But it was the only logical explanation.
The freak accident had apparently been a wake-up call for Devlin. After helping me to drag a piece of plywood up from the basement and nail it over the opening, he couldn’t get away from me fast enough. And in the nearly two weeks since that night, I hadn’t seen or heard from him.
I told myself it was just as well. The accident had also been a warning for me, a grim reminder of the dire consequences for breaking my father’s rules. Devlin and I could have been seriously injured or even killed by flying shards of glass. I considered myself lucky for having escaped with only those tiny splinters in my back.
The timing of the accident chilled me, but perhaps I was giving Mariama too much credit in thinking she could have somehow engineered that falling tree limb. In all my ghostly sightings, I’d never before experienced a physical manifestation of an otherworldly presence, with the one exception being the garnet ring Shani may or may not have left behind in my garden.
But…this was the ghost of Mariama Goodwine Devlin. A woman who had known things. Dark things. Witch things. A woman who believed that one’s power was not diminished in death. That a spirit angered by a violent passing could use that force to interfere with the lives of the living. Even enslave them, in some cases.
After my talk with Essie, I’d been certain that Shani’s spirit couldn’t move on because she didn’t want to leave her father. But now it seemed clear that Mariama was the one who lingered, caught between her daughter and the husband she didn’t want to leave behind. Maybe Temple had been right. Devlin and Mariama’s connection was such that nothing—not time, not distance, not even death—could keep them apart.
I’d gone home that night after my dinner with Temple and dreamed about Devlin and Mariama. And lately, I’d been dreaming about them again. The visions always started the same way: Temple imploring me to join her at that open doorway. Inside, the swirling mist, the flickering candlelight, the primitive drumbeats that drove the couple’s frantic rhythm. And then Mariama would look over her shoulder and sometimes I would find myself staring back into my own eyes.
I wasn’t possessed, but I very much feared I was on the verge of obsession.
It was a good thing that real life decided to run interference. With the Oak Grove restoration put off indefinitely, financial circumstances dictated that I take on a new project. As much as I had enjoyed dabbling in the investigation—and yes, I freely admitted that now—I could no longer ignore my dwindling bank account.
I kept track of any new developments online and through the newspapers and knew that the remains excavated from the second grave had been identified. Her name was Jane Rice and she’d been an emergency-room nurse at MUSC. She was single, lived alone and by all accounts had been a caring young woman who disappeared nine years ago on her way to work one night and never been heard from again.
I filed this information away in my Oak Grove folder.
Now that I was well away from the investigation—and from Devlin—everything that had happened seemed a little surreal. The killer was still out there somewhere, but I’d found no more suspicious postings to my blog nor had I spotted a black sedan lurking in my neighborhood. As the days passed, I began to breathe a little easier because I really had no choice. The police couldn’t watch my house twenty-four hours a day and I couldn’t hibernate indefinitely.
So I had to move on.
For the past several days, I’d been working in a small cemetery about forty miles north of Charleston. It was a plain country graveyard with simple headstones and fenced-in plots. The trees had already been thinned to allow for plenty of sunlight, and I found the personal mementos and family keepsakes—dolls, toys, framed photographs and bits of cheap jewelry—that decorated the graves touching and rather charming.
The dolls reminded me of the one Devlin had placed on Shani’s grave.
I was thinking about that doll—and Devlin—late one afternoon when I felt a chill at my back and knew that someone watched me.
Twilight had not yet fallen, but I searched the landscape fearfully with my peripheral vision. When I saw no movement, no slithering dark shape at the edge of the woods, I lifted my head and scoured the countryside.
I finally spotted him beneath a live oak, in the deepest part of the shade. Gripped by an icy trepidation, I stared at him across the headstones.
Then I put away my brush, peeled off my gloves and started toward him.
He looked exactly the same as the last time we’d met. Handsome and guarded, with sunglasses shielding his eyes.
I was uneasy but not really frightened even though we were completely alone and the nearest house was at least a mile away. Devlin seemed convinced that Tom Gerrity wasn’t the murderer and I trusted his judgment. But I did not trust Tom Gerrity. There was something about him that made my stomach clench and the hair at the back of my neck lift. He wanted something. And I had a feeling it would be some time before I discovered his true motive.
I walked up to him, scowling. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to see you.”
I glanced around. “I don’t see a car anywhere. How did you get here?”
“I walked up from the main road. The sign on the gate says no vehicles allowed in here. Being an ex-cop, I wouldn’t want to break the law.”
Why didn’t I believe him?
Shading my eyes with my hand, I gazed down the road.
Just past the gate, I saw the glint of sunlight on chrome. I glanced back at Gerrity. “How did you know where to find me?”
“You posted pictures on your blog. I recognized this place. I know someone who’s buried here.”
I started to ask him about that, then something else struck me. How long had he been going to my blog? Did he have a membership, a screen name?
His gaze swept the cemetery. “About time they cleaned this place up.”
“You say you know someone who’s buried here?”
“A cop. He was killed in the line of duty. His murder was never solved.”
I remembered what Devlin had said about another cop dying because of Gerrity.
“If you’ll give me a name, I’ll take special care of the grave.”
“Fremont,” he said. “Robert Fremont.”
The name sent a shiver through me, a faint ripple of déjà vu that made me wonder if I might have heard about his death on the news.
I sensed Gerrity’s eyes on me, sensed that something had shifted between us. I couldn’t explain it, but it was like a wall had toppled and I wasn’t so sure that was a good thing.
“What do you want from me?” I asked softly.
“Your help.”
“Why me?”
“There’s no one else, Amelia.”
I shivered again and looked away. “If this is about Devlin—”
“It’s not. It’s about Ethan Shaw.”
My brows rose in surprise. “Ethan?”
“I need to find out what he knows about the skeleton you found in the chamber below Oak Grove.”
“Then why not go talk to him yourself?”
“He won’t see me.”
I folded my arms. “Don’t tell me. There’s bad blood between the two of you.”
He shrugged. “Not bad blood. I just don’t have the right credentials anymore.”
“I don’t have any credentials. What makes you think he’ll tell me anything?”
“What makes you think he won’t?”
I gave an exasperated sigh. “This is ridiculous. Why do you even care about that skeleton? I thought you were working for Hannah Fischer’s mother. Now that her body has been recovered, what’s your interest in this case?”
“I’m interested in justice,” he said. “And I mean to have it. One way or another.”
An alarm went off inside me. “What are you talking about?”
“Just go see Ethan Shaw. It’s all there.”
“What is? Hey!”
A million questions flashed th
rough my head, but I didn’t call Gerrity back when he walked off. Mostly, I just wanted him to go away and take his vague premonitions with him.
But the pall he’d cast remained long after I watched him disappear through the gate.
Thirty-Five
I couldn’t have gone to see Ethan that afternoon even if I’d wanted to. On my way home, Aunt Lynrose called to tell me that my mother had been admitted to the hospital at MUSC—where Jane Rice, one of the victims, had worked. She’d been on her way there when she disappeared nine years ago.
Not that one event had anything to do with the other, but the coincidence merely served to feed the panic that was already starting to fester.
After a quick stop at my house for a shower and change of clothes, I headed straight up Rutledge Avenue, located a parking garage and then made my way over to the mammoth brick-and-glass building that housed the main hospital.
When I finally found the right wing and floor, a doctor was in with my mother and I had to wait out in the hall with my aunt, who maddeningly refused to tell me anything.
“She’s going to be fine,” Lynrose assured me as we perched on the edge of a bench. “But it’s her place to tell you.”
By the time we were finally allowed in, I’d worked myself up into quite a state, imagining the worst. But my mother actually looked better than she had the last time I’d seen her. Her color was good and she seemed strong and alert. I went over to give her a hug and a kiss before settling myself on the edge of the bed. Lynrose pulled up a chair beside the bed and the three of us sat for a moment in loaded silence.
I didn’t want to press for answers, but I could stand the silence no longer.
“Mama—”
“I have cancer,” she said and instantly my eyes welled with tears.
I took her hand in mine and squeezed.
“It’s breast cancer,” she said. “The lump showed up in my last mammogram.”
“The doctor said it’s perfectly treatable,” Lynrose put in. “He said there’s every reason to be optimistic for a full recovery.”
“That’s not exactly what he said,” Mama corrected her. “He said the prognosis is favorable, but the tumor is in an advanced stage and is the kind that can spread rapidly. So we have to be aggressive with the treatment and realistic about my chances.”
I felt as if someone had rammed a hand inside my chest and clamped a vise grip around my heart. I swallowed hard and tried to control my emotions. “What do we do? What’s the next step?”
“I’m scheduled for surgery first thing in the morning.”
“So soon?”
She patted my hand. “It’s not that soon. I’ve known for a while.”
“How long?” Then it hit me. “That’s why you came to Charleston for your birthday. You knew then. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“We were having such a wonderful time, I didn’t want to spoil it. And afterward…I didn’t want you to know until you absolutely had to.”
“Why? I could have been here for you.” I felt a little betrayed by her silence.
“I’ve had Lyn with me. She’s taken good care of me.”
“I should have been here.”
“There was nothing you could do. And you had your work.”
“But still—”
“Amelia.” Aunt Lynrose shook her head and I fell silent, staring almost fiercely out the window where the sunset over the Ashley River seemed unbearably symbolic.
“I expect to be home in a couple days,” my mother said briskly. “There’ll be tubes and drains…a lot of unpleasantness. I don’t want you to have to deal with any of that. And, of course, chemo…”
I couldn’t believe how calmly she could talk about all this. I’d always thought of my mother as fragile, but her pragmatism in the face of a devastating diagnosis astounded me. She was facing major surgery, weeks of chemo, and her main concern was that I not have to deal with tubes and drains.
Lynrose had put up a good front, but now she began to weep quietly into a linen hankie.
“Lyn, for God’s sake,” my mother scolded.
“I know, I know, steel magnolias and all that. But your hair, Etta. You’re going to lose all that beautiful hair.”
“It’s just hair,” my mother said crisply. “Perhaps it’ll come back in curly. Wouldn’t that be something after all the money I’ve spent on perms over the years?”
Holding back my own tears, I fluffed her pillows, poured her a glass of water, and then with nothing else to do, I had to ask the obvious.
“Where’s Papa?”
“He is a man, and therefore, worthless in a situation like this,” said my aunt who, so far as I knew, had never had a serious relationship with a man in her life, much less been married to one.
“He was here earlier,” my mother said. “I sent him out for some air. He never could abide closed in places.”
“Really? I didn’t know that.”
“There are a lot of things you don’t know about your father,” she said, with a hint of something in her voice that made me glance up and study her face.
“Etta, I don’t think now is the time—”
“Hush, Lyn. This is between my daughter and me. There’s a chance I may not wake up from that surgery.” She put up a hand when my aunt and I both protested. “A slim chance, but nevertheless…there’s something you need to know about Caleb…”
Lynrose pursed her lips and took out her knitting. She bowed her head over her work, but I knew she watched us through her lashes. And I could feel the tension rolling off her in waves.
“Mama, what is it?” I asked softly. Did she know about the ghosts? I wondered. Did she know about me?
She hesitated, and for the first time since I arrived, I saw a chink in her steel, a hint of the delicate, melancholy woman who had adopted me, nurtured me and loved me. But who had never really let me know her.
My aunt’s knitting needles clicked together in the silence. I wondered if she was actually making loops or merely pretending.
“Your father…”
I leaned in. I think my aunt did, too. “Yes?”
“Your father…” My mother’s eyes flickered. Her gaze went past me and I glanced over my shoulder to see Papa in the doorway. He stood there for a moment, his face weathered and weary, and then without a word he backed away and retreated into the hallway.
I whirled around to my mother. “Why won’t he come in?”
“I expect he’s giving us our time together.”
“Don’t make it sound so final,” I pleaded, thinking of Devlin and his missed goodbyes.
“I didn’t mean it that way.”
“Mama, tell me about Papa.”
She exchanged a glance with my aunt.
“Your papa is a complicated man with a complicated past,” Lynrose said. “Perhaps it’s best to just leave it at that.”
“A complicated past?” I turned back to my mother. “What does that mean?”
I could see the struggle on my mother’s face, the internal battle she waged within herself on how much she was willing to share with me. She closed her eyes and sighed. “All you really need to know is that he loves you. More than anything in this world, and that includes me.”
That wasn’t what she’d meant to say at all. I knew her well enough to figure that out.
“Mama—”
“I’m tired now. I think I’ll sleep for a while.”
“It’s for the best,” Lynrose muttered.
I didn’t want to risk upsetting my mother on the eve of her surgery, so I let the matter drop. After a while, I got up and slipped out of the room, leaving my mother and my aunt whispering together the way they once had on our front porch.
When I went out into the hallway, Papa was nowhere in sight.
My mother was dismissed from the hospital two days later, and I went home with her to Trinity to stay until she and my aunt cajoled me into returning to Charleston.
“You have a business to run and there
is no reason in the world for you to put yourself in a financial bind when I have nothing except time on my hands,” Lynrose insisted and my mother backed her up.
On my last night there, Papa had left the house right after dinner, and I walked down to Rosehill to say goodbye. I inhaled the roses as I made my way along the walkway. He was at the angels waiting for their cold faces to come alive in the warm glow of the setting sun.
After the fleeting animation, he turned, his gaze going past me to the gate. I knew he was looking for the ghost. His dread was tangible as dusk drew near.
“Have you seen him again, Papa?”
“I’ve been seeing him more and more lately.”
The revelation made my blood go cold. “What does he want?”
Papa turned and the glitter of tears on his face shocked me into silence. I’d never known him to show emotion. Like me, he mostly lived inside his own head.
And then it came to me. I put a hand to my mouth. “Papa…do you think he’s come back for Mama?”
He closed his eyes and shuddered. “I wish I knew, child. I wish I knew.”
It was a long, lonely drive back home to Charleston. On the way, I checked my messages. One from Ethan Shaw, one from Temple and none from Devlin.
Ethan had invited me to a small gathering at the Charleston Institute for Parapsychology Studies on Friday to celebrate his father’s seventieth birthday.
As I let myself into the darkened house, I couldn’t help wondering if my mother would still be with us for her next birthday.
Thirty-Six
On the morning of Dr. Shaw’s party, I woke up lethargic and out of sorts. I wondered if I was coming down with something or if all that worry over my mother had taken a physical toll. A few hours of hard labor at the cemetery left me weak-kneed and shivering.
By midafternoon, I called it a day and came home to soak in a hot bath and sip tea, which did nothing to help. Grabbing bottles of vitamin C and ibuprofen from the medicine cupboard, I noticed in the back the packet of Essie’s Life Everlasting.
Good for what ails you, she’d said. According to Dr. Shaw, it was harvested from a plant in the daisy family and had the same effect as a vitamin shot. Just what the doctor ordered. I didn’t expect the herb to work miracles, but I did believe in the medicinal value of natural remedies that had been around for ages.
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