The Restorer (8 page)

Whether I could see them or not, Devlin’s ghosts were always with him, making him the most dangerous man in Charleston for someone like me.

The rest of the day passed without incident…for the most part.

I took my car in to get the window replaced, and as I waited on the repair, I spent an obscene amount of time obsessing on my latest encounter with Devlin. It reminded me of Papa’s analogy about vampires—instead of blood, ghosts suck out our vitality. That was exactly the way it had felt to me earlier, as though my energy had been drained. But there had been no ghost in my office. Only Devlin.

If he had somehow fed on my energy, would it bind me to him the way blood connected a vampire to his victim?

A crazy notion, but under the circumstances, I excused my overzealous imagination. After a while, though, I tired of trying to make sense of the experience and put it out of my mind as I drove into the country to look at a family graveyard on the remains of an old rice plantation. I’d been asked by the new owners of the property to submit a bid for a complete restoration, and walking the burial sites was a welcome distraction.

And since I was so close to Trinity, I thought it would be an opportune time to pay my parents a visit. I hadn’t seen my mother in over a month, my father in even longer.

Mama and Aunt Lynrose were sitting on the front porch of our cozy white bungalow drinking lemonade when I drove up. They came down the front steps, all exclamations and admonishments, and the three of us shared a group hug in the front yard.

As always, they smelled wonderful, their scent a unique blend of the familiar and the exotic—honeysuckle, sandal-wood and Estée Lauder White Linen. They were both taller than I, their posture still arrow-straight, their figures as slender as the day they’d graduated from St. Agnes.

“What a nice surprise to find you here,” I said, slipping an arm around my aunt’s trim waist.

“Serendipitous, one might even say.” She reached over and patted my cheek. “Shame I have to come all this way to see my only niece when she lives not more than five minutes from me in Chaa’stun,” she drawled.

“Sorry. I’ve been meaning to get by for a visit. I’ve just been really busy lately.”

“With a new beau, dare I hope?”

“’Fraid not. Between my business and my blog, I don’t have time for a social life.”

“You have to make the time. You don’t want to end up an old maid like your favorite aunt, do you?”

I smiled. “I can think of worse fates.”

Her eyes gleamed with affection. “Nevertheless, there’s a time for work and a time for play.”

“Leave her alone, Lyn.”

“Leave her alone? Etta, have you seen your daughter’s skin? Brown as a berry and freckles all over the place. What do you put on your face at night?” she wanted to know. “Whatever’s handy.”

“Chile.” She clucked her tongue in disapproval. “I know a woman on Market Street makes the best face cream in the world. Don’t have a clue what she puts in it, but the smell is divine and the formula works like a charm. Next time you come see me, I’ll give you a jar.”

“Thanks.”

“Now let me see those hands.”

I held them out for inspection and she sighed. “Always,
always
wear gloves. It’s
essential
working outside the way you do. The hands are a terrible betrayer of a woman’s age.”

I looked down at my callused palms. They did look a little worse for the wear.

Mama had disappeared inside the house, but she came back out a moment later with a tall glass of lemonade, which she handed to me as I plopped down on the top step.

“You’re staying for supper.” I’d always loved the way she said “suppah.”

Since it wasn’t a question, I merely nodded. “What are we having?”

“Chicken and biscuits. Mashed potatoes and gravy. Collard greens. Sliced tomatoes. Roasted corn. Blackberry cobbler for dessert.”

“My mouth is watering already.” It seriously was, particularly for the homegrown vegetables.

“I never could fry chicken worth a flip,” Lynrose mused as she settled back down in a green metal glider, the gentle sway almost hypnotic in the somnolent heat. “It’s an art, you know. I must have tried a hundred different recipes over the years. Buttermilk batter, cornmeal breading, you name it. Finally just gave up. Now when I have a hankering for a drumstick, I get takeout, but it’s not the same.” She sighed. “Etta got the cooking gene in our family.”

“And you got the gift of gab,” Mama said.

I smiled as Lynrose flashed me a conspiratorial wink. She was the only person I knew who could tease out my somber mother’s sly sense of humor. When I was a child, I loved when she came for visits. Mama always seemed so carefree with her sister.

The last time I’d seen them together was a month ago when Mama had driven into Charleston for her birthday. She’d spent the weekend with Lynrose and the three of us had gone out to celebrate. We’d had enough wine with dinner to laugh ourselves silly over some ridiculous play my aunt had dragged us to. I’d never seen my mother so giddy. It was a sight to behold. She’d turned sixty that day, but neither she nor my aunt looked a day over forty. I’d always thought them the most beautiful women in the world. I still did.

Now I searched my mother’s features, hoping to find a bit of that same girlish mirth I’d witnessed on her birthday. Instead, I noticed how fragile and gaunt she looked. How tired she seemed. The dark circles under her eyes reminded me of John Devlin.

A shiver ran through me and I glanced away.

“Where’s Papa?” I asked.

“Rosehill,” Mama said. “He still likes to putter around out there even though the county hired a full-time caretaker last year.”

“Did he finish the angels?”

A faint smile touched her lips. “Yes. They are quite something, aren’t they, Lyn? You’ll have to go down and take a look at them before you leave.”

“I will.”

“Speaking of angels,” my aunt said lazily. “Do you remember Angel Peppercorn? Tall gal with a rather unfortunate overbite. I ran into her the other day in a little tea shop on Church Street. You know the one I mean, Amelia. Has that cute black-and-yellow awning? Anyway, turns out her son, Jackson, is in the movie business. She says he’s a famous director out in Hollywood, but I heard through the grapevine he’s in the adult entertainment industry. I can’t say I’m surprised. Always was something a little perverted about that boy,” she said with malicious glee.

As my aunt prattled on, I began to relax, letting my worries over Mama’s health and those dark memories of Oak Grove slip away. We spent a pleasant afternoon gossiping on the front porch, only stirring when Mama rose to start dinner. My aunt and I offered to help, but she would have none of it.

“I don’t know which of you is more helpless in the kitchen,” she said. “Last thing I need is the both of you under foot.”

After she went inside, I settled back against the post as my aunt launched into a new story. I waited for a lull, then said casually, “Aunt Lynrose, are you acquainted with any Devlins in Charleston?”

“Would that be the South of Broad Devlins?” she asked, naming the most prestigious and historic area of the city.

“I don’t think so. The Devlin I met is a cop.”

“Probably not one of
the
Devlins then. Unless he’s a distant cousin. Plenty of those around, I would imagine, since their roots go all the way back to the seventeenth century. Of course, they’re dying out now. Bennett Devlin’s only son and daughter-in-law were killed in a boating accident years ago. The grandson came to live with him for a while, but they had a falling out. I seem to recall hearing that the boy got himself involved in some scandal or other.”

My ears perked up. “What kind of scandal?”

“The usual. Fell in with a bad crowd, took the wrong sort of wife.” She shrugged. “I’ve forgotten the particulars.”

I tried to recall if I’d seen a wedding ring on Devlin’s finger. I was pretty sure I would have noticed something like that.

“You say the Devlin you met is a cop? You’re not in some kind of trouble, are you?” my aunt teased.

“Hardly. I’m doing some consulting work for the Charleston Police Department.”

“My goodness, that sounds important.” She eyed me with unabashed curiosity.

“Actually, that’s one of the reasons I drove up this afternoon. I wanted to tell Mama before she heard about it from someone else. A body was found in the cemetery where I’ve been working. A murder victim.”

“Lord have mercy.” My aunt pressed a hand to her heart. “Chile, are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m fine. I was never in any danger,” I said, conveniently ignoring the stolen briefcase. “My involvement is minor, but my name was mentioned in the
Post and Courier
article this morning. I’m surprised you didn’t see it.”

“I spent the night here with Etta. I haven’t even looked at a paper.”

“Anyway, Detective Devlin asked that I be present for the exhumation and I agreed.”

“You mean you were there when they dug up the body?” Aunt Lynrose held out her arm. “Look at that. You done gave me chills.”

“Sorry.”

I caught a movement behind the screen door and wondered how long my mother had been standing there listening to us.

“Mama? You need some help now?”

“You can go find your papa, tell him we’re ready to eat.”

“Okay.”

As I walked across the front yard toward the road, I heard the screen door squeak. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw that Mama had come out on the porch and she and my aunt were speaking in low tones the way they once had when I was little. This time, I was pretty sure they were talking about me.

Instead of driving around the road, I took the shortcut through the woods and went straight back to the old section. The gate was locked, but I knew where Papa had always kept a spare key.

I let myself in, closed the gate behind me, then wandered down a soft incline, along fern-edged pathways and through thick, silvery curtains of Spanish moss to the angels.

There were fifty-seven of them.

Fifty-seven angels adorning fifty-seven tiny graves. The victims of a fire that had ravaged an orphanage in 1907.

The people in the surrounding counties had taken up a collection to buy the first angel, and every year thereafter, a new one had been added, except during the two world wars and the Great Depression.

By the time the final angel had been placed on the remaining grave, some of the earlier statues had fallen victim to weather and vandalism. Papa had been working for years to restore all fifty-seven with nothing more than patience and a set of vintage masonry tools.

When I was little, those angels had been my only companions. There were no other children around where we lived, but I don’t think the solitude had much to do with my loneliness. It was inherent, and once the ghosts came along, it was constant.

The sun had already begun its slow glide toward the horizon when I found a patch of warm clover and slid to the ground. Hugging my knees tightly, I waited.

After a few moments, the air stilled in a prelude redolent with summer.

And then it happened.

The sun sank with a gasping flare, a dying day’s last breath that gilded the treetops and shot a volley of golden arrows down through the leaves. Light danced off stone so that for one split second, the angels shimmered with life, a fleeting animation that always took my breath away.

As the angels slept under the soft blanket of dusk, I sat waiting for Papa. Finally, I got up and walked back toward the gate. I saw someone standing just outside and I started to call out to him.

Then with a shudder, I realized it wasn’t Papa. But I knew him. It was the ghost of the old man I’d seen when I was nine years old. I stood on hallowed ground, so he posed no immediate threat to me, but he terrified me just the same. His presence after all these years seemed menacing, a manifestation of the unrest that had afflicted my ordered little kingdom.

He looked exactly as I remembered him. Tall, gaunt, with long white hair brushing the collar of his suit coat. Glacial eyes and a faintly sinister demeanor.

I felt another presence and glanced over my shoulder.

Papa had come up behind me. His hair was white, too, but he kept it cropped close to his head and his eyes were faded, his demeanor remote but not at all threatening.

He seemed focused on some distant point, but I knew the ghost had caught his attention.

“You see him, too, don’t you?” I whispered as my gaze strayed back to the gate.

“Don’t look at him!”

His harsh tone startled me, though I didn’t outwardly re act. “I’m not.”

“Here.” He took my arm and turned me toward the angels. “Let’s sit a spell.”

We sank to the ground, our backs to the ghost, just as we had when I was nine. For the longest time, neither of us spoke, but I could sense Papa’s tension and what I thought might be fear. I shivered in the gathering darkness and drew up my legs, resting my chin on my knees.

“Papa, who is he?
What
is he?” I finally asked.

He wouldn’t look at me, but fixed his gaze instead on the statues. “A harbinger…a messenger. I don’t know.”

The chill inside me deepened. A harbinger of what? A messenger for whom? “Have you seen him before? I mean…since that day?”

“No.”

“Why has he come back? Why now after all these years?”

“Maybe it’s a warning,” Papa said.

“What kind of warning?”

Slowly, he turned to face me. “You tell me, child. Has something happened?”

And then I knew. Something
had
happened. Something had shifted in this world and the next. Everything had been changing from the moment John Devlin had stepped out of the mist.

My arms tightened around my legs. I couldn’t stop shaking.

Papa placed a gentle hand on my shoulder. “What have you done, Amelia?”

Now it was I who couldn’t look at him. “I met someone. A police detective named John Devlin. He’s haunted by two ghosts, a woman and a little girl. Last night the ghost child came to my garden. Papa, she knew I could see her. She tried to communicate with me. And then this morning, I found a tiny ring in the garden where I saw her disappear.”