The House on Tradd Street

by Karen White

  “Hello?” she repeated. “Is anybody there?”

  “Sorry, Nancy. It’s me—Melanie.”

  “Oh. Are you here? I didn’t see your car, and Ruth said she hadn’t seen you this morning when I stopped in for coffee.”

  “Um, no. I’m still at home. In bed, actually.” I wondered for a moment if I should fake a cough and then decided against it. “I’m sick, so I won’t be coming in today. I was hoping you could cancel all of my appointments.”

  There was a long pause. “Hang on. I’ve got to take these golf ball earrings off because it’s too hard to hold the receiver to my ear, and I can’t find my headset.” The phone clattered on her desk, and I waited for a moment before her voice came back. “I’m sorry. I thought you just said that you were calling in sick.”

  “Yes, that’s right. And I was hoping you could cancel all of my appointments.”

  “Are you with a man?” She was whispering now.

  “No, of course not. I just . . . don’t feel good.”

  “It’s Jack, isn’t it?”

  “No, Nancy. It’s not a man. I’m a little under the weather, that’s all.”

  “Well, you’ve never called in sick before, and as far as I can recall, you’ve never had a date, either, so I thought that somehow they might be related.”

  “Nancy?”

  “Yes, Melanie?”

  “Would you mind keeping those thoughts to yourself?”

  “Sorry. You know I’m only here to help you. Besides, I knew it wasn’t Jack.”

  “You did? How?”

  “Because he already called here this morning to speak with me.”

  I frowned into my phone. “With you? What about?”

  “You. He wanted to know if you were okay, and when I told him I hadn’t seen you yet this morning, he said that I might not. He told me that you’d received some bad news and would need a little TLC today. That’s why I went by Ruth’s—your bag of favorite doughnuts is sitting on your desk.”

  My cheek reluctantly creased into a half smile at Jack’s thoughtfulness until I recalled that he was responsible for the crappy way I was feeling. “Thanks, Nancy. I appreciate it. But you can go ahead and eat them. I won’t be coming in today.”

  “Hang on. That’s my other line. But don’t go away.”

  Music piped in while I waited, my eyes skirting the once comforting walls of my condo—the white, empty walls without cornices or wide baseboards, the large main room devoid of a fireplace or anything that might be even loosely called ornamental. The focal point of the room was the flat-screen television I had bought myself for Christmas the previous year. I watched little on it except for old black-and-white romantic movies on AMC and the Weather Channel. The hardwood floors were prefabricated without any signs of wear and tear, their pristine condition evidence that feet from nearly two hundred years of people hadn’t walked across them, leaving heel marks and scratches as a sign of history’s passing.

  The recessed lights on the ceiling left no room for elaborate chandeliers and spotlighted only stark white walls instead of oil paintings of Charleston Harbor and of people who’d once had breakfast at a mahogany dining room table and slept in the same bed as I had.

  The chrome-and-glass furniture, which I had hand selected with excruciating thought, now seemed cold and out of place. Everything seemed new and pristine, as if the person living here had no past. It all felt wrong somehow, as if I were a temporary visitor and my real home was elsewhere.

  I mentally shook myself, then forced my brain to remember the backbreaking, grueling work my body had been made to endure over the past four months. My nails were nonexistent, my hair a disaster, and I knew more about stripping paint from an assortment of surfaces than any thirty-nine-year-old single woman had any business knowing. If I focused on those things long enough, I might start thinking that a condo with as much personality as a hotel room could actually be a place to call home.

  My caller ID clicked in, and when I checked to see the small screen in the receiver, I saw it was my dad. I stared at the number for a long time and listened to two more clicks before they finally stopped and the number disappeared from my screen.

  “Melanie? Are you still there?” Nancy’s voice piped through the receiver.

  “Yes, I’m here. I don’t have anything else to add—just please cancel my appointments.”

  “I’m going to cancel them for the rest of the week, too. You’ve been working too hard and need some good old-fashioned R and R. I’m looking at your schedule now, and if I move a few things around and push a few appointments into next week, you should be fine. I’ll tell Mr. Henderson that you have the flu or something.” I could hear Nancy tapping her pencil against her desk, undoubtedly impatient to get back to practicing her chip shot.

  “But . . .”

  She cut me off. “But nothing. And don’t accuse me of trying to mother you. This was all Jack’s idea. Wait—there’s my other line again and I’ve got to take it. Enjoy your week off.”

  I held the phone in my hand, listening to the dial tone, wondering if I should be angry or relieved. I really didn’t think I wanted to have anything to do with houses right now, regardless of whether they were old or new. But to know that it was Jack’s idea irked me enough to make me want to stomp into the office. Or worse—into the house on Tradd Street with a bucket of paint.

  Then I remembered the diamonds and Jack’s lies and my father telling me that we didn’t have the money to finish the restoration, and my anger melted into something that seemed a lot like disappointment. So, instead, I crawled back into bed, threw the covers over my head, and went back to sleep.

  I spent the next three days in bed, mostly sleeping. I only crept out from under the covers to pay the pizza delivery boy or retrieve my iPod, and then I returned to my cocoon, where I could wallow in my own misery. I purged my address book on my BlackBerry, reorganized my CD collection by title instead of by artist’s last name, then created a work sheet that cross-referenced them. I even sorted out my makeup drawer by season, grouping eye shadows with lipsticks. But for some reason, my reorganization didn’t give me the same sense of satisfaction it had always given me in the past.

  The phone rang incessantly, an unending circle of Sophie, Jack, my dad, and Marc. Even Amelia Trenholm called once, and my hand hovered over the receiver for a long while until the phone stopped ringing. I wasn’t angry with her; she’d tried to get Jack to tell me the truth from the beginning. And even I recognized that it was Jack’s truth to tell, not hers. Still, I didn’t want to think about anything hurtful, and speaking with her would remind me of all the work we’d done on the house on Tradd and all the work that still needed to be done. And how the first man who’d showed me any interest in more than a year had only been interested in that damn house.

  Eventually, they all decided to call Nancy, assuming correctly that she was my gatekeeper, and were all informed that I was under the weather and didn’t want to be disturbed. Jack was the only one who continued calling, but only once a day. He never left a message. It was almost as if he was making sure I knew he was there, and I found an odd comfort in that. Just not enough to actually pick up the phone and speak to him.

  On my first day back to work, I felt no more rested or clearheaded than I had the day I’d told Jack I never wanted to see him again. I left explicit instructions with Nancy that I didn’t want to see anybody until I’d had at least half a day to clean off my desk, so I was surprised when she buzzed me in my office to let me know that Marc was in the reception area waiting for me and that he wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  I met him at Nancy’s desk, my tongue feeling thick and swollen either because it wasn’t used to talking or because I didn’t know what to say.

  He stepped forward and took my hands before kissing my cheek. “I’ve missed you. I hope you’re feeling better.”

  I stared into his dark eyes, trying to see any subterfuge, but all I saw was genuine concern.

 
“A little,” I said.

  “Good. I was afraid . . .” He looked up at Nancy, then lowered his voice before speaking again. “I was afraid that you were avoiding me.”

  I looked down at his Gucci loafers in case he could read the truth in my eyes. Dropping my hands from his, I said, “Let’s go outside for a moment so we can talk.”

  He nodded, then followed me outside.

  We walked down Broad Street toward the Old Exchange Building, which was said to be the most haunted building in Charleston because of its years of use as the provost dungeon. I wasn’t going to publicly dispute this fact on account of me being reluctant to provide evidence contrary to popular belief, but I’d seen more lost souls wandering the gardens and halls of my grandmother’s house on Legare than I’d seen lurking under the barrel vaulted ceilings in the old prison.

  We stopped in front of an empty iron-and-wooden bench and sat down. I smiled to myself as Marc held up his hand for me to wait while he wiped my seat with his pocket square. Then he sat down next to me and reached for my hands. After realizing that mine were already safely tucked beneath me, he placed his own on his thighs.

  “So what’s this all about, Melanie? I thought we . . . were enjoying getting to know each other.”

  My eyes met his, and I blushed a little, remembering how good a time we’d actually had getting to know each other. Being a businesswoman had taught me to cut to the chase, and I decided to do it now before I completely lost my nerve. “When you said you had to go out of town, did you mean Las Vegas for a high-stakes poker game?”

  If he was startled or disappointed, he recovered quickly. “Yes, I was.” He breathed a heavy sigh. “My younger brother, Anthony, has a gambling problem. Whenever I hear that he’s headed to some big game, I sign up for it, too, to keep an eye on him. To make sure that he doesn’t gamble more than he can afford to lose.” He shrugged slightly. “I didn’t mention this to you because we try to keep our family problems private.” His eyes narrowed as he regarded me. “Is that what your silence is about? That you disapprove of gambling?”

  I shook my head. “No. It’s more that I disapprove of lying, and misrepresenting yourself to get what you want.”

  He turned his body so that he was completely facing me now. “What are you talking about?”

  I looked for any shift in his gaze or any admission of guilt but saw none. “Are you familiar with the legend of the Confederate gold?”

  He seemed confused. “Sure, isn’t everybody? Jefferson Davis took the gold with him when he retreated from Richmond at the end of the Civil War. It mysteriously disappeared at some point, and nobody knows what happened to it. But what has that got to do with you and me?”

  I refused to bend, having already traveled this far. “Have you ever heard that part of the treasury might be hidden in my house on Tradd?”

  “Gold? Hidden in your house? With all the reconstruction going on, don’t you think it would have been found by now?”

  I shook my head again. “Not gold—diamonds.” I watched his face to see if any of this was registering with him, but his expression seemed to be that of genuine confusion. I continued. “The sultan of Brunei purportedly gave six valuable diamonds to the Confederates, and they were part of the missing treasury. An ancestor of Mr. Vanderhorst was the last person who had contact with them, but he died in the war. No one has seen or heard of them since.”

  A small smile touched Marc’s lips. “Just like Louisa and Joseph.”

  “What would make you say that?”

  He shrugged. “It’s just that historical events with perfectly logical explanations tend to become legends as the years progress. It’s much more romantic to assume something magical or mystical than to admit that a housewife got bored with her marriage and ran off with another man, or that a respected Charleston gentlemen embezzled a failing government for an infusion of cash to make sure his family survived the hard times he knew were coming.” Marc shrugged again, the smile back on his face. “It’s called life. Not mystery.”

  “So you’ve never heard of the sultan’s diamonds?” I persisted.

  Marc managed to extract one of my hands wedged between my legs and the bench. “Look, Melanie. Your friend Jack is probably the one who has filled your head with these ideas. By nature of his occupation, he has an overactive imagination and thinks zebras when what he’s really hearing is horses. His career depends on taking normal events in history and making them exciting enough to write a book about. Good for him—we all need an escape from reality now and again. But we can’t lose sight of the fact that it’s all based on conjecture gleamed from flimsy research at best.”

  I didn’t respond, still waiting to see if he would answer my question.

  With another sigh, he said, “Like with every legend involving Charleston, I’ve probably heard them all at one time or another, so it’s completely possible that I heard the one about the diamonds, too. What you’re getting at, I assume, is whether or not I believe in it enough to pursue you so that I might gain access to your house.”

  I looked down at his well-manicured hand holding mine, remembering how nice his hands had felt on other parts of me. I had to force myself to meet his eyes again. “Did you?”

  He closed his eyes for a moment, genuinely hurt. “The other night—did that seem fake? Did it seem as if I were forcing myself to make love to you?” He let go of my hand and stood. “And do I seem to be such an incompetent businessman that I couldn’t find an alternative to acquire your house—if I truly thought it hid a fortune—than dating you?”

  I had to admit to myself that everything he said made perfect sense. Even what he’d said about Jack had a ring of truth to it—made even more plausible by the fact that I was ready to believe the worst about Jack if only to get me to stop thinking about him.

  I stood, too, and placed my hands on his shoulders. “I’m sorry, Marc. It’s just that . . .” I paused, not yet ready to confide everything. Raising my gaze from the charcoal-colored wool of his lapel, I met his eyes and saw only concern and warmth. “It’s just that . . . well, things aren’t going well with the restoration, and I just needed to know that I wasn’t going to be surprised with more bad news.”

  He stroked my cheek, sending nice warm flutters down my arms. “What’s wrong, Melanie?”

  “The restoration is costing us a lot more money than we originally budgeted, and I’m not sure if we’re going to be able to afford to complete it.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “But you don’t even particularly like the house. Didn’t you once refer to it as the ‘goiter on the neck of your life’?” He gave me a soft smile, but his gaze remained intense.

  “Yeah, I probably did. But I’ve invested so much time and energy into it that I can’t stand to think that all the work might have to be abandoned.”

  “And then what would happen?”

  “I’m not sure. I need to talk to my dad. As trustee, he’ll have to figure it out. I’m assuming, though, that if I move out permanently and abandon it, ownership will revert to somebody else for failure to pay the property taxes. Regardless, I’d end up with nothing.” A house is a piece of history you can hold in your hands. No matter how hard I tried, I still couldn’t get Mr. Vanderhorst’s words out of my head.

  “Which isn’t such a bad thing since you never really wanted it in the first place.”

  “True,” I said, and wondered if he could hear the hollowness in my voice, too.

  “Unless you find those elusive diamonds hidden inside. Then all of your problems would be over.”

  I jerked my gaze up to meet his and saw that he was smiling. “Yeah, something like that,” I said, smiling back. I shook my head. “I feel so stupid.”

  He placed his hands over mine. “You’re not stupid. You’re incredibly intelligent—but perhaps easily misled by people you trust. And I forgive you for jumping to conclusions. I understand that this whole renovation project has left you a little more stressed than you’re used to. So,” he sai
d, leaning forward and kissing me on my forehead, “why don’t we plan a destressing weekend at my beach house again? I promise you won’t have to think about any of it for two whole days. You don’t even have to get dressed if you don’t want to.”

  I let myself blush this time and felt no reservations raising my lips to his. “I’m not positive about that last part, but I’m definitely up for the destressing weekend.”

  Marc’s BlackBerry in his coat pocket beeped, and he moved back to answer it. When he was done, he said, “I’ve got to go now. I’ll pick you up on Friday at four o’clock, if that works for you.”

  I gave him the address of my condo in Mt. Pleasant, then kissed him goodbye. As I watched him walk away, I noticed for the first time the occupant of a nearby bench. The man, dressed in the full Confederate uniform of a cavalry officer, was watching me calmly, and I thought for a moment that he might be a Civil War reenactor—of which the city had plenty—until I realized that I could see the slats of the bench through his torso. Before I could turn away to show him that I wasn’t interested, he vanished, leaving only a small breeze that rustled a few fallen leaves on the sidewalk to show that he’d been there at all.

  Three days later, I was at Victoria’s Secret picking out coordinating lingerie for my weekend trip when my cell phone rang. I almost didn’t pick up after seeing that it was Sophie. I hadn’t seen her since that disastrous last night at the house on Tradd, although I’d had a conference call with her and my dad to discuss a temporary halt to the renovations. She hadn’t really said anything at the time, and I wondered if she was somehow angry with me. As if everything was somehow all my fault.

  I flipped open my phone while comparing the silk of one nightgown to another. “Hey, Soph.”

  “Hi, Mewanie.”

  “Soph? Is that you? You sound like you’ve got a cold.”

  “Just a dog awergy.” She sniffled.

  “I thought Chad had General Lee.”

  There was only silence and the sound of sniffling coming over the receiver. Then the sound of low voices and the soft yap of a dog.