Page 93 of The Christmas Spirits on Tradd Street
I began walking around the perimeter of the room, searching for any missed fruit.
“She’s right, you know,” Jayne said. “About losing some vital clue. I see Adrienne, too, sometimes, and I feel that time is of the essence. I’ve seen her a few times when I’ve been working with Veronica. They must have been very close.”
I stood and faced my sister. “I guess so. Veronica still misses her and it’s been more than twenty years.”
Jayne’s face looked wistful. “It must have been nice to grow up with a sister, don’t you think? Sharing confidences. And makeup. Clothes.”
“And fights,” I added. “Most sisters I know have always done a lot of fighting.” I immediately regretted my words. For a brief moment I pictured Jayne and me with matching black patent Mary Janes having ice cream sundaes at the curved booth in the front of Carolina’s with our grandmother. Grandmother would have known that we’d each want our own since even now as adults neither Jayne nor I ever shared a dessert with anyone. And we would have been aware of the silent spirits around us at the other tables and standing nearby, but we wouldn’t have been afraid because we would have had each other.
I softened my tone when I saw her wounded look. “Yeah, it wouldhave been nice not to grow up alone. And I’d rather have a sister than a brother. Especially for the sharing of clothes.”
As if she’d heard only the first part, Jayne said, “I don’t think we would have fought.” She peered behind the dining room door and plucked out an orange I’d missed. “Because you and I have this thing we share—this gift or whatever you want to call it. It would have bonded us together. Kind of like how it’s bonding us now.”
“True,” I said, wishing I felt as reassured as I sounded.
She smiled and I smiled back, feeling only a little tinge of remorse that I couldn’t completely agree with her.
I indicated the oranges we both held. “Why don’t we put these in the kitchen for Mrs. Houlihan? She’ll probably use them to whip up another batch of wonderful cookies that she won’t let me have.” I walked toward the kitchen to deposit the oranges in the bowl in the middle of the center island, Jayne right behind me.
Jayne grimaced. “Probably. I find it’s easiest to resist sweets when they’re not in the house.”
The look I gave her made her quickly switch the subject. “I missed you on our run this morning. You’re doing so well, and I feel it’s my duty as a coach to keep you motivated.”
We returned to the dining room, where I glanced out the window. “Yeah, well, I was more motivated to get this day over with than to get frostbite. It’s really getting ugly out there.”
“Oh, it was a little cold. But it’s all about the proper gear. I was well insulated and I brought my little hand warmers to stick inside my running gloves.” She considered me for a moment. “I think I know what I need to put in your Christmas stocking.”
I forced a smile. “I like chocolate Santas, if anyone’s asking. Dark chocolate and solid—none of that milk chocolate hollow stuff. I might as well eat tofu.”
The doorbell rang, announcing the arrival of the party-rental people, and Jayne, Mrs. Houlihan, and I got busy directing the placement of the six extra tables in the front parlor, placing a white tablecloth on each. Ibegan putting the centerpieces on the tables and attempting to zhush them as Greco had taught me, but I stopped when I realized Mrs. Houlihan was going right behind me and redoing them. And making them look much better.
Wonderful baking smells wafted from the kitchen while we worked, making it hard to concentrate. Mrs. Houlihan had insisted on adding to the caterer’s menu with her famed tomato bisque, topped with chilled shrimp that her husband had caught off of Edisto the past summer and she’d set aside and frozen “just in case.”
She’d also persuaded me to allow her to gift our dinner guests with small bags of goodies, including her praline pecans, homemade truffles, lemon cranberry tarts, and spicy iced peppermint shortbread cookies. I’d yet to taste a single bite of any of it, as Mrs. Houlihan seemed to have a sixth sense where I was concerned, always facing the kitchen door as if expecting me each time I tried to sneak in for a sample. She claimed that I didn’t know what a sample was and every time she’d allowed it in the past, she’d had to make another batch of whatever it was I’d sampled. I denied it, of course, blaming it on whoever else happened to be in the house, but she never believed me.
My mother arrived around ten, after going with my father to the gardening store for tarps for his beloved Daphne evergreen shrubs and camellias to protect them from snow. They were hardy, winter-sustainable plants, but Dad wasn’t convinced that his Southern beauties would know how to handle icy rain or a thick coat of snow. I’d called him on his cell, asking him to get more tarps than he needed because Sophie was concerned about the cistern and exposing anything old to the frigid cold. I’d bit my tongue before I could make a comment about how it wasn’t possible to make a piece of garbage less valuable, refraining from speaking when I reminded myself that we were friends.
Nola came downstairs around the same time my mother arrived. Nola wasn’t an early riser, so I was impressed she made it downstairs before noon on a Saturday. Mrs. Houlihan placed a cup of tea in one hand and I put a spreadsheet in the other, and then waited another fifteen minutes for her to completely wake up and get to work.
She began with helping Mrs. Houlihan and me set the small tables with a mix of the Vanderhorst Imari and my mother’s borrowed Cartier wedding china with the narrow gold edges, which blended beautifully with the other pattern. The mix and match had been suggested by Greco, and I shook my head in wonder at how I’d found him on a recommendation from his good friend Rich Kobylt of the low-slung pants and pickup truck.
I continued to keep an eye out the window as we worked, constantly checking the weather outside and on my phone and occasionally turning on the Weather Channel for corroboration that it wasn’t going to snow before Sunday morning. My life’s mantra was that if it was worth doing, it was worth doing three times.
Nola and I were folding napkins in elegant tepee shapes following Jayne’s directions—she’d apparently learned how to fold any material into any shape in nanny school—when Jack appeared at the top of the stairs. “Mellie?”
I quickly dropped the linen square and took the stairs two at a time. He still looked pale and not at all well, but there was a little flush of color to his cheeks. “You shouldn’t be out of bed.”
“Probably not,” he agreed, “but I think I just figured out what those colors mean.” He leaned into me and I put my arms around his shoulders. His knees seemed to bend a bit and I struggled to keep him upright. Jayne ran up the stairs and stood on his other side, slipping her arm around his waist.
“Should I come up, too?” Nola called.
“No, your aunt Jayne and I can handle this.”
“But I was the one—”
“Yes, you helped us figure out about the umber.” It was hard to forget since she’d been bringing it into every conversation since the previous evening. “And we’re grateful—but those napkins won’t fold themselves. You can borrow my ruler to make sure the sides are all equal—I left it on the table next to you.”
Jayne and I carefully led Jack back to bed, although I had to move the notebook and about ten crumpled balls of paper off first. I frowned down at him as I adjusted the pillow beneath his head. “Did you work on this instead of sleeping?”
