H. Mallory - Ghouls Rush In

It was time for a fresh start.

All my bags had been packed and I’d been more than ready to go, to quote John Denver.

And now that I’d escaped Los Angeles, and found myself safely ensconced in New Orleans, I could breathe a little more easily. Yep, with the two thousand miles that now separated me from Jonathon Graves, my recently declared ex-husband, my future never seemed brighter, nor life sweeter.

It’s funny (well, not in a ha-ha sort of way) but I always thought of divorce as the last resort, as the ultimate failure. Somehow it seemed better, more courageous, more right to continue bearing the tattered and bruised flag of a failing marriage (regardless of how unhappy said marriage was) than to throw in the towel and admit that sometimes you screw up. Sometimes you make decisions you have no business making. Sometimes you desperately yearn to make a wish on a falling star that might rewind your life and allow you to skip whatever drastic decision you made that led to the biggest mistake of your life.

In choosing to accept Jonathon’s marriage proposal five years ago, I’m convinced I must’ve been possessed by the ghost of June Cleaver, much to the chagrin of my true self. That, or maybe Nurse Ratched had performed a lobotomy on me without my knowledge. Otherwise, I just couldn’t reconcile how I willingly threw my lot in with his. Why? Because our lots never should have been thrown in together. Nope, we were like oil and water, cats and dogs, Lindsay Lohan and a law-abiding existence. Jonathon and I existed at polar ends of the personality spectrum. And in our case, while opposites did attract, the result was impending doom.

Regardless, at some point, I must have thought I was in love with him even though I’d always been convinced he was never in love with me. But sometimes you get bitten by the lunacy bug. Then you wake up one day to find yourself living an “inauthentic life” (to quote the innumerable self-help books I’d lost myself in for the last five years). And all you can do is ask yourself, in silent, nauseous wonder, how in the hell did I get here? The answer isn’t a fun one, by any stretch of the imagination.

For the old me, though, the whys and hows of my situation weren’t the important parts. I bought into the whole “when you’ve made your bed, you lie in it” mentality and consequently I’d become a marriage martyr; I’d tried to convince myself that I was truly happy. And even after I could willingly face that my happiness was a sham, I still wasn’t sold on divorce. Instead, I figured my marriage was the same as any other marriage—that holy matrimony was, by nature, crippling.

All I could feel was intense relief—intense, wonderful, magnificent relief. Whatever my past, whatever exhaustive anger and depression I harbored for so many years, I’d escaped it all now. And that was the beauty of life. No matter how bad things got, no matter how much you hated your predicament, there was always a way out. And luckily for me, I’d found it.

And now as I stood on Prytania Street, in the middle of the Garden District of New Orleans, I took a deep breath of the humid air, the cloying scent of stale blooms of Cecile Brunner roses wafting over my neighbor’s fence. But all I could really smell was the divine scent of freedom, the scent of the beginning of the rest of my life. This new beginning just happened to be a three-story Greek Revival mansion from the late 1800s that was situated on the middle of Prytania Street, between a rambling, yellow Queen Anne Victorian and a four-story Italianate wonder with black wrought iron railings on all four of its porches.

I was starting over, finding myself again and thus, in need of a diversion. No, I needed something bigger than a diversion. I needed something that would wholly occupy me, something that would require the full extent of my energy. Getting out of my marriage had been such an emotional drain, I knew that I’d have to throw myself into an overwhelming project, something that would require the full commitment of my brainpower and time. I needed something that would exhaust me so I wouldn’t be left at night with nothing but my wounded, naked thoughts. I required a project that would completely wipe me out and, in so doing, allow me to sleep at night. Having no children to aid in the task was actually a huge blessing. Though I did someday want children, I could only thank my lucky stars that Jonathon’s and my relationship never evolved into the territory of having babies. Nope, I had no ties to Jonathon at all, which was exactly the way I wanted it.

Given my need for a diversion, renovating a three-story, five-thousand-square-foot mansion was just what the doctor ordered.

“This one’s gotta be in the worst repair of any I seen in, oh, ten years, maybe,” Hank said, his caterpillar eyebrows reaching for his grimy baseball cap. He frowned at me before turning to study the monument that I called my new home. Hank was old and had one of those faces that had weathered time, but as to how much time, I wasn’t so sure. He could’ve been in his early sixties or his late eighties, for all I knew. Shit, if he were one hundred, I wouldn’t have been too surprised. He sighed and shook his head like he thought I was getting in way too deep. “It’s gonna be one heck of a project,” he continued, his bushy mustache obscuring his entire mouth until it looked like a hamster was clinging to his face while having a seizure. Hank was a mechanic who owned his own repair shop just out of town.

I nodded. “Yep, that it is,” I answered, a smile seeping into my words. For as much of a “project” that the renovations on my new home would prove to be, I still wasn’t in any way concerned. Nope, that’s because I was far too overcome by the possibilities, which only filled me with unbridled excitement.

And, yes, I could honestly say I was completely cognizant that I was absolutely getting in over my head. But I didn’t care. I welcomed the challenge because how deep I sunk into the project wasn’t the point. Instead, the point was my freedom and this being the first chapter in the book known as the rest of my life.

I gazed up at my new home again, feeling the pride I imagined a new parent feels. Yep, my life was now dominated by a three-story study of peeling paint, broken balustrades, dusty windows, and sagging verandas. It was a sorry sight, but one that filled me with pure anticipation and excitement of a new journey. I was on my way to uncovering a lost pathway, previously obscured by the foliage of “self-doubt.”

“So you related ta Myra?” Hank asked while eyeing me pointedly, one bushy white eyebrow arched up in curiosity.

I nodded but then sighed because even though Myra was my great-aunt, I’d never known of her existence. “She was from my mother’s side but, unfortunately, I never got to meet her.”

Hank nodded. “So how’d ya come ta end up here then?”

I smiled and then cocked my head to the side as I considered it. “It was pretty coincidental, actually,” I started. “On the same day my divorce was finalized, I also learned that Myra had passed away and left this property to me.”

“An’ you ain’t never even laid eyes on ’er?” Hank continued grilling me, his expression one that revealed he wasn’t sure if he should believe me or not. Why? I had no clue.

I shook my head. “Nope.” And the other unfortunate part about the whole Great-Aunt Myra situation was that I had no way of questioning my mother as to the existence of her because my mother had passed away when I was eighteen. I’d never known my father.

So I was basically left with a huge mystery as to how I’d ended up with this old mansion, but, if anything, our cloudy pasts only connected me to the property more. And now standing here, in front of the house, I just felt as if I belonged here—as if the blood that pumped through my veins was tied to this grand mansion.