Return to Tradd Street

  Jack moved to sit beside me, placing one hand on my back while the other traced the yellow line that connected all three of the boxes. “And all three of these are related on their father’s side.”

  Thomas nodded. “That’s correct.”

  My brain felt as if it had been tied in a knot, but I could feel the strings suddenly loosening. “So they couldn’t have been triplets,” I said.

  Sterling continued to write in his pad as Thomas leaned over to study the chart again. “No—because only two of them are related on the mother’s side. One scenario that I came up with that might explain this would be that perhaps there was a pair of twins born at about the same time as a single birth—from the same father, but with two separate mothers.”

  I thought for a moment. “But wouldn’t the DNA be able to tell us there were twins?”

  “Not if they were fraternal. Fraternal twins have their own DNA, just as if they were regular full siblings.”

  The soft sound of a baby’s cries undulated in the air around me like ripples on a still lake, but it wasn’t coming from the baby monitor. “Do you hear that?” I asked softly, turning toward Jack. “It’s a baby crying.”

  “No,” he answered. “One of ours?”

  I shook my head, belatedly realizing that both Thomas and Sterling had been listening to our exchange. For Sterling’s benefit, I said, “I think we might have a stray kitten that comes to our garden and cries. Sounds just like a baby.”

  He nodded, then went back to his note making, but Thomas sat back in his chair, understanding dawning on his face.

  My phone that I’d placed on the coffee table rang and I looked down at the screen. “It’s Yvonne. I haven’t had a chance to call her. Hang on a second and I’ll tell her I’ll call her back when we’re through here.”

  Jack put his hand on my arm. “No. I think you should take it. It’s about the Vanderhorsts and might further explain what’s going on.”

  I nodded, then quickly excused myself and walked into the foyer.

  “Hi, Yvonne. I got your text too early this morning to call you, and I haven’t had a chance yet.”

  “And I know how busy you are with those little ones, but I’m too excited to keep this information all to myself. I think I just might explode if I can’t tell someone right now. I promise it will only take a minute.”

  I pictured her pearls, reading glasses, and sensible pumps being flung against the walls and ceiling of the Fireproof Building and stifled a grin. “I wouldn’t want that to happen. And this is actually perfect timing. We were just talking about various members of the Vanderhorst family tree, so I hope you might have information to add to the discussion.”

  Something like fear and adrenaline braided together before racing through my veins, filling me with an odd mixture of dread and hope. “Go ahead, Yvonne. I’m listening.”

  I could almost imagine her clapping her hands together. “It’s been driving me crazy that I couldn’t find the maiden name of John Vanderhorst’s second wife, Charlotte, to verify that she was Charlotte Pringle, Camille’s friend and honeymoon companion. It occurred to me two days ago that I was looking at the question in the wrong way. As Jack once told me, sometimes you have to turn the question upside down and attack it that way. So that’s what I did.”

  I stole a glance into the parlor, where the men had refilled their coffees. “I have no idea what that means, Yvonne. So what did you find?”

  She continued as if I hadn’t said anything. “When I couldn’t find anything as far as a wedding announcement or invitation anywhere in the archives, I thought I’d have to disappoint you and tell you I came up empty-handed. Of course, with John marrying so soon after his first wife’s death, it could have been a very private affair and therefore not broadcast in the papers. It was also the beginning of the Civil War, and most of the news was, of course, about that. I’d like to take credit for this next tidbit, but I actually came across it by accident when looking for a wedding announcement. It was an invitation to a meeting of the Ladies’ Auxiliary Club to discuss their making bandages for the ‘glorious cause.’” She paused for effect. “At the home of Charlotte Pringle Vanderhorst at fifty-five Tradd Street.”

  My mouth went dry. “So it is the same Charlotte. Which means she married her best friend’s husband a year after the friend died.”

  “Yes. But as I mentioned before, that wasn’t so unusual back then. But there’s more unusual information about Charlotte Pringle Vanderhorst that you will understand after I tell you why I just had to call you.”

  I could almost see her bouncing with delight. “I then needed to find out if there was a connection between Charlotte and Dr. Pringle. It was too much of a coincidence that Camille’s best friend would have the same last name as her doctor. So I turned the question upside down and it became clear to me where I had to look. I realized that if Charlotte and Camille were good enough friends to share a honeymoon, surely Charlotte would have been in Camille’s wedding. I felt silly for not thinking of it before! John was a Vanderhorst, so of course it would have been a huge society wedding, with some sort of announcement in the paper. And there it was! A wedding announcement in the newspaper for Camille and John. They listed the maid of honor as Miss Charlotte Pringle, daughter of a Dr. and Mrs. Robert M. Pringle.”

  I felt somebody watching me, and I turned around to face the parlor again, but the three men were still drinking coffee and talking, paying no attention to me. “And then what?” I said, watching my breath float up toward the ceiling.

  “Well, I knew you’d be asking me if it was the same Dr. Pringle who’d signed Camille’s death certificate. So I dived back into the archives, this time searching for anything I could find regarding the South Carolina State Hospital in the eighteen fifties and sixties.”

  She fell silent again, so I immediately asked, “And what did you find?” I closed my eyes, hoping she’d speak quickly as pinpricks of fear tiptoed across my scalp.

  “A book. Written by one of the asylum’s doctors, in which there is a brief passage regarding Dr. Pringle and his assistant.” I heard the smile of triumph in her voice. “His daughter, Charlotte.”

  “She worked with him?” I shivered in my thin long-sleeved blouse, watching out of the corner of my eye as a small cloudlike vapor began to form at the top of the stairs.

  “Yes. The author praised her intelligence and abilities, despite the fact that she was a woman. He said she was well trained by her father and allowed to administer medications without supervision, and that she had a calming impact on the patients.”

  It was so cold now that I felt my lungs tighten, making it hard to breathe. I watched the vapor cloud begin to take the shape of a woman as I recalled a part of Bridget Gilbert’s letter. After some discussion, which I did not hear, the doctor’s daughter, acting as his nurse, wrapped the child in a blanket before handing him to me. She said it was a blessing that his mother had fainted from the pain and was not awake to see the horror.

  I whispered into the phone, “Thank you, Yvonne. I have to go now. One of the children . . .” I ended the call, my attention focused on what was happening in front of me.

  The woman at the top of the stairs wore a long dress with a tightly fitted bodice and a large bell-shaped long skirt, an oval cameo pinned to the high neck of her gown. Her dark brown hair was swept off of her face, with a curl dangling on each cheek. She was solid, and so real that for a brief moment I thought that an intruder might be in the house. Until I noticed that instead of eyes, there were only empty sockets.

  I didn’t move. I couldn’t. It was as if her empty gaze held me to the floor. And then the most terrifying thought of all: She’s between me and my children. I began to tremble, more afraid than I’d ever been. I thought of what Yvonne had just told me, about one friend’s betrayal, and I forced myself to speak. “Camille?”

  The air sizzled and popped around me as the apparition wavered and weakened, allowing me to take a step toward the stairs. She turned
and began moving down the hallway, toward the open bedroom door where my babies were sleeping.

  “Jack,” I shouted, half sobbing, as I began to run up the stairs, hearing him running up behind me.

  I watched as the specter moved to my doorway, floating about a foot off the ground, a storm cloud about to make rain. I was running up the stairs as hard as I could, but it was like a dream run where my legs were stuck in molasses, making it impossible to lift them with any speed. Jack came up behind me in time to watch the door slam in front of the now cloudy apparition, blocking her from entering the room.

  I ran toward her, moving fast now, then feeling only bone-shattering cold as I ran through her. When I turned around to look, she had completely vanished, only a lingering chill on my skin remaining. Jack was already turning the door handle. It didn’t move at first, but on the second try it turned easily, and the door swung open into the room.

  We moved quickly toward the two cradles, where General Lee lay between the sleeping children, the overwhelming scent of roses saturating the air. I dropped to my knees, an arm stretched over the top of each cradle, as drained as if I’d just given birth again.

  “Thank you, Louisa,” I said to the room, my thoughts jumbled. Louisa was protecting something precious, something Camille thought was hers. And somehow Jack, I, and the children were caught in the middle of a struggle I neither understood nor knew how to end.

  CHAPTER 30

  Jack and I sat outside in the garden, listening to the fall and splash of the fountain as the children slept like tiny flower buds in their double pram. It was a warm day for early March, the wisteria and gardenias pregnant with upcoming blooms, the Louisa roses hibernating in their waxy green bushes. It was comforting, somehow, to find the world waiting alongside us as we prepared for what would happen next.

  Jack’s arm was around me, his hand resting on my shoulder as we contemplated the perfection of the two sleeping babies. “Have you spoken to Sophie?”

  “Yes. She’s as confused as I am, because there are too many pieces in this puzzle that don’t seem to fit. She even admitted that she might appreciate one of my charts to illustrate what Yvonne told us yesterday, the DNA results and what we already knew. She thinks it’s her pregnancy brain, but I think that’s just her excuse not to tell me that my chart making might actually be a useful tool.”

  “With figuring out an old murder, sure. For tracking the color and consistency of an infant’s diaper contents, not so much.”

  I scowled at him. “You never know if that sort of information could be handy. And maybe one day they’ll want that kind of stuff in their scrapbooks.”

  His eyes narrowed. “You’re kidding, right?”

  I paused, trying to think of the right answer. “Sure,” I said slowly. “But I still think it’s a good idea.”

  After studying me for a moment, he said, “We need to figure this out. JJ and Sarah aren’t sleeping another night in this house until I know they’re safe. And I don’t want all five of us to move into my condo. Last night was enough to convince me that it’s way too small.”

  “I know. I feel the same. But even after what I saw, I’m not convinced that Camille—and I’m almost positive it was her—meant to harm the babies.”

  Jack jerked back, dropping his arm. “She was trying to get into the room.”

  I held up my hand. “Yes, but there was such a feeling of . . . sadness I absorbed when I ran through her. It was the same feeling I got every time I saw Nola’s mother.” I was silent for a moment, thinking. “Even my mother believes that the ghost is the wronged party, that whatever she’s claiming is hers is a legitimate claim. And yesterday . . .” I shrugged, not even sure I could voice my confused feelings. “Yesterday I got the feeling that she was using the children to show me the intensity of what she’d lost. As a mother to another mother.”

  “And Louisa?”

  “She’s definitely here as a sort of guardian angel for the children, returning the favor, I think, for my granting her only child his dying wish. But again, I have a feeling where she’s concerned, too.”

  “A feeling?”

  I nodded. “You know how you’re always saying there’s no such thing as a coincidence? I also believe that there’s no such thing as a stray feeling. I think more people are psychic than we think. It’s just that too many of us brush aside these feelings, or gut reactions, or intuition—whatever you want to call it. I’ve learned not to. And the feeling I get about Louisa is that she’s here because she shares a connection with our ghost. That whatever it is the ghost thinks is hers, Louisa disagrees.”

  Jack was silent, his thumb rubbing the top of my hand. “When is your mother getting here?”

  “I told her not before nine o’clock—Nola and the babies will be out of the house, and it should be full dark by then. That’s one thing about ghosts that Hollywood usually gets right. Although I’ve had my fair share of experiences during broad daylight, there’s always more activity at night.”

  He put his arm around me again, his finger absently tracing a pattern on my shoulder, making me shiver. “It feeds on the elemental fear in all of us. It’s usually what we can’t see that scares us the most.”

  I faced him, wanting him to tell me what it was that scared him, but he was studying the side of the house with such focus that my words stumbled.

  His gaze moved from the slate roof down the clapboard sides and tall, mullioned windows, then swept across the Loutrel Briggs garden with the Louisa roses that had once been the pride of the Vanderhorsts—the same roses that my father had brought back to their original glory with love and care. “It really is like a piece of history you can touch, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I said, remembering Nevin Vanderhorst’s letter telling me about the strength of the Vanderhorst women, and how I reminded him of them. It was his way of explaining why he’d left me his house. They sent men off to war and kept food on the table long after money ran out. They camped out on the front porch during hurricanes and after the earthquake of 1886, armed with whatever they could find to protect what was theirs for their family. They were like the foundations of this house—too strong to be swayed by little matters such as war, pestilence, and ruin.

  “He’d want me to fight for it,” I said.

  “I know,” Jack replied. Our thoughts had always seemed to run on a parallel course, whether or not we wanted to admit it. “And we will. I’m hoping the intervention you and your mother are staging tonight will give us a little more ammunition.”

  “Me, too.”

  Jack continued to stare at the house, at its beautiful lines and elegant proportions, as if he were seeing it for the first time. “You know . . .” he said, his voice trailing away.

  “What?” I asked, hoping and praying he hadn’t spotted another hairline crack somewhere.

  “Do you remember what I told you about the perfect family home I wanted you to find for me? I said I wanted something large so I could throw huge parties for Nola and the babies. And a big enough yard so there’s room for a swing set and maybe a little lap pool, something with architectural charm and character. Even a ghost or two.”

  I turned to him with surprise. “You just described my house—right down to the ‘ghost or two.’ Was that on purpose?”

  He shook his head, amusement making his eyes sparkle. “Believe it or not, no. Maybe subconsciously, but I promise it wasn’t intentional.” He laughed. “It’s funny how it all worked out, though, isn’t it?”

  I looked down at my hands, not wanting him to read the uncertainty in my eyes. I twisted the platinum band on my left hand, still amazed at the perfect fit, as if it had been made for me. The metal seemed to warm beneath my touch as I remembered Jack putting it on my finger in the hospital, telling me the story of how his grandparents had been married for more than seventy years. The memory gave me the courage to meet his gaze again. “Did you marry me for my house, Jack?” I said it with a smile, but the rest of me tensed, waiting for the a
nswer I so desperately needed to hear.

  “Alston, they’re over here!”

  We turned to see Nola and Alston, wearing matching Ashley Hall uniforms, come through the garden gate. They rushed over to us and plopped their backpacks on the ground. General Lee sat up from his now permanent perch near the babies, letting out a low growl before he realized the two girls weren’t intruders. What his plans were for an actual intruder remained to be seen, and would probably conclude with the criminal being easily apprehended because he was laughing too hard to move.

  “I can’t believe it’s already so late in the day,” I said, amazing myself again how an entire day could go by without my actually doing anything, yet I could look up and see it was late afternoon and I was bone tired.

  “Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Trenholm,” Alston said with a shy smile. “Nola told my mom it was okay to drop me off here for a little bit so I could see the babies. Mom had some errands to run, but she said she’d be back in an hour to pick us up.”

  “We really appreciate you taking Nola in tonight. But we all have to leave the house while it’s being fumigated.”

  “Nola told me about all the palmetto bugs.” She gave a delicate shudder. “I can’t imagine what it must have been like to wake up with two of them in your hair.”

  I eyed Nola, wondering what kinds of embellishments she’d given to our fumigation story. I’d been trying to keep everything as close to the truth as possible, which was why I’d chosen fumigation in the first place. Except the bugs we were going to try to eradicate were bigger and just as hard to get rid of.

  “I’m glad you came by. I’m afraid the babies won’t be much entertainment for you, but if they wake up while you’re here, you can hold them if you like.”