Page 33 of The Christmas Spirits on Tradd Street
“It’s just that you don’t need distractions right now....”
He held his finger to his lips. “Stop. I don’t want to rehash the same old thing. It won’t get us anywhere.”
The sound of screeching brakes outside followed by a quick acceleration brought our attention to the front windows. Jack stood and joined me at the window, both of us wincing as I spotted my dad’s old Jeep Cherokee being tortured as it scooted down the street.
Jack turned away from the window. “I can’t watch. It might give me nightmares. Your dad must have nerves of steel. Thank goodness Jayne is in the backseat. I think she’ll give a calming influence.”
A heat wave of some unidentifiable emotion flushed through me. “Jayne’s with them?”
Jack nodded. “Your dad asked her, and Nola thought it a good idea. I guess she was looking for backup in case your dad threw himself out of the vehicle.”
I watched for another moment before I, too, had to look away, but not for the same reason. “I wonder why Nola didn’t ask me.” I somehow managed to keep the hurt from my voice.
Jack regarded me, his mouth twitching as if he wanted to smile. “I can’t imagine that ending well, can you? It could be very stressful for both of you if she put her seat belt on in the wrong order of things.”
I frowned. “Well, there’s a right way and a wrong way for everything.”
“Exactly,” Jack said.
I watched him for a beat, waiting for him to speak first. When he didn’t, I asked, “So, are we okay?”
Jack faced me, his eyebrows raised, and didn’t say anything.
I pushed myself away from the window and walked slowly until I stood in front of him, then forced myself to meet his eyes. “I’m sor—” I stopped. Swallowed. Remembered what Sophie had said, and that I was trying to be the more mature version of myself. The version of myself who knew how to apologize, regardless of whether she thought she’d done anything wrong. I tried again. “I’m... sorry. About not telling you about the apparition in Nola’s room. I was just trying to—”
He silenced me with a slow kiss. When he lifted his head, he said, “Saying sorry was enough—I don’t need to hear anything else. We’re a team, Mellie. Always. I just need you to remember that before you decide again to keep something from me. There’s a lot about you that drives me crazy, but that’s the one thing that I just can’t live with.”
I pulled back. “There are other things about me that drive you crazy? Like what?”
“Where would you like me to start?” He kissed me again, his lips lingering on mine. “I didn’t mean it in a bad way, since I find most of your craziness endearing. But I suppose we could start with the labeling gun....”
There was a brief tap on the office door before it was opened by myfather, looking flushed and rumpled, as if he’d just outrun a pack of wildcats, with wide eyes and hair standing up at attention. He clutched a manila folder stuffed with papers and his hands shook a little.
“Are you okay?” I asked, concerned about his pallor.
“I’ll be fine in a moment.”
We all turned at the screech of brakes outside. Jack rushed to the window. “You didn’t leave her alone, did you?” he asked, his voice full of concern.
My dad shook his dead. “No. Jayne insisted she could handle it. I think she’s destined for sainthood.” He said it with a note of admiration, making that hot flush consume me again. I wondered if I might be experiencing the change of life already and made a mental note to call my gynecologist the next day.
He looked down at the papers strewn on the floor. “What’s all this?”
“From Anthony. He dropped by earlier with a shoebox full of old letters and documents he’d found in the garbage can at Gallen Hall, presumably stolen from the archives by Marc when he found out I was working on another book. Marc apparently tossed them instead of returning them when he discovered there was nothing interesting enough to write about. He and Melanie had hoped there might be some information in there regarding the mausoleum. Sadly, just a lot of receipts and lists—nothing helpful.”
My father held out the manila folder. “Well, maybe this will have something for you. When Yvonne was helping me find information about the gardens here and at our house, we found some misfiled paperwork. Yvonne made copies and I stuck them in the back of one of my folders, then forgot all about it until we were on the way to Gallen Hall. Remember, Melanie?”
I nodded, wishing I could forget.
He continued. “They’re newspaper clippings and architectural drawings all about the Vanderhorst plantation, but they had been stuck in with the Tradd Street garden papers. Easy to see how that would happen, since they’re both Vanderhorst properties. Yvonne said they use a lot of volunteers and interns to do filing and to return papers to the archivesafter someone has checked them out. So it wouldn’t be out of the question that they were simply returned to the wrong folder whenever the last person looked at them—which could have been decades ago.”
Jack began thumbing through the papers, a smile growing on his face. “Which means Marc never saw these, or he would have kept them. Or thrown them away.” He looked up at me with an excitement I hadn’t seen in a long while. He paused, his eyes widening as he gently took a yellowed page from the stack. “Well, well, well,” he said. “Looks like we just might have beaten Marc at his own game.”
My father and I moved to either side of Jack, looking down at the fragile page in his hand. “Is that...?” I began.
“Two architectural renderings of the mausoleum at Gallen Hall, I think,” Jack replied, a wide grin on his face.
My dad started to say something, but his words were lost in the screech of skidding tires and crunching metal from the street outside, followed by the sharp barking of a dog and the incessant scream of a car horn penetrating the house and making my blood run cold.
