Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fourteen

Nerves shot and throat raw, I sat on my bed, sipping water and counting the seconds until Catherine came home. Hours had passed since the incident in the library and there was still no sign of her. Not that I had no idea what I was planning to say. ‘Hey, Catherine, hope you had a good day, by the way, Ashley baked me some really great cookies but I almost choked on one while she stood and watched, oh and I think I might have rabies and also, should I dress for supper this evening?'

Reaching across the bed to put down my empty water glass, I felt a warm pulse in my palm as it hovered over the antique nightstand. Slowly, I opened the drawer and the silver pin that saved my life in Bonaventure winked at me in the darkness. The pulse became a throb and all I wanted to do was touch the pin. I needed to feel the cool silver against my skin, run my fingers over the filigree and the centre stone, but before I could reach it, two sharp taps sounded against my window and I slammed the drawer shut.

Someone was clinging to the trunk of the tree that grew all the way up to my balcony. A magnolia tree, I noted, as I cautiously crossed my room to get a better look, but their face was obscured by its enormous white blossoms. Thankfully, their canary yellow tank dress and bright blue sneakers were perfectly visible as were the handful of little round stones that sat on the balcony.

‘Hi neighbour!' a voice exclaimed as I lifted the sash window.

‘Lydia,' I replied, leaning outside. ‘What are you doing?'

Lydia Powell sighed with relief and pocketed her remaining pebbles. ‘I'm so glad you're home. I'm almost out of ammo.'

‘And you almost broke the window.'

On the other side of the fence that separated Bell House from the street, I saw Jackson leaning against a No Parking sign, as though he had absolutely nothing to do with his sister's shenanigans.

‘We are here to deliver a very formal invitation to hang out with us,' Lydia said brightly as if climbing a tree to hurl pebbles at a window was the most normal thing in the world. ‘It's hot as balls out here, we have no money and no plan, but you should definitely leave your beautiful air-conditioned house to walk around town with us.'

‘As tempting as that sounds,' I replied, pressing my hand to my forehead to check for a fever, ‘I haven't been feeling so good.' My voice was still raspy from choking and it hurt to talk.

‘That's because you need to acclimatize,' she insisted. ‘Get out here, girl, you'll feel better, I promise.'

Unless I started foaming at the mouth, bit the both of them and we all died of rabies.

‘At least come and save me from my sister,' Jackson called. ‘I promise I'll catch you if you start to swoon.'

He didn't realize how much that promise meant.

‘Why didn't you come to the front door?' I asked as Lydia began her descent.

‘Because I'm scared of your aunt.'

I looked over at the chair wedged underneath my door handle. She wasn't the only one.

‘I'll be down in two minutes,' I said as she climbed down the tree, taking several huge flowers with her. ‘Don't go anywhere.'

‘No phone and no internet,' Lydia uttered as we strolled down Abercorn Street. ‘It would be like losing a limb.'

‘I do have a laptop but the battery is flat,' I told her, wrangling my hair into a topknot to get it off the back of my neck. Every single strand that touched my skin felt like too much; the humidity was even more oppressive than before. ‘It's from the UK so the charger doesn't work with the outlets here.'

‘If I took Lydia's phone away, she would cease to exist.' Jackson held up his empty hand in front of his face and posed like he was taking a selfie. ‘The bones in her wrist are deformed from holding it all the time.'

‘Evolved,' his sister corrected. ‘I post, therefore I am. And don't act like you don't spend half your life on TikTok. I see you, big brother, I see you.'

‘Big brother by twelve blissful minutes,' he explained when he saw the look on my face. ‘After nine months with no escape, it was the least I deserved. She hasn't left me alone that long ever since.'

‘He loves me really,' Lydia said, bounding off to the end of the block to grab hold of a lamp post and twirling around it, her pink belt bag spinning around her body like she had her own moon. She was a blur, always in motion. Jackson was much more calm and considered but they both moved through the city with total confidence. It was so obvious that they belonged here and I wondered if I would ever feel that way.

‘What kind of laptop do you have? We have a bunch of chargers and cables lying around. Lydia breaks everything.' Jackson hit me with the full force of his big brown eyes and even in the unbearable heat, my body found a way to make me blush.

‘It – it's a MacBook, not sure what kind but I can check,' I stammered, caught off guard by his undeniable good looks. That kind of charm really was dangerous. ‘It was my dad's computer. All his research is on there and I'd hate to think his work had disappeared forever.'

He shrugged like it was no big deal and I looked down at the ground, waiting for my face to return to its normal colour. Any and all interactions I'd had with guys my own age were extremely limited but I couldn't say any of them had gone well. Even if we spoke the same language, and that was rare since we moved to a different country every couple of years, just holding a perfectly normal conversation felt like an impossible task to me. I couldn't get out of my own head, too obsessed with what they were thinking, trying to guess what they might say back before they'd said it and so busy working out what I was supposed to say after that, I hardly ever got past the first ‘Hello'. Wyn was the first guy I'd ever met who didn't make me feel like our conversations were a game of chess no one could win.

‘How are you liking your new home?' Jackson asked as we walked on, the fierce afternoon sun boiling me alive in my jeans. ‘Gotten up to anything fun?'

‘I don't know about fun,' I replied, mentally going over the events of the last few days. ‘But I am getting used to the place.'

‘There's nowhere like Savannah.' He smiled at the city and it truly felt as though the city smiled back, his adoration reciprocated. ‘Since we never really got through proper introductions, what else do we need to know about you, Emily James Bell?'

‘Emily James Bell,' I repeated. ‘That's going to take some getting used to.'

He shot another irresistible grin my way but this time I was too preoccupied with the addition to my name to react. It was so strange to hear out loud but it also felt unbelievably good to be openly claimed as part of the family.

‘You already know way more about me than I know about you,' I pointed out. ‘There isn't much else.'

‘Sure there is,' he insisted. ‘Do you have any hobbies, what are you into? What do you love?'

‘Books,' I replied readily, remembering the similar conversation I'd shared with Wyn. ‘I love books. Wherever you are in the world, a book can take you back to your favourite place.'

Jackson screwed up his face then laughed. ‘Wish I could say I have the same passion. I've never had enough of a concentration span to last more than a few pages at a time.'

‘Maybe you're reading the wrong books,' I suggested, a little disappointed in my new friend. There was nothing less attractive than someone who didn't read. Not that I was attracted to him, but he was, objectively speaking, gorgeous.

‘He's not reading any books,' Lydia said as I tried to unravel the hole I'd fallen down in my head. ‘Believe me, Em, I've tried but he's allergic to fiction. The last book he read by choice was The Cat in the Hat .'

‘And Lydia reads a lot of fantasy,' Jackson countered, dry as a bone. ‘Because Lydia thinks life is a fantasy.'

I grinned, pausing to check for traffic before we crossed the road. The twins didn't bother, confident they could stop traffic without trying. ‘Aside from hating Charleston, do you two have anything in common? You don't seem very alike for twins.'

‘You hear that, Lyds?' Jackson called as his sister pulled out her phone to take pictures of an old, creepy-looking house. ‘Em doesn't think we're very alike.'

‘That's because Em is smart,' she replied without looking back. ‘And she's smart because she reads.'

‘Please. I could give you a penny for your thoughts and still get change.'

‘And you're not the dumbest person in the world but you'd better hope that person doesn't die—'

‘Do you know the people who live in this house?' I asked, diverting the conversation before an actual fight broke out.

‘No.' Lydia shook her head and put on a dramatic voice, still snapping photos. ‘But everyone knows about the people who used to live here.'

‘Lydia, cut it out.'

There was a mild warning in Jackson's voice which only made me more curious. In the top-floor bay window, I saw a little girl's face pressed up against the glass. She gave me a wave before dashing away out of sight.

‘This is one of the oldest houses in Savannah,' Lydia said, ignoring her brother completely. ‘The Benjamin Wilson house. It was built in 1870 and it was the most expensive house in Savannah at the time. Then the city built the first free public school right across the square and like most richie-rich men, Mr Wilson was an asshole—'

‘An alleged asshole,' Jackson corrected.

‘What's he going to do, sue me? The dude is dead.' She fluffed her hair before continuing with her story. ‘As I was saying, he was an asshole, and when he found out one of his beloved daughters was playing with the kids from the free school, he tied her to a chair in the attic and made her sit in the window to watch them play without her.'

‘Sounds like a charmer,' I muttered, even the Savannah sun not enough to stop a shiver from prickling my skin.

‘That's not the worst of it,' Lydia replied. ‘Georgia was in the middle of a heatwave and he left his daughter all alone for two whole days. When he finally went back to let her out, she was dead. She died of heat exhaustion.'

‘That's awful,' I replied, thinking of the little girl I'd seen in the window. ‘Imagine having to live in a house with such a miserable history. Do you think the people who live there now know the story?'

‘No one lives here now,' Jackson said. ‘It's been empty for years.'

I looked back up at the window.

‘Empty? But I just saw someone in the attic.'

Lydia zoomed in on her picture and turned the screen around to show me. Not a single soul in any of the windows. I was sure the girl was waving at me when she took it.

‘They say his daughter still haunts the house,' she whispered. ‘Some people say she's appeared in their photographs or that she messes with your camera so the pictures come out all blurry but that's never happened to me.'

‘That's because the whole story is untrue,' Jackson replied as I pinched the image outwards until it was a bunch of meaningless pixels. ‘The house was built in 1868, not 1870, and there are marriage licences and death certificates for both of Wilson's daughters, filed years after your story was supposed to have taken place.'

‘Like rich people aren't still out here falsifying records today.'

Lydia tutted and deleted the whole group of photos. ‘Jackson thinks he's a history professor because he spends hours on Wikipedia and got a special badge at school one time.'

His nostrils flared and he pursed his lips. ‘It wasn't a badge, it was a trophy, and I don't think it's so peculiar to be interested in the place where you live. Savannah is one of the oldest cities in the whole United States, we're lucky to have so much history around us.'

‘My dad was a historian, wild to think he never told me any of these stories,' I said, struggling to keep the tremor out of my voice, my eyes glued back on the attic window. ‘Are you sure no one lives here anymore?'

‘That's about the only thing she got right,' Jackson confirmed. ‘I sometimes work with one of the historic walking tours on weekends and they reckon the guy who lived there got sick of people gawking. He's super wealthy, does something in finance I think. He still owns the house, I heard he uses it for storage, but he moved someplace else.'

‘Probably Charleston,' Lydia said with a scowl.

Jackson laughed, nodded in agreement and the twins walked on, their fragile truce restored. But I didn't follow. I was far too busy watching the little girl in the white frilly dress and ringlets press her nose up against the glass of the top-floor window and wave again before slowly but surely fading away.

‘Welcome to Forsyth Park,' Lydia said before spinning around in a huge circle with her arms outstretched. ‘My favourite place in all Savannah.'

The park was beautiful, lots of people and wide open footpaths, the sound of happy voices in the air. It was just what I needed to shake off Lydia's ghost stories. The twins were both wrong, I decided, after prising myself away from the Benjamin Wilson House. Someone had to be living there. Just because they hadn't seen the girl in the window, didn't mean she didn't exist.

Like the rest of the city, Forsyth Park had more than its fair share of trees and the trees had more than their fair share of Spanish moss, but it was less hemmed in than the carefully planned-out squares, sprawling on and on and on. In front of us was an enormous fountain with cool streams of water arcing out from the sides. If it weren't for all the people lined up to pose in front of it for photos, I'd have been tempted to jump in. There were so many people in the park, seniors taking a stroll, teenagers moving in packs or sunbathing on blankets, and harried-looking parents chasing after little kids, high on the thrill of being outdoors. A little girl with her hair in pigtails ran past us and I felt an involuntary shudder, thinking of Benjamin Wilson's daughter.

‘The buildings around the park are some of the best examples of Savannah's classic architecture,' Jackson said, pointing across to a large building with a lot of windows and what looked like even more columns. ‘That was Savannah's first hospital. It's part of SCAD now.'

Was that where my parents had met? Or where Wyn was taking his classes? I hadn't mentioned him to the twins. I could tell Lydia maybe but not Jackson. I was still building up my immunity to his charisma.

‘But the best thing about Forsyth Park,' Lydia said, ‘is our grandmothers don't come to Forsyth Park.'

‘Why not?'

Lydia answered first. ‘They don't leave the historical district.'

‘NOGS,' Jackson added. ‘They are strictly North of Gaston Street only and they're the last of a dying breed. I swear, they'd both be happier if they could turn back time and live in the nineteen hundreds. Our grandmother gets worse every day, last week she asked me if I was courting anyone.'

‘I'm surprised she hasn't gone full Scarlett O'Hara and made me a gown out of the drapes,' Lydia mimed a swoon, hand pressed to her head. ‘It's the twenty-first century and she still looks like she's going to faint clean away every time she sees me in jeans. At least Catherine dresses pretty cool. For an old person.'

‘I'm pretty sure Catherine's only in her late fifties,' I replied.

‘Ancient.' Lydia paused and reached for a strand of my hair. ‘Hey, did you get streaks?'

‘No?' I replied, checking the same strand myself. She wasn't wrong, there was definitely a red tint. ‘Must be the sun.'

Jackson led us across the grass and safely out of the way of a runaway toddler on a tricycle. ‘It suits you. Like that accent of yours. Half the time you sound like you're Savannah born and raised and the rest of the time it's full-on Downton Abbey. So cute.'

‘What? No, it's not cute,' I rambled, quickly falling back into old, awkward habits at the first sign of a compliment. ‘My dad never lost his southern accent but I picked up bits and pieces everywhere I went. You two have the best accents, mine is a mess.'

‘You like my accent?' he asked, hitting me with another sleepy-eyed smile.

‘Jackson Charles David Powell, we have talked about this.' Lydia swatted at the back of her brother's head then slid her arm protectively through mine. ‘You do not have permission to make a move on my new friend.'

‘She's my new friend too,' he said, trying to smother a guilty chuckle. ‘I can't help it. Supposedly, I get the rizz from our bio-dad.'

It was tough for me, knowing I had two parents who were both gone but I couldn't imagine how it must feel to know your father was out there somewhere, still alive, but not part of your life.

‘Have you ever tried to find him?' I asked.

Jackson shook his head. ‘Why would we? He never came back to look in on our mom.'

‘Hit it and quit it,' Lydia confirmed. ‘I don't need that kind of energy in my life.'

‘All we know is he was a charming Black artist who came through Savannah seventeen years ago,' her brother added. ‘We don't know his date of birth, he lied about his name and the number he gave Mom was for a burner. Even if we did want to find him, we don't have anything to go on.'

‘I'm sorry,' I said. ‘I didn't mean to pry.'

‘Don't be, I'm happy with what I have.' He looked over at his sister and rolled his eyes as she flipped effortlessly into a handstand and walked across the grass on her hands. ‘Most of the time.'

‘This is the best part of the park,' Lydia announced as we passed a noisy playground and approached a quieter, white-walled structure. Behind tall plaster columns and wrought-iron railings was a park within a park. The same looping footpath in miniature and dozens of different flowers and plants. There was even a tiny fountain in the middle.

‘It's a fragrance garden,' she said, running her hand over the railings. ‘The people who take care of the park planted all these cool flowers that smell good and have interesting textures, and all the signs are in braille so everyone can enjoy it.'

‘I don't know if enjoy is the right word,' I said, almost choking on the overpoweringly sweet scent of the garden. It was like walking into the perfume department of ten different department stores at once. ‘It's a little intense.'

‘Really?' she replied. ‘I can barely smell a thing. Must be allergies.'

She went to open the gate but when she tried to flip the latch, it was locked.

‘What the heck?'

‘We're too late,' Jackson said, scanning a sign posted on the wall as she rattled the lock. ‘They closed early for maintenance.'

With my eyes closed, I held on to the bars and breathed in. It was such a heady perfume, a dense, overwhelming combination, but at the heart of it was something familiar. Jasmine? My dad loved jasmine-scented anything. Once he told me it reminded him of my mom and I'd held on to that memory forever.

‘These gates have a history all their own.' Jackson grasped the railings too, his hand right above mine, not quite touching. ‘They're from Union Station, the railway station they knocked down in the Sixties to build the interstate. It's cool how they were able to repurpose them here.'

‘My brother the history buff,' Lydia said, this time with admiration. ‘And what's even cooler is that before this was a fragrance garden, it was a poison garden.'

‘Really?' I searched the flowerbeds for evidence.

‘Lydia, quit it,' Jackson groaned. ‘No, not really. They didn't even build this place until the nineteen-sixties. Seriously, you cannot believe a word my sister says.'

‘It's a good job you're pretty, Jackson Powell,' she replied before grabbing my arm and marching me back the way we came. ‘Because you have no imagination.'

In the distance, I heard a low and foreboding rumble. It sounded like a big truck driving by but from the matching looks on the twins' faces, I suspected it was not.

‘Thunder.' Jackson grimaced as the blue sky clouded over with unbelievable speed. ‘We should move.'

‘Why didn't I bring a jacket?' Lydia wailed, letting go of my hand and taking off in a sprint. ‘I don't want to get my hair wet, I just washed it.'

I hated surprise storms. A surprise storm took my dad from me and I had no desire to get caught in this one, but there was no outrunning it. With only that one warning, the heavens opened and down it came. Living in Wales, I was used to rain, but this was something else. Huge, heavy raindrops that hit so hard they almost blinded me as I ran side by side with Lydia. I felt my feet slapping against the footpath but all I could hear was the driving rain. The packed park was suddenly completely empty, everyone had run for shelter.

‘Wait up!' Jackson yelled, his voice lagging somewhere behind us. ‘Shit! I think I twisted my ankle.'

We slowed to a stop and turned back to see him limping, his white shirt transparent and glued to his body. I swiped my waterlogged hair out of my face as Lydia rushed to her brother's aid, understandably less distracted by his suddenly visible abs.

‘Can you put any weight on it at all?' she asked, ducking underneath his arm and forcing him to lean on her for support.

‘It's not that bad,' he claimed, sucking the air in through his teeth every time he touched his foot to the floor. It certainly looked that bad. ‘Y'all go on without me, I'll be just fine.'

‘Oh, sure. It's not that bad.'

With a pointed look, Lydia bent over and poked his ankle with her forefinger. He let out an unholy howling sound.

‘He broke it last summer playing ball and it never did heal right,' she explained while her brother cursed her out loudly and creatively. ‘Catherine gave him something to help heal it up but I just knew he didn't use it. Your grandmother's remedies always work.'

‘I did too use it,' he muttered in response but from the sullen set of his jaw and shifty look in his eyes, I was pretty sure he was lying. ‘Give me one minute to catch my breath and I'll be fine. Go on.'

‘One minute and we'll all be drowned,' Lydia argued. ‘Em, you run on home, you're soaked to the bone. If you catch a cold and die, your grandmother will kill me too. No point everyone dying.'

‘People don't die from summer colds,' I assured her, catching Jackson's eye before he could look away. Suddenly I was too aware of the clinginess of my own shirt and folded my arms across my body. ‘Besides, I don't know that I could even find my way home in this.'

‘OK then,' she sighed with acceptance. ‘Let's at least get out of the rain.'

Lydia and I helped Jackson hobble over to the closest oak tree. The ground underneath its dense canopy of leaves was relatively dry compared to the rest of the park and we lowered Jackson carefully to the ground, his ankle already swelling up inside his sneaker. Carved into the sturdy trunk of the tree, I spotted a heart about the same size as my palm, with an arrow shooting through it. Inside were two initials but they'd been worn away by time and the weather.

‘And I thought the heat was bad,' I said, the rain still hammering down as though it might never stop. ‘Does this happen a lot?'

‘Usually later in the summer but the weather has been all over the place this year,' Lydia replied. ‘Once things really heat up, we might get a storm like this every day. You don't get much of a warning.'

‘I wouldn't say exactly like this.' Jackson winced as he tried to flex his foot as the rain thrashed down.

‘No,' she admitted. ‘This is a doozy.'

From underneath the tree, it looked like a solid wall, pummelling all the plants and flowers into submission and closing in on us until I couldn't even see the footpath anymore. Another roar of thunder echoed through the park and the Spanish moss above me trembled.

‘You know what's strange?' Lydia said, peering up at the sky. ‘When there's thunder there's usually—'

The words weren't even out of her mouth before a streak of electric white light shot out of a cloud and stabbed the ground in front of us, scarring the park with a smouldering scorch mark.

‘That's not great,' Jackson said as the earth sizzled.

‘We're not safe here,' I said, combing through my memory banks for weather safety tips. ‘The tree is too tall, we're basically sitting under a lightning rod.'

‘You want to walk out into the storm instead?' Lydia asked. ‘Are you crazy?'

‘She's right,' Jackson said with grim resignation. ‘We're toast if we stay here and the lightning gets any closer. Literally.'

‘Then you'd better butter me up because we can't do much else but sit,' she replied. ‘You can't even walk, let alone run, and this storm ain't fixing to clear up any time soon.'

Another rumble of thunder shook the sky, much closer on this occasion, and I knew we were running out of time.

‘We have to move him,' I told an unhappy Lydia, who dropped her head backwards and growled. ‘I know it's horrible out there but we're not safe here. I've got a really bad feeling in my gut.'

Jackson did his best to bite back his moans as we hoisted him to his feet but I could see tears in his eyes once he was finally upright.

‘Your gut better be so smart,' Lydia grumbled. ‘I'm talking early acceptance to MIT followed by a Nobel prize smart, because if I get struck by lightning I am going to be so mad at you.'

‘You won't be mad because you'll be dead,' her brother corrected through gritted teeth.

‘Awesome positive thinking,' she grunted as he curled his arms around our shoulders. ‘Y'all are ready?'

Getting out from under the tree was the right decision but one we didn't make soon enough. The moment we made our move, another flash of lightning pierced the clouds directly above my head. Lydia screamed and shoved Jackson out of its path but there was no way to avoid the inevitable. It was going to hit us.

For a split second, everything turned a blinding white and when the world came back into focus, the three of us were untouched, but something had changed. Everything was moving at a fraction of its usual speed. Lydia and Jackson were still falling but in slow motion, suspended above the dirt like puppets on a string. I could see every molecule of every raindrop and as I stepped out of its path, I watched the lightning bolt strike one of the lowest limbs of the oak tree instead of me. But we were still too late, the severed limb was going to hit us.

Then I saw her.

The fair-haired woman from the cemetery was standing right in front of me, her hands touching mine.

‘Breathe in,' she commanded.

And I did.

‘Now breathe out. Slowly.'

I controlled my breath as best I could, air passing over my pursed lips as I exhaled. The tips of my fingers tingled, sparks flickering underneath my skin, and I watched in shock as the Spanish moss that hung from the oak tree began to bind itself together into thick ropes. They wrapped around the tree and the falling branch, tensed like steel cables on a suspension bridge, pulling tight to hold it fast but even as it stretched, I could see the fibres tearing apart. It wouldn't hold for long.

‘Now, run.'

I blinked as rainwater ran into my eyes. She was gone.

‘Move!' I screamed at my friends as time caught up with itself and thunder rolled out over the city. ‘We have to move!'

Jackson was already on the ground, Lydia having pushed him out of harm's way, but if she didn't run, she would be crushed. I reached for her arm and yanked, stronger than I knew I could be, and pulled her clear of the tree as the moss ropes gave way. The falling limb crashed to the ground, landing so close to us, I felt a sharp scratch against my cheek. When I touched my fingers to my face, they came away bloody. Too afraid to move, I stayed exactly where I was, staring up at the sky and willing the storm to pass. It did, ending as quickly as it had begun. The lightning-severed branch smouldered harmlessly beside me, the clouds blew away, grey skies turned to blue and the world was bright and sunny once more.

‘Em.' I heard Lydia gasp my name. ‘You saved our lives.'

‘You saved Jackson,' I replied weakly. ‘You pushed him out of the way.'

‘Should've let it hit me,' Jackson joked as he pushed himself upright, cringing at his swollen ankle. ‘I'll never hear the end of this now.'

But Lydia wasn't listening, she was too busy gazing at me with big, open, awestruck eyes.

‘If it weren't for you, I'd be dead right now.'

She scrambled across the wet grass, already steaming as the sun came back with a vengeance, and covered my body with hers, smothering my face in noisy kisses. ‘You're amazing and I love you and I will do anything for you forever.'

‘Better think about what you're saying before you make that promise,' I replied, trying to laugh along with the twins.

Two lives saved in three days. It was an impressive record, especially given that until I moved to Savannah, I hadn't had to save a single life in the last sixteen years. I was just as happy as Lydia and Jackson that we'd survived but for whatever reason, I couldn't shake the growing suspicion that if it weren't for me, they would never have been in danger in the first place.