A Sound Among the Trees (23 page)

Her daughter strode past her.

“Where are you going?” Adelaide called after her, afraid that Caroline was headed up the stairs to grab her suitcase and leave.

“I’m not leaving Marielle alone with that woman,” Caroline muttered.

Caroline was out the drawing room door, and Adelaide pivoted to follow her. “Caroline.”

Caroline said nothing. She crossed the foyer and made her way to the far end of the entry and the half-open parlor doors. Adelaide hurried to catch up, her bruised body protesting.

Inside the parlor, Eldora stood, her arms lifting slightly from her sides, palms out, and her head to one side, looking somewhat like a waiting antenna. Her eyes were closed. Marielle stood wide eyed a few feet away from her.

Adelaide was mesmerized by the sight, but Caroline spoke into the strange silence as if to break the glass around a fire extinguisher. “What’s going on in here?”

Eldora, apparently unfazed by Caroline’s interruption, slowly moved her head in a circle, like a warmup exercise. She opened her eyes. “I feel the presence strong in here,” she said. “So strong. Stronger than last time.”

“Look, I don’t mean any disrespect, but I don’t think this is a good idea,” Caroline said.

“You feel it too. Don’t you?” Eldora said, turning to Caroline. Her voice was sweet, inclusive. “You are in touch with the spirit world.”

“I think we need to go back to the family room and sew.” Caroline turned to Marielle and nodded to her.

“Don’t you want me to check the other rooms, Adelaide?” Eldora asked. “What about the garden? And the slaves’ quarters? And your cellar? Do you remember how strong it was in your cellar? Do you not want me to see if she is in there?”

Adelaide saw Marielle flinch, and she opened her mouth but no answer came. She didn’t know what she wanted Eldora to do. What would Eldora find if she kept at it? What would she hear? What would she see? Adelaide realized with a shudder that she wasn’t prepared to hear she’d been wrong all these decades—that Susannah did indeed haunt the house. A tiny squeak escaped her throat.

“That’s enough.” Caroline stood at the parlor doors and held them open, like a nanny shooing little ones out of a room they had no business being in.

Eldora took a step toward Adelaide. “I will leave if you want me to. But only if
you
want me to.”

Adelaide nodded. “I think you should go.”

Caroline walked out of the room without a look back. Eldora took Adelaide’s good hand in her own. “I wonder if you aren’t in some kind of danger, Adelaide. Your daughter senses it too or she would not be so insistent that I leave. She is afraid I will provoke this presence by being here. Caroline touches the spirit world. I felt it in her when I shook her hand. She thinks you can ignore this and it will go away, but I ask you, how long have you known your house is not like other houses?”

The answer came easily, before she had a chance to rein it in. “All my life,” Adelaide said.

Eldora squeezed her hand. “What would you like me to do?”

An image of her great-grandmother seated in her wingback chair, dead, rose up before her.

I did everything I could
.

I did everything I could
.

“What can you do?” Adelaide asked. “What is it that you can do? Can you fix what is broken here? Can you?”

Eldora’s grip on her hand lessened. “No, I can’t. I can only tell what I sense, what I feel. I cannot fix anything for you.”

“Who can?” Adelaide whispered.

“The deceased who can’t move on from this world needs to be empowered somehow. She needs something. If you want me to try and find out, I will.”

The doorbell sounded.

From behind her, Adelaide felt Marielle place a hand on her shoulder. She had almost forgotten she was there. “I think the lunch is here, Mimi,” Marielle said.

Adelaide turned to face her. Marielle’s face was pale. “You must think I’m crazy. Don’t you?”

Marielle shook her head. “No, I don’t. Let’s go have lunch.”

Adelaide took a step toward the parlor doors with Eldora on one side and Marielle on the other. “I almost wish I was crazy. Then none of this would matter. It would all just be in my imagination.”

“Do you want me to check the other rooms, Adelaide?” Eldora asked.

“Eldora, I think maybe we’ve had enough for one day,” Marielle said before Adelaide could answer.

And she leaned into her new granddaughter-in-law and thanked Eldora Meeks for coming.

She did not ask her to stay for lunch.

arielle stood over the long table in the family room surveying the work she had done on the uniforms that lay before her, resplendent in the light from the chandelier above. Her rows of shining buttons, spread across the coat fronts like runway lights, glowed warm and straight. She’d had to remove and resew a few that hadn’t been perfectly positioned. Adelaide had gently insisted. When officers go to war, they set the standard for everyone else, Adelaide had told her. Everyone looks to them for direction and inspiration. Especially the young soldiers because they’re wondering what war will do to them. Will it turn them into barbarians? The perfect rows of buttons show them it will not.

There had been less conversation in the sewing room after lunch, after Eldora left. Pearl, pouting a bit, had decided they needed music to regain their party atmosphere and filled the room with Frank Sinatra tunes from the stereo. Marielle had caught Caroline looking at her more than once, and each time she tipped her head as if to silently encourage her. By the time Pearl left at six, Marielle’s arms and shoulders ached from bending over fabric and needles all day long. But the uniforms were nearly finished. Just a few more swirls of braid to attach. Caroline had said she could finish them tomorrow—Pearl didn’t have to give up another day—and Pearl had said she was fine with that because she had her jewelry party to get ready for.

Now, as Marielle waited for Carson to get home from work, the house was eerily quiet. Adelaide had gone to her room to lie down before dinner, and Caroline had gone for a walk. For the first time since they had left,
Marielle realized she missed the children. She smiled to herself. Surely that was a good sign. She wondered if she should call them and tell them she missed them. Carson talked to them every night, and sometimes he gave the phone to her to say hello and sometimes he didn’t. She didn’t think it was some kind of conscious decision on his part when he didn’t. She supposed he was still getting used to the idea that his children had a new stepmother, just as she was getting used to the idea that she was it. She would definitely call them.

She heard the front door open and the sound of Carson walking into the house, hanging his car keys on the hook by the door, setting his briefcase down.

“Anybody here?” he called out.

“I’m in your study,” she said, and a few seconds later he was at her side, his arms around her from behind. She rested her head on his chest.

“Wow. You gals were busy. Are they done?”

“Nearly. Just some trim left to do. Caroline said she’d finish them up.”

He kissed her temple and she closed her eyes. “This was a wonderful thing you all did for Mimi. I know this would’ve bugged her, not getting them done in time.”

She looked up at him. “See the nice rows of buttons? Those are mine.”

He smiled. “Lined up like little golden soldiers. Well done.” He kissed her again. “So you had a good day?”

She hesitated. “Mostly.”

“Mostly?”

She turned around to face him. She wanted him to know who had been at the house. “Pearl invited Eldora Meeks over.”

A rush of surprise fell across Carson’s face. “Why?” He sounded almost angry.

“She thought she was doing Mimi a favor. Mimi said something to Pearl at the hospital about …” Marielle suddenly felt like she was saying too much. Betraying something.

“About what? What did Mimi say at the hospital?”

Marielle moved away from him to take a seat on the couch. He followed her. “She … well, you know how she feels about this house, and when she fell, she felt like … like she needed to talk to Eldora again. Pearl assumed it was okay to ask her over today.”

“She felt like what?”

“Maybe Mimi should be the one to tell you.”

“To tell me what? Why can’t you tell me?” He sounded disappointed, like she was keeping something from him that he had every right to know.

“She felt like she didn’t just fall.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“She … she felt like someone or something pushed her.”

Carson looked away for a moment. “What did Eldora say?”

“Caroline didn’t like her being here. She didn’t stay long. She only went into one room—the parlor. She left after that.”

“And?”

Marielle shuddered slightly at the memory of Eldora standing as if in a trance, her head cocked in the pose of someone listening to something faint but present. “And it was creepy. She said she sensed a presence. Stronger than the last time she was here. Much stronger. Freaked me out, actually.”

Carson exhaled and shook his head. “What else did she say?”

“She wanted to go into the other rooms, but Caroline wasn’t going to let her and I certainly didn’t want her to. She wanted to go back to the places where she had sensed this presence before. The studio, the cellar, the garden. But lunch arrived, and Adelaide didn’t ask her to stay.”

Carson stroked his chin with his hand, thoughtful and silent.

“Do you think … Do you think Eldora knows what she’s talking about?” she said. “I mean, I’ve never believed anything like this could actually happen. Eldora said Holly Oak isn’t like other houses. Is that even possible?”

He turned his head to look at her. “I think Adelaide hit her head too hard, and I think Pearl made a mistake by bringing Eldora here. Caroline was right to ask her to leave.”

“But do you think it’s possible?”

“Do you?” His tone suggested he didn’t.

“I didn’t think I did.”

He took her hand in his and kissed it. “I’m sorry about this. I told you Adelaide had some quirky notions about the house, but I didn’t think she’d take it this far. You shouldn’t have to worry about any of this. I’ll talk to her.”

“To who?” The sense that she was betraying someone again pricked her. “Talk to who?”

He laughed gently. “To Mimi, of course. I’ll tell her to please keep her odd superstitions to herself. They’re upsetting you. I can see that they are.”

“Don’t do that. Don’t tell her that.”

“Why not? I really don’t want Eldora coming back here. This is my house too, and I don’t want her here.”

“But that’s just it, Carson. This isn’t our house. It’s Adelaide’s house. Right now, it’s just
her
house.”

He still held her hand, and she felt it tense in her palm.

“What do you want me to do?” he said.

Marielle felt the weight of the house’s history envelop her as she considered his question. Adelaide was not likely to change in the years left to her. She had lived a lifetime believing what she did about the house. It was up to them to lessen the weight if they could. She and Carson.

“Leave Adelaide be. I don’t think you can say anything that will make her feel differently about the house. But I think cleaning out the studio is a good place for us to start feeling differently about it.”

Carson closed his eyes and pressed his head to the back of the couch.

“Yeah. About that.”

“What?”

“I have to fly to Houston on Friday. I’ll be gone until Sunday night late. I can’t clean it out on Saturday. I’m sorry. We’ll have to do it another day.”

Disappointment settled over her. It surprised her how much.

“The following Saturday then?” she said.

“Sure.”

“I can help her clean it out this Saturday.” The voice from behind them was Caroline’s. Marielle and Carson both whipped their heads around to see her standing in the doorway. Marielle had no idea how long she had been standing there.

“What was that?” Carson said quickly, but Marielle could see by the look on his face that he had heard her.

Caroline moved farther into the room. “I said I can help her on Saturday. Marielle and I can clean out the studio.”

“Oh. No, that’s … that’s too much to ask of you, Caroline. It’s a mess in there. And I don’t mean just random art supplies.” Carson sounded alarmed.

“I’m sure I’ve lived in places in worse condition than the studio,” Caroline said. “You’d be surprised how many ways I know to kill a rat.”

“Yes, but there’s a lot of … stuff. You’ll need some muscle, I think. I’m afraid it would be too much for both of you,” Carson stood and faced Caroline, met her gaze eye to eye.

“I don’t think a few old art tables and crumbling shelves are a match for Marielle and me. I’ve seen what’s in there, Carson. We’ll be fine.”

Carson cocked his head in surprise. “You’ve seen the inside of the studio?”

“Yes, I have. Sara was my daughter. What’s left in there is all that is left of her for me. So, yes, I’ve been inside. And I know Marielle and I will be just fine, won’t we, Marielle? You’ve been inside it as well. You didn’t see anything in there the two of us couldn’t handle, did you?”