Caroline stood as well, and Marielle reached for the cake. As she left for the kitchen, Pearl began to ask Caroline where she had been the last few years and what she had been doing. She was still pumping Caroline for details when Marielle returned a few minutes later.
“So you became a nun?” Pearl was saying. “Because I didn’t know you could do that after living like, well, like you have lived. Because, I mean you’ve slept with so many men and had a child and all.”
“Good Lord, Pearl—,” Adelaide said.
“No, I didn’t become a nun,” Caroline replied, lifting a uniform coat off the table. “I spent some time with some. At a convent. Turned out to be just what I needed. But I didn’t become a nun.”
“Really? Well, isn’t that something? Did you hear that, Marielle? She wanted to become a nun but they wouldn’t let her.” Pearl turned back to the table. “But we’re glad you’re here instead of kneeling in a church for hours on end! So glad. What a nice surprise!”
“How about if we get started?” Adelaide said.
For the next few minutes, Adelaide showed them the hand sewing that needed to be done and the few seams that were left to do and all the linings that had to be tacked down. Marielle was shown how to attach the buttons, and she settled onto the couch next to Adelaide to begin the task. Adelaide watched her sew the first few and told her she was doing a fine job. Caroline took on the hems and lining, and Pearl sat at the machine and sewed up the remaining open seams. They would work on the gold trim and braid that afternoon.
An hour had passed, with Pearl providing a running commentary on the social scene in Fredericksburg, when the doorbell rang.
“I’ll get that,” Marielle stood and put the jacket she was working on on the cushion next to her.
“Oh! I think I might know who that is,” Pearl said.
“What do you mean?” Adelaide looked up from taking a peek at Marielle’s work.
“I invited someone to lunch.”
All eyes turned to her.
“Who did you invite, Pearl?” Adelaide asked.
“It’s a surprise.”
The doorbell rang again, and Marielle walked quickly to the foyer and opened the door. Standing on the welcome mat was a stout, smiling woman in a powder blue sweat suit trimmed in white.
Eldora Meeks.
delaide heard a woman’s voice, one that she recognized but couldn’t place. She heard the front door close and Marielle saying something. Footsteps sounded on the foyer’s tile floor. Caroline took a step toward the drawing room doors.
“Who is here, Pearl?” Caroline sounded anxious. There were few people in Fredericksburg her daughter wanted to see; Adelaide was fairly certain of that.
But before Pearl could answer, Marielle was showing the guest into the drawing room.
It had been more than a decade since Adelaide had seen Eldora Meeks. But the woman hadn’t changed much in all those years. Adelaide would’ve known the woman anywhere.
“Eldora …,” Adelaide breathed.
Eldora turned to her. “Hello, Adelaide. It’s so nice to see you again.”
“Yes!” Pearl was triumphant. “Eldora is here!” She turned to Caroline. “I don’t think you’ve ever met my cousin, Caroline. This is Eldora Meeks. She’s clairvoyant.”
Eldora, smiling, thrust her hand toward Caroline. “Nice to meet you, Caroline.”
Caroline took it tentatively.
“And Marielle you’ve already met,” Pearl was saying, but Adelaide’s eyes were on Eldora and Caroline. Their hands were still touching, their handshake frozen for a moment as if time had stopped at their hands.
Then Eldora abruptly pulled her hand away, gulping a breath of air as she did so. She smiled at Caroline, a mixture of awe and surprise on her face. “Very nice to meet you,” she said again.
“Likewise,” Caroline said, but she stared at Eldora as if she felt differently.
“I’m having sandwiches delivered from Pandora’s at noonish,” Pearl announced. “So we’ll have some time to chat before we eat. Adelaide, I told Eldora what you told me in the hospital and—”
Adelaide cut her off. “Pearl, could I see you in the kitchen for a moment?” Adelaide didn’t wait for an answer. She turned to the drawing room doors and was halfway across the foyer tiles when Pearl caught up with her.
“What is it, dear?”
Adelaide waited until they were in the kitchen. Then she drew Pearl close to her. “Why didn’t you tell me you had asked Eldora to come today?”
“Adelaide, you seem upset with me. I only did what you asked me to. You told me you wanted to see Eldora again. I invited her over. I thought you’d be grateful.”
Adelaide sighed. “Did you really think I’d want to have Eldora come over with Marielle and Caroline here?”
Pearl lifted her chin. “I had no idea Caroline was at Holly Oak. Seems to me you could’ve told me that. And as for Marielle, I don’t see what difference that makes. Marielle and Eldora have already met. If you’re upset, it’s your own fault for not telling me Caroline was here, dear.”
“What on earth do you mean, Marielle and Eldora have already met?”
Pearl brought a hand up to her mouth. “Oh. Oh, never mind. Just never mind about that.” Pearl started to walk away, but Adelaide used her good arm to stop her.
“Marielle has already met Eldora?” Adelaide asked. “When?”
Pearl patted her arm. “You know what? This really isn’t any of my business. I just try to be a good neighbor, that’s all. Marielle asked to speak with Eldora, and I arranged it when she came to have lunch with me. But it’s not really something I would know anything about. That’s probably between you and her. And Eldora. And Carson.”
Pearl was out of the kitchen before Adelaide could stop her again.
“What is she going to do here, Pearl?” Adelaide said as they walked, her voice a rasping whisper.
“Take a reading on the house, of course,” Pearl whispered back.
They arrived back in the drawing room. Only Caroline was still there.
“Where’s Eldora?” Adelaide asked.
“Mother, what is that woman doing here?” Caroline’s tone was gentle but urgent.
“Where is she?”
Caroline nodded toward the open doors Adelaide had just come through. “She went off to explore the house. Marielle followed her. What is she doing here? Is this … is this about Susannah?”
Adelaide looked over her shoulder. She could hear low voices now in the parlor. Pearl apparently heard them too.
“Oh my lands, Adelaide. Eldora and Marielle are in the parlor. I think I will just wait here.” Pearl walked over to the sofa and sat down quickly.
“Mother, please tell me what’s going on,” Caroline said.
“I just … Something happened the day I fell, Caroline. I can’t explain it. I—”
“But what is she doing here?”
“Eldora has special sight,” Pearl said, leaning over to speak as softly as she could. “She can talk to the spirit world. Well, sometimes she can. Sometimes she can just see it. Sometimes she can hear it. Sometimes she can see ghosts. That’s why Adelaide wanted her to come. Because of Susannah. Susannah pushed her down the stairs.”
“Pearl!” Adelaide exclaimed.
“Well, that’s what you told me!”
“That is not what I told you! I said it felt like I had been pushed. I didn’t say I had been.”
Caroline looked first to Pearl and then to Adelaide. Her countenance was calm but set. “Is that true, Mother? Did you ask Eldora to come here because you think there’s a ghost in this house?”
“It’s not as simple as that—”
“No, indeed. Ghosts are complex. Eldora told me that.” Pearl sat back on the couch, satisfied.
Caroline ignored Pearl, her gaze still fixed on Adelaide. “Then tell me what you think it is.”
“I don’t know what it is! I thought I did, but now I’m not sure. Eldora had been here
once before, ten years ago. She sensed a presence inside Holly Oak. She believes it was my great-grandmother, stuck here in some kind of self-imposed limbo because of what happened here at this house.”
“And you believed her?” Caroline asked, sounding incredulous. Adelaide was struck dumb for just a second. Caroline sounded like the parent. And she, the child.
“No, I didn’t believe her. I thought it was something else. Something else entirely.”
Caroline blinked at her. “Thought what was something else? What?”
“But now she thinks it is Susannah, don’t you, Adelaide?” Pearl interjected. “Because Susannah pushed her down the stairs because she let Marielle go poking about the studio.”
Caroline stared at her, and Adelaide saw flashes of the young girl who had left Holly Oak at seventeen, hating it, hating her. “What have you told Marielle about this house, Mother?” Caroline said evenly.
“I said nothing about a ghost—”
“That’s true, she didn’t. Eldora told her about the ghost,” Pearl interrupted. “Well, actually first it was me—”
Adelaide turned to her friend. “Pearl, please. I’d like to talk to my daughter alone.”
Pearl frowned but rose from the couch and left reluctantly.
“What did you tell Marielle about this house?” Caroline repeated. “I’d like to know.”
Adelaide’s arm began to throb. “I never said there is a ghost at Holly Oak. Pearl told her that. You remember how Pearl is. I told her it’s like the house doesn’t know how to let go of its past. It wants to but it can’t. I knew Marielle would hear the rumors around town that the house is cursed. Sooner or later she would hear it. I told her that the people who think there’s a curse on this house are wrong.”
Caroline breathed in and out. A breath of resignation. Or maybe indignation. “Are they wrong? Think about it, Mother? Are those people wrong?”
Her daughter strode past her.
“Where are you going?” Adelaide called after her, afraid that Caroline was headed up the stairs to grab her suitcase and leave.
“I’m not leaving Marielle alone with that woman,” Caroline muttered.
Caroline was out the drawing room door, and Adelaide pivoted to follow her. “Caroline.”
Caroline said nothing. She crossed the foyer and made her way to the far end of the entry and the half-open parlor doors. Adelaide hurried to catch up, her bruised body protesting.
Inside the parlor, Eldora stood, her arms lifting slightly from her sides, palms out, and her head to one side, looking somewhat like a waiting antenna. Her eyes were closed. Marielle stood wide eyed a few feet away from her.
Adelaide was mesmerized by the sight, but Caroline spoke into the strange silence as if to break the glass around a fire extinguisher. “What’s going on in here?”
Eldora, apparently unfazed by Caroline’s interruption, slowly moved her head in a circle, like a warmup exercise. She opened her eyes. “I feel the presence strong in here,” she said. “So strong. Stronger than last time.”
“Look, I don’t mean any disrespect, but I don’t think this is a good idea,” Caroline said.
“You feel it too. Don’t you?” Eldora said, turning to Caroline. Her voice was sweet, inclusive. “You are in touch with the spirit world.”
“I think we need to go back to the family room and sew.” Caroline turned to Marielle and nodded to her.
“Don’t you want me to check the other rooms, Adelaide?” Eldora asked. “What about the garden? And the slaves’ quarters? And your cellar? Do you remember how strong it was in your cellar? Do you not want me to see if she is in there?”
Adelaide saw Marielle flinch, and she opened her mouth but no answer came. She didn’t know what she wanted Eldora to do. What would Eldora find if she kept at it? What would she hear? What would she see? Adelaide realized with a shudder that she wasn’t prepared to hear she’d been wrong all these decades—that Susannah did indeed haunt the house. A tiny squeak escaped her throat.
“That’s enough.” Caroline stood at the parlor doors and held them open, like a nanny shooing little ones out of a room they had no business being in.
Eldora took a step toward Adelaide. “I will leave if you want me to. But only if you want me to.”
Adelaide nodded. “I think you should go.”
Caroline walked out of the room without a look back. Eldora took Adelaide’s good hand in her own. “I wonder if you aren’t in some kind of danger, Adelaide. Your daughter senses it too or she would not be so insistent that I leave. She is afraid I will provoke this presence by being here. Caroline touches the spirit world. I felt it in her when I shook her hand. She thinks you can ignore this and it will go away, but I ask you, how long have you known your house is not like other houses?”
The answer came easily, before she had a chance to rein it in. “All my life,” Adelaide said.
Eldora squeezed her hand. “What would you like me to do?”
An image of her great-grandmother seated in her wingback chair, dead, rose up before her.
I did everything I could.
I did everything I could.
“What can you do?” Adelaide asked. “What is it that you can do? Can you fix what is broken here? Can you?”
Eldora’s grip on her hand lessened. “No, I can’t. I can only tell what I sense, what I feel. I cannot fix anything for you.”
“Who can?” Adelaide whispered.
“The deceased who can’t move on from this world needs to be empowered somehow. She needs something. If you want me to try and find out, I will.”
The doorbell sounded.
From behind her, Adelaide felt Marielle place a hand on her shoulder. She had almost forgotten she was there. “I think the lunch is here, Mimi,” Marielle said.
Adelaide turned to face her. Marielle’s face was pale. “You must think I’m crazy. Don’t you?”
Marielle shook her head. “No, I don’t. Let’s go have lunch.”
Adelaide took a step toward the parlor doors with Eldora on one side and Marielle on the other. “I almost wish I was crazy. Then none of this would matter. It would all just be in my imagination.”
“Do you want me to check the other rooms, Adelaide?” Eldora asked.
“Eldora, I think maybe we’ve had enough for one day,” Marielle said before Adelaide could answer.
And she leaned into her new granddaughter-in-law and thanked Eldora Meeks for coming.
She did not ask her to stay for lunch.
arielle stood over the long table in the family room surveying the work she had done on the uniforms that lay before her, resplendent in the light from the chandelier above. Her rows of shining buttons, spread across the coat fronts like runway lights, glowed warm and straight. She’d had to remove and resew a few that hadn’t been perfectly positioned. Adelaide had gently insisted. When officers go to war, they set the standard for everyone else, Adelaide had told her. Everyone looks to them for direction and inspiration. Especially the young soldiers because they’re wondering what war will do to them. Will it turn them into barbarians? The perfect rows of buttons show them it will not.
There had been less conversation in the sewing room after lunch, after Eldora left. Pearl, pouting a bit, had decided they needed music to regain their party atmosphere and filled the room with Frank Sinatra tunes from the stereo. Marielle had caught Caroline looking at her more than once, and each time she tipped her head as if to silently encourage her. By the time Pearl left at six, Marielle’s arms and shoulders ached from bending over fabric and needles all day long. But the uniforms were nearly finished. Just a few more swirls of braid to attach. Caroline had said she could finish them tomorrow—Pearl didn’t have to give up another day—and Pearl had said she was fine with that because she had her jewelry party to get ready for.
Now, as Marielle waited for Carson to get home from work, the house was eerily quiet. Adelaide had gone to her room to lie down before dinner, and Caroline had gon
e for a walk. For the first time since they had left, Marielle realized she missed the children. She smiled to herself. Surely that was a good sign. She wondered if she should call them and tell them she missed them. Carson talked to them every night, and sometimes he gave the phone to her to say hello and sometimes he didn’t. She didn’t think it was some kind of conscious decision on his part when he didn’t. She supposed he was still getting used to the idea that his children had a new stepmother, just as she was getting used to the idea that she was it. She would definitely call them.
She heard the front door open and the sound of Carson walking into the house, hanging his car keys on the hook by the door, setting his briefcase down.
“Anybody here?” he called out.
“I’m in your study,” she said, and a few seconds later he was at her side, his arms around her from behind. She rested her head on his chest.
“Wow. You gals were busy. Are they done?”
“Nearly. Just some trim left to do. Caroline said she’d finish them up.”
He kissed her temple and she closed her eyes. “This was a wonderful thing you all did for Mimi. I know this would’ve bugged her, not getting them done in time.”
She looked up at him. “See the nice rows of buttons? Those are mine.”
He smiled. “Lined up like little golden soldiers. Well done.” He kissed her again. “So you had a good day?”
She hesitated. “Mostly.”
“Mostly?”
She turned around to face him. She wanted him to know who had been at the house. “Pearl invited Eldora Meeks over.”
A rush of surprise fell across Carson’s face. “Why?” He sounded almost angry.
“She thought she was doing Mimi a favor. Mimi said something to Pearl at the hospital about …” Marielle suddenly felt like she was saying too much. Betraying something.
“About what? What did Mimi say at the hospital?”
Marielle moved away from him to take a seat on the couch. He followed her. “She … well, you know how she feels about this house, and when she fell, she felt like … like she needed to talk to Eldora again. Pearl assumed it was okay to ask her over today.”
A Sound Among the Trees Page 16
