Free The House on Tradd Street by Karen White Page B

grasp on the bar had apparently failed, and he had slid to the ground again, taking several of the beer bottles on the bar with him.
    I stared at him, at the still-thick head of graying hair and the sharp, fine bones of his face, which alcohol had softened like a putty knife to wet clay, and felt the familiar jolt of embarrassment mixed with resignation cut through me. I headed to the bar, Jack right behind me.
    “Do you think you should get involved, Mellie? I think the guy has enough friends to help him out.”
    I stood over the man, watching as a stain of wet beer darkened the front of his khaki shirt, spreading its shame like a red letter on his chest. “Jack, would you please help him out to your car while I go call Mr. Drayton and tell him I’ll sign the papers?”
    He looked at me with confusion. “Do you know this man?”
    I knelt down. “Jack Trenholm, meet Colonel James Middleton. Dad? This is Jack Trenholm. He’s going to bring you home.”
    My dad looked at us, his bloodshot hazel eyes staring up at me. At least he still had it in him to look ashamed. His words slurred together, bumping into one another like falling dominoes. “Sorry, Melanie. I only meant to have one.”
    Jack put his hand on my arm. “I’ll take care of it. Go make your call.” He gave me that trademark grin of his again. “We’re partners now, remember?”
    I rolled my eyes in mock resignation. “Yeah, great. Just make sure he pukes before he gets into your Porsche.”
    I turned my back on them and headed out into the sticky air of a late Charleston summer and took great, gasping lungfuls of it while trying to breathe out all the disappointments and hopelessness that I had carried inside of me for thirty-three years. Then I fished my cell phone out of my purse and dialed Mr. Drayton’s number.

CHAPTER 5
    T hree days after my “come to Jesus meeting” at Blackbeard’s, I was the owner of an antique pile of rotten lumber, and encumbered by a dog, a housekeeper, and a guilt trip as long as the Cooper River. Later I would come to wonder how my perfect life had changed so quickly, and the only thing I could come up with was that in a moment of weakness I had been taken in by something as simple as a rose-painted piece of china and a handwritten letter on beautiful stationery.
    I returned to the house on Tradd Street, dressed to do battle. I even brought along a rake, a trowel, and a handheld gardening implement with pointy prongs, the name of which I couldn’t recall. They were lent to me by our receptionist, Nancy Flaherty, when I told her the condition of the garden. She even knew of the Louisa rose, and I felt like Sir Lancelot as she’d handed me the trowel and said solemnly, “The very existence of that rose in this world is in your hands, Melanie.”
    I rolled my eyes. “And when did you take time away from your golf game to learn horticulture?”
    She’d refused to take my bait. “Gardening isn’t something you learn, Melanie.” She pressed her golf-glove-covered fist to her chest. “It’s something that’s there. You’re either born with it or you’re not. And who knows? Maybe you’ve got it.”
    “I’m not the nurturing type—you know that. I don’t even keep houseplants. Why don’t I just pave over the whole garden and be done with it?”
    She looked at me as if she thought I was joking. “Just give it a try. You might just find that you love tending a garden.”
    I headed toward the door, gardening implements in hand. “Right. And I might even find that I actually love old houses instead of thinking that they’re huge holes in the ground that stupid people throw money into.”
    She held the door open as I headed down the outside steps. “Stranger things have happened.”
    I was on the sidewalk when Nancy called out to me again. “And you’re wrong, you know.”
    I stopped and looked up at her. “About what?”
    “About you not being the nurturing type. Most people would have written your father