own.
A trio of squirrels foraging for acorns kept Angus entertained while I found a sunny spot on the steps where I could sit and keep an eye on him. He seemed perfectly fine this morning, but the sooner I took him in for a checkup and shots, the better I would feel.
I’d already decided to make a trip back to Charleston soon, anyway. My mother hadn’t felt well enough to come to the phone the last two times I’d called, and I was starting to worry that the chemo might be taking too much of a toll. Aunt Lynrose had tried her best to reassure me, but I wouldn’t have peace of mind until I saw for myself. Maybe I would also drop in on Papa. Since my mother had been staying in Charleston for her treatments, I rarely saw him. I couldn’t even remember the last time we’d spoken, but that wasn’t unusual. Even though he was the one person I could talk to about the ghosts—we would always have that bond—I no longer tried to bridge the gulf between us. I had finally accepted that, for whatever reason, he needed his distance.
Absently, I plucked a stem of bee balm that grew near the steps and lifted the purple blossom to my nose. The morning was impossibly peaceful, the lake a quiet mirror reflecting nothing more sinister than sun, sky and the wavering images of the evergreens. I got up and walked down the stepping-stones to the pier where I leaned over the rail to gaze into those still depths. I could see nothing, of course. The water was too cloudy. But it wasn’t hard to imagine the ruins of Thorngate Cemetery at the bottom. There was a faint hum in the air that I thought might be the echo of those bells. But when I listened closely, I heard only the gentle lap of water against wood pilings and the occasional thump of the boat.
Tossing the flower into the lake, I went back up the steps to the yard where Angus sat watching the squirrels. I was tempted to pack him up and head back to Charleston today. Just abandon the restoration regardless of my contract and business reputation. I needed to get out of this place. Something very alarming was happening in Asher Falls, and somehow I’d become a part of it. Might even be the reason for it. I didn’t understand why or how, but I couldn’t help but think my role here was preordained. The anxiety I’d felt last night in the clearing—the fear of my own destiny—had left me shaken.
And yet…I didn’t leave. I sat there in the lemony scented sunshine as if I hadn’t a care in the world. Because somehow I knew that whatever—
Why that particular snippet popped into my head at that precise moment I couldn’t imagine. I tried to ignore it because I didn’t want to dwell on Pell Asher this morning. Despite his charisma, my time with him had been very disconcerting. How odd to think that our paths had crossed so long ago, and I’d never even known it. How stranger still that he’d seen me playing in Rosehill Cemetery as a child and remembered it after so many years.
On the heels of that reflection, my own memory surfaced, hazy with time and distance and invoked, no doubt, by a combination of concern for my mother and the strange events that had unfolded since my arrival. Reacting to the stimuli, the shutter in my brain clicked once more, and an image slowly came into focus.
I could see myself on the floor of our living room, legs drawn up, arms wrapped around my knees as I listened through an open window to Mama and Aunt Lynrose on the front porch, lulled as always by the lovely cadence of their Lowcountry drawls. I had been six or seven at the time and had yet to learn of the ghosts. But my world had always been guarded and insular, and those accents had given me a glimpse of the lush and exotic. My mother and aunt were very beautiful women, exuding a bygone femininity that smelled of honeysuckle, sandalwood and fresh linen. Papa, by contrast, smelled of the earth. Or was that me? To Mama’s horror, I often had little half moons of dirt beneath my nails, the odd leaf or twig stuck to my hair. Even wearing my Sunday best, a bit of the graveyard seemed to cling to me.
I’d been sitting with my cheek resting on my knees, drowsy in the warm breeze that stirred the lace curtains. I even remembered the incessant drone of a bee trapped against the screen and the smell of freshly mown grass. It was a typical summer afternoon, dreamy and hypnotic, until the sudden anger in my aunt’s voice brought my head up. I’d never heard her speak to my mother in that tone.
“Do you have any idea what I would give to be in your shoes? You have a husband and daughter who love you. What more do you want?”
“You don’t understand—”
“Oh, I understand. You always imagined yourself having the perfect life, the perfect husband, the perfect child. It was what everyone else expected of you, too. But dreams go awry, Etta, and life gets messy. What’s done is done. You need to forget about the past.”
“I thought I had,” Mama said wistfully. “But then I found myself driving up there the other day.”
My aunt gasped. “After all these years? Why would you do such a thing?”
“To visit the grave.”
There was a long pause, during which I’d held my breath. I didn’t understand much of that conversation, but I knew it was serious because my aunt never raised her voice. She doted on Mama. Only a year or so separated them in age, but Aunt Lynrose had always seemed both younger and older to me. Younger because she still had the coquettish quality of a girl while my mother grew more solemn with each passing year. And older because she was so fiercely protective of Mama. Their closeness had always filled me with deep yearning because they shared secrets I could never be privy to. Sister secrets.
“And?” Lynrose asked softly.
My mother paused. “It was a very strange moment.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t explain it any more than I can put into words how I felt driving through that town.” Her voice dropped. “It’s as if the soul of that place has been eaten away. The people, the houses…even the very air seems befouled. I can’t stand to think of my little girl in such an awful place.”
“You don’t have to. She’s right here with you. Exactly where she belongs.”
“For now.” In the ensuing silence, I could imagine my mother’s hand going to her throat, plucking nervously at the gold cross she always wore. “Oh, Lyn. I’ve been so weak. I’ve never let that child fully into my heart because I was so afraid someone would come for her.”
“They won’t. How
“You know how.”
“Too many years have passed. She’s ours now, Etta. Just accept it as a blessing and let that child into your heart,” Lynrose murmured, but I had heard something in my aunt’s voice—a palpable fear—that made me shudder now in memory.
The images fluttered back into the shadows of my past, leaving me deeply troubled by what I’d overheard. But had I really overheard it? Maybe that conversation was nothing more than a remembered dream or a false recollection planted by my own fears. I had so many memories of my mother and aunt. Over the span of my childhood, I’d spent hours and hours by that open window as they reminisced and gossiped on the front porch. Why would I have buried that particular memory?
Even if it was real, I wouldn’t have been able to recall everything in such detail. Not after so many years. I must have embellished an impression. Besides, it was too much of a leap to assume the town in question was Asher Falls. What could possibly have driven my mother all the way up here? Whose grave had she felt compelled to visit? And why had she always feared that someone would come for me when even the woman who gave birth to me hadn’t wanted me?
As if drawn by my disquiet, Angus came over to plop down at the bottom of the steps. I rested my chin on my knees as I reached down to scratch behind the ear nubs, but my thoughts were still on that conversation.
That was a near perfect description of Asher Falls, but I still couldn’t believe my mother had been talking about this town. I certainly couldn’t picture her here. In some ways, she’d lived an even more sheltered existence than I had. She knew nothing of the ghosts and had scoffed at any mention of the paranormal, especially the stories Papa had told me of his childhood in the mountains.
The sun was warm on my shoulders, but I found myself shivering. The longer I stayed here, the more convinced I became that my restoration business had not been picked randomly from a phone book or the internet. My arrival was part of a design, a grand scheme that went back to those days in Rosehill Cemetery when Pell Asher had watched me play among the dead.
