Amanda knew that Peyton had to see the plan in her own head first, then she typed it out. She was the only Account Director who prepared a proposal by pacing and talking to herself for several hours before she put anything on paper. Then she wrote a perfect proposal on the first draft. She could remember every detail, that’s how her near perfect memory worked.
“First thing we’ll do is change their slogan. It has to come off of their website, their to-go bags, napkins, advertisements, everything. ‘By hand’ is not the right slogan considering the founder has been accused of sexual misconduct.”
“Excellent idea. By the way, his daughter called this morning. Lily said she needs to make a decision by Wednesday as to which PR firm to go with.”
“As in two days from now? I thought we had until next week on this?”
“Apparently someone leaked the lawsuit to the news and they’re getting bad press.”
“Oh, gosh.”
“Yeah. Former employee, I think. Did you talk with Lily before you left?”
“I did. She was great. Very open about everything that happened.” Peyton exhaled relief. That first step with any client always made her nervous. They had to be honest with her about what they did, or what someone did in their company that screwed things up. Once she knew the real story, she could go about fixing their image. She had to have all the facts first. If she didn’t, she knew she couldn’t truly help them.
“Confess the truth,” Peyton remembered her grandmother’s words. “It will set you free, sweetheart. Confess it, stand on it, cling to it. The truth will always give you a way forward.” She believed that. She also believed that honesty was necessary for her clients. It gave her projects momentum, started a measure of healing for everyone. Nothing could be truly fixed without honesty.
“I’ll definitely send it tonight.”
“Great. I’ll pitch it for you tomorrow.”
Peyton stopped talking. Last thing she wanted was for this account to go to someone else in the firm. Amanda had a reputation for letting other people do the creative, while she took the client for herself.
“I’m just going to pitch it for you,” Amanda said as if she had read Peyton’s mind.
“And our agreement is the same, that I’m promoted to Senior Vice President when I land this client?”
“Well, technically, I guess I would be landing the client since—”
Amanda seemed to catch herself. The Sweet Chocolate Company was a prize account and Peyton didn’t think Amanda could get it without Peyton’s creative.
“Not that that matters. Of course, stakes are the same. Senior Vice President when this client comes in.”
“Great. Let’s make sure we have that in writing and I’ll get the creative to you tonight.”
“Oh—I’ll, um—”
“I do better when everything is in writing. Just helps me keep things straight.” Actually, she didn’t want Amanda worming her way out of their agreement.
“Yeah, I’ll email something to you today,” Amanda said quickly. “Now, hurry back. I don’t want to worry about losing my best person to the plantations of Charleston.”
Peyton glanced at the house that seemed to be watching her. “You don’t need to be concerned. My life is in Boston.”
They said their goodbyes and Peyton flipped her hair behind her shoulders. She stared at the house like a challenge, and she walked toward the front door. Each step reminded her of a different time when boards fell from the front of the house, revealing its darkened insides.
Her phone rang. Like grabbing for a lifeline, she answered it quickly. “Ira. Hey.” She walked back down the stairs and into the driveway.
“Hi, hon. I’m at the hospital, only have a minute. Wanted to make sure you’re okay.” The sound of Ira’s voice calmed her, brought her back to the person she was in Boston—confident, strong, accomplished.
“Thanks, I’m fine. I’m at the manor. I guess my Mom will be here shortly.” The thought of seeing her mother coated her stomach in dread. There was her mother’s insistence that she be at the center of all things, and the fact that she was too controlling, too selfish, too…everything. It was bad enough that Peyton had to be at the manor again, but being there with her mother made her want to drink shots of hard liquor. For breakfast.
“Alright, well, you call me if you need me.”
“I will.”
“My flight arrives tomorrow morning.”
“I thought you were coming in tonight?”
“I got called into a surgery for tomorrow morning. After that I’ll be on the first plane out. You sure you’re alright? You sound, I don’t know. Different somehow. Not quite yourself.”
Peyton twisted the oversized diamond solitaire around her ring finger. “I’m fine. It’s just—this woman is here. She runs the local history museum and she’s always been odd.” She didn’t tell him the real reason she felt uncomfortable around Mrs. Miller.
“I thought the South took pride in their odd family members.”
Peyton laughed. “I guess under normal circumstances we do sort of put them on the proverbial front porch and show them off. Mrs. Miller isn’t family, though. Our families were friends when I was younger and I interned with her at the museum for a couple of years when I was in high school.”
“If you’ve known her all your life, then she’s probably close to family.”
“I don’t remember exactly when we met.” Peyton did know exactly but she didn’t want to think about it. She didn’t want to think of most things concerning the manor.
“You—not remember something? You should see a doctor right away. I’ll be down immediately.”
“Stop. Be serious.”
“I am serious. I miss you. Too much. And now you’re forgetting things, which isn’t like you. I’ve never known you to forget anything.”
“I haven’t been gone long enough to be missed. And I’ve always had a few blank spots around that time in my life.” No one besides Beau and her family knew that she had missing memories. She was surprised she even mentioned it to Ira.
She glanced at the doorway, remembering the only snippet she could from that night when she was ten—sitting on the bottom step of the grand staircase inside the manor, smoothing her torn and bloody white dress. She didn’t even know how she got there.
An oily chill slid through her insides. It had been so long since that happened, she tried to tell herself that she didn’t actually know if it had happened. Maybe her mother was right that it had been a dream, a nightmare that she had inadvertently held onto as truth. Children did that sort of thing.
A stiff breeze shot across her back, as if the manor tapped her on the shoulder, correcting her. Still she argued her point. Actually, they were her mother’s points. First, she didn’t forget things. Ever. Her memory was nearly photogenic. Second, why would she have been in the manor at age ten? The house was mostly dilapidated then. Some parts were completely restored, but no one had been allowed near the grand staircase. So it would have been impossible for a child of ten years to wander in and sit on the bottom step of that area of the house.
Over the years her mother had been insistent that it was only a bad dream. But even as an adult, Peyton occasionally woke up in the middle of the night, crying, gasping, dreaming that she was ten again and sitting on the bottom step of the grand staircase inside Alcott Manor. Alone, frightened, the front of her dress splotched with blood, sticking to her skin.
Then, a hand reached up from beneath the floorboards and snatched her, dragged her below ground where she was suffocated to death. Her mother told her that she had been reading too much Greek Mythology back then. The teacher made them read about Persephone and how she became Queen of the Underworld. Jayne Ella said she never should have let her read those colorful stories when she was so young and her imagination was so wide open.
No other details came to light about that flash of a memory. Not while she slept and not after she awoke. In fact, the entire last ha
lf of her fourth-grade year had disappeared from her otherwise perfect memory.
Peyton didn’t want to remember. She liked not knowing.
She looked at the tintype still in her hand, her gaze sunk into the expression in his eyes. The others in the photo appeared to look at the photographer. He looked through the lens and right at her.
“It’s not the time you’ve been gone. It’s more just the knowing that you’re gone that makes me miss you. That’s more than enough. Have you gotten any of our registering done?” Ira asked.
“Registering?”
“For our china and silver, the everyday and the flatware…”
“Oh, right.”
“You know, typically it’s not the groom who remembers these things. I thought you loved china?”
“I do. It’s just—there’s too much going on with work and the manor.”
“Well, you’re only getting married once, missy. So, you might want to think about it, soon. Also, Mother is asking about the patterns we’ve chosen. I need to let her know.”
Her heart tightened at how involved his mother had been in the wedding planning from the beginning. Carol Byrne adored her son, and by default, Peyton. But she was strong to the point of domineering and Ira defaulted to his mother’s opinion more frequently than Peyton liked.
Their family was unlike Peyton’s in every way and she struggled with the very public arena where their family thrived. Ira’s father was a high profile attorney who was often in the news for his latest case. Ira’s mother was a society queen, also featured in the paper and magazines but more so for the events she either organized or attended. Their world revolved around money, image and prestige. She attended the fundraisers and the society events that were important to Ira and she enjoyed the dresses and the limos and the fancy dinners. Unlike Ira she felt she was pretending, an outsider visiting a foreign world. She knew she would adjust and her discomfort would dissipate with time.
The smile in Ira’s voice gave her new motivation. “You’re right. I’ll go online and get that done.”
They said their I love yous and she ended the call. She looked again at the image in the tintype that resembled Beau. Too bizarre.
When she’d first met Beau she’d had no idea that her heart could love someone as much as she loved him. She chalked it up to first love. When he left her at the altar, she hadn’t known it was possible to feel that much pain.
She left the church on what should have been her wedding day in faded jeans and a blue t-shirt, hairpins still holding her bridal updo in place, and she’d overheard Beau’s parents arguing. His mother stood on one side of their car, blaming his father for insisting that Beau work at the bank. “Finance was never his calling. You pushed him so hard he left!” his mother yelled.
“He left because he came to his senses and decided not to marry that girl. He’ll be back, and it’s a good thing we won’t be connected to that family,” his father said. “The lot of them, they’re all trash.”
She aimed her phone flashlight on the tintype to see the photo more clearly. Her stomach clenched. She snapped a photo of him and enlarged it on the screen. Maybe it was an ancestor of Beau’s. His family had been in Charleston as long as hers had.
She replaced the tintype in the box, pulled her shoulders back and narrowed her focus on the job ahead: get her proposal done for work, map out a publicity and tour plan for the manor, organize the manor’s artifacts into exhibits. Wrap up last minute wedding details. Marry Ira.
Beau’s doppelganger stared at her from her phone screen. She turned her screen to black. She stepped into the house and a chill covered her arms. She shivered even though the weather was warm.
The gold chandelier in the foyer shined bright, its light reflecting on highly polished, black and white marble floors. Mahogany wainscoting and marbled walls ensconced the space in regal warmth and comfort. Heavy crown molding in a gold leaf and floral theme accented the ceilings and arched doorways in good taste, and she saw the appeal she had often spotted in long ago photographs.
The small bust of a woman was carved into the center of every arch molding in sight and Peyton recognized her immediately. With her hair piled into high pinned curls, her high neck lace collar, and poised expression, Peyton knew that was Bertha Mae, the original matriarch of Alcott Manor. A woman who was known as much for her beauty as she was for surviving the tragic mysteries that filled her life.
She was a legend in Alcott family lore and a heroine of Peyton’s. She had already planned to build an exhibit dedicated to Bertha Mae Alcott. She could include Bertha Mae’s diary as a testament to her ability to overcome. Her ancestor had documented her trials in detail, her strength rising off of every page. She forgave those who wronged her and acted with compassion when life and luck turned against many of them. Her daughter Rachel was sick for most of her short life, and there were quite a few tintypes of Bertha Mae caring for her sick daughter, giving her spoonfuls of medicine and holding her on her lap. Tragically, Rachel drowned at an early age.
Mrs. Miller appeared from a side door at the end of the hallway, holding a lit candle. “It was a fuse.” Her heels dragged along the hardwoods with each step in an even, lazy rhythm. She blew the flame from the candle, a wisp of smoke curled next to her.
When she reached the foyer, she craned her neck to look where Peyton had been studying the crown molding. “I see you found Bertha Mae.” Her smile was broad and knowing, as if she had just introduced an old friend. Her uneven teeth appeared gray in the low light.
“The original Mrs. Alcott still watches every person who has ever walked through those double doors. This is still her house in a way. She owned it first, she owned it best. Probably always will, I think.” Mrs. Miller kept an eye on the carving. “If you listen closely you’ll find that she’s here. Her life is still within these walls—her memories, the way she ran the house. Everything about her life is still here.”
Peyton felt it, Bertha Mae’s presence. The entire Alcott family’s presence. It was palpable in the manor, even though they had long been in their grave. The sensation bled through the walls like a dark stare, an angry mood, a thickness that clung too close.
The past needed to be put to rest.
The exhibits would do just that, she decided. They would be a salute to the first Alcott family, and especially, Bertha Mae. That would bring the manor the peace it needed.
The house seemed to respond to her thought, and she could have sworn she felt it notice her plan. She wasn’t sure if it was the lush period furniture or the restored architecture or the entire picture-perfect presentation, but the house was not just a structure full of relics like a museum. Life shifted beneath what could be seen, as if the combination of this furniture, and these fixtures, inside these walls, set the stage for something to occur. A shiver ran through her body like the wiggle of a live wire.
“This house has seen it all,” Mrs. Miller said. “It misses nothing, forgets nothing. You know its history. It shares its secrets when it wants and exacts a measure of justice in the process.”
Whatever Mrs. Miller was referring to, Peyton hoped she was wrong. She didn’t want to know the manor’s secrets. And she didn’t want its justice. She knew enough about the manor’s past to know that some stories shouldn’t be told.
“Of all the Alcotts, I’ve always related to her the most, because she lost a child, you know. A beautiful child,” Mrs. Miller said. “Put the containers in there with the rest of them. Now that the fuse is fixed, I’m going to make a pot of coffee.” Her voice bounced off the wide hallways as if she were in a vacant castle.
Peyton pulled her shoulders back, tipped her chin and tried to be brave. She hadn’t always been afraid of the manor. When she and her younger sister, Layla, were little, they would run along the beach and stop where the great lawn met the sand. They would challenge one another to see who would run closest to the house. Peyton always won.
After one brisk night when Peyton was ten, that all changed.
She no longer trusted the manor after that.
3
Peyton watched Mrs. Miller muddle her way to the kitchen, feet scuffling, her hand touching the wall now and then for balance. She griped under her breath; Peyton couldn’t hear what she said but it didn’t sound good.
She glanced toward the foyer, ornate with gold and marble, a pre-Civil War version of an English castle entry. She tried to focus on that aspect and to get into a work frame of mind. But memories of her and Beau in the manor played too clear, like they were really there: sneaking in the front door as teenagers, his smile and eyes gentle and wide, encouraging her to follow him. He said he could get her over her fears. He said that he wanted to, that he loved her so much he didn’t want her to be afraid of anything.
She pressed her fingers against the pain in her chest, turned away, tried to focus her attention on something besides their memories. Her therapist in Boston prescribed Xanax for her time at the manor, she wondered if she should take it.
“Treat your anxiety like a headache,” she had said. “First sign of any symptoms of anxiousness, take a pill. Or at least half of a pill. Some memories just aren’t meant to be recovered, the brain insulates us for a reason.” Peyton agreed and swore she would take at least a half of one when she needed it. She put her hand in her purse and felt the smooth outline of the bottle.
Some memories aren’t meant to be recovered.
Long before he left, she had told Beau how she remembered being at the manor one night. Alone, cold, scared. Bloody.
“Oh, darlin’. You’re safe now.” He held her close, his voice was smooth and sweet like warm caramel. Her fears relaxed when she was in his arms, as if that night at the manor had never even happened. That was when he talked her into visiting the manor with him, once when they were in high school, and again when they were in college. The manor was fairly well restored then, at least for a little while. “Revisiting will help you get over that nightmare,” he’d said.
He walked them into the ballroom, played waltz music on his phone and offered her his hand. “Miss Peyton, may I have the honor of a dance with you?” He strengthened his already southern accent with the longer vowels used only in days gone by.
A Stranger in Alcott Manor Page 2
