“Everybody’s with the babies in the parlor. Let’s head that way,” I said, taking a step in that direction.
She stayed where she was, a frown on her face. “Actually, before we go in, I wanted to give you something.” She fumbled with her purse, dropping it twice before she finally got the clasp open. “As part of my assignment, I took a lot of pictures of your backyard, to record the work-in-progress. I was printing them out when I came across an interesting anomaly in one of them.”
An ominous prickling sensation crept up my spine. “An anomaly?”
“Well, that’s what they call it on that reality haunted house show my mom watches. I don’t believe in ghosts or anything like that, but I have to say that this picture kind of weirded me out.”
Despite everything that had happened in the last few months, and my giant strides forward in becoming the new Mellie, my first instinct was to run upstairs and pretend I’d never had this conversation. As if reading my mind, Jack grabbed my hand and held tight.
“Can we see?” he asked, holding out his hand toward the small stack of photos she’d pulled out of her purse.
“You can have them—these are copies.” She held them out to Jack, then somehow managed to drop them on the floor before they reached Jack’s hand. “Sorry,” she said, attempting to hold the crutches with one hand while bending down to get the pictures, knocking Jack in the head as he bent to do the same thing.
“You two stay where you are, and I’ll get them,” I said, kneeling to pick up the four photographs. I stood, holding them out so we could all see them, but far enough away from Meghan that she couldn’t knock them out of my hands.
“See how in the first ones it’s bright and clear?” she said. “You can see the sunshine and a bit of blue sky through the trees?”
I looked at my poor damaged garden, the toppled rosebushes, and the sunken earth. The photos were all taken on the far side of the cistern, facing the house. I flipped through the first three, all relatively the same, then stopped when I got to the fourth. She didn’t have to point out the anomaly—my gaze went right to it. It was a full figure of a man standing on the edge of the cistern. If I hadn’t been looking for something, I might have at first dismissed it as a wisp of smoke, but when I looked closely I could see his nineteenth-century jacket and cravat, his dark hair and mustache. The apparition was looking right at the camera, its eyes dark and hollow. But what truly horrified me was what he was holding in his outstretched hand.
“Is that a piece of jewelry?” Jack asked, leaning in to look closer.
It took me two tries to force out the word. “Yes,” I said. I met his eyes. “Just like Jolly saw.”
“Like I said, you can keep them. I don’t think I’ll use that weird one in my report, but the other ones are good. I’ll probably take more when I come back in a couple of months to finish up.”
“A couple of months?” I forced a smile as we finished escorting Meghan toward the drawing room. Nola called to her and stood to help her into a chair, but Jack held me back in the doorway.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Besides that man standing by the cistern in our garden who happens to match the description in Jolly’s vision?”
“Well, yeah, that’s a bit disturbing. But there’s something else. Remember—we promised not to keep anything back. I think we’ve both learned that lesson.”
I thought back to the photo I held in my hand, of the odd wispy figure standing by the edge of the cistern. But nobody else had pointed out the dark shadow in the upstairs window, a shapeless something looking out at us. From Nola’s bedroom. It was one thing to have a spirit hanging out in the backyard. It was quite another to have one lingering around your children’s sleeping spaces. I was still so exhausted from the ordeal at the Pinckney mansion. I just needed another week of recovery and then I’d tell him. I’d find an excuse to move Nola out of her bedroom for a week, such as a promise to redecorate it or paint it. Because then I’d be ready to deal with it. Just one more week.
“Nothing to worry about,” I said. “Now, let’s go celebrate surviving our first year as parents of twins.”
He pulled me back into his arms and kissed me soundly. “I love you, Melanie Trenholm.”
I met his eyes, feeling the truth of his words. “And I love you, too, Jack Trenholm.”
We held hands and walked into the drawing room, feeling the love that surrounded us that almost, but not quite, covered up the sense of foreboding that seemed to lurk beyond the periphery of my vision.