Amanda Stevens - The Restorer

Like my maternal grandparents, I was educated and traveled. I’d received an undergraduate degree in anthropology from the University of South Carolina at the age of twenty—what else had I to do but study?—and a graduate degree in archaeology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I was a member of the American Institute for the Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, the Southeast Regional Conservation Association, the Association for Gravestone Studies and the Alliance for Historic Landscape Preservation. I owned my own business, was considered by some to be an expert in my field and, thanks to that viral YouTube video, had become a minor celebrity among Charleston taphophiles and ghost hunters. But for all my accomplishments and fleeting notoriety, there remained a segment of Charleston’s dying mansion class that would never accept me because of my father’s people.

This bothered me not in the slightest.

I was proud of Papa’s heritage, but I did still wonder how he and my mother had managed to meet and fall in love, considering the social chasm that had separated them. Over the years, my queries to both parents had been met with little more than vague details and outright dismissals.

The only clue I’d ever uncovered was in an overheard conversation between my mother and Aunt Lynrose when she’d come to visit us in Trinity, the small town north of Charleston where we lived when my father worked as caretaker for the county cemeteries. Every evening, the two sisters would sit out on the front porch sipping sweet tea from tall, frosted glasses while twilight settled around them as softly as the silk scarves that held back their hair.

Chin propped on the sill, I would sit and listen to them through the open parlor windows, mesmerized by the lyrical quality of their lovely drawls. As I grew older, I learned to pick out the French Huguenot and Gullah influences that made the Charleston accent so distinct. My mother had never completely lost those long midvowels, and to a sheltered child such as I, her exotic speech patterns made her seem glamorous and mysterious.

On one particular evening, as I sat listening through the window, I’d detected a note of sadness in Mama’s voice as she and my aunt reminisced.

Aunt Lynrose had reached over and patted Mama’s hand. “Things don’t always work out the way we planned, but we have to make the most of what we’re given. You have a good life, Etta. A lovely home and a hardworking husband who loves you. And don’t forget what a blessing Amelia is. After all those terrible miscarriages…”

“A blessing? Sometimes I wonder…”

“Etta.” There was a note of censure in my aunt’s tone. “Why dwell on something you can’t change? Remember what Mama always said. No good can come of living in the past.”

“It’s not the past I’m worried about,” my mother murmured.

Long after they’d moved on to another topic, I remained at the window, frightened and lonely, and not understanding why.

I’d never asked my mother about that conversation. As any good lawyer would advise, a query should never be posed unless one already knew the answer. Or was prepared to deal with the consequences. I wasn’t. I preferred to remain in the dark as to why my adoption had not been considered a blessing by my mother.

Turning right on Tradd Street, I left that dark memory and the bells of St. Michael’s behind me.

Before me, the city was coming alive. The delectable aromas of coffee and fresh pastries wafted from the bakeries and open-air restaurants that catered to the breakfast crowd.

As I neared the water, the air thickened with brine. Keeping a brisk pace, I retraced last night’s steps past the stretch of colorful homes on Rainbow Row and the grand East Bay mansions with their elegant piazzas and jewel-box gardens.

I walked to the very southernmost tip of the peninsula and paused to watch the sunrise. A lone pelican circled overhead and I tracked it for a moment before letting my gaze drop to Fort Sumter, a hazy outline of crumbling walls and Southern history in the middle of Charleston Harbor.

From the corner of my eye, I saw someone step up to the rail and I turned, almost expecting to find John Devlin. The stranger beside me was the same height and build as the detective, and he had the same guarded air. And yet he made me think—not of Devlin—but of his ghosts. This man, too, had the café au lait complexion that suggested a mixed heritage, but his bearing was straight, not regal, his features more handsome than exotic. At least what I could see of them beneath the sunglasses. He wore faded clothes, but he did not strike me as homeless. Nor, for some reason, did I think he was a tourist.

He didn’t so much as glance at me as he stared out over the water, seemingly absorbed in the vastness of the harbor.

I grew apprehensive. It was very quiet where we stood, too early for anyone to be about. Whoever had broken into my car and stolen my briefcase was still out there somewhere. The killer of that poor girl whose body had been found in Oak Grove Cemetery had yet to be caught.

Was it just a coincidence that this stranger had appeared on the Battery at the precise time I took my morning walk?

I wanted to move away, but was reluctant to call attention to myself and even more hesitant to turn my back on him.

As if sensing my unease, he waited a moment longer for the sunrise, then turned and slowly walked away, disappearing into the lush foliage of White Point Gardens.

I headed for home, stopping for a bagel and coffee on the way. With each step that brought me closer to my sanctuary, I felt a growing trepidation. A creeping dread that left me wondering…

How had Devlin’s ghost child managed to penetrate my defenses? And what would I do if she came back?

When I got home, I went straight to the garden. The moonflowers had withered in the heat as the rising sun slowly awakened the morning glories.

I walked along narrow beds of purple phlox to the spot where I’d seen the little girl’s ghost. I don’t know what I expected to find. Nothing as earthly or as human as footprints. But something had been left behind.

A tiny garnet ring lay embedded in the soft earth.

I might not have seen it at all had I not been searching so closely for evidence of a ghostly visit.

The ring looked as if it had been buried there for a very long time. Perhaps like the body in Oak Grove, it had been uncovered by the recent rainstorms. I wanted to believe it had been lost by some former occupant of the house, but I couldn’t help remembering the sparkle on the little ghost’s finger as she pointed to the window where I had stood watching her.

I knelt in the grass, hands on thighs and stared for a long time at that ring.

Had it been left there as a message? A warning?

Could a ghost do that?

I’d felt the spidery crawl of their fingers in my hair, the whisper of their cold breath down my collar, but I’d never found any physical evidence of their presence. And yet there lay a ring in the very spot where one of Devlin’s ghosts had vanished back into the mist.

It didn’t seem proper to leave it half buried in the dirt, but neither did I want the thing in my house or on my person. Already I had too much of a connection to this entity. The last thing I needed was to issue an unwitting invitation.

After a bit, I got up and went inside to retrieve an antique silver trinket box from my dresser, along with a basket of pebbles and seashells I’d collected from the old part of Rosehill Cemetery, my childhood playground. The artifacts had come from hallowed ground, as had the polished stone I wore on a silver chain around my neck. Whether they held any protective properties of their own, I had no idea. I liked to think that they did.