The Christmas Spirits on Tradd Street

by Karen White

  “This is ridiculous,” Marc said, moving toward Jack just as Thomas took a step in Marc’s direction. He fumbled with his words for a moment before a grin lifted his mouth. “You’re still trespassing. To get to the cemetery you had to pass through private property and park your cars on land belonging to Anthony.” He faced Thomas. “I want you to arrest these four people for trespassing.”

  “So much for family,” I mumbled.

  “So you’ll have time to remove whatever is buried under those markers?” Jack said. “I think not.”

  Marc turned to Anthony. “Tell them, Anthony. Tell them that you want them off of your property now.”

  “Don’t you dare,” Jayne shouted, approaching Anthony with a raised hand. He didn’t even bother to block her slap.

  “Detective, that’s physical assault,” Marc shouted. “We are pressing charges and want her arrested.”

  “No.” Anthony stepped away from where Marc was facing off with Jack. “We’re not pressing charges. I deserved that.”

  He began to walk away, brushing roughly against his brother and making Marc stumble.

  “Hey, what’s your problem?” Marc said, rushing after Anthony and grabbing him by the shoulders. “You said it was easier than taking candy from a baby, remember?”

  Anthony tried to pull back, but Marc wouldn’t let go. He tilted his head as he stared at his younger brother. “You didn’t sleep with her, did you? I told you not to complicate things.”

  Anthony drew his fist back for a punch, but before he could swing, Marc flew backward, propelled by an unseen force and thrown twenty feet before landing flat on his back with a grunt.

  Thomas was the only one to move, rushing over to Marc. Instead of taking the offered hand to help him up, Marc twisted in the opposite direction, pulling himself to stand and angrily dusting the snow from the sleeves of his jacket. “What the—”

  Before he could finish the sentence, he was knocked down again, then dragged through the snow by his feet toward the mausoleum. He clawed at the ground, trying to find purchase, his face showing his terror. Jayne and I both moved forward to help, but whatever was pulling him was too strong and fast. Before we reached him, the mausoleum had swallowed him, his head bumping like a rubber ball against the brick steps, the gate slamming in our faces. We wrapped our fingers around the bars and shook them, but the gate remained unyielding.

  “Marc!” Anthony shouted as he and Thomas ran up behind us. Thomas had grabbed Marc’s light, and he shone it inside, moving from one crypt to another, then back, looking for Marc.

  “Marc!” Thomas shouted. Slowly, he trained the light on the top of Lawrence’s crypt and paused. The lid had been slid back unevenly, a corner of it hanging over the edge, the opening big enough for a man to fit through.

  “Is there another entrance to this?” Thomas asked.

  I half listened to Anthony’s answer as I became aware of two black shadows in front of Lawrence’s crypt. As Jayne and I watched, the shadows took on human forms. I told my feet to back away, to start running as fast as they could in the opposite direction, but I was frozen, forced to stay and watch whatever was about to unfold. Lying prone, the red spot on his cravat larger now, was the man I recognized as Lawrence, and standing over him was an older man with graying hair pulled back in a ponytail and wearing a heavy cape. He turned to look at me, his cape billowing open and revealing a pistol in his hand. His eyes were piercing, asking me for something I couldn’t understand.

  “Forgiveness,” Jayne whispered from beside me.

  I nodded, because I knew that was the word I’d heard inside my head. It was the reason I wasn’t afraid. I understood that I wasn’t meant to be. And when I looked down at the prone figure of Lawrence, I understood something else, too.

  “It’s his father,” Jayne whispered. “It was Carrollton Vanderhorst who killed him. He didn’t feel as if he had a choice.”

  I nodded, knowing she was right. “Neither did Lawrence.” I closed my eyes, trying to hear the voices in my head, to decipher the words that sounded as if they were out of order, nodding when I finally understood. “He felt betrayed by Eliza for being a spy and for loving another man, so he killed them both.” I looked at the spirit of the old man, his face a mask of old grief. “Tell Lawrence you forgive him for what he did,” I whispered. “So he can forgive you, too.”

  A soft rumbling vibrated the earth beneath us and I heard Anthony swear behind me.

  “It’s okay,” Jayne said. “Their souls are being released.”

  The ground trembled one more time as lightning flashed through the sky above us, showering us with the smell of burnt ions and filling the mausoleum with a bright, bluish white light. When it had faded, the mausoleum was empty, the only sounds a low moaning from the direction of the opened crypt and the click of the gate latch as the door slowly began swinging open.

  Anthony pushed it fully open and entered, Thomas and Jayne close behind. I felt a soft tug on my arm and turned around, thinking it was Jack, but no one was there. “Eliza?”

  A firm push propelled me away from the mausoleum. I grabbed my phone and turned on the flashlight, unsure what had happened to my camping light. “Jack?” I called out. I spun around with my light, looking for him. I’d begun heading toward the front gate when a hard tug on my arm propelled me in the opposite direction.

  I had taken only three steps before I saw it was Eliza, and where she was directing me. One of the soft dips that I had just navigated around during my gravestone search was now a gaping hole, a blemish on the pristine white ground.

  “Jack!” I screamed. I ran to the edge of the hole and stared down at the mix of dark soil and snow, Rebecca’s dream of Jack being buried alive playing like a movie reel in my head. “Jack!” I screamed again.

  Jayne came from behind and knelt next to me. “There,” she shouted, pointing to something pale and still near the bottom of the six-foot hole. “He’s there.”

  I might have screamed again, the sight of Jack’s closed eyes and pale face at the bottom of a grave too surreal to accept.

  “I’ll get help,” Jayne said, moving to stand.

  While she ran to get Thomas, I lowered myself into the pit, no longer feeling the cold or the fear of the last few hours. I didn’t think about how I would get out of the pit or even whether it was done collapsing. I had no idea how many coffins had been buried here, or how deep. I didn’t care. If something happened to Jack, nothing else would ever matter again.

  His body was completely covered up to his nose with the dirt and snow. I carefully crawled over, taking care to distribute my weight evenly, until my fingers could reach his face and begin brushing the dirt off his chin and mouth. “Jack, it’s Mellie. Don’t talk—I’ve got to get the dirt off your face first. Just nod that you can hear me.”

  He didn’t move or respond in any way, his face as still and colorless as the moon as he lay at the bottom of the grave, just as Rebecca had seen in her dreams.

  Kiss him. I wasn’t sure if the words had been spoken aloud, but I looked up at the edge of the collapsed grave and saw the British soldier standing next to Eliza, his arm around her. Kiss him.

  I pinched Jack’s nose closed and pressed my mouth against his and blew a deep breath. When nothing happened, I did it again, harder this time, imagining his lungs expanding with the air of my breath. He gasped, his eyes blinking open as he took a breath on his own, his eyelids fluttering until he caught sight of me.

  “Oh, Jack. You’re going to be okay. I’m here. It’s Mellie. I found the rubies!” His eyes focused on me and I smiled. “I love you, Jack.”

  His eyes looked behind me to where Anthony and Thomas had replaced Eliza and Alexander and were peering at us from the top of the grave. Then Jack’s eyes shifted back to me, and there was no warmth or light in them. “Go. To. Hell.”

  CHAPTER 35

  The r
est of the night was mostly a blur—the fire and rescue sirens, the ambulance, the trip to the hospital with Thomas and Jayne in the detective’s four-wheel-drive truck. I remembered Jack turning his head away from me as they loaded him into the back of the ambulance and strapped him lying down into a bench seat, and I remembered the shock of seeing Marc as they slid his gurney in next to Jack. I didn’t recognize him at first, and not because of the large, swollen bruise on the side of his face. It was because of his hair—his thick, dark brown hair had gone completely white, incongruous with his black eyebrows and unlined face. He asked me to call Rebecca, and I did, and that was the last coherent memory I had.

  When I awoke the following morning, I was at my mother’s house. I vaguely recalled her picking me up at the hospital and telling me that Jack was fine except for some bruising and a sprained ankle. They’d wanted to keep him overnight for observation, and even though I’d been prepared to wait and bring him home the next morning, he’d refused to see me and had requested someone else—anyone else—to drive him. I’d been too stunned to cry and allowed my mother to lead me from the hospital, as Jayne and Thomas had offered to stay and chauffeur Jack when he was discharged.

  I sat up in my old bedroom, feeling disoriented, as if I’d been standing on a moving sidewalk that had suddenly stopped. I recalled Jack’s hurtful words and could feel nothing but shame, knowing I’d deserved them. I needed my babies, needed to see them and hold them and talk with Nola and confirm we were all going to be all right. That Jack would forgive me. I threw off the covers and pulled on the green velvet dress I’d worn to the party the night before, then ran downstairs in search of my mother.

  She was just putting down her cell phone when I walked into the kitchen. She was dressed and perfectly made-up, but her gaze didn’t falter as she took in my unbrushed hair and wrinkled dress. “That was Amelia. She said the twins have been perfect angels and she’s happy to keep them a little longer if you need her to. She already asked Nola to bring over more supplies just in case your answer was yes.”

  I opened my mouth to say something, but all that came out was a loud sob that quickly become a torrent of tears I couldn’t stop. She came over to me and enveloped me in a warm and sweetly scented embrace, bringing back old memories of when I was a little girl. The girl I’d been before she’d left me behind.

  My mother brought me into the parlor and sat me down on the couch, where I continued to sob for five minutes, until I had no more tears left. She waited a moment before pulling back and lifting my chin with her fingers.

  “So, what are you going to do, Mellie?”

  “You know?” I sniffled.

  She nodded. “When Jayne called me to tell me you were all at the hospital, she filled me in on what happened.” She kept all judgment from her voice, making me so grateful that I cried a fresh torrent of tears.

  When I was done, I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand, recalling what she’d just said. This wasn’t how I’d anticipated the conversation going. I’d envisioned her commiserating with me, telling me that even though things hadn’t turned out as planned, I’d been smart and resourceful and everything had worked out all right in the end. And then I’d sit and listen while she told me what I needed to do next. When she didn’t speak, I asked, “So, what should I do now?”

  “You’ve really hurt Jack, Mellie. And your marriage. The damage might even be irreparable.”

  I stood abruptly. “Why are you saying this? I thought you would be on my side.”

  “I am on your side. That’s why I’m saying this. Because someone has to. You deliberately kept Jack in the dark so you, for reasons I’ve yet to determine, could solve a mystery and keep the glory all for yourself. Even though you’d promised Jack you wouldn’t. You lied to him, Mellie, and now you expect him to applaud your cleverness. That’s not how a good marriage works. I thought you’d already learned that, but apparently I was wrong.”

  I felt the strong impulse to find a disconnected phone and call my grandmother.

  “She’d tell you the same thing.” My mother looked at me with knowing eyes. “No, I can’t read minds, but I know how you think. And finding someone to agree with you is not how you mature. Sometimes you remind me of a moth at a porch light, thinking that if it hits the light one more time it will get a different result. I’d like to think you’re smarter than that.”

  I sat back down on the couch, deflated. “So what do I do?”

  “What do you think you should do?”

  She raised her brows as my eyes met hers. “Apologize?”

  “That would be a good start. It won’t be enough, but it’s a start.”

  My heart jerked and skidded. “What do you mean, it won’t be enough?”

  “You’ve apologized before, remember? And made promises. But neither seemed to be important enough to you. You have to find a way to really mean it, and to make sure he knows it. Just realize that it won’t happen overnight. Assuming he can forgive you.” She took my hand. “Mellie, I know I’m partly why you are the way you are. I abandoned you, leaving you to be raised by your alcoholic father. To survive your childhood you decided to rely only on yourself. And I’m so proud of you, of how you’ve succeeded despite everything. I think your resistance to change is because you’ve never wanted to forget how far you’ve come since you were that lonely little girl. Or that you’ve done it all by yourself.” She squeezed my hand. “But just because you might rely on someone else doesn’t negate any of where you’ve been or what you are. You need to learn to accept that.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not resisting change. I want to change—I’m ready for it. I just need to let Jack know.” I stood up again. “I’ll go over there right now.”

  My mother let go of my hands with a sigh. I marched to the door and yanked it open. “Oh.” The street was indistinguishable from the curbs or sidewalks under the white layer of snow, the points at the tops of the iron fencing less menacing with their caps of white.

  Mother came from behind me and shut the door. “May I suggest a shower and hair brushing first? There are new toothbrushes and toothpaste in the linen closet in your bathroom, and you can use my makeup. I’ll leave an outfit on your bed—something in a bright and cheerful color—and your snow boots are on the back porch steps and your coat is in the hall closet. Carry your heels so you can put them on when you go talk to Jack. Men do love high heels.”

  “And you think that will work?”

  She shook her head. “No. But it can’t hurt.”

  I frowned. “Maybe I should walk barefoot through the snow to let him know how sorry I am.”

  “It might be worth a try,” Mother said, embracing me. Holding me at arm’s length, she added, “Jack loves you so much, Mellie. And you love him, too. And you’ve got those two precious babies and Nola, who need you two to make this work. Love is a great foundation, but there has to be trust, too. Sadly, trust is a lot harder to maintain than love. You’re going to have to work very, very hard to regain his trust.” She stepped back, eyeing me up and down. “The only thing I know for sure is that looking like a hot mess isn’t a good way to start. And it will give you time to think about what you want to say. You know how badly things can go when you act and speak rashly.”

  I hurried away up the stairs before I began to sob again.

  * * *

  • • •

  The winter wonderland I crossed on my walk home was something out of a storybook. Amelia texted me a photograph of the twins bundled up like Eskimos sitting in the snow next to a snowman with stick arms and a carrot nose and what looked like Oreo cookie eyes. The picture made me want to cry, so I slipped my phone back in my pocket and continued to trudge down the street.

  The temperature had already begun to climb with the rising of the sun in a cloudless blue sky. The sound of dripping gutters and tree branches tittered along both sides of the street like happy birdsong.
Children and adults alike were outside using anything they could find for sleds—including flattened cardboard boxes and inner tubes—spending most of their time looking for something that resembled a hill to slide down. I returned smiles and waves, but my heart felt as frozen as the snow beneath my boots.

  My house on Tradd Street was oddly quiet when I opened the front door, only the sounds of the Sunday church bells from St. Michael’s echoing throughout the vacant rooms. Someone—probably my dad—had moved the furniture back into position, the temporary tables and chairs already folded and stacked in the dining room to be picked up the following day by the rental company.

  The house had the sad, empty air of finality, the laughter and chatter of so many people ushered outside leaving behind only silence. Even the wandering spirits that lived there were suddenly absent, either exhausted from all the activity of the party, or worried about what was going to happen next. Or maybe that was just me.

  “Jack?” I called, slipping out of my boots and putting on my heels.

  I heard movement from upstairs, but no one responded.

  “Jack?” I called again, climbing the stairs quickly. I stood at the top, aware of the lightness in the air, as if it had just been cleansed.

  I peered into Nola’s room and spotted the jewelry cabinet, all the drawers and the top neatly closed. I thought of the hidden compartment and imagined Eliza bending forward and hiding the brooch with the four disguised rubies. I remembered examining it with Sophie, how she’d said the hinges were broken because the door had been ripped off as if by an impatient hand. I pictured Lawrence threatening Eliza to tell him where the rubies were, or spying on her to discover where they’d been hidden. He’d killed her regardless, making it look like suicide. And his own father had killed him as punishment or to get the rubies back; we’d never know. But they had made their peace with each other in the mausoleum, and Eliza and Alexander were gone, too, together finally for all eternity. Since they’d helped me find Jack, I’d no longer felt their presence. It felt good to know we’d helped one another, a connection through time that I was lucky enough to experience. I’d never thought of it that way before, and I felt my chest expand as I considered the implications.