Yvonne was silent for a moment. “Or maybe she did. You’ve mentioned how she was fond of puzzles. Maybe you just weren’t aware at the time.”
I thought of all the times my grandmother and I had spent in the room with the sunlight streaming through the window, and sitting outside in the garden on the reverse side. But I’d been so young then; anything she might have said had long since been forgotten. Maybe simple exposure to the window was her way of implanting it in my memory.
“Maybe,” I said uncertainly.
“There was a sketch with the purchase order, and I made a copy of that, too. Although you’ve already noticed all of the changes from the original order.”
“And it’s in the folder you gave Rebecca.”
“Yes. I do hope I didn’t do the wrong thing.”
“No, Yvonne. You’ve been nothing but helpful. One more question, though. Do you remember when the window was changed?”
“Of course.” Again, she sounded wounded, as if I somehow doubted her mental capacities and I made a mental note to be more careful with my questions in future. “I’m usually not as good with dates as I am with names, but I remember the year because it was the year I got married: 1947.”
I closed my eyes, trying to recall the dates on the family tree that I’d seen recently. My eyes popped open. “That was the year after Rose died.”
“Hunting unicorns again, Melanie?” I heard the smile in Yvonne’s voice.
“I’m thinking there might have been a deathbed confession of some sort, and this was my grandmother’s way of recording it for future generations. She did love her puzzles.”
“That’s very good, Melanie. And exactly what Jack said, too.”
“You’ve seen Jack?”
“No. He called me this morning. Wanted me to check to see if I had anything—birth records, death records, marriage certificate, anything, really—on a Meredith Prioleau.”
Before, I would have been angry that Jack’s mind had been quicker than mine in figuring out the next step. But now all I could feel was an odd relief that Jack hadn’t completely forgotten about me or abandoned the search. I frowned when it occurred to me that he might not be doing the research for me at all. I grasped the phone tighter. “He beat me to the punch. That was the next thing I was going to ask you. Have you had a chance to look, yet?”
“Just preliminary files so far. And I’ve found absolutely nothing. Any idea who she might be?”
“None. But I have a feeling she may be a contemporary of Rose’s. Maybe a distant cousin?”
“That at least gives me a time period to work with. I’ll call you on your cell phone as soon as I learn something.” She paused for a moment. “And do try to think of anything your grandmother might have said to you, something that maybe didn’t make sense to you back then but might now. I knew your grandmother, you know. Not well, so I suppose I knew more of her than anything else. But it was well known that she had a sharp mind and a sharper sense of humor, and loved mysteries, and riddles, and pranks more than anything. She was also secretly hated by a lot of the women in town because of how she remained whiplike thin yet ate like a pack mule.”
I smiled, remembering my grandmother and how we used to fight over the biggest piece of chocolate cake. “I will,Yvonne. And thank you.”
I hung up the phone just as I heard high heels coming from the foyer. “In here,” I called, expecting to see Rebecca and more than a little bit relieved. When my mother appeared from around the corner, I must have gasped in surprise.
“Are you all right, Mellie? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.” Her eyes twinkled, belying the seriousness of her question.
I stood, pocketing my cell phone. “Very funny, Mother. And no, I haven’t seen anything. I think the large number of people working in the house during the days keeps them at bay. Were you looking for me?”
“Yes, actually.” She leaned forward and before I could step back, she’d plucked a clump of sawdust from my hair and held it up. “I don’t think gray is your color, dear.”
Before I could stop myself, I smiled, amazed how natural it had felt to have my mother teasing me and making jokes the way mothers were supposed to. At least how other mothers did.
I backed away, feeling self-conscious now as I raked my fingers through my hair. “So what did you need?” I asked, careful to keep my voice neutral. The open hostility had passed if for no other reason than I found it exhausting to keep it up while we lived in close quarters. It might also have had something to do with the fact that my mother had held the journal to help me, regardless of what effect it might have on her. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t forget it.
Small lines formed between her eyebrows. “Rebecca came by the house a little while ago.”
I straightened. “Did she leave a folder for me?”
She shook her head. “No. Actually, I think she took something.”
“What? There’s nothing of any value in the house right now except for a few pieces of heavy furniture.” I thought of the sapphire necklace and earrings, but after the incident in the kitchen, I’d had them stored in a safety-deposit box at my bank. I’d figured it was in my best interests to keep them out of the house.
“The journal. I didn’t realize it was gone at first. When I came downstairs, I felt a cold draft and found General Lee outside and the kitchen door open. As I went to retrieve the dog, I saw Rebecca getting into her car. I called for her, but she either didn’t hear me or pretended not to. Regardless, she got in her car and drove away.
“It wasn’t until I got to the kitchen that I remembered you’d left the journal on the kitchen table. And it wasn’t there anymore. I checked on the counters and everywhere else to see if it could have been moved, but it was gone.”
I started breathing heavily as anger and worry bonded together in a gathering snowball. I wasn’t sure which part to be more upset about: that she’d stolen the journal or that she’d left General Lee outside in the cold. “Are you sure it was Rebecca?”
My mother gave me a hard glare. “Blond hair, pink coat, perky steps?”
“Right.” I flipped open my phone and hit redial again, trying to reach Rebecca on her cell. I flipped it closed when I reached her voice mail. Then I tried Jack’s cell and home number, with the same results.
“Do you know what she’s up to?” my mother asked.
“No clue,” I said, sliding down the wall and landing in a pile of sawdust, but I didn’t care. I was overwhelmed by questions with no answers, and the only person I knew of who could help me figure them out wasn’t taking my phone calls.
To my surprise, my mother sat down, too, albeit more elegantly and managing to avoid the piles of sawdust stacked around the room like a minefield. “So what are you going to do about it?”
I shrugged. “Nothing, I guess. I just have no idea what direction to move in next.”
“So you’re giving up? Just like that? That’s not the Melanie Middleton I’ve heard about.”
I turned my head to glare at her. “And you would have heard a lot up there in New York or whatever corner of the world you were.”
Her soft smile didn’t falter. “Actually, yes. I always had the Charleston paper forwarded to me wherever I was. I have a scrapbook of every sale you’ve ever made, every article about all your sales awards, and every ad, with some questionable choices in hairstyle, I might add. But I have them all. A mother’s brag book, I guess you’d call it.”
I looked down at my sawdust-encrusted hands, not knowing what to say.
Softly, she said, “So the Melanie Middleton I thought I knew was tenacious and didn’t quit. It seems to me you should think of this whole thing as a listing with multiple offers, and you’re going to get a huge commission if your client gets the bid.”
Despite myself, I smiled. “Yeah, well, in that scenario I’d know what I was doing. I’m pretty much branching out into new territory here. We have portraits of girls with matching lockets but with initials we can’t trace, a ghost who hates me and wants to hurt me, a dead soldier who apparently wants to date me, a hidden room with an empty chest, a window in which Grandmother Sarah stuck a clue that I can’t figure out, and a dead body in a boat that once belonged to my family. And I don’t have a single thought as to how all of that might be related and/or how any of it might help me figure out how to exorcise the bad spirit who’s been in this house since you were a little girl.”
My mother was staring at me intently. “What did you say about your grandmother and the window?”
“Oh, right. I just received a phone call from Yvonne at the historical society library. She found a work order dating from 1947, the year after your grandmother Rose died, with Sarah’s name on the purchase order. She was the one who made the changes to the window: the addition of the decorative line framing the picture in the window, the angel’s head, and the addition of the people. Jack’s found some evidence that would suggest that our forebears were wreckers, but again there’s no solid proof of anything, although the picture in the window shows a beach and ocean.”
A slow smile spread over my mother’s face. “Your grandmother Sarah did leave a clue, Mellie.”
I frowned at her, not following.
“On her tombstone, remember?” She closed her eyes and recited the words slowly:
When bricks crumble, the fireplace falls;
When children cry, the mothers call.
When lies are told, the sins are built,
Within the waves, hide all our guilt.
I sat up a little. “Rebecca figured that the bricks crumbling are related to the Charleston earthquake in 1886, and because the sailboat
Rose
disappeared the same year, she thought the last line was about the boat. But I was the one who noticed that the lines framing the tombstone matched the design on the back of the window at your house, which brings me back to where I started. Yvonne—she’s been helping with a lot of the research—had a folder for me with some information regarding Grandmother’s purchase order for the window as well as a family tree for the Crandall family.”
“The Crandall family?”
“Yes. Their house in Ulmer has a portrait of a girl around the same period with an identical locket worn by the girls in our portrait. Jack and I were trying to find the identity of the girl in that portrait, hoping it might shed some light on the other two.”
“And what about the window order? What were you trying to find out?”
“I’m not sure. I was hoping that seeing in Grandmother’s own words what she was changing might help me figure out what she was trying to tell us.”
My mother leaned toward me. “But we’ve already seen her own words. On the tombstone.” Her eyes lit up, exaggerating her resemblance to my grandmother, and also reminding me that she was a Prioleau, too. “You’re forgetting a piece of this puzzle, the writer of the journal. It seems to me that her name is an answer to a question we haven’t thought to ask yet.” Standing, she began to walk around the room, managing to avoid the sawdust piles. “Let’s assume Rebecca was right and the first line is about the earthquake. Let’s assume, too, that she’s right about the last line.” She held up a finger on one gloved hand. “So here we have an unidentified body, although she’s found with a locket with the initial
M
on it.” She held up a finger on her other hand. “And here we have a name with no history: Meredith Prioleau. Have you asked Yvonne for any of the casualty lists from the earthquake?”
I had only a vague memory of studying the earthquake that had rocked the city almost one hundred years before I was born. I was proud to be able to point out the earthquake rods that were drilled into the sides of most of the historic buildings in the city to prospective buyers. But this was the first time I’d really thought about the incident in terms of casualties. Hesitantly, I asked, “Were there casualties?”
My mother stopped her walking and stared down at me before sighing heavily. “About two thousand buildings were destroyed at a cost of about six million dollars at the time, and around one hundred people were killed. They’re not sure of the exact numbers because records were destroyed and record keeping wasn’t what it is today. Some bodies were never recovered.”
“Oh, right. I knew that.”
My mother frowned at me. “Regardless, it’s something that hasn’t been explored yet and it’s a place we can start without Rebecca. Or Jack.” She waved a gloved hand at my reproachful look. “Oh, I’m not blind, Mellie. I know he hasn’t been coming around or calling, and I’m not about to point fingers or blame anyone. Not yet, anyway. But I do think it’s time you stopped feeling sorry for yourself and move forward. Besides, nobody buys into the ‘poor me’ thing you’ve got going.”
She began to rustle around for something in her purse.
I swiped angrily at the sawdust that stuck to my eyelashes. “You have some nerve . . . ,” I began.
“You’re much too beautiful, talented, and successful for that to work anymore. Time to face the fact that you turned out pretty remarkable despite how much your parents screwed up.” She began to walk away. “Let’s go. We have work to do.”
“But . . .” I tried to formulate a rebuttal to anything she’d said, but she’d managed to insert something nice and I couldn’t. I jogged after her, grabbing my coat from the banister. “Where are we going?”
“To find Rebecca. Do you know where she is?”
“In Ulmer.”
This made her stop. “Do you know how to get there?”
I stopped, too, almost running into her. “I’ve been there once, with Jack. I think I remember the way. But it’s about a two-hour drive.”
She glanced at her watch. “Fine. I’ll drive, then, and get us there in half the time.”
I wanted to tell her no, to let her know that everything still wasn’t okay and that I had missed her for every day of the thirty-three years she’d been away. But she’d said the word “we,” and I found myself wanting to believe in second chances and starting over.
I slid into the passenger side of her brand-new sedan and leaned back into the leather seats, contemplating again how very much my life had changed in the relatively short time since I’d had the strange and unexpected inheritance of a historic home on Tradd Street.
We rode mostly in silence. I was quiet because I knew if I said something, I’d be likely to break the tentative truce we had. I figured my mother was being silent for the same reason. She’d started out by asking me questions about my childhood, about dance lessons and best friends, but my clipped answers had probably hinted to her that she was approaching forbidden territory. To mask the silence, I’d found a satellite station playing all ABBA, but my mother quickly changed it to a classical station and we’d left it at that.
I called Yvonne on my cell to ask her about the earthquake casualty lists and she promised to make it a priority and call me back as soon as she found—or didn’t find—anything, then returned to navigating our way to Ulmer from memory, making only one false turn.
I called the McGowans, too, but I reached only an answering machine. I left a message, explaining who I was and that I was on my way to see them. My eyes started drifting closed, lulled by the sound of the tires against asphalt, but I was jolted awake by my mother’s voice.
“You do realize that a lot of operas are written in German, correct?”
I stared at her, wondering where this line of conversation was leading. “I’ll take your word for it.”
She grimaced and didn’t look at me as she spoke. “I suppose that means you’re not a fan of opera.”
I didn’t answer, not yet ready to tell her how when I was small, and my father wasn’t watching, I’d flip channels in the hope of finding her singing somewhere in the world, and that in all of the years of flipping channels, I’d only seen her twice; but I’d never stopped hoping.
“I’ve been waiting for you to ask me what
Gefangener des Herzens
means.”
I sat up straight, fully awake now. I’d completely forgotten that I’d even told her about it. “I’ve been meaning to plug it into Babel Fish, but it keeps getting pushed farther and farther down on my to-do list. I figured Daddy would know and I’d ask him when he came to trim back Grandmother’s camellias tomorrow.”
She turned to look at me. “What makes you think that your father would know?”
I shrugged. “Despite being less than reliable, he was the only go-to person I had while growing up, and he always seemed to have an answer.”
A corner of her mouth turned upward. “That may be, but I doubt he knows what it means.”
“So, are you going to tell me?” I said, sounding slightly peeved and feeling protective of my father.
“It means ‘prisoner of the heart.’ ”
I rubbed the words over in my mind, like a thumb against a coin. “That’s interesting. Rebecca thinks he might have been a Hessian soldier who deserted the British Army following the end of the Revolution. He may have been kept there unwillingly, but I wonder what the other part means.”
“You can ask him, you know.”
I didn’t answer right away. Summoning spirits had been something my mother had done, but something I shied away from. I’d never wanted to call attention to my psychic ability, and had even hoped for a long time that if I ignored it, it would go away. Although I’d asked Wilhelm questions before, he’d avoided answering them, and I wondered if it was because I hadn’t initiated the contact. “He always seems to find me first.”
“We’re running out of time, Mellie. I feel her in the house everywhere, not just in the back. We need to find out as much as we can now. But one thing you must be aware of before you summon Wilhelm: When you call him by name, you make him stronger.”
I studied her profile for a long moment—the smooth curve of her chin and her long neck, the tight skin belying her age—then looked away. I’d wanted to ask her if she knew about Wilhelm from experience, and what else she knew but wasn’t telling me. But the moment passed, the lure of a peaceful truce and companionship with my mother too strong to give up so soon. I let the questions go, allowing myself to be lulled into a half sleep.
As the miles slipped behind the car, I began to feel more and more unsettled, my skin prickling as if someone were blowing cold air on the nape of my neck. I twitched in my seat, and my mother glanced over at me before returning her attention to the road.
When we turned onto the long gravel drive leading up to Mimosa Hall, my mother turned to me. “Do you feel it, too?”
I nodded, again feeling the unfamiliar relief that I didn’t need to explain anything to her—or hide anything. “My skin’s burning with it,” I confessed.
“Mine, too.
I looked at her with surprise. “I would never have guessed.” She edged the car to the side of a large pothole. “That’s because I’ve lived with it longer than you have. My mother showed me how to hide it.”
I looked straight ahead as we approached the house, feeling now as if ants were running under my skin. My mother parked the car in the same spot Jack had left his on our previous visit and turned off the ignition. Rebecca’s car was nowhere in sight.
“She’s here,” my mother said. “She’s waiting for us.”
I knew she wasn’t referring to Rebecca, and I flinched, remembering my last visit and knowing there’d be no alcohol and no Jack this time to act as a buffer. My mother surprised me by taking my hand with her gloved one. “Together, we are strong enough to fight her. Remember that.”
I studied her for a moment. “Then why didn’t you stay? Before, when I was small. You keep telling me that you didn’t leave because of me. Was it because of her? Because you couldn’t fight her and I wasn’t strong enough to help?”
She squeezed my hand. “There’s so much I still need to tell you, Mellie, and I will—soon. I just don’t think you’re ready to hear it yet.”
I pulled my hand away. “I’m almost forty years old, Mother. How much older do I have to be before you can trust me with the truth?”
Her eyes darkened. “It’s not the truth I don’t trust you with. It’s your fear. You can’t be afraid of what you don’t know.”
I shivered inside my coat. “Now you’re scaring me. I’m not at all sure I want to do this.”
“You must, Mellie. I’m here, and we will face this together, or we will never be free.”
I noticed again how pale she looked, how tight her skin seemed to stretch over the fine bones of her face, realizing how she’d been that way since she’d touched the journal.When she put her hand on the door latch to open her car door, I placed my hand on her arm.
“There’s something else that’s been bothering me.”
She looked at me and I noticed the dark circles under her eyes.
“I don’t think I put the journal in the kitchen. I’d been reading it in my room before I went to sleep, and I left it inside the drawer of my bedside table. I might have moved it, but I don’t think I did.”
Her brows furrowed. “Why do you think it was moved?”
“Rebecca told me that I shouldn’t let you touch it; she’d had a premonition and told me that it could be dangerous for you. I wasn’t sure I believed her, and besides I couldn’t see you willingly touching it again, but I kept it hidden from you and out of sight just in case. I wouldn’t have brought it to the kitchen.”
She nodded. “This other entity wants to use the journal to reach me in a negative way. She saw how the journal writer used it to communicate with me, and she saw an opportunity. It’s a—portal of sorts. A way to communicate with those like us. But you have to make sure that you don’t get the wrong spirit on the other end.” She glanced toward the house. “Come on. Let’s see if anyone’s home.”
I followed her out of the car and up to the steps leading to the wrap-around porch. After not receiving an answer when I’d called earlier, I didn’t expect anybody to be home. So I was surprised when I heard footsteps approaching the front door.
A plump woman in her late sixties with white hair and large blue eyes greeted us enthusiastically when she opened the door.
She introduced herself as Mrs. McGowan, then said, “You must be Melanie and her mother. I got your message that you were on the way. Come in, come in! What a day it’s been for visitors!”
“Excuse me?” I asked.
“A reporter from the
Post & Courier
was here. She left about an hour ago. We must have been in the attic when you called and left your message.”
I shared a glance with my mother. “Was her name Rebecca Edgerton?”
“Blond and perky?” Ginnette added.
“Yes, that was definitely her. Sweet girl. Is she a friend of yours?”
“Sort of. Yes, actually. We’re working on a project together. As you’ve already gathered, I’m Melanie Middleton and this is my mother, Ginnette. When I was here before with Jack Trenholm and spoke with your husband, he showed me the portrait of the girl with the locket and we’ve been trying to determine her identity. Jack mentioned that you’d discovered some information in your attic that might be useful to us.”
She put her hand to her chest and actually fluttered her eyelashes. “That Jack. Such a charming man. We’ve spoken on the phone several times, but I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting him in person. He’s promised to stop by and try some of my blueberry cobbler.”
“He did mention that,” I said as I followed my mother over the threshold. She gripped my arm as we stood in the foyer, and I knew that she’d felt the icy wind at our backs, too.
Mrs. McGowan shivered as she closed the door behind us. “Come on in. I’ve got a nice fire going in the family room. And I still have all the papers out that I was showing Rebecca, so no more trips up to the attic.” We followed her, staying close together, then shrugged out of our coats before sitting on the sofa Mrs. McGowan indicated. “I just put a kettle on to boil, so if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go make us a nice pot of hot tea.”
“We don’t want to put you out,” my mother began.
Mrs. McGowan waved away her protests. “I enjoy the company. And I just took out a batch of Scottish shortbread that I would love to share.” She patted her ample waist. “George and I certainly don’t need to be eating the whole thing.” She laughed as she walked out of the room. Calling back to us, she said, “Feel free to look around, if you like. The portrait you were talking about is in the dining room off the entrance hall.”
My mother stood and held her hand out to me, but I didn’t stand immediately. “I’ve already seen it, and I don’t want to repeat the experience, thank you.”
My mother squatted down in front of the sofa. “Mellie, it’s not going to go away just because you like to pretend it isn’t there. It will be worse for you if she senses your fear.” She stood again, and held out her hand. Not completely convinced that I was doing the right thing, I allowed her to pull me to my feet.
I led the way to the familiar spot in the dining room where I’d last seen the portrait. I stared at the girl with the familiar features, focusing on the heart-shaped locket with the initial
A
engraved in the middle. It was clear that there had to be some relation to the two girls in the other portrait, but that only added to the confusion. She couldn’t be a Prioleau, but the family resemblance was there. And the other portrait had been found in my mother’s attic, adding to the assumption that they were family members. Not to mention the fact that I bore a strong resemblance to them as well. I hoped Mrs. McGowan could shed some light into the murky corners of my family’s past—and that Rebecca hadn’t made off with the evidence again.
Ginnette.
I startled at the sound of the voice that was now so familiar to me. But the relief that she hadn’t been saying my name quickly evaporated when I realized she was speaking to my mother.
My mother reached for my hand, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Her eyes were wide, but not with fear; it looked a lot more like determination. Her breaths were quick and shallow, and I looked at her with alarm. “Are you okay?”
She nodded. “She’s trying to get inside my head, but I won’t let her. Don’t let go of my hand.” She closed her eyes tightly and shook her head, as if she were answering a question I couldn’t hear.
A cold wind circled us, slicing the air between us like a steel knife, sliding between our joined hands. I thought I heard a voice telling me to let go, but I couldn’t be sure. Nausea rose in my throat as the putrid smell of dead things from the sea flooded my nose. Panic strangled the words I struggled to say. “I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know what to do.”
Her voice was firm, calming me. “Just be strong. Don’t listen to the voice, and keep telling yourself that you’re stronger than she is. That
we’re
stronger than she is—but only if we work together.You’re not alone anymore, Mellie. I’m here.”
Our eyes met, and I knew she was talking about way more than the mere matter of evil spirits. I looked away quickly, feeling the encircling cold as it continued to search for a way in. My mother’s gloved fingers lifted from my hand, one by one as if being forced by unseen fingers, and for the first time I saw the fear in my mother’s eyes.
“I’m stronger than you,” I said out loud, grabbing my mother’s hand with both of mine. But my grip was weak—my fingers boneless—and I felt her hand slipping from my grasp.
“
We
are stronger than you,” I shouted and my grasp tightened.
“We are stronger than you,” we shouted together, then stood still as the cold dissipated like a whisper, leaving only the faint scent of the ocean to remind us that she’d been there at all.
“Tea’s ready.” We both turned with a start to see Mrs. McGowan holding a tea tray brimming with mugs, spoons, and a plate of shortbread cookies.
“Let me take that,” I said, taking the tray and feeling my mouth start to water at the sight of the cookies. My shaking hands were the only reminder of what I’d just experienced, and I tightened my grip on the tray to keep the mugs from jostling against each other.
We sat down and waited for Mrs. McGowan to add lemon and sugar to the tea. My mother and I each took four cookies, making our hostess regard us with a raised eyebrow. “I could go get more from the kitchen,” she suggested.
“No, but thank you,” I said, washing down my last bite with a sip of tea. “We must have both missed lunch.”
Or fighting spirits burns a lot of calories.
I smiled. “And I must apologize again for showing up on such short notice. We were just, um, trying to show up at the same time as Miss Edgerton to make it easier on you.”