The Guests on South Battery (Tradd Street #5)(63)

“What about my mother?” I asked. “Did she ever come visit Hasell?” I found myself holding my breath, not wanting her to say yes. Because then I’d have to wonder why my mother hadn’t mentioned it to me.

Amelia tilted her head. “No, I’m afraid not. She wanted to, but she and Anna were not friends. Anna probably knew about me and a few others being sneaked into the sickroom, but if she’d found out that Button had let Ginette up to see her daughter, there would have been hell to pay.”

“Really? Is it because my mother was in love with Anna’s husband, Sumter?”

“She told you that?” Amelia asked with a raised eyebrow.

“No. She just said that she had a schoolgirl crush on him when she was in high school. And that she and Sumter were in New York at the same time and that he was kind to her. But that would have been after Hasell’s death and his divorce. My cousin Rebecca intimated that there was more, but I should know better than to believe her.”

Amelia was thoughtful for a moment. “Yes, well, Anna was very possessive. I’m not even sure why she tolerated me. She seemed to believe that every woman was competition for the affection of her daughter and husband and therefore couldn’t be trusted. I think she only tolerated her sister-in-law because Button was so kind and gentle, and a good friend to all who knew her.”

Amelia began leading us up the stairs. As I put my foot on the bottom step, I felt a quiver in the air around me, the way I imagined a bear opening its eyes after a long hibernation. I shivered, not sure if it was because the temperature had dropped or because we were heading upstairs toward the attic.

Amelia paused on the landing and rubbed her hands over her arms. “I suppose the air-conditioning must be on up here, because it’s definitely colder than downstairs.”

“Probably,” I said, remembering the window unit in Button’s room and praying that was what it was. I turned to look at Jayne and saw her chilled breath rising from her opened mouth.

Amelia resumed climbing. “I never really blamed Anna for being the way she was. She was an only child, left behind with staff so her parents could travel the world without her. Her father owned an architecture and construction company, so they were very wealthy, and they made sure she had the best of everything, except themselves. She was always starving for affection. I think that’s why she was never really one of our crowd. Button, Ginette, and I were good friends and would have welcomed her into our circle, but Anna didn’t know how to share her affections.”

I paused on the landing, feeling the warring between two separate and distinct entities, the push and pull that I had quickly begun to associate with being in this house. I slowly climbed each step, feeling like a woman being led to the scaffold, Jayne close behind me.

I half expected to see that doll again by the attic door, but I hadn’t received a panicked phone call from Sophie, so I was hoping it was still locked up in the safe in her friend’s office. Behind a pile of bricks. And a Catholic priest with holy water.

A door shut behind us, and I jumped. “That’s Button’s room,” I said. “It must be the air conditioner,” I added hopefully, praying that my companions wouldn’t point out that the door would have been blown open, not closed.

“Good,” Amelia said. “Leave it closed and let’s give the upstairs a few minutes to warm up.” She headed toward the attic door, seemingly unaware of the pulsating air that shimmered around us, or the putrid smell of rotting flesh.

She turned the doorknob and I held my breath in the split second after I realized that I didn’t need to. The curtain had come down again inside my head with an almost audible pop. The air had settled, the smell gone, leaving only the fresh scent of sawdust and new plaster.

I drew in a deep breath as she pushed the door open. I glanced back at Jayne, who seemed completely unaware that something had just happened. I was relieved, not wanting to relive the scene of her being pushed down the stairs.

We began to climb another set of steps to the attic, well lit from the window at the top.

“Why would they put a sickly child up in the attic?” Jayne asked.

Amelia reached the top of the stairs and turned to look at us. “It was Hasell’s choice. She always wanted to travel the world but couldn’t. So she satisfied her longing by being able to see the water and the boats and ships passing by. She would make up stories of the great adventures she imagined the passengers were having, and a lot of other really creative stories of her own imaginary world. She actually wrote them down in a large notebook, always saying that one day she’d like to have them published. Not that she ever had the chance, of course. I actually looked for the notebook earlier, but it must have been removed at some point.”

Jayne was humming something to herself as we both stepped into the attic, the sound immediately stopping as we took it all in. Despite the peaked ceiling and an exposed rafter bisecting the middle, it would not have been apparent that this room was an attic. There was water damage evident on one entire wall, but the rest of the room, although musty, was mostly unscathed.

The four walls had been painted a bright, azure blue, with vivid depictions of sea and sky and foreign lands. In one small section a replica of the house had been painted on a spit of land next to what was labeled the Ashley River, and there were other bits of land throughout the mural showing the Eiffel Tower and the British houses of Parliament and other known landmarks from around the world.