Ellie scratched the golden retriever between his ears. “Pixie would be happy to share some of her food with her new friend.”
“You mean kibble for pip-squeaks? He’d eat the whole bag in one go.” He left the room and returned a few minutes later fully dressed. “I need to check on my house anyway.”
“Of course you do.” She walked with him down the hall to the front door. As he was putting on his raincoat, she risked a glance toward the stairs, expecting to see her grandmother’s ghost floating toward her.
Julian pinched her chin. “Don’t worry, pretty lady. There’s no such thing as ghosts.” He pulled his hood over his head and took off down the sidewalk with Mills at his side.
Ellie closed and locked the door. She looked down at her dog, who stared back at her with the saddest eyes she’d ever seen. “I know, little girl. I wanted them to stay, too.” She picked her dog up and held her close. “After we eat dinner, we’ll find a way to entertain ourselves.” Without Wi-Fi, her choices were limited. She couldn’t watch Netflix on her iPad or download a book to her Kindle app. “Maddie brought in plenty of wood. Maybe we’ll build a fire in the library. It can’t be that hard, right? We can always Google best practices for lighting a fire.” Her shoulders slumped. “Or not. We’ll just have to wing it on our own.”
Ellie placed her casserole in the oven, preferring a slow reheat to the microwave. She was scooping penne with vodka sauce onto a plate forty-five minutes later when someone pounded on the front door.
Who in the world is out in this weather? she thought as she hurried to the door.
She was surprised to see Julian on her front porch, dressed like a sailor in head-to-toe yellow foul weather gear. Mills shivered beside him, and torrents of rain blew sideways behind them. When a gray yard-size trash can bounced down the street, she grabbed him by the arm. “Get in here,” she said, and yanked him inside. She closed the door against the stormy night. “What’re you doing here?”
“You forgot to give me your number.” Her face scrunched up in confusion, and he added, “For the antiques dealer.”
“I’m pretty sure that could’ve waited, Julian.” She planted her fists on her hips, pretending to be cross, but secretly she was pleased, not only because she wanted to be with him but because she didn’t want to be alone in the house during a hurricane with her grandmother’s spirit on the loose.
“I brought a change of clothes with me,” he said, holding up a black trash bag. “Although, I think my sailor suit kept these dry.” He slipped off his coat and stepped out of his bibs. He felt his plaid cotton shirt and jeans. “Yep. All dry.” He removed a towel from the bag, draped it across his dog, and then stuck his hand in the bag once again. “For you.” He handed her a bottle of liquor. “Consider it a housewarming gift.”
She read the label on the cognac bottle. “I’m impressed. You brought the good stuff.”
He dropped his bag to the floor beside the door. “We’re having a hurricane party. The situation calls for the best.”
“I applaud your enthusiasm.” She set the cognac bottle on the Church of England altar. “I was just getting dinner ready. Are you hungry?”
He patted his belly. “Starving.”
“In that case, do you mind starting a fire in the library while I fix our plates?”
He rubbed his hands together like a little boy on his first camping trip with his father. “I’m on it.”
Forty-five minutes later, Julian and Ellie abandoned their empty plates on the coffee table beside them and sank deep into the velvet cushions at opposite ends of the sofa. The dogs napped on the floor in front of the crackling fire while the wind howled outside the shuttered windows.
“You realize I’m going to have to spend the night,” Julian said.
She cut her eyes at him without moving her head. “You can sleep in my grandmother’s bed.”
“No thanks.” He closed his eyes and placed his folded hands in his lap. “I’m plenty comfortable right here.”
They lounged in a food coma until Pixie stirred twenty minutes later. She stretched her front legs and wandered over to Ellie, sniffing at her right hand that was dangling off the side of the sofa.
Julian cracked an eyelid at Pixie. “Bigger dogs have bigger bladders. You should consider that the next time you shop for a pet.”
Ellie swung her legs over the side of the sofa and sat up. “I can put paper down in the kitchen for Pixie. That won’t work for your large dog.”
“It would work, but Mills has better manners than that.” Julian rolled off the sofa. “Let’s open the front door for them and see what they do.”
As it turned out, Pixie followed Mills’s lead. They ran to the edge of the porch, squatted to do their business, and scampered back inside to the library, resuming their positions in front of the fire. Julian took their dirty plates to the kitchen while Ellie went upstairs for bedding. She gathered all the duvets, blankets, and pillows she could carry. She had no intention of sleeping upstairs alone with her grandmother’s spirit floating around and the hurricane wailing like a banshee outside.
They sipped cognac and talked well into the night. Julian confided in Ellie about his ex-wife who had come home from her nursing job at MUSC three years ago and announced she was taking their daughter and moving to Spartanburg, about as far away as she could get from Charleston but still be in the state of South Carolina in order to abide by custody laws. “She totally blindsided me,” he said. “I thought everything was fine in our marriage. I was happy. I assumed she was as well. She said she no longer loved me and she needed a change. I wish she’d at least given our marriage a chance, but she refused to consider seeing a marriage counselor. Weekends twice a month with a seven-year-old isn’t enough. At least not for me. We used to be close. Now our relationship feels strained. I sense her mother may be feeding Katie some unflattering lies about me.”
He reached for the bottle on the coffee table and poured each of them another finger of cognac. “It’s your turn to share. Tell me your deepest, darkest secret.”
“If only I could remember it.” She spoke of her memory loss and her mother’s diaries. “Something bad happened to me in this house when I was a child. I know it, like I know my name is Ellie Pringle. A have a strong hunch there are more of my mother’s diaries somewhere in this house that will provide the answers I’m looking for.”
“And you have no idea what that something might have been? I’m a good listener, if you want to talk about it.”
Ellie smiled at him. “I sense that about you, actually.” Her expression turned serious. “I’ll tell you about it sometime, but not tonight. I’d hate to ruin a perfectly good hurricane party.”
Tipsy from the cognac, they snuggled together under a mound of blankets with him spooning her from behind. When she opened her eyes six hours later, Julian and the dogs were gone. She heard the soft murmur of voices on Bennett’s portable TV from down the hall and smelled the faint aroma of coffee brewing. She folded the bed covers into a neat pile on the sofa. She was headed toward the kitchen when Julian appeared in the doorway.
“Coffee?” He held out a steaming mug. “I took the liberty of adding cream and sugar. You seem like a super sweet girl to me.”
She took the mug from him. “That’s bad, Julian,” she said in response to his cheesy remark.
“I guess I’m a little rusty. I haven’t tried to pick up a girl since my college days.”
She would let him pick her up any day, corny lines and all.
The dogs, reeking of wet fur, appeared at his side. “I take it they’ve been out.”
“I had to drag them. Pip-squeak was too afraid to venture into the yard. This time she pooped on the porch. Lucky for you, her turd was so lightweight, the wind blew it away.”
Ellie rolled her eyes at him. “I can’t believe we haven’t lost power yet.”
“Shh!” he said, bringing his fingers to his lips. “Don’t say it. Most of Charleston is without.”
“Are the streets flooded?” she asked.
“Not too bad.” He stepped out of her way and gestured toward the front door. “See for yourself.”
They were nearing the door when the sound of dripping water coming from somewhere upstairs stopped her in her tracks. “Do you hear that?”
He narrowed his eyes and listened. “That’s not good.” He handed her his mug, yanked the door open, and ran barefoot out into the yard. She stood in the doorway, holding both coffee mugs, watching him. He leaned into the wind as he shielded his eyes and stared up at the house. She noticed a small river flowing down South Battery Street behind him.
“The tarp has blown back,” he called to her, his voice barely audible over the roar of the wind. “Get every bucket you can find and meet me in the attic.” He darted back into the house and up the stairs.
Ellie deposited the coffee mugs on the Church of England altar on her way to the laundry. She searched all the cabinets and closets in there and in the kitchen. The cooler Bennett had dropped off and the two Maddie had brought in from the garage were the only suitable containers she could find for water collecting. She dragged them up the stairs to the attic. The rain was pouring in through leaks in the roof and then seeping through the ceiling in her grandmother’s bedroom. For the next hour and a half, they ran up and down the stairs, emptying and repositioning the buckets until the flow was finally under control.
Exhausted, she collapsed on a nearby steamer trunk. “I blame this on you, Julian. You unleashed my grandmother’s spirit on us by removing her door.”
He kneed her to move over so as to make room for him on the trunk. “Are you suggesting your grandmother is responsible for the tarp blowing off?”
Feeling herself near tears, she propped her elbows on her knees and buried her face in her hands. “I know it sounds twisted. I didn’t believe in ghosts until I came here. Why’d my grandmother have to drag me into it? She should’ve donated this money pit to the Charleston Historical Society and called it a day.”
He nudged her with his shoulder. “Are we feeling sorry for ourselves?”
“You’re damn right I’m feeling sorry for myself.” She swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. “Eleanor Pringle totally disrupted my life. I moved all the way across the country to live in a house that’s falling down around me and haunted by ghosts. I’m creeped out by all her possessions, and I’ve become obsessed with remembering my past when I’m clearly better off not knowing what happened to me here.”
“Look.” He rubbed circles on her back between her shoulder blades. “You’ve just made a drastic change in your life. It’s only natural for you to feel overwhelmed. Give yourself some time to adjust. I agree, there is an enormous amount of work that needs to be done to this house, but I can help you with all that.”
She sniffled. “Would you?”
He pulled her close to him. “Of course I will. You’re a super sweet girl.” He kissed her on the side of the head. “You need a friend, and I enjoy your company. I’m even growing attached to Pip-squeak. But don’t tell anyone I admitted that.”
Tears blurred her vision as she stared down at her lap. She noticed a brass plate on the top of the steamer trunk and ran her fingers across the engraved initials—A. L. P. She leaped to her feet. “Wait a minute! What are we sitting on?” She took him by the arm and hauled him off the trunk.
“An old trunk, like the one I took to camp every summer,” Julian said.
“Those are my mother’s initials.” She pointed to the brass plate. “Maybe her diaries are in here.” She knelt down in front of the trunk and fidgeted with the lock. “No telling where the key is.”
Removing a pocketknife from his pocket, he knelt down beside her. “I can pry it open, but it might ruin the lock.”
“The lock is the least of my concerns,” she said, and moved out of his way.
Julian jimmied the lock open and lifted the lid. Ellie’s heart sank when she saw the party dresses stuffed inside—elaborate frocks made of taffeta, satin, and velvet. She dug through the dresses, tossing them in a heap on the attic floor beside the trunk. When she reached the bottom, she fell back on her rear end. “Nothing.”
Julian tilted his head from side to side as he scrutinized the trunk from different angles. “Maybe not. It looks like the trunk might have a false bottom.” Leaning over, he reached inside and pried free the board that served as the fake bottom. “Bingo!”
Ellie peered inside the trunk. Scattered across the bottom were six leather-bound journals.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Ashton
The train ride south seemed endless. The other passengers were tucked away for the night in their berths, but I couldn’t sleep for worrying over how Mother would react to my predicament. Pacing up and down the aisles did little to alleviate my anxiety, and the six-hour delay at Union Station in Washington only added to my angst. When we finally arrived in Charleston, I took a taxi from the train station and got home just as my mother was sitting down to dinner in the dining room.
She barely glanced in my direction when I entered the room. “Well now. Look what the cat drug in.”
“It’s nice to see you, too, Mother.” I’d learned from years of experience that the direct approach was the best approach with her. Pulling a chair up to the table beside her, I placed my hands on the table and laced my fingers together. “I know how much you appreciate it when people are up front with you, so I’ll come right out and tell you why I’m here. I’m pregnant, Mother—too far along to have an abortion, not that I would even consider it if it were an option. If you’ll allow me to stay here until the baby comes, I plan to put it up for adoption and return to my life in New York. I’ll be out of your hair for good.”
Mother dropped her fork to her plate with a clatter so loud it made me tremble all over. Her eyes bore into mine. “So you’ve come running home to me with your tail between your legs and a baby in your belly. Who and where is the father?”
I told her the father is no longer a part of my life, that we had a relationship but it is over, and that is all she needs to know. I was reassured by the strength in my voice. I’d grown a backbone during my time in New York.
“Humph. If you’d married James Middleton like you were meant to, we’d be planning your baby shower, not hiding in shame. And hide you will. I won’t have you out on the streets for everyone in Charleston to see your womb swelling from the bastard growing inside it. If word about this gets out, it will spread like wildfire. Flaunting your half-naked body in those raunchy fashion magazines has earned you celebrity status around here. I’ve had to cut down on the number of social engagements I attend because your starstruck fans are constantly approaching me. One young woman had the audacity to ask me for my autograph.”
“Most mothers would be proud of my success.”
“Success!” My mother brought her fist down on the table, rattling her plate. “You’ve made a mess of your life and brought that mess home for me to deal with. You call that a success?”
I sat up taller in my chair. “In the past three years, I’ve appeared on the covers of every major New York fashion magazine. Yes, Mother, I call that a success.”
“I think your behavior is deplorable. You’ve cheapened yourself. No self-respecting man will ever marry you now.” She folded her linen napkin, placed it on her plate, and rose from the table. “If you want to remain in my house, we’ll discuss in the morning the rules by which you’ll live here.”
But Mother had already left for church by the time I woke up the next morning. Homesick for New York, I walked north to Broad Street and west until I located a newspaper stand. I purchased a New York Times and strolled the long way back to the Battery, enjoying the fragrant spring air. My mother was waiting for me at the front door when I arrived home, her black pillbox hat still perched on her head and her handbag dangling from her arm. “I told you not to leave this house.”
Holding the paper out as evidence, I explained that I�
�d only gone over to Broad Street for a newspaper.
“When I said don’t leave this house, I meant don’t walk to the end of the sidewalk. You may go out in the back garden, and that’s it.”
I rolled my eyes at her. “Geez, Mother, don’t you think you’re overreacting?”
I did not see the blow coming when she hauled off and smacked me across the face. My hand flew to my cheek. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Maddie, the young black maid Mother had hired in my absence, peeking at us from around the doorway to the dining room.
“Don’t you roll your eyes at me, young lady,” Mother said, wagging her finger in my face. “You will abide by my rules while you’re living in my house, or you will leave.” She grabbed my father’s jogging stick from the umbrella stand in the corner of the hall and chased me to the stairs with it.
My hand still pressed to my cheek, I went to my room, where I stayed for the rest of the day. Someone had stripped my room of every trace of my past life. Gone were the clothes from my closets and drawers. Gone were the ribbons and trophies I’d won showing horses and sailing in regattas. All my framed photographs of friends, including the only picture I owned of my father, had disappeared. The collection of black-and-white images I’d photographed and matted in my photography class in college had been taken off the walls. The white eyelet comforter and chintz skirt of lavender bouquets that had once adorned my bed had been replaced with a set of scratchy sheets and a thin cotton blanket. The only sign that my room had ever been inhabited was a flimsy cardboard box stuffed full of toys and tucked away at the back of my closet.
When I asked Mother about my things over dinner, she told me that since I’d left town without so much as a note or a goodbye she assumed I no longer wanted them and gave them away to the Salvation Army.
Mother has always been strict, but she’s never hit me before. She changed while I was in New York. Her stare has grown colder and her demands more rigid. Her mistrust of the world now borders on paranoia. Things have worsened in the days, weeks, and months since I got home. Mother rules over this household with dictatorial superiority. Dead bolts have appeared on the doors downstairs, and the ones leading to the second-floor piazza have been permanently sealed. The security system she had installed is controlled by a small silver key, which she wears on a red satin ribbon around her neck. She’s stopped going out altogether, preferring instead to watch over me like the warden on a jailhouse block.
Magnolia Nights Page 10
