The girls laughed—thin, brittle notes that had nothing to do with mirth.
They drifted from the piazza inside through the door flung open wide to the night breeze. From inside came the crashing crescendo of a pianoforte. Beethoven—Tom recognized it. The widow Russell had once played the pianoforte, and Tom had shod many a horse to the notes of a concerto, badly performed. Tonight Emily Pinckney, the top of her head visible through the first-floor parlor windows, banged out Beethoven as if the hammer and speed of it could catapult her free from the house.
Dropping the mule’s hoof, Tom was just standing, just turning to walk on up the street, when he caught sight of blue toward the top of the house that maybe wasn’t just the shreds of sky left as dark overtook it.
And there Dinah was in the cupola, where she stood with a blue head rag over the black spill of hair that fell to her shoulders. Only now one hand was to her throat and her mouth twisted into what must be a scream, her head thrashing backward in panic.
A man’s hand slapped over her mouth. The tumbler he held sloshed amber liquid onto her neck and her chest, and then it shattered against the frame of the cupola window, the man brushing its jagged glass across her neck. No sound came from the cupola, just a terrible, twisting silence above the crash of Beethoven below.
And Tom standing there. Staring up. Able to do exactly nothing to help.
The strength drained from his head down through his torso and out of his legs so that only his locked knees were holding him upright.
The back of Dinah’s head was pressed to the glass now, her hair blending with the black of the night. Behind her, the man, his upper lip curling as he looked down into her face, then pressed his mouth onto hers, his hands pulling at something and ripping and tearing. Then the bare of one of her shoulders.
Both of Pinckney’s arms circling her.
Wrenching her back. Wrenching her down.
Both their heads disappeared then. Nothing in the yellow glow of the cupola but the flicker of candlelit shadows.
Nausea shot up Tom’s middle, scorching his throat. It cut off his air. It swallowed him whole.
Closing his eyes, he tried to shut out the sight of her face twisted with fear. Or himself, the sinewed mass of him, unmoving there on the street, like a shorn Samson roped to one single spot where he was helpless to fight.
Helpless even to move.
Beethoven pounding around him, Tom stood there, dizzy and sick, still hoping to hear something. See something. Know anything other than the too much he already did.
Two levels below, Emily Pinckney came sweeping back out onto the piazza, holding a thick leather-bound book. “Clarissa. By that longwinded Samuel Richardson, who would not get to the point. This was the giant block of a novel we slipped from your mother’s parlor as little girls, remember? The one she was horrified to find that we’d read. Imagine if she’d known how we loved acting it out: you and me taking turns as the sweet, flawless damsel and the blackguard Lovelace who took Clarissa’s innocence from her—and Dinah in all the supporting roles. Dinah asked once, I recall, to play the virtuous lady Clarissa—before her ruin at the hands of Lovelace.”
“And you would not let her,” Nina mused. “I remember.”
The Grimké girl might have said something more or not—Tom had to bend double now, his head nearly touching his knees.
“And, Nina, remind me to tell Dinah she must have me dressed early tomorrow for the Ravenels’ picnic. Where has she gotten to, by the way? Honestly, these past several months she can just disappear. Shamefully inconsiderate of her when she knows it’s getting late.”
Two levels below the cupola, Emily Pinckney leaned on the first-floor piazza’s balustrade and sighed. “The truth is I’m in no mood to care about ladylike conduct and good Southern breeding tonight.” She snapped open the newspaper and handed half its pages to Angelina. “See what a baneful influence you are. What would Father say if he knew?”
A few yards away, in the cavernous dark of an ancient magnolia, Tom Russell had dropped to his knees and was beginning to retch.
Chapter 10
2015
Pausing at the entrance of the inn’s garden, Kate ran a hand over the shape of a lyre crafted into the gate’s elaborate design. She’d read only just this morning that one clue to the quality—and often the age—of Charleston’s ironwork was the craft of its curls. This gate’s wrought iron wound in tight, perfectly tapered spirals. And for a moment she held on to it, as if its age and its strength might transfer some sort of courage to her.
At the inn’s sign requesting that only registered guests pass through its gardens, Kate did not stop. Out on South Battery, just a few yards away, a tourist carriage was clattering past, its driver sporting Confederate gray. Just beyond the gazebo and cannons, the land spilled into sea.
Through pink and purple clouds of azaleas, she skirted right, not toward the inn’s main entrance but instead toward the far side for a view of its vast wraparound porch. From here in the garden below, myrtle and magnolia rising around her, she could see two sets of high-heeled sandals as they clattered past on the porch. Except for an older couple sipping coffee at the far end, the porch was empty now of guests.
She’d seen Botts come straight toward the inn, so he must be either here on the porch or inside.
“Mr. Botts?” a man’s voice called.
No answer.
Kate ducked back into the shade of the magnolia.
Footfalls sounded over the boards—not the sharp click of an attorney’s dress shoes but heavy and dull. Construction boots, she could make out from below.
“Mr. Botts?” the man called again.
Again, no answer.
A scratch of wood on wood, and Kate could see a man’s arm moving one of the wicker chairs closer to the edge of the porch and the construction boots propped on the porch’s lower railing.
Then the rhythmic strum of a guitar. And a bass voice on a mournful melody line—a song Kate knew. Knew well, in fact.
Summertime, and the livin’ is easy.
She could see her mother bending to push her in a tire swing—the one they’d strung up together from a silver maple in the yard in front of their duplex one bleak Christmas Day in New England, to the neighbors’ horror—the eighteen-wheeler’s tire and a fraying rope visible from the street, where, on both sides of the town square, colonial saltbox two-stories marched stiffly, dutifully, their original wooden shutters intact, their original iron boot scrapers still affixed to front stoops. All but Kate and Sarah Grace’s house, which sat small and low and unkempt, like a whispered apology. Kate could see her mother ignoring the neighbor walking his schnauzer, both master and dog cocking their heads, dubious, disapproving, as Sarah Grace shoved at the tire as it swung past and sang in time to its swing:
Fish are jumpin’, and the cotton is high.
Sarah Grace’s voice keened over the notes, sorrowing, sliding. The words that followed rang eerily true, Kate sensed even as a small child: the daddy who was rich, the momma who was good-looking—and something deeply, elementally tragic about that pairing, like a fault line that assured some future catastrophic collapse.
At some point, the song had come to an end, the sway of the rope had stilled, Kate laughing up at her mother—only to find her mother staring out and away, her fingers on the spiral and fall of Kate’s curls, but her eyes not seeming to see them.
Sarah Grace bent then, cinching her arms around her daughter and kissing the top of Kate’s head—and held her like that for so long Kate wondered if her mother had forgotten again where they were: outdoors. In front of their little house, the smallest by far on the square. The neighbor shaking his head.
“It provokes one,” said the neighbor—perhaps to his dog or perhaps to no one at all, “to wonder about the South.”
The guitar landed a final D minor—this one mangled, discordant. A rumble and scrape then, like boots scuffling as someone stood up.
A low rasp of a voice cam
e from around the far curve of the porch. “You are early, Mr. Lambeth.”
“I try to break the stereotype of the slow-showing contractor at every chance, Mr. Botts,” the voice of the young man who’d been singing replied.
Kate crept closer.
“And?” Botts again. Curt. Impatient.
“I’ll cut right to the chase.”
“By all means do. I have a meeting soon. And my time is immensely valuable.”
The toe of the work boot tapped once, then twice, as if the contractor were making himself pause before answering. “I’m here to advocate for the family.”
“And which family, might I ask, would that be?”
“Let’s not play games, Botts. I believe you know.”
They’d moved closer, just a few feet away from her now. Kate tried to quiet her breathing.
She saw a square jaw, a hand raking hair back from the face, and eyes that widened, blinked once, as the younger man—the runner guy from the seawall—caught sight of Kate hiding there.
A cell phone rang.
Botts’s voice: “I need to get this. I assume you are willing to wait.”
A series of thuds as he walked a few steps away from the runner—and toward Kate. “Yes,” he muttered into the phone, “I’ve talked with the lab.”
A pause. He stepped farther away from the contractor. And still closer to Kate. The toes of Percival Botts’s wing tips, polished to an ebony gloss, poked to the edge of the porch.
He lowered his voice. “They received the follicle and root samples, some antique items of clothing—including the handkerchief, yes—their usefulness for DNA purposes yet to be determined. And, of course,” he uttered this last with distaste, “the buccal swabs.”
A pause. Then he said, “Like you, they told me it might or might not be enough for a determinative result.” A pause. “Yes, I can meet for lunch, but . . .” He shot out his breath in annoyance. “I’ll see you there.”
A muffled beep as he hung up without signing off.
Kate could see up to the knees of Botts’s trousers.
He did not move. Which might mean he’d heard her there, only inches away. Breathing. Or shifting her weight.
The contractor guy’s voice edged into the silence. “Everything okay?”
The wing tips pivoted left. A pause. “What was it you were attempting to say, Mr. Lambeth, when I was unavoidably interrupted?”
The contractor’s eyes darted down toward her, and for a moment Kate thought he might give her away. Instead, he tromped down the porch in the opposite direction. A wicker chair scraped across wood. “Mr. Botts, I wonder if you and I could chat for a moment.”
Hesitating only an instant, Kate rounded back through the garden, mounted the porch stairs, and stood before them. “So,” she said. “Hello.”
Botts froze. The attorney had not changed in all these years: the black trench coat, the small head between pointed shoulders, the jerk of limbs strung too loosely together. Percival Botts was as much the tarantula of her nightmares as ever.
Kate braced herself. She knew what kind of pain Percival Botts left in his wake. Hadn’t she seen Sarah Grace pale when they were expecting a visit from Kate’s father and they opened the door on Botts standing there, his tiny eyes hard and glaring?
Kate had watched her mother struggle—to find a job, to find them housing, to help Kate feel secure in their new life even when Sarah Grace herself clearly did not—back as far as their flight to New England. In Kate’s mind as a girl, Botts represented all that had conspired to make her mother always short on money—and even shorter on resilience. So Kate learned long ago, you didn’t take your attention off Percival Botts for two shreds of an instant—not unless you’d already abandoned all hope and were prepared for surrender, a white flag poled through your heart.
She could guess what he must see, looking at her. Long hair frizzed by sea air, clothes rumpled, face pale—the very picture of what her father thought she would become: a failure.
He stood a full moment, unspeaking. Then, stiffly, extended his hand. “Katherine. I was planning on contacting you to apprise you of my arrival.” Botts pulled his briefcase up his side and in front of his middle as if he were drawing a sword.
“I thought I’d save you the trouble by just showing up.”
The whetted gray of his eyes held steady on hers. “I was assuming you had research you could pursue in the meantime. Assuming, that is, you’ve managed to retain your position in the department. I understand there have been . . . issues.”
Kate took a moment to absorb this. “That’s more about my life than I would have guessed you knew. I didn’t realize that in addition to attorney-client privilege, attorney-client spying also extends beyond death.”
The contractor’s gaze, uneasy, circled from Kate to Botts and back.
“My adviser’s been encouraging me for some time to travel to visit some archives, but leaving Massachusetts wasn’t something I could do in good conscience . . . before.”
“Sarah Grace,” Botts said, as if forcing himself to form the words.
“Yes. But since my circumstances have obviously changed, it occurred to me now might be a good time to pursue that research. For my work. And also some questions I’ve had for a very long time about my family. As it turned out, I left Cambridge without a lot of advance planning.” To say the least.
This fell leadenly into the silence.
So Kate continued. “Since her funeral, I’ve been going through boxes. With all sorts of papers and . . . memorabilia. And also a good bit of research.”
Botts’s eyes widened over his craggy outcropping of nose. Cautiously, he nodded. “Sarah Grace . . . your mother had no gift for order.”
“There’s a reason,” Kate persisted, “that Sarah Grace never let go of Charleston.”
Botts jerked back his head. A small gesture. Still, he’d been startled.
But he regained his composure quickly. “And you assume, Katherine, that somehow your mother’s nostalgia ought to mean something? Perhaps you’ve been reading more novels than scholarly works.”
Kate leaned forward, one elbow resting on the opposite arm, which was crossing her chest. “The reading material I’m most excited about now, actually, is going through Sarah Grace’s belongings in all those boxes.”
Botts tensed—no hiding that. “If by belongings you mean deeds to cars that broke down decades ago, then all best of luck to you.”
“Still, I’m guessing it might be worthwhile, my reading all the way down through. Don’t you think?”
Here he seemed to visibly pale. Something like fear flashed through his eyes—before they hardened again. “Your mother and father’s marriage was stormy, it is fair to say. Perhaps she felt she needed to put some distance between herself and the Low Country. But if you’re assuming there are inheritance issues that concern you, then you would be unequivocally mistaken.”
Kate studied his face, the ragged angles of his features going, if anything, sharper as he avoided meeting her eye. “I didn’t say a word about inheritance. What makes you bring that up, Mr. Botts?”
Small eyes narrowed to what Kate could have drawn with two slashes of pencil. She wanted to give him time. But the words, years of them, tumbled from her. “With my mother gone, all the things I always thought she’d tell me someday feel urgent now to understand. I thought maybe you could explain what happened. Why both of them came from Charleston and both of them—separately—left. Or why, for all her running away from this place, she never stopped talking about the Low Country, reading its history—dreaming about it even, I think.”
Vaguely, she was aware of the contractor still standing there, his eyes on the porch planks and his weight shifting from one foot to the next. But all her focus now was on the attorney and the expression she could not read on his profile, the twitch of his eye and the pressed line of his lips.
Botts remained facing the harbor. “‘Reading its history,’” he repeated, each word
chopped to a dull chunk of sound. His hands went deep in the pockets of his trousers, arms stiff, his body a wall—but his face in profile contorted. “She should have . . . told you herself.”
Kate touched his arm. “Please. What was it that shattered her?”
In Botts’s eyes, she could see something newly wedged open, something newly exposed.
“What,” she whispered, already wishing she wouldn’t say it, already regretting the words as they formed, “did my father—and you—do to her?”
He rounded on her. The moment of seeing into his eyes was over. That wedged-open shaft had slammed shut once again, his face all contempt.
“Look,” she said, “I’m sorry. That didn’t come out like I—”
But it was too late.
“If she’d listened to me . . . ,” he hissed.
The contractor, Lambeth, edged a step back.
“I’m sorry to air all this in front of you,” Kate told him. “But Mr. Botts here has a track record of not returning my calls when he has something to hide.” It was only a guess, a stab in the dark. But the lawyer flinched at that last phrase—she was sure of it.
She spun back to him. “Then what, Mr. Botts? What more damaging could you have possibly done? You and my father had already arranged it so we got nothing financially. You managed to wound her all over again every time you showed up in Great Barrington with some new excuse of my father’s to ignore us—and all along, you pretended that your client’s conduct was okay.”
He stepped back as if he’d been struck and took a moment to gather himself before speaking. “Let me ask you this, Katherine: Did your mother never give you specifics of her earlier life in the Low Country? Did she never divulge anything while, for example, she was . . .” He glanced away and then met her eye. “Drinking?”
A Tangled Mercy Page 9
