The House on Tradd Street (25 page)

“I’m usually confused when I wake up in the morning, but I’m sure your work sheet will anchor me. Thank you.” He smiled brightly at me. “You know, this restoration stuff could be a whole lot of fun.”

I snorted. “Right. As fun as a root canal.” I switched the albums to my other arm. “I’ll see you tomorrow then.”

“Looking forward to it,” he said, a grin in his voice.

I grunted in response, afraid that if I said anything, he would hear in my voice that maybe I was, too.

“By the way, you’re adorable when you blush.”

“I wasn’t blushing,” I stammered.

“Yes, you were. When you were talking about Emily and how she and I had met while I was doing research for a book. You blushed. Or maybe it was a hot flash.”

I jostled the albums in my arms and scowled at him. “I’m not that old.”

“Then it must have been a blush,” he said, and I could hear the laughter in his voice.

I forced back a smile. “Good night, Jack.”

I headed toward the stairs, and before I’d reached the top step, he said, “Good night, Melanie.”

A sharp retort asking him to stop calling me by my nickname was already on my tongue, and I had to cough to cover it up. Instead, I headed down the steps and called back over my shoulder when I’d reached the bottom, “Good night, dude.”

I heard him laughing as I made my way back to my bedroom.

 
I put the stack of albums on the dresser next to the first album I’d already brought from the guest room. I took off the gloves, my robe, and slippers and crawled into bed, no longer tired, but I figured I had to at least try to sleep. The sound of footsteps and boxes being dragged drifted into the room from the attic—at least I hoped that was where the noises were coming from. With a heavy sigh, I turned on my side and caught sight of the stack of albums highlighted in a crease of light from the shut draperies.

I stared for a long time before finally sitting up and flipping on my bedside light. With a deep breath I walked over to the dresser and picked up the first album without thinking, feeling the tickle of anticipation race up my arms as I held it.

This time I smelled the heavy scent of oiled leather and the unmistakable odor of fuel exhaust. I wiped at my face, expecting to feel silk chiffon draping across my cheeks, but touched only my skin. Slowly sinking to the floor, I opened the album, the scents of horse and hay added now, and I sneezed.

The album opened to a photo of Robert and Louisa sitting in a Model T. A tall gold trophy cup was perched on the seat between them, and they were looking at each other, smiling. Across Louisa’s face was a sheer silk scarf to protect her from road dust in the absence of a windshield, and both occupants wore goggles sitting atop their heads. A group of laughing people surrounded the car, and behind them, an alley of oaks leading to the columned portico of a Greek Revival mansion.
Magnolia Ridge,
I thought to myself, knowing what it was even though I’d never seen it before. Two Arabian horses stood at a fence lining the drive, looking toward the camera.
How do I know they’re Arabian horses?

A lone man stood apart from the crowd, only the headlight of another car visible behind his left hip. He was noticeable because he was the only person not smiling in the entire photograph. And because he looked exactly like Marc Longo.

It became difficult to take a deep breath, as if I were wearing a corset, and once again I felt in my hand a fountain pen that wasn’t mine as I began to read the caption.

 
Something drifted to the ground next to my foot, startling me. It hadn’t come from the photo album or from anywhere else that I could determine. It had apparently drifted out of midair. It was a rectangular cream-colored card a little larger than a business card, and when I picked it off the rug, I could see there was writing on one side.

At the top was Louisa’s monogram, LCG, her maiden name. In elegant cursive, she’d written the date
April 2, 1918
and below that:

 
I tucked the card into the photo album and closed it thoughtfully, recalling what Louisa had written about Joseph Longo:
I can’t help but think that Mr. Longo isn’t finished with trying to prove himself right.
Was this proof, then, that he had pursued her before she was married and hadn’t given up even after she married Robert? Was their disappearance on the same day, then, also proof that he had succeeded in finally winning her?

I pushed the album off my lap and crawled into bed again, checking the four corners of the room before flipping off my bedside lamp. I lay awake for a long time, listening to the quarterly chime of the grandfather clock downstairs, and smelling again the unmistakable scent of roses. And when the clock chimed two o’clock, it finally occurred to me why the signature at the bottom of the deed for Magnolia Ridge seemed so familiar. It was Augustus P. Middleton’s signature, lawyer, Charlestonian, best friend of Robert Vanderhorst and, most important, my grandfather.

I turned over and closed my eyes, sleepily reminding myself to tell Jack in the morning, then finally drifting to sleep before the clock struck again.

I
sat on my accustomed bench at White Point Gardens with a fast food hamburger in one hand and a set of closing papers in my other watching as children clambered over the scattered assortment of cannons. The Battery had always been my favorite Charleston spot, despite its reputation for being steeped in history and the throngs of tourists that congregate throughout the year in this place where the Ashley and Cooper rivers meet and where Fort Sumter can be seen far out in the harbor.

“Fast food can kill you, you know.”

I looked up at the familiar voice, shading the sun from my eyes with my hand. My dad, fresh-shaven and clear-eyed, wore a navy blue golf shirt and khaki pants with loafers and I couldn’t help but grin. “Is Jack dressing you these days, Dad?”

He grinned back. “Well, he did take me shopping and gave me a few recommendations, is all. Why? Don’t you like the new look?”

He turned for me with his hands held out from his sides like a model, as I admired the crisp pleat of his pants and the layered cut of his clean hair and felt an unreasonable stab of jealousy that he’d gone shopping with Jack instead of with me. I guess he’d known that Jack would pick up the phone when he called to ask, whereas I didn’t come with that kind of guarantee.

“Looking good, Dad,” I said, meaning it. “What’s the big occasion?”

He sat down on the bench next to me, his eyes somber as he regarded me closely. “It’s been three weeks now. Not a single drink.” He patted his pocket, and I saw his hands still shook a little. “Been chewing lots of gum, though. Jack said it helped him, so I thought I’d give it a try.”

I nodded, then looked down at my paperwork, my eyes blurring. I didn’t want to feel the rush of excitement and hope. The crash hurt so much more when you allowed yourself to fly.

He touched my arm, then quickly pulled his hand away. “I know you can’t get excited for me. I don’t blame you for that. But I wanted you to know.”

I nodded again, not wanting to give voice to my hope. Instead, I turned to him and asked, “How did you find me?”

“Your receptionist, Nancy. She wasn’t going to tell me where you were at first even after I told her I was your father.”

“What made her crack?”

“Well, she was standing there jostling golf tees in her pocket, so I figured she had to like golf.”

“Yeah, you could say that. ‘Obsessed’ works, too.”

He grinned and his eyes sparkled, something I hadn’t seen in a very long time. “So I told her I had a friend who knew a friend who knew Tiger Woods’s publicist and that I would try to get her an autograph.”

“And she folded.”

“Like a house of cards,” he said, grinning. He tapped his fingers on his leg as his grin faded. “Although I don’t think she would have given me what I was asking for if she didn’t think it was in your best interests. She just needed me to think that I didn’t have a chance and see what I would do. Kind of to prove myself, you know?”

“And it’s a good thing you passed. She keeps a nine iron behind her desk in case any visitors get unruly.”

“After meeting her, I can believe it.”

I took my last bite of hamburger and offered him a french fry. After swallowing, I asked, “So what did you need to see me about that you couldn’t take care of with a phone call?”

He looked at me with his old eyes—the eyes he’d once had when there were three of us in our family, eyes that were clear and sparkled with a hidden joke. “I didn’t think you’d answer your phone. And I was pretty sure you wouldn’t run away from me in a public setting.”

I rolled my eyes but didn’t say anything because he was right.

He continued. “Nancy said you come here on most nice days to eat your lunch. It surprised me.”

I crumpled up my empty hamburger wrapper. “Why? A lot of people eat lunch on the Battery.”

He looked at me, a question in his eyes. “Because your mother used to take you here all the time. She loved telling you about the history of the place, and at one time you could name the families in every house on East Battery.” He leaned back, his thick hands, with gray hairs sprouting from the backs of them, on his thighs. “You used to laugh and laugh at the story about the fake Revolutionary War nine-pounder at the end of the path from Church Street. You’d tell the story to anybody who would listen and then practically fall over with laughter.”

I looked down at my papers, remembering the story but not my mother’s involvement in it. And I wondered, briefly, how over the years I had managed to chisel my mother out of my personal history.

I felt half of my mouth tilt up as I recalled the story of how the city government had removed an antique British cannon from Longitude Lane to be placed on the Battery, not anticipating the uproar by the residents at its removal. To placate them, a fake cannon was made—complete with pitting and an inscription to make it look authentic—and then “purchased” and offered to the irate residents of Longitude Lane. Being Charlestonians, they rejected it as not having been the original, and the fake cannon was donated to the city, placed on the opposite end of the Battery from the real cannon, its secret safe until someone tried to steal the real cannon. The authentic one was removed, leaving only the little impostor to fool all the tourists and those residents of Charleston too new to know the difference.

“I’d forgotten about that,” I said, turning toward my father with a full grin. “Only in Charleston, you know?”

He smiled back. “Yeah. That’s for sure.”

We sat there smiling at each other until I realized what I was doing and looked away. “I need to get back to the office and make a few phone calls before I head back to the house.”

I stood suddenly, dropping my pen. He leaned down to get it and handed it to me as he stood, too. “I guess I’ll see you at the house, then.”

I nodded. “Yes, I guess you will.”

He looked at me for a moment before saying, “You always call it ‘the house.’ Never ‘my house.’ ”

“Well, it’s hardly mine, is it?” I asked, annoyed that he could be so perceptive. He’d been that way when I was a little girl, always knowing without me telling him if I were sad or lonely or just needed somebody to talk to. But that was a very long time ago when I used to need somebody to tell me how I was feeling.

I brushed crumbs off of my skirt. “You never told me what you came here to tell me.”

“Right.” He looked a little sheepish. “Well, I wanted to know why you hadn’t put me on the work sheet for the week.”

I sat back down, stunned that it would be important enough to him to make him track me down to ask me why. “I guess because I figured you could help Jack wherever he needed help.”

He sat down again, too, and I watched as a muscle jerked in my father’s cheek. “I’m sure you’ve already noticed, but Jack’s a grown man. He doesn’t need me to be dogging his steps and getting in the way. I need my own projects. Jack can make sure I show up and do a good job, but he doesn’t need to supervise me twenty-four-seven.”