The Strangers On Montagu Street Part 28

I turned to see Rebecca in the doorway leading into the parlor, wearing a soft pink linen suit, her blond hair loose on her shoulders. Her pale eyes were wide. "I hope you don't mind, but I had another dream last night that I needed to tell you about in person, and I ran into Jack. We thought we'd wait until you got back."

She leaned forward as if to get a better look at me, and her eyes widened further. "Oh," she said, raising her hand to her mouth. I was about to ask her what she thought she was seeing when Jack appeared in the doorway behind her, his eyes dark and cool.

"Mellie," he said, his voice doing nothing to thaw the coolness of his eyes. "How nice to see you again."

My heart lurched in my chest as I recalled the last time I'd seen him: when he'd kissed me good-bye and his eyes held so many promises. The eyes I saw now seemed to belong to a different man.

"Welcome back, Jack." I wanted to add, I missed you, or, I'm finding it difficult to get through my days without you, but held back, and not just because of Rebecca's presence. The unspoken truth hovered close, negating anything else I could have said.

Rebecca looked between Jack and me before returning to scrutinize me again. "I guess what I wanted to tell you can wait-I see you two need to talk." She disappeared into the parlor and returned with her purse. "I already explained to Jack that you didn't know about Marc until the night of the party-that Marc deliberately kept you in the dark."

I had to hand it to Rebecca. Regardless of how she actually felt about me, I was still family, and she was trying to do her part to smooth things over. As if they could be. "I'll call you later." She gave me another odd glance before tapping her way across the foyer to the front door.

I faced Jack, blushing as images of our night together flashed through my head. "Can I get you something to drink?" This wasn't how I'd imagined his homecoming.

He didn't answer. Instead, he said, "Tell me that you haven't known about Marc for almost a week without telling me. At least tell me that you didn't know before we slept together. I've been waiting here for over an hour to hear it from your lips."

I took a deep breath, knowing I couldn't evade the truth any longer. "I did know. He told me right before I left the party. It was one of the reasons I came to see you that night."

He stared at me for a long time, as if trying to translate what I was saying into a language he could understand. "For a pity party? Is that why you came? To make me feel better?" He laughed bitterly. "I did say that to you once, though, didn't I? That going to bed with you would make me feel better. I never expected you to take me up on the offer."

I took a step toward him, then stopped. "No, Jack. That's not it at all. I wanted to tell you, but then things between us . . . progressed. And then you left, and I kept telling myself it could wait until you got back."

He shoved his hands in his pockets. "That's all I needed to hear," he said, and began walking toward the door.

I took a step toward him. "Please, Jack. Don't go. I know what I did was stupid-I've been beating myself up about it every day. I just . . . Please let me explain. I didn't want to hurt you."

He faced me, his eyes hard. "You've got a funny way of showing it. Knowing you, you were probably waiting for me to figure it all out by myself so you wouldn't have to be involved at all. Tell me I'm wrong."

I almost lied. But even I was beginning to understand how the truth served warm was a lot easier to digest than a lie served cold. "I'm sorry, Jack. Please believe how sorry I am. Just give me another chance. I know now how important the truth would have been, and I was going to tell you. . . ." Even I cringed at how cliched and pathetic my words were. I closed my mouth, certain that anything I said wouldn't bring him back. I had lost him the moment I'd entered his apartment that night with the secret I wasn't convinced I would share.

"I'm done with you, Mellie. With all the craziness you put me through. I thought the other night was the start of something new between us, but I guess I was wrong. There's a level of trust that's not there, and I just can't get past it. Life is way too short." He opened the door, then paused, looking back.

"You said telling me about Marc was one of the reasons you came over that night. What was the other?"

I bit my lower lip, tasting tears I wasn't aware I was shedding. I looked down at the floor in front of his feet. Very quietly, I said, "I wanted to tell you that I love you."

He didn't move for a long moment, and I closed my eyes, waiting for him to answer. Finally he said, "I'm sorry."

I didn't open my eyes again until I heard the door close behind him.

I stared at the two unnamed goldfish making their endless laps around their gla.s.s bowl. I hadn't found the energy to figure out what to do with them, or even to name them. I thought one looked a little thin, so I dropped an extra pinch of food into the top of the bowl, watching as the plumper one s.n.a.t.c.hed the first gulp before swimming away in victory. The smaller one sidled up to the last flake and was opening its little fish mouth before the bossy one swam by and s.n.a.t.c.hed it up, too. I couldn't even find the energy to scold it.

For three weeks I'd been walking through life as if in a coma. I couldn't sleep, couldn't eat, and couldn't focus on anything. For the first time in my career, my name slipped from the top seller's chart in Dave Henderson's office and I couldn't even care. My parents, Nola, and even General Lee handled me with care, not jostling me too much with questions or speculations or the need for walks. Nola even brought me doughnuts at all hours of the day, concerned that the same box had languished in the pantry for more than a week. I'd taken a bite for her benefit, then thrown the rest of it out after she left. It was odd to feel hungry but have no appet.i.te, something with which I'd had no previous experience.

The only bright spot was that Jack wasn't asking for Nola to move back with him. I a.s.sumed the reason was because the dollhouse was now parked in his spare bedroom. Regardless, I was glad. I'd miss her- even her wild music and eye rolling-when she was gone, and I didn't think I could take another loss so soon.

A knock sounded on the door and I leaned back in my chair. "I'm not here."

Sophie walked into my office and stopped when she saw me by the fishbowl. "You look awful."

"It's good to see you, too," I said, rolling my chair back to my desk, then laying my head on top.

"Really, Melanie, I've never seen you look this way. You're . . . puffy."

I turned my head away. "Maybe I've been crying."

"Yeah, well, I can see that. But it's more than your face. Check out your feet."

I'd figured the heat of summer coupled with my now advanced age had been making my shoes tighter. I lifted my head and looked down at my swollen feet, where my ankles were definitely approaching cankle territory.

"Who cares?" I said, my voice sounding almost as pathetic as I felt. "It's probably from all the salt tears I've been swallowing."

"I think you're probably dehydrated. Have you been drinking your water?"

I moaned in answer.

Sophie plopped herself down in one of the chairs on the other side of my desk and scooted it over so I had a better view of her and her hair, which was beribboned in about fifty or so plastic bow-shaped barrettes. I realized how bad I was feeling when I caught myself thinking that her hair looked cute. "You haven't returned any of my phone calls, and Charlene swears she's been giving you my messages."

I sat back in my chair and yawned. All I wanted to do was sleep and cry, and sometimes I even managed to do both simultaneously. "Sorry. But I've already told you everything, and there just isn't anything else to talk about."

"Actually, there is. But first, I'm going to kidnap you and do something fun."

I closed my eyes. "Does it involve sleeping?"

"Not necessarily, but it does involve things that as my maid of honor you're supposed to be taking care of."

One eye popped open. "Like what?"

"We're going to Charleston Place and having a spa day."

I sat up, trying to picture Sophie in a white robe and spa slippers. "Really?"

"Really. And trust me-after seeing you, I realize a spa day will be as much for you as it is for me."

I looked at my desktop computer and BlackBerry-neither of which I'd turned on yet, even though I'd been in the office for nearly two hours-and weighed the misery of staying at the office and ignoring calls against lying in a dimly lit room with soft music while somebody slathered my face with cream. With a heavy sigh, I said, "Whatever."

"I appreciate your enthusiasm." She stood and grasped my arms to help pull me up. "I've invited Nola, and she's waiting outside in my car. I invited your mom, too, but they called her this morning to fill in as docent at the Nathaniel Russell House."

I blinked at her. "My mother's a docent?"

"Since last month. I told her she'd be a shoo-in, and tourists love her. I'm sure she's mentioned it to you."

I searched my fuzzy memory of the last month in vain as I followed Sophie out of the office like a lemming, too tired to tell her I'd figured out that she'd decided I was going even before she'd asked.

I loved Charleston Place, the venerable stately hotel and upscale retail mecca on the corner of Meeting and Market streets. In my life before Jack, I'd loved to come shop at the Anne Fontaine store and the other beautiful boutiques that lined the marbled halls, and I frequently brought clients for breakfast or lunch at the elegant Palmetto Cafe. I'd even shared a few celebratory dinners at the four-diamond Charleston Grill, with its amazing dessert menu.

Today the aromas of the restaurants made me wrinkle my nose, despite the persistent hunger pangs, and I barely paused before the gla.s.s windows of my favorite shops. I even took off my shoes before we reached the elevators to take us up to the spa. It was either that or force Sophie and Nola to carry me. I thought halfheartedly about heading down to Bob Ellis afterward and demanding they fix the shoes that seemed to be shrinking daily.

I allowed Sophie to arrange my treatments-including a heavenly Ultimate Bliss, where two therapists worked their magic on a simultaneous facial and foot reflexology-and a manicure-pedicure. My spa aesthetician, Leah, was young, trim, and perky, and tried to be diplomatic about the deplorable condition of my skin and feet. I hadn't so much as touched a bottle of lotion or pumice stone since my birthday party. But despite her gentle manner and a.s.surance that forty was the new thirty, I burst into tears as I tried to explain that I'd always taken care of myself and had prided myself on my good skin until just recently, when I'd found my heart shattered with n.o.body to blame but myself.

Leah was very comforting and rea.s.suring-making me think that aestheticians probably had to take psychology cla.s.ses, too-and told me she'd have a bag of free samples waiting for me when I left, to make me feel a little better. She handed me a tissue as I thanked her, then escorted me to what I referred to as the decompression room, where robe-clad ladies waited between treatments.

Sophie and Nola were already there, their toenails and fingernails painted in matching neon purple. I sat down in a wicker chair across from them, my skin and feet feeling great, but my heart still bruised and shrunken. I blinked twice at Sophie's feet. She wore the brown rubber spa flip-flops, giving me the first non-Birkenstock view of her feet since I'd met her. Her feet were small and slender, with straight, even toes. She could have been a foot model. I had known her for so long, yet had never realized how pretty her feet were. For some reason, the thought brought a fresh wave of new tears, and I had to press the tissue to my eyes.

The two of them whispered to each other for a moment before Nola spoke. "I haven't had any more music lessons. Miss Julia's in the hospital."

"Oh, no," I said, as fresh tears threatened to spill. "That's terrible. What's wrong?"

Sophie answered. "She's having trouble breathing on her own. I guess mostly because she's old. Dee said that the doctors can't believe Julia's still hanging on. It's like there's something holding her here."

They both looked at me as if I held all the answers. I quickly shook my head. Ever since Jack walked out of my life, I hadn't even been able to see spirits, like dead people were shunning me, too, for being so stupid. "I can't. I can't see them anymore."

Nola spoke up. "Maybe you're not trying hard enough."

I glared at her, and she jutted out her chin as if I were the one in the wrong. She continued. "Remember that newspaper article that mentioned how the Manigaults' plantation house had been hit by lightning and that's why it burned? Well, Sophie took me to see Miss Yvonne at the Historical Society to see if we could find weather records or news reports from that same geographical area and time. We found a little article about a church supper that evening in the neighboring town where the sky was clear and everybody was counting stars."

"It was apparently in the middle of a drought," Sophie added. "It hadn't rained for five straight weeks."

I felt a small stirring of interest. "So if there was a fire, it probably wasn't lightning."

Sophie shook her head. "Nope. But it would certainly be a great cover-up. If you destroy the reason anybody would be visiting the plantation-namely the house-you get rid of the chance of anybody discovering two new graves."

"I'm guessing Harold Manigault paid somebody to print such a blatant lie about the lightning. Looks like everything is pointing to intentional deaths. Has there been any identification yet on either body?"

Nola nodded. "That's why Miss Julia had to be taken to the hospital. When they called to tell her about the DNA results, she stopped breathing and had to be resuscitated. She's been in the hospital ever since."

"It was William, wasn't it?"

"Yes," Sophie said. "But they have no idea who the other male is."

"And you think that's why Julia's hanging on, to find out?"

"Well, partly," Sophie said. "She's still looking for William's forgiveness for something. But maybe that can't be given until we know the whole story."

For the first time in three weeks, I felt a glimmer of the old me. Turning to Nola, I asked, "Since we moved the dollhouse, have you had any more dreams?"

She shook her head. "No, but we still can't find the dog figure, and General Lee keeps acting like he's playing with another dog."

I raised my eyebrows. "I'm not going to even try to pretend I understand what that's about."

"But someone keeps messing with my music and my mom's guitar."

I looked at her gently, but didn't say anything.

"I'm guessing Mom's still here, too."

"Yeah. I think you're right," I said.

She looked at me, her eyes pleading. "Can you help them, Mellie? Not just Miss Julia, but my mom, too? Your mom said she'd help, but she can't do it without you."

I looked at Sophie and frowned. "Is this what today's spa trip was all about? An intervention?"

They both shrugged. "Does it matter?" Sophie said. "We miss you, and there are spirits who need you. Maybe if you turned your focus outward, you might heal a lot quicker."

I was angry that I'd been so manipulated, that somebody else was telling me how to run my life when I'd done such a good job of it. Until recently, anyway. I knew, in the shriveled place that used to be my heart, that they were right, and that I didn't want to live my life feeling the way I'd been feeling for the past three weeks. Mostly I was angry that I'd let somebody else figure it out for me.

I stood, trying to muster as much dignity as a person could while wearing a robe and flip-flops. "I'll think about it. But I don't think I can help. They don't want to talk to me, and to be honest, I'm tired of trying." I swept past them. "I'm going to go get changed."

I felt them watching me as I left, the all too familiar sting threatening to explode yet again into another torrent of tears and self-pity.

CHAPTER 27.

I reached into the doughnut box, my fingers. .h.i.tting only cardboard. I tilted the box toward me, surprised to see it empty. There'd been half a dozen doughnuts when I'd sat down only an hour before. I still had no appet.i.te, and I hadn't tasted anything for weeks, but a persistent and gnawing hunger never seemed to abate, regardless of what I put in my mouth.

The wall-mounted TV flickered images of Mrs. Houlihan's favorite soap opera, whose storyline was about a woman with amnesia who had accidentally married two men and didn't know who the father of her baby was. I was vaguely aware of my mother sitting across the kitchen table with her arms crossed over her chest, regarding me with a frown.

"When was the last time you combed your hair?"

I reached up to pat my hair, realizing too late that I'd probably just dusted my head with powdered sugar. I caught sight of the sleeve of my nightgown, stained with spilled coffee and something that looked a lot like toothpaste. At least that meant I'd brushed my teeth at some point. "I don't remember," I said, slumping further in my chair and wondering if it would be impolite to get up and see what else might be in the pantry.

"Do you think you might get dressed anytime soon?" she asked.

I thought for a moment. "Probably not. I'm on vacation." When I'd asked Dave Henderson for a couple of weeks of vacation, he'd nearly fallen out of his chair. In all the years I'd worked for him, I'd yet to take a real vacation, much less two weeks' worth.

"Jack called."

I sat up in my chair. "When?"

"Yesterday. On my cell. He only wanted to speak with me."

"Oh." I slumped back down.

"He said the activity in the dollhouse has increased. Every night things get rearranged or thrown out. But there's one new thing that he wanted to ask me about."

I feigned noninterest by shrugging.

"The mother figure, Anne, keeps ending up in the same spot outside the house. Right next to the place we kept finding William. Do you think she's trying to tell us something?"

I thought about my promise to both Julia and Nola to try to find out what had happened to William and why he'd ended up in an unmarked grave. It stirred my conscience just a little bit. I nodded. "She's always been silent, bullied by her husband or son to remain quiet. Why would she be taking a stand now?"

"I've been wondering the same thing. Maybe the discovery of William's body has given her a certain kind of leverage or freed her somehow. Maybe an emerging truth is giving her strength." She paused. "I mentioned that I could go over there and hold the doll figures again and see what I can find out."