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  She let out an exaggerated sigh. “I know. It’s just that I’ll never get this song finished for Jimmy Gordon at this rate. My agent—and I still can’t believe I have an agent, but Dad said I needed one—gave me a deadline, which I’m not sure I like, but I guess I’ll have to deal with it. It’s just really hard to get anything done with distractions like dueling ghosts.”

  “Welcome to my world,” I muttered as I entered the room. “I’m glad they don’t frighten you.”

  Nola shrugged, her fingers tapping lightly on the keyboard. “It’s kind of hard to frighten me. I mean, my mom came back, and she didn’t scare me. It’s like if you’re a nice person when you’re alive, chances are you’ll still be nice when you’re dead.”

  “I think you’re right, mostly. At least, that’s been my experience.” I thought for a moment. Lowering my voice, I said, “Except for the ghost who seems to be connected to the baby’s remains. My mother seems to think that she’s been wronged in some way and that’s why she’s angry—not that she’s a mean person.”

  She nodded, then stopped, tilting her head to the side. “Do you smell the roses now? It’s even stronger. It’s like I’ve been tossed face-first into a rosebush.”

  “Ouch,” I said, trying to lighten the oppressive atmosphere that had started to gather in the small room like dark clouds on the horizon. I sniffed deeply. “Still no roses.”

  Nola narrowed her eyes. “Do you miss it? Seeing dead people and stuff?”

  I remembered asking my mother the same question, and how easily I’d dismissed her response. “I’m not sure. Maybe if I’d never had the ability, I wouldn’t know to miss it. And now sometimes I think how nice it is that I can’t see things at all anymore—not even hazy images that I did in the first part of my pregnancy. I can actually look in a mirror and not be prepared to see somebody standing behind me. But a part of me . . .” I shrugged, unsure of what I’d wanted to say.

  “Yeah. I get it. Like living with my dad. It’s like I miss him when we’re not together, but when we are together he drives me nuts.”

  “Your dad has that effect on a lot of people.”

  She gave me a heart-stopping dimpled grin, and then we both sighed, making us laugh. She dropped her gaze back to the keyboard, her expression becoming serious. Gently stroking one of the white keys, she said, “I’m playing Mary in the school Christmas play, so I was thinking that maybe you’d like to come. Like, if you weren’t already doing anything that night with that detective guy who’s always around. It’s December sixth.”

  “Congratulations! That’s pretty amazing, considering you’re only a freshman.” I held up my phone and began typing into the calendar. “There. Done. And even if I did have plans, you come first.”

  “Just don’t bring the detective guy, okay?”

  “I thought you liked Thomas.”

  Which, I considered, was my problem. I liked Thomas. A lot. We had shared meals, events, movies, picnics, boating expeditions, and even a niece’s first communion. Yet I still only liked him. He hadn’t tried to kiss me yet, either because of my growing girth or because he suspected that every time I looked at him, I wanted to see Jack.

  “He’s nice and all; it’s just . . .”

  “It’s just what?”

  “Well, all of my friends have a mom and dad, and they’ll all be at the play. I was just thinking that since you’re the closest thing I have to a mom, you and Dad can sort of be like my mom and dad for the night.”

  Jell-O seemed to have replaced my heart, but if I’d learned anything from dealing with teenagers, it was that I had to remain neutral despite my initial urge to throw my arms around her and squeeze as tightly as I could.

  “I’d be honored to, Nola. You’re the closest thing I have to a daughter, so it looks like a win-win.”

  Her cheeks lifted in a smile as her fingers began a delicate descent on the keyboard, the sound stopping as she hit certain notes. “Look, she’s doing it now.”

  I stepped closer, peering inside the piano, the sudden chilliness in the air stinging my cheeks. “Play them again.”

  She began playing each note slowly, starting in the lowest register of the keyboard and working her way up to the higher notes. I watched as the strings vibrated on most of the keys, but when particular ones were pressed, it appeared as if an invisible finger were pressing on the string.

  “I thought you said it was only three keys,” I said.

  “It is. A, C, and E. But it’s in every register—not just in the middle of the piano. She’s definitely trying to tell us something.”

  “A-C-E?”

  “Or C-A-E or E-A-C or whatever combination. The letters only mean something if you know where you’re supposed to start.” She moved her lips into the shape of an O and blew out, her breath creating little clouds.

  I watched as they dissipated, the three letters A, C, and E somersaulting over one another in my brain. “Hang on a minute,” I said as I left the room with my cell phone and moved into the front parlor. I’d learned from experience that modern technology didn’t always work when other currents were flitting around the same space.

  I flicked to my contacts, then hit the call button for Yvonne Craig, thinking as it rang that I should probably add her number to my favorites for quick dialing. She picked up on the third ring.

  “Hello, Yvonne. This is Melanie Middleton. Can you talk?”

  “I’m taking a break and sitting outside watching the latest season of Downton Abbey on my iPad, but I’ll be happy to put Lord Grantham and his family on pause for you.”

  I smiled at the mental image of Yvonne with her iPad. “Thanks. I appreciate it. I left the folder you made for me with all of the photocopies in it at my office, but I had a quick question about the Vanderhorst family tree that I was hoping you could answer without too much trouble.”

  “Oh, that’s too easy. I just pulled all of the books out for Jack, and they’re still on the table upstairs.”

  “For Jack?”

  “Oh, dear. I don’t know if I was supposed to tell you that.”

  “Tell me what? That he’s helping me? He already said he’d help—I just assumed we’d be working together.”

  There was a long pause before she spoke again. “Yes, I know. It’s just . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s just that I think he was looking for an excuse to call you or to see you.”

  I stared at my phone, ready to argue that I saw Jack regularly, because I was helping him find a new house, but even that had become sporadic lately as the pool of homes that matched his specifications had dwindled.

  “Oh,” I said, feeling like a high school girl who’d just been told that the guy she had a crush on liked her, too. When we’d left our last visit with Yvonne, I thought he’d been joking about trying to find an excuse to see me. It made me feel awkward, and excited, and sad, too, stretching my emotions to their limit like a rubber band. I could only wait for it to snap back and hit me.

  “Well, do you remember what he was asking about?”

  “Certainly. When you were here, you remarked that John’s wife died the year after William was born and that John remarried soon afterward. I wanted to find out anything about those events that looking at a family tree just can’t tell me. Unfortunately I haven’t had the time, but it’s on my list. That’s why I pulled the books out again, hoping I might have time later this afternoon.”

  “Well, later on, if you have time, could you please take a peek at the family tree again? I’m looking for any name of any family member around the year 1860 that would have the letters E, A, and C in it. If that year doesn’t work, we’ll look at other generations, but since 1860 is the year the foundation was altered, I thought that would be a good place to start.”

  An exaggerated sigh came through the phone. “Really, Melanie. You’ll need to try harder to stump me. There are two names that popped into my head immediately—I most likely remember them because they’re the same names as my mother and mother-in-law. I’ll certainly double-check to confirm, but I believe the names you’re looking for are Camille and Charlotte.”

  “Camille and Charlotte,” I said slowly, as if tasting every letter. “Yes! Those work!” I shouted in my excitement, hoping I hadn’t deafened the poor woman. “Who were they?”

  Nola came into the room, her eyebrows raised in question. In response, I gave her a thumbs-up.

  “Camille was John’s first wife, and William’s mother. Charlotte was John’s second wife.”

  An electrical hum zipped through my phone, ending the call. I tried to turn it back on, but it was completely dead despite having had a nearly full battery charge when I’d started my phone call. I turned to Nola to ask her whether I could borrow her phone, but I stopped in midsentence when I saw her face.

  Her usually pale skin was now bleached of all color, her black hair sticking up in all directions as if she’d just pulled a thick woolly sweater over it, her eyes wide enough that I saw mostly white. And she was staring at something directly behind me.

  I turned around in time to see the front windows undulating as if they were still liquid, pulling in and bulging out, groaning and snapping like a ship in a storm. I heard the crack of one of the window mullions, watched it fall to the floor as if in slow motion. Before I even realized what I was doing, I dived for Nola, crashing us both to the floor just as both windows exploded, covering us and the room with a million shards of glass.

  CHAPTER 18

  I quietly closed Nola’s bedroom door, then stepped back into the hallway, my index finger over my lips as I passed Jack. He looked rumpled and tired, but much better-looking than he had a right to be after receiving panicked phone calls from both Nola and me right after the windows had decided to act like angry toddlers instead of inanimate objects. He’d been in the middle of a run and had just kept running until he’d reached us. Not that I would admit it, but it hadn’t even occurred to me to call anybody else.

  I walked down the hall toward my bedroom before speaking. “She’s asleep, although it’s hard to imagine how. I can’t believe we didn’t get anything more than a few scratches and bruises—and that was mostly from me tackling her. I almost wish I could say she was scared, but she was angry more than anything. You should have heard her screaming right after it happened—calling the ghost a coward for picking on a pregnant lady and a helpless little kid.”

  “A helpless little kid?” Jack asked.

  “Her words, not mine. But it seemed to work. Everything just sort of stopped.”

  He rubbed his hands over my arms. “Were you scared?”

  “Out of my mind. You know, I thought it would be easier not seeing them. It’s not.” The central heat flicked on, shooting a blast of warm air from a baseboard vent. “The scariest thing will be telling Sophie that her original windows are broken, and then her telling me how much it’s going to cost to replace them.”

  Our gazes moved to the pile of sheets, blankets, and a pillow on the floor outside my door. “You can sleep in the other guest room, Jack. Or the nursery. You don’t have to sleep on the floor.”

  “Boarding up windows is hard work—I think I could fall asleep anywhere.”

  “But you don’t have to. The floor in the nursery is carpeted, and there’s a twin bed with a really old mattress in the guest room. And don’t forget the sofa in the upstairs drawing room. I believe that’s an old favorite of yours.”

  “As tempting as those options are, I’d rather keep an eye on you. That’s why I’m here, remember?”

  I felt suddenly warm, and was suddenly glad that I had a protruding abdomen between us. “Thanks, Jack. I appreciate your coming and agreeing to stay for a bit. We both do.”

  “You know, you’re welcome to come stay with me, too. At least until we get those windows replaced.”

  “Absolutely not. Whoever it is can’t be allowed to think even for a minute that she’s won.”

  He tilted his head to the side and rubbed his jaw. “Oh, Mellie. You are one stubborn woman.”

  “Thank you,” I said, glad I sounded more indignant than insulted.

  He looked past my shoulder and into my room. “What’s that?”

  I tried to stop him, but he was already in my room before I could pull him back. With a heavy tread, I followed him to the easel I had set up, with my work-in-progress clipped on top.

  “It’s a spreadsheet,” I said, hoping he’d lose interest before he looked too closely.

  He didn’t. Leaning closer, he read the title, “‘Nine Months and Counting.’” His head bobbed up and down as he followed the two line graphs I’d hand-drawn over the computer printout of the babies’ month-to-month expected size and development.

  “What’s the graph all about?” he asked.

  I mumbled my answer.

  “I’m sorry; I couldn’t hear you.”

  I was sure he had, but I shouted it out anyway. “My weight. The green is what I should be and the red is where I am.”

  He had the decency to express neither horror nor disgust nor even surprise. “I see,” he said, his attention shifting to the calendar I’d tacked up next to the spreadsheet. He zeroed in on the square I’d highlighted in red, March 23. With a bold Sharpie pen, I’d written in large letters, GIVE BIRTH.

  He tapped on the paper calendar square. “What does this mean—‘give birth’?”

  I frowned at him. Jack was usually pretty bright. “It’s my due date, so that’s when I’m planning on going into labor.”

  “You’re planning on going into labor?”

  I tried once again—and failed—to cross my arms over my recently expanded chest. “Are you having problems with your native tongue? Yes, my due date is when I’m planning on giving birth. That’s normally how it works.”

  His eyes sparkled as if he were holding in something that was vastly amusing but that he didn’t feel like sharing with me. “Um, you do know that your due date is just a prediction, right? That it could come before or after—and that with twins it could come much earlier.”

  I waved my hand. “Oh, I know. We’re both reading the same book, apparently. But I’ve found that sometimes it just takes mind over matter to harness chaos and uncertainty into something more manageable. I’m planning on giving birth on my due date, so I’ve got all of the preplanning activities already marked on the calendar so that everything is ready by the time I get to the hospital.”

  “I see,” he said, stroking his chin. He looked back at the calendar. “You have ‘mani-pedi/haircut’ written on the twenty-fourth.”

  I tried to put my hands on my hips, but when I couldn’t locate them I made do with resting my flattened palms against my sides. “I want to look nice for visitors.” I thought for a moment. “Unless you think I should do it the same day?”

  I watched him swallow—twice—before he spoke. “You know, Mellie, you might not be up to it right after giving birth. Besides, if you have a C-section, you could be in the hospital for more than just a couple of hours, like you’re obviously planning. Perhaps you should work in a little more wiggle room.”

  Expelling a deep, exasperated breath, I reached for the Sharpie I’d attached to a string from the top of the easel. “Reading a few books does not make you an expert on childbirth, Jack, but if it makes you happy, I’ll change my nail appointment to the twenty-sixth.” Using a ruler I kept at the bottom of the easel, I lined through the original appointment reminder and rewrote it on the new date.

  Stepping back to admire my handiwork, I caught Jack watching me with an expression I couldn’t decipher, although it seemed to match the one he used when watching episodes of his favorite show, Lizard Lick Towing.

  His voice seemed very tight when he spoke. “I’m surprised you haven’t already put the twins’ feeding and sleeping schedules on a spreadsheet.”

  “Oh, but I have.” I flipped up the pregnancy spreadsheet and folded it over the back of the easel. “See? Feed every four hours starting when they wake up at eight o’clock in the morning; then it’s playtime for an hour before they go back to sleep and wake up in time for their next feeding at noon. . . .”

  I turned around at the gasping, choking sound I heard coming from Jack’s throat.

  “Are you all right?” I asked, pounding him on the back.

  “I’m fine,” he said, although I thought I caught the trace of tears in his eyes. “I’m just really tired. I should go get ready for bed.”

  “All right. I can show you the rest another time. There’re clean towels and a washcloth in the hall bathroom for you, as well as a new toothbrush, toothpaste, and disposable razors in the medicine cabinet. And extra soap and shampoo under the sink.”

  “Expecting overnight guests, Mellie?”

  Glossing over his innuendo, I said, “I like to be prepared. And see? It was a good thing I was.”

  “I can’t imagine that the world knows how to revolve without you.”

  Ignoring him, I said, “I found the pair of pajamas I bought for you at Berlin’s when you stayed with me before.” I gave him an accusatory glance. “They still had the tags on them, but I took them off and gave them to Mrs. Houlihan to wash. I hung them behind the bathroom door just in case you needed them.”

  “I don’t wear pajamas.”

  I blushed at the memory. “I know. But I figured with your daughter in the house, you might not want to be sleeping naked in the hallway.”

  “Or outside your door,” he said with a wicked grin.

  I squelched the seed of excitement that tried to take root deep in my belly. “I think I might be able to resist you, Jack.”

  He arched his right eyebrow, giving him a piratical look. “It wasn’t your restraint I was worried about.”

  Despite the little rush of heat that coursed through me, I gave an exaggerated roll of my eyes. “Really, Jack?” I indicated my curvy body and the baby bump that Hollywood starlets always managed to look cute with but that on me looked like I was trying to hide a John Deere tractor. “I really don’t think I need to worry.”