The Strangers on Montagu Street Read online

  I crossed my arms, relieved. Obviously, this was some kind of a joke. Jack never asked for favors. His usual MO was to ply his victim with charm so that she never knew she was doing exactly what he wanted her to do. “Will this involve getting me on my back? Or maybe just getting me drunk so that I embarrass myself?” He hadn’t technically done either thing, but I liked to pretend that those two instances had been both deliberate and his fault.

  Instead of the snarky comment I expected, he frowned and gave a quick shake of his head. Too late, I realized that he wasn’t alone on the piazza, as the young girl I’d met only once before emerged from the shadows behind him. Jack stopped slouching against the doorjamb and straightened, allowing the girl to move into the foyer ahead of him. She eyed me in very much the same way her father just had, but with a far more critical eye and accompanied by the loud smacking of chewing gum.

  “Nice slippers.” She blew a large purple bubble with her gum, then snapped it back into her mouth.

  I looked down at my feet. My slippers had been a gift from my best friend, Dr. Sophie Wallen, a professor of historical preservation at the College of Charleston, and I rather liked them. I kept telling myself it was because they kept my feet warm and not because they resembled General Lee, since I wasn’t really a dog person. Especially at this moment, as I watched my fickle dog move from my side to sit at the girl’s feet and nuzzle her leg.

  Jack moved into the foyer, closing the door behind them, and I could see the lines of strain around his mouth, even though he was trying very hard to keep his smile in place. “Melanie, since I didn’t get the chance to formally introduce you the last time we were here, I’d like you to meet Emmaline Amelia Pettigrew. Emmaline, I’d like you to meet my . . .”

  He paused, as if unsure what to call me, and I couldn’t blame him. “Friend,” I interjected, feeling the unusual need to help him. It was very clear to me that Jack was completely out of his league with this woman-child.

  “Melanie Middleton,” I added, and stuck out my hand, because I couldn’t think of anything else to do.

  The girl stepped under the foyer chandelier and I got a better look at her. Despite the heavy black eyeliner, bright red lipstick, teeny-tiny denim skirt, and pink Converse high-top sneakers, I could tell she was very young, maybe thirteen or fourteen. She also had beautiful black, wavy hair and startling blue eyes that left no doubt as to her relationship to Jack.

  Ignoring my hand, she snapped another bubble with her gum. “Nola,” she said. “My real name’s Nola.”

  I dropped my hand and looked at Jack.

  “We just received her birth certificate from California, and it seems she was officially named Emmaline Amelia. Apparently she’s always been called by a nickname.”

  Nola crossed her arms across her chest and she wore an expression that was somewhere between a smile and a smirk, and I knew enough to brace myself. “Mom always called me Nola because I was conceived in New Orleans, Louisiana, when she and this guy were drunk off their asses.”

  Jack spoke through gritted teeth and I had the fleeting thought that I should be enjoying this a lot more than I was. “Like I said, her name is Emmaline Amelia and she’s been living for the last thirteen and a half years with her mother in Los Angeles.”

  I raised my eyebrows at him. There was a whole story behind those words that he’d have to share with me eventually. But not now. An almost imperceptible tremor shook the girl, and her knuckles were nearly white where her hands gripped a ratty backpack. And there was something in her take-no-prisoners stance, in her bravado, that didn’t ring true. Something sad and lonely and scared. Something that reminded me of the young abandoned girl I had once been.

  I didn’t know a lot about teenage girls, despite having once been one, but I knew that assigning a new name to her right now wasn’t a good idea. I also knew that the girl standing in front of me wasn’t an Emmaline or an Amelia.

  Directing a warning glance to Jack to remain silent, I said, “Nice to meet you, Nola. I think that name suits you.”

  With a triumphant look that was meant for her dad, she said, “So, are you sleeping with him?”

  “Absolutely not,” I said at the same time Jack said, “Not for lack of trying.”

  Nola rolled her eyes. “I told him that I would only consider staying with you if the two of you weren’t hooking up or anything.”

  Or anything. I wasn’t sure what that last part encompassed, but I knew for sure that whatever Jack and I had going on, it certainly couldn’t be classified as “hooking up.”

  “Stay with me?” I turned a sharp look at Jack.

  “Yeah. That’s the favor I was going to ask.”

  “What about Rebecca?” I asked, feeling light-headed. I already had a pretty jam-packed schedule, and I couldn’t envision making room on my spreadsheet for one more thing, much less a troubled teenager.

  Nola made a gagging sound as she leaned against my Chippendale console table, causing the Dresden figurine on top to wobble but, fortunately, remain in place. “Oh, please. Don’t make me puke. All that sugary pink fakeness would make me want to strangle her, and I don’t want to spend time in juvie.”

  I raised my eyebrows, although I was in complete agreement with her assessment of Rebecca. Forcing my voice to remain calm, I suggested to Jack, “And your parents?”

  “They’ve already downsized to a one-bedroom condo. They’d put it up for sale today and buy a new house to make room for Emma . . . Nola, but I don’t want them to do that. Besides, we, ah, kinda need something now.”

  “And she can’t stay with you because . . . ?”

  Jack clenched his teeth. “Because . . .” He shrugged, either because he couldn’t think of a good enough answer or because he didn’t want Nola to hear it.

  Nola piped up. “Because he doesn’t want me. He never has.”

  Jack took a step toward her, his hands palms out. “That’s not true, Nola. I’ve told you that. I don’t know why you won’t listen.”

  Nola’s voice rose a notch. “You’re the one who won’t listen.” Nola’s face reddened beneath her makeup, but it was more than just anger or hurt, and it suddenly occurred to me that I knew nothing about the circumstances that had brought her to Jack. Something had wounded Nola in a much more profound way than she wanted anyone to know, and it was apparent even to me that Jack really didn’t have a clue.

  My neck started to feel a little clammy. “Maybe I can just be your intermediary whenever you two have an argument. Sort of like a referee. I’ll even do house calls.” I smiled at them hopefully.

  They both looked at me with identical expressions of disdain, two pairs of matching blue eyes making me feel very, very small and hardhearted. Some part of me even enjoyed watching them spar like a normal father and teenage daughter. I’d never fought with my parents, but only because I’d never been given the chance; my mother had left when I was six and my father had usually been too drunk to care. Despite my relationships with both parents having vastly improved over the last year, I still felt a huge void in my growing-up years. Not that I wanted to revisit them. I was thirty-nine years old, after all. Way too old to be dealing with teenage angst. Or to be single, but that was another matter altogether.

  Grasping at my final straw, I said, “But she doesn’t even know me.”

  Nola’s look was so searing that I expected to see smoke rising from my terry-cloth robe. “It would be better than staying with him.” She jerked her chin in Jack’s direction. “Or living on the street.” Her look indicated that the latter choice was only marginally worse than living with me.

  Jack put his hand on my arm and turned the full force of his considerable charm on me, starting with a penetrating look from his very, very blue eyes. “We’re here at this ungodly hour because we were arguing up until midnight, when I called a truce just to get some sleep. That’s when I caught her trying to sneak out. I made her sit with me on the living room couch until I thought you’d be up.” He shook his head.
“Please, Mellie,” he said, using the nickname that I barely tolerated, although both he and my mother delighted in using it—my mother because it had been my childhood name, and Jack because he enjoyed irritating me. He continued. “It will only be for a little while, until we can figure this all out with cool heads—something we apparently can’t have while living under the same roof.”

  In a last-ditch effort to avoid disaster I said, “What about school? Doesn’t she need to be registered where she lives?”

  Nola rolled her eyes. “School’s lame.”

  Jack looked like he wanted to say something to her but thought better of it. Instead he said, “I already got her transcripts and she’s a straight-A student. I’m going to try to get her involved with a homeschooling group to finish up the year. In the meantime, my mother’s trying to get her into Ashley Hall, her alma mater and your mother’s, too. I’m hoping their combined efforts can get her a spot in the fall.”

  I knew what an Ashley Hall girl looked like—smooth hair, lacrosse stick, fresh-faced—and I couldn’t imagine Nola fitting in there any more than I would have at her age. But I bit my tongue. It had nothing to do with me.

  Jack added helpfully, “So basically Nola has the whole summer to get acclimated to Charleston.”

  I looked at both of them as they stared at me expectantly, Jack hopeful and Nola resigned. I wanted to shout out an immediate “no.” I had my own life to live, unfettered by husband or children or any other responsibilities that didn’t include making my sales quota for Henderson House Realty. Or continuing the restoration of my beautiful yet money-sucking house. But when I looked at Nola, I saw again a scared and abandoned child who, except for the telltale trembling, was trying very hard to appear brave and strong. Unfortunately for both of us I saw not just her trembling; I saw myself.

  “Fine,” I said carefully, wanting to end Nola’s misery and not willing to set her up for more rejection. “She’s welcome to stay here for a bit. The guest room has clean sheets on the bed, and there are clean towels in the hall bath. I’ll make sure Nola feels at home for as long as she needs to stay here.” I shot a questioning glance at Jack in the hopes that he’d be able to give me not only a finite time period, but some kind of encouragement, too.

  Instead, the only look I got from him was one of extreme relief. For all of the emotional trauma he’d caused me in the last year, I should have been gloating. Instead, I could only feel sorry for him and for Nola, their estranged relationship so much like the one between my father and me up until recently, when he’d finally decided to become sober.

  “Thank you,” he said, and all I could do was smile.

  Jack walked to the door and pulled it open. “I know Nola doesn’t want to forget this.” He reached for something on the piazza and pulled inside the house a beat-up guitar case, scuffed and scratched, the original black of the case nearly completely hidden by stickers, most of them illegible. On the top near one of the latches was a small white rectangle with the faded black words I LOVE N’AWLINS. NOLA.

  He set it down by the foyer table and I stared at it for a moment, feeling the telltale pinpricks of gooseflesh on the back of my neck for the second time that night. I looked around, expecting to see . . . something. The temperature seemed to drop by a few degrees, and I watched Nola rub her arms. And then I heard what sounded like very quiet music. I glanced at Jack and Nola to see if they were hearing it, too, but they were concentrating on trying to figure out how to say good-bye without physical contact.

  I strained to hear better, but the melody was so light that it was almost beyond my hearing range. The notes were strummed on an acoustic guitar, the tune hauntingly beautiful.

  “So, Nola,” Jack was saying. “You have my cell phone. Call me if you need anything. Anything,” he emphasized.

  She nodded, her jaw sticking out in the same way Jack’s did when he was upset and trying not to show it.

  I turned to Nola. “I want to speak with your dad for a quick moment. Why don’t you go ahead up to your room—at the top of the stairs turn left. It’s the third door on the right, and the bathroom’s right next door to it. Make yourself at home and I’ll be right there.”

  With a heavy sigh, Nola picked up her guitar and slung her ratty backpack over her shoulder, the unzipped corner exposing the well-worn face of a nearly threadbare teddy bear. It surprised me to see it, and it told me more about Nola than all of her heavy makeup and belligerent attitude. It also reminded me that Nola was only thirteen years old, and very alone. Well, almost. General Lee, the little traitor, happily followed at her heels, content to be led away by a perfect stranger.

  As she headed up the stairs, I called after her, “Nola, I have to go into my office early in the morning, but I’ll tell my housekeeper, Mrs. Houlihan, to look after you and get you anything you need. I’ll have her make you breakfast, so tell me what you want and I’ll make sure we’ve got it.”

  She turned around and with a sullen expression said, “I don’t like to wake up before noon, and I only eat vegan and organic.” Without waiting for a response, she turned around and headed up the stairs, one slowly exaggerated step at a time.

  I faced Jack again, seeing a faint glimmer in his eyes. “That could be a problem for you, Mellie, seeing how you only eat processed baked goods and animal protein. I guess I should have warned you.”

  “About a lot of things, apparently.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “You’ve got a lot of things you need to tell me, starting with where her mother is.”

  His face sobered as he sent a quick glance up the stairs. “She’s dead.”

  Jack’s words didn’t surprise me; I suppose I had known from the first moment I’d seen Nola. But a lifelong attempt at trying to bury my sixth sense made me extremely obtuse sometimes.

  He placed his hands on my arms and pulled me closer to the door. Quietly, he added, “Nola’s probably listening, so I don’t want to talk about it now, but meet me at eight o’clock at Fast and French for coffee and I’ll tell you everything.”

  I sighed. “You really owe me.”

  With a low voice, he said, “I know.” He didn’t drop his hands from my arms as he continued to look at me, and for an odd moment I thought he might kiss me, and I even thought that I might want him to. But the time for that was long gone, buried too deep beneath all sorts of reasons why Jack and I were wrong for each other—not including the fact that he had a girlfriend and now a teenage daughter.

  He let his hands slip from my arms. “That wasn’t an almost-kiss, was it?”

  “No,” I said, a little too quickly.

  “Good. Because I think I’ve lost count,” he said, referring to his annoying habit of reminding me each time he almost kissed me. But that all seemed like such a long time ago. He stepped out onto the piazza. “I’ll see you at eight then.”

  “I’ll be there,” I said, before I closed the door and latched it, then set the alarm. As I began turning off the lights and heading back upstairs, I heard the music again, so faint that I couldn’t be sure I was hearing it at all, and I found myself turning my head like an antenna trying to pick up a better signal.

  It seemed to get louder as I reached the top of the stairs and headed for Nola’s room, where I found General Lee sleeping outside her closed door. I raised my hand to knock and held it there while I listened as the music faded and was replaced by the sound of sobbing coming from the other side of the door. I lowered my hand, then quietly backed away and headed toward my room, leaving the hall light on and my door cracked open. I slid out of my robe, and as I began to get ready for work, I couldn’t help but wonder how many ghosts this lost and lonely girl had brought into my life.

  CHAPTER 2

  I had just finished writing the note of warning to Mrs. Houlihan to let her know that a teenage girl was sleeping upstairs and would expect to be fed something vegan for breakfast when she woke around noon. I’d hoped to make it out the door before the housekeeper got there, because I was sure there wer
e going to be way more questions than I could answer. I’d left my business card and a note under Nola’s door telling her to call me when she got up so we could figure out the rest of her day. Hopefully, my breakfast with Jack would answer at least part of that question.

  I scratched General Lee behind the ear, then gave him a treat, because I just couldn’t stand that forlorn look he gave me each time I left him behind. As I shut the kitchen door behind me I heard voices from the back garden. I froze for a moment as I always did when I heard voices in my house, remembering the ghosts who’d inhabited it when I moved in. Most of them were gone, the ones remaining unobtrusive and with a mutual understanding that we not get in one another’s way.

  Carefully negotiating the flagstone path my father had installed for me as part of his garden restoration, I followed it by the side of the house to the garden, where the voices mingled with the sound of the burbling fountain of the peeing boy. I stopped and stared, not sure whether I should frown or laugh.

  Sophie, never a candidate for a magazine cover, except for maybe National Geographic, wore what looked like a pair of oversize jeans split in the middle and then connected with quilted patches to make a sort of long skirt. She had on her ubiquitous Birkenstocks, her toenails each painted a different color, a tie-dyed tank top, and her long, curly black hair barely tamed by a lime green scrunchy. She was in stark contrast to the man in the plaid shirt and jeans standing next to her, my plumber, Rich Kobylt. His tool belt hung heavy on his hips, leaving the jeans a little lower in the back than I would have liked. They were both staring at the brick foundation of my house and shaking their heads. It couldn’t be good if Sophie, an expert in the field of historical restoration, was shaking her head while staring at my very old house.

  With more good cheer than I felt, I called out, “Good morning.” I walked closer to them, and the spike of my high-heeled shoe stuck between two flagstones into the soft grass, sucking my shoe into the clinging mud and bringing to mind how this whole house had sort of done the same thing to my life.