The Girl On Legare Street (35 page)

And then the earthquake came, and it was such an easy matter to claim that I was Rose and that Meredith had perished. With all of the destruction and chaos, nobody seemed to notice anything different than they might have otherwise. There were no other heirs, yet if Rose had known the truth of my origins, I was afraid others might as well and I would lose everything that I loved. Everything that my adopted father had loved and had wished for me to have.

I plan to go away for a time, so that people will forget the differences between Rose and Meredith, and come to accept that I am Rose. If I’m gone for long enough, I can claim that I sought treatment for my affliction and can now walk unassisted.

Charles will wait for me, and when I return, we will be married and we can put the past behind us. I can only pray that Rose has forgiven me. But forgiveness never came easily for her, and I can only hope that her vengeance cannot reach beyond the grave.

My one regret is that we sent her to her eternal rest wearing my locket, and I in possession of hers. I found it at the bottom of the stairs with the broken chain where she’d dropped it, and I had a horrible premonition that she would want it back. Although she claimed everything I owned was rightfully hers, she took great pride in her locket. I suppose it is because it was given to her by her father, who showed her little affection, but regardless it is hers. And I have no doubt that if she is able, she will come back for it.

I looked up, and saw that we’d reached the clearing my mother had spoken about. We’d climbed to higher ground, so there was no standing water, and tall pines sheltered the twenty or so graves within the boundary of a peeling wrought iron fence. Through the filter of the rain, I saw the shadowy ghosts of Prioleaus long since gone, but their attention wasn’t focused on me.

I shoved the page back into the box and slammed it closed. “I know what she wants,” I said, my mind suddenly clear, the remaining puzzle pieces suddenly snapping into place.

“What who wants?” Jack looked at me as if I were hallucinating.

“Rose,” I said as I opened my door. “Pop open the trunk.” I turned to the backseat to check on Rebecca. Her skin shone with a cold sweat, but her eyes were open and regarding me quietly.

With a quick nod, she said, “Be careful.”

I ran to the back of the car and retrieved the shovel that I kept in my trunk for times when I needed to put up my own signage for open houses. I ignored the look on Jack’s face as I passed him with my shovel.

“Mother!” I called, my words stolen by the wind. But it didn’t matter because I’d already seen her; I’d followed the ghosts of the ancient Prioleaus to where my mother knelt in front of a small marker in the corner, digging into the moist earth with her bare hands. I ran toward her. “Mother,” I called again, and this time she looked at me.

She was soaked through and shivering, her lips tinged with blue. I knelt beside her and took off my sodden sweater, then threw it over her shoulders thinking it had to be better than nothing. “What are you doing?”

We both turned to look at the marker: MEREDITH PRIOLEAU. B. 1870 D. 1886. But this marker, unlike the memorial in St. Philip’s cemetery with the heart locket and the initial
R
, had no further inscription. Meredith had assumed, correctly as it appeared, that anyone who’d made it this far would have figured it all out by now.

Ginnette placed a cold and trembling hand on mine. “We must hurry. She’s here. She’s here now, and her anger is feeding her hatred.” Her troubled gaze met mine. “She doesn’t want to go, not while we’re still living.”

I stood and placed a hand on her shoulder and helped her stand. “Step back.” She saw the shovel I held and took a step backward. “You should go to the car,” I said. “The heater’s on and it will get you out of this freezing rain.”

She shook her head, wet strands of her hair that had fallen from her chignon whipping her cheeks. “No. We can only do this together.” She suddenly pitched forward as if unseen hands had pushed her, and I managed to break her fall before she hit the ground. “Hurry, Mellie. Please.”

While she huddled nearby, I lifted the shovel, but stopped midstrike, surprised to feel resistance. I turned, and saw Jack with his hand on the handle. “Let me do this. Stay with your mother.”

I stared at him for a moment as the rain cascaded down his face and plastered his shirt to his chest. I started to argue that this was my battle and he’d already opted out, but he leaned forward and kissed me hard on the mouth, surprising me into making me let go of the shovel. He sent me a dark gaze before driving the shovel into the wet and weeping earth.

I knelt by my mother and put my arm around her, holding her close. Unseen hands pulled at our hair as the wind and another unknown force pushed at our backs. I struck out a hand, angry that she wouldn’t show herself. “Stop it!” I screamed to the pelting rain.

Ginnette grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “Focus, Melanie. I need you to focus. I can’t do this without you and she knows it.” She closed her eyes tightly, and I saw how rivulets of water clustered on the tips of her eyelashes before spilling over. “We are stronger than you,” she said loudly, then said it again, squeezing my hand.

“We are stronger than you,” we said in unison as Jack dug into the mud, unearthing a hole that quickly filled with water. I felt my mother’s warmth and her strength at the place our hands were joined, noting that the torturing hands had gone. A sense of triumph filled me, and I squeezed my mother’s hand tighter as a sign of victory while I turned to her with a smile.

But her face was drawn and ashen, and she was looking past me to where Jack had stopped digging. “No, Mellie, not yet. Don’t let your guard down. She’s waiting!”

Jack shouted, and I turned from my mother in time to see him hold up what appeared to be a square ivory box. I watched as he held it up so the rain could rinse off the dirt, then pried open the lid. He dug his fingers inside and held up the locket, the broken chain dangling between his fingers.

Dropping my mother’s hand, I reached for it.

“Mellie, give me your hand!” I could barely hear my mother’s voice as she shouted over the renewed force of the wind.

As I turned I heard Jack call out a warning and from the corner of my eye, I saw the flash of light hurtle down from the sky, striking the earth in front of me. I watched in horror as Jack and my mother were knocked from their feet, then realized that I was already on the ground, my mouth tasting dirt and burnt ions. A warm trickle oozed down my forehead and right before I closed my eyes, I realized that I must have hit my head on a stone.

I lay on my back as the rain poured down, but it wasn’t touching me. I felt dry, and warm, as if I’d been pulled in from the storm and wrapped in a soft blanket, and I heard my grandmother nearby, telling me to get up. Groggily, I turned my head, a blood-searing scream in my ears, and I saw Rose. Her skin was white and waterlogged from being on the bottom of the ocean floor for so long, her eye sockets empty but projecting rage. Small fiddler crabs scuttled in and out of her mouth and empty eyes, scavenging for food.

The screaming evaporated into a high-pitched whine, and was replaced by her voice, the same terrible voice I’d heard in the kitchen.
She left you, Melanie, because she never loved you. She is jealous because you are stronger. Go to sleep, Melanie, and let me take care of her. Let me punish her for what she did to you.

I turned my face from the stench of rotting sea creatures, toward the sound of my grandmother’s voice calling my name. And then I heard my mother’s voice, edging its way out from my past.
Sometimes we have to do the right thing even if it means letting go of the one thing we love most in the world.
Closing my eyes and blocking out the sounds of all the voices, I searched for the dark quiet inside of me, and remembered my mother’s words. And after more than thirty years, I understood. Finally, I understood.

I stuck my fingers into the earth, trying to claw my way from the hideous apparition, but I couldn’t move. I scratched harder, trying to crawl away, screaming and screaming as her icy breath brushed the nape of my neck. A door appeared in the darkness, with fingers of light escaping around the edges like a halo, and I struggled to a stand, suddenly certain that if I reached the door, the evil I felt at my back would go away, and I wouldn’t need to be afraid anymore.

“Mellie!” somebody called in the darkness, but I wasn’t sure who.

I was moving in slow motion, trying to reach the door. I kept my gaze focused ahead of me, knowing that if I turned I’d see Rose again and that if I had to look in her eyes, I would die. I scrambled toward the door, but instead of moving faster, I was swimming in a sea of black fear, roiling up against my skin like thick crude oil, the smell hot and rancid and stinking of rotting fish.

“Mellie!” I recognized my mother’s voice this time. In my fear and need to escape, I’d forgotten she was there; I’d forgotten what she’d told me about fear and strength and our need to fight together.

I stopped struggling, staring at the door that seemed no closer and panting as if I’d run for miles.

“Mellie,” my mother’s voice called again, but not as strong this time. Almost, I thought, as if she’d given up.

The evil thing moved behind me again, telling me to go to the door. To open it where I’d find safety. But I felt my mother’s presence, too, and it was stronger, and sweeter, and full of truth, and I stopped struggling, and I remembered her telling me not to listen to the voice. With one last look at the door and its beaming light, I turned around ready to face the encroaching darkness that nipped at my heels.

The first thing I felt was the icy rain, hitting my face as I stared up at a nearly black sky. I sat up, catching sight of Jack, who was struggling to stand. Frantically, I searched for my mother and found her crumpled on the ground near Meredith’s marker. As I forced myself to stand, I felt something sharp biting into the skin on my palm. I glanced down at my closed fist and slowly opened my fingers, one by one, revealing the dull glint of a gold locket.

The light shimmered around me, the air viscous like embryonic fluid feeding me the strength I needed and holding me together as I moved toward my mother. I placed my hand on her back, relief flooding me when I felt her take a breath. She moaned and turned over, looking up at me with glassy, feverish eyes.

“Thank God,” she said, and grasped my hand and I felt the fizz of electricity shoot through me and back to her. She didn’t let go, even as I pulled her to her feet and we both looked up at the sky and the funnel of mud and leaves that circled above our heads. I made to jerk back but my mother held on, and I knew that I couldn’t let go ever again.

“Give it back to her,” my mother shouted over the increasing wind. “Give it back to her, and tell her to find the light. To leave us in peace.”

I looked down at the locket in my hand, then drew my arm back and threw it as hard as I could toward the funnel of air. A sound like the screeching brakes of a train pierced the air as the locket evaporated into the spinning cloud of debris. Every hair on my body stood on end as I held my ground and didn’t look away.

“Go!” I shouted. “Leave now. Find the door and the light and leave this place forever. You have what was yours. Now go.”

The air hummed with electricity as the funnel whirled faster and faster, sticks and leaves whipping at my face, but I didn’t back down. “Be gone!” I shouted and the funnel exploded into a million balls of light and ice, spraying us with hail and knocking us back to the ground.

We lay there, breathing heavily, the air suddenly clear. Above us, dark clouds unfurled around the rising moon, wiping away the storm clouds as if an eraser had swept over the horizon. In the distance, I heard the call of sirens, relief consuming me now that help was on its way and I didn’t need to fight anymore.

Jack staggered toward us, his face determined and I managed a thumbs-up before I lay back on the ground next to my mother, tasting rain and dirt and the metallic tinge of electrified air, and I knew that somehow I had found the strength she’d known I had all along to save us both.

I placed the last suitcase in the trunk, then tucked General Lee firmly under my arm before shutting the rear trunk of my rental car, my own car still in the shop undergoing massive body repairs. I only wished there was an equivalent in the human world, as my mind and body still felt bruised and battered, although it had been two weeks since the night of the storm.

I stared up at my mother’s house, no longer feeling the undercurrent of a pulsing heart or dreading opening the front door to whatever might be lying in wait. I drew in a deep breath, taking in the warm air that was scented with the promise of spring. Although the official start of the new season was still a few weeks away, the gardens of Charleston were already pregnant with emerging bulbs and bud-laden stems, holding their secrets for just a little longer.

The front door opened and I watched as my mother emerged from the house, followed closely by my father carrying a breakfast tray. After a night in the hospital, where it was determined that she was suffering from nothing more than poor blood iron, she’d returned to her old self. Well, almost. Because the woman who looked at me now wasn’t the same person who’d once hesitated before touching me or watched me with guarded eyes. I found myself sometimes missing the old version of herself, as now she felt no need to hold back when it came to mothering me. She felt free to comment on everything from my hair, makeup, wardrobe, dog-training methods, and diet without reservation. And although I pretended to be annoyed, I didn’t really mind it. I suppose because regardless of a woman’s age, she will always have the need to be mothered. Some things remained off-limits, however, such as Jack and my relationship with Marc Longo, if only because such things were unexplainable.

As I approached the garden, I watched as my father settled my mother in a wrought iron chair—discovered in the attic along with the matching table and other chairs—then draped a blanket gently over her shoulders. He then proceeded to place dishes and silverware onto the table, and a vase full of pink roses nearest to my mother’s chair.

It was hard not to roll my eyes, but I managed. Despite coming to terms with my mother’s new presence in my life, I hadn’t yet managed to reach that point with my parents’ burgeoning relationship. Now that I understood my mother’s reasons for leaving all those years ago—although not completely agreeing with them—I could stand back and view the events of thirty years before more clearly. My father—whose alcoholism had done much to tarnish his image in the intervening years—was no longer the knight in shining armor that I’d envisioned as a little girl. Instead, I’d begun to see him as my mother had: intractable and closed minded when confronted with things that didn’t work inside his world order.

Granted, he’d seen much more of the world than I with his years as an army officer, but I was his daughter and my mother supposedly the love of his life. And I couldn’t help but think that he should have pretended to accept, or at the very least condoned, the fact that my mother and I could see things that he could not. Maybe if she’d had his support in that darkest point in her life, she wouldn’t have felt the need to abandon us both.

He looked up and smiled as we approached, and General Lee wrested himself out of my arms to receive a table scrap from my mother. I was still his favorite human, but he was easily enticed with food offerings. Unfortunately, he didn’t possess the family gene for a high metabolism, and he’d started to bulge out of the argyle sweaters that Nancy continued to knit for him.

My mother held up her cheek for me to kiss and my father enveloped me in a bear hug before I sat down in an available chair. “The garden is lovely,” I said, admiring the burgeoning knot garden he’d been reconstructing from old photographs, and the neatly clipped boxwoods that lined the brick patio area. The dormant annual beds still slept, waiting for their place to shine within the coveted gates of a Charleston garden.

“If I can get your mother to agree, I want to move the fountain to the back, so it can be enjoyed from the kitchen. I think Sophie’s gotten to her, though, as she’s resistant to alter anything that was original to the house.”

I took a donut from a plate and eyed it thoughtfully. “Which means you’d need to have a consent form signed by God and witnessed by the Board of Architectural Review to allow it to happen. Better think of a plan B, Daddy.”

He poured a cup of tea for my mother, then slid a plate with a donut on it in front of her. I almost stopped him to ask for ID and find out what he’d done to my real father.

My mother turned to me. “Don’t forget your coffee cup—the one with the sales graph on it. I put it on the kitchen counter so you wouldn’t leave it behind.”

“It’s not like she’s going away forever, Ginny. She’ll be back.”

“I know. It’s just that I think she’d want to say good-bye before she left. To the kitchen,” she added slowly, her eyes heavy with meaning.

Both my father and I regarded her silently. Slowly, I slid my chair back and rose. “Well, then. I guess I’d better go get it.”

I left them to finish their breakfast in the garden, then entered the house through the front door. I smelled the hint of gunpowder in the air, and I began to realize what my mother had meant. We’d discussed Wilhelm’s presence in the house, and how he’d remained earthbound for us, but that it was time to set him free. I hadn’t understood at the time that she was allowing me the chance to exercise my newfound understanding of my psychic abilities.

“Wilhelm,” I said out loud, summoning him. I closed my eyes, focusing inward, finding the power I was only beginning to comprehend—and appreciate—although I wasn’t sure if I’d ever get to that point. “Wilhelm,” I said again, opening my eyes. He stood in front of the stairs, his boots shiny, his hat tucked under his arm, and his musket gripped in his left hand. He bowed, and looked me in the eye. My gaze traveled down to his boots and that’s when I noticed that I couldn’t see through him anymore. It was as if in discovering my own strength, I’d given some to him.

You look beautiful this morning, Melanie. More so than yesterday, but not as much as tomorrow.

I smiled. “Did you used to say that to Catherine?”

A mischievous smile crossed his face.
You are very clever, Melanie, because you are correct. Catherine was very beautiful.You remind me of her. But perhaps you already knew that.

I blushed, remembering how he’d kissed me, feeling foolish that I hadn’t guessed why. I considered him for a moment, thinking how he’d carried his musket for over two hundred years in penance for an event he’d had no control over. His presence had been a warm memory of my childhood; his help in protecting me from Rose had probably saved my life more than once. But it was selfish to expect him to wander this house aimlessly, mourning for his lost love. It was time to say good-bye.

Swallowing the thickness in the back of my throat, I said, “She’s waiting for you, Wilhelm. On the other side. She wants to be with you again.”

His eyes were unsettled.
I went back for her. Into the water to be with her forever. But instead I stayed there by the shore for long years, watching for ships. Guiding them away from danger. Until baby Nora, and I came here. I don’t know how to leave this place.

“You were a good protector, Wilhelm. But you’re not needed here anymore. It’s time to go, to find Catherine at last. I can help you. My mother said that helping you leave can be as simple as letting you go.”

I want to. I do not know how.

I remembered the door, and the bright light behind it. For me, the door had been closed, but for Wilhelm the light would be burning brightly, the door leading to it opened wide. “Look for the light. It will show you the way.”

But who will take care of you?

“My mother and I will be together, and Rose is gone.” I smiled, trying to appear more confident and sure than I felt. “We’ll be all right. But it’s time for you to move on.”

His face began to glow as a smile transformed his face.
I hear Catherine. I hear her calling me.

“Follow her voice. She’ll lead you to the light.”

He stepped toward me and I looked into his eyes, seeing the flecks of brown in them that I’d never noticed before. He leaned down and kissed me gently on the lips.
Good-bye, Melanie.

I heard a quick intake of breath and I turned to see my father standing inside the door, watching us and I realized that he could see Wilhelm as clearly as I did.

Wilhelm straightened and clicked his heels together before placing his tricorn hat on his head. And then, with military precision, he saluted my father, then slowly began to fade away until nothing was left of him except the faint whiff of gunpowder smoke and the warm tingling on my lips where he’d kissed me good-bye.

I pulled into the driveway at my Tradd Street house, squinting to see if I’d really seen a banner strung across the front door. I hoped they hadn’t used masking tape since that might ruin the ridiculously expensive paint that Sophie had insisted I use because it had been blended to perfectly match the color of the original used more than one hundred and fifty years before. Every time Sophie mentioned touching up the paint on the door from workmen bumping it or from the sun fading it, I just heard the huge ch-ching of a cash register. I kept threatening to replace it with a storm door with plastic windows just to see her look of horror.

I grabbed General Lee from his car seat and slowly walked through the garden to the piazza, listening to the soft trickle of the fountain. I stood back to read the sign: WELCOME HOME, MELANIE! I smiled, figuring it had to be Chad and Sophie. I didn’t know anybody else whose enthusiasm reached out to somebody who’d been staying only blocks away while her wood floors were being refinished. I paused, my smile fading. Then again, I couldn’t help but wonder if they’d found something else in the house that would require not only a prolonged absence, but also a huge outlay of funds and they were trying to soften me up before felling me with the news.

Dispirited, I turned the handle and opened the door, prepared to be pelted with confetti or at the very least a work order and deposit check that needed to be signed immediately. Instead, I was greeted with silence and an empty foyer. I put General Lee on the floor and he scampered to the back of the house in the direction of the kitchen. After dropping my keys and purse on the hallway table, I moved inside, smelling the reassuring odor of wax and fresh wood—a tangible reminder of all the money it had cost to restore the floors. But from what I’d seen, they looked beautiful and would serve as the perfect backdrop for the home I hoped to create when all the work was finished. Whenever that would be.

I was about to head upstairs to my room when I spotted wrapped packages on the dining room table. Warily, I approached, then peeked at the tags, which were all addressed to me. Feeling somewhat despondent, I sat down and began opening them.

The first was from Jack: a small blue T-shirt, apparently for General Lee, which had splayed across the back, BITCHES LOVE ME. I tried not to laugh, and ended up sputtering instead. I still wasn’t sure where Jack and I stood. We’d seen little of each other since the night of the storm, and I knew that he’d joined Rebecca at her family’s summer home on Paw leys Island for a few weeks while she recuperated. I’d visited her in the hospital, where I’d been forced to sign her pink cast and listen to her call me “cousin.”

I’d returned the box of jewelry to her and called it even. She didn’t argue, and instead began talking about hosting a barbecue to introduce me to the rest of the family. I remembered the days when I thought of myself as an only child as a bad thing, and found myself thinking of them with nostalgia.

There was a gift bag with tissue that held a can of paint, to “touch up the front door” as the tag read, from Sophie and Chad, and a tube of Chanel lipstick in hot pink from Rebecca—her favorite color, which she thought would look great on me, too. There was also a framed oil miniature of Belle Meade as it must have looked in the early 1800s, with only the words “thank you” written on the card in Rebecca’s rounded, girlish handwriting.

The sound of voices and a door slamming brought me into the foyer again in time to see Chad, Sophie, and Jack coming in from the kitchen. They all stopped when they saw me, and it was apparent from the looks on their faces that they’d been discussing me. Or the house. Or both.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, secure that whatever it was it couldn’t be the roof because I’d already paid to have it replaced.

“Did you see your gifts?” Sophie asked, pointing to the dining room.

“Yes, actually, I did. Thank you. I think the T-shirt might be a little small on me, Jack, but I’ll give it a try.”

He raised an eyebrow and sent me his killer grin, and I almost forgot that we were wrong for each other and that I’d practically thrown him into the arms of another woman on purpose.

I faced Chad, knowing he’d be the easiest to crack. “The floors look beautiful. It’s hard to believe that you did them all by hand without an electric sander.”