The Restorer. Amanda Stevens

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СКАЧАТЬ shiver ran through me and I glanced away.

      “Where’s Papa?” I asked.

      “Rosehill,” Mama said. “He still likes to putter around out there even though the county hired a full-time caretaker last year.”

      “Did he finish the angels?”

      A faint smile touched her lips. “Yes. They are quite something, aren’t they, Lyn? You’ll have to go down and take a look at them before you leave.”

      “I will.”

      “Speaking of angels,” my aunt said lazily. “Do you remember Angel Peppercorn? Tall gal with a rather unfortunate overbite. I ran into her the other day in a little tea shop on Church Street. You know the one I mean, Amelia. Has that cute black-and-yellow awning? Anyway, turns out her son, Jackson, is in the movie business. She says he’s a famous director out in Hollywood, but I heard through the grapevine he’s in the adult entertainment industry. I can’t say I’m surprised. Always was something a little perverted about that boy,” she said with malicious glee.

      As my aunt prattled on, I began to relax, letting my worries over Mama’s health and those dark memories of Oak Grove slip away. We spent a pleasant afternoon gossiping on the front porch, only stirring when Mama rose to start dinner. My aunt and I offered to help, but she would have none of it.

      “I don’t know which of you is more helpless in the kitchen,” she said. “Last thing I need is the both of you under foot.”

      After she went inside, I settled back against the post as my aunt launched into a new story. I waited for a lull, then said casually, “Aunt Lynrose, are you acquainted with any Devlins in Charleston?”

      “Would that be the South of Broad Devlins?” she asked, naming the most prestigious and historic area of the city.

      “I don’t think so. The Devlin I met is a cop.”

      “Probably not one of the Devlins then. Unless he’s a distant cousin. Plenty of those around, I would imagine, since their roots go all the way back to the seventeenth century. Of course, they’re dying out now. Bennett Devlin’s only son and daughter-in-law were killed in a boating accident years ago. The grandson came to live with him for a while, but they had a falling out. I seem to recall hearing that the boy got himself involved in some scandal or other.”

      My ears perked up. “What kind of scandal?”

      “The usual. Fell in with a bad crowd, took the wrong sort of wife.” She shrugged. “I’ve forgotten the particulars.”

      I tried to recall if I’d seen a wedding ring on Devlin’s finger. I was pretty sure I would have noticed something like that.

      “You say the Devlin you met is a cop? You’re not in some kind of trouble, are you?” my aunt teased.

      “Hardly. I’m doing some consulting work for the Charleston Police Department.”

      “My goodness, that sounds important.” She eyed me with unabashed curiosity.

      “Actually, that’s one of the reasons I drove up this afternoon. I wanted to tell Mama before she heard about it from someone else. A body was found in the cemetery where I’ve been working. A murder victim.”

      “Lord have mercy.” My aunt pressed a hand to her heart. “Chile, are you all right?”

      “Yes, I’m fine. I was never in any danger,” I said, conveniently ignoring the stolen briefcase. “My involvement is minor, but my name was mentioned in the Post and Courier article this morning. I’m surprised you didn’t see it.”

      “I spent the night here with Etta. I haven’t even looked at a paper.”

      “Anyway, Detective Devlin asked that I be present for the exhumation and I agreed.”

      “You mean you were there when they dug up the body?” Aunt Lynrose held out her arm. “Look at that. You done gave me chills.”

      “Sorry.”

      I caught a movement behind the screen door and wondered how long my mother had been standing there listening to us.

      “Mama? You need some help now?”

      “You can go find your papa, tell him we’re ready to eat.”

      “Okay.”

      As I walked across the front yard toward the road, I heard the screen door squeak. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw that Mama had come out on the porch and she and my aunt were speaking in low tones the way they once had when I was little. This time, I was pretty sure they were talking about me.

      Instead of driving around the road, I took the shortcut through the woods and went straight back to the old section. The gate was locked, but I knew where Papa had always kept a spare key.

      I let myself in, closed the gate behind me, then wandered down a soft incline, along fern-edged pathways and through thick, silvery curtains of Spanish moss to the angels.

      There were fifty-seven of them.

      Fifty-seven angels adorning fifty-seven tiny graves. The victims of a fire that had ravaged an orphanage in 1907.

      The people in the surrounding counties had taken up a collection to buy the first angel, and every year thereafter, a new one had been added, except during the two world wars and the Great Depression.

      By the time the final angel had been placed on the remaining grave, some of the earlier statues had fallen victim to weather and vandalism. Papa had been working for years to restore all fifty-seven with nothing more than patience and a set of vintage masonry tools.

      When I was little, those angels had been my only companions. There were no other children around where we lived, but I don’t think the solitude had much to do with my loneliness. It was inherent, and once the ghosts came along, it was constant.

      The sun had already begun its slow glide toward the horizon when I found a patch of warm clover and slid to the ground. Hugging my knees tightly, I waited.

      After a few moments, the air stilled in a prelude redolent with summer.

      And then it happened.

      The sun sank with a gasping flare, a dying day’s last breath that gilded the treetops and shot a volley of golden arrows down through the leaves. Light danced off stone so that for one split second, the angels shimmered with life, a fleeting animation that always took my breath away.

      As the angels slept under the soft blanket of dusk, I sat waiting for Papa. Finally, I got up and walked back toward the gate. I saw someone standing just outside and I started to call out to him.

      Then with a shudder, I realized it wasn’t Papa. But I knew him. It was the ghost of the old man I’d seen when I was nine years old. I stood on hallowed ground, so he posed no immediate threat to me, but he terrified me just the same. His presence after all these years seemed menacing, a manifestation of the unrest that had afflicted my ordered little kingdom.

      He looked exactly as I remembered him. Tall, gaunt, with long white hair brushing СКАЧАТЬ