The Girl On Legare Street (34 page)

As Jack began carrying her to the exit, Rebecca struggled in his arms. “Stop!” she yelled, pointing a scraped and bloody finger back toward the fireplace.

I turned and saw a dark wooden cigar box partially buried under a pile of bricks. The words from the puzzle echoed in my head.
Within the fireplace bricks our sins hide.
I paused, imagining time pausing, too. Before my name had even passed Jack’s lips, I ran to the box, extricated it, then followed Jack across the threshold just as a roaring whoosh of exploding timbers filled our ears and the remaining roof crashed down onto the spot where we’d been just seconds before.

Placing my shirt over my nose to help filter the thick air, I carefully followed in Jack’s footsteps until we emerged onto the porch and into a nearly blackened world as the sky opened up on us and began to pour down sheets of rain.

We paused for a moment as we tried to catch our breaths. Jack turned to me, his eyes lit with fury as the rain slid down his face. “That was really stupid, Mellie.You could have been killed.” He was trembling, and I knew it was more than just anger.

Despite the situation, a glimmer of hope emerged somewhere in my chest. Before he could read my thoughts, I ran past Jack to the car and threw open the back door so he could lay Rebecca down across the backseat. I stood staring into the car as he approached with Rebecca, not quite comprehending that it was empty.

I pulled back to allow Jack room, then began frantically looking for my mother in the vicinity of the house, heedless of the mud and rain. “Mother!” I screamed. I ran to the side of the house that was now a blackened, smoldering shell, feeling the odd mixture of heat and ice on my face at the same time. I ran around to the front of the house, jumping up on the porch and sticking my head inside the opening. “Mother!” I screamed again, feeling a terror I hadn’t felt in a very long time—not since the morning I’d awakened to find her gone.

I jumped back onto the gravel, then jogged around the other side of the house until I’d reached the back. Sour gums and tall, spindly pines huddled together near a muddy path that led to the creek, the rising water already at the top of the cord grass. “Mother!” I shouted, looking frantically for any sign of her.

A strong hand grabbed hold of my arm and pulled me around. I faced Jack, and it wasn’t until he shook me that I realized how very close to losing control I’d come. I still held the box, and felt something shaking inside. I was breathing heavily and it took me a moment to catch my breath. “My mother. She’s gone. She was here when I came into the house. I gave her my phone. . . .” I stopped, realizing how useless it was talking out in the rain.

Jack’s voice was strong and reassuring. “If she went inside the house, we would have seen her. She probably went back to the gatehouse to get help.”

I allowed him to lead me back to the car. He opened the passenger side and put me inside, putting his hand on my head like cops do on television shows. My teeth chattered, from fear or cold I wasn’t sure. Then he stripped off his button-down, leaving him in just a T-shirt, and ripped it into shreds before wrapping two of the strips around Rebecca’s leg to try to stanch some of the bleeding. She didn’t cry out although I could see how much pain she was in from the way her lips drained of color, making her even more doll-like.

After Jack slid behind the steering wheel, I turned back to Rebecca, impressed by her stamina. “Are you okay?” I managed to ask.

She nodded and I saw that she was shivering, too. “Hang on.” I leaned over and pulled the trunk lever before flinging open my door. I ran to the trunk and retrieved one of the blankets I always kept there for emergencies, huddling over it to keep it dry, then returned to the car, slamming my door behind me. Leaning over the seat back, I opened the blanket and laid it on her, then used my purse to make a pillow. She smiled her gratitude and closed her eyes.

I turned to Jack. “I told my mother to call 911, but I don’t know if she did.” At the mention of my mother, a large tremor shot through me. Jack put his arms around me and began rubbing brusquely. “Not to alarm you, but I hope she did because my phone is out of range here.”

“We’ve got to find her, Jack. She’s not wearing a coat, and it’s raining pretty hard.” I realized I was babbling, but I was unsure how to express concern for a woman who only months ago I had liked to pretend didn’t even exist.

“We’ll start driving back to the gates, all right? We can’t delay too long, because we need to get help for Rebecca. I have to go slowly in the mud, anyway, and we’ll both be looking, so we can’t miss her.”

I nodded and he started the engine, flipping on the high beams, although they did little more than reflect the rain that seemed to come from the heavy clouds as if being poured out of a pitcher.

He drove slowly, as he’d promised, and we scanned the area on both sides of the car. I tried to tell myself that he was right, that she’d probably gone to the front gate to ask a guard to call an ambulance and a fire truck, although with the deluge of rain I felt confident that the latter no longer mattered.

The front right tire fell into a hole and I listened as Jack gunned the engine, then rocked it into reverse before shooting us forward again.

“Stop,” I said, rubbing the window with my sleeve to clear the fog on the inside. We’d come to the fork in the road that my mother had pointed out to me earlier—the path that led to the old family cemetery. I closed my eyes, blocking out the fear and the cold and the sound of the storm, and tried to listen to the quiet place inside of me that my grandmother had always told me was there if I only took the time to find it. I needed to now, since everything else—my control, my organization, and even my spreadsheets—were completely useless to me.

I pointed down the road. “She’s there. She went to the cemetery.” I looked back at Rebecca. Her shivering had slowed with the car’s heater blowing full force, and she’d managed to prop herself against the side door. Her color hadn’t improved but at least she was still conscious.

“Yes,” she managed from a dry mouth. “The cemetery. I saw Ginnette there. In a dream. I didn’t know what it meant, until now.” Lightning shot across the sky, making her skin and eyes look jaundiced. “She’s—not alone.”

Jack didn’t wait to be persuaded. He pushed down hard on the gas pedal, and we lurched forward, but I wasn’t paying any attention to the sound of rocks grating against the metal of my car. All I could think about was that my mother was in trouble, and she needed me.

I remembered the box in my hand again, and looked down at it. “Is Rose’s locket in here?” I turned to face Rebecca in the backseat. “Is that what you were looking for?”

Rebecca groaned as Jack hit a pothole, jarring her injured leg off the seat. I helped her right herself, struggling against the jolting car. She shook her head. “I wasn’t sure what was in there. I just knew that the figurehead in the window pointed to the house. And the code in the window and on the gravestone, about the sins hidden in the fireplace bricks, it had to be in the house.”

I flicked open the latch on the box, then lifted the lid, pulling it back to allow the feeble light to show me what was inside. Blinking up at me was an emerald-cut ruby cocktail ring, and a diamond butterfly hairpin—both items I remembered from the insurance claim from the
Ida Belle
. They’d been lost along with the sapphire-and-diamond necklace and chandelier earrings that were now in my mother’s possession.

I held the box up to show Rebecca. “You did all of this for the jewelry? If you’d just told me, I would have given it to you.”

She shook her head, wincing in pain as she did so. “I wasn’t looking for hidden treasure, if that’s what you mean. I wanted—my heritage. There’s an oil painting in my mother’s house of my great-great-grandmother—Alice and Nora’s grandmother. In it, she’s wearing the sapphire-and-diamond necklace and earrings. When I saw your mother wearing them on television, I needed to find out how you came into possession of them. I thought”—she took a deep breath, as if riding a tide of pain—“I thought you knew, that you were hiding the truth deliberately.”

I brought the box back to my lap and shook my head. Then, looking down at it again, I noticed a tarnished silver baby rattle, nestled amid the jewelry. I held it up to my face and rubbed the handle with my thumb, exposing a monogram:
NSC
. I didn’t know what Nora Crandall’s middle initial was, but I would bet everything I owned that it started with the letter
S
.

I closed my eyes for a moment, realizing that Jack’s theories about my ancestors were at least partially correct. I opened my eyes and spotted one more thing at the bottom of the box, a yellowed piece of paper that looked as if it had been torn out of a book.

Using my short and torn fingernails, I worked at the edge of the paper to release it from its snug fit, managing to pull it off the bottom of the box without tearing it. Carefully, I unfolded it once, then turned on the overhead light. It was written in the same handwriting as the journal, and I realized with a start that that’s where it had probably come from, but the page had been removed undetected. Moving it closer to the light, I began to read out loud:

It is now two days past the great earthquake that struck Charleston. No one knew for certain what it was at first, and Rose and I thought that a bombardment had started again from the dreaded Yankees that poor Father always talked about. But Father has been gone now for almost a year, and I am glad that he is not here to witness my shame.

I am putting this all down on paper, to record the truth, to ensure that future generations will not be led into thinking ill of me. The truth always has a way of coming out, and this is my way of recording events so that they be known in their entirety. Later, when I have figured out everything, I will leave a trail to this place to be discovered in due course.

Everyone is calling the earthquake a disaster, and there are few who would disagree. Yet I call it a fortuitous event; an event that allowed me the chance to right a wrong, and to hide my sins.

On the morning of August 31, Charles was scheduled to call on Rose and to take her driving. We have been putting off telling her the truth about us, knowing how miserable Rose would make our lives if she knew. For that reason alone, we delayed letting our feelings be known, biding our time until the right opportunity presented itself.

It was a hot summer day, so I had given the servants the day off, knowing Rose and I would need nothing except for our dinner, which Cook promised to return to prepare later that day.

Earlier that morning, Rose cornered me in my sitting room, insisting that we play a trick on Charles. I didn’t want to, knowing that it could only lead to disaster, but Rose was insistent in the only way she knows how, like a spider ready to bite. I agreed, and was surprised when Rose made me swap lockets with her to complete the deception. She then settled herself on the settee in the drawing room until Charles called, whereupon Rose began to build her web.

I stood outside the door, listening, and realized shortly afterward that Rose had suspected all along, and was only waiting for Charles to admit it and embarrass himself. And then go after me.

I could not listen anymore and escaped up the back servants’ stairs, collapsing into tears of despair at the top. Charles is my one true love, and of all the things I have given up for Rose, he could not be one of them.

I heard them arguing, and then the front door slammed and I waited, knowing she was going to look for me, and dreading the confrontation that would follow. I huddled where I was, hoping against all hope that she would not find me in the servants’ wing. But like all evil, it finds what it seeks.

Despite her small stature and deformity, she has an almost inhuman strength. She hauled me up by the elbow and slapped me, drawing blood from my lips. I told her that I was sorry, that we had never meant it to happen, but then she turned the tables and began accusing me of stealing everything she had ever had—her father’s affections, her friends, even the clothes on my back and the food that I ate. She had me pressed against the stairwell wall, and that is where I was when she spotted the
R
locket she had given me to wear. Her face contorted into an expression of pure hatred, and she accused me of wanting not only what she had, but to be her. And she was going to tell the world that I was not a Prioleau at all, that I had been found on a beach when I was a baby and adopted by my father as a companion for her. She told me about the jewelry and the baby rattle that was found with me, which she now kept in a box in her dressing table because it was her insurance if she ever needed to keep me silent, her payment for having been forced to share everything with me since she was a girl.

I told her it was all lies, and that I would gladly relinquish everything if she would just let me leave with Charles. Her anger consumed her at my ready answer, and she grasped for the locket around my neck and pulled. It was clear to me that her intention was to propel me down the stairs. But instead, the unthinkable happened. The chain snapped in her grasp and she fell backward down the stairs, somersaulting until she reached the floor below, her head bent at an unnatural angle.

I ran from the house, and caught up with Charles and brought him back to the house, where I confessed everything to him, including the fact that I was not a distant cousin as I had always been led to believe. It was us together who decided what we would do, and we promised to each other that we would never regret any of our actions.

We placed Rose’s body in a trunk we found in the attic and loaded it into Charles’ carriage and brought it to Belle Meade. It was my idea to use the
Rose
as her coffin. We loaded the trunk onto the sailboat, then I took it out to deep water where we scuttled it. Charles followed me in a rowboat, and took me back to shore, where we looked back across the smooth ocean to where our sins lay hidden within the waves.