The Sound of Glass Read online

  New American Library Titles by Karen White

  The Color of Light

  Learning to Breathe

  Pieces of the Heart

  The Memory of Water

  The Lost Hours

  On Folly Beach

  Falling Home

  The Beach Trees

  Sea Change

  After the Rain

  The Time Between

  A Long Time Gone

  The Tradd Street Series

  The House on Tradd Street

  The Girl on Legare Street

  The Strangers on Montagu Street

  Return to Tradd Street

  New American Library

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014

  USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China

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  A Penguin Random House Company

  First published by New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC

  Copyright © Harley House Books, LLC, 2015

  Readers Guide copyright © Penguin Random House, 2015

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

  White, Karen (Karen S.)

  The sound of glass / Karen White.

  pages cm.

  ISBN 978-0-698-16585-4

  1. Widows—Fiction. 2. Family secrets—Fiction. 3. Domestic fiction. I. Title.

  PS3623.H5776S68 2015

  813'.6—dc23 2015001181

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  contents

  Also by Karen White

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Epigraph

  prologue

  chapter 1

  chapter 2

  chapter 3

  chapter 4

  chapter 5

  chapter 6

  chapter 7

  chapter 8

  chapter 9

  chapter 10

  chapter 11

  chapter 12

  chapter 13

  chapter 14

  chapter 15

  chapter 16

  chapter 17

  chapter 18

  chapter 19

  chapter 20

  chapter 21

  chapter 22

  chapter 23

  chapter 24

  chapter 25

  chapter 26

  chapter 27

  chapter 28

  chapter 29

  chapter 30

  chapter 31

  chapter 32

  chapter 33

  chapter 34

  chapter 35

  Readers Guide

  For my parents

  acknowledgments

  Thank you to the lovely people of Beaufort, South Carolina, for your kindness and warm hospitality, especially the staff at the Rhett House Inn and native Beaufortonian Nancy Rhett. A huge thanks and hugs to friend and fellow author Dee Phelps for the private tours and insider information on your beautiful hometown. This book couldn’t have happened without you!

  A special thanks to airline pilot Steve Weber for all the technical information about planes, flight paths, and basically anything I needed to know, and to Tracy Ferro, MSN, RN, PCCN, for your incredible help regarding all things health related in this story.

  Thank you to Meghan White and Alicia Kelly, my “research buddies,” who accompanied me on my trips to Beaufort and waited patiently as I asked endless questions of tour guides and read every inscription on every gravestone.

  Last but not least, thanks to BFFs and authors Susan Crandall and Wendy Wax, whose insights help shape and perfect each book I write. Thanks for being there since the beginning and through the ups and downs of this crazy writing thing we do.

  One need not be a chamber to be haunted,

  One need not be a house;

  The brain has corridors surpassing

  Material place.

  —EMILY DICKINSON

  prologue

  BEAUFORT, SOUTH CAROLINA

  JULY 1955

  An unholy tremor rippling through the sticky night air alerted Edith Heyward that something wasn’t right. Like a shadow creeping past a doorway in an empty house, or the turn of the latch on a locked door, the movement outside Edith’s opened attic window raised the gooseflesh along her spine. Her breath sat in her mouth, suspended with anticipation as icy pinpricks marched down her limbs.

  Her gaze moved from her paintbrush and the tiny drop of red paint she’d drizzled onto the chest of the doll’s starched white cotton nightgown, to the sea-glass wind chime she’d made and hung just outside the window. The stagnant air of a South Carolina summer had stifled any movement for months, yet now the chimes seemed to shiver on an invisible breeze, the frosty blue and green glass twitching like a hanged man from a noose.

  She jerked her gaze to the locked door, wondering whether her husband had returned. He didn’t like locked doors. The bruises on her arms, carefully placed and easily hidden under long sleeves, seemed to press against her skin in memory. Edith dropped her paintbrush, barely aware of the splatter of red paint on the dollhouse-size room she’d been re-creating, eager to unlatch the door and make it down to the kitchen and her mending basket before Calhoun had cause to wonder where she was.

  She’d barely slid from her stool when the sky exploded with fire, illuminating the river and the marshes beneath it, obliterating the stars, and shooting blurry light through the milky glass of the wind chime. The stones swayed with the shocked air, singing sweetly despite the destruction in the sky behind them. Then a rain of fire descended like fireworks, myriad balls of light extinguished into hiccups of steam as soon as they collided with water.

  Smaller explosions reverberated across the river, where the migrant workers’ cottages clustered near the shore like birds, their roofs and dry postage-stamp lawns easy fodder for the hungry flames that fell from the heavens. A fire siren whirred as Edith leaned out the window as far as she could, listening to people shouting and screaming, and smelling something indiscernible. Something that smelled like the tang of wood smoke mixed with the acrid odor of burning fuel. She recalled the hum of an airplane from when she’d been working on the doll, right before she’d thought the earth had shifted, and imagined she knew what was now falling from the sky.

  A thud came from above her head, followed swiftly by the sound of something heavy sliding down the roof before hitting the gutter. Then the sound stopped and she pictured whatever it was falling into the back garden.

  Edith ran from the room, ignoring the shoe-size bruises on her hips that made it hard to walk, sliding down half the flight of stairs to the second story, where her three-year-old son, C.J., lay in his bed, blissfully unaware of the sky falling down around them. She scooped him into her arms, along with the baby blanket he’d worn thin but wouldn’t give up, feeling his warm, sweaty skin against her own. Ignorin
g his whimpers, she moved as quickly as she could with the boy in her arms down to the foyer.

  Edith threw open the front door to stand on her wide columned porch and stared past her garden and across the street to where the river seemed to bleed in reverse with rising steam. Her neighbors streamed toward the water, as if all the trauma were occurring somewhere else and not in their own backyards. She made her way to the street, but instead of following her neighbors she turned around to inspect her roof, expecting to see it lit with flames.

  Instead she was met with the same sight she’d been seeing since she’d moved into her husband’s home on the Bluff nearly eight years before, the dark roof outlined neatly against a sky that seemed dwarfed in comparison.

  With her little boy tucked against her shoulder, Edith stepped gingerly through the garden gate at the side of the house by the driveway, looking for anything that might have fallen from the sky, wondering what she’d do if she found something on fire. Wondering whether she’d try to put it out with her son’s blanket. Or throw it into the house and watch it burn.

  She studied her flower garden, her only hobby that Calhoun approved of, smelling the tea olives and lemon trees that almost eradicated the odd smell of fumes that wafted toward her in waves. The full moon guided her along the white-stoned path, past her roses and butterfly bushes that nestled closer to the house and where she imagined whatever had fallen from the roof had landed.

  Her foot kicked something hard and solid, reminding her that she was wearing only her house slippers. She started at the sight of a disembodied hand, its fist enclosing a rose. She pressed her hand against her chest to slow the heavy thud of her heart as she realized it was the arm from the marble statue of Saint Michael. He’d watched over her since she’d placed him there when she first realized she needed protection.

  She spotted the rest of the statue lying faceup on the path among broken branches from the oak tree, his sightless eyes hollow in the moonlight. When she stepped forward to assess the damage, her foot collided with something hard and unyielding, hidden in the shadows beneath the fragrant boxwoods.

  More sirens joined in the cacophony of sound that had invaded her quiet town, but as Edith knelt on the rocky path, she hardly seemed to notice, her attention completely focused on the brown leather suitcase that sat upright in her garden as if an uninvited visitor had suddenly come to call.

  C.J. began to stir as Edith deliberated what she should do. Unwilling to separate herself from either her son or the suitcase, she pressed C.J. against her body with her left arm, ignoring the throbbing from the bruises that ran along her rib cage, then grabbed the handle of the suitcase. Gingerly she lifted it to test the weight, finding it lighter than it appeared. Walking slowly, she carried the suitcase up the back steps and into the empty kitchen.

  After placing C.J. in the playpen, Edith returned to the brown suitcase, noticing for the first time the large dent in the bottom corner, the hinge badly damaged but not broken. Judging from the relatively good condition of the suitcase, she realized the canopy of oak limbs had broken its fall before it landed on the roof. A name tag dangled from the handle, practically begging her to touch it.

  She should call the police. Let them know that she had a piece of whatever disaster had happened in the sky that night. Perhaps some survivor would be looking for this exact suitcase that now rested on her kitchen floor. Still, she hesitated. She wasn’t sure why she felt the need for secrecy, but the thrill of the forbidden teased her senses, brought forth her rebellious spirit, which she’d learned years before was best left hidden.

  She pressed her lips together with determination. She’d push the button on the latch to see whether it opened. It was probably locked anyway. Or the lock could be too damaged from the fall to open. Then she’d call the police.

  She heard a sound from the playpen and saw C.J. watching her with his wide blue eyes. “Mama?”

  She smiled. “It’s all right, sweetheart. You go on back to sleep, all right?”

  “Suitcase,” he said around the ever-present thumb Calhoun had been demanding she make him stop sucking.

  “Yes, darling. Now go on back to sleep.”

  He remained standing, watching her intently. She knew his rebellious streak came from her and she was reluctant to stifle it. “You can watch for a little bit if you’d like. I’ll be right back.”

  Edith kissed his damp forehead as she walked out of the kitchen and to the front door, which she carefully opened to peer out. She was more afraid of her husband’s return than of the band of angry people she imagined marching toward her door to find the errant suitcase. The smells and sounds were stronger now, the sky glowing orange across the river over the fields of okra and watermelon as sirens screamed into the night.

  Edith retreated into her house and closed the door, turning the key in the lock, then returned to the kitchen and the suitcase. After a quick glance at C.J., who remained sucking his thumb and watching everything with his father’s eyes, she reached for the luggage tag and tried to read the name and address. Moisture must have seeped beneath the plastic cover and the cardboard name tag, making the ink run like tears. The address was nearly illegible, but she could read the name clearly: Henry P. Holden. When she flipped up the handle, she saw that a monogram had been boldly stamped in gold: HPH. She imagined a middle-aged man in a dark suit and hat, with a wife and kids at home, traveling on business. She thought of where they were now, and how they might be notified of the accident. Wondered whether it was possible to survive such a thing as falling from the sky.

  She pushed the button and the latch popped open. It was a sign, Edith thought as her hands moved to the two latches on the sides of the suitcase. One opened easily, but the one on the side with the dent took a few twists and tugs.

  Without pausing, she opened the suitcase wide on her kitchen table. She unlatched the separators on each side and folded them up, revealing neat stacks of starched and pressed dress shirts and suit pants, bleached white undershirts, boxers, and linen handkerchiefs. Everything had been packed so tightly that there’d been little room for movement as the suitcase had tumbled to earth.

  Edith recognized the scent of the detergent that wafted up to her as the same one she used, as if the clothes had come from her own washing machine. It had so obviously been packed by a woman that Edith almost laughed at the predictability of it, then sobered quickly as she pictured the faceless woman walking down a dark hallway to answer the ringing telephone.

  She stared down again at the clothing, taking note of the quality of the thread count in the shirts, the soft linen handkerchiefs, the fine gabardine of Henry Holden’s trousers, the thickness and brightness of the undershirts. Each handkerchief had a perfectly stitched monogram on the corner in bright, bold red: HPH. It all made sense for a man traveling on business. But as she stared at the suitcase’s contents, something bothered her, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

  Calhoun had once told her it was her analytical mind that had first attracted him to her. As the only child of a widower police detective, she’d never known any other way to be. So when the handsome lawyer Calhoun Heyward had come to her small town of Walterboro to try a case, she hadn’t known that she would have been better off pretending to be a simpering female without opinions. Because, in the end, that was what he’d really wanted.

  C.J. was sleeping standing up, his head cradled on the top rail of the playpen, his thumb in his mouth. Edith glanced nervously at the round metal clock over the sink. Calhoun could be home at any minute to find a locked front door and a man’s suitcase on the kitchen table. She didn’t stop to think where he’d been or with whom, or if he’d seen the airplane explode and had thought to worry about her and their son.

  She quickly refastened the separators, the fasteners slipping through her fingers because she was going too fast and her hands shook. It was then that she realized what had been bothering her. The dopp kit. The ubiquitous men’s toiletry kit was missing. No man tra
veled without one. She pulled the cloth separators back again, looking at the neatly packed clothes, studying the side where the clothes had shifted slightly more than on the other. She reached in to shove a stack back to the side, revealing a small pocket where a dopp kit would have fit during the packing. She pursed her lips, thinking. Could Mr. Holden have removed it before boarding his plane, believing he might have need of something inside it during the flight?

  Edith smiled to herself. These were the questions her father had taught her to ask until her inquisitiveness had become a part of her. During the years of her miscarriages and Calhoun’s growing disappointment in her, it had become her saving grace. It had been what had made her ignore the censure of her friends and husband and reach out to the local police department and offer her services as an artist with an unusual talent. It had kept her whole.

  Forgetting the time and the sound of an approaching siren, she reached into the suitcase and carefully began to shift the clothing, searching for the missing dopp kit. She searched the top half of the case first, and then the bottom, almost giving up before her fingers brushed against something that didn’t feel like cloth. Careful not to disturb anything further, she gently pushed away three pairs of neatly rolled-up dark socks to find a crisply folded letter.

  She hesitated for only a moment before taking it out. It was expensive stationery, thick, heavy linen, the Crane watermark visible when Edith held it to the light. It wasn’t sealed but had been tightly folded, as if the writer had pressed his or her fingers along the creases many times. When she flipped it over, a single word was written in thin black ink with elegant penmanship.

  Beloved.

  She paused, wondering how many boundaries she could cross, quickly deciding that she had already crossed too many to worry about one more. With steady hands she unfolded the letter and began to read the short lines written in the same elegant script as the word on the back.