“I got your voice mail, by the way,” she said. “I’ve got to take a group of my students to Pompian Hill Chapel of Ease tomorrow to do some grave cleaning and to repair a box tomb, but I can meet you at the Pinckney house on Thursday morning. Does eight o’clock work?”
“It does for me. I’ll check with my client and get back with you. She doesn’t want to go inside, but I think she should. She doesn’t like old houses.”
Both Sophie and Meghan looked at me as if I’d said something blasphemous. “It happens,” I said.
We said good-bye, and then Sophie left with Meghan and Skye. Rich stayed where he was, his hands on his hips, looking down into the pit, the bottom now blackened as the slanting sun scooped out the light. I was wary of what he was about to say. I’d learned in the years we’d been working together that he not only had a second sight but wasn’t fully aware of it.
“I don’t want to scare you, Miz Trenholm. But there’s something not right about this. Something not right at all.”
Ignoring his implication, I said, “I don’t like a hole in my garden, either, but we’ll have to live with it for a little while. Hopefully it won’t take too long.”
I said good-bye, then walked toward the kitchen door, sensing a set of footsteps following me, and knowing they weren’t his.
After feeding the twins and tucking them into their cribs for the night, I sat in the downstairs parlor flipping through the new MLS listings on my laptop and making spreadsheets for my new clients. Nola sat doing homework at the mahogany partner’s desk that Jack’s mother, Amelia, had found for her through her antiques business, Trenholm Antiques on King, while Jack finally took a shower. He’d claimed he hadn’t had time for grooming—or writing—while taking care of the babies. He’d looked so traumatized that I didn’t point out that if he’d followed my schedule that I’d helpfully written down for him, and tried to be more organized, he wouldn’t look as if he’d been wandering the wilderness for weeks.
A fire crackled in the fireplace beneath the Adams mantel—Sophie’s pride and joy. It was a thing of beauty, but it still made my fingers hurt when I looked at it, as if they recalled all the hand-scraping with tiny pieces of sandpaper Sophie had given me to remove about eighty layers of old paint from the intricate scrolls and loops. My manicurist had almost quit during that period, and if I hadn’t given her a generous gift certificate to my favorite boutique, the Finicky Filly, I would still be walking around with bloody stubs for fingers.
I found myself sinking back into what felt alarmingly like domestic tranquility. But there was an uneasiness in the air, an energy that crept out of the walls like morning mist. The sense of unseen eyes watching me. I knew, without a doubt, that the lingering dead had managed to find me again, and that my newfound peace was about to end.
The grandfather clock, where Confederate diamonds had once been hidden, chimed eight times, the sound deep and booming in the quiet house, almost obliterating the sound of what I imagined to be the house inhaling, as if in anticipation of something only it could see. General Lee and the puppies, curled into a furry ball at Nola’s feet, looked up at me right before a knock sounded on the front door.
The frenzied movement of three dogs rushing toward the door and barking loudly accompanied me to the alcove, where a replacement chandelier—which had cost me three months of commissions—now hung in the same spot the previous one had been in before it mysteriously fell and smashed onto the marble floor, narrowly missing me. One of the tiles had been cracked, but I had strategically hidden it under a rug so Sophie wouldn’t notice and then demand that I have marble craftsmen from Italy come to replace the entire floor and I’d be forced to sell one of the children to pay for it. Because that’s the sort of thing that happens when one’s best friend is a bona fide house hugger.
My mother, Ginette Prioleau Middleton, stood on the piazza wrapped in a black cashmere cape, looking as beautiful now in her mid-sixties as she probably had been during her brief yet stellar career as an opera diva. Her dark hair gleamed in the porch light, her green eyes bright with barely any lines to betray her age. She was tiny but somehow never appeared small—something I’d discovered since our recent reconciliation and our even more recent battles with spirits reluctant to head toward the light. A shiver that had nothing to do with the cold tiptoed its way down my spine. My mother never came by unannounced. Unless there was a reason.
“Mother,” I said, stepping back to allow her inside.
She kissed my cheek, then handed me her cape, keeping her gloves on. She always wore gloves, even in the summer. Her gift—her word, not mine—was the ability to see things by touching objects, sometimes inadvertently. Gloves protected her from being overwhelmed by images and voices bombarding her from as casual a contact as a stair railing or doorknob.
“I’m sorry to come so late. But I was returning from a Library Society meeting and was passing your house, and knew that it couldn’t wait until morning.”