Page 86 of The Guests on South Battery
“That’s the ring you wore to the party,” Nola said.
“Yeah, I think you’re right.”
She took the frame from me and read the date from the front of the photograph. “March seventeenth, 1984. Were you alive back then?”
I knew she was joking, but I was too fixated on watching her flip it onto its back and open the clips that held the picture to the frame. “Look, Melanie—the photograph wasn’t cut to fit the frame. It was folded over.” She flattened the picture on her knee and looked at it for a long moment, before slowly turning back to me. “I think that’s Ginette.”
I took the photo and studied the original picture of three people, a stark white demarcation line where it had been folded and tucked inside a frame for three decades. I stared at the newly revealed image of the woman next to Sumter, watching it fade in and out of focus until I blinked. My mother’s face, a younger version than the one I knew now, stared out at me from the photograph, her hand now seeming possessive where it rested in the crook of Sumter’s arm. But it wasn’t just the fuller face, or softer cheeks, or even the absence of gloves that riveted me and made my suddenly dry tongue stick to the roof of my mouth. It was the obvious fact that my mother was very pregnant in this picture, taken almost a full decade after I was born.
A thud sounded behind us, and we twisted to see a small ball rolling on the rug before coming to a stop by my foot. It was the saltshaker from Lake Jasper, the printed date, May 30, 1984, faceup. My eyes met Nola’s. “I didn’t pack that, either,” she said, her voice shaky.
I picked it up and held it in the palm of my hand, the ceramic icy cold to the touch. “I didn’t think you did,” I said just as all the clocks in my mother’s house began to chime four o’clock.
CHAPTER 30
After Nola left, I took a quick shower and changed into yoga pants and my favorite sweater. I even brushed my teeth. I took my time, trying to prepare myself for the conversation I needed to have with my mother. Thankfully, my father was gone all day at a garden show in Savannah, so that at least was one conversation I could postpone or avoid altogether.
Before heading downstairs, I emptied the bag, wanting to mentally prepare myself for a lengthy stay by putting my things away in drawers. At the bottom of the bag I was surprised to find the grocery bag containing the snow globe bottoms. I quickly texted Nola to see if she had actually packed them and was relieved when I received her response saying that she had because they’d become one of Sarah’s favorite games and Nola thought she might want them. I shoved them in the back of my dresser drawer where hopefully Sarah would never know they were there, then went slowly down the stairs, carrying the baby monitor with me.
I found my mother in her garden, sipping hot tea and reading a novel, looking elegant and poised. She looked up at me and smiled. “You’re looking better, dear. Nothing like what a shower and a freshchange of clothes can do for a person.” She indicated the seat next to her and I sat. “Would you like some tea? And I just took some homemade shortbread out of the oven, so it’s still warm.”
“No, thanks,” I said, placing the monitor on the table and making sure the volume was up.
“Something must be really wrong if you’re saying no to sugar.” Her soft laugh faded quickly when she saw that I hadn’t joined her. “What is it, Mellie? Did Nola say something that upset you?”
I shook my head. “No. But this was in the bag she brought over, although she swears she didn’t pack it.” I took the saltshaker out of the sweater’s deep pocket and held it up in front of her to show her the wordLake Jasperon one side and the handwritten date on the other. I didn’t expect her to touch it without her gloves, and she didn’t.
Her face paled slightly when she read the date. As if it meant something to her. “Where did that come from?”
“Button’s house. Jack borrowed it, so it was on his desk, and then managed to find its way into the overnight bag that Nola packed for me.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out the photograph, sliding it on the table toward her. “And so was this.”
She looked down at the photograph, and her hand started to shake. I took the teacup from her fingers and placed it on the saucer. “That’s you,” I said. It wasn’t a question. “In 1984. Which I can’t understand because I was always led to believe that I was an only child.”
She placed both hands over her mouth and I wanted to tell her it was too late to keep this secret. Clenching her eyes shut, she slowly lowered her hands to her lap. “You are,” she said, then opened her eyes. “You are my only child. The baby didn’t survive childbirth.”
I wasn’t prepared for that answer, and a sharp stab of what felt like grief nudged me between my ribs. “Was it a girl or a boy?”
The tears fell freely down her cheeks. “I don’t know. They didn’t tell me, saying it would be easier for me to forget. As if I ever could. They never even let me see my baby.”
“Who? Who wouldn’t?”
After only a brief pause, she said, “Button. And the midwife. And a psychiatrist they said they consulted—all agreed that it would be easier for me to get past the trauma if I didn’t know. If I couldn’t picture the child in my head, or name it. So I didn’t. Not that it made it any easier, of course.” She pressed a knuckle into her eye to try to block the tears. “It was a very difficult birth—they said I almost died. I was half out of my mind with grief and pain and fear and eventually I stopped asking, and accepted it.”
“And the baby?” I asked. “Where was it buried?”
“At the lake house. I agreed to keep it a secret—there were too many people who could be hurt if they knew the truth, including your father. We knew of the plans to flood the lake, so even though I knew it was illegal, I thought it was somehow okay if the grave would soon be underwater. I couldn’t go say good-bye—I was so ill and weak, and didn’t get out of the bed for two weeks. But I did select the Bible verses I wanted Button to read, and the flowers—lilies—I wanted placed on the grave. And then Button packed my bags and put me on a plane to New York so I could resume my life. When they flooded the lake and covered the grave the following year, it made it easier to pretend that none of it had happened. But I never really forgot. A mother never forgets her children.”
I sat back in my chair, trying to digest what I’d just been told. “Sumter...?” The question hung in the air between us.
“He was the father. We’d had a fling in New York. Hasell had just died, and he was recently divorced and trying to find a new life. And I was divorced from your father, and separated from you, and I was looking for someone to love.” She wiped her face with her fingers, somehow managing to look elegant. “Even if the child had survived, it would never have worked out between Sumter and me. Because I was still in love with your father, and that would never change.”
“When was this taken?”
She looked down at the photograph, a soft smile touching her lips. “At the lake house. When I couldn’t hide the pregnancy anymore, I told my agent I needed a break and Button brought me down to the lake to wait out my pregnancy and find a midwife. Sumter was travelingso much for work and paid to have the midwife live at the house full-time until the baby was born. That allowed Button to be in Charleston most of the time so Anna wouldn’t get suspicious.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “Sumter was in London when the baby was born—two weeks early. He didn’t get to see our baby, either.”
“Why didn’t you marry him? You were both free.”
She gave a delicate shrug. “Sumter wanted to marry, but I kept putting him off, saying we could decide after the baby was born. I knew he didn’t really want to marry again—he had loved Anna, at the beginning at least. Button didn’t want us to marry, either.”
