by Karen White
“Interesting,” I said, entering my office slowly and putting my purse and briefcase on a chair before sitting down opposite him. I had no idea what he was talking about, since the only thing I used the newspaper for was to examine the real estate listings.
“You are familiar with the Hunley, right?”
I forced myself not to roll my eyes at him. One could not be a Charlestonian and not know about the Confederate submarine that had sunk almost one and a half centuries before and had recently been raised to great fanfare. I might not know how many points the Dow average had plummeted in the last weeks, but I knew about the Hunley.
I glanced down at my opened calendar and began to feel a little annoyed. I flicked my eyes up, realizing that Dave was watching me.
“You’ve got a pretty busy schedule this week, Melanie.”
Maybe this wasn’t such a bad thing after all. I smiled, keeping my lips from quivering. “Yes. I do. Business has been very good, despite the real estate market not being what we’d want it to be right now. I’ve already met my sales quota for the month and we’re only halfway through.”
He began folding up the newspaper, making deliberate sharp creases as he folded it smaller and smaller. I began to feel nervous again. He slapped the newspaper on my desk and stood. I stood, too, not wanting to give him the advantage of towering over me. With heels, we were on an even keel.
“But you’d still be able to fit in a new client or two,” he said, examining me closely with brown eyes that were rumored to have made grown men cry.
I swallowed. “Of course. I pride myself on being organized and diligent, and I’m more than capable of handling a fairly large workload. You know that, Mr. Henderson.”
He put his fists on my desk and leaned toward me, his face flushing a little. “Then why would you send a celebrity client to Jimmy Thorn-hill instead of taking her on yourself ? Especially when she’s your own mother?”
I drew myself up to my full height, my anger greedily taking over my apprehension. “Because Jimmy needs the boost of confidence a big sale could give him. My mother knows the house she wants, so it wouldn’t stress him very much. She just needs somebody to handle the paperwork for her.” I glared at him. “And why should it matter to you? Henderson Realty gets credit for the sale regardless of who handles it.”
He came around the desk so that he stood in front of me. “I care when a potential client has to call me personally to ask for another Realtor.”
I swallowed, forcing myself to make my voice sound strong. “My mother called you?”
“Yes. We’re acquaintances from years ago. She was almost in tears when she called me, wondering why you wouldn’t help her.”
“And what did you tell her?” My two donuts and latte fell firmly into the pit of my stomach.
He smiled his closing smile—the smile I knew meant that business was over and he’d won. “I told her that you would call her this morning to schedule a showing of the Legare Street property.” He straightened. “Unless, of course, you’re not strong enough to look past your differences with your mother to clinch this sale. You’d grab the top sales award for the month for sure.” He reached over to my credenza and picked up his golf glove.
“Of course, I could let Wendy Wax handle the sale. Her numbers are pretty close to yours, you know.”
“But what about Jimmy? He could really use the sale.”
Dave shrugged. “Too soft. The Texan who owns the house on Legare is a real tightwad. I’ve met him a few times at the club. Never buys his round of drinks, if you know what I mean. We need somebody real sharp for this deal. And Wendy can handle it if you’re too busy.”
I couldn’t stand the thought of my coworker’s smugness if she handled this deal instead of me. I knew I’d been played but I couldn’t stop myself. “No. That’s fine. I’ll handle it.”
He saluted me with his golf glove. “That’s the Melanie I know. Well, I’m glad we had this discussion and we’re all in agreement here. I’ll expect a call from you to let me know the status on the sale.”
Without even a good-bye, he left my office, leaving the door open behind him. I sat back down in my chair, my feet tapping nervously. But I wasn’t sure if the nerves were from how unfairly I’d just been treated by my boss or from the thought of being alone again with my mother in the house on Legare.
The house was dark except for a single lamp in the downstairs living room when I let myself in after work. I’d stayed at the office longer than I’d planned, researching recent real estate sales on Legare Street as well as information on the current owners to get a better idea of how desperate they were to move. I prided myself on knowing as much as I could so that when I made an offer on a client’s behalf, I knew how much leeway we had for negotiations and at what point we’d walk away. I half hoped that my mother would balk at the current asking price, considering it represented a three-hundred-percent increase over the price at which she’d sold it over three decades before.
The only bright spot in my entire afternoon had been the phone tag I’d played with my mother, each of us taking turns leaving messages so that we’d made an appointment to meet the following morning without once having had to speak with each other.
I pushed open the door and heard the dog bark from the kitchen where Mrs. Houlihan usually left him with a soup bone when she went home. Flipping on the lights as I walked into the foyer, I noted the new addition of scaffolding that reached up to the gold-leaf cornices that Sophie was in the middle of having restored. One of the bracing rods of the scaffolding blocked the stairs and would require I flatten myself to crawl under them if I had any desire to actually use the upper floors of my house. Or sleep in my bedroom. I wondered if Sophie had considered that and just as quickly dismissed the thought.
I paused, my keys held in midair above the hall table. The soft tread of footsteps coming toward me from the living room made me clench a key between two fingers to use as a weapon. Of course, in this house there were no guarantees that any unwanted visitors were the living, breathing kind. Although three of the ghosts had recently been exorcised from the house, both General Lee and I still sensed the presence of several others. But we pretty much stayed out of each other’s way and tolerated each other because we were all content to be where we were and not at all eager to leave.
The lights flickered and I spun around toward the light switch, seeing only empty space. My lungs seemed to crystallize as I gulped in a breath of frigid air, the temperature suddenly plummeting as the stench of rotting fish permeated the air, making me gag. I let the keys drop to the table, knowing they wouldn’t help me. My breath slowed and stuttered, matching the bubbles of fear that ransacked the skin along my spine. I am stronger than you. I am stronger than you. My mother’s old mantra came back to haunt me, and I almost smiled at the irony.
I took one step toward the living room and stopped, the sudden jangling of the phone on the hall table jarring in the still air of the quiet house. I froze and stared at it, my breath visible now in chilly puffs. I let it ring six times—three more times after it should have been picked up by my answering machine—before lifting the receiver. My frozen fingers felt scalded by the plastic of the phone and I dropped the receiver, the sound of it hitting the wood of the table unnaturally loud. With shaking fingers, I picked it up again, making sure the heat was only in my imagination before I held the phone to my ear.
“Grandmother?” The line was empty, as if the person on the other end were using a phone in the next room. I held the receiver in two hands now to keep it from shaking. I heard no noise, no breathing on the other end—just silence, as if I’d been plunged into a black hole that absorbed all light and sound like a cosmic sponge.
Melanie.
I strained to hear, not sure if I’d heard my name or not. One thing I knew for sure was that whoever had said my name, it hadn’t been my grandmother.
Melanie, I heard again, and I pressed the receiver closer to my ear, fighting the impulse to ha
ng up. The voice was soft and airy and most likely female, assuming it was even human.
“Hello? Who is this?”
The black hole began to pop and crackle, erupting something vile and unholy through the telephone line. I held the phone away from me, then slammed it down. But not before I’d heard the voice again. I am coming for you, Melanie. I am coming for what is mine.
General Lee barked in the kitchen and began scratching on the door, interspersing his barks with high-pitched whimpers.
The front door opened and I jumped, knocking over the hall table and sending the phone and my keys clattering to the floor. I spun around and saw my mother and Jack standing in the doorway, Jack holding up the house key I’d given him when he was living there with me to help fend off its ghosts. His gaze took in the toppled hall table and the broken phone. “Are you all right?” He stepped forward and placed his hands on my shoulders, looking carefully into my face. “I’m sorry we didn’t knock, but your mother insisted that we needed to get to you right away.”
“I’m fine,” I said, wondering if they could hear the heavy thudding of my heart, which seemed loud enough to rattle the chandelier above me.
“No.You’re not,” said my mother, whose face was pale and drawn—as if she’d actually spared a moment worrying about me. She shivered, rubbing her hands on her arms. “It’s freezing in here,” she said, her clear gaze focused on me.
“It’s an old house. Old houses are drafty.” I shivered despite the fact that the temperature was quickly returning to normal. I pushed Jack away and held out my hand. “And you can give me that key now since you won’t be needing it anymore.” All three of us looked at my hand. It was shaking so much that it could have sifted flour.
“You need to sit down, Mellie.” My mother’s concerned expression was almost fooling even me.
“I don’t . . .” Before I could finish, my knees buckled and Jack grabbed me just in time.
With his arm supporting me, he led me into the living room and settled me in a chair while giving directions to my mother on where the kitchen was so she could bring me a glass of water.
“What happened?” Jack asked after we’d heard my mother’s heels click across the foyer. Jack squatted in front of my chair to look me in the face. “Is he back?”
I shook my head, understanding his meaning. Jack had helped me exorcise a nasty ghost by the name of Joseph Longo that neither one of us wanted to see again. “No. It was female. I’m not sure how I know that; it was more of an impression. And the odor was different. Like . . . fish. Old, rotting fish.”
He sat back on his heels. “I guess that would make sense, then.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, feeling light-headed again. Slowly, I leaned forward and rested my forehead on my knees.
I felt Jack’s hand on the back of my neck, surprisingly tender as he rubbed the base of my skull. “The boat they found off Sullivan’s Island—they released the name of it today.”
“And?” I felt so sleepy.
“It was called the Rose.”
He looked at me expectantly, as if the name should ring a bell. I shook my head, too tired to form a sentence.
“For a true Charlestonian, you know very little about your ancestors. Rose was the name of your maternal great-grandmother. The sailboat was owned by your great-great-grandfather and he named it after her.”
I sat up straight, suddenly alert, hearing my mother’s approaching footsteps. “Are you saying that the boat they’re thinking about raising to the surface once belonged to the Prioleaus?” I shuddered, recalling again the stench of rotting fish.
My mother stood in front of me and pressed the glass of water in my hand. I gulped it down, postponing the inevitable. Sooner or later my mother and I would have to talk. I just wasn’t ready for it to be sooner.
“Just like my dream,” she said softly. “And if they raise the boat, something evil will be released.”
I remembered the voice on the phone and my hand began to shake again, the water in the glass sloshing up on the sides. “It already has.”
“I thought so,” she said, taking the glass from me. She looked contemplative for a moment before speaking again. “Some spirits aren’t tied to any particular location; some are attached in some way to a person”—she raised a dark eyebrow—“or a family.”
“Great,” I said. “Just when I think I’ve laid all of my ghosts to rest, you bring me more to deal with.”
“Sweetheart, it found you without my help.”
I didn’t know if I was more surprised to agree that she was right or by the endearment, and I felt a small spark of anger. “I’ve seemed to manage quite a bit without your help.”
“Ouch.” Jack stepped between us. “Ladies, we have a problem here. And nothing’s going to be resolved if we can’t form a truce and just get to the facts.” He turned to me. “When we arrived, what was going on here? You were obviously scared out of your mind.”
I took a deep breath, wondering how in less than a year I’d gone from being in complete denial about my psychic abilities to being able to talk openly about them to a select group of people the way normal people talk about what they had for breakfast. I knew Jack was responsible, but it wasn’t always clear to me if I should thank him or blame him.
“I felt a presence. Something horrible and definitely not a benign presence like the other ghosts in this house.”
“You hadn’t sensed him before?” Jack asked.
I shook my head. “She,” I corrected. “And, no, she was definitely new.”
“Did she say anything to you?” my mother asked, her voice wary, and again I felt that she knew something—something she didn’t want to share.
I nodded, feeling sick again. “The phone rang right before you came. It was—a voice on the other end. It said . . .” I closed my eyes, smelling the rotting fish again, feeling out of breath as if my head were being held underwater. “It said, ‘I’m coming for you, Melanie.’ ” I paused, wondering if I should continue. Slowly, I said, “ ‘ I’m coming for what is mine.’ ”
My mother’s hand flew to her throat, and I saw she still wore her gloves. They were her trademark, but only I knew the real reason why she rarely took them off. Jack pulled a chair closer to her and she sat down.
Jack said, “And the voice on the phone definitely wasn’t your grandmother’s?”
I shook my head. “Definitely not.”
We both looked at my mother, whose lips were pressed tightly together. “I don’t understand any of this. But I have no doubt that whatever it is will make it very clear to us eventually. Which means Melanie and I need to stay together. To fight it. Two against one is always better odds.”
I stood, looking down at my mother, my fear giving strength to thirty years of loss. “Or you could just leave again. None of this would have happened if you hadn’t come back.”
She stood, too, facing me, and I realized that we were the exact same height. “It’s too late.”
I didn’t like the sound of her voice. Her tone was ominous, holding something back—something that pricked at the back of my brain like an itch that couldn’t be scratched.
She continued. “Whatever it is, it’s connected to my great-grandfather’s sailboat. And if they raise it, which they will, it’s going to be bad for us.”
I stared into the face that I’d lain awake at night as a child trying to remember so I wouldn’t forget it. And now I felt no relief that I hadn’t left out a single curve or the exact shade of her eyes. She was a deliberate stranger—someone who chose to be absent from every birthday past my seventh year—and had spent every milestone of my life so far as the ghost whose presence was always visible as the blank spot next to me in photos.
“There’s no ‘us,’ Mother. If I need to exorcise a spirit, I’ll get Jack’s help. We’ve done it before. But it will be a cold day in hell if I ever ask for your help.”
She raised her eyebrow, but showed no emotion other than surprise. Jack s
tepped closer to me and put his arm around my shoulders. “Mrs. Prioleau, Ginnette, I don’t see things the way that you and Mellie do, but I’ve seen enough to understand that when either of you senses trouble, I listen. Which is why I agree with you that Mellie shouldn’t be alone until we figure this out.”
I was about to argue, but he squeezed my shoulders, silencing me. “I think I should move in again, so you won’t have to deal with it alone.” He grinned the grin that always did funny things to my stomach. “Just like old times.”
I frowned at him but was thankful for the escape he was offering, regardless of how conniving his suggestion was. I allowed his arm to rest on my shoulders and turned to my mother. “That’s right. Jack and I have experience with this sort of thing, so don’t worry about me on that account. We won’t be needing your help.”
“Ah,” she said, her gaze traveling from me to Jack and then back again. “I see.” She reached down and picked up her purse from the floor by her chair. “I guess you’ve got it all under control, so I’ll just leave then.” She began walking toward the foyer but stopped and turned around. “Don’t forget our appointment tomorrow at nine o’clock. I’ll meet you in front of the Legare Street house.”
The relief I felt at her departure dissipated and was quickly replaced by dread. “You still want to buy that house? Don’t you have a career in New York you need to get back to?”
She smiled a half smile and for the first time I saw my resemblance to her and it saddened me. “I’m retiring, Mellie. It’s better to retire when you’re at the top of your game so you won’t be remembered as a has-been with a failing voice.” She glanced around at her surroundings as if finally noticing them. “I love what you’ve done with the place,” she said, her gaze taking in the mismatched furniture and the empty windows.
