Our Song (The Savannah Sweethearts #1)

Prologue

MAGNOLIA

“You have to take me with you, Charlie,” I whined, sitting cross-legged on our Uncle Cole’s old, musty couch, playing with the fringe of my cut-off jean shorts.

It was another one of those hot and unforgiving days in downtown Savannah, and my brother Charlie had just made his first friend since we moved here.

There’d be hell to pay if he didn’t let me tag along.

“You’re not coming, Magnolia! You’re so embarrassing.

You cry all the time and look—gosh, Magnolia, stop crying!

” Charlie tossed a box of tissues at me, and I blew my nose so hard my shoulders rattled.

I could feel the telltale redness creeping across my eyebrows and nose. It would take all night to calm down.

I pulled out another handful of tissues and sighed dramatically. “I’m only crying because you said I cry all the time! You always have to be so mean to me. For no reason.”

The truth was, though, Charlie wasn’t a very mean big brother.

He was actually a very gentle soul. His only fault was that he was moving on faster than I was.

From the move to Savannah, from the threshold of childhood to teenager, from our parents dying and leaving us with our one and only surviving family member—a bar owner we barely knew with a smelly old couch and not a clue how to raise a couple of kids.

Charlie watched me closely, pacing back and forth on the dingy carpet of our apartment, and as he always did when I was stressing him out beyond belief, he ruffled his hand through his long, auburn hair.

I watched as he let his guard down, relaxing his shoulders a bit as he remembered that he was pretty much all I had left in the world.

“Alright,” he relented. “You can come.”

I jumped up from the couch and wrapped my arms around his neck so tight he groaned.

“But it’ll get scary and you can’t cry, no matter what, alright? I don’t want my only friend here to get scared away by you and your wide range of emotions.”

My wide range of emotions were pubescent angst and dead parents, but I wanted a friend, too, so I nodded in agreement.

That evening, Charlie and I strolled through Chippewa Square with the sun setting at our backs.

“Who’s this friend you’re so excited about anyway?

You’re acting like he’s the pope or something,” I said, letting out a laugh so hard it led to a loud snort that echoed throughout the square.

Charlie rolled his eyes.

We were heading toward Jones Street, lined with nothing but million dollar townhomes. Not the kind of neighborhood Charlie and I lived in. Or belonged in.

“Lee Wilder,” he finally answered, stopping in front of a four-story mansion that was lit up like Christmas morning. The lazy front porch looked over the cobblestoned road, and every window in the house glowed with a faint yellow ember—cozy and inviting.

“Your friend’s rich, Charlie,” I whispered harshly, plunking my grubby bottom on one of the lazy white rockers on their porch, leaving Charlie to knock on the Wilders’ front door. I figured if I was hidden away, I wouldn’t embarrass him so early on.

“I think his dad’s a lawyer. His momma is an antique dealer. She’s working on the Mercer House right now.”

I shuddered. The Mercer house was the scariest place in Savannah. Wasn’t too long ago that Jim Williams, who owned the Mercer House, had dropped dead in the very spot where he shot his young lover, Danny Hansford, after an altercation.

“I’d never step foot in that spooky old house! You’d have to be dumb as a one legged possum wandering down a dark highway to go in there.” My voice was high pitched, but I stayed crouched down in my rocker, hiding out of sight.

“Well, I guess we’re pretty dumb then.” A boy no older than Charlie, but taller and more lean, stepped out into the light of the porch.

He dangled a set of keys in Charlie’s face quickly before snatching them away, letting out a yelp.

His early summer tan had brought out the paleness of his blue eyes and his dark-blond hair was kissed by the sun already.

He had a smile stretched wide across his face that flashed straight, white, post-braces teeth flanked by deep, swoony dimples.

The boy popped a dusty blue baseball cap on backward, letting a few wild curls escape at the sides, and my stomach twisted with that nervous energy you get when you really see a boy for the first time and start wondering what it might feel like to kiss him.

In an instant, I had my very first crush.

He extended a long, tanned arm toward me. “I’m Leland Wilder, but you can call me Lee. I’m dumb as a possum, but very pleased to meet you,” he drawled, throwing a wink at me.

I was helpless to do anything but shake his hand and smile.

We locked eyes, and he studied my face as he took in my freckles and my long, wild red curls. As he moved onto my ratty Salvation Army overall shorts and pink t-shirt, he let out a sigh, accompanied by a slanted smile.

“Well, I’m Magnolia Pruitt, and it was nice to meet you, but I’ll be going now.

I’ll be sure to send some nice flowers to your parents when y’all bite the dust tonight.

” I hopped off the porch in one leap, foregoing the steps all together, and started down the street as fast as my dirty Chuck Taylors could take me.

I didn’t need someone staring at my mangled old clothes, wondering about what kind of life I had.

“See ya at home, Charlie,” I called behind me.

I was halfway down the block when I heard hurried footsteps closing in on me. “You’re dressed for the occasion, though,” Lee said, breathless. He flashed me a big smile that sent my stomach into a tumble.

“Besides,” Charlie called from behind us, “who else is going to tell the story of the two bravest guys in Savannah taking on old Jim Williams’s ghost?!”

I snickered and moved on down the street, shoving my hands in my pockets. Charlie sauntered ahead of us, and Lee kept by my side. Every now and again, he would start to say something, think better of it, then shut his trap. He kept looking over at me, smiling, then back down to his feet.

Whatever he was up to, if Momma was still alive, she would have told me to stay far away from it.

As we walked, Lee told us that his momma, Eunice Wilder, had been chosen by the Daughters of Savannah Civic Society to oversee the preservation of the Jim Williams collection and historic Mercer House, which was set to become a museum—Jim’s dying wish.

As we got closer to the house—and closer to our souls possibly becoming ethereal nourishment for the bevvy of ghosts within—my nerves began blazing off like fireworks. My palms were greased with sweat, and I was breathing hard like I’d been smoking my whole young life.

We stood in Monterey Square, looking up at the big old house towering over us like a monument. I kept thinking about Jim Williams’s spirit knocking around those empty, echoing halls full of secrets and stories.

I didn’t care how fancy a house was. If it was haunted to the gills, I’d rather sleep in a cardboard box in an alley.

Not like our living situation was anything better than a cardboard box these days, though.

“Magnolia,” Lee whispered, inching closer toward me, “I promise you right now that I won’t let anything happen to you. We’re going to go in there and see if the spirit of Jim Williams is haunting the place, and then we’ll get the hell out of there and get some pralines down at the river. Okay?”

Of course, anything sounded like butter coming out of Lee Wilder’s mouth, so I just nodded in agreement.

When Jim Williams died after his sprawling trials, Eunice Wilder had taken over business at his house and, as a prominent antiquarian in Savannah, a lot of Jim’s former clients.

These days, she was tasked with getting the house ready to become a museum on the first floor, and the second floor was being prepped for the remaining members of the Williams family to move into.

Eunice, however, needed to be better at the business of not leaving her keys out in the open so that her idiot son didn’t go finding them and using them to commit felony acts of paranormal stupidity.

We cut through the courtyard and tiptoed up the back stairs onto the big porch that hugged the back of the Mercer House.

“Did you know,” Lee hissed, practically spitting in my face, “there was a family living here like a hundred years ago, and one of their maids’ kids fell off the roof and impaled himself right there on that fence?”

I could feel the bile rising in my throat and my little pulse hammering in between my ears.

“You’re full of shit, Lee,” Charlie said, inching up from our little huddle to peek in the window. “It’s pitch black in there. How are we supposed to see?”

Lee pulled a flashlight from the pocket of his navy-blue Savannah Academy hoodie and handed it to Charlie. “Always got to be prepared, brother.”

I rolled my eyes.

Lee used his mother’s key to crack open the tall, sturdy doors and pushed us inside. I flattened myself up against a wall, thwacking the back of my head against an oversized picture frame. “This is the stupidest thing we have ever done, Charlie Pruitt!” I was steaming and hissing through my teeth.

“Relax, Maggie,” Lee said, grabbing my hand, as if my heart wasn’t already racing out of control. “Good Lord, you’re sweaty.” He wiped my hand on his jeans, then closed his fingers around mine again.

Charlie led the way, flicking on the flashlight, turning his head back and forth dramatically, like he was in an espionage movie.

He tripped over his loose shoelace and gasped for air like the ghosts were squeezing his neck like a lemon.

I flung my hand over my mouth to shove down the howl trying to escape my throat.