Page 105 of The Christmas Spirits on Tradd Street
I nodded, knowing she was right. “Neither did Lawrence.” I closed my eyes, trying to hear the voices in my head, to decipher the words that sounded as if they were out of order, nodding when I finallyunderstood. “He felt betrayed by Eliza for being a spy and for loving another man, so he killed them both.” I looked at the spirit of the old man, his face a mask of old grief. “Tell Lawrence you forgive him for what he did,” I whispered. “So he can forgive you, too.”
A soft rumbling vibrated the earth beneath us and I heard Anthony swear behind me.
“It’s okay,” Jayne said. “Their souls are being released.”
The ground trembled one more time as lightning flashed through the sky above us, showering us with the smell of burnt ions and filling the mausoleum with a bright, bluish white light. When it had faded, the mausoleum was empty, the only sounds a low moaning from the direction of the opened crypt and the click of the gate latch as the door slowly began swinging open.
Anthony pushed it fully open and entered, Thomas and Jayne close behind. I felt a soft tug on my arm and turned around, thinking it was Jack, but no one was there. “Eliza?”
A firm push propelled me away from the mausoleum. I grabbed my phone and turned on the flashlight, unsure what had happened to my camping light. “Jack?” I called out. I spun around with my light, looking for him. I’d begun heading toward the front gate when a hard tug on my arm propelled me in the opposite direction.
I had taken only three steps before I saw it was Eliza, and where she was directing me. One of the soft dips that I had just navigated around during my gravestone search was now a gaping hole, a blemish on the pristine white ground.
“Jack!” I screamed. I ran to the edge of the hole and stared down at the mix of dark soil and snow, Rebecca’s dream of Jack being buried alive playing like a movie reel in my head. “Jack!” I screamed again.
Jayne came from behind and knelt next to me. “There,” she shouted, pointing to something pale and still near the bottom of the six-foot hole. “He’s there.”
I might have screamed again, the sight of Jack’s closed eyes and pale face at the bottom of a grave too surreal to accept.
“I’ll get help,” Jayne said, moving to stand.
While she ran to get Thomas, I lowered myself into the pit, no longer feeling the cold or the fear of the last few hours. I didn’t think about how I would get out of the pit or even whether it was done collapsing. I had no idea how many coffins had been buried here, or how deep. I didn’t care. If something happened to Jack, nothing else would ever matter again.
His body was completely covered up to his nose with the dirt and snow. I carefully crawled over, taking care to distribute my weight evenly, until my fingers could reach his face and begin brushing the dirt off his chin and mouth. “Jack, it’s Mellie. Don’t talk—I’ve got to get the dirt off your face first. Just nod that you can hear me.”
He didn’t move or respond in any way, his face as still and colorless as the moon as he lay at the bottom of the grave, just as Rebecca had seen in her dreams.
Kiss him.I wasn’t sure if the words had been spoken aloud, but I looked up at the edge of the collapsed grave and saw the British soldier standing next to Eliza, his arm around her.Kiss him.
I pinched Jack’s nose closed and pressed my mouth against his and blew a deep breath. When nothing happened, I did it again, harder this time, imagining his lungs expanding with the air of my breath. He gasped, his eyes blinking open as he took a breath on his own, his eyelids fluttering until he caught sight of me.
“Oh, Jack. You’re going to be okay. I’m here. It’s Mellie. I found the rubies!” His eyes focused on me and I smiled. “I love you, Jack.”
His eyes looked behind me to where Anthony and Thomas had replaced Eliza and Alexander and were peering at us from the top of the grave. Then Jack’s eyes shifted back to me, and there was no warmth or light in them. “Go. To. Hell.”
CHAPTER 35
The rest of the night was mostly a blur—the fire and rescue sirens, the ambulance, the trip to the hospital with Thomas and Jayne in the detective’s four-wheel-drive truck. I remembered Jack turning his head away from me as they loaded him into the back of the ambulance and strapped him lying down into a bench seat, and I remembered the shock of seeing Marc as they slid his gurney in next to Jack. I didn’t recognize him at first, and not because of the large, swollen bruise on the side of his face. It was because of his hair—his thick, dark brown hair had gone completely white, incongruous with his black eyebrows and unlined face. He asked me to call Rebecca, and I did, and that was the last coherent memory I had.
When I awoke the following morning, I was at my mother’s house. I vaguely recalled her picking me up at the hospital and telling me that Jack was fine except for some bruising and a sprained ankle. They’d wanted to keep him overnight for observation, and even though I’d been prepared to wait and bring him home the next morning, he’d refused to see me and had requested someone else—anyone else—to drive him. I’d been too stunned to cry and allowed my mother to lead mefrom the hospital, as Jayne and Thomas had offered to stay and chauffeur Jack when he was discharged.
I sat up in my old bedroom, feeling disoriented, as if I’d been standing on a moving sidewalk that had suddenly stopped. I recalled Jack’s hurtful words and could feel nothing but shame, knowing I’d deserved them. I needed my babies, needed to see them and hold them and talk with Nola and confirm we were all going to be all right. That Jack would forgive me. I threw off the covers and pulled on the green velvet dress I’d worn to the party the night before, then ran downstairs in search of my mother.
She was just putting down her cell phone when I walked into the kitchen. She was dressed and perfectly made-up, but her gaze didn’t falter as she took in my unbrushed hair and wrinkled dress. “That was Amelia. She said the twins have been perfect angels and she’s happy to keep them a little longer if you need her to. She already asked Nola to bring over more supplies just in case your answer was yes.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but all that came out was a loud sob that quickly become a torrent of tears I couldn’t stop. She came over to me and enveloped me in a warm and sweetly scented embrace, bringing back old memories of when I was a little girl. The girl I’d been before she’d left me behind.
My mother brought me into the parlor and sat me down on the couch, where I continued to sob for five minutes, until I had no more tears left. She waited a moment before pulling back and lifting my chin with her fingers.
“So, what are you going to do, Mellie?”
“You know?” I sniffled.
She nodded. “When Jayne called me to tell me you were all at the hospital, she filled me in on what happened.” She kept all judgment from her voice, making me so grateful that I cried a fresh torrent of tears.
When I was done, I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand, recalling what she’d just said. This wasn’t how I’d anticipated the conversation going. I’d envisioned her commiserating with me, telling me thateven though things hadn’t turned out as planned, I’d been smart and resourceful and everything had worked out all right in the end. And then I’d sit and listen while she told me what I needed to do next. When she didn’t speak, I asked, “So, what should I do now?”
“You’ve really hurt Jack, Mellie. And your marriage. The damage might even be irreparable.”
