Page 15 of The Guests on South Battery
“It sounded mechanical,” Jayne said. “Like one of those old wind-up toys.”
I was already walking toward the end of the hall, feeling the odd sensation of being pursued from behind, and a separate, more gentle presence in front guiding me down the dark hall. I still couldn’t see, but I could feel both of them, sense them the way a plant follows the light. Whatever it was behind that door at the end of the hall, I needed to get there before Jayne.
I reached toward the round brass knob, but it was already turning, the door pushed open without any assistance from me. Jayne caught up to me in the doorway, apparently unaware that the door had opened on its own. We stared inside, taking in the large mahogany dresser covered in perfume bottles and tarnished silver frames filled with old photographs. A small end table was covered with an assortment of pill bottles and an empty water glass sitting on a lace doily. An enormous rice-poster bed held court next to it, the silk bedspread and pillows neatly placed on top. I thought of the housekeeper who’d taken care of the deceased owner, thinking she’d made the bed as her last duty to the old woman.
A cold breeze greeted us and I watched as Jayne shivered, wondering if she’d noticed the temperature drop in the already chilly room. I wanted to stamp my foot in frustration at my inability to see whoever it was. It wasn’t that Iwantedto see them. But if I knew they were there, I’d rather see them than just feel them. It made it harder for them to sneak up on me and surprise me when I least expected it.
“This must have been Miss Pinckney’s room,” Jayne whispered, as if the old woman were still there, sleeping in the giant bed.
“You’re probably right,” Sophie said from behind us. “It’s the only room where the furniture isn’t covered. And there’s an air conditioner in one of the windows.” She crossed the room to a rocking chair in the corner near the window unit, an elegant piece of furniture with slender spindles and delicate rockers on the bottom. A small chest sat beside it, a stack of books teetering on its wooden surface. Sophie picked up the book from the top of the pile. “Apparently, either she or her nurse really liked Harlen Coben and Stephen King.”
“Too scary for me,” I said, not overlooking the irony. I began walking around the room and pulling open the heavy curtains to let in light, feeling oddly compelled to do so. Almost as if somebody were telling me to do it. Yet each time I grabbed a drapery panel to open it, I felt an opposing force trying to stop me. Jayne watched me with a furrowed brow as I wrestled with each window covering. “They seem to be stuck on something,” I explained, yanking one across the rod. “Don’t feel obligated to keep these.”
Sophie frowned at me. “I disagree. Those are Scalamandre, if I’m not mistaken. An exquisite reproduction of the originals, I would bet. Made to last, unlike so many things these days.”
“Was this Miss Pinckney?” Jayne asked. She stood by the dressing table, a large oval frame in her hands.
Peering over her shoulder, I saw a photograph of a beautiful young woman with a bouffant hairdo and thick black eyeliner, placing her in the late sixties or early seventies. She wore a white gown and gloves, and stood next to a young man only slighter older than she was. He resembled a young Robert Wagner—one of my mother’s old flames—and looked even more dashing in his white tie and tails.
“Yes, that’s her. And I’m thinking this was taken at her debut. She, my mother, and my mother-in-law, Amelia, made their debuts at the same time. She said that Button’s brother escorted her, since their father had died when they were little.”
“I’m pretty sure I never met her.” Jayne paused for a moment beforecarefully replacing it and picking up another, this one of three girls in Ashley Hall uniforms. Jayne pointed to the tall, thin girl in the middle, her bright blond hair held back by a headband, the edges of her shoulder-length hair flipped up. “I think this is her, too.”
I took the frame from her, noticing how faded the photograph was, the years leaching color from the paper and the images. I smiled. “And that’s my mother and mother-in-law on each side.”
“They look so happy,” Jayne said, replacing the frame.
“They were best friends, according to my mother.”
“Who’s this, do you think?”
Jayne held up another photograph of a girl about ten years old, more recent than the ones of Button. The colors were sharper and the television in the background looked as though it could have been early to mid-eighties. The girl bore a striking resemblance to Button, the same light hair and large, almond-shaped blue eyes.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “But it could be her niece. Her brother had a child.”
Jayne looked at me with surprise. “Then why didn’t she inherit everything?”
I glanced over at Sophie for help, but she was busy studying something in the rocking chair. “She didn’t survive childhood. My mother remembers that she was... sickly.”
The frame fell heavily onto the tabletop, almost as if it had been wrenched out of Jayne’s hand and thrown down.
“Sorry,” Jayne said. “I’m so clumsy.”
My phone began to ring in my purse, the ring tone one I didn’t recognize. My hand froze on the purse clasp, willing it to stop ringing.
“You can answer that,” Jayne said. “I don’t mind.”
“It’s not important,” I said, keeping the tremor out of my voice. “I’ll just silence it so we can focus.” I reached into my purse and flicked the button on the side of the phone without looking at the screen, knowing it would be the same unidentified number as before.
I picked up the frame, the clips on the back apparently loosened in the fall and allowing the glass and photograph to slip out. I turned thepicture over to see if there was any writing on the back. There, in faded blue ink and in a feminine hand, was written the single nameHasell.
“Is that a misspelling of Hazel?” Jayne asked.
I shook my head. “It’s actually an old Charleston family name—there’s a street by that name that runs from King Street past East Bay. It’s pronounced like Hazel but spelled with an S. My mother told me that Button’s brother, Sumter, married a Hasell, which would explain why they used it for their only child.”
As I replaced the photograph and glass back in the frame, I studied it more closely, seeing now the dark circles under the child’s eyes, the pale translucence of her skin, the faint blue veins that bracketed her temples. I thought of the robust cheeks and bright eyes of my own children, and I felt a stab of loss for this girl I’d never known. I couldn’t take my gaze away from the image, noticing now something familiar in the shape of the chin and the delicate arch of the eyebrows.
I was about to pick up the photo of Button to compare the faces when I heard that odd, metallic sound again that Jayne and I had heard earlier. We both turned toward Sophie, who was holding something up in her hands, a look of surprise and wonder on her face.
