Paula Morris (18 page)

"Wild as in crazy?"

"Crazy, angry. Her eyes red and big." Lisette widened
her

153

eyes. "Pulling at her hair. When the doors burst open, they
almost knocked me over. And when she saw me, well ..."

Rebecca waited. She wasn't sure if Lisette could go on. Her friend
was looking away, trailing her free hand along the neat hedge outside one of
the Prytania Street houses.

"She flew at me," Lisette said, her voice so soft
Rebecca had to twist closer to hear clearly. She gave Lisette's hand a
comforting squeeze. "Shrieking, arms flailing. She was beating me, ripping
at my clothes. She ripped my sleeve off, almost."

That's why it was torn, thought Rebecca. The woman married to
Lisette's father had practically clawed it off Lisette's body.

"Didn't anyone try to stop her?" Rebecca asked.

"The lawyer man tried," Lisette replied. "But she
was like a woman possessed. In that moment, I think, she hated me. Maybe
because her own daughter had just died, and I was still standing there, young
and healthy. Or maybe it was because she'd just found out this terrible secret,
that her husband had another woman -- a black woman -- and another child, and a
house he'd bought for them on the other side of the city. Maybe she even knew
my mother somehow, and that's why my mother said
she
couldn't go to
nurse him when he was ill. I think about these things over and over. I wish I
could ask my mother."

"So she attacked you, right there in front of the
lawyer."

"And the doctor -- he'd been out back checking on two of the
manservants, because they'd just taken ill as well. He was running up the hall,
I remember. She shook me and shook me, and I was backing away, trying to get
free of her and her claws and her angry face."

154

"But you couldn't?" The houses they were passing were
starting to look familiar, Rebecca realized. They must be back in the Garden
District.

"There was nowhere to go. I tripped on the bottom step and
fell, and she was still over me, shaking and shaking me. She slammed my head
against the stairs. It must have hurt, though I don't remember the pain at all.
It's a funny thing, the way we don't remember the pain. Just the sensation of
hitting, and then a smoky kind of darkness. And then I was standing up, but at
the same time I could see myself lying on the stairs. My body was still, and my
eyes were open, but they were just staring at nothing. My head was leaning in a
strange way, and a dark spot, like spilled ink, was growing on the stair
carpet. That woman was still shaking me, trying to bash my head against the wood
another time. And the men -- one of them had his hands on her shoulders,
pulling her way. The other was shouting something -- 'For the love of God!' I
remember that."

"And you could see all this?" Rebecca was imagining what
it would be like to see your own lifeless, bleeding body.

"Oh, yes. I could see it. I could walk down the stairs. I
could watch them all and hear them all. And that's how I knew."

Lisette looked at Rebecca, her eyes as dark as the inky blood
she'd just described.

"Knew you were dead," whispered Rebecca.

"Knew I was a ghost." Lisette stopped short in front of
a locked gate, gesturing with one shoulder to its broad front gallery, the
old-fashioned gaslight by the door, its narrow white pillars. Lumber and
scaffolding were piled all over the

155

yard at the corner; it looked as though construction was underway
on an addition of some sort. A solarium, thought Rebecca, and a swimming pool.
She knew the details, because she'd heard all the talk about it at school. It
was the Bowman house.

Rebecca must have flinched, or tightened her grip on Lisette's
hand, because Lisette hurried to reassure her.

"They're not here this weekend," Lisette told Rebecca.
"They always go away for all of Thanksgiving -- I don't know where. They
wouldn't be able to see you, anyway."

"Of course," Rebecca said. Something about this house
provoked such a strong, visceral reaction in her.

"The place you died," said Rebecca, gazing up the steps.
"It's this house, isn't it?"

Lisette nodded.

"And the woman who killed you," Rebecca said slowly,
"was Mrs. Bowman?"

Lisette nodded again. All the warmth had disappeared from the
afternoon. A few drops of rain spattered the sidewalk. Rain had no effect on
Lisette: It just hit the ground she walked on, as though she wasn't there --
because, of course, she wasn't. But Rebecca shivered, anticipating the coming
storm.

"My death had to be covered up, of course," Lisette
said, stroking the iron railings. A breeze was picking up: Leaves danced down
the sidewalk, and the big oak tree on the corner started rustling, as though it
was warning the Bowmans of their presence. "They knew my mother would be
around asking questions before too long. I wasn't one of their slaves. So the
doctor said he would declare me another victim of

156

yellow fever, and sign all the necessary papers. His name, you
know, was Sutton."

"Really?" So Helena and Marianne's families
had
been
friends a long, long time.

"And late that night, the lawyer and the doctor came back for
me. My body was wrapped in a sheet. They carried me across the road to the
cemetery -- they had keys, of course, to the gate. I followed them over, to
watch what they were doing. I was thrown into the family tomb, on top of my
father's coffin, and my sister's."

"Didn't your mother demand to see your body? You know, when
she found out?"

"They told her I'd been buried in a communal grave in the
cemetery with other fever victims. Too many people were dying every day by
then. When she went to the cemetery, the grave was filled in and the Bowman
family vault -- well, it was all sealed up."

"Of course," said Rebecca. They stood together, safely
invisible, looking up at the Bowman house. It was hard to believe such a
terrible thing could have happened in such a beautiful house. On a night like
this, with clouds tumbling in the sky, and the low growl of thunder in the
distance, the house looked calm and solid, a refuge rather than a place of
danger. A place of secrets, sickness, murder. "It must be awful, having to
look at this house every day."

"Sometimes, I even go inside," Lisette said.

"Really?" Rebecca didn't know that she would want to
come here more than she absolutely had to.

"Not very often. But this year I'm coming to the party."

"You are?"

157

"Mmmm," murmured Lisette, staring up at the house.
"It's time."

Rebecca didn't know what that meant. Lisette was pulling away from
her now, dropping Rebecca's hand. She started walking off alone toward the
cemetery: Rebecca was standing-- suddenly visible again, she realized -- outside
the Bowmans' wrought-iron gates.

"I'm coming to the party, too!" Rebecca called after
her, not caring that any neighbors looking out their windows at that moment
would see her talking to no one in particular. Lisette glanced back at her,
smiling.

"Look for me at ten o'clock," Lisette said. She looked
exhausted, spent with the walk and with the story she'd told.

Rebecca nodded, watching Lisette amble away. Now she understood
why Lisette haunted the Bowman house. She understood why for the past one hundred
fifty years she'd drifted around in the long shadow of its quiet, oak-shaded
galleries. It was the place she'd died, murdered at the age of sixteen -- and
it was her father's house. Villieux may have been her mother's last name, but
Lisette was a Bowman.

158

***

CHAPTER TWENTY

***

"It took some planning, and some lies, and the enthusiastic
cooperation of Aurelia and her coconspirator, Claire, but Rebecca was going to
the Bowmans' party whether Aunt Claudia -- or anyone else -- liked it or not.

A week had passed since the walk with Lisette, and all Rebecca had
been able to think about was getting inside the Bowmans' house, and seeing the
place where her friend had been murdered. She and Anton had communicated by
text only: Rebecca didn't want anyone to see them together. She
had
to
take this opportunity to at least see the staircase at the Bowmans'. Helena was
hardly going to invite her around for dinner.

The afternoon of the party, her aunt arrived home from her day in
the Quarter, complaining about patchy business and out-of-tune buskers. Rebecca
made her some tea and mentioned, in an oh-so-casual way, that she was going to
the movies that night with Aurelia and Claire.

"You know, that Reese Witherspoon thing," she said,

159

watching her aunt count out the day's meager takings onto the
stained Formica table. "It's on at the Prytania."

"I thought Aurelia was just having a sleepover at
Claire's," Aunt Claudia said, smoothing out crumpled notes and shuffling
them as though they were a floppy deck of cards.

"Oh, she is! But first we'll go to the movies together ...
and I may go back with them for a while. To hang out."

This sounded so lame and implausible that Rebecca had to turn
toward the window and pretend to be intent on rinsing old tea leaves out of the
strainer. As far as her aunt was concerned, Rebecca spent all her spare time
doing homework in a café or reading books in her room. The idea of her hanging
around with that high-energy twelve-year-old twosome, Aurelia and Claire, both
as fizzy as a whole bottle of Alka-Seltzer ... well, it wasn't a very
compelling lie. But Aunt Claudia seemed just distracted enough to buy it.

"Do you want me to drive you there, baby?" she asked.

"Yes, please," said Rebecca. This was all part of the
plan, so her aunt wouldn't suspect anything. And anyway, as Rebecca had
realized, her aunt thought the party had already taken place. Inadvertently,
she'd given Aunt Claudia the wrong date -- December fifth, which was the day
before. "Claire's mother is going to pick us up afterward and take us to
her house. I'll just walk home from there. I won't be home late -- ten-thirty
or so, I guess."

"I'd rather Claire's father walk you home," her aunt
said. "Just to be safe."

"I'm sure he won't mind," Rebecca told her. Of course,
Claire's parents knew nothing about her coming over to

160

their house, because she wasn't
going
to their house.
Claire and Aurelia had been sworn to secrecy on the lives of the entire cast of
Gossip Girl.

That night, after Aunt Claudia let them out of the car outside the
Prytania -- an old redbrick movie theater that seemed completely out of place
on its residential street -- Rebecca shepherded her giggling charges up the
stairs, bought tickets from the guy in a black SAVE NOLA T-shirt sitting behind
the arched window, and waved good-bye to her aunt. Inside, she bought the girls
tubs of popcorn and bottles of water -- at the same inflated price they
commanded in New York, she noticed -- and left Aurelia and Claire to find seats
in the cavernous, shabby old theater.

In a tiny stall in the women's bathroom, Rebecca opened her
shoulder bag and removed its contents: her one decent dress, which was black,
strapless, and carefully folded; a pair of strappy black sandals with kitten
heels; some dangling silver earrings bought at one of the little boutiques in
the Quarter; and a small makeup bag crammed with mascara, lip gloss, and
eyeliner. She had fifteen minutes -- fifteen minutes to tug off her jeans and
American Eagle checked shirt (while trying not to crack her elbows on the walls
of the toilet stall), to wriggle into her dress and make up her face, and to
meet Anton in the street outside. And she made it, in perfect time.

"You look great," he said, holding open the passenger
door of a silver Audi. Anton had turned seventeen a month ago, so he could
drive without a licensed older driver in the car -- not that his parents had
ever been sticklers about that kind of thing, from what Rebecca could gather.
They'd left him alone this weekend altogether, with only the housekeeper

161

for company: His father was on a business trip in Chicago, and his
mother had gone along to do some Christmas shopping.

"You don't look bad yourself." Rebecca slid onto the
leather front seat, blushing because it sounded more flirtatious than she'd
intended, and hoping it was too dark for Anton to notice her red cheeks. He
did
look good, very mature, in Ralph Lauren pants and a button-down shirt, his
pale blue tie flecked with a tiny fleur-de-lis design; a navy blazer lay across
the backseat. But he also looked as embarrassed and awkward as
she
felt.

"It seems like ages since we, you know ... saw each
other," he said, driving slowly along Prytania, back toward the Garden
District. "I thought maybe you'd changed your mind about ... you know ...
hmmm."

His voice trailed off into a choked sort of cough.

"Oh, no!" Rebecca said quickly. "I mean, I really
want to go."