The Splendour Falls (32 page)

While I stared at her, trying not to look as gobsmacked as I felt, Clara said, amused, ‘I'm so glad to know you were once capable of being silly.'

I leaned forward, figuratively holding my breath. Something she'd said clicked, and I had to phrase my question carefully, to keep the mood light and the emphasis off my nighttime adventures.

‘Do you think,' I ventured casually, ‘this is where the rumour that the house is haunted came from? Kimberly and the others really seem to believe in ghosts, and you said yourself Shawn is fascinated. Those would be their mothers, wouldn't they? The girls at your slumber party.'

Paula blinked in surprise. ‘I never thought about that.'

Should I press my luck and point out how this meant
I wasn't nuts? That she could stop worrying about me? Or would it just remind her about last night? Her story didn't explain the girl at the river, after all.

While I debated, Clara got up from the table and asked, ‘What do you want for breakfast?'

‘Is there cereal? I should have gotten some when I was— Oh, crud.' I edited my usual curse word. ‘I left the soy milk I bought yesterday in Shawn's truck.'

‘Uh-huh,' said Clara knowingly. ‘I guess you'll have to call him to bring it over.'

Or not. I didn't think he needed encouragement. Even forgetting that Addie had been out late with
someone
last night, if my gut said things like ‘stage presence' and ‘Tom Sawyer trickster', I needed to pay attention. Which was easier to do when Shawn wasn't around.

My noncommittal ‘Humph,' which both women seemed to find amusing, put an end to the conversation, or at least that part of it. As Clara and Paula exchanged a few words about groceries, I ventured into the inner sanctum of the kitchen and found regular milk and some bran flakes, carried them back to the table and poured myself a generous bowl. And then, suddenly, Clara left, as if she and Paula had made some agreement while I was crunching and couldn't hear, and I was alone with my cousin.

‘Listen, Sylvie.' She leaned her elbows on the table.

I set down my spoon warily. Nothing good was going to follow that gently concerned overture. The phone rang, and I grasped at the diversion. ‘Do you need to answer that?'

‘Clara can get it in the den.' She cleared her throat
and continued. ‘Your stepfather gave me the name of a colleague of his in Birmingham, who will see you at a moment's notice. Maybe I should call and make you an appointment.'

‘What? No! Paula—' My protest was incoherent, the emphatic slash of my hand endangering my cereal bowl. ‘I don't need a shrink. Weren't we just talking about how rumour and the history of the house can make even
your
imagination run wild?'

She didn't look pleased with the reminder. ‘Imagination, yes. Screaming night terrors, no.'

My heart pounded in my throat. A junior shrink had gotten me into this mess, his confiding manner making me say too much. The stepshrink had told Mother I couldn't stay by myself, and she'd believed him over me. My own, real shrink was no help at all when I'd begged – well, demanded – that he tell Mother I was fine. He'd just said his usual crapola about mourning and moving on. The psychiatrists who
knew
me didn't believe I wasn't drunk or depressed or deranged. What the hell would an actual stranger do to me?

‘Paula, please,' I said, knowing that giving into irrational raving was not going to convince her I didn't need professional help. ‘I'm fine. If it happens again' – by which I meant, if I got caught in a situation I couldn't bluff my way out of – ‘I'll talk to … I don't know. Anyone but a shrink.'

For a long moment, she studied my earnest expression. ‘What about Reverend Watkins at our church? Will you talk to him?'

I sat back in my chair, struck by the possible
providence of this suggestion. ‘Which church?' I bit my tongue to keep from blurting out:
The one where the Colonel is buried?
I didn't want to say anything to make her rethink the shrink issue.

Paula stood up, as if the matter was settled. ‘It's between here and Maddox Landing. You may have even seen the steeple from the road. It's been the family church for generations.'

‘So …' I pretended to be reluctant about the idea. ‘I could even ride my bike over there.'

She was so relieved, her spine relaxed a millimetre or so. ‘I'll be happy to drive you, honey.'

It wasn't difficult to manufacture a pained expression. ‘Please. Leave me at least the illusion of independence.'

‘Fine,' she said, getting the last word. ‘I'll call the reverend and tell him you'll be out sometime today.'

I was eating my bran flakes, grumbling silently about being outmanoeuvred, when Clara came in from the front of the house. Something in her step made me look up, and I swallowed hard at her worried expression.

‘What's wrong?' Paula asked. I remembered the phone ringing, and my heart plummeted.

Clara lifted her hands in a calming gesture. ‘Everyone is all right. Professor Griffith just called; they were in a minor accident on the way home last night.'

‘Are they OK?' I asked, half rising out of my chair, oblivious to the fact that she'd just said so. There were different levels of ‘all right'.

She nodded. ‘He and Rhys are fine. Bumps and
bruises. But it was late, and they had to have the rental car towed; they're working on getting another one. He didn't want us to worry if they didn't arrive back until this afternoon or evening.'

Paula leaned a hand on the counter, one hand on her chest. ‘Well, thank God for that. I've grown rather fond of those fellows.'

‘You're not the only one,' said Clara, and I thought she was talking about herself until she said, her voice warm with sympathy, ‘Sit down, honey, before you fall down. They're both fine.'

I didn't feel like I was going to fall down. I felt like I was going to throw up. I'd known Rhys less than a week, not nearly long enough to justify the wrenching knot in my chest at the thought of something dire happening to him.

‘I'm OK,' I said. ‘I'm just going to go, um, change my jeans and work in the garden for a bit.'

Calling for Gigi, I headed to the front of the house. I didn't care about my jeans; as the dog jumped onto the love seat, I grabbed the home phone and checked the caller ID. My cell phone was still in my pocket from the day before, and it even had a charge. I entered the number – a US one, probably a throwaway phone for their stay – into my cell, then grabbed Gigi and went out the side door to my garden.

Impatiently I unlaced my sneakers while the phone rang. I'd just gotten them off and was kneading the grass between my toes when Rhys answered.

‘Hello?' I recognized his voice with no trouble, even though the accent was the same as his dad's.

‘Are you really OK?' I asked without preamble.

There was a funny sort of exhale on the end. Real-ization, relief, recognition – I couldn't tell, except that his tone warmed a little. ‘Yeah. We're both all right. The car's a goner, though. Dad's doing the paperwork now.'

‘How are you all right if the car's totalled?'

‘Air bags, love. Fantastic invention.'

Gigi was sitting in the flower bed, getting dirty. My knees weak, I joined her, lowering myself into a soft, green patch. ‘Where are you? What happened?'

‘Gasden. It was the closest city.' There was a pause, then he lowered his voice. ‘I swerved to avoid a deer. At least I think it was a deer. And I, ah, may have corrected in the wrong direction.'

‘Oh my God.' His humour was reassuring. ‘I
told
you. Right side of the road. I don't even have a licence and I know that.'

‘Yes, well.' His voice dropped further, giving a feeling of intimacy to the conversation. ‘I'm not twenty-four, or however old the rental place likes you to be, so I wasn't driving, if you know what I mean.'

‘You rebel. Out joyriding with your old man.'

‘An old man who is waving me over now. I've got to ring off.'

‘Sure, of course.' I suddenly felt embarrassed for calling, giving in to the impulse to reassure myself.

‘I'll see you shortly.' He paused, as if he was going to say something else. But he merely finished with, ‘Cheers, Sylvie,' and hung up.

I lowered the phone to my crossed legs and looked
at Gigi. ‘I just wanted to make sure he and his father were all right,' I told her. She stared back with halfclosed lids that asked, very clearly, who I thought I was fooling.

Saint Mary's Methodist Episcopal Church was almost as old as Bluestone Hill. It had a gabled roof and a tall steeple, which, as Paula had predicted, I could see from the road. The brick foundation looked meticulously preserved, and the wood siding had a new coat of white paint. Set in a clearing, surrounded by majestic trees and a cloudless sky the colour of a Tiffany's box, it was as pretty as a postcard.

Paula had put her foot down when she found out I planned to bring Gigi. We almost fought about it – again – but I backed down when I remembered I could be on my way to a shrink instead of pedalling voluntarily to a place I wanted to go anyway.

I parked my bike against a tree next to the iron fence that surrounded the churchyard. Though I supposed it would be better manners to go in and meet the reverend first, I was drawn irresistibly to the northeast side of the clearing.

The Alabama River glinted through the trees, moving more slowly here than up by the Hill. I followed a tidy path to a fenced graveyard, the stones a patchwork of white and grey and age-darkened brown. On the graveyard's outer edge, the markers were arranged in a modern, orderly fashion. Closer in, the headstones
were grouped, often with another iron fence around them, or a tree that someone had planted long ago to shade the dead.

It was a peaceful place. There was a gentle serenity to the way the sun dappled the ground, like a patterned quilt draped over those who slept.

‘Hello!'

The greeting startled me, especially after my fanciful thoughts. I whirled, one hand going to my heart. I was going to be old before my time at the rate I was racking up shocks.

‘Sorry.' A man in a clerical collar stood on the path behind me, raising his hands in the universal gesture of ‘don't freak out' and smiling sheepishly. ‘I suppose a graveyard isn't the best place to sneak up on someone.'

‘Um, no.'

I'd expected the reverend at a historic church to be similarly antique, but this man was maybe in his early thirties. Tall and thin, he had light brown skin and features that pointed to a mix of races, and his eyes were kind and friendly. I guess that was a plus in his profession.

‘I'm Reverend Watkins,' he said, unnecessarily. ‘If you're Sylvie, your cousin called and told me to keep an eye out for your arrival.'

‘That was nice of her.' I thought I managed to say this without sarcasm, but the glint in his eye said maybe I'd missed the mark.

‘Are you looking for your family's plot?' he asked, surprising me. Not that it was a major intuitive leap, but I'd expected he'd want to talk about my
feelings
first.
At my startled silence, he pointed further down the path. ‘The Davises are over here, in the oldest part of the cemetery.'

He pressed the latch on the gate and gestured me ahead of him. I paused for a moment, not worried about ghosts, for once, but struck by the deep sense of purpose to this place. Not every sanctuary or temple impressed me as being so … hallowed. This one did, through the soles of my shoes.

‘How old is the church?' I asked as he closed the gate behind us.

‘Old. Some of the family plots date back to the eighteen twenties, when the church was built.' He walked casually, with his hands in his pockets. And he still hadn't asked how I was feeling. ‘But during some restoration in the seventies – the nineteen seventies – there was archaeological evidence that this might have been a Native American site as well.'

‘You mean a burial ground?' I asked, intrigued by the possibility.

‘That would be quite a coincidence, wouldn't it.' He shrugged with a wry half-smile. ‘Probably just an extension of the settlement at Cahawba – much like this was an outgrowth of the ex-capital. But I like to imagine there's something special about this place.'

We'd stopped under one of the spreading oaks, and I smiled at a memory. ‘Funny. My dad used to say that some spots were meant to be sacred. Which was why successive civilizations would sometimes build one temple on top of another, without even knowing what was there before.'

Dad had designed more than one beautiful cemetery, which was why I'd found it odd that he'd wanted to be cremated and not interred. But looking at one of the raised marble mausoleums, I had to think it would have made Dad sad to be in the earth but not part of it.

‘Were you and your father much alike?' The reverend's tone was conversational, not the funeral-soft way most people asked about the dearly departed.