27

EVERLY

Present day

In the empty museum’s vaulted room I worked alone. It was late afternoon and the outside world hummed with weekend activity, the sounds dulled by the thick plaster wall and music I played. I was waiting on Oliver.

A shift in the air and I looked up to see Oliver standing before me with a pile of folders in his arms. “Good morning. How was Allyn’s birthday bash?”

“Not so much a bash as a coconut-cake-eating binge, but nice. Thanks for asking.”

“Anything new from Maddox or the team?”

Oliver drew close enough to touch and I stepped back. “Just more photos of silver and china. He did show me a photo of a silver teapot they found and it has the same crest made of wings that’s on the pocket watch . . . I really want to figure out who that belongs to. So far it is the only real hint of ownership. The passengers took so much with them. I barely remember to pack a toothbrush when I go somewhere.”

The familiar sound of his laughter filled the room. I felt a lift of my chest as if light and air were finally entering. “Any luck with the Longstreet family?”

“None. I have a call in to the historical society to see if they have the Longstreet ancestry tree. I still hope to track down a descendant, but damn, the Pulaski was six generations back. Why did they only write down what happened to Charles? It’s frustrating—as if by choosing evil he got to be recorded for posterity.” I shook my head. “And I did ask Mom about the painting. You’ll never guess where it came from.”

“Your papa stole it.” Oliver paused. “From bootleggers. From the trash. From—”

“Stop.” I laughed. “It’s from Mora’s family. Josephine gave it to Papa. No one knows why.”

“Mora’s Mee-maw? The woman who can drink more than a sailor in 1700? That grandmother?”

“The very one.”

“So Josephine actually gave something away. Now, there is an unexpected turn of events.”

I shut my laptop. “Will you go with me to ask her about it? I mean, I can do it, but I don’t want to go alone. We’re sure to run into Mora’s mom, and I haven’t seen her since the funeral. She’s refused guests. She never goes anywhere. But if we go together maybe she’ll let us talk to Josephine.”

Oliver shifted back and forth on his brown loafers. His smile faded. “I don’t know, Everly. The last time I tried to talk to Laurel, it was very uncomfortable. In her pain, she lashed out at me.”

“But that was over a year ago. She didn’t mean what she said.”

“Everly, she told me that if Mora hadn’t been with me that day she’d still be alive. She—”

“I know. She said it to me, too.”

“Can’t someone else—like your mom—ask Josephine why she gave the painting to your grandfather?”

“Let’s just try?”

Oliver dug his hands into his back pockets. “Why the hell not? If you’re up for an adventure then so am I.”

---

The house at the edge of historic Monterey Square, where the Casimir Pulaski monument stood tall and proud, was deeply shaded by a live oak that had survived Hurricane Irma, the only tree on the property that hadn’t succumbed to the saturated earth and beating winds. The house was a stately Georgian painted a faded cream color with moss growing in patches along the walls. Pale blue shutters hung crooked on a few windows. Ivy grew along the garden wall and only the left gas lantern beside the door flickered, the right one dead and dark.

Oliver stood next to me on the brick sidewalk in the sweltering heat, beads of sweat on his forehead and the underarms of his white shirt darkening. I held a bouquet of pink roses entwined with ivy. “You ready?” I asked.

“Not really, but let’s go.”

The stone steps leading up to the front door were well worn, the middle scooped out from the slide of feet for over a hundred years. The street-level entrance one flight down was hidden behind an iron gate, the apartment it led to rented out to a student most likely. The ground-floor rooms would have once included the kitchen and the servants’ quarters. The front door at the top of the stairs was painted a dark red.

We climbed and Oliver rang the bell. From the recesses of the house we heard its melody, and then silence. Oliver looked at me and I shrugged. “Maybe we should have called ahead?”

Mora had never actually lived in this house. Laurel Dunmore had bought it for herself and her own mother when Mora graduated from high school. Laurel’s divorce from Mora’s wealthy, philandering father had left her with money and bitterness—never a good combination.

I lifted the lion’s-claw knocker and banged it three times.

Oliver laughed. “You don’t give up, do you?”

“Nope.”

This time we heard shuffling and then the click of a lock. The door opened and there stood Laurel Dunmore. She wore a white dress, loose and unbelted, that made her look like a nurse. Startled to see us, she took a step back. “My, my. What brings you two here?”

“Hello, Mrs. Dunmore.” I held out the flowers and tried my best smile.

Laurel took the flowers and smiled wanly, as if it was something she was not accustomed to doing. She stood her ground. “Thank you for the unnecessary flowers. May I ask why you are here?”

“We wanted to ask you a quick question, and we thought it would be better to do so in person.”

“And what would that question be?” Laurel didn’t move an inch while Oliver and I stood on her front stoop as if we were selling her something she didn’t need.

“It’s about the Pulaski painting hanging in my family’s home. I was wondering where it came from. Mom told me that your mother gave it to Papa. And I wanted to ask about it.”

“What do you need to know? Seems you have all the facts you need.”

“But I don’t. You see . . .” I paused, feeling sweat running down my back. “Do you mind if we come in? It’s so hot out here and I promise it won’t take long.”

Laurel looked at me just as she had when Mora and I were children—she didn’t trust me. She thought any trouble we found ourselves in was my fault entirely. Her eyes slanted and then she looked at Oliver. “You’re still in Savannah?”

“Yes, ma’am, I am. I still work at the museum.”

“I’d thought you might leave.” She stepped inside and motioned for us to come in.

The air conditioners, closed windows, and dark rooms kept the house a cold crypt of dark antiques and oriental rugs. We followed Laurel down a long hallway and into a sitting room I’d been in on a few occasions through the years, the last time for the reception following Mora’s funeral. I’d sat there so stupefied with anti-anxiety meds that I barely remembered it. I didn’t glance around the room, where I knew there were photos and an oil painting of Mora, and instead focused on Laurel. “Can you tell us why your mother gave the painting to Papa? Was it a family heirloom?”

“Why do you need to know?” Laurel laid the paper-wrapped flowers on a mahogany side table.

“Oliver and I are curating an exhibit of the Pulaski. Its wreck was recently found off the coast of North Carolina.”

“Oliver and you?” Laurel narrowed her dark brown eyes at us. “Together? Are you two together?”

An invisible hand began to clench my throat. No words came out even as I opened my mouth.

Oliver spoke for me, softly and calmly. “We’re working together. If there’s any way you could help us, we’d be grateful.”

Laurel looked back and forth between us, and then she walked to the far end of the room, picked up a cut-glass decanter and poured herself an inch of dark liquid. She downed it in one gulp. She didn’t offer any to us. “I knew one day I would see you both again. I wanted more warning.”

Oliver stepped forward and for a moment I thought he might bow, he seemed so deferential. “Mrs. Dunmore. I am so very sorry to bother you. Please know that we miss Mora as profoundly as you do.”

“I doubt that very much, Oliver.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to presume. I just . . .” Oliver faltered and then found his footing again. “The flowers you leave on her grave are beautiful. Both Everly and I have seen them when we visit her.”

Oliver’s words were having the opposite of their intended effect. Laurel was not only growing redder and more agitated, but also angrier. She took a step toward him. “I don’t leave flowers. She isn’t there, at her grave. She is here with me. She is everywhere. That stone is in my ex-husband’s plot and her spirit is nowhere near there. Do you understand me? Those are not my flowers.”

“I understand,” Oliver almost whispered.

Coming here had been a terrible idea, I realized. It came back to me then—like a flash—how Laurel had begged that Mora not be buried in Bonaventure, that her ashes be scattered in her beloved Savannah River. Moon River, as it was called in the lyrics by Savannah’s own Johnny Mercer.

“I’m sorry we bothered you.” I took two steps backward and nearly tripped on the edge of the carpet, grabbed Oliver’s arm for support.

Laurel glared at us. “That painting. I don’t know why anyone would want it, honestly. But if you want to know why Mother gave it away, you’ll have to ask her. She never told me.”

“May we?” I asked. “May we ask her?”

“Mother!” Laurel called out in a screech so loud and high-pitched that both Oliver and I startled.

In a few moments, Josephine stood before us. She was now eighty-six years old but in the dim light she almost looked younger than her daughter. She wore a pink frock with ruffles and carried a cane with a gold tip shaped like a lion’s head with an open mouth. “Well, hello there, Everly!” She took limping steps toward me and kissed my cheek. “I am so very happy to see you.”

She turned to Oliver and did the same to him, leaving a red lipstick mark on his cheek, which he didn’t move to wipe away.

“Hello, Josephine,” he said. “It’s lovely to see you.”

Laurel made a noise somewhere between a snort and a laugh and exited the room without a good-bye, leaving the flowers I’d brought to wilt on the side table.

“Forgive my daughter. She’s not done well since we lost Mora. Anger consumes her.”

“I understand,” I said. “We’re so sorry to bother you, but I just wanted to ask you a quick question about the oil painting you once gave Papa.”

Josephine poured herself a drink of the dark liquid, took a long swallow and then settled herself painfully in a spindle chair. She adjusted behind her a pillow cross-stitched with the letter D. Laurel might renounce her husband but she damn sure hadn’t renounced his name or his family heirlooms. “My poor legs seem to be giving out on me, so please do sit with me. And Oliver, dear, if you could please open the drapes. I don’t know why my daughter insists on such darkness on a beautiful day like this.”

Oliver pulled the thick red damask curtains aside with a swish and sunlight burst into the room, changing everything it touched.

“The painting,” Josephine said. “It’s not so complicated. I gave it to your papa because I didn’t want it in my house. It was a doomed ship and I had many other paintings I liked much better. Your papa was fascinated with ships, and he always admired it. I was quite enamored of him, you know. He barely noticed me, but I do believe I might have been a bit in love with him. He was completely devoted to your grandmother, even years after she was gone. But posh, that’s not what you asked.” Josephine brushed the air with her hand. “Where was I?”

“The painting.”

“Yes. Your grandfather was always off to that Aquatic Club and reading about sailing adventures, and I thought he should have it. So I sold it to him for a pittance.”

“Was it a family piece?” Oliver asked.

“Yes, it was. But I married into the family. It came from my husband Perceval’s side, and he was gone by then. What did I want with a ship that took so many lives?” She leaned forward. “You do know entire families were lost, don’t you? The Parkmans of Octagon Plantation lost the father and three of their children, the MacKays lost the mother and children, the McLains and Coles went down with three generations at once.”

“I know a little bit.” My heart sped up. Did she know more than I did? “I’ve read a few newspaper articles. I’m trying to find out more.”

While I was talking, Oliver walked to the fireplace, glanced up at the oil painting I’d been avoiding—Mora at sixteen years old in an all-white dress holding a bouquet of white roses. Her red hair, muted in the painting, fell over her shoulder in soft waves. She smiled with the mischievous look I knew so well, one that the painter had caught in a flash. I looked back to Josephine, who said, “I wish I could give you more information, but honestly, all I know is that the painting belonged to my husband’s family and when he was gone, I didn’t want anything to do with a ship associated with such a horrible story. Life is hard enough.”

“Was your husband’s family on the ship? Is that why they had it?”

“No, dear. My husband was merely obsessed with Savannah maritime history. He was a member of the Aquatic Club like your Papa George, and he believed he’d been born into the wrong era. He always wanted to be a sculler and conquer the world.” She laughed but the sound held some darkness.

“Well, thank you for trying to help.” Oliver gently touched my shoulder and nodded toward the door as Josephine’s chin bobbed to her chest. She didn’t answer our good-byes and we exited as quietly as we could.

On Bull Street, the sun high and thunder rumbling far off, we stood and faced each other. “What do you make of that?” I asked.

“That was gothic and bizarre.” He shook his head and pressed his fingers into the sides of his eyes. “Mora would hate to see her mother this way.”

“Laurel was nearly always that way. Angry and looking for error all the time. I think it’s worse, but still . . .”

We walked into Monterey Square in search of shade, always a pressing need. I stopped stock-still at a bench—a lump of a man covered in a cardboard box lay sleeping, his head on a black garbage bag. His long greasy black hair was spread out and one of his arms was flung wide and left to hang over the edge. Before I realized what I was doing, a pure need overcoming me, I ran to the bench and shook him.

“You.”

He startled and rolled over, groaning. “What the hell . . .” His breath was rancid and dank, his body potent with urine. He opened his eyes and stared at me—blue eyes.

“Sorry. Sorry.” I tripped backward into Oliver, who took me by the shoulders and turned me to face him.

“Everly.”

“I know. I can’t help it. I keep thinking . . .”

I slumped and then dropped my head onto his shoulder. He placed one hand on the nape of my neck and I felt the comfort of his touch. The feel of him, so solid, soothed me. “I get it,” he said. “You don’t have to explain it to me.” His words fell warm into my ear.

How I wanted him to take both arms and wrap them around me, sway to the breeze, hold me until my heart stopped hammering and the sick feeling in my stomach settled. But that wasn’t going to happen. Trouble began with that very idea. I eased away.

“I keep thinking I’ll find him . . .”

“I know.” He nodded and looked at the bench before returning his gaze to me. “So do you think Josephine isn’t telling us something?” he asked.

“I have no idea. But let’s find out.”