The Girl On Legare Street (32 page)

“So she was sixteen when she died.”

“Yes, but . . .” I thought for a moment, sifting through the puzzle pieces, selecting and discarding them just as quickly. “The girl found on the
Rose
was older.”

Our gazes met, and she lifted her eyebrows. “Did Sophie find anything else?”

I nodded. “Rose’s father adopted Meredith when Meredith’s parents died in a shipwreck and raised her as Rose’s sister.”

“Well, then. That explains a lot, doesn’t it?” She pointed to the journal that I had placed on the nightstand. “I found something out today. An entry that you probably read before but didn’t mean anything. I bet it will now.” She reached across the journal and clumsily flipped through pages until she reached the one she sought. “Read this entry.” She handed the journal to me and I began to read.

Father has a surprise for both of us for Rose’s birthday. I already know what it is, though, since Father borrowed my locket to have a duplicate made—but with R’s initial instead of mine. She wants to be just like me, and it scares me a little because sometimes I believe that she wants to become me. She likes to make me sit down next to her in front of a mirror so she can see how we are almost like twins. It is only when she stands or tries to walk that our differences are visible. She played a little joke on C last week, when she had me sitting in the drawing room and pretended to be her when he came in. I agreed only because it is so difficult to deal with her anger when things do not go her way, but now I fear that she will want to pretend to be me the next time he calls. I will have to send him a warning, so he will not give anything away.

I thought for a minute, tapping my fingers against the yellowed page. “Rose married a man named Charles, four years after the earthquake. Four years after she left Charleston to travel Europe with family friends.”

“Four years is a long time. Long enough for people to forget the physical differences between two girls who resembled each other so much that they might have really been sisters.” My mother’s gaze met mine. “We are not as we seem.”

I pressed my fingers against my temples. “No, I suppose we’re not. So who are we?”

My mother sat back against her pillows. “I’ve seen the pictures of Rose and Charles on their honeymoon, and I’ve seen the portrait of the two girls. And there’s the fact that the girl found on the boat had a hip joint problem. If I were a gambler, my bet would be on Meredith being our ancestor—whoever she really was.”

She licked her dry lips and I gave her a glass of water that sat on her nightstand. With narrowed eyes, she regarded me over the glass. “The question then is how Meredith supposedly died in 1886 yet gave birth to my mother in 1900.”

“Then if Meredith wasn’t the one found on the
Rose
, who was it?” I probably knew the answer, but until my mother spoke, I held out hope that I was wrong.

“Everything points to Rose. She wants us to ask, but we’re not ready to speak to her yet.”

“Why not?” I asked, the small yet heavy feet of fear marching down my spine.

She took a deep breath, as if to draw in strength. “The forensics report showed that her skull was cracked, as if she’d suffered blunt-force trauma. She has reason to be angry. To want revenge. And that makes her very dangerous.”

“But why us?”

“Because this was her house, her birthright. But instead of living here, and having children and grandchildren living here, she ended up at the bottom of the ocean, wearing a locket that wasn’t hers, while someone else lived the life she was supposed to have.”

I sat down on the bed, feeling sick. “There’s more to this that I only recently discovered. Alice Crandall—the girl in the portrait at Mimosa Hall—is Rebecca Edgerton’s great-great-grandmother. The sapphire-and-diamond jewelry that your mother gave you originally belonged to Alice’s mother, who went down on a ship in 1870. When Rebecca saw a photo of you wearing the necklace and earrings, she knew there had to be a connection. That’s why she approached us in the first place.”

A soft smile lit her face. “So if the jewelry was recovered, then a baby might have been, too. A baby wearing a heart-shaped locket, identical to the one her sister Alice wore except with an
N
. And then it was simply a matter of changing the initial on the locket and renaming her Meredith.”

I shook my head. “I can almost feel sorry for Rose. Her father finds a baby and brings her home, then asks Rose to accept her as her sister. Except the imposter is more beautiful, and perfectly formed, and loved to sail like their father. It must have been difficult for her.”

My mother closed her eyes and I took the glass of water from her. I straightened my back as another thought occurred to me. “Does this mean that we’re descendants of a murderer?”

My mother shook her head. “Don’t say that. We don’t know the circumstances. And from reading the journal I can’t help but believe that Rose had a hand in her own undoing.”

I sat up, remembering something I’d heard. I turned to tell her, but her eyes were closed, and for a moment I thought she’d gone to sleep. But she opened them, touched my arm, and said, “Tell me.”

I somehow didn’t find my mother’s ability to read my mind as disturbing as I probably should have. “Wilhelm told me that he saved her, the writer of the journal. If our assumptions are correct, and it was Meredith—or Nora—then maybe he was the one who found her after the shipwreck. Maybe she managed to survive the sinking and somehow ended up on shore.”

A small furrow formed between her brows. “But he would have been dead for one hundred years by the time of the shipwreck.”

I sent her a sardonic grin. “Right. Like we wouldn’t know how that works.” I sighed. “From what I’ve read in the journal, Rose couldn’t see Wilhelm, which probably meant that she didn’t have a sixth sense, which would make it likely that no one in her family did, either. But I’ve heard stories. . . .” I looked down to make sure she was still awake and found her gaze focused intently on me.

“Go on,” she said, her voice soft.

“I’ve heard of instances,” I continued, “where spirits can make themselves known to others by expending all of their energy for a brief moment.”

“Who told you that?”

“Grandmother Sarah.”

A soft smile lifted her lips. “I’ve seen it happen. Usually it’s when the spirit is making his final good-bye to loved ones, or during an emergency when a life is at stake.”

“Like when a baby is in danger of drowning.”

My mother nodded. “Wilhelm said that he protects us in reparation for what happened to his Catherine. And why he continues to protect the women of this family—Meredith’s descendants.”

“Wilhelm told us that Catherine drowned.” I frowned, remembering the books on the table in Jack’s condo, regardless of how much I wanted to forget that entire scene. “Jack believes that the Prioleaus in the latter half of the eighteenth century might have been wreckers. Their plantation on Johns Island would have given them access and opportunity. Whether or not they lured ships up onto the rocks or were simply opportunists feeding off of a ship’s bad luck, it’s entirely possible that they built their fortune on the misfortune of others.” I swallowed, trying to bury my humiliation at the mere thought of being in his condo while he and Rebecca were back in the bedroom. “He marked a passage in a book that concerned the disappearance of a British schooner in 1785 off of Johns Island. The passengers, crew, and cargo were never seen again.”

“And 1785 is the year Wilhelm’s Catherine died.”

“I thought the same thing. And I keep thinking about the carving in the beam in the hidden room: ‘prisoner of the heart.’ Rebecca mentioned how some Hessian soldiers were hidden by Charleston citizens when the British fled the city. What if Wilhelm was held prisoner here in the house in exchange for doing some dirty work for the family, like scavenging cargo?”

My mother nodded, her eyes never leaving my face. “And even if the ship was wrecked by Mother Nature and not by intervening human hands, no mercy was shown to survivors, as they would be witnesses to the scavenging.”

I thought for a moment, almost hearing some of the puzzle pieces clicking into place, and feeling dread as I reached a probable conclusion. “So if Wilhelm was doing his job, and scuttling cargo from a ship that his Catherine was on—but didn’t know it—and she drowned while he did nothing to save her, his guilt would have been unbearable.”

“So he spends his centuries making amends for the woman he loved but couldn’t save.” My mother turned her face to the side, revealing the black-and-blue imprint of a human hand.

I stood, staring at the bruise. “What happened?”

She struggled to a sitting position. Her face was nearly as pale as her pillowcase, and she tried to hide it with her hand. “I told you. She’s getting stronger. She’s trying to weaken me so that she can then go after you.”

“Why were you trying to hide this from me?”

Her eyes were hard. “Because I didn’t want you to feel fear. Fear is what will make you weak; it is what she will be looking for. It is what will allow her inside your head and she will win.” She leaned toward me and grabbed my arm. “She can hurt you. Her hatred is that strong.”

“What does she want?”

She didn’t answer right away. “I don’t know.”

“Yes you do.” I leaned closer to her and she met my gaze again. “Why won’t you tell me?”

“Because I feel your fear right now. She’s near. Can’t you feel her? She’s waiting for her chance.”

I backed away. “I don’t want this. I’ve never wanted any of this. Why can’t we just walk away—leave this house to her?”

“You know that you can’t. She’s followed you before, and she won’t rest until she’s won. Until . . .” She stopped speaking, her chest rising and falling in shallow breaths.

I glanced sharply at her. “Until what?”

Instead of answering, she laid her head back on the pillow and closed her eyes. “Get the door.”

“I didn’t hear . . .” Before I’d finished my sentence, the front doorbell rang. I moved to the window and looked out onto Legare and saw Jack’s black Porsche parked at the curb.

“It’s Jack,” I said, unable to keep my voice steady.

She took a deep breath. “You should let him in.”

“No. You don’t know what he did.”

She opened her eyes halfway. “I suppose I do, actually. But you should still let him in. He needs your help.”

“I can’t. . . .”

She sat up on her elbow, her eyes angry. “He’s going to need you soon as much as you need him now, so go answer the damned door and stop arguing with me.”

My eyes widened. I didn’t remember my mother ever yelling at me, and despite the anger I felt, there was something comforting in it, too. Like she and I were growing accustomed to our roles and didn’t need to make nice anymore.

Without a word, I went downstairs, taking my time, making him wait. And the whole time I was trying to figure out what my mother had wanted to tell me, and wondering if I should tell her that I felt Rose’s presence now, as close as a scarf about to be squeezed tightly around my neck.

I stood inside the door for a long moment before finally unlocking it and pulling it open just enough to frame my face.

Jack was clean shaven and his hair wet as if he’d just stepped out of the shower, reminding me of an altar boy or a boy presenting his best face before being scolded by his mother. His clothes were cleaned and pressed and he smelled of soap and shampoo and that other unnamable scent that I just referred to as Jack.

“Are you sure you’ve got the right house? I thought Rebecca lived in Ansonborough.” I was proud at how even my voice sounded, not giving away any of the hurt and humiliation that seemed even worse now that I was facing him again.

“Look, Mellie, I’m sorry. I’m sorry you were in that situation; I can’t imagine how embarrassing that must have been for you.”

“Embarrassing? Walking down the street with the back of my skirt tucked into my panty hose is embarrassing. That scene in your condo was . . . mortifying. And degrading.”

“Degrading?” He raised his eyebrow and I sensed his anger. “It would only have been degrading if you and I were involved in a relationship, Mellie, and you made it perfectly clear to me that you didn’t want one. I’m certainly no saint, but I would never cheat on a committed relationship. Your apparent disinterest led me to assume that I was free to pursue other interests. So I did. You can’t have it both ways, Mellie.”

I wanted to slam the door in his face, but I couldn’t. Because there was no escaping the fact that he was right. I just needed to make sure that whatever happened next I never let him see how much I hurt or regretted missing my chance to lose some self-control.

“Can I come in, please? I have something to show you.”

I opened the door a little wider. “Can you just show me out here so that you can be on your way?”

Without saying anything else, he reached into his back pocket and pulled out a gold chain. He held it up in front of me, the sun’s reflection off of it like a conspiratorial wink. I squinted to see it clearly, to make sure that I’d seen what I thought I had. Hanging from the center of the chain on a tiny gold loop was a golden heart locket with the initial
A
engraved in the middle of it.

I stepped back in surprise and Jack took the opportunity to push the door open farther so that he could move inside to the foyer.

“Where did you get that?” I asked, although I was pretty sure I already knew.

“Rebecca left it on the floor of my bathroom. I’m thinking it fell off as she was getting dressed and she doesn’t know that it’s missing yet.”

I decided to ignore the implications of why Rebecca might have been getting dressed in his bathroom. My eyes met his. “It’s Alice’s, isn’t it? And if Rebecca’s had it in her possession, then she must have known about the connection between her family, the Crandalls, and the Prioleaus.”

He nodded but I wouldn’t drop his gaze.

I crossed my arms across my chest, my anger a welcome cover to the crushing bruise around my heart. “Did you know?”

He shook his head. “I probably figured it out at about the same time you did. And I’m telling the truth that I didn’t believe Rebecca knew anything before that, too.”

“Is that why you brought the locket, then? To prove to me that you weren’t lying?”

“Partly.”

“Only part?” I wanted to slap down the part of me that felt a rising hope.

A corner of his mouth twitched and I was happier than I’d admit to see something of the old Jack. “You know I can’t leave a good mystery alone. And we do work well together.”

I curbed my disappointment. “Just don’t ask me to work with Rebecca.”

He didn’t answer right away. “Fine. I don’t know what she’s up to, and she’s probably already figured some of this out, but I’m sure it’s not as bad as you’re thinking. Regardless, I won’t make you work with her if that’s what you want.”

I stared at him for a long moment. “Why Rebecca?” I said the name with the same distasteful inflection most people reserved for names like Hitler or bin Laden.

“Why Marc Longo?” he mimicked in the same tone of voice.

Despite myself, I smiled.

“Truce then?” he asked.

I could think of a million reasons to say no, including his ability to lure me into doing things I really didn’t want to, but I could see in Jack’s eyes that I’d already been shot, bagged, and my head mounted over his fireplace. “No” simply wasn’t an option. “Fine,” I said, sighing heavily. “At least until we can figure out all of this.”

“And then what?” He sounded almost hopeful.

“Then I can move back into my Tradd Street house, and you can get back to writing your historical true crimes. We’ll send Christmas cards for a while, and I’ll wave to you from a distance when we see each other at the annual Oyster Festival at Boone Hall Plantation that Sophie will make us buy tickets for each year until we’re too old to walk without assistance.”

He smiled, but his eyes didn’t. “Great. Then we have a truce.” He drew a deep breath. “So let’s get busy.” He reached into another pants pocket and pulled out a stack of photographs and began laying them out on the foyer floor. I recognized them as the pictures I’d seen on his dining room table. The last thing he pulled from his pocket was a folded-up piece of paper that he straightened and placed on the floor above the photographs. I knelt to see better and realized that it was a handwritten version of the verse on my grandmother’s tombstone, and that each line had been numbered, and each letter had been numbered from left to right starting at the number one at the beginning of each line. Someone had highlighted what seemed like random letters with a yellow highlighter.

When bricks crumble, the fireplace falls;
When children cry, the mothers call.
When lies are told, the sins are built,
Within the waves, hide all our guilt.

“What is this?” I asked.

“I’m not sure. I think I’ve figured most of it out, but I need you to help me with the rest.”

I tried not to grin like an idiot and kept my gaze focused on the verse. “Show me how far you’ve gotten.”

He set up the photographs of the lasso-like outline that encircled the verse on the grave marker and the stained-glass window in the same order as they appeared with the top, two sides, and the bottom forming a circle. He pointed to a gap between the top of the left side and the upper line. “See how there’s a separation here? That makes me think that they’re in order from number one to number four, starting at the top and moving clockwise around the circle.” He slid the paper with the gravestone rhyme next to the photographs. “Notice how there are four lines on the marker. Since the border appears on both the marker and the window, I assumed it wasn’t a coincidence.”

“Since there’s no such thing as coincidence according to the Jack Trenholm school of thought.”

He didn’t smile, and I hoped it was because he was remembering when I’d last said that to him, when he was defending Rebecca as I confronted him with the evidence of her connection to the Crandall family.

“Exactly,” he said through narrowed lips.

“There’s something in the journal, too,” I said. “How the soldier—Wilhelm—would tap on the glass four times, always by the quadrant where the depiction of the angel’s head is.”

“You didn’t tell me that.”

“You’ve been avoiding me.”

Clearing his throat, he pointed to the photographs again. “Remember how I noticed that some of the weird marks in the border were larger and bolder than the rest? Like here.” He indicated the top border where the second and fifth black marks stood out from the others. “I played with it a bit until I figured out that they corresponded to a word in the rhyme. For instance, the second and fifth words in the first line are ‘bricks’ and ‘fireplace.’ ”

My eyes met his and I felt a surge of adrenaline. It had been this way between us before, when we’d worked together to solve an old cipher. “That’s really good,” I admitted.

“I know.”

Our eyes met again and I couldn’t help but roll my eyes to disguise my smile.

“Going around the border, these are the words that I picked out.”

He flipped the paper over and I read the words out loud. “Bricks, fireplace, the, sins, within, hide, our.”

He glanced up at me and I found myself staring at his lips and remembering our kiss. I looked back at the words, struggling to speak past the lump in my throat. “Obviously, they’re scrambled. Have you been able to make any sense out of them?”

“Not yet. That’s why I came here.You’re really good at creating order from chaos.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I’ll take that as a compliment.” Without waiting for him to respond, I stood and went to the kitchen to pull out two notepads and pencils. When I returned, I handed him one of each. “There’re only seven words. Create as many sentences as you can using those words—making sure nouns, verbs, pronouns, etcetera are all in the right place so that they’re forming coherent sentences.”

“You don’t need to tell me that, Mellie.”

I shrugged. “I’m sure I wouldn’t know that. You seem to have an appalling lack of judgment.”

He didn’t say anything as he sat down on the floor beside me. Then he leaned over and whispered, “Marc Longo.”

I pretended I hadn’t heard him as I began to write.

Our bricks hide within the fireplace sins.
Sins within our bricks hide the fireplace.
The fireplace sins hide within our bricks.

I glanced over at Jack, who’d made equally nonsensical sentences.With a sigh, I returned to my word bank and studied them again, the words seeming to twist and warp on the page, teasing me. I closed my eyes, seeing the words like metallic glints against my eyelids, on what seemed like a scrolling marquee. I focused on the words behind my lids, then popped my eyes open to stare at the paper again. I squinted, trying to get them to lie flat, focusing on the nouns and verbs in a final attempt to wrestle them into some kind of a coherent sentence. I blinked, then sat up, eyeing the words again and seeing how obvious they were, and wondering why they hadn’t been as obvious to me the first time I’d seen them.

With a firm grip on the pencil, I wrote,
Within the fireplace bricks our sins hide.
Putting the pencil down, I said, “I think I’ve got it.”

Jack stood and I handed him my notepad. He read the words out loud. “Within the fireplace bricks our sins hide.” His eyebrows knit together. “I think you’re right.” His gaze met mine. “But which fireplace?”

I thought for a moment. “All of the fireplaces in this house are brick, including the one in the kitchen. But we’ve already examined every inch of it. If there’s anything else hidden there, we would have found it by now.”

“And what sins can you hide?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. But since the words appear on a window my grandmother installed, as well as on her grave marker, I’d say it’s fairly safe to assume that the sins directly relate to her and her family.”

“The Prioleaus.”

“Or not. Meredith Prioleau was born Nora Crandall.”

Jack raised his eyebrow. “Something else you forgot to tell me.”

“Not exactly. You were—busy, if you recall. That’s why I went to your condo, to tell you what I’d learned.”

He didn’t say anything in his defense, so I continued. “My mother and I believe that the infant Nora Crandall wasn’t lost at sea, but was rescued by a member of the Prioleau family, perhaps by my great-great-grandfather, and raised here as a distant cousin to Rose. They changed her name to Meredith, and treated her as Rose’s sister.”

“Which would explain the change in the locket initial. And why Alice Crandall would have an identical locket.”

“And,” I continued, “Rose’s father had one made for Rose, which is how she ended up with hers. Apparently Rose felt quite a bit of jealousy for Meredith, always wanted what Meredith had.”

Jack was frowning at something I’d said.

“What is it?”

“Rose’s locket. We’ve found the other two, but where is the one with the
R
on it?”

“Hold that thought,” I said, and went back to the kitchen to retrieve the photograph my father had found of my great-grandparents on their honeymoon.

Jack flipped it over to read the names, then studied the sepia-toned faces. “I don’t get it. What does this have to do with Rose’s locket?”

“It says it’s Rose, but it’s not. The woman in the photograph is tall and slender. Look how tall she is in comparison with her husband and the horse behind them. And she doesn’t have a cane. The remains discovered in the sailboat were of a person who was no more than five feet two inches, and who would have walked with a limp.”

“So who do you think it is in the photograph?”

“Meredith. I’m sure of it.”

“But if Rose is the one on the sailboat, why was she wearing Meredith’s locket?”

Quietly, I said, “Within the waves, hide all our guilt.”

My legs were getting cramped as I knelt on the floor and I moved to stand. Jack extended a hand to me and I paused for a moment before taking it.

He didn’t let go of my hand right away, but stood close to me, a look of hard concentration on his face. “If you’re right, then somehow during the earthquake of 1886, Meredith and Rose swapped identities. But how? And why?”

I shook my head, gently untangling my hand from his. “I don’t want to speculate. I don’t want to think that my great-grandmother was a murderer.”

“A locket could be hidden within a fireplace brick.” Thoughtfully, he added, “Within the fireplace bricks our sins hide.”

We stared at each other as a strong gust of wind pushed at the house, making the front door shudder. The chandelier above our heads swayed, the mirrored glass tinkling gently like a muted conversation.

“A bad storm’s coming in this evening,” Jack said. “A nor’easter. It’s going to get pretty nasty on the coast.”

A breath of cold air descended on me and I shivered, but Jack didn’t seem to feel it.

He looked at me oddly. “You do realize that all this means that you and Rebecca are cousins.”

The thought had crossed my mind, but I’d avoided thinking about it, much as a person avoids muddy puddles on a city sidewalk. “I suppose you’re right. I guess that explains her ability to see things in dreams. But the rest of her,” I shook my head, “comes from a completely different gene pool.”