The Guests on South Battery (Tradd Street #5)(26)
“Mrs. Houlihan baked brownies,” I said. “Flourless for you, and then regular ones with taste for the rest of us. They’re on the stove if you and your friends want a snack.”
“Maybe I should try a flourless one,” Alston said as she swayed with a content JJ, his chubby fingers wrapped around strands of her long blond hair.
“Unless you’re trying to punish yourself, I wouldn’t,” I suggested.
She giggled, then carefully put JJ back in his swing. He began snorting his disappointment until Nola gave him a push on the swing and he was back to his burbling self.
“We have an algebra test tomorrow, so we’ll bring our snack up to my room to help us study. Try not to disturb us, okay?”
“Okay,” I said. “The new nanny will be here soon. Will you have a few minutes to say hi?”
“Sure. Just text me and I’ll come down.”
She and the girls said good-bye and left before I could ask if I could just knock on the bedroom door. As Lindsey turned to follow the other two girls into the house, I noticed something long and rectangular, like a narrow box, sticking out of her backpack. It looked like a board game, but the bottom was facing me so I couldn’t see what it was. Nola wasn’t into board games, as I was sure she and most of her generation were more into Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter. I thought it was nice she and her friends were going a little retro.
JJ began to squeal and kick his feet while his hands opened and closed again in what Jack referred to as his crab imitation. I turned around to see Jayne coming from the side garden.
“Hi,” she said. “I took a guess that you’d be back here with the children taking advantage of this gorgeous weather.”
“Good guess,” I said.
She approached the children with a broad smile as if she really was happy to see them. But when her gaze settled on the hole behind us, she faltered. “What’s all that?”
“Nothing you need to worry about—just keep the dogs and children away. It’s an old cistern that was buried for a long time, and with all the rain we’ve had the earth sort of caved in. Sophie is sending some of her students to excavate it to see if there’s anything of historical significance in it before I tell my guy to bury it again.”
“Oh,” she said, her forehead creased. “What are they expecting to find?” She definitely sounded worried, and I wondered if she’d read up on me and the house and its propensity to hide buried bodies.
“Just junk. Our construction guy says the ground is stable around the perimeter of the cistern, but if being out here makes you uncomfortable, we can go inside. I want to give you the tour and show you your room and the nursery and the children’s spreadsheets. I purchased a small MacBook for you so that it’s easy for us to keep track of their care. We can just send updated spreadsheets back and forth to track their outfits, food consumed, vocabulary word of the day, diapers changed and their contents—that sort of thing. I’ve also set up a Google calendar for their social lives—which includes birthday parties, trips to the beach, and museum visits.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment, and it looked as if she was waiting for me to tell her I was kidding. I knew that expression because I got it a lot from family and well-meaning friends who didn’t have a clue how to organize their lives or those of small children.
My phone rang and I suppressed a sigh as I recognized Suzy Dorf’s number. I ended it and then before I could remember what we’d been talking about, I got a ping telling me I had a text message. I looked at it and tried not to squint to read it, despite the fact that I’d made the font as large as it could go. So large, Nola suggested, that my texts could be read from outer space.
Have you heard about the new movie they’re filming in Charleston? I have the scoop you might want to hear. And besides, you owe me an interview.
I began to respond with Why would I owe you anything? But after three failed attempts to make a capital W for the first word, I gave up. I didn’t owe her anything, especially not a response to her ridiculous text. The previous year she’d printed the contents of an anonymous letter she’d received at the paper about buried bodies in my garden. The only thing I owed her was a wish that she’d become one of them.
“Sure. Let’s go inside,” Jayne said. “I left my stuff on the front porch and can bring it in as soon as I know where to put it.”
I picked Sarah out of her swing and watched as Jayne lifted JJ. “Jack can bring your bags in when he gets home. Is it a lot?”
She shook her head. “No—just a regular suitcase. I travel light. Old habit to break, I guess.”
There wasn’t any note of self-pity in her voice, but it brought back again the image of her as a baby being left on a church doorstep. It made me want to offer to redecorate her room in her favorite colors and furnish it with all the things she loved. Which was silly, really, since I didn’t know her, much less her favorite colors. I might have moved around a lot with my military father, but I’d always had my own room that I’d been allowed to decorate, hanging up as many ABBA posters as I wanted. It made me feel sorry for her, for her less-than-perfect childhood that she’d managed to overcome. Maybe because I was now a mother, I saw a need to be a mother for those in need of one.
As we walked toward the back door, each holding a child, I made a mental note to start a spreadsheet to keep track of all the things we could do to make Jayne feel welcome and at home, then made another note to go online to see if I could find any ABBA posters she might want to hang on her walls.