The Final Victim(9)

It was grits, poached eggs, and bacon at seven. Always.

Grandaddy napped every afternoon after lunch, snoring peacefully in his recliner. A lifelong insomniac, he claimed it was the only place he could ever fall asleep-and stay asleep-without the prescription medication he often resorted to in the wee hours.

Every night, after supper and his bath, Grandaddy watched the NBC Nightly News at six thirty. Then, without fail, he would turn off the television and turn on the radio, the one on the mantel. It was always tuned to the same Oldies station, which ironically played swing music that was probably newer than the radio itself. Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, Count Basie…

That first Christmas she lived with him, Charlotte got her grandfather a brand new stereo system.

It still sits, unused from that day, in a cabinet in the far corner of the living room, along with the stack of golden oldies CD's she bought him to go with it. She has long since gotten over the hurt, having come to understand that Gilbert Remington was a creature of habit. He wanted to hear his old music on his old radio.

She stayed for almost two years, moving out only when she married Vincent.

But the Savannah condo and later the two-story, center-hall Colonial that she shared with her first husband never entirely felt like home. Not even when Adam was alive. Selling the house and returning to Oakgate after the divorce hadn't been a difficult decision, though Lianna had complained. But soon even she grew comfortable here.

It was Charlotte who couldn't quite settle in.

That had nothing to do with Grandaddy or the house. She was still mourning her losses. Initially, she thought being at Oakgate would make her feel closer to her little boy, buried in the family graveyard behind the house.

Instead, it was a constant reminder of all that she had lost; of what will never be.

She had already decided to buy a house of her own hack in Savannah before that fateful Labor Day weekend three years ago.

It was shortly afterward that she met Royce, under the most horrific of circumstances.

The first time he showed up at the bereaved parent group she used to attend, she instantly recognized him from the beach.

She watched him running that day, screaming for his son. She saw him hurtling himself helplessly into the water, screaming for Theo, until the lifeguards dragged him out.

Lianna witnessed it as well.

As far as Charlotte knows, her daughter hasn't been back to the beach since.

But Lianna seemed to welcome Royce into their lives, when Charlotte finally got the nerve to bring him home.

Theirs was a whirlwind courtship that seemed inevitable from the moment they met. Each had found the only other person in the world who truly understood what they had been through.

Sometimes, even now, Charlotte finds it difficult to wrap her mind around the eerie, cruel coincidence that brought them together. She still wakes up every morning of her life wishing desperately that it had never happened, that Adam had never died. Yet if he hadn't, and if Royce hadn't lost his son, they wouldn't have found each other.

They've long since stopped asking why. It's far too painful to look back. They've both done their best to accept what is, to only look ahead toward their future and the fresh start they're building together.

But that isn't easy here at Oakgate, where the past exists hand in hand with the present.

Built on a slight knoll at the end of a long lane bordered by an arch of Spanish moss-draped live oaks, the red brick mansion's rooms remain filled with heirloom nineteenth-century furniture, and seem to echo with ghosts of a bygone era.

Charlotte has long harbored a curious mix of affection and dread for the old place, which, like many old Low Country homes, is rumored to be haunted.

She's never actually seen a ghost, but that doesn't mean they aren't here… And it doesn't mean she wants to continue living under this roof any longer than is absolutely necessary. Especially now that Grandaddy is gone.

But for the time being, with their own home in Savannah undergoing extensive renovations after having been gutted down to the studs, she, Royce, and Lianna are stuck here.

Everything will be brighter for all of us when we can get back home, Charlotte tells herself wistfully. We just have to hang in there until then.

Phyllida tosses a shrewd glance at the man in the framed photo on the nightstand.

The black-and-white image of her grandfather in his youth came with the room, of course. Though maybe she'll take it with her as a nice little memento when she goes back to California.

Yes, physical evidence of her loss will make her friends and neighbors out West even more sympathetic. She'll keep the picture on the mantel for a while and when people come to visit, she'll affectionately point out Grandaddy's cowlick, so like Wills's, and the bruise on his cheek undoubtedly caused by some youthful Prank.

I'll tell everyone he got hurt rescuing the family dog from a burning house, Phyllida thinks dreamily. I'll say that he used to take me on his knee and tell me that story when I was little.

She smiles faintly at the image of herself as a wide-eyed little girl curled up on her grandfather's lap, almost believing, for a split second, that it really happened. But, of course, it didn't Widowed when his sons were toddlers, Grandaddy was a tough old son of a bitch; tougher, even, than Phyllida's father. And unlike Phyllida's father, who didn’t seem to care much for either of his children, Grandaddy played favorites.

Uncle Norris's daughter, Charlotte, was the only one Grandaddy ever really noticed. Not Phyllida, not even Grandaddy's own namesake, Gilbert IV.