Around nine, I took a couple of pills for my headache and stretched out on the chaise, not yet ready for bed. I still had hopes that Devlin would call and kept the phone handy just in case.
I only meant to doze for a few minutes, but when I roused sometime later, the garden breeze had died away to an unnatural stillness. I tried to concentrate on the hum of the ceiling fan in my office and the pop of settling floorboards overhead as Macon moved about his apartment. The normal household sounds were reassuring and made me feel less alone. Pulling a soft throw over my legs, I closed my eyes and sank more deeply into slumber.
When the dreams came, they transported me back to a time in my childhood when I had not yet been aware of the ghosts. I was in Rosehill Cemetery with Papa. It was just getting on dusk and moths flitted through the air like dark-winged fairies. I sat in the grass and watched Mama’s yellow tabby pounce once, twice and then disappear into the shelter of a rose thicket with something dangling from his sharp teeth.
The approach of twilight had always spooked me. Even with Papa nearby I felt the stir of an unknown fear. The day had been clear and warm, but now a chilly breeze swept through my hair, lifting the blond strands as though invisible hands were at play there. Papa didn’t seem to notice the sudden nip. His head was bowed to his work and he didn’t glance up even when the leaves overhead began to whisper.
Trying to ignore the tingles across my scalp, I removed a ribbon from around my neck so that I could admire the old key I’d found earlier on a headstone in the deepest recesses of Rosehill Cemetery. Shrouded in ivy and Spanish moss, that forgotten corner had become my hideaway. No visitors ever came along that way and even Papa rarely went back there. But I’d spent many an hour in the company of the forsaken, reading aloud from my Gothic romances and weaving daisy chains to adorn the crumbling headstones.
I was never to take anything from the graves. Papa had instilled that rule in me long ago, but I felt certain that key had been placed on the headstone for me to find. My aunt Lynrose was visiting from Charleston and she always brought little gifts—a book, a charm, a shiny silver dollar—which she slipped beneath my pillow or hid away in my favorite climbing tree.
Suspended from a pink satin ribbon, the key was ornate and beautiful, the kind that might open an ancient treasure box stuffed with toys and trinkets and deep, dark secrets. Draping a clover necklace over the headstone, I slipped the ribbon around my neck as a frisson of excitement coursed through me.
The key felt heavy and warm to the touch. Tucking it inside my sweater, I skipped off to find Papa.
Now as I waited for him to finish his work, I grew more and more fascinated as I spun the ribbon around one finger, watching the brass catch the fading light. Faster and faster I twirled the ribbon until the knot worked loose and the key went flying.
“Oh!” I fell to my knees to search through the thick grass.
“What’s wrong?” Papa called out to me.
“I lost my necklace. The one Aunt Lynrose left for me. I’ve looked and looked, but I can’t find it anywhere.”
Papa abandoned his work and came over to kneel beside me on the ground. “Whereabouts did you drop it?”
I showed him the spot and he began to methodically comb through the grass with his gnarled fingers. We kept at it for a long time until I finally grew weary of the search.
“I’m tired, Papa. Can we come back tomorrow and look for it?”
“No!”
His sharp tone startled me. I glanced up at him in confusion. “Why not?”
His tired gaze met mine in the falling twilight. “You mustn’t leave here until you find what you lost.”
“But why, Papa?”
“Remember what I told you, child. Take nothing, leave nothing behind.”
“I know, but—”
“Keep looking, Amelia. Hurry. We’re losing the light.”
There was something strange in his voice and demeanor. Something almost frenzied about the way he applied himself to the search. In that moment, he didn’t seem at all like my papa but a driven, secretive stranger.
Finally, he straightened and held out his hand so that I could see the key in his palm. “Is this yours?”
“Yes! Oh, thank you, Papa!”
“It looks very old, child. Are you sure your aunt gave this to you?”
As he studied my face, a guilty conscience niggled. I’d been certain earlier that Aunt Lynrose had left the key on the headstone, but Papa’s strange behavior filled me with doubt. What if I’d taken something that didn’t belong to me, something sacred from a grave? Papa would be very unhappy with me and I couldn’t abide his disapproval. He and Mama meant everything to me. What if they decided to send me away? Ever since I’d learned of my adoption, I’d nursed a secret worry that I might someday be returned to the family that didn’t want me. What if that someday was now?