glass of water, and the wastebasket, which he put by the side of the bed. “You might need this later.” He pushed my hair out of my face and made me take the aspirin. I hazily recalled doing the same thing for my father, and I felt a wave of shame.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered, staring at him with blurry eyes and feeling like I wanted to cry.
“Don’t be. It happens. And I’m glad it’s me here to take care of you so don’t worry about it.”
After placing the glass on a coaster on my bedside table and watching me collapse back onto my pillow, he said, “I’ll be in the guest room with General Lee. I’ll leave our doors open, so if you need me you can just shout.”
I was about to slip into unconsciousness again when I remembered something I needed to tell him. I grabbed him by the arm to prevent him from leaving. “It was there today. At the house with the painting.”
“What was there?”
“That—spirit. The one that’s always been in my mother’s house. The one I felt in my mother’s kitchen when I went there the first time.” I lowered my voice, just in case somebody else might be listening. “I think it followed me.”
He gave me a questioning look. “I didn’t know it worked that way. Don’t ghosts haunt houses or buildings?”
I shook my head vigorously on the pillow, feeling my cheeks jostling from the exertion. “They can do whatever they want to. But there’s one thing I’m pretty sure of.” I pulled on both of his arms to get him to lean closer to me. “It wanted to hurt me.”
His face was close enough to mine that I could smell his cologne and the shampoo he used to wash his hair. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, enjoying the effect it had on all of my extremities. I opened my eyes again to find his dark blue ones very close to mine. Feeling like a giddy schoolgirl again, I said, “You want to know a secret?”
His eyes flashed with amusement—and with something else I wasn’t sure he wanted me to see.
I reached up to whisper in his ear. “I like you. I like you a whole lot, but I’m never going to let you know that.” I hiccupped in his ear before I fell back onto the pillow. I had the sneaking suspicion that it might actually have been a burp, but Jack was kind enough not to mention it. “That’s because Sophie once told me to stay away from men who are emotionally unbelievable.”
The corner of his mouth quirked up. “I think that would be ‘emo tionally unavailable,’ Mellie.” His voice was soft with a hint of amusement, and I wondered in what was left of my brain if I’d said anything that he might use against me later.
I’d already lost the train of our conversation. Not letting him pull back, I said, “I need you to do a favor for me.”
I watched as his eyes drifted down to my lips before dragging them back up. “What is it?” he asked softly.
“Don’t let my mother throw me that fortieth-birthday party.”
Jack gently dislodged a strand of hair from my mouth. “Why not, Mellie? I think she’s trying to find a way to connect with you. And throwing you a party is her way of doing it.” He paused and I felt his warm weight on the edge of the mattress next to me. “Would it be so difficult for you to let her?”
I shook my head, trying to make him understand the thing that was so clear to me. “Because then everybody would know that I’m old. That I’m a dried-up husk of a woman whose biological clock is running on daylight saving time without a battery.” I stifled another hiccup. “Fifty years ago I’d be called somebody’s eccentric spinster aunt and I’d have to sit on my front porch all day and spit at people who walked by.” I shook my head again briskly, trying to clear it. “I could just wash my face until I can’t breathe.” I looked at his blank expression and realized that I hadn’t understood what I just said, either.
His lips trembled a little. “Mellie. Firstly, you don’t have any nieces or nephews so you can’t be called anybody’s aunt. Secondly, you’re a beautiful, intelligent, and vibrant woman who doesn’t look a day over thirty, which is a miracle I can attest to because I’ve seen what you eat. You should be proud of who you are and what you’ve accomplished, regardless of your age.” He paused for a moment. “I know your relationship with your mother is difficult right now. But she’s reaching out to you. Maybe you should give her a chance.”
I blinked slowly, fighting sleep. “What did you say?”
He took a deep breath. “I said lots. Which part are you asking about?”
“The part where you said I was beautiful.”
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “That part.” He chuckled and my whole body vibrated with it. “I said you were beautiful, vibrant, and intelligent. And I might add that if you were also sober and knew we were having this conversation, you would probably have to kill me.”
I smiled smugly. “You think I’m beautiful.” I frowned, trying to grab a thought that kept floating away. “Aren’t you supposed to kiss me now?” I moved up to touch my lips to his but he pulled back.
Gently, he disengaged my fingers from his arms. “Mellie, trust me. It’s not that I don’t want to. It’s just that I don’t make a habit of kissing women who are barely conscious. I like them to be fully awake so they remember it in the morning.” He stood and retucked my covers, then surprised me by leaning over and kissing me on my forehead. Then he moved his lips to my ear and whispered, “Just for the record that was almost kiss number three.”
I listened as his footsteps crossed the floor. Before he reached the door, I said, “Number four, but I’m not counting.”
I fell asleep listening to him laugh while he walked down the hall toward the guest room, his footsteps lulling me into a dreamless sleep.
All through my shower the following morning, bits of conversation kept sifting through my consciousness, like recalling a dream. If only it
could
have been a dream. With dreams, you’re the only witness and you’re free to do whatever your subconscious tells you.You willingly do it in the privacy of your own mind. Unfortunately, judging from the humiliating fragments that kept jumbling inside my brain, everything I’d said and done the previous day had had an audience. I pressed my forehead against the cold tile of the shower to try and stop it from throbbing and wondered if it were possible to fake my own death and move to another continent.
Moving quietly so as not to awaken Jack in the guest room and actually have to look him in the face, I threw a few essentials into a suitcase and crept down the stairs and through the back door after giving a quick greeting to Mrs. Houlihan and General Lee in the kitchen. I had no intention of moving into my mother’s house before she returned from New York, but I’d hired a cleaning crew to scrub the house from top to bottom after the previous owners had moved out and I needed to be there to let them in. And if I brought a few things over each time I went to the house on Legare, I wouldn’t have to ask Jack for help. It was my plan to never actually have to speak with him again.
I parked on the street in front of my mother’s house to allow the cleaning people access to the driveway when they arrived and sat for a few minutes to wait for my head to clear and my stomach to stop churning, realizing my unease wasn’t completely due to the previous day’s excess.
With a fortifying breath, I pulled my bag out of the backseat and made my way inside the house. Despite the DayGlo paint colors on the walls and moldings, the house didn’t appear as awful as it had on my previous visits because of the absence of the hideous furniture and accessories.
I spun in a slow circle, seeing with my newly trained eyes the classic architecture and perfect symmetry of the foyer superimposed on my memories of my grandmother’s house and the happy days I’d spent here as a child. But the clash of colors on the walls brought me quickly out of my reverie and I felt the odd need to reassure the old house that help was on the way. I’d already scheduled an appointment with Sophie to walk through each room to decide on historically accurate color schemes and any reverse remodeling that needed to be done. I wasn’t as sold on the “historically accurate” part as Sophie was, but I did know that any type of color scheme was an improvement to the existing circus-like hues.
Fishing through my purse, I found two more aspirin. I knew from experience with my father’s hangovers that if I stayed ahead of the headache, I had a much better chance of hanging on to the contents of my stomach. Dropping my purse and bag by the front door, I paused.The kitchen wasn’t far from the foyer, but I was alone and in no mood to face whatever it was that lurked in the house and whose presence I sensed even now.
“Hello?” I called out, feeling silly, but wanting to alert my soldier that I was there. I listened to the silence, waiting to hear a clang of metal against metal or his booted footfall. I heard nothing, but neither did I hear my name being called by the menacing voice I’d experienced once before and had no desire to experience again.
Feeling somewhat reassured, I made my way quickly to the kitchen in search of tap water to wash down the aspirin, hesitating briefly in the entrance to make sure the door to the back stairs was closed, just as I’d done as a child.
I was leaning over the sink with my hands cupped like a bowl when I sensed a presence behind me. Swallowing my aspirin quickly, I spun around in time to see my soldier casually leaning against the wall by the door leading to the back stairs, his booted legs crossed at the ankles. He began to fade until I averted my eyes.
“Good morning,” I said out loud, not remembering if we’d ever really had a conversation when I was a child.
You have grown into a beautiful woman since I saw you last.
The words had not been spoken out loud, but I heard them inside my head as if they had been. His words were heavily accented, and I smiled in recognition.
I felt myself flushing as I leaned back against the sink, aware again of how tall he was, and how his blond hair seemed to gleam from the sunlight streaming through the plantation shutters on the windows. “What’s your name?” I asked, feeling foolish, but not because I was speaking out loud to a phantom. I felt foolish because I should have known his name and didn’t, despite remembering him from the long-ago years of my childhood.
He bowed and I heard his boot heels click together.
Is it not enough that I know yours?
I shook my head. “No. If we’re to be friends, it’s only fair if we know each other’s names.”
I felt his eyes on me but I didn’t turn to look, sure I would see a sparkle of amusement in them.
Maybe we are not meant to be—friends.
“Melanie?”
The soldier disappeared as quickly as if a light switch had been flicked off at the sound of my father’s voice.
My father came into the kitchen and looked around. “Who were you talking to?”
“No one,” I said. “Maybe you heard the radio from a passing car.”
“Uh-huh,” was all he said. He finally got a good glimpse of my face and bloodshot eyes. “What happened to you? You look like you’ve been pulled the wrong way through a hedge.”
“Thanks, Daddy. I’d rather not talk about it, okay? I drank too much, I know I shouldn’t have, and I doubt I’ll ever willingly do it again. Trust me.” I winced again, remembering snatches of my conversation with Jack.
He pressed his lips together as if forcing himself to reserve comment. “Is your mother here?”
Glad of the change in subject, I said, “No. She’s in New York tying up some loose ends.”
He actually looked disappointed. I crossed my arms over my chest. “Why? I got the impression that she wasn’t interested in seeing you again.”
He walked toward me and shrugged, then stuck his hand in his pocket. “Maybe so. But I have something here that she might be interested in seeing.” He pulled out a small zippered plastic bag with something balled up at the bottom of it. “I know your mother has sent her lawyers to deal with the salvage company responsible for discovering your great-great-grandfather’s sailboat, but I thought a personal visit might get us a little closer to the action. I figured if anybody should be near the site, it should be me since the media doesn’t have any idea who I am—yet.”
I stared at the bag, not wanting to touch it. “Are you allowed to have that?” I looked up. “There’s also the matter of human remains being found on board. I doubt the authorities would want anything removed from the scene until they’ve had a chance to look at it.” I didn’t really care. Old things and their histories had never held much interest for me. All I knew was that I didn’t want anything to do with whatever was in the bag and I needed to try and persuade him to return it.
He raised both eyebrows, succeeding in appearing as innocent as a puppy. “They already have.” Clearing his throat, he held the bag out to me. “The captain’s an old army buddy of mine and thought this should be yours. They’ve already run all the tests they can and taken all the pictures they need. My friend figured it would be better off with you than in some government vault for the next fifty years.”
I stared at the bag while my father held it out to me, waiting me out. He’d been out of the military for a long time, but I underestimated his endurance and his willingness to wait until he saw the right opportunity and went in for the kill. “If you don’t take it, I’ll have to give it to your mother.”
He’d known, of course, the one thing to say. I took the bag, the once-clear sides now cloudy from so much handling.
“Go on. Open it.”
The top pulled apart easily and I could now see a tarnished gold chain, its luster dulled by years beneath the salty water of the ocean. Gingerly, I lifted it out of the bag, my hand stilling as I spotted the heart-shaped locket dangling from it.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” he asked.
“It is,” I said, touching the flat gold locket but sensing nothing except the cold quiet at the bottom of the ocean. Relief rushed through me that I hadn’t been able to see anything else and my fingers closed over it. “Where was it found?”
“Inside the trunk. With the remains.”
The locket slipped out of my hands, landing on a black marble tile, the chain extended like a spider lying in wait.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, stooping to pick it up.
“Come here,” I said, then led the way into the downstairs drawing room where I’d placed the portrait of the girls after bringing it from the Tradd Street house following the closing. I stopped short in the threshold, feeling disoriented—like being on an escalator that suddenly begins to move in the opposite direction. I stared at the painting, my breath suspended. When I’d moved it into the room, I’d placed it facing against the wall. But now the portrait of the two girls faced out toward the room, the eyes of the shorter girl glaring out at me with what seemed to be a menacing grin in the dim corner of the room. I blinked, thinking it must be a trick of the light.
My father walked closer to the portrait, the locket dripping through his fingers. “It’s identical. Isn’t it? It’s a little hard to tell because this one’s so dark, but look at this edging. And here.” He used his thumb to brush hard against the front of the locket, then took out an eyeglass cloth from his back pocket and rubbed it back and forth over the gold. “I thought so. It has an engraved initial, too.”
He held it up, and the stink of rotting fish reached me at the same moment I noticed the initial
M
rising out of the grime on the locket like a dead thing from the grave. “It could be the same one. Couldn’t it?”
I nodded, swallowing thickly and wanting desperately to run out of the room. But how could I do that in front of a person who’d never believe me? For the first time in my adult life, I wished my mother were there.
“It’s an
M
—for Melanie,” he said, and before I realized what he was trying to do, he was standing behind me and fastening the locket around my neck. I froze, unable to move as if a great weight were pressing on my shoulders, holding my feet to the floor. The chain felt warm on my neck as if the heat from another’s skin had touched it first. I smelled salt and ocean air and the pervading stench of spoiled fish. I resisted the urge to gag, but not because of the necklace; the necklace felt as if it belonged on my neck, and not just because of the initial. And when I ran my fingers over the large
M
I had the distinct feeling that whatever rotting presence we’d resurrected from the bottom of the ocean didn’t want me to have it.
“Someone’s at the door,” my father said, and I realized he was repeating himself and that I hadn’t heard him the first time.
I blinked at him. “The door,” he said again. “Would you like me to go get it?”
Eager to leave the room, I backed out, waiting until the last moment to turn my back on the portrait. I threw the door open and found Rebecca Edgerton grinning widely on the other side.
“Good morning,” she chirped, and I wondered absently if she’d ever been a cheerleader. I knew if I’d asked Jack he’d be able to tell me along with a list of all of her injuries and where any scars might be located.
“Hello,” I answered, peering behind her to make sure she was alone. I had no intention of speaking with Jack in the foreseeable millennium, and I especially didn’t want it to happen in front of Rebecca. “Jack’s not here.” I stood in the doorway, blocking her access.
“I know,” she said, her smile now forced. “I already spoke with him and he told me I could find you here.”
“How nice of him. So what brings you out so early?” I blinked hard. The sharp sun that angled through the doorway was like a dazzling dagger to my bleary and swollen eyes, but my vision was clear enough to see Rebecca’s immaculate appearance and freshly manicured fingers. I hid my own behind my back, still trying to flake off the paint that had adhered to my nails much more effectively than to the fat cherubs anchored in marble pear trees on the fireplace surround in my tiny library.
Rebecca looked behind her, then shivered in her pink cashmere coat. “Do you think I could come in? It’s a personal thing that I’m sure you wouldn’t want anybody else hearing. Besides, it’s freezing out here.”
Reluctantly, I opened the door wider so she could enter. As she took her coat off, she examined her surroundings, her fingers stalling on the last button as she caught sight of the heating vents that had been painted black-and-white to match the zebra rug that I couldn’t even bring myself to give to Goodwill for fear they’d be insulted. Besides, with all the painting we were planning on doing, it could come in handy as a drop cloth.
Seeing the question in her eyes, I hastily added, “I had nothing to do with the décor and neither did my family. We’ll be working with Sophie Wallen to return everything to colors actually found in nature.”
She continued spinning, as if trying to get a 360-degree view of the foyer and its kaleidoscope of colors. “This is practically profane,” she said, and I was surprised to hear the anger in her voice. “Some people would die to have the honor to live in a historic home like this, and to think that someone would . . .” Her hands indicated the fuchsia walls. “It defies logic.”
“And good taste,” I muttered and saw her lips curve up in a smile. I watched her for a moment longer, captured by a fleeting glimpse of something familiar that was too brief to recognize.
“Who is it, Melanie?”
“My dad’s here,” I explained to Rebecca, leading the way into the drawing room.
He stood in front of the portrait of the girls as if mesmerized, his back to us. “I see something of your mother and you in the taller one,” he said. “But the shorter one.” He shook his head. “There’s a strong physical resemblance, but there’s . . . something else about her. Something that makes me feel as if they’re not sisters. Cousins maybe?”
I stopped behind him. “Dad? This is Rebecca Edgerton, the reporter who’s doing the story on Mother.”