The Girl On Legare Street (9 page)

I’d just been about to ask the same thing but remained silent now. Tagging along with them as a third wheel was about as appealing to me as spending a month living with my mother.

Jack put his phone back into his pocket and glanced at me. I was already preparing a gentle way to decline his offer to accompany them when he said, “You should probably stay here and start packing up your things to take to your mother’s. I’ll be happy to help you cart it all over when you’re ready.”

I felt like a balloon that had lost all of its air and then been run over by a truck. Twice. I forced a smile. “I was just about to say the same thing.”

Chad and Sophie excused themselves and returned to contemplating the pocket doors as I herded the rest of the group to the front door. “Call me if you find out anything,” I said to Jack.

Rebecca handed my mother her business card and after a brief pause my mother accepted it. “Just in case you accidentally deleted my messages on your answering machine,” Rebecca said, her eyes not giving anything away. “I’d like to set up a time to interview you.”

Ginnette gave an elegant shrug. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible anytime soon. I have to fly back to New York to supervise the listing of my apartment and then pack up everything. I’ll be sure to call you when everything has settled.”

Rebecca’s expression grew cool. “I understand. I’ll call from time to time just to check your availability.”

“Yes, certainly,” my mother replied, and it was hard for me not to lift my palms in the air to double high-five her.

Jack and Rebecca left while my mother lingered inside the door.

“I’m not so sure about that Rebecca,” she said after they were out of earshot.

“Mother, I really don’t care about her and Jack. He’s completely free to pursue whomever he wants.”

She glanced over to the portrait again. “I wasn’t really referring to her and Jack, but I suppose the warning would bode well there, too.” She gave me a pointed glance. “I was referring to her interest in our family. She reminds me of a vulture hovering over a foundering ship.”

“I think she’s harmless. She can dredge up whatever she wants because it has no bearing on me. I have nothing to hide.”

Her eyebrow crept up. “Don’t you?”

The way she said it, full of resonance and innuendo, I could understand her success on a stage. I faced her fully. “What are you holding back? What is it that you don’t want me to know? Do you know something about my past or our family—like whoever that might be they found on the sailboat—that Rebecca could find out? Because if you do, let me know now so I’m prepared.”

She shook her head slowly but her eyes never left my face. “I know only as much as you do.Truly. I suppose we’ll just have to muddle through and figure this out together.”

She looked so convincing, and I might have been convinced if I didn’t remind myself of what a brilliant actor she was. What most people don’t realize about opera singers is that not only do they have to have a good voice, but they also need to know how to act—if only to translate into actions whatever they happen to be singing in Italian or German or whatever. I wasn’t a fan of opera for obvious reasons, but I knew enough about it to be wary when my mother looked me in the eye and denied something.

I remembered the baby’s crying from the day before echoing in the empty rooms of the old house and knew there’d been at least one thing she’d kept from me. “Rebecca told me about your miscarriage. I would have thought you’d have mentioned it. I don’t want to be taken unawares again.”

She lifted her chin but didn’t say anything right away. Finally, she said, “There was no opportunity to tell you. You were too young to understand when it happened and I didn’t want to upset you.”

I felt the rush of hurt and disappointment like spilled milk and broken glass; both were irretrievably gone and much too late to cry over. “Hurt me? And leaving me without as much as a reason why or a good-bye was much less hurtful?”

She looked at me for a long time, and I found I was holding my breath, hoping she would finally tell me what I wanted to hear. Instead, she turned away and breezed through the open door, her fur coat close enough to tickle my nose. She paused but kept her back to me. “We will have to do this together, you know. Even with the help of others, it will come down to just the two of us.” She pulled her collar close to her neck. “I’ll be gone about a week or so.You can move into my house at any time but I suspect you’ll want to wait until I return.”

I remained silent as she walked down the steps. She turned her head slightly and looked back at me. “Good-bye,” she said.

I didn’t answer, knowing that her one word was thirty-three years too late.

I was staring at the computer screen in my office, checking new listings and making notes, when Nancy Flaherty buzzed me on my intercom.

“You have a visitor, Melanie.”

I could tell she was smiling and her consonants had gone soft as if they’d fallen out of slack lips onto a pillow. Sighing, I pressed the button to respond. “Jack doesn’t have an appointment so he’s going to have to wait. Tell him to cool his heels for a while and I’ll be out as soon as I’m done here.”

“I didn’t think I needed an appointment, Mellie, since the two of us are practically living together.”

I jerked out of my seat at the sound of Jack’s voice in the doorway, flinging my glasses across the room at the same time. Struggling to regain my composure, I said, “You startled me.”

With his trademark grin, he sauntered across the office and retrieved my glasses. “I noticed.” Returning the glasses to me, he said, “I believe these are yours.”

I stared at them as if I’d never seen them before and as if they hadn’t been perched on my nose merely seconds before. “Yes. I believe they are.” I took them from his outstretched hand and tossed them into my drawer. “They’re more of a fashion statement than anything, really. Somebody told me they made me look more professional.”

He looked at me with that annoying smirk that was at the same time achingly familiar. “You’re a beautiful woman, Mellie. With or without the glasses.”

His words had an opposite effect than the one he’d intended. I sat down in my chair, deflated. “What do you want, Jack?”

He sat down across from my desk and stretched out his long legs. “What makes you think I want something?”

“Because you’re always nice to me right before you ask me for something.”

He looked hurt. “I’m always nice to you.”

Technically, that was true. But his being nice always led me to do something I didn’t want to be doing. “Spit it out, Jack. The earlier I tell you ‘no’ the earlier you’ll leave so I can get back to work.”

“Fine, then. I wanted to know if you’d like to take a road trip today.”

“Today?” I looked down anxiously at my desk with my neat to-do list and the stack of pink phone messages I still had to return.

“Yes, today. Right now, actually. It’s still early enough that if we left now, I could have you back by your nine o’clock bedtime.”

I wasn’t sure if it was the mention of my bedtime that made his eyes sparkle or the prospect of taking a road trip. Remembering his easy dismissal of me the previous day when he took Rebecca to visit Yvonne at the historical archives, my mind started preparing my refusal when my mouth asked, “Where to?”

“Ulmer.”

“Ulmer?” The name wasn’t familiar. “Ulmer as in your long-lost uncle Ulmer?”

He smirked, unveiling a dimple that had a completely unwarranted and unwanted effect on my blood pressure. “No. I meant Ulmer as in Ulmer, South Carolina. Or right outside it, anyway. It’s about a two-hour drive from Charleston on State Route 321.”

I frowned, remembering past road trips I’d made with USC college friends to their parents’ old family hunting lodges or restored farmhouses. They were second homes and used for family gatherings and holidays where friends with nowhere else to go were always welcomed and sometimes pitied.

“Isn’t 321 the road that cuts through a bunch of swamps where the only signs of human habitation are billboards that advertise deer corn and bait worms?”

“The very one.”

“Then why do we want to go there?” I realized too late that I’d used the word “we” instead of “you” and that I was already hooked—ready to be reeled in and thrown on deck.

A smug smile crossed his face. “To go see a two-hundred-year-old plantation that has old family portraits still hanging on the wall that I thought we should look at.”

My computer screen flipped to the screen saver—a rolling marquee that read: WASTED TIME IS LOST SALES!—which reminded me how long I’d been idle. Irritated, I asked, “Why would I want to go see somebody else’s old family portraits? And do they really expect any tourists that far out in the middle of nowhere?”

“Actually, it’s not open to the public. It’s a private home and still owned by the family that purchased the house back in the 1930s from the descendants of the builder. And I’m suggesting going there because when I showed Yvonne the picture of the portrait of the two girls you found in your mother’s attic, she said I needed to go there.”

Intrigued, I sat up. “Why?”

“Well, she didn’t have a picture of it anywhere in the archives, but she’s been inside the house several times to catalog its contents and remembers the portrait. It’s of a young girl—and she’s wearing a necklace that Yvonne thinks is very similar to the one worn by the girls in your painting.”

“How similar?” I asked slowly.

“Similar enough to think it would be worthwhile to drop everything and take a road trip to the nether regions of South Carolina.”

I looked down at my desk again and all of the work I still had waiting for me, the marquee’s scroll sliding past the screen with an accusatory glare. “I’m not sure if I . . .”

“Mellie?”

My eyes met his and I noticed how the dark blue sweater under his leather jacket matched his eyes. “Yes?” I said hesitantly.

“Have you ever played hooky before?”

I shook my head.

Jack sighed. “I didn’t think so. I’m going to go get your coat while you clean up here, and I’ll meet you out front.”

He left before I could argue, or maybe I waited too long to argue. Whatever was the case, I didn’t feel right letting him wait up front all day so I dutifully cleaned up my desk, switched off my computer, and left my office, coming back once to retrieve my glasses and toss them into my purse.

We took Jack’s Porsche because he said it would get us there faster. I only agreed after he assured me it had the requisite airbags and ABS. After denying my request to stop at a fast-food restaurant to get fries and a shake to eat in the car—although he promised we’d stop someplace on the way as long as I didn’t actually bring any food into the car—we headed west on Interstate 26.

I refrained from looking at the speedometer and commenting on how fast he was going in exchange for being in control of the radio. I found an oldies station that was playing an hour of ABBA and leaned back into my leather seat thinking that life couldn’t get much better.

We chatted during the commercial breaks about his parents and the restoration of my house and the progress on his current manuscript that involved him spending so much time in my attic going through the previous owner’s papers. He skillfully skirted any mention of my mother and I was thankful for that until I began to question his motives for being so nice to me. I was about to ask him out loud when his cell phone rang.

He hit a button on his dash to answer it and I heard the caller’s voice broadcast into the car. “Hi, Jackie.Where are you? I’m sitting outside your condo with a bag of ribs from Sticky Fingers and a bottle of wine.”

I recognized Rebecca’s voice and turned to look out my side window as he picked up his Bluetooth and put it to his ear so I could only hear his side of the conversation.

“I’m actually on the way to Ulmer right now. I wanted to see that painting Yvonne told us about for myself. I’ll be home by nine.”

I noticed how he’d omitted mentioning that he wasn’t alone. I closed my eyes and listened to the lyrics of “Waterloo” while pretending to block out Jack’s half of the conversation.

“I’m disappointed, too,” he was saying quietly but not quietly enough that I couldn’t still hear him over the purr of the car’s engine. “Can I take a rain check for tomorrow? Great. I’ll see you then.” He took his Bluetooth off his ear and tossed it into the console.

I felt him looking at me, and I was beginning to think he assumed I was sleeping when he said, “Sorry about that. It was Rebecca. She was wondering where I was,” he added unnecessarily.

I nodded sleepily. “I know.” I was silent for a moment. “I still can’t get over how much she looks like Emily.”

Jack continued to stare at the road in front of us. “Others have mentioned that before but I don’t think I’d really ever noticed it.”

I felt a perverse need to press on despite Jack’s obvious desire not to. “They’re practically twins. As a matter of fact, when I first met Rebecca, I thought it
was
Emily and that she’d come back.”

He turned to consider me before concentrating on his driving again. “Emily’s definitely gone. I feel it.”

I didn’t have any doubts either but I let Jack contemplate the knowledge alone. Still, Rebecca’s intrusion into my life wouldn’t allow me to drop the subject completely. “I can’t help but wonder if your attraction to Rebecca could be because she does look so much like Emily. Like she’s playing a role for you, to give you the chance to say good-bye to Emily that you didn’t have before.”

“That’s ridiculous. Don’t you think I can tell the difference between two different women? And what makes you think I’m attracted to her? We’re just old friends, getting reacquainted with each other.”

I snorted. “You’re male. She’s blond. And she’s definitely interested,
Jackie
. Need I say more?”

“Do I detect a hint of jealousy, Mellie?”

Before I could deny it, he swerved off the highway onto a little dirt side road that had a sign that read: SWEET POTATOES—$5 GALLON BUCKET. A field of high sandy rows were dotted with the orange skin of the potatoes, glowing like meteors in the winter sunlight.

I grabbed on to the door handle to keep myself from falling into the driver’s seat if only because Jack would have enjoyed that too much. “What are you doing?”

“Don’t you like sweet potatoes?”

I frowned at him. “I’m from the South. It’s illegal to be a Southerner and not like sweet potatoes.”

He grinned the grin that always had the unfortunate response of raising my internal temperature several degrees. “Is it? I didn’t know. It’s a good thing I love them, then. And I make a mean sweet potato bread.”

He pulled sharply into a dirt clearing where an elderly woman sat in her pickup truck, buckets piled with potatoes as large as suckling pigs in the truck bed.

I turned back to Jack. “You make bread? From scratch?”

Putting the car in park, he took the key from the ignition. “Somebody gave us a bread maker as a wedding gift and told me to keep it even when it became apparent there would be no wedding. What else was I going to do with it?”

I thought of several things including returning it to the store, but I remained silent as I watched him exit the car. His words had been flippant, but I’d sensed the thin veil of grief that still hovered over him like a sigh. How long did it take a person to get over a broken heart? And what happened if you never did?

It didn’t take very long for the woman in the truck to begin batting her eyelashes at Jack as he spoke, his arm draped on the door surround as he leaned toward her. Eventually, he slid out his wallet and handed her a five before lifting a bucket from the truck. He came to my side of the car and paused, staring in at me.

I opened my door. “Do you need something?”

Jack eyed his minuscule trunk and nonexistent backseat. “Yeah. A place to put these.”

I followed his gaze to the floor in front of me. “Please don’t tell me you want me to stick the bucket between my legs for the rest of the trip.” I sighed, recognizing the inevitability of the situation but not willing to give in too easily.

“I’ll make you a loaf of sweet potato bread,” he offered helpfully.

“Deal,” I said, hoisting the bucket and situating it between my feet on the floor of the car. “If the tires start to deflate, we can throw them out the window one by one like ballast.”

Jack slid behind the wheel. “Don’t you dare. I’ve got just enough to make a few loaves of bread and a pie for Rebecca. She loves sweet potato pie.”

I looked down at the offending spuds, no longer seeing them as just an inconvenience but more as an affront. Maybe if we stopped to look at the scenery they could be accidentally left behind.

“So, how long did you date Rebecca?” The question was out of my mouth before I could call it back.

He seemed amused. “Long enough to know that she likes sweet potato pie.”

Chagrined, I sat back in my seat. “But not long enough not to have your head turned when somebody new appeared on the scene.”

He knew I was talking about Emily, but he didn’t take the bait and instead raised the volume on the radio. “I know this will be hard for you, but try not to bruise the potatoes by clenching your legs so tightly together.”

“That’s not funny,” I said as he sped off with a wave to the woman in the truck.

“It wasn’t meant to be. I was simply concerned about the potatoes.”

“Sure you were,” I said as I turned away and watched as the sun dipped behind darkening clouds and the first splat of rain hit the windshield.

Mimosa Hall was little more than a large farmhouse with a covered porch and white clapboard siding that seemed to glow in the gray of the pouring rain.

“What time was our appointment?” I asked as Jack pulled into a gravel drive and shut off the ignition.