The Splendour Falls (34 page)

I should have seen that if my roommate and the Colonel's daughter were the same person, odds were she was also the third ghost, the woman at the river. Or maybe that was only obvious in retrospect. After all, the house had been standing for almost two hundred years.

What I couldn't reconcile, what kept sticking in my throat as I swallowed the story, was how disappointed I was in her. I was sad
for
her, of course, outraged and horrified at the judgemental Colonel. But to kill herself because she'd been dumped – as awful as that must have been in her day – didn't seem like something the resourceful girl I'd met in her journal would do. Maybe it was irrational, but I felt almost angry with her. I'd thought a Davis would be stronger than that. By taking her own life, she'd let the Colonel win.

Or maybe I was projecting. Some days – when the pain of my healing bones, the surgeries and the apparatus on my leg had been almost as unbearable as the knowledge I'd never dance again – the only thing
that kept me going was knowing I couldn't let the pain win.

Pedalling on the gravel was too much for me, so I got off the bike to push it the rest of the way. I went straight to the garden, let the bicycle drop in the grass outside the hedge and kicked off my shoes. My first afternoon here I'd lain in the grass, imagining myself in the hoopskirt and corset of the daughter of the house. Imagining I was Hannah.

Had
she waited here in the garden for her sweetheart? I looked towards the first floor of the house. You'd have to be standing at the corner of the balcony to see down into the hedges. She could have sat with her guy on the iron bench, out of sight of the Colonel, had he stepped out of his study and stood at the French doors.

I needed to change my clothes and dig for a while. Channel my disquiet into activity. With that thought in mind, I walked on autopilot into the back yard and climbed the steps to the porch. Gigi yawned and stretched in her crate, tail wagging as I came to let her out. I'd just bent over, hand on the latch, when I heard Addie's voice from outside the screened walls.

‘I can't believe you want to
ruin my life
this way.'

At first I thought she was talking to me somehow, and a furious ‘What now?' jumped to my lips. But as I straightened, I saw that the door to Clara and Addie's apartment was open.

Her mother's answer was unintelligible, but Addie was upset, and her voice carried easily. ‘Do you have any idea what a big deal this is? That they called on the last day of the school year? It's a
sign,
Mom.'

Clara came to the landing outside their door, shaking out a dust rag. With Gigi watching me curiously, I dropped behind the wicker settee. ‘But it's not just a summertime commitment, Adina,' Clara said. ‘It would interfere with your senior year. You may not think you want to go to college, but I don't want anything to limit your choices.'

‘I can go to college later,' Addie whined. ‘When I'm
thirty
and too old to model any more.'

Even the snap of Clara's dust rag sounded irritated. ‘Does nothing in that sentence seem wrong to you, Adina Jackson? A career where you can only work for ten years?'

‘That's why I have to start now, while I'm young.'

Ironically, I was on Addie's side of this argu?ment. There were prima ballerinas who danced for thirty years, but realistically, ballet was so hard on the body that it was practical to start young so you had as much performing time as possible. Even if you moved on to choreographing or directing a company, the prestige jobs went to those who'd built up the most performance cred during their active dancing career.

‘One year isn't going to make that big a difference, Addie,' said Clara. ‘Why don't you look into modelling classes in Selma or Montgomery? I'll drive you to anything, as long as you keep your grades up.' Her voice started to fade like she was going back inside. ‘And on that subject – about these meetings. I was all for the TTC at first, but this spring you've been out too late and too often.'

‘Mom! You can't take everything away from me—'

I strained to hear Clara's words. ‘Out in the summerhouse until all hours …'

Crap. Her voice disappeared and the door slammed shut, just as they were getting around to something interesting. I was surprised to hear Clara speaking anything other than one hundred per cent in favour of the TTC. Everyone else did.

While I was down on the floor anyway, I let Gigi out of her crate. She bounded out, growling playfully, thinking I was on my hands and knees for her amusement.

This was a sad commentary on my situation. I'd become an eavesdropper on other people's lives – in the present, and the past.

I
spent the afternoon in the garden. Since the vines that covered the rock were too tough to tackle until I got a better pair of clippers, I worked on the planting bed, moving on to the next wedge-shaped piece of the centre circle.

My copy of Dad's diagram was on the bench, weighted down by a rock; I wouldn't have found the labyrinthine pattern in the mess of plants and weeds without it. I wasn't sure I would be able to duplicate it even with his notes, but I figured the only way to start was to clear out the weeds to see what was left.

Hard at work and lost in my thoughts, I didn't really notice that a car had arrived until Gigi uncurled from her favourite bed of greenery, looking eagerly towards the house, her tail waving.

I kept working, because it was silly that the same sort of hopeful excitement was bubbling up in me, too. I was not a puppy looking for belly rubs, and I was not a sheltered, innocent, 1860s Hannah Davis. I was a modern and sophisticated Manhattanite. I was
not
going to squeal, even internally, with the hope that Rhys Griffith had missed me like I'd missed him. He might not even come out to see me.

But a few minutes later, he did. I felt his step into the garden through my fingers in the earth, and Gigi, with one bark of welcome, bounded over to see him. I confined myself to sitting back on my heels and rubbing some of the dirt from my hands.

‘You've been busy,' he said ambiguously. I assumed he meant in the garden, but I'd done a lot of other things in the past two days, like meet half of Maddox Landing. Not to mention my dead relatives.

Brushing the hair out of my face with the back of my hand, I climbed to my feet, irrationally disappointed with this tame and vague beginning. ‘It gives me something to— Holy crap.'

As I stared, Rhys raised his brows – and then winced. The bridge of his nose was swollen, with a cut across the top. He had bruises under both eyes, but it was worse on the left, where the whole top of his cheek-bone, curving up to the big knot over his eyebrow, was mottled purple.

‘You said you were fine!' Wiping my hands on my jeans, I crossed through the plants to get to him, barely registering the crush of herbs under my bare feet.

‘I said bumps and bruises,' he responded flatly, then gestured to the garden. ‘What's all this? Lowly work for a princess.'

‘Did you really think I was going to sit around all day and eat bonbons?' The retort was automatic, and I didn't let him distract me. ‘You talked like it was a fender bender.'

His expression softened slightly in admission. ‘It was a bit more than that.'

We stood close, and the smell of turned earth and bruised greenery was insufficient to soothe my shock and worry. The livid purple around his eyes made them look startlingly green. I reached up on impulse and, when he didn't draw away, very gently touched the goose egg on his brow. He winced slightly, then sighed, his shoulders relaxing, as if my cool fingers on the fevered swelling were a relief.

‘Is your dad really OK?' I asked, trying to quiet the anxiety that crawled inside of me as I realized the air bag probably saved his life.

‘Dad's got barely a mark on him,' Rhys said gently, as if he were comforting me, instead of the other way around. He was all right; it was over. But if my concern eased a fraction, it was only to a lingering disquiet.

I was suddenly aware of how close we were, and the intimacy of standing in the hedges, hidden from view, stroking his face as if I knew him a lot better than I did.
Heat rushed to my cheeks, replacing the cold of alarm, and I drew back my hand. My withdrawal seemed to make Rhys aware of all the same things. He dropped his gaze and cleared his throat.

‘Dad's inside, talking to Paula about the trip,' he said. ‘Clara's got the kettle on, and I smelled baking when we came in.'

‘OK,' I said, awkwardness making my voice too high. ‘Let me grab my stuff.'

Gigi had run off with one of the gloves, and while I was finding it, Rhys got to the drawing on the bench before me.

‘What's this?' he asked.

‘It was in the book.' I had to stifle the urge to snatch the paper up and hide it. My secret connection with Dad. Instead, I tried to lessen its importance with a casual tone.

Turning back to me, he started to lift a brow, then obviously thought better of it. ‘I read that book. This wasn't in it.'

There wasn't any point in lying, I suppose. ‘It was in the back. That's a tracing of a drawing my dad must have made when he was here.'

Rhys touched his forehead with a careful frown, still gazing at the diagram. Scanning the work I'd done, he brought his eyes up to mine again, guarded. ‘Do you even know what you're doing here?'

Irritated, I plucked my paper from his fingers. ‘No. Of course not. I'm just making this up as I go along.'

The muscle in his jaw twitched, as if he had been
hoping for a different answer. ‘I know you must want to reconnect with your father, but this isn't the way to do it.'

Bitter anger rushed to my tongue. ‘How is that any of your business?' And how could he say such a thing? He
had
a dad. He should have known how important this was. I was amazed at how quickly my emotions could swing from ‘Oh my God, I'm so glad you're not dead' to ‘I might have to kill you myself for that remark.'

Raising his hands defensively, he said, ‘I just don't want you to get in over your head.'

‘What are you?' I demanded. ‘The gardening police? What difference does it make?'

He blinked, then narrowed his eyes. ‘What are you talking about?' he asked.

‘Gardening. What are
you
talking about?'

‘Something else entirely.' He busied himself, very obviously, with collecting the gloves Gigi had scattered over the garden, while the perpetrator rested in the shade under the bench.

‘Rhys,' I said, in as close to an alpha-dog voice as I could manage, ‘what the hell is going on?'

I meant with him, but I could have shouted the question to the universe, demanding answers in a much broader sense. Why did everything I discovered today, every conversation I had – or overheard – only lead me to more questions?

‘Why don't you tell me?' he snapped back. ‘We stopped to eat in town, and everyone is talking about you and Shawn.'

‘Oh my God.' I pressed the heels of my hands to my forehead, leaving gritty streaks on my face. ‘I am not making a play for Shawn Maddox!'

That came out way louder than I meant it to. Gigi barked from under the bench, and I closed the distance to Rhys so I could lower my voice. ‘I can't believe we are arguing because I had lunch with Alabama's answer to Tom Sawyer.'

He set his jaw, almost masking his surprise, but not hiding his flush at all. ‘Why can't you believe that?'

‘Because …' Wind cut from my sails, I floundered to finish that thought. ‘Because it's stupid. I just
met
Shawn.'

With a small, wry smile that made me a liar some-how, Rhys took a step into my personal space. ‘That doesn't mean anything. You and
I
just met.'

True, yet the connection between us heated the air, made my heart stumble a little. ‘That's different.' I just hoped he didn't ask me how, because I didn't have an answer.

‘You rang me up to see if I was all right.'

‘To see if you and
your dad
were OK.'

‘So … you cared.'

Part of me squirmed with glee that he was standing so close, with that smile, and speaking in that low voice and smooth accent. And a much tinier, more cynical part of me speculated that he'd changed his method of diverting my questions.

‘So,' I said, my voice annoyingly breathless, ‘the thing about getting in over my head. That was about Shawn and me?' It actually made sense. Getting
involved with a Maddox would certainly seem to be a way of connecting with my Davis heritage, given our families' intertwined history. And since even I had misgivings, there was reason to warn me.

A flicker in Rhys's eye said he wasn't happy about my dogged pursuit of the matter. But he answered, ‘It's about Shawn, who is not everything he seems.'

I nodded. ‘Yeah, I figured that out on my own, actually.'

‘Good.' There was a flattering satisfaction in that one word. ‘You'll give him a wide berth, then?'

‘No.' That would make it hard to find out what he and the Teen Town Council were doing in the summerhouse. ‘But I'll be on my guard.'

He took a frustrated step back, raising his hand to rub his forehead, then cursing when he touched the bruises. ‘Sylvie,' he said through the grimace of pain, ‘you don't know what you're dealing with.'

‘Then tell me!'

‘I can't.' He lowered his hand, and his voice. ‘Why don't you tell me what
you
know?'

Like what? That I thought the house was haunted? That I was being set up with Shawn because of some old tradition? It all sounded paranoid and delusional, and the threat of Paula calling the shrink loomed large and terrifying.

‘I can't,' I echoed, wondering if that sounded as miserable as I felt.