Chapter 10
The first time I visit Savannah is when I come home with Wyatt to meet his parents, one month into our relationship. Yes, it was fast. No, it didn’t feel fast.
Savannah was a very different place then.
Before the flood that forced the city to get creative about space, before bicycles and trains replaced cars, before climate migration shoved everyone closer together.
Savannah’s town squares, each of which used to showcase statues depicting historically significant figures, have been transformed.
Repurposed as community gardening hubs, gathering spots for residents to socialize, places for children to play together.
What hasn’t changed are the city’s massive, century-old oak trees, whose branches hold swaths of Spanish moss, drooping in soft, dove-gray cascades.
Some low enough that you can reach up and graze them with your fingers.
“It’s so romantic,” I say to Wyatt as we walk along a quiet street heading to Wright Square on that first trip.
I have never been anywhere like it—Savannah has a heartbeat, pulsing gently, alive, especially after the sun goes down. The cicadas buzz loudly in the trees, the males singing mating calls.
“I can’t imagine growing up here. These oaks, and the moss…what is it, exactly?”
Wyatt holds my hand as we stroll toward the square.
Our fingers are sticky with sweat in the August heat, but neither of us cares to let go.
“It’s a bromeliad. Same family as the pineapple.
And it isn’t anchored to the tree in any way, so it’s more friend than foe.
The French colonizers called it ‘Spanish beard.’ ”
“It does look like a long beard.” I tilt my head back to gaze up at the moss. The sky is charcoal, stars beginning to pop. “How does it survive?”
“It gets nutrients from the air. It loves Savannah’s high humidity and temperatures.”
We arrive at Wright Square, essentially the center of the downtown area. Wyatt has a surprise—something super touristy, he warns, but also a fun way to learn about one famous aspect of Savannah’s history.
“Welcome to Savannah After Dark, and thank you for coming out this evening,” the tour leader, a middle-aged woman named Sharon with pink hair and an “I see dead people” tattoo on her forearm, says. I wonder if that tattoo came before or after she started leading ghost tours.
Seems I’m not the first to ponder the question.
“The tattoo came first, before anyone asks. It’s what led me to a ghost-tour-leader career. The pink hair after, because it’s all about balance, right?”
The group, around twenty of us, chuckles as Sharon hands out headphones and the audio devices, so we can follow along.
“One of Savannah’s most notable ghost stories—and, trust me, we have a lot of them—begins here in Wright Square, which is also where our tour begins.
” Sharon has us stand in a circle. Then she tells the tale of Alice Riley, an Irishwoman who arrived in Savannah in the 1730s to work as a servant, alongside her husband, for a cattle farmer named William Wise.
“Residents here were not fans of Mr. William Wise,” she continues. “He would have been accused in the ‘hashtag MeToo’ movement, if you know what I mean.” There are nods all around.
“One day, nasty William Wise ends up dead, his head submerged in a bucket of water, and Alice Riley and her husband are nowhere to be found. Willy Wise was declared Savannah’s first murder victim, and with the unfortunate but rampant anti-Irish sentiment here at the time, Miss Alice and her hubby were found to be guilty of their boss’s murder.
They were sentenced to a public hanging. ”
I shiver, even with the stifling heat, and Wyatt rubs my arm. “Are you scared of ghosts?” he whispers with a smile.
“You have to believe in ghosts to be scared of them,” I whisper back, laughing a little to dispel the odd chill.
But then tears prick at my eyes, and, horrified, I realize I’m about to cry.
My mom has been gone for years, but some days it’s as though it happened yesterday.
I wish I believed in ghosts—maybe then I could spend time with my mom, outside of my memories.
I crouch, retying the laces on my sneakers.
The knots haven’t loosened, but it gives me a moment to compose myself.
A minute later I’m in control once more, and I smile at Wyatt when I stand.
He returns it, no idea—thank goodness, because we are in the early days of love, when you want to appear flawless—about the emotions churning inside me.
“Now, there’s a kink in the ‘hang in the square’ plan, because turns out Alice is pregnant, with Willy-the-Worst’s baby.
This is where the story breaks off into a few paths.
Some say she was hanged pregnant, and so now her ghost follows mothers with infants and pregnant women, because she wants to take their babies as her own.
Another version is that she was a witch, and cursed all Savannah’s residents, and this hex is the reason Spanish moss—which as you’ve probably noticed is on all the oak trees in this city—doesn’t grow on that particular tree. ”
Sharon points at the great oak near us, and we all look up into the dark branches. Sure enough, there appears to be no moss hanging. Someone gasps, and there is a murmur of agreement among us that, yes, that is a bizarre thing.
“The most likely version, at least in my opinion, is that they imprison her until her baby is born—a boy named James, who sadly later dies—and then she’s hanged, the first woman to be hanged in the square…
right in that spot there.” She points again, this time at a plaque right under my feet.
I step back as though the ground is about to give way.
“Some say the reason Spanish moss isn’t found here is because it can’t grow where innocent blood has spilled, meaning that Alice Riley was not a murderer after all.”
Later, over drinks, Wyatt and I talk about the twenty or so ghost stories Sharon delivered on the two-hour walking tour and about the fun of being a tourist in your own city, and how strange it was that at various moments on the tour we both felt cold shivers, even with the evening’s warmth.
Wyatt jokes that one of the ghost tour providers probably skulks around in the middle of the night with a ladder to remove any Spanish moss that tries to take up residence in that oak.
Otherwise, the ghost story of Alice Riley lacks the pizzazz and impact it needs to continue to be retold night after night, tour after tour.
Half-drunk and giddy with our newfound love, we laugh imagining that stealthy guy and his ladder.
—
On my way home from my breath work class I stop at Wright Square, a place I visit often.
Usually I sit on a bench, staring at the spot where Alice was supposedly hanged, now covered by a small splash pad for children, the concrete lining painted bright blue, with smiling cartoon sea turtles and big-eyed puffer fish.
The plaque is long gone, but the air here feels unsettled, heavy with something best described as melancholy.
The splash pad has emptied, all the young children home and tucked into bed at this hour.
I think again of Alice Riley and imagine a different reality, one where Alice raised her son, James, and where I’m watching Clementine and Poppy play together in the splash pad—two gold rings proudly displayed on my necklace.
Indulging in this fantasy is like pressing an angry purplish bruise, but it’s pain I revel in.
I’m not a religious person, and this ritual is the closest to atonement I have.
I stare up at the same oak tree from that ghost tour, years ago now. The branches are wider, the canopy fuller, and yet, it remains the only tree in the square that’s free of Spanish moss. I shiver, thinking of Alice Riley’s execution, the spilling of “innocent blood.”
Layered over the pain of losing Poppy is a heavy blanket of guilt I’ve wrapped tightly around myself.
When I saw the pregnancy test—the blinking results window announcing five weeks with a smiling face—I couldn’t believe it, my first emotion regret, and it filled me to the brim.
It wasn’t planned, and I didn’t want to be pregnant again so soon after Clementine.
She was barely four months old! I was overwhelmed with new motherhood, and I missed my work.
Wyatt, by comparison, was thrilled. He saw only the positives, his body and brain still his own. Under his complete control.
I’ve never told anyone about my dark, unconscionable thoughts surrounding that pregnancy, and how for a moment I wished it all away.
Until I shared it with an AI therapist named “Paige,” thanks to a mental wellness initiative GIA implemented as part of a new benefits package, and a weak moment of wishing to expel my guilt.
At the time, I hadn’t considered the ramifications of sharing my shameful secret, confidentially, I believed.
But that was before infertility, before the MotherWise IVF subsidies that required a deep dive into my health records—all of which Wyatt, as the expectant father, would be privy to.
A couple walks into the square, holding hands, laughing about something. They see me, and the woman waves and smiles. I smile back, quickly gathering my things as I note the time on my watch. I’ve been here too long. I need to stop coming here.
Something flutters nearby, and I’m startled, my bag slipping from my hand.
“Oh!” I whisper, my voice low but sharp with a tiny burst of fear-laden adrenaline.
Is that a bat? I duck slightly, looking around.
But then something lands on the bench, beside where I sat moments ago.
At first I think it’s a butterfly, but, no, it’s a moth.
A large one, with wings an ethereal pale green and delicate dangling tails.
A luna moth.
Shock moves through me in rippling waves.
Luna moths aren’t exactly rare, but seeing one is—especially here in Savannah.
I’ve only seen a luna moth once before, back home when Mom and I visited the cottage of a friend of hers.
It rested on the screen door, attracted along with the bugs and mosquitoes to the small porch light, hauntingly beautiful.
What are the chances?
I’m about to snap a photo with my watch when the moth lifts off, soon a small speck of paleness against the dark sky. “Shoot,” I whisper, disappointed to not be able to show Clementine such a rare thing.
There’s a sudden soft breeze against my neck, the whisper of wings, and my mother’s voice comes to me again—but this time it’s from a memory.
Did you know all art is made by the dead, Mathilde?