Page 83 of The Guests on South Battery
When I turned back to Rebecca, she was watching me carefully. “I’ve been having more dreams. Remember the one I told your mother that I was having about the girl in the white nightgown, knocking on the inside of a wall and calling your name?”
I tried to keep my expression neutral. “Vaguely.”
“I’m seeing her again, but now she’s pointing toward the bottom of a set of wooden steps, as if there’s something there she wants me to see.”She looked at me closely. “Sounds like a good story, doesn’t it? I sure hope you figure out what it’s all about before I do and tell Marc. From what Marc’s told me, Jack really needs a great book idea. The early buzz from Marc’s agent on the book Jack just turned in says it’s not bestseller material. You know how incestuous the whole publishing world is—there aren’t many secrets. Marc says the inside scoop is predicting a print run about half that of his last book.”
I drained my wineglass, then smiled softly, pretending none of this was news to me. “Yes, well, we’re both proud of it and know his fans won’t be disappointed.”
She took a sip of her own wine, and it was all I could do not to hit the bottom of it and make it spill down the front of her pink dress.
“I never realized how much this ‘gift’ of ours could help our husbands in their writing careers.” She lifted her glass in a mock toast. “May the best man win.”
I didn’t raise my empty glass, and didn’t care if she noticed.
“Well, not to worry,” she said. “After tonight’s announcement, Marc’s book and movie are going to put us all on the map.”
I recalled the conversation I’d had with Jack over the newspaper article about the film deal Marc had made, and how it was speculated that the movie would be filmed in Charleston using our house as the setting. The conversation hadn’t continued because we hadn’t been officially approached, and I’d simply assumed that Jack and I were on the same side of the fence. Which was a very good thing, since it would have to be a very cold day in hell before I would ever agree to it.
I turned toward Jack, needing confirmation, and discovered he was no longer standing nearby. The waitress appeared with his seltzer water and lime and I took it, replacing it with my empty wineglass, thanking her while looking over her shoulder to find out where Jack had gone. I spotted Thomas, talking with a group of people, but Jayne wasn’t with him.
The quartet stopped playing and Marc stepped up to a microphone and I noticed all the servers were now passing out flutes of champagne. “Excuse me, please—now’s the big moment,” Rebecca said as shewalked past me to where Marc was standing. Camera flashes popped all around them like paparazzi, and I was left wondering if they were plants paid for by Marc and Rebecca. I certainly wouldn’t put it past them.
Someone touched my elbow and I turned to see Suzy Dorf, as diminutive as I remembered, holding a champagne flute. “You’re a hard person to reach,” she said, taking a sip from her glass.
“I’m very busy,” I said, remembering the reams of pink message slips Jolly Thompson had dutifully filled out despite the fact that she knew I threw them all away.
“Well, if you’d bother to return my calls, then you’d already know what the big announcement is.”
“I already know about the film—it was in the paper. But it’s not being filmed at our house—we haven’t agreed to that, nor would we ever.”
Her round brown eyes—looking remarkably like buttons—widened. “Really? Because your husband has. Surely you know that.”
Something that felt like a hot flame erupted from my core and shot up my throat to my head. I was pretty sure that was what being hit by a meteor would be like. “I’m sorry?”
Marc was tapping the mic, and Suzy indicated him with her chin. “Stick around—you’ll hear him make the announcement now.”
I thrust the glass of seltzer water at the reporter. “I’ve got to find Jack—there’s been some mistake. Excuse me, please.”
She grabbed onto my arm. “I saw him just a few minutes ago, heading back toward the kitchen.” She paused, as if debating whether she should say more, then decided not to.
I didn’t stop to pry out whatever it was she thought I should know, because whatever it was had to be the least of my worries. If Jack had actually signed that agreement, a blizzard was about to start in hell.
CHAPTER 29
I’d read accounts of soldiers shell-shocked after an explosion, suddenly deaf and blinded, stumbling forward with no idea of how they got where they were or where they were headed. I felt a little like that now, propelling myself with sheer instinct, looking for the door where the waiters were moving in and out and following them into the kitchen as if I were supposed to be there.
The food smells were stronger there, the noise louder and punctuated with orders being barked from one end of the white-tiled room to the other, the sharp clack of knives against cutting boards, the metallic clanking of silverware, and the ping of china plates being stacked. I was only vaguely aware of all this, a sound track to my own personal nightmare as I scoured the space for Jack. A female waiter—I recognized her as the one who’d brought the seltzer—stopped and stared at me for a long moment. Then, with lifted eyebrows and a jerk with her chin toward a door behind me, she allowed her empty tray to be filled with champagne flutes and exited the kitchen.
My first instinct was to follow her, even if it meant listening to Marc make his announcement. It would make a good excuse anyway as to why I hadn’t followed Jack into what appeared to be a large storageroom. With a closed door. Behind which I could clearly hear a female voice. But I remembered what my mother had said about becoming the new and mature Mellie. The one who faces the truth instead of hiding from it, and asks questions no matter how unpleasant the answers might be. And believes jumping to conclusions shouldn’t be on my list of exercises. And I remembered what Jack had said about trust, and how our marriage was based on it. They were both right, of course. I was a forty-one-year-old married mother of three, and it was time to pull up my big-girl panties.
I could hear the faraway amplified voice of Marc Longo. “Jack Trenholm, related by marriage, has generously agreed to allow most of the filming for the movie to be made in his home on Tradd Street, which is where the story takes place.” I felt sick and betrayed, but still clung to a shred of hope that I had misunderstood, or that Jack had an explanation that would make it all better. That what my mother had told me about the importance of finding out the truth was true.
With my shoulders pulled back, I hesitated only a moment in front of the closed door and then, without knocking, turned the doorknob and yanked it open. I had a brief recall of my earlier thoughts regarding shell-shocked soldiers, and wondered if it was possible to survive two episodes in quick succession. My first impression was that it was cold, and that I might actually be in a refrigerated storage room. I blinked twice, but not because I couldn’t see. The fluorescent lights were on, illuminating everything in an unflattering blue-white light. I blinked again as if somehow the view in front of me might disappear. But it didn’t.
I was sure the pantry was lined with metal shelves and they might even have been full of bins of fresh produce and large condiment containers, but I didn’t see them. Because all I could see was the beautiful pale blue chiffon of Jayne’s gown, half hiding my view of Jack in his black tuxedo, his left hand—the one with the gold wedding band that I’d placed there a little more than a year ago—cradling her head against his chest. His head must have been tilted toward hers until the sound of the door being thrown open made him jerk it back. I was pretty sure they weren’t practicing their chip shots.
For a moment we stared at each other as if none of the bustle and noise in the kitchen registered, as if the girl in blue standing between us, her tear-streaked face pale with shock, didn’t even exist. And then all the sounds came back with the intensity of a gunshot, and I felt the percussion through my body, the slow movement of a lead slug traveling cleanly through to my heart.
“Mellie,” Jack said, stepping toward me as Jayne pulled away.
