Free The Guests on South Battery by Karen White Page B

them, sense them the way a plant follows the light. Whatever it was behind that door at the end of the hall, I needed to get there before Jayne.
    I reached toward the round brass knob, but it was already turning, the door pushed open without any assistance from me. Jayne caught up to me in the doorway, apparently unaware that the door had opened on its own. We stared inside, taking in the large mahogany dresser covered in perfume bottles and tarnished silver frames filled with old photographs. A small end table was covered with an assortment of pill bottles and an empty water glass sitting on a lace doily. An enormous rice-poster bed held court next to it, the silk bedspread and pillows neatly placed on top. I thought of the housekeeper who’d taken care of the deceased owner, thinking she’d made the bed as her last duty to the old woman.
    A cold breeze greeted us and I watched as Jayne shivered, wondering if she’d noticed the temperature drop in the already chilly room. I wanted to stamp my foot in frustration at my inability to see whoever it was. It wasn’t that I
wanted
to see them. But if I knew they were there, I’d rather see them than just feel them. It made it harder for them to sneak up on me and surprise me when I least expected it.
    â€œThis must have been Miss Pinckney’s room,” Jayne whispered, as if the old woman were still there, sleeping in the giant bed.
    â€œYou’re probably right,” Sophie said from behind us. “It’s the only room where the furniture isn’t covered. And there’s an air conditioner in one of the windows.” She crossed the room to a rocking chair in the corner near the window unit, an elegant piece of furniture with slender spindles and delicate rockers on the bottom. A small chest sat beside it, a stack of books teetering on its wooden surface. Sophie picked up the book from the top of the pile. “Apparently, either she or her nurse really liked Harlen Coben and Stephen King.”
    â€œToo scary for me,” I said, not overlooking the irony. I began walking around the room and pulling open the heavy curtains to let in light, feeling oddly compelled to do so. Almost as if somebody were telling me to do it. Yet each time I grabbed a drapery panel to open it, I felt an opposing force trying to stop me. Jayne watched me with a furrowed brow as I wrestled with each window covering. “They seem to be stuck on something,” I explained, yanking one across the rod. “Don’t feel obligated to keep these.”
    Sophie frowned at me. “I disagree. Those are Scalamandre, if I’m not mistaken. An exquisite reproduction of the originals, I would bet. Made to last, unlike so many things these days.”
    â€œWas this Miss Pinckney?” Jayne asked. She stood by the dressing table, a large oval frame in her hands.
    Peering over her shoulder, I saw a photograph of a beautiful young woman with a bouffant hairdo and thick black eyeliner, placing her in the late sixties or early seventies. She wore a white gown and gloves, and stood next to a young man only slighter older than she was. He resembled a young Robert Wagner—one of my mother’s old flames—and looked even more dashing in his white tie and tails.
    â€œYes, that’s her. And I’m thinking this was taken at her debut. She, my mother, and my mother-in-law, Amelia, made their debuts at the same time. She said that Button’s brother escorted her, since their father had died when they were little.”
    â€œI’m pretty sure I never met her.” Jayne paused for a moment beforecarefully replacing it and picking up another, this one of three girls in Ashley Hall uniforms. Jayne pointed to the tall, thin girl in the middle, her bright blond hair held back by a headband, the edges of her shoulder-length hair flipped up. “I think this is her, too.”
    I took the frame from her, noticing how faded the photograph was,