And then I was breathing on my own and seeing brightness because the kitchen lights were on. Then Jack was kneeling next to me, his face pale, and his eyes full of worry.
“Are you all right?” He moved the hair out of my face and examined my eyes closely.
I nodded slightly, afraid that if I moved too much, he’d stop touching me.
“Damn,” he said through clenched teeth. “I promised your mother that I wouldn’t let you out of my sight. I’m sorry.”
I thought of something flip to say, but forgot what it was when I realized how scared he really was for me.
“What happened?” he asked, helping me as I struggled to stand. “Are you all right? Do you need a doctor?”
I shook my head, unwilling to field questions from medical personnel and briefly imagining their reactions if I answered them truthfully. “No. I’m fine.” My gaze shifted to the back stairs. “Close that door.” My throat was raw and achy as I spoke, the words like sandpaper against stone.
He closed the door, then returned to my side before gathering me in his arms and holding me until I’d stopped shaking. When he released me, he kept his hands on my arms as if he were afraid to let me go.
“Were you in here by yourself ? I thought I heard voices.”
My hand went to my lips, and I remembered Wilhelm. But I hesitated to speak, almost as if doing so would be a betrayal of some sort. To whom, I wasn’t sure.
Jack’s gaze fell to my mouth, still swollen from the kiss, and his eyes narrowed. “Was it Marc Longo? Was he here?”
I shook my head, disoriented but still aware enough to feel gratified that Jack could be jealous. “No. It was her—the girl from the boat. I know it was her because I—smelled her.”
His blue gaze dropped to my neck and I watched as they widened with shock. “She tried to choke you.” Gently, he touched the place where I’d felt the icy fingers, taking some of the sting away.
It wasn’t a question, but I nodded anyway. “She tore off the locket, too.” I swallowed again, my throat hurting. “She said it was hers.”
His brows furrowed. “Who is she?”
“I don’t know. I don’t understand what any of it means.”
Jack continued to stroke my neck, his fingers moving down to my shoulders, tracing my collarbone. I couldn’t help but think about the anger in his voice when he’d asked if Marc had been here, and a little tremor electrified my spine.
His voice was soft, his breath warm on my face. “We’ll figure it out. We work pretty well together, don’t we?”
I nodded dumbly as we stared at each other, my sense of caution muted. I struggled hard to find it, knowing I was no match for Jack Trenholm without it.
“But if we’re going to continue to work together, you’ve got to stop trying to get yourself killed, all right? I feel responsible for you, and I have no idea why.” He was looking right at me, but I had a feeling that he wasn’t speaking to me anymore.
I needed to move away from him, but for the second time that night my feet refused to obey me. I fought for control, trying to ignore my stubborn feet and Jack’s fingers. I cleared my throat, searching for a subject on neutral ground. “Why didn’t you let Rebecca have the locket? When she wanted to look at it, you wouldn’t let it out of your grasp.”
He shrugged, his eyes focused on mine and I tried not to notice how blue they were at night. “I didn’t like the way she was looking at it. Like it belonged to her.” He paused. “I have a feeling that she’s envious of you.”
I remembered Sophie telling me the same thing. “Because I have access to two historic albatrosses?”
I waited to hear him laugh, but he was silent for a moment, and I felt fear again for the second time that night. But this wasn’t the type of fear you felt when the breath was being choked out of you; this was the kind of fear you felt when you thought you were about to lose everything.
“No,” he said softly. “At least that’s only part of it.” He was standing so close still, yet I didn’t ask him to move away.
“Then why?” I persisted.
“Because she thinks that you and I are an item.” His warm breath dusted the bare skin on my shoulders and I saw that he was leaning closer. All I had to do was tilt my face and our lips would touch. But I held back, focusing instead on the millions of reasons why kissing Jack Trenholm was a bad idea, the least of which being his ability to make me lose control. And being in control was the only thing I’d learned that I could truly count on.
I swallowed, hoping he couldn’t hear it in the quiet room, then forced a flippant smile. “Right. Like I would fall for a conceited, shallow-hearted womanizer. She must not think very much of me.”
His eyes hardened, but his smile didn’t falter. “Right. Because you’re really known for your high standards in men. Like Marc Longo. That was a great call on your part.”
I tried to push away, but Jack kept his firm grip on my shoulders. “There must be something seriously wrong with you, Mellie, for you to jump into bed with a guy whose motives are clearly not in your best interests. And then you agree to have lunch with him even after you discover what a real shit he is.” Something flickered behind his eyes. If it had been anyone else besides Jack, I would have said it was hurt. “You’re either a masochist, or you’re really, really afraid of thawing that ice ball in your chest that used to be a heart.” He leaned closer. “What are you afraid of, Mellie? Forgetting who you are or where you’ve been for just a moment? Could it really be that bad?”
I turned my head, too exhausted to try and pull away again. “Leave me alone. You don’t know the first thing about me, or about women. You’re in pictures all over the Internet with a different beautiful woman in every one.” I turned my head and met his quizzical gaze. “Yes. I Googled you—so what? It just goes to show that you’re incapable of appreciating a woman for anything other than how she looks on your arm. I guess when they figure out you’re a . . . a”—I rolled my eyes, never having been one to come up with a good put-down when I needed one—“a toad-faced idiot, you’ve already moved on to the next woman. Emily must have been a saint.” I bit my lip, wishing I could call back the entire tirade, especially the last part. But I was scared—scared of being this close to him, scared of my feelings for him—and I was desperate to push him as far away from me as I could.
His eyes were like blue ice, and for the first time since I’d met him, I was reminded that he was a military man—a trained soldier who could be very, very dangerous. I swallowed, waiting for him to continue.
Jack’s voice was very controlled when he spoke. “A toad-faced idiot? How very erudite, Melanie. I’ve been called many things, but I can honestly say that’s the first time I’ve ever been called that.” His gaze dropped to my lips again before returning to meet my gaze. “So, who else was here with you besides the girl from the boat?”
I didn’t answer, knowing that to tell him the truth was to open myself up to a new barrage of Jack’s opinions, most of which I knew to be true.
“Was it your soldier, Mellie? Your protector? Your mother told me about him, you know.”
My hand went to my lips, remembering the kiss, remembering how I’d thought of Jack, feeling relieved at the anger that flooded through me at the memory. I pulled back from where Jack’s fingers stroked my cheek, clinging to the hard-won control that governed my life. I had seen the dark room of a life lived in chaos, had felt my feet poking over the ledge, and I never wanted to get that close again.
“Rebecca knows about him, too,” Jack continued. His hands moved to my shoulders, but I remained still, not wanting to show him how his touch affected me.
“Rebecca?” I was finding it difficult to follow the conversation, distracted by the brush of his thumb on my collarbone. I wanted him to stop. Needed him to stop. But my tongue was useless, and I found myself creeping too close to the precipice.
“She told me that she keeps seeing the two of you in her dreams.”
I swallowed heavily. “How fascinating. Don’t you two have more interesting things to discuss than me? Like what shade of pink she should wear? Or why you dumped her for Emily or why Rebecca is back in your life?” I felt physically sick at the words pouring out of my mouth, but I couldn’t stop them. I felt like a cornered animal, and I did the only thing I knew to protect myself.
He raised an eyebrow, but spoke as if I hadn’t said anything. “I guess he’s your ideal lover, isn’t he? He’s the safest relationship you could ever hope for. I mean, you can’t get too involved or be too committed if he’s already dead, can you?”
I put my palms on his chest and pushed him, forcing him to take a step back. “You’re one to talk, Jack.You’re doing the same thing with Rebecca.”
For a moment, Jack looked almost dangerous. “How so?” he asked slowly.
“You’re only attracted to Rebecca because she reminds you of Emily. But she’ll never be Emily, so you’re safe. No real relationship can come of it because she’ll never be the one you really want.”
He stared at me for a long time without moving, and while I didn’t feel fear, I definitely felt nervous. “Ouch.” He straightened, but didn’t take his eyes from my face. “Thank you for that insightful observation, Melanie. I wasn’t aware that you held a degree in psychiatry as well as rigid scheduling. But thanks for letting me know what a pain in the ass I must be to you. I promise not to offend you with my presence any longer.”
Jack turned and headed toward the door, pausing before he opened it. Without looking back at me, he said, “You’re wrong, you know.” He didn’t move, nor did he speak, and for a moment I thought he wouldn’t continue. Then he said, “Maybe my attraction to Rebecca isn’t because she reminds me of Emily.” He turned his head and our eyes met. “Maybe it’s because she reminds me of you.”
He pushed open the doors and strode through them, the heels of his boots echoing on the marble floors. I pressed my hands against my chest, fighting the need to cry and to call him back, to at least reassure myself that any damage caused by careless words wasn’t permanent. Instead, I did neither, my pride creating a huge chasm between Jack and me. I couldn’t quite forgive him for what he’d said about me and my soldier, mostly because I feared that he might be right.
I quickly headed to the door—eager not to be left alone again in the kitchen—but I stopped when I heard him shout back, “And that was almost kiss number five. Not that you’re counting, of course.”
I placed my hands on my cheeks, eager to cool them from the flush that was already rising up from my neck, and my eyes caught sight of reflected light under the kitchen table. I knew what it was, and approached it carefully, afraid that whoever had snatched it from my neck might be looking for it. I gathered it up from the floor and stood, then held the cold metal of the locket in my hand for a long time, staring at the broken clasp, trying to figure out what she’d meant when she said that it belonged to her—and wishing that Jack was still there to tell me.
I sat curled up in the lime green beanbag chair—inadvertently left in an empty bedroom by the previous owners—and blinked my eyes at the journal I’d been reading for over two hours. My eyes felt gritty and strained from reading the compressed script, the penmanship beautiful but filled with flourishes that made it very difficult to decipher.
The handwriting was definitely that of a female and she seemed to be in her mid-to late teens. Although most of what I’d read so far was comprised of the everyday life of a Charleston resident in the latter half of the nineteenth century, I was enthralled. I’d never been a fan of history, about things that had happened in the past that nobody remembered anymore, but this was different. It was a lot like communicating with a ghost, except in this instance I finally got to hear what they were thinking.
Most telling of all was the writer’s description of the house. It was definitely thirty-three Legare, with its two-tiered portico and stained-glass window, which, according to the writer, “dominated the downstairs drawing room, and created a lot of nasty head shakes from neighbors as it was being installed.” I’d smiled to myself at that one, wondering if some of those neighbors were charter members of the first Board of Architectural Review—or whatever it would have been called back then.
I paid close attention to her description of the window, noting how closely it resembled the window of my childhood.
The window is large and what some would refer to as unattractive, yet it holds a strange fascination for R. I recognized the image of two girls in it first, which made her angry, and then I was forced to pretend that she had been the one to discover it as she relayed the story to Father.
My protector appears enthralled as well, and I have found him staring at it many times. I ask him what he sees but all he will do is tap four times on the window, which will startle R or whoever else is in the room at the time. And when I look up he is always tapping at the same place, at the top right corner, which appears empty from this side of the window.
I see my soldier almost every day. He says he is my protector. He hears me when I speak to him, so yesterday I found the courage to ask him why he is always near. He said because he saved my life when I was a baby, and he was grateful for having been given the chance to redeem himself for a past mistake. He goes away whenever I ask him more questions about what mistake he made. He also disappears whenever I look right at him, as if I am stronger than he is and I overpower him somehow.
I was in the downstairs drawing room this morning, admiring the window, when he appeared. R rushed into the room, unannounced, demanding to know to whom I had been speaking. I was astonished to learn that she could not see him at all since he is so real to me. I have seen spirits since I was a little girl, and I was almost a young woman before I discovered that not everybody does. It is my secret, and I have told no one including R. But still, since R is four years older than I and has thus lived in this house for four more years, I would have thought that she would have come to know him. I must ask him why.
I made some notes in my notepad, then flipped open my phone to call Jack before slowly closing it. I hadn’t seen or spoken to Jack for two weeks, ever since the night of the house tour. After a couple of days of silence, I’d figured out that he was avoiding me, but it had taken me nearly the full two weeks to finally stop calling and leaving messages. I somehow thought that because I was pretending that none of what happened actually had, he could, too, and we could go on as before. Sophie had called this my self-denial; I chose to refer to it as self-preservation.
I hadn’t even heard from him at Christmas. My mother, father, and I were invited to his parents’ house for Christmas dinner, but Amelia and John Trenholm were obviously embarrassed when they’d had to explain that Jack was spending Christmas with Rebecca’s family in Summerville. At least I was spared the agony of watching my parents pretend to ignore each other, as my father declined the invitation. He said he would rather spend his day off going over plans for his garden, and had actually sounded excited about the prospect.
The final blow had come when Amelia gave me a wrapped present from under the tree. I’d been excited until I realized that the attached tag read: MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM JACK AND REBECCA, in her handwriting. Inside was a salon-quality blow-dryer with a note explaining it was a replacement for the one I’d destroyed by using it to melt wallpaper glue in order to remove it from the cypress walls of the Legare Street drawing room.
Sighing, I placed the phone back on the table, whatever I’d wanted to tell Jack forgotten.
The situation was, essentially, what I’d longed for, but I couldn’t help feeling as if I’d lost something valuable long before I’d discovered its worth.
I listened to my mother in the connecting dressing room. We’d managed to paint over the purple-and-brown faux-leopard wall treatment in a warm ivory tone so she could officially move into the master bedroom. Her clothes—four crates’ worth—had arrived the day before, and like Sophie at a yard sale Ginnette had dug right in and set about organizing her closet.
She’d instructed me to stay in my room, within shouting distance. I’d told her about what had happened in the kitchen the night of the tour, and ever since she’d been reluctant to let me out of her sight. I didn’t want to admit that she was right, that the spirits in the house did seem to be getting stronger, or at least more insistent. We needed to bide our time, she said, until we were strong enough to fight. When I asked her when that would be, I hadn’t liked the look in her eyes when she’d told me simply, “You’ll know.” I’d spent every night since lying awake until I thought she would be asleep, then slowly cracking open the connecting door between our rooms. She never asked, and I never said anything, the boundary between us softer yet still unyielding.
I’d initially started out my morning by helping my mother organize her closet, but I’d wasted too much time trying on some of the beautiful clothes. I had nice clothes, too, but they were all for business and function. My mother’s wardrobe was something out of
Dynasty
—with jeweled buttons, puffed sleeves, and heavenly fabrics. Although her tops tended to have extra material in the chest area, everything else fit as if they’d been made for me. I wondered at what age I’d grown to be her size, and if she would have let me borrow her clothes. Our eyes met, and I knew she’d been thinking the same thing. For a moment, I was a little girl again, listening as she told me how sometimes people had to do the right thing even if it meant letting go of the one thing they loved most in the world. And for the first time, I almost believed her.
She eventually sent me back to my room to read the journal, and that’s where I’d been ever since. I stared down at the leather-bound book, then stood before walking over to the connecting door. I paused with my hand raised, ready to knock, lowering then raising my hand again two more times before I gave in and knocked.
My mother opened the door. Her usually perfect chignon was lop-sided and half hanging down her face, and I noticed that she had changed clothes to something that might actually have been velour sweatpants and a matching jacket. But it wasn’t until my gaze had taken in her feet that realization dawned on me.
“When was Sophie here?” I demanded.
She looked surprised. “While you were at work. How did you know?”
“The Birkenstocks.”
She pointed her toe and twisted her foot back and forth to give me a better view. “Sophie and I happen to wear the same size, and she thought it might be easier for me to wear these while unloading and lugging things up the stairs. And you know what, she was right! They are actually quite comfortable. She loaned me the warm-up suit, too.”
Before I could think of something to say that didn’t involve the words “intervention” or “psychologist,” we turned our heads toward the sound of heavy footsteps in the hallway. Chad appeared at the door, two arm-loads of clothing in each arm. “Yo, Dudette.” He smiled broadly, his teeth shining brightly in his perpetually tanned face. He turned to my mother. “Yo, Miss Ginnette, here’s the last load.”
“Hi, Chad.” I placed the journal on a side table, then stepped forward to take some of the clothes from his arms. As I placed them carefully onto the existing pile on the bed, I asked, “And why, exactly, aren’t we letting a moving company do this?”
A shocked expression covered my mother’s face. “I don’t let just anybody touch my clothing. I’m very particular about my things.”
I eyed her outfit again, and muttered under my breath, “Apparently not anymore.” Turning to Chad, I asked, “How did you get roped into this?”
My mother, with a long sequined gown folded over her arm, interjected, “Because your father was working in the garden and was about to volunteer when Chad showed up. It was the perfect solution.”
I wondered why Chad would be at the Legare Street house. “Did you need something from me, Chad? Everything all right back at my house?”
“Everything’s fine. We’re almost through with the stripping of the second floor and I’m about to tackle the staircase. Jack’s been helping a lot, too, with removing all the baseboards. He’s developed what he’s calling the ‘Melanie Middleton method’ of numbering all the pieces so we know where they go when it’s time to put them back. I even showed him how to use a spreadsheet to keep track of it all.”
I wasn’t sure if I should be flattered or annoyed. If Jack was involved, I’d bet on the latter. “Jack’s been helping?”
“Yeah. He’s been spending a lot of time with the papers in the attic doing research for his book, but he comes and helps us when he wants to take a break.”
The news of Jack’s being at my house and interacting with my friends stung. It made me feel like the only kid without a Valentine’s Day card. It was especially painful because I was fairly sure that one of the main reasons why he was there was because he knew that I wouldn’t be. I kept going over his parting words to me the night of the tour.
Maybe it’s because she reminds me of you.
I’d planned on ignoring them, and never bringing them up again between us. But it seemed that I needn’t have bothered thinking about them at all. He’d apparently taken to heart the things I’d said to him in anger, and I should have been thrilled that he wasn’t interfering in my life anymore. Only, I wasn’t.
“Great,” I said, and my mother slid a glance toward me as if she recognized that my tone of voice and what I was saying were out of sync. Just like a mother who’d been around her child all of her life would do. Or maybe it was just one of those skills that mothers picked up in the first few years and never quite forgot.
I forced a smile. “Tell him I said hello. And, um, tell him that they’re tearing out the plaster covering the kitchen fireplace tomorrow. He might want to be here to see what’s behind it.”
Chad looked at me oddly. “Sure will. But he said he was going back to his condo to try and get some writing done, so I don’t know when I’ll see him next.” He shoved his hands in his jeans pockets and stood there, staring at the dentil molding as if he’d never seen anything like it before. I waited for him to leave, but he continued to stand where he was without saying anything.
“Is there something else?”
He looked back at me as if remembering I was there and shuffled his feet. My mother ducked discreetly into the closet. “I need your help.”
“With what?”
He looked down at his sandal-clad feet—with socks in deference to the season—and shuffled them again. I watched as his face shifted from easy and open to almost tortured. I touched his arm in alarm. “Is there something wrong with the house?” I had visions of hordes of termites camping out in the mahogany stairwell of the Tradd Street house. Or maybe one of the rare glass sidelights by the front door had cracked in the cold weather. Even worse, I pictured myself writing yet another check out with lots of zeros for a repair that couldn’t be postponed. I felt sick to my stomach waiting for him to answer, not pausing to consider how odd that I could be so concerned about something I’d once referred to as a goiter on my neck and, more kindly, a pile of lumber.
“No. The house is fine,” he said in his slow, California manner. “It’s just . . .”
I waited, resisting the impulse to pull at his shirt collar to yank the words in quicker succession from his mouth. “What?”
“I need to borrow an electric floor sander.”
I blinked at him in both relief and amazement. “You need a floor sander,” I repeated. It looked like he might cry, and I groaned inwardly, hoping he wasn’t about to pull my mother from the closet so we could have a group hug.
His face wrinkled a bit as he spoke. “It’s just that I don’t think I can hand-sand one more square inch of floor in your house. It’s like I’m being punished for some bad karma or something.” He looked directly into my eyes and I could have sworn I saw tears. “Sophie’s doing a field study with one of her classes all week, so I’m pretty much alone at the house to do more sanding. I figured . . .” He stopped, unable to continue.
“You figured that if she wasn’t there to see, you could get some sanding out of the way with the electric sander.”
Chad nodded and I squeezed his arm, trying not to smile. “No problem. It’s being stored temporarily outside in the garden shed for lack of a better place for it. It’s yours for as long as you need it.”
His eyes were worried. “And you won’t . . .”
“My lips are sealed.”
He nodded with relief, his eyes closed for a moment. “I don’t care what Jack says, Melanie. I think you’re one of the nicest people I know. And you’re really not
that
uptight once people get to know you.”
Before I could say anything, Chad enveloped me in a tight hug, his organic wool sweater scratching my cheek. “I wanted to let you know that I’m having mine and Sophie’s star charts read by a professional astrologer.”
“Really? I thought that Sophie was the only one who bought in to that stuff.”