The Guests on South Battery (Tradd Street #5)(61)
“It’s your turn,” she said, lifting a fully dressed Sarah. I glanced over at the little hairbrush and untouched bows on the dresser, torn between putting them in myself and waiting for Jayne to do it. Sarah hated them, but I kept telling Jack that it was just a matter of Sarah getting used to them. He’d said that the more I pushed, the more she’d resist, having inherited a certain amount of stubbornness from her mother. I hadn’t spoken to him for the rest of the day, not because I thought he was completely off base, but because I was afraid he was right.
I sat down again, bouncing JJ on my knee and enjoying listening to him chortle. “I’m meeting Jack’s mother, Amelia, at the Pinckney house later this morning. She owns an antiques store on King Street and knows quite a bit about old furniture and decorative accessories. I suggested she come look and see what’s there, to give you a general idea of value. To maybe even help you decide what you might want to keep, or even auction separately. You’ll get more that way than if you sell the contents with the house.”
“You don’t need me for that, do you?” Her eyes were round and wary and oddly familiar to me.
“No, I suppose not. Although it would make things go faster if you could tell her right off the bat what you don’t want to keep. Like that hideous rose china set in the butler’s pantry.”
“How did you know I hated that?”
“Didn’t you say so?” I shrugged. “Maybe it’s just because I thought it was ugly that I couldn’t imagine you not agreeing.” I looked at her for a moment. “And there’s another thing, too. Sophie thinks you should come look at the attic. Apparently, it was the bedroom for the little girl who died—Button’s niece. According to Sophie, it’s rather . . . extraordinary. She doesn’t think she should be the one to determine what to do with it.”
“Have you seen it?”
I shook my head, remembering the screaming doll and the slamming door. “I was in a rush last time I was there and didn’t have the chance. But I thought today would be a good time for us to head over there. Jack’s home and said he’d be happy to watch the children. I think he’s procrastinating—I think that’s what writers do with most of their time anyway, so it’s not like we’ll be taking him away from his work.”
She smoothed Sarah’s hair behind her ears, the bows apparently forgotten. I closed my eyes and sniffed JJ’s head until the irritation passed.
“How long do you think it would take?” she asked.
“I wouldn’t think more than an hour. I’ll treat you to a pastry from Ruth’s Bakery afterward as a reward.”
She worried her lower lip between her teeth. “I do love her bacon and chocolate cupcakes.”
I swallowed at the thought, embarrassed to find myself salivating. It had been too long since I’d had anything that resembled sugar. “I haven’t tried those yet. I’ll split one with you.”
She frowned.
“Or we could each get our own,” I added hastily.
An almost imperceptible shudder went through her. “Okay—you win. I can stand anything for an hour, right?”
I pretended to be busy nibbling on JJ’s neck so I wouldn’t have to answer, remembering my last visit to the house with Sophie when fifteen minutes had seemed more like an eternity.
Amelia’s Jaguar was parked in the driveway when we arrived. Standing at the bottom of the outside steps, I’d thought for a minute that I’d have to hold Jayne’s hand and drag her with me. I hadn’t seen the cat, nor did I feel any presence, sinister or otherwise. So far so good. Maybe whatever it had been was still too exhausted from terrifying us the last time. Jayne took a deep breath and followed me inside.
Scaffolding had been constructed in the downstairs rooms, where most of the water damage and crumbling moldings had been, and a few of Sophie’s students and hired conservation experts were busy with the laborious job of removing most of the damaged cornices and medallions bit by bit. As Sophie had explained it, they had been removed so they could be restored and the missing pieces reconstructed while the roof and ceilings were being repaired. I refrained from mentioning to Sophie that a huge sander would do the job in a fraction of the time and that there wasn’t really anything wrong with a smooth ceiling. I suppose I treasured our friendship too much.
“Melanie, is that you?” Amelia called from the dining room.
Jayne and I found her next to the large breakfront between the windows. There was even more of the hideous rose china in there, along with more crystal than I’d seen in one place outside Vieuxtemps on King Street. There were also, I was disappointed to see, even more of those salt-and-pepper sets, giving the intricately carved antique breakfront an almost clownish appearance. If it could express itself, I was sure it would have cried at the injustice.
“Hello, Amelia,” I said, kissing each cheek as was her custom. Perfectly turned out in a Chanel suit and pearls, her blond hair in a tight French twist, she appeared tiny and reserved, but I knew her to be a lovely, warm person who adored her grandchildren and was known to crawl on her hands and knees just to make the babies laugh, or to lie on the floor to create a barrier for the children to clamber over.
“And this is Jayne Smith, our nanny.”
They shook hands and I saw the look I’d grown accustomed to when introducing Jayne. “She has one of those faces,” I explained. “So that you think you’ve met but you haven’t.”