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  Jack eyed the detective warily, sizing him up. “Yes, I am. And you are . . . ?”

  “Detective Thomas Riley of the Charleston Police Department.” He stuck out his hand and the two men shook. “I’m a huge fan. My parents and sisters and I have been waiting for your next book. We don’t recall having ever had to wait this long between books from you.”

  A dark shadow passed over Jack’s face. His nemesis and my onetime suitor, businessman Marc Longo, had somehow managed to scoop Jack’s last story, a story centered around the disappearance of Louisa Vanderhorst. Although Jack had been given another story to write by the late Julia Manigault about her own family, losing to Marc Longo was not something from which he’d easily recover. Or that he’d forgive.

  Jack smiled tightly. “Yes, well, there were unexpected delays. But I’m hoping to have another book out sometime next year.”

  Jack looked at the bag of peas in the detective’s hand, then up to his forehead, as if noticing the growing knot for the first time. “Did Mellie hit you?”

  “Not exactly.” Thomas looked between Jack and me as if trying to figure something out, his eyes widening in apparent understanding. “Why? Has she hit you before?”

  I stood. “Now, wait just a minute . . .” I began, looking at my parents for moral support, but they were both busy studying the thread count of the Aubusson rug.

  Jack interrupted. “Only figuratively.”

  I slowly sank back onto the sofa, unable to argue, because even underneath all of my own self-pity and righteousness, I knew that he was right. Trying to salvage the conversation, I turned my attention to the detective. “So what do we do next?”

  “Nothing, really. We’ll have to leave your back garden a mess, I’m afraid, until the crime-scene people have had a chance to sift through everything, so I’ll need your patience. And I’ll contact Dr. Wallen-Arasi when she returns from her honeymoon and see if she can shed any light on the identity of the remains and why they might be hidden in your foundation.”

  The ethereal sound of a mewling baby drifted around us like a wisp of smoke, so soft that I would have thought I was imagining it except for my mother’s shaking hand as she placed her teacup on its saucer.

  My mother’s voice was a lot calmer than she appeared to be. “You said you found something else with the remains. Can you tell us what that was?”

  I found myself shaking my head, although I already had a feeling that any efforts to hide from lost spirits were gone from the first moment I’d awakened to the sound of a crying baby.

  “It looks to be an old lace gown and bonnet, like the kind a baby would wear when being christened. Which, at first glance, tells us that the baby wasn’t simply discarded. The fact that the child was buried in the gown tells us that he or she was either baptized before burial, or the child was important enough to be buried in it.”

  The wailing grew loud enough that I thought that the others might hear it, but I’d learned long ago that this blessing or curse or whatever you wanted to call it was reserved for very few.

  My mother stood, and everyone else stood, too. “Well, then, we don’t want to take up more of your time.” She took the detective’s arm and began to lead him to the foyer and the front door. “Please don’t hesitate to call if you have any further questions.”

  I was about to ask her what the hurry was, but could suddenly feel the chill blowing softly on the back of my neck, as if an unseen pair of eyes rested on it.

  My father and Jack wore identical looks of concern as my mother practically threw the detective out onto the front piazza, then shut the door in his face after a perfunctory good-bye. Her chest rose and fell with exertion, her hand pressed against her heart before reaching for me.

  “Do you see anybody?” she asked, my father and Jack understanding that her question hadn’t been meant for them.

  I shook my head without really looking, the chill on the back of my neck still intense. My mother squeezed my hand. “Mellie, have you heard the baby before today?”

  “No,” I whispered, knowing where she was headed.

  “There’s a reason why it’s been silent until now. Most likely it’s because of the remains being unearthed.” She paused, and I tried to pull away. “Or it could also be because of your pregnancy.”

  Panic and denial rose in me as I struggled to find words to extricate myself.

  Jack stepped toward my mother. “Is the baby in danger?”

  Hormones, my swollen body and ill-fitting clothes, the cold breath on my neck, and the ghostly crying all conspired against my resolve to keep my emotions in check. I turned on Jack, the closest available candidate for my pent-up frustrations—the least being that despite all that had happened between Jack and me, I still loved him with every part of my heart that was capable of loving another person.

  “You’re going to start caring now? I haven’t heard one word from you in a month—any concern about me or the baby—and here you are trying to interfere and pretend that this baby means anything to you.” I gulped back tears and rage and impotence.

  My father cleared his throat. “Actually, Mellie—”

  I cut him off as I faced Jack. “What my mother is trying to say is that whoever was found in that box under the house, or whoever it was who had been missing whoever it was, thinks they’ve found a kindred spirit in me because I’m pregnant.”

  My father tried to speak again. “Mellie, Jack and your mother and I . . .”

  I held up my hand, not wanting to be distracted from my tirade directed at Jack. “And apparently my mother thinks it’s a duty to guide all lost souls to the light, and she probably wants my help with this one even though I can’t imagine adding one more thing to my plate right now. But she and I can handle it alone, without your help. Just like this baby.”

  Of all the expressions I’d seen pass over Jack’s face—sarcasm, humor, anger, desire—I’d never seen this one, and it scared me. His eyes, darker than ever before, widened slightly, giving him the look of someone who’d been punched unexpectedly in the gut.

  Just as quickly his expression changed, like a magician whipping away his cape to display a hidden bouquet of flowers when a sword was expected. His trademark grin that graced the back covers of his bestselling novels and had slain countless women since he was out of diapers crossed his face. I braced myself.

  “If my memory serves me correctly, Mellie, you didn’t make that baby by yourself.”

  He let the words sink in, and I was acutely aware of my parents’ presence and how they were both looking at everything else except Jack and me. I might have actually squirmed. I was also aware of every hair on my head standing on end, and how the cold that had started on the back of my neck now enveloped my entire body.

  My brain was busy formulating a response when suddenly Jack looked up toward the Venetian glass chandelier that lit the small vestibule area inside the front door.

  “Mellie!” he shouted, and before I could tell him to stop calling me Mellie, he dived for me, tackling me to the floor. He’d managed to cushion me by landing on his back with me on top of him, sprawled halfway into the main foyer and far enough away to escape the falling chandelier as it crashed onto the exact spot where I’d been standing.

  I was so shocked I couldn’t move for a moment, and I remained lying on top of Jack, our bodies pressed together from chest to toe.

  He was breathing hard, but his eyes held their old light as they looked into mine, making me aware of just how much of him was touching me and vice versa. “Just like old times, huh, Mellie?”

  With my cheeks flaming, I scrambled off of him, wishing I still had my jacket button to aim at him. Carefully avoiding the broken glass, I stepped toward my mother and father, whose focus was split between me and the ruined chandelier.

  “What was that all about?” my father asked, his military career leaving him wholly unprepared for explaining the unexplainable. It had been one of the reasons why my mother had left him all those years ago.
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  My mother’s gaze held mine, and a weary sense of resignation settled on me as we turned to face my father and Jack. I took a deep breath, remembering for that one brief second a moment when my life had been my own, when I’d been content to let the restless dead flitter unnoticed along the periphery.

  “They’re back,” I said, the words whipped back in my face by a strong, cold breeze.

  CHAPTER 3

  I stepped out onto the sidewalk, letting the door to Ruth’s Bakery jingle shut behind me, feeling no better than when I’d entered five minutes before. In the past, Ruth had had my bag of doughnuts and extra-cream latte ready to grab and go on the way to my office. However, my mother and soon-to-be ex–best friend, Sophie, had paid Ruth a visit in an apparent attempt to ruin my life. Clutched in my hands was a bag of two organic bran-and-broccoli muffins, as well as a tall cup of green tea without sugar. I couldn’t say for certain, but judging from my first and only bite I was pretty sure that the first two ingredients on the muffin recipe were cardboard and dirt.

  I walked down the sidewalk on Broad toward Henderson House Realty, ditching the bag of muffins in the first trash receptacle that I passed. I’d had such high hopes when actual hunger pangs had gripped me after the early-morning nausea, and the thought of hidden candy bars in my office lightened my step so that I was almost skipping by the time I reached my building.

  I pushed open the door, pausing midstride as I made my way across the reception area. Our golf-addicted receptionist, Nancy Flaherty—apparently fully recovered from a golf-ball injury to the head—sat in her usual seat behind the desk, golf-tee earrings swinging as she greeted me. She wore her ubiquitous golf visor with the Masters logo on the brim—a souvenir from a trip to the mecca of golf, Augusta, Georgia—and held a ball of yarn and two flashing metal knitting needles that were moving in and out of something pink and small.

  Sitting next to Nancy was a slightly older woman wearing a bright yellow cardigan with golfers embroidered all over it. She, too, was knitting, but with a blue ball of yarn. I stopped in front of them with a questioning look at Nancy. “Knitting?” I asked.

  “Sure am.” She grinned broadly, the knitting needles not slowing. “This here’s Joyce Challis,” she said, indicating the woman next to her. “She and I are going to be job-sharing. After my life-threatening injury, I realized that life is too short not to spend most of it on a golf course, so I talked to Mr. Henderson, and he said if I could find and train somebody, I could job-share. As a bonus, she’s teaching me how to knit.”

  “Where’s Charlene?” I asked, recalling the petite blond yoga enthusiast who’d covered for Nancy while she was recuperating from her head injury.

  Joyce and Nancy looked at each other and rolled their eyes simultaneously. “She’s decided to move to California and become a movie star. I think playing an extra in that Demi Moore film kind of went to her head.”

  “Isn’t she a grandmother?” I asked, wondering whether there was an age cutoff for moving to Hollywood to make it big.

  Joyce and Nancy nodded in unison.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Miss Middleton,” Joyce said, her blue eyes smiling. “I’ve heard all about you from Nancy here,” she said, pointing a knitting needle at her companion. “And Jack.” She made a show of fanning her face with her hand.

  I frowned. “I don’t expect him to be darkening our door anytime soon, so may I suggest watching a few soap operas for your daily dose of drama instead.” I forced my lips into a smile. “It’s nice to meet you, Joyce. I’m sure if Nancy’s training you, you won’t have anything to worry about.”

  Facing Nancy, I said, “Are there any messages for me?” Even I was surprised at how unenthusiastic my voice sounded. It was bad enough that all I wanted to do was sleep, but it was worse that everybody else could tell, too.

  Joyce put down her knitting and reached for a pink slip of paper on the corner of the receptionist’s desk. With a gleam in her eyes that could be described only as mischievous, she said, “Just one. From Jack Trenholm. He said he’s tried your cell but he must have the wrong number, because it keeps going to voice mail, and on the recording it’s a deeper voice than yours and with a slight accent.”

  Both Joyce and Nancy blinked innocently at me as I tried not to blush at the memory of recording the message right after Jack had left the house the previous day following the chandelier-smashing incident. Before he left, he’d kissed my mother’s cheek, shaken my father’s hand, then looked at my ankles and suggested I stay away from salt, closing the door a little more firmly than necessary. My mother said my hormones were making me overly sensitive to criticism, but his words had been all I’d needed to convince myself that I could handle the pregnancy and upcoming motherhood fine on my own. If only the thought didn’t leave me so dark and empty—a place more terrifying than any ghostly encounter.

  The pink and blue yarn suddenly registered in my brain. I peered over the desk. “What are you making?”

  Nancy’s needles didn’t pause. “Baby blankets. Since we don’t know if it’s a girl or boy, we’re doing one of each.”

  Staring at the soft-colored yarn, I felt a rumble of panic—something that was happening more and more these days but whose source I couldn’t yet pinpoint. I forced myself to start thinking of spreadsheets and feeding schedules and a birthing plan that included epidurals and anesthesia and I began to calm down a little.

  “I hope it’s a girl,” I said, the words springing from my mouth before I could call them back. Both sets of knitting needles paused. “I mean, I really just hope for a healthy child.” I crumpled my lone phone message and left it on the counter. “I guess I’d better get to work.”

  I turned and began walking toward my office, trying to imagine a baby boy with eyes as blue as his father’s, and how in the world I could find the mental and physical stamina to raise a mini Jack. Yes, I wanted a healthy child, but, dear heavens, don’t let it be a boy.

  I opened my office door and shuffled inside. The office had been rearranged back to its pre–feng shui status—something Charlene Rose had felt necessary but I had not—and I felt a little of my old self return. Even the fish in their bowl—the “water feature,” as Charlene had called it—were gone, I was thankful to note. I didn’t want to think about the fate of the two fish, since the thought made me teary eyed again.

  I dropped my purse and briefcase unceremoniously in the middle of my office and lurched toward my credenza, where I’d stashed a bag of Halloween candy I’d found on sale at Tellis Pharmacy, before they’d closed for good, to find support hose for my ever-burgeoning ankles. I pulled open the first drawer, and then the second and the third, and then the cabinets underneath in a growing panicked frenzy. I knew I was being irrational, but I’d never been this long without processed sugar or chocolate and I was desperate.

  “Is this what you’re looking for? Sophie told me where to look.”

  I swung around to see Jack perched casually in one of the chairs facing my desk, holding up the plastic bag of miniature candy bars. His face held an expression of mild curiosity and amusement.

  I swallowed heavily, torn between giving in to my sugar craving and diving at the bag, and self-preservation. The latter won. I hastily turned back to the credenza and picked up a pencil sharpener that hadn’t been used in about five years. “Oh, here it is.”

  I sat down at my desk and pulled out a pencil from the top drawer and began to sharpen it. “I don’t remember you having an appointment this morning, Jack, and I’m afraid my schedule is jam-packed—”

  He interrupted, “I don’t think mechanical pencils need sharpening, Mellie.”

  A wave of heat started somewhere in my chest, then crept up to swamp my face. I stopped grinding the hapless pencil and looked up at Jack, who was openly grinning now.

  “Pregnancy hasn’t changed you a bit.”

  “Is it supposed to?”

  “I’d hoped.” He held up his hand—not the one with the bag of candy—to sto
p me from saying more. “I didn’t come here to argue. I wanted to talk with you. See how you’re doing.”

  “I’m fine,” I said quickly. As long as I’m not thinking about you, because that makes my heart hurt and sometimes I can’t even remember to breathe. I slapped the palms of my hands against the desk as if to magically make my lie into truth, and maybe even to shake loose those thoughts.

  “Why are you so mad at me? You’re the one who rejected my marriage proposal.” His words were quiet but intense.

  I couldn’t meet his eyes. “You haven’t called. Or asked about the baby. I assumed you didn’t care.”

  There was a pause before Jack spoke. “I was kind of waiting to hear from you, considering how we left it. But I’ve been checking in with your mother and father every day to see how you were doing. To see if you needed anything and if everything was okay with the baby.”

  I remembered my dad trying to interrupt me the previous day in the middle of my rant directed at Jack, and I felt the heat creeping back into my cheeks.

  Jack continued. “And I’ve been asking all of my friends who are parents for advice on the best pregnancy books. I brought What to Expect When You’re Expecting and a few other books over yesterday, but you didn’t give me a chance to give them to you.”

  I resisted the impulse to crawl under my desk in utter shame and instead raised my gaze to meet his while trying to form a sentence that would be both an apology and a reproach.

  He was resting his elbows against the arms of his chair and regarding me with those intense blue eyes. “You’re still beautiful, you know. Maybe even more so.”

  My half-formed sentence flew from my head. He’d always had a knack for chiseling my defenses away one pebble at a time. But his words had been more like a wrecking ball against my castle walls. I started to smile, but then I remembered my reflection in the bathroom mirror as I’d dressed that morning—the bloated face and body, the lanky hair, and the zit on my chin. I hadn’t kept Clearasil in my bathroom cabinet since I was about sixteen, and I’d dabbed on a spot of whitening toothpaste instead—an old home remedy I’d probably read in Seventeen magazine—and belatedly wondered whether I’d remembered to wipe it off before heading to the office.