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Authors: Susan Meissner

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BOOK: A Sound Among the Trees
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“I speak my mind too freely. I know that. I am sorry.”

“Look. I don’t care so much what you say around me. But I do care what gets said around Marielle. I don’t want her having to handle more than what she’s already having to deal with. She doesn’t need to know what you believe about this house, Mimi.”

Adelaide at once remembered what she had said to Marielle the day of the reception about the record player and the needle. She’d already said too much.

At her silence, Carson looked at her. He frowned. “What did you tell her?”

Adelaide shrugged. “Hardly anything.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I only said that the people who say Holly Oak is cursed don’t know what they’re talking about. It’s not the house’s fault.”

Carson tossed a carton of granola bars into the tote and stood erect. “Was that really necessary?”

Adelaide sniffed. “Few things are necessary, Carson. And I’ll have you
know she asked me if I’ve been happy here. And she asked me because, if you will recall,
you
brought her here to live and now you expect
her
to be happy here. So I told her that all the things that have happened to me are not the house’s fault.”

“For crying out loud—”

Adelaide’s breath and voice tightened in her throat. Carson didn’t often raise his voice. He was mad at her. She felt behind her for the shelving unit and grasped a metal rung for moral support. “What? It’s not the house’s fault my father had cancer or my mother had dementia or that Charles died of a heart attack in his fifties or that Caroline became an addict or that Sara was taken from the both of us when she was only thirty-four!”

“Adelaide!”

“It doesn’t know how to get past the scratch! I’ve told you that before!” She tottered slightly for a moment and grasped the rung tighter. Carson did not notice.

He lifted the tote of food off the floor. “This is exactly what I don’t want you telling Marielle,” he said quietly. “It’s nonsense. And you can think it if you want, but I told you a long time ago that I didn’t want you talking this way around the kids—”

“I haven’t!” Adelaide exclaimed.

“And I would appreciate it if you also didn’t talk this way around Marielle.”

“She asked me.”

“She asked if you had been happy here.”

They stood there for a strained moment, staring at each other.

“You called me Adelaide,” she finally said.

Carson’s facial features took on a conciliatory look. “I’m sorry, Mimi. How about if we just move past this. Please?”

Another long moment of silence passed between them.

“She’s having lunch with Pearl next week,” Adelaide finally said.

Carson began to walk past her with the box in his arms. “All the more reason to drop this. I don’t think Marielle believes Pearl. But I’m afraid she could believe you.”

And he stepped past her with the tote in his arms, leaving her alone in the mix of light and shadow.

he drumming whir of a sewing machine greeted Marielle as she stepped off the last stair and made her way to the slightly ajar parlor door. The house was silent except for the mechanical piercing of the needle into fabric. She had already taken Brette and Hudson to swimming lessons, and a family friend had offered to pick them up so that Marielle could have lunch with Pearl and not worry about the time. She was glad. It surprised her a little that she was looking forward to lunch with Pearl. She tapped lightly and the whirring ceased.

“Yes?” Adelaide said from within.

Marielle gently pushed the door open. Adelaide was seated at her sewing table with folds of gray frothing at her hands. A gooseneck lamp perched over her sewing machine looked as though it were inspecting her work. She looked up as Marielle poked her head inside the room.

“Just wanted to let you know I was leaving,” Marielle said.

Adelaide cocked her head as she studied the gauzy, violet-hued cotton dress Marielle had chosen to wear. “You look nice. Lavender looks good on you. And it’s Pearl’s favorite color. She’ll think you wore it for her.”

Marielle smiled. “Should I just let her think it?”

Adelaide reached for her scissors and clipped a dangling thread on the seam she had just sewn shut. “Pearl will think what she wants, dear, no matter what you do. Keep that in mind.”

There was unspoken weight under Adelaide’s words. A warning. “Um.
Thanks. I will. The kids are all set to go home with Lynn Jarrel. I’ll pick them up from there on my way home from Pearl’s.”

Adelaide snipped another thread. “You don’t need directions to Pearl’s?”

“I’ll be fine. I’ll just use my phone.”

“Your phone.”

“I have GPS on my phone. I’ll be fine.”

Adelaide pulled the half-sewn jacket out from under the raised needle. “I know I should know what that is, but today I am just not interested in knowing. Call me if you get lost. I know you can do that on your phone.”

Marielle laughed lightly. “I will.”

She turned to go, but Adelaide called out her name. Marielle turned around.

“Look, maybe I shouldn’t be saying this, Marielle, but Carson doesn’t want you having to deal with any more ghost talk. And I know Pearl. She’ll bring it up.”

Marielle took a step into the room. “Carson said that? When was this?”

Adelaide turned back to her sewing machine. “When we were cleaning out the utility room for you, I said something about this being a house of ghosts. I shouldn’t have. That’s when he said he didn’t want you to have to hear any more of Pearl’s stories.”

Marielle sensed hesitancy. Back-pedaling. “Mimi, Pearl’s stories don’t scare me. The first day I heard about them it was a little weird, but it’s not like I’m having nightmares. Is that what Carson thinks? That I’m afraid?”

Adelaide stuffed the jacket back underneath the needle. “I think it’s more that you shouldn’t have to deal with Pearl’s ghost on top of having to get used to me and this house and the humidity outside. And he knows I told you about the scratch, and he doesn’t like that either.”

Carson was miffed that Adelaide had told her her theory about the scratch? A theory that made absolutely no sense?

“It’s not what you think,” Adelaide quickly added. “We only talked
about it for a minute. A minute. All I am saying is when you go to Pearl’s today and she starts talking about ghosts, you can tell her to shut up. That’s all.”

“But maybe I don’t want her to shut up about it,” Marielle said, now very glad she had called Pearl the day before with a suggestion.

Adelaide turned her head to look at her. “I beg your pardon?”

“Pearl’s stories don’t scare me. Just like they don’t scare you. Maybe I want to hear her stories.”

“Whatever for?”

Marielle shrugged. She had been giving the matter some thought. It shouldn’t be a big surprise that she was daily becoming more interested in what remained in a house after someone died. She was curious. That was all. “Maybe it will help me understand what you were telling me about the scratch.”

Adelaide raised an eyebrow. “Pearl doesn’t believe in the scratch. Only the ghost.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Marielle stood for a moment longer, but Adelaide said nothing else. The woman turned back to the sewing machine, pressed her foot to the pedal, and the needle began to flash with purpose. “I’ll see you later, then, Mimi.”

Adelaide nodded. “Yes. Have a nice time, dear.”

Marielle stepped back into the entry hall. Her face was warm. Adelaide probably hadn’t been completely honest with her, but neither had she.

She had asked Pearl to invite a third person to join them for lunch.

Eldora Meeks.

Fragments of cucumber sandwiches, chicken salad, and melon balls dotted the creamy blue china plates as the three women sat in Pearl’s sunroom.

They had eaten as soon as Marielle arrived, forgoing a stroll through the garden, owing to the heat and Eldora’s needing to be in Yorktown by five.

Over lunch, Pearl had described in ebullient detail how Marielle and Carson had met and fell in love, as if Marielle were not sitting right there at the table with them. Marielle didn’t mind, even though Pearl kept embellishing the story. The chatter gave her a chance to study Eldora Meeks without attracting attention.

Marielle had never met someone who claimed to have special sight or a connection to the spirit world or the ability to talk to the dead. She had never met anyone with any kind of psychic ability at all.

Eldora looked to be in her late sixties, plump, with silvery red hair and eyes that narrowed into slits when she smiled. She wore a pale pink warmup suit trimmed in white and flicked her tongue to the corner of her mouth every time she said something. Her accent was more fluid than Pearl’s or Adelaide’s and reminded Marielle of taffy being pulled by slowly moving blades. She looked like a kind grandma who watches the shopping channel, makes quilts, and collects porcelain dolls.

Marielle reached for her glass of sweet tea and took a sip just as Eldora turned to her and smiled, her eyes disappearing into lash-fringed seams.

“That sure sounds like a right sweet love story,” Eldora said. “But you probably have many questions, don’t you, Marielle? That’s why you asked Pearl to invite me to come today. What can I do for you?”

“She wants to know about the ghost,” Pearl interjected, and Eldora raised a hand.

“Now, Pearl, why don’t we let Marielle ask her own questions, shall we?”

Pearl sat back in her chair, her lips puckered as if she’d swallowed a lime. “I’ll try to be quiet,” she murmured.

“Are you sensing a troubled spirit inside the house, dear?” Eldora asked Marielle.

Marielle shook her head slowly. “Well, no, not really. I just … I actually
just want to know what you saw or heard at Holly Oak when you were there.”

“And why is that?” Eldora’s voice was still kind and accommodating.

“Because … because Adelaide said something to me about the
house
being troubled. That doesn’t make any sense. I don’t understand what she means by that.”

Pearl leaned forward. “Adelaide doesn’t believe in the ghost, Eldora.”

“Yes, I know, Pearl. I’m aware of that. But we’re lettin’ Marielle ask the questions, remember?”

Pearl sank back in her chair. “Sorry,” she mumbled.

Eldora turned back to Marielle. “Did you ask Adelaide what she means?”

“What?”

“Did you ask her what she means when she says it’s the house that is troubled?”

Adelaide’s strange words on the lawn floated back to Marielle. “She said it’s like a record player that keeps playing the same part of a song over and over because it can’t get past a scratch.”

Eldora nodded. “I see. And did you ask her what she meant by that?”

“She tried to explain it, but we were interrupted. I never really had the chance to bring it up again because it seemed to be something she wanted to keep just between us. But Carson knows now she told me. And he’s not exactly happy about it.”

“I wonder why he feels that way.” Eldora laced her fingers together and sat comfortably back in her chair.

“He doesn’t believe in ghosts either!” Pearl said, and then clamped her hand over her mouth.

Eldora smiled at Pearl and then turned back to Marielle. “And how about you, dear? What do you believe about ghosts?”

Marielle shrugged a shoulder. “I’ve never had any reason to believe they exist.”

“But now you are wonderin’ if you do?”

“I’m just trying to understand this. I’m living in that house now. It’s my home.”

Eldora reached for Marielle’s hands. She flinched at the woman’s touch and then slowly relaxed. Eldora’s manicured fingers gently stroked Marielle’s hands.

“Here’s the thing, Marielle. I can tell you what I felt inside that house. Ten years later I can still feel it. And I am happy to tell you. But I can’t make y’all understand anything. I think in the end it’s you who is goin’ to have to decide where you land on all of this.”

Marielle swallowed. “All right.”

Eldora let go of her hands and smiled. “First, you need to know that I didn’t ask for this gift I have. It just came to me. My grandmother had it and so did her aunt. I didn’t know I had it until I was fifteen. And at first I didn’t know what to do with it. And I can’t see the future or make objects move or hear y’all’s thoughts. I see and hear things in the spiritual realm, things that ordinary people can’t see and hear. Lots of people don’t like to think there is a spiritual realm, and those that do don’t like to imagine that some of us can see it and hear it when they can’t. Are you with me so far?”

BOOK: A Sound Among the Trees
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