Not Quite Right (A Lowcountry Mystery) (Lowcountry Mysteries Book 6) (36 page)

To tell the truth, I think they
are
haunted, but maybe they don’t bother us because we’re sort of trapped here, too.

There’s a break in the page, as though she’d left off to meet James and then came back, and when it picks up again, there’s no new date and the penmanship is shaky. It gets my attention, and I sit up straight, setting down my cup of coffee.

 
James’s mother knows everything. She followed him to the cabin, and even though we didn’t see her, she says she saw us together, that she heard us talking about our plans to run away. Come to think of it, she didn’t mention the baby, and of course, neither did we.

So perhaps she doesn’t know absolutely everything.

I’ve never been so frightened in my life. She says she won’t let us go, that she’ll tell Father and he’ll stop us, that she’ll stop us herself even if she has to kill me.

“You’re my son. My blood. These people stole everything from me, and now you think I’m going to let them steal you, too?” Her eyes were glowing like a demon’s, I swear it before God. It’s like she’d forgotten I was there, too, shrinking against the wall and about to bawl like a child. “I will not. You will not leave me, and you will discard this harlot like the trash she is.”

Now that made me angry, even if maybe in some people’s eyes at least the first part is true. But I’m not trash! I stood up to tell her as much, and even swallowed most of my fear.

“Mama Lottie,” I said. “I don’t know why you hate my family so much.”

That part was the God’s honest truth. I’d always been told that we took her in as a child, that she’d been a few years older than my father when she’d come to the Hall, and since my aunt Sarah had taken a liking to her, Mama Lottie had always gotten to work in the kitchen and the house, even before the war came and everyone was set free. She’s the one who chose to leave the house for the fields, for no reason. And all of that happened before I was born, so why should she hate me with such ferocity?

“Don’t worry your empty head about it. No other Drayton ever did,” she growled in response to my cheeky statement.

“Well I don’t care about that, and neither does James. We’re in love, and we want to go somewhere we can be together without judgment.”

Her eyes widened, then narrowed, as though she was fighting off her own desire to be surprised by my strong statements. “Love? Do you think that I, or anyone else, gives a whit about love? You may think you can escape persecution by fleeing north, and although that may be true in some sense, it will not be for all. And there is nowhere you can run where I will not find you.”

The way she said the words, like a wish or a hex or a curse, thundered straight into my heart. Fear blossomed like a thick, dark cloud that overtook my body, and I reached for James. He came to me, but then immediately went as stiff as a board at the look on his mother’s face. She was going to kill us where we stood, that’s what I thought.

But she didn’t.

Her eyes kept on glowing as she leaned in, until her nose was a breath from her son’s and her voice a low whisper that felt like the tongue of a snake in my ears. “You will rid yourself of this disease of a girl. You will do it now, or I will make you regret it.”

With that, she was gone. I don’t know if I blinked or passed out for a second, but it was like she was there one minute and gone the next.

I sat right down on my bottom in one of my better dresses, not caring about the dusty floor. My stomach tried to insist on being emptied, but there wasn’t much in it to start with, and as James rubbed my back I started to feel better.

At least until I looked into his face and saw he was as scared as I was. I’ve always known he feared his mother and now I know why. Even though Mama Lottie hasn’t been around the house since the war, not my whole life, my mother and father have fond memories and stories to tell of her. I can’t believe the girl Father talks about, the one who saved lives of whites and blacks alike, is the woman who just threatened my happiness with such passion.

“What are we going to do?” I asked, my lip trembling and damned tears gathered in my eyes. I wanted to be strong for James and our son, but I was scared. Maybe I was right to be.

“We’re going ahead as planned,” he told me, his own voice shaking but his eyes sure as they settled on mine. His hand was soft as he smoothed hair from my sweaty forehead. “We’re a family now, Charlie. She’s… She’ll have to understand that once she knows everything.”

“We can’t tell her,” I nearly shouted, panic choking my good sense. Every last piece of me knew that Mama Lottie knowing about the baby would only make things worse. “And what about her telling my father? What if she does that before we leave?”

“She’s not going to tell your daddy anything.” He clenched his jaw, pain in his face.

It didn’t take me long to realize he was right. If Mama Lottie told my father what we’re up to, there was a chance he’d kill James with his own two hands. My daddy isn’t a violent man. He’s kinder than most, even, and it wouldn’t even be just because he thinks James is unsuitable for me in more than one way. But a man can’t have his daughter spoiled before marriage, and if she is, he can’t let the boy get away with it. That’s the way it is.

“Maybe we should leave sooner,” I begged.

“No. We’ve got the tickets, and we need the next few days to get everything ready.” He pressed a kiss to my forehead, but his words and actions did nothing to make either of us feel better. I could feel it in the way the air between us was strained in a way it never had been before. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

My hands haven’t stopped shaking. Bessie’s worried. She thinks I’m having some kind of fit, but I can’t make them stop. I don’t know why, but I have a premonition that a few days is going to make all the difference, and that staying here that extra time is going to be the end of everything.

I can feel her worry, almost see Charlotta’s fear forming the words on the page. My own stomach is tied in knots, reading about her confrontation with Mama Lottie. My heart hurts that James didn’t tell his love what he suspected about his own blood, tainted with magic or juju or whatever Mama Lottie’s people up north called their connection to their African religious roots before she was stolen and sold.

Part of me grieves for that little girl, the young Mama Lottie ripped from her family and everything she knew. At some point she’d had a son and made him her world, so it isn’t hard to understand why she would have fought so hard to keep him. Why she had no problem frightening and insulting Charlotta Drayton, even if she hadn’t been born when her family transgressed against Mama Lottie—if they had even been aware of her origins, as she believed.

All of that, I can empathize with, even if it does seem excessive to my twenty-first-century brain. It makes sense given all she had been through and what little she had left.
 

I have a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that whatever came next would not be easily understood, no matter the time and place. My hands are wet with concern for Charlotta and her child, and even for James, so clearly caught in the middle between his roots and his future. I don’t see a way out for him, maybe because I know he and Charlotta never left the plantation together.
 

Even though Charles Henry, the patriarch of the story, told me himself that Mama Lottie had caused the death of her own son.
 

I refill my coffee mug, turn on the oven with plans to heat up a frozen pizza since I never did eat any dinner and abandoned that pie, and go back to the journals. I’m almost to the end of the last one, and there’s no way Charlotta would have wasted time on frivolities now. With my heart in my throat, I take a deep breath and steel myself for the end of their story.

24 March 1900

Nothing has happened since the night Mama Lottie caught us. I’ve been holding my breath, ready to run for my baby’s life if she pops out, determined to stop us like she said, but all that’s changed is my nerves are strung tighter. It’s not good for our son, for me to be so on edge, but it’s almost over. We’re leaving in the morning.

I will not believe it’s happened until we’re on the train and away. Mama Lottie says she can find us wherever we go, but that’s nonsense, like believing there are spirits in the slave cabins. We can hide from her.
 

I know that James believes she has the power to do what she says, but I have hope that time and distance will let him see her for the angry, sad human being she is—nothing more and nothing less.

Bessie gave me a brief scare before dinner, cornering me in our room and asking questions about why I’ve been so quiet, how I’m still gaining weight with Mother’s forced diet and exercise regime, and telling me she knows I’ve been sneaking off to see someone in private. It’s all bluster, of course, and she stopped short of accusing me of meeting a boy and being pregnant. Bessie probably can’t believe I’d really do such a thing, even though she’s seen all the clues and put them together.
 

Those are things that happen to other girls, stupid girls who aren’t Draytons. Even if she suspects all of that, she would never guess the identity of the boy I love, and that’s all that matters.

I’m not feeling well tonight, and neither is Bessie or Charles. The roasted chicken we had at dinner, prepared differently than we’re used to, must not be sitting well with any of us. I even heard Father grumbling and coughing over the chamber pot, so we’re all coming down with the sickness.

Even though I’m bathed in sweat, ill in my stomach, and feeling weak as a kitten, there’s no way I’m not leaving with James before first light. Nothing will stop me, not if I have to hang my head out the train window all the way to Philadelphia.

I frown at the next entry, dated more than three months after the previous. There are no pages missing, no other journals we haven’t been through, and I hate missing so much of their lives—probably even the birth of their son, which I can’t believe she didn’t document. Dammit.

30 June 1900

Three months have passed since all of my plans for the future were crushed beneath the heel of one angry woman.

No. Not only a woman. Mama Lottie is something else, though I can’t speak to what. My James was something else, too, though no matter what he believed, they were not the same.
 

This is the first time I’ve felt like writing since he died, but I’ve also been busy caring for our son, who was born early that same night. He’s strong, like I predicted, and a fighter. He’s as big as he should be by now and as healthy as a horse, even if Mama won’t let me take him to the regular doctor. The medicine man in the Gullah camp is just as good, I figure, and my baby is happy.

Too happy for a child who lost his father before he drew his first breath.

I don’t want to talk about what happened, but I think now that I must. If I do not, then who will ever say that my James was a hero? How will people ever know he was a great man?

If I’m being honest, I don’t care too much if people know any such thing, but I do want his son to know every word of this is true, and for him to know he comes from not only great strength and abilities, but from a love so powerful it saved both of our lives.

I swear on my own life that this is the truth of what happened the night James died, the night my son was born, no matter how it sounds.
 

By the time the witching hour came and went, the whole family was wretchedly ill. The servants couldn’t keep up emptying the chamber pots and both Bessie and I had given up, crawling out onto the balcony and vomiting over onto the grass. It had been hours and we’d barely stopped. Mama was even worse, and Father sent Charles for the doctor even though his little legs were shaking from his own bouts of sickness. Yet he still went.

Part of me wondered if he would get back in time or if we would all die, even though I didn’t think a person could die from bad chicken. Not so fast.

I was scared as we stared at the lane, waiting for help to come. Not only for the fact that our escape attempt was slipping away but for the baby living inside me. What would become of him if this didn’t stop soon? Would my distress become his? Would he die without nutrients, without water?

Desperate tears wet my face. Bessie paid me little attention, as she was struggling to breathe between cramps and the servants were running between the four of us wringing their hands and cleaning up—there was nothing else anyone could do.

Finally, lights appeared at the end of the drive, promising relief. At least, that’s what we hoped. I didn’t see how we could go on like this another hour, and Bessie had taken to moaning to God to take her away from the pain. That sounds dramatic but I half wanted to join her. At that point, anything felt preferable to the suffering that felt as though it tore holes in my gut.

The doctor saw Mama first, at my father’s insistence, and his frown only deepened as he examined the rest of us. He hung his tools around his neck after he’d gathered us all on the balcony. We were wrapped in blankets, sweating and shivering at the same time, and if all of us had made it through his diagnosis without crawling to the ledge in an attempt to expel our own organs, it would have been a miracle.

“You say you all took ill after dinner, correct?”

“That’s right. Chicken prepared by the servants.”

“I don’t want to alarm you, but given that you are all ill and it came on at around the same time, I have to assume it was the food.” He cleared his throat, looking like he’d like to be anywhere but looking at the five of us. I wanted to tell him join the party but held my tongue. “How well to do you trust your servants?”

Mama coughed. Daddy’s bushy eyebrows went up. “What are you saying, Phil?”