The Christmas Spirits on Tradd Street

by Karen White

  “He’s asleep, Melanie,” Jayne whispered. “We can go. Besides, you have the video monitor. But you won’t need it.”

  I gave her a leveling stare. “He’s still Jack’s son.” I pressed my ear against the door one last time, then felt my sister tug on my arm.

  “How’s your head?” she asked.

  “Just a little bump. Mrs. Houlihan gave me an aspirin. And a cookie. I’m feeling much better now.” I rubbed my head.

  She was silent for a moment as she looked at me. “Did you tell Jack everything?”

  “Mostly. I told him why I was there to meet Anthony and about my conversation with Marc.”

  “And the figure in Nola’s bedroom?

  I studied a spot on the wallpaper. “Sophie said this is all hand painted. Did you know that?”

  “Melanie.” Jayne’s voice was full of warning. “You need to tell him everything. And if you don’t, then I might have to. I don’t like the energy I feel when I pass by Nola’s bedroom. We need to take care of it soon, and Jack will have to know.”

  “I know, and I agree,” I said, realizing her hand was still on my arm. “I’m just trying to figure out where to begin. And I really don’t want to bother Jack with any of it until I know something for sure. The spirits are not showing themselves to me, like they don’t want to talk to me.”

  “Or they don’t know they’re dead,” Jayne suggested.

  “Or that. At least I know Louisa is here, protecting the children while I try to sort everything out. I promise to tell Jack everything when we’re ready to deal with it, all right? He’s got a lot on his mind right now.”

  I ignored her sideways glance as she kept her hand gripped firmly in the crook of my elbow, leading me down the stairs and in the direction of the parlor. “I think he’d rather know than be caught by surprise. Like finding you flat on your back in front of the gazebo in Battery Park with another man sprawled on top of you.”

  I couldn’t argue with her logic, but I was distracted by the firm tug on my arm. “Where are we going?” I asked, suddenly aware that I was being led for a reason.

  “Both of your parents are here, and Nola and Jack are with them in the parlor. They’d like to have a little chat.” Despite my digging in my heels at the mention of an apparent audience waiting to talk with me, she’d managed to pull me into the doorway of the parlor, where everyone had gathered, drinking coffee and tea and snacking on a plate of what looked like Mrs. Houlihan’s holiday fudge. Each piece was decorated with green marshmallow-covered Frosted Flakes and tiny cinnamon drops to make them look like holly. They were my favorite, and Mrs. Houlihan had been keeping them under lock and key. I headed in their direction, but Jayne pulled me back.

  “Hello, Mellie.” My mother smiled and stood, followed by my father and then Nola. Even the three dogs, previously asleep in front of the fire, stood and faced me.

  I eyed them all suspiciously, my gaze settling on Jack as he approached. “Is this an intervention?”

  “Funny you should use that word.” Jack stopped in front of me and smiled. It wasn’t one of his devastating ones, which I was used to. This was the smile of a man about to have teeth pulled. Without anesthesia.

  “Why is it funny?” I hedged, looking for a way to snag a piece of fudge en route to my escape.

  Jack seemed to be speaking from behind gritted teeth. “Because only someone who thinks they might need one would ever assume that a gathering of loved ones might be an intervention.”

  “Well, no one’s died, so I know it’s not a funeral,” I said, crossing my arms.

  “Mellie. Sweetheart,” he said, placing his arm around my shoulders and pulling me toward him. I tried to retain my indignation, but the scent of him, that “Jackness” that I couldn’t name but could always identify, made me almost lose track of why I was supposed to feel indignant.

  “Mmm,” I mumbled into the soft cashmere arm of his sweater, enjoying the feel and smell of him but keeping my body rigid.

  “How old are you?”

  I jerked back. “Excuse me? Are you about to make some dig about how you’re younger than I am?”

  “I would never,” he said solemnly. “It’s just that while you were upstairs, we’ve been having a conversation where we all agree that you’re old enough to know who to trust. And that would be everyone in this room.”

  “I have no idea what you’re—” He stopped me with a firm kiss on the mouth that erased my next words.

  “Get a room,” Nola grumbled.

  He grinned his Jack grin. “Glad that still works. As I was saying, you should have told me and the rest of us about your meeting with Marc and your decision to meet with Anthony. We’re all in this together, remember? We’re a family. We love you. We love this house and everyone connected to it. Well, most of them. Your problems are our problems. And we solve them together.”

  “But with your deadline, you don’t need any distractions—”

  He put his finger on my lips, stopping me. “You, your safety, and our happiness are never a distraction.”

  “Mellie, dear,” my mother said. “Your father and I divorced all those years ago because we didn’t communicate and because we each thought we knew what was best for the other. And look where that led us.”

  I stepped away from Jack so I could gather my thoughts. It was hard to think with him standing so close. “I understand your concern. I do. And I thank you. But I decided to do it myself not because I don’t trust you. It’s because I thought I could handle it on my own. Maybe I was wro . . .” I couldn’t finish the word. I tried again. “Maybe I moved a little too fast and maybe I should have waited before agreeing to meet with Anthony. And I did tell Jayne,” I said in a small voice.

  “Right before we left, before I could get reinforcements,” Jayne added with look of admonishment.

  I stepped over to the couch and sat down. “Well, I’m still not convinced that I can’t handle it. I was just a little blindsided by . . .” My gaze slid to my father. “By an unexpected visitor.”

  One of the reasons for my parents’ divorce had been my father’s unwillingness to accept or try to understand something he couldn’t see. In the years since our reconciliation, he’d learned to tolerate the unexplained events that seemed to follow my mother and me, but he’d never accepted them. While no longer openly hostile to the improbable idea that speaking with the dead might be a viable thing, he simply turned his head the other way so he didn’t need to confront it, like an ostrich with its head stuck in the sand: If he couldn’t see it, then it must not be there.

  “Mellie,” my mother said with a warning in her voice. “You should still have told us about Marc’s threats. You could have put yourself in danger. Remember, we’re always stronger together.”

  I knew she was referring not only to the members of our new family unit currently surrounding me, all of them responsible in part for the happiness, the house, and the family who lived within its ancient walls, but also to the mantra we’d used before and since Jayne came to us to bind our strength together to fight angry spirits. Although being together made our beacon brighter, it also made us much, much stronger.

  I watched as Nola snuck a piece of fudge from the side table next to her and shoved it in her mouth. I frowned at her, but she looked up at the ceiling—something she’d probably learned from my father.

  “I realize that now,” I said slowly. I’d been independent of all family connections for so long that it was still hard for me to believe I wasn’t expected to do it all on my own. Maybe, deep down, I missed that part of the old Melanie. Despite some of her quirks, which I was trying very hard to bury, my independent nature wasn’t going to go down without a fight. Perhaps I didn’t want it to. Perhaps I only wanted to temper it, to meld the old Melanie into the new to create a stronger me who was fiercely independent but also needed the love and support of others. I appare
ntly didn’t have a clue as to how to make that happen.

  I chewed on my lip as I thought for a moment. “So, I guess this means I’m supposed to bring someone with me to the mausoleum at the Vanderhorst plantation cemetery? Although I don’t see—”

  “I’ll go!” Nola stuck her hand up as if she were in a classroom.

  “I believe you have school.” Jack sent his daughter a stern glance before directing his attention back to me. “Obviously, if a Longo is involved, I need to go with you. They’re like sand fleas—you don’t realize they’re about to swarm and bite until it’s too late.”

  I threw up my hands. “See? Another distraction from your writing! Exactly what I was trying to avoid.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Jayne offered. “If Mother could watch the children, of course. It’s probably not a good thing if the three of us go together.”

  I wasn’t sure which part of her comment made me more uncomfortable—the fact that she understood already the complexities of our abilities or the fact that she’d moved from “Ginette” to “Mother.” It wasn’t that I’d expected her to ask for my permission, but for more than forty years, I’d believed myself to be the only person in the universe authorized to call her Mother.

  “Or you can stay here with the children and Mother will come with me. Just like old times.” I felt everyone looking at me.

  My father cleared his throat. “Jayne said the last time Ginny encountered unpleasant spirits, it took her nearly a month to fully recover. So if Jayne wants to go with Melanie, then I’ll go, too. For protection. Jayne’s kind of new to all this.”

  I jerked my head in his direction. “Who are you, and what have you done with my father?”

  He had the decency to appear abashed. “While Jayne and I have been working in the garden, we’ve had some long and interesting chats. I still think there has to be some scientific explanation for everything, but Jayne has made me understand that if it’s real to her, then I should give her and you and Ginny the benefit of the doubt and go along with it. At least until I can offer an explanation.”

  I saw a serene smile of mutual appreciation pass between Jayne and my mother, leaving me with the familiar feeling of being picked last for a team in gym class. The new Melanie was grateful that my parents and sister now had a close relationship despite having been separated for most of Jayne’s life. But the old Melanie felt the hurt and abandonment smoldering like a banked fire, sparking bits of burning ash into the room.

  I smelled chocolate and turned to find Nola holding out the dish of fudge to me. I smiled gratefully and took a piece, more relieved than I cared to admit that I wasn’t the only person who recognized the weirdness of what had just happened. I took a bite and chewed, glad for the excuse not to have to speak immediately.

  “Then it’s settled,” my mother said. “You’ll let us know when you’re meeting after you speak with Anthony Longo?”

  Before I could tell her I needed to consider my options, the doorbell rang. The dogs began their alarm barking, alerting us that a threat from potential marauders had invaded the piazza. It was never clear what sort of protection the dogs might offer other than ferocious licking around the ankle area, but they were serious about their role as our protection detail.

  “I’ll get it,” Jack said, touching my shoulder on the way to the front door.

  We heard the door open and then: “Jack—it’s been ages!” Rebecca’s voice carried through to the parlor as those remaining let out a collective groan.

  “Rebecca, so good to see you. Feels like yesterday that we saw you last. You and Marc are like a stain we can’t rub out completely.”

  “Oh, Jack,” she said, standing on her tiptoes to air-kiss his cheek. “Always the joker.”

  “Am I?” he asked, his tone one of mock innocence.

  I hurried after Jack so I could stop him before he said something so direct that she might actually get it, and then I’d have to spend hours making her feel better. My mother would insist, since Rebecca, by some horrendous twist of fate, was a cousin. A distant one, I kept reminding myself, but still a cousin.

  She turned her attention to me, a crease between her brows. “Did you tell Jack about my dreams?”

  I quickly shook my head and was lifting my index finger to my neck in a close approximation of slicing it to make her stop, but Jack turned too quickly and saw it.

  “Really, Mellie? There’s more to what you haven’t told me?”

  Before I could think of an appropriate response, Rebecca said, “Oh, come on, Melanie. Surely your marriage is strong enough that you can tell each other everything—even the bad things. Right?”

  “Apparently not,” Jack said.

  “Of course,” I said simultaneously.

  Jack met my gaze, his eyebrows raised expectantly.

  Rebecca cleared her throat. “I had two dreams: one where a man without eyes and wearing old-fashioned clothes was after you and Melanie, and the other was of an unidentifiable person—I think it was a man—trying to bury you alive.”

  “I see,” he said slowly. “Well, then, thanks for letting me know that I should avoid strange men and open graves. Just wish I’d heard it from my wife.”

  To my relief, Sophie appeared from behind Rebecca carrying a large box stuffed to the brim with piney-smelling greenery. Her face was covered but I knew it was her from the bright blue braids of hair that crisscrossed her scalp like she’d been attacked by a runaway sewing machine.

  Blowing a pine bough away from her mouth, she said, “There are a bunch more boxes in the back of Veronica’s SUV if someone could help bring it all in.”

  “I’ll get it,” Jack said. He took the box from Sophie, setting it down in the vestibule before turning his most charming smile on me. “We’ll talk about this later.”

  I started to say something that might sound like an apology, but I was distracted by the small bag that Rebecca clutched in her pink-gloved hand. “What’s in there?” I asked.

  “Contraband.” Sophie stepped in front of us, her hands on her hips. “I’ve already explained several times that all the decorations in the progressive dinner homes have to be authentic—as in what people would find in houses during the Revolutionary War period.”

  Rebecca looked outraged. “That’s only because the colonists didn’t have bedazzling guns back in the day!” She held aloft what looked like a small laser gun with a dangling electric cord. “But if they did, I’m sure all of their pineapples and mobcaps would have been bedazzled.”

  Sophie took a step toward Rebecca. “If you don’t put that thing away, it won’t be fruit and caps getting bedazzled!”

  “Stop,” I shouted, grabbing the gun from Rebecca’s hand. “I’m sure we can speak rationally about this later. Right now, let’s get everything inside to see what we have and decide where it’s going to go, all right?”

  An icy wind blew through the door, even colder than the chilly November day, and I looked up to see Veronica and Jack entering the vestibule, followed by Veronica’s husband, Michael. I smelled Vanilla Musk perfume before I saw the blob of light hovering behind them, announcing a familiar presence.

  I greeted the newcomers, hoping Michael would leave as soon as he’d deposited the bags he’d brought into the house. Ever since our uncomfortable confrontation in which he’d told me in no uncertain terms that I was to have nothing to do with helping his wife in her quest to find out what had happened to her sister more than twenty years before, I hadn’t spoken two words to him. I hoped he was as eager to avoid me as I was to avoid him.

  I turned toward Veronica and smiled. “Glad to see you’re wearing black and white, as I have a feeling we might need to play referee with Rebecca and Sophie.” I picked up several bags containing dried oranges and cloves and brought them to the dining room table to be artfully displayed by someone besides myself, hoping by the time I’d returned,
Michael would be gone.

  “Hello, Melanie.” Michael’s voice was close to my ear, making me drop one of the bags on the smooth dark wood of the table, spilling oranges, which began to roll. I was on the opposite side of the table and couldn’t reach them before they fell off the edge, my view blocked by the ginormous centerpiece of flowers and greens from the garden that Mrs. Houlihan changed almost daily. I stood frozen, waiting for the sound of the oranges splatting on the floor.

  When all I heard was the sound of General Lee licking himself under the table, I walked slowly to the other side and was brought up short by the sight of six plump oranges lined up in a neat row like soldiers, perched precariously at the table’s edge.

  “How did you do that?” Michael asked, his voice a little higher than usual.

  I searched the room for Adrienne, Veronica’s spectral sister, wondering why she was hiding from me. But I knew she was there. I could smell her perfume as if it had just been sprayed in the air in front of me.

  I met his gaze. “Magic,” I said.

  He didn’t smile. “I don’t believe in magic.”

  “I don’t think you need to believe in magic to see it.”

  He picked up one of the oranges to examine it, perhaps hoping to find a squared bottom. Without looking at me, he said, “I’m glad Veronica has found something to occupy herself with other than the pointless search for her sister’s murderer. I hope you remember what I said before—about how important it is to me that you don’t get involved with Veronica’s little . . . obsession. It will go away a lot faster if it’s not validated.”

  I tried to keep my temper in check. “I don’t find the desire to solve her sister’s murder an ‘obsession.’ I think it’s a reasonable quest. As for me helping her, she hasn’t asked.”

  He was still holding the orange as his gaze shot back to meet mine. “And if she does? I know she wants you to channel—or whatever it is you say you do to speak with dead people—Adrienne. Would you say yes?”