“It’s really no problem, dear. I love to help other people who are as interested in history as I am, and I don’t get enough company as it is, seeing as how we live so far off the beaten path.”
My mother leaned forward. “Melanie mentioned that you’ve been searching through the old documents of the Crandall family, who owned this house before your husband’s family acquired it during the 1930s. We were hoping that you’d discovered the identity of the girl in the portrait.”
“I have actually, and that’s just what I was discussing with Miss Edgerton.”
My heart beat a little faster. “That’s wonderful. Could we please see what you found?”
“It would be my pleasure. I believe I mentioned to Jack on the phone that I remembered about some sort of family tragedy that occurred in the late 1800s, but I couldn’t recall what it was. Most of what I have is in letters between Crandall family members in Connecticut and the branch who migrated down here to the coast of South Carolina.”
She stood and began to rummage through a neat pile of yellowed envelopes stacked on the coffee table. “I’ve read through all of these so I’m fairly familiar with them. It’s a bit like eavesdropping on history.” Mrs. McGowan looked up at us with a wide smile. I stole a glance at my mother and wondered if I was wearing the same tight-lipped grimace she was in an attempt not to appear impatient. I glanced down at her crossed leg and watched as her foot bounced up and down.
I made a point to still my own. “It must be fascinating,” I said. “So what did you find?”
Mrs. McGowan finally pulled out an envelope and carefully slid a fragile letter from it. “The letter is from William Crandall, of Mimosa Hall, to a Mrs. Suzanne Crandall of Darien, Connecticut, sister-in-law of Josiah mentioned in the letter and aunt to the girl in the portrait. I’ve gathered from other correspondence that William is the cousin of Suzanne’s husband. It’s rather sad, I’m afraid.” She slipped a pair of reading glasses out of her pocket and put them on. “I’d rather it not be handled too much, at least not until I can get it into an archival album, so I’ll read it aloud to you.”
At our nods, Mrs. McGowan cleared her throat and began to read.
September 29, 1870
Dearest Suzanne,
It is with great sadness that I must tell you the news that weighs heavy on my heart. The ship carrying Josiah and your sister Mary, along with their daughter, Nora, has been lost at sea. We were hoping that their delay was for other reasons, but when a week went by past their expected arrival, we made enquiries into the whereabouts of their ship. The last contact with the captain and crew was when they dropped anchor at Wilmington, North Carolina, before heading down the coast. The captain was advised to delay his departure as a terrible storm was being predicted, but he felt confident that he could get ahead of it. Alas, it does not appear to be so as no sight has been made of the ship, its captain, crew, or twenty passengers. The only sign of the ship’s fate is the discovery of the ship’s figurehead on the beach at Edisto Island.
My heart breaks over the loss of your sister and her husband, and their little Nora, just an infant, lost forever in the clutches of the sea. I have taken the liberty of having a memorial service said for them, and have placed a marker in the family cemetery here.
How fortunate for young Alice, to have fallen so ill as to make her unsuitable for travel and thus to have been left behind in your tender care. She was spared the same watery fate as her parents and twin sister, and for this we must be grateful, even as our hearts grieve.
Your cousin,
William Crandall
Mrs. McGowan folded the letter and replaced it in the envelope. “I’m a little bit of an amateur genealogist and have been working on the Crandall family tree with information gleaned from these letters. Nothing serious, mind you, but just something that sparked my interest.” She began rummaging through a stack of papers that had been placed inside a large three-ring binder.
My mother and I shared a glance before I asked, “So who is the girl in the portrait?”
Mrs. McGowan looked up at us, seeming confused for a moment. “Ah, yes. That’s Alice Crandall. Daughter of Josiah and Mary, and twin sister to Nora, the child who perished on the ship with her parents. She remained in Connecticut, raised by her aunt Suzanne, until she was thirteen and the family moved down here to South Carolina. Alice lived here until she died in the 1920s, mercifully before the family lost the house and property during the Depression. Her son, Bill, had to deal with that.”
I’d been hoping that one of the names would have had an
R
or
M
, something that would fill in a piece of the puzzle instead of adding to it. I would have even been willing to suggest that the Crandalls and their tragic story had nothing to do with us, that the girls and their identical lockets were merely coincidence.
My mother turned to me. Speaking softly, she said, “But then the girl’s spirit wouldn’t have followed us here.”
I stared at her for a long moment, wondering if she’d even realized that I hadn’t spoken my thoughts out loud. Maybe all mothers and daughters were like that, but I’d never had the chance to learn.
I turned back to Mrs. McGowan. “I’d like to see a Crandall family tree, if you have that handy.”
Her forehead wrinkled. “That’s what I’ve been looking for. That’s odd. It was right here. I was showing it to Miss Edgerton, so it couldn’t have gone far.” She continued to flip through the binder. “I’m wondering if she accidentally picked it up with her things when she left.”
Again, I shared a glance with my mother. “Probably. When I see her, I’ll ask and let you know.” I stood. “We can’t thank you enough, Mrs. McGowan, for your time.”
“And your cookies,” added my mother as she stood, too. “You’ve been most helpful.”
Mrs. McGowan escorted us to the door. “I’ve enjoyed it. Please come back anytime you want to discuss more of the family’s history. It really is quite interesting. And bring Jack.” She smiled and handed us our coats.
“One more thing,” I said. “Do you have any idea of the name of the ship that sank with all on board?”
She shook her head. “No. It was never mentioned in any of the letters. Only that it sank in 1870 somewhere along the coast between North and South Carolina.”
I nodded. “Well, that’s a place to start. Thank you again,” I said before turning and leading my mother from the porch.
We paused at the car, facing each other over the roof. My mother said, “Well, that wasn’t a complete bust. We know the girl in the portrait is Alice Crandall, and she had a twin named Nora who went down with a ship in a storm in 1870. And that whoever is haunting the house on Legare is connected to this house in some way and wasn’t very happy to see us today.” She looked up as a heavy cloud lumbered its way over the sun. “We also know that for some reason Rebecca is reluctant to let us see the Crandall family tree.”
I groaned in frustration. “None of this makes sense. I’m beginning to believe that none of it is even related to anything else.”
My mother opened her car door. “Let’s go eat dinner and we can discuss this more. I saw a nice seafood restaurant about five miles down the road on our way in.”
I studied my mother, noticing the graying sky behind her head, and the way the fading light darkened her eyes, making them look more like mine. I sighed, realizing that regardless of the new yet tentative bonds that we’d begun to forge, there would always be parts of my life that my mother had opted out of; parts that would always be irretrievable. But along the way, those things had somehow begun to lose their significance. “I’m allergic to seafood, Mother. I had a severe reaction to shrimp when I was eight years old and I haven’t touched it since.” This wasn’t completely true, as on my doctor’s recommendation I’d tried it again as an adult and I’d had no reaction, but the small child in me wanted my mother to know that she hadn’t been there in a moment when I’d needed her.
She was silent for a moment, her eyes sad as she contemplated me. “There’s something you need to know, Mellie. . . .”
Her words were drowned out by the sound of an approaching car. We turned and I recognized Jack’s black Porsche, puffs of dirt and gravel thrown behind it like exclamation points.
He pulled up next to us in the driveway, then climbed out quickly. Ignoring me, but with a quick greeting to my mother, he said, “Rebecca’s already gone, I assume.” He wore an unbuttoned and wrinkled oxford cloth shirt thrown over a white T-shirt, and he was still sporting a five o’clock shadow. I wanted to say that he looked disheveled, but the only thing that came to mind was how much he looked like he belonged on a magazine cover.
I faced him. “She left about an hour before we got here. How did you know she was here?”
“Yvonne called me, trying to reach you.Your cell phone must be out of range. She told me about the window and your grandmother, and how Rebecca has the folder with the information Yvonne had meant for you, and that the Crandall family tree is missing from the archives. I wanted to find Rebecca to set the record straight.”
“Us, too. That’s why we came here. And guess what. Mrs. McGowan can’t find the Crandall family tree that she was working on, either. It went missing somewhere between the time Rebecca got here and the time she left. Go figure.”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “I’m sure there’s an explanation. Sometimes Rebecca gets really caught up in a story and she does—irresponsible things.”
“Like stealing the journal from my kitchen? That’s more than irresponsible, Jack. It’s a criminal offense. And she’s not returning any of my phone calls.”
He rubbed his hand over his jaw and when he looked at me again, his eyes were hard. “I’ll get to the bottom of it.” He glanced at the house. “Did Mrs. McGowan have anything interesting to show you?”
“Besides the missing family tree? Yes, actually.” I quickly filled him in on the identity of the girl in the portrait and the ship lost at sea.
He was thoughtful for a moment. “You said the ship was lost in 1870, correct?”
“Yes.Way too late for my ancestors—the supposed wreckers—to have been involved, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
He raised both eyebrows. “The ship was lost off the South Carolina coast, and the figurehead was found not far from your family’s plantation on Johns Island. It’s a bit of a coincidence, don’t you think?”
My mother stepped forward. “But surely our family’s financial and social positions were secure enough by that time that such drastic actions weren’t necessary.”
Jack shrugged. “All I’m saying is that the ship went down near Johns Island. If any salvaging was done by anybody, it would have been a crime of circumstance seeing that it was Mother Nature who sunk the boat. The Civil War devastated the finances of many of Charleston’s upstanding citizens, and the market for sea-island cotton, not to mention the difficulty in cultivating it without slave labor, would have made a huge cut in the Prioleau family fortunes. Who’s to say that they wouldn’t have seen an opportunity and taken advantage of it?”
“It’s possible, I suppose,” I admitted reluctantly. I didn’t want to be related to anybody who could profit from another’s loss. “But it still doesn’t bring us any closer to the identity of the girl on the sailboat that was sunk nearly sixteen years later.”
“Maybe it was Alice on the sailboat,” Jack said.
I shook my head. “No. Mrs. McGowan said that Alice moved from Connecticut with her aunt to Mimosa Hall when she was thirteen and lived there until she died sometime in the 1920s. But she wore an identical locket to the one worn by the unidentified girls in the portrait in my mother’s house. And if a girl named Meredith lived at Thirty-three Legare, then I have to assume it’s probably her in the portrait with the
M
locket on.”
Jack approached the car. “Not to confuse things”—he began as he reached into his back pocket and brought something out, keeping his fist closed over it—“but aren’t you curious what Yvonne was so eager to tell you?”
“Yes, of course.” I’d nearly forgotten the reason Jack was at Mimosa Hall in the first place.
“She found a casualty list from the Charleston earthquake of 1886.” He paused for effect. “She found a listing for Meredith Prioleau. Missing, presumed dead. Her last known residence was Thirty-three Legare Street.”
My mother stepped forward. “But why isn’t this Meredith anywhere on our family tree?”
I rubbed my temple, feeling the beginning of a headache. “We found a calling card with Meredith’s name and address in the journal, and the casualty list also gives her address as Legare Street. If we can make a leap of faith and say that she was probably the journal writer, I think we can assume that she’s the girl in the portrait, too.”
Jack nodded, his expression unreadable. “That’s what I was thinking, too, until I picked this up today after having it cleaned.”
A cold gust of wind caught my hair as Jack placed the gold locket and chain in my hand. At first I didn’t recognize what it was because it now gleamed in the fading light.
My gaze met his. “I don’t get it.”
“Look closely.”
Giving up on vanity completely, I squinted my eyes, staring at the single letter in the middle of the locket. Even in fading light and without glasses, it was clear to the naked eye that the last leg of the letter
M
had been added at a later time—and that the original letter on the locket had been an
N
.
I held it up to my mother, who had already slipped on her reading glasses. Slowly she raised her gaze to both of us. “This is just a shot in the dark, but since it’s the only thing we have to go on right now, could the
N
have been for Nora?”
I’d been thinking the same thing. “But how could the locket have ended up in the sailboat sixteen years after Nora died? And why was it altered?”
After a final look, I slipped the locket into my purse as Jack scratched his head. “Look, why don’t we all grab a bite to eat so we can discuss everything, see if we can reach any conclusions?”