Chapter Eleven. Grace
CHAPTER ELEVEN
GRACE
I grab for the railing and it crumbles. Falls to pieces that slide away down the roof. I tilt into empty air. My shoes scramble on the wet wood, and I slip and there’s nothing to catch me, only the sloping roof and the hard ground three stories below.
I’m going to fall.
I’m going to die.
I windmill my arms, trying to catch my balance.
Then Rose grabs my wrist, yanking me back with surprising strength.
I stand there, shaking, staring down at her. She’s breathing fast, her blue eyes wide. For a full minute, there’s only the drumming of the rain and our panting breaths. Then:
“You could have died!” she says accusingly.
“Only because you scared me half to death!” What the hell is she doing up here, anyhow?
“I—!” Rose huffs, indignant. “I saved your life!”
“My life wasn’t in any danger!” I trip over the bottle, pick it up, and take a swig. It doesn’t burn my throat so much now. Before the almost-fall, my head was swimming, my thoughts pleasantly muzzy. Now it’s cleared. Adrenaline, I guess.
I want that nice bleariness back.
Is that why Stan drinks so much?
Rose grabs the bottle. “Unless you didn’t want saving. Is that why you’re up here? Do you know what that would do to your brother?”
It takes a minute to puzzle out her meaning. “I wasn’t going to jump, you dope!”
“Then what are you doing up here in the pouring rain?” Rose swipes irritably at the wet curls plastered to her forehead.
I gesture behind her at the dark Chesapeake. “Admiring the view.”
“Baloney.” Rose drinks, then coughs and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. I smirk. Champagne is obviously more to her taste.
Then the smirk falls from my face. “Do I really seem desperate enough to jump?”
“No,” Rose says. “But—”
My shoulders slump. “You think I’m loony. Everybody will.” Maybe I am … I really wanted to hurt Stanley. Wanted to make him bleed. Make him feel a little of the pain and embarrassment he’s caused me.
“Look, between Stanley and your father, I don’t blame you for being fed up.” Rose shivers in the rain and takes a daintier sip.
“What does my father have to do with anything?” I demand. Rose makes a face, like she’s said something she shouldn’t, and I swear. “What did Cooper tell you?”
“Nothing.” She’s a bad liar.
“That was a private family matter!” I stomp my foot, but it only makes an unsatisfying squelch. I can’t believe Cooper told her. One kiss and he’s already spilling all my secrets! “I’m going to strangle him.”
I head for the ladder, but Rose gets in my way. “Don’t, please. He’s worried.”
“I don’t need him mother-henning me! I can take care of myself!”
“Can you?” Rose puts her hands on her hips. “You made a real muddle of things tonight.”
I raise my chin. “Mad that I ruined your party?”
“Please. I didn’t want to have a party in the first place.
I don’t give a damn what any of those people think,” Rose says.
“I never have to see any of those kids again if I don’t want to.
But you do. You can’t let your temper get the best of you like that.
” Rain drips from her nose, from her chin, from her hair.
“You can’t go around stabbing Stanley every time he does something disgusting.
You’d be stabbing him constantly. Just imagine the mess!
How would you get the blood out of your clothes? ”
Who knew Rose had a sense of humor.
“When he put his hands on Ella like that, I snapped. I don’t know how to explain it,” I confess.
“I wanted to punch him in the nose, too,” Rose says. I bark out a laugh; I can’t imagine that at all. She flushes. “There’s something about this place that makes me feel a little savage.”
“You?” Even with her dress drenched and her curls flattened to her skull, she seems as though she could command a drawing room full of servants.
Rose scowls. “You don’t know everything about me.”
“I suppose everyone has their little secrets.” She lets out an exasperated growl. I do enjoy provoking her. “Go ahead, tell me your problems, princess.”
“So you can mock them? No, thank you. I should have let you fall,” Rose grumps. There’s a flash of real hurt on her face as she moves toward the ladder.
“No, stop!” I feel rotten, remembering how lonely she and Ella seemed earlier. “I won’t make fun. I swear.”
Rose hesitates. “I think I’m losing my mind,” she blurts.
I don’t know what I expected. Some scandal with a boy back home. A catty stepmother. Something frivolous. Something I could, despite my promise, poke fun at.
Not the same fear that’s been plaguing me for months.
“If you tell anyone, I will deny it,” Rose says evenly. “I’ll have your family let go.”
“All right, I understand. It’s a secret.
” I raise my hands in the air. I don’t think she would have anyone fired.
She may not like me, but she likes Ma. And Cooper.
I’m a little impressed that she would threaten it, though.
“Why do you think you’re cracking up? You seem sane enough to me. Spoiled rotten, but sane.”
“I’ve been seeing things,” she says, and my breath catches. “Things that aren’t there. A woman, specifically. Or a girl? Our age, maybe a little older. Black bob. Big, dark eyes. Pale face. Red lipstick. And she’s always—”
“Screaming.” I grab Rose’s wrist. My heart is racing. “Swear it. Swear on your mother’s grave. If this is some sort of prank, I will throw you off the roof.”
Rose blinks raindrops from her eyelashes. “I swear on my mother’s grave.” She crosses herself. The hope on her face must be mirrored on mine. “You—you see her, too? In the pool?”
“Yes. I thought—that first day, you went all pale and strange. Like you’d seen a ghost. But—oh my God.” I bury my face in my hands.
It’s not only me. Rose can see her, too.
Neither of us is losing our mind!
Relief rushes over me, sweet and heady. I sway and Rose reaches out to steady me. “I’m all right. It’s just—I’ve been seeing her for three months. I thought I was going nuts.”
“Three months?” Rose looks horrified. “I’ve been ready to jump out of my own skin after one week!
I’ve been too afraid to tell anyone. I didn’t even write about her in my diary.
” I’ve seen Rose carting around a little leather-bound book.
“I can feel her, too, right before I see her. I feel hot and angry and wrong.”
“Me too!” The words rush out of me like air from a popped balloon.
“I feel prickly and furious, like I’m burning up.
Then I see her. At first she was only in mirrors, and only in the main house.
But I’ve seen her in the pool now, and in car windows, and at the cottage in the back of a spoon.
” That nearly scared the life out of me.
I threw the spoon across the kitchen and then I had to pretend I was trying to hit Cooper.
As though my aim isn’t any better than that! “I can’t escape her.”
“I saw her in the pool this morning, when I said there was a bee, and then in the library window right before the party. I screamed and Ella thought I was a ninny afraid of a little thunder,” Rose confesses.
My mind is racing. I’ve never put much stock in the supernatural, but—
“Do you think she’s a ghost?”
Rose hesitates. “I always thought that ghosts were a bunch of bunk, but—my God, maybe Magnolia is right! Maybe the hotel is haunted.”
I roll my eyes. “Magnolia is simple. Her meemaw was about as much of a spiritualist as J. Edgar Hoover. But if any place in town is haunted…” I remember Maisie’s words. “It would be the Harrow Home. I bet the ghost was one of the wayward girls.”
“That makes sense,” Rose allows. “She probably died in childbirth.”
I don’t know about that. “I think something terrible happened to her, Rose. Something that made it so she can’t rest …
Sometimes I get so angry, like tonight. I don’t feel in control of myself.
I think that’s her. I think she can get inside my head, my heart …
I’m afraid I’ll hurt someone, do something I can’t take back.
I have to figure out why this is happening to me. ”
“To us,” Rose corrects.
I cut my eyes at her. “You haven’t tried to hurt anyone yet.”
The yet makes her breath hitch. I don’t mean to scare her. But that terrifying urge for violence—is it me or the ghost? I’m not sure. Rose should know what might be in store for her.
“I have to figure out who she is, and what she wants,” I say. “Isn’t that how you lay ghosts to rest?”
“We,” Rose insists. “We’re in this together now, so you’ve got to trust me. Why did you come up here, really? I know it wasn’t to admire the view.”
“Dozens of girls have probably died here over the years. But Dad keeps his records locked up tight. The only girl I’ve heard about is Imogen Lee, who jumped from the widow’s walk. I thought if I came up here, she might give me some kind of clue … It was silly. Nothing happened.”
“That isn’t silly.” Rose is kinder than I deserve.
I scoff. “For all the good it did. Now we’re both soaking wet.”
Headlights appear down the drive. As they come closer, I can make out the roar and suck of tires on the muddy lane. “That’ll be Coop,” Rose says. “Stanley lost his keys, so Coop drove him home.”
I head to the ladder. “How am I gonna explain why I was up here in the rain?”
“You haven’t told him about the ghost?” Rose follows me down.
“I haven’t told anyone,” I explain when we both reach the bottom. “Only you.”
We stare at each other in the dim, dusty attic. She was brave to confide in me. If it had been up to me, we might never have found out that we were—what did she say? In this together?
I still don’t quite believe that Rose and I have a common goal.
“You can trust me,” she says earnestly, as though she can see the doubts written on my face.
I want to be cagier than that, but between the lateness of the hour, her father’s whiskey, and the shock of it all, I must be slipping.
“I get the sense, from the way your friends acted, that maybe you aren’t used to having a girlfriend who will stick up for you.
Somebody you can trust with your secrets.
And to tell you the truth, I haven’t always been that kind of friend.
I’ve been too worried about my own reputation.
But I’m going to do better by you. We are in this together, Grace. And we will figure it out. Together.”
I don’t know what that all means, but I could use help. I hate admitting it, especially to Rose. But I could.
“We better,” I say. “Before somebody else gets hurt.”