Return to Tradd Street
“General Lee!” she shrieked again before leaning down.
It was like watching a movie where the bottom half of the screen was blocked, meaning all I could do was hear the sounds of a little dog squealing, another dog growling, and Rebecca screaming while I watched her bob up and down as if looking for a suitable stance from which to rescue her dog.
A fierce growl sounded from beyond my vision, making Rebecca jump back. The image of my marshmallow-like dog getting territorial almost made me laugh.
“Maybe you should just let them finish . . .” I began, but quickly stopped at the venomous look Rebecca gave me.
Without a word, she grabbed one of the pillows and began advancing on the unseen amorous pair before stopping abruptly. “I think they’re through,” she said. Dropping the pillow, she leaned down and picked up Pucci, who, I thought, looked quite happy and not despoiled at all.
“Do I need to find a couple of cigarettes?”
She glared at me. “I thought you said your dog was old!”
“He is. But old doesn’t mean dead, Rebecca. Just look at my parents!”
With a disgusted look at my dog, Rebecca stormed to the door. “I can only hope there aren’t any . . . repercussions.” She stared pointedly at my swollen girth. After a deep breath and a moment apparently needed to compose herself, she said, “My wedding planner will be calling you. His name is Daniel—just the first name. Like Madonna.”
“I thought you said I wouldn’t have to do anything . . .” I began, but she’d already slipped through the door and was headed for the stairs.
With a sigh, I leaned back against my pillows, then immediately jerked myself upright again, remembering my conversation with Sophie during our walk on the Battery. She’d mentioned the last name of Camille’s friend Charlotte, and the name had rung a bell with me. At the time I couldn’t place it. But now, after what Rebecca had just told me, I thought I knew.
Gently rolling myself into a sitting position, I reached for the folder Yvonne had given me that I’d set on the easel. I’d already started making a time line of all the information we’d discovered so far, but what I was looking for wouldn’t be there.
I began flipping through the papers until I’d reached the copy of Camille’s death certificate. Running my fingers down the page, I stopped at the bottom, right where in bold black ink was the signature of the attending physician who verified the death. Robert Pringle.
Icy crystals seemed to form down the line of my spine as I flipped through more pages until I’d found the second piece of paper, a later addition that Sophie had asked Yvonne to include in the folder. It was a copy of the postcard that Camille Vanderhorst had sent to her mother while on her honeymoon in Italy, the postcard where she’d mentioned the name of her friend who’d accompanied Camille and her husband. There, in Camille’s own elegant cursive writing, was the name I’d been looking for: Charlotte Pringle.
I turned back to the front of the folder, where Yvonne had stapled the Vanderhorst family tree. I found John and his lone descendant, William. And there, on the same branch with John were the names of his two wives, Camille and Charlotte.
It could be a different Charlotte; Pringle was a common Charleston family name, and it could just be a coincidence. But, as Jack was so fond of reminding me, there was no such thing as coincidences.
I hadn’t realized that I’d said the two names out loud until the lamp on the bedside table began to wobble. I was about to call out General Lee’s name to get him to stop until I realized that he was curled into a ball on the floor by my dressing table.
With alarm, I turned back to the lamp as it continued to move from side to side, gaining momentum until it seemed to perch itself on the edge of its brass base for a moment before swinging back in the other direction with such force that it toppled over, hitting the table with a loud cracking sound before smashing to the wood floor.
Jack, my mother, and Nola were at the doorway within minutes, Mrs. Houlihan panting behind them a few moments later. Jack came right to the bed and began touching me, as if to reassure himself that I was still in one piece, while my mother and Nola moved around the bed and spotted the lamp.
“Are you all right?” Jack asked.
I nodded. “I’m fine—really.”
Mrs. Houlihan moved to the windows, rubbing her arms. “It’s freezing in here.”
My mother lifted the top half of the lamp from the floor and we all stared at the shade that seemed to have been shredded by what looked like claws. Or the fingers of a very angry woman. “What happened?” she asked, although it was clear from her expression that she’d already guessed.
I felt three pairs of eyes on me while Mrs. Houlihan tested the window locks and moved aside curtains to check for cracks. Looking at Jack, I said, “I think things just got a little more complicated.”
CHAPTER 26
The last week of February, Detective Riley had let me know that the forensics lab had finally begun to work on the DNA procured during Nevin Vanderhorst’s exhumation and that the results were imminent. I wouldn’t risk the health of the babies by asking questions and antagonizing the ghost I couldn’t yet see, and whose restlessness I sensed near me almost daily, but my pregnancy was a temporary thing. As I lay in my bed each day, waiting for the babies to be born, I felt as if the house and its spirits were waiting, too.
I was still on bed rest as the babies thrived and I grew even larger, something I hadn’t thought possible the previous month. My mother and Amelia had taken over setting up the nursery, including the addition of a new closet to hold all of the accumulated baby gifts from extended family and friends, as well as from the baby shower Nancy Flaherty and Joyce Challis had thrown for me. I thought I’d be upset relinquishing control over the babies’ room, but I’d secretly found it a little liberating knowing that something was being done without my having to manage it. Perhaps my impending motherhood was changing me in spite of myself.
To keep my sanity, I tried to keep to a schedule, eating and sleeping at the same times every day, making business calls and checking in with my coworkers who were handling my clients, and updating my essential charts. I meticulously noted my weight and the baby’s statistics after every checkup with Dr. Wise, along with my blood pressure and urine test results. I made lists of baby clothes we’d received, the number of diapers we had on hand, the safety ratings of every piece of baby equipment we did or would own during the first five years of life. I’d even already addressed all of the birth announcement envelopes and stamped them. All we needed to do was call the printer with the baby’s names and weights after they were born. I tried to get the company to go ahead and print the birth date, but they had declined.
I had filled three large sheets of easel paper with everything I’d discovered about the Vanderhorsts and the house since the baby’s remains had been found—the three christening gowns and bonnets, the package that had been mailed one hundred years before and had just been delivered to my front porch. In a corner I listed baby William and his physically deformed brother, Cornelius, a line drawn from their names to Camille’s name and a note of her death in 1861 in an insane asylum. Underneath Camille’s name I had printed John’s name and Charlotte’s name on the same line, a question mark connecting Charlotte with Dr. Robert Pringle. Their connection—if there was one—had remained elusive, although neither Sophie nor Yvonne had yet to accept defeat.
All of the bits and pieces reminded me of a game I’d once played with my grandmother where long, skinny sticks were poked into a clear canister and marbles placed on top. One by one we’d pull a stick, trying not to let any marbles fall. In this game, however, all of the sticks were questions, the marbles answers. Yet no matter how many sticks I tugged on, the marbles stubbornly remained where they were.
I looked up at the ceiling as I heard another bump and scrape in the attic, followed by my mother’s voice as she instructed Jack and my father where to put something. She’d decided it was time the attic was scour
ed in the hopes of finding some last-minute additions to the nursery—as long as anything she brought down didn’t have any hangers-on.
Her heels tapped on the attic stairs and then down the hallway into my room. She carried what looked like a polished wooden box the size of a pillow, and which could have once been a cigar humidor. She wore her gloves and used them to wipe off the bottom of the box before setting it down on the foot of my bed.
Using the back of her arm, she swept a lock of dark hair from her forehead. “As OCD as you are, I can’t believe you’ve left the attic in such a state.”
“I’m not obsessive-compulsive. That’s just what Jack says to annoy me. But to answer your question, I have done some cleanup. Before I had the roof repaired, I had Amelia and John come to take away anything valuable and give me an appraisal. A lot of it is still in their shop waiting for me to decide what I want to do with it. I also got rid of the large buffalo head, because it was beginning to smell with all of the pigeon poop on it. But the rest of it I just left where it was, because I haven’t had time with all the house repairs, my job, and the pregnancy.”
She raised her eyebrows, as if she knew I was telling her only part of the truth.
I sighed. “And because it’s a little scary up there. The Vanderhorsts never threw anything away, and I think a lot of them have chosen to remain in the attic with their favorite possessions. Like that cradle. Which, for the record, I don’t want anywhere near the babies.”
“You’re not going to hear me arguing about that. Besides, your father is almost finished with the cradles he’s making. Don’t worry—they’re being made with current safety specifications, and Amelia is going to a lot of trouble getting custom-made bedding that is also current with today’s standards. I’ll make a chart if you want me to.”
“Very funny. By the way, has anybody called or brought over the Manigault cradle that Julia left for me in her will? I’ve got so many cradles to choose from, I guess I let that one slip from my mind.”
She shook her head. “No, but I’ll find out.” She was thoughtful for a moment. “I am curious, though, why Julia Manigault left it to you. I’m not even going to try to guess how she knew you were pregnant, but I suppose she knew in the same way that you’d need another cradle.”
“Technically, I didn’t need another cradle—the second one is in the museum. Knowing Julia, she would have assumed that I would demand that the museum return it to its rightful owner until it was no longer needed.” I thought for a moment. “Which makes me think she was giving me a third cradle on purpose.” Shrugging, I said, “Who knows? Nothing’s making sense anymore, and the more I speculate, the more confusing it gets.”
My mother sat down on the edge of the bed, a soft smile on her face. “I think it’s conversations like this that drive your father crazy. If it doesn’t make sense to us, it will make even less sense to him, so let’s keep that little tidbit of information to ourselves for the time being, all right?”
Another screech and bump sounded from above. Looking up at the ceiling, my mother said, “Your father found a few crated paintings under a tarp that must have been left over from the roof repair. He’s going to bring them to Trenholm’s Antiques to see if they’re worth anything. You can look at them first to see if there’re any you want to keep, but he’s hoping he might be able to sell most of them.”
“Why does he want to sell them? Surely in today’s market it would make more sense to hold on to them until the economy improves.”
She was silent for a moment, allowing doubt to tiptoe across my scalp.
“He’s eager to repay your generous loans to the trust, because we’re aware how deep you had to dig into your own personal accounts to pay for a few recent repairs. He’s liquidated some of the trust’s assets, but unfortunately the market value today isn’t all he had hoped. He’s waiting for a better opportunity to liquidate more, but in the meantime was hoping the paintings could be a welcome windfall that would enable him to pay you back and also give us a little more time.”
I kept my expression neutral as I tried to tamp down my own worries. Without a steady income due to my leave of absence from my job, my own accounts were getting low enough that I’d started to worry about how I was going to make ends meet if I didn’t sell another house within the next six months. “I have enough art on the walls. Just tell Dad to do what he needs to do. If it gets serious enough, then we can have the Trenholms appraise some of the stuff hanging on the walls, too.”
My mother’s eyes met mine as if she’d also felt the chilling breeze that had rushed through the room.
She lifted the wooden box and placed it on her lap. “We found Louisa’s trunk—where you and Jack discovered her camera and albums. It’s also where I saw this—under an old gramophone.” She lifted the lid of the box and placed it on the bed beside her.
Reaching inside, she pulled out a silver frame, tarnished to a deep smudge of black. “I’m thinking these belonged to her, but they didn’t make it into her scrapbooks because they were in frames. Maybe her husband boxed these up after she disappeared, in an attempt to forget her.”
I sat up, remembering my conversation with Yvonne about nesting before a baby is born. “Louisa donated one of the cradles and a bunch of useless papers around the time Nevin was born in 1922. I’m surprised she didn’t clean up the rest of the attic. Like that buffalo. Yvonne found references to a hunting trip to Montana in the eighteen eighties, which is where we assumed it came from, so it would definitely have been here when Louisa was doing her cleanup.”
“Her baby might have arrived before she finished,” my mother suggested.
I barely heard her, I was so preoccupied with my own thoughts. “But why would she just donate the one cradle? She was a Charlestonian and had probably seen the Vanderhorst family tree with all the twins hanging from it. Well, at least until William. According to the family tree, at least, he was an only child, as was his son. But I wouldn’t think that would be enough to convince her that she wouldn’t have twins in her first pregnancy or any other pregnancies.”
My mother was thoughtful for a moment. “Louisa was a Gibbes. Maybe she figured that since her husband hadn’t married a cousin they probably wouldn’t have twins.”
“Or maybe she knew something that we don’t. Maybe she found something in the attic while she was cleaning it up. That would explain why she stopped before she’d finished.”
Mother began pressing her thumbs into the tarnish on the frame, revealing the silver underneath. If only uncovering the truths hidden in this house could be so easy. With her voice barely louder than a whisper, she said, “The roses are back.”
“Louisa?”
She nodded.
The stab of disappointment I’d begun to feel each time I was reminded of my extrasensory loss hurt a little more this time. As I neared my due date, I wanted to know that Louisa was close by. She was the only spirit in the house who seemed to do more than just watch and wait. And I couldn’t help but wonder whether it was the sound of Nevin’s baby feet I heard racing down the halls each night as I drifted off to sleep.
Eager to shake my sadness, I indicated the frame and said, “What did you find?”
She turned the frame so that I could see the old black-and-white photo inside it. “I think it’s an early print made from taking a photograph of a painting of two babies. If you look closely enough, you can see the canvas markings.”
I plucked my reading glasses off of my night table—my increasing girth and a wardrobe consisting mostly of nightgowns had made me decidedly less vain in the past months—and stuck them on my nose.
Her gloved finger tapped on the glass. “Whoever took the photograph and put it in the frame wrote on the back—John and Henry. And they’re wearing matching christening gowns.”
I nodded. “The gowns are identical—and just like the one I found in the package that showed up on my doorstep. The bonnets are the same as well.” I studied the round babies’ faces, my finger
slowly moving across the glass as if something in the shape of the eyes or curve of a chin could tell me what I needed to know.
My mother reached back into the box and pulled out another tarnished frame. “I think this must be baby Nevin. He looks so much like the little boy at the piano you have in the photograph downstairs. It appears to be the right time period, too.”
“Yes,” I said, nodding vaguely, my attention focused on the christening gown the baby wore. “Can you take it out of the frame?”
She shook her head. “I tried. It’s stuck to the glass and I don’t want to damage the photograph. But I did look on the back, and there’s nothing written on it.” She handed the frame to me and I took it.
After examining it closely, I lifted my gaze. “This gown and bonnet definitely match those worn by John and Henry. I could pull the one from the package to compare, but I’m positive it’s identical.”
“But if one of the gowns was in the foundation, and the other was sent up north with Cornelius in 1860, why is Nevin wearing one, too?”
“Because,” I said slowly, remembering standing next to Yvonne while she pulled out an old sales slip from the archives, “a third gown and bonnet set was made by the Susan Bivens shop—the same store that had made the original two—in 1860. I saw the invoice. It was commissioned by a C. Vanderhorst.”
I slid the glasses from my nose and began cleaning them with the edge of my sheet as I considered the box. “Is there anything else in there?”
My mother shook her head. “Just those two photographs in frames.”
“Which makes me believe they were selected on purpose instead of randomly gathered by Louisa’s husband and tucked away. It almost seems like they were hidden.”
“But why?” she asked, her eyes wide. “And by whom?”
Our heads swiveled toward the bathroom door and the sound of the water being pumped through the fixtures at full force.
“What . . . ?” My mother stood and began walking toward the bathroom door just as it slammed shut, shaking the frame.