Magnolia Nights Read online

  Also by Ashley Farley

  Sweet Tea Tuesdays

  Sweeney Sisters Series

  Tangle of Strings

  Boots and Bedlam

  Lowcountry Stranger

  Her Sister’s Shoes

  Adventures of Scottie

  Breaking the Story

  Merry Mary

  Saving Ben

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  No part of this work may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Kindle Press, Seattle, 2017

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, Kindle Scout, and Kindle Press are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE Ellie

  CHAPTER TWO Ellie

  CHAPTER THREE Ellie

  CHAPTER FOUR Ellie

  CHAPTER FIVE Ashton

  CHAPTER SIX Ellie

  CHAPTER SEVEN Ellie

  CHAPTER EIGHT Ashton

  CHAPTER NINE Ellie

  CHAPTER TEN Ellie

  CHAPTER ELEVEN Ellie

  CHAPTER TWELVE Ellie

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN Ellie

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN Ellie

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN Ashton

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN Ellie

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Ashton

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Ellie

  CHAPTER NINETEEN Ashton

  CHAPTER TWENTY Ellie

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE Ellie

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO Ellie

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE Ellie

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR Abbott

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE Ellie

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX Ellie

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN Abbott

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT Ellie

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE Abbott

  CHAPTER THIRTY Abbott

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE Ellie

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO Ellie

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE Abbott

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR Ellie

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE Ellie

  Acknowledgments

  A Note to Readers

  About the Author

  CHAPTER ONE

  Ellie

  Ellie approached the antebellum mansion with caution. Thirty-four years had passed since she’d last been here. Time had not been kind to the house, as evidenced by the paint peeling in sheets off the wood siding and rotten newel posts on the first- and second-floor porches. With Pixie dancing around at her feet, she climbed the brick steps and removed the brass key from under the mat where the attorney had instructed that she’d find it. After a struggle with the jammed lock, the key finally engaged, and she swung open the oversize paneled door. Standing stock-still on the threshold, she stared down the wide center hallway.

  Memories drifted toward her, and her knuckles turned white as she gripped the heavy molding of the doorframe. She heard echoes of voices—some demanding and others more soft-spoken—and saw snapshots of the people who had once lived and worked in the house. Her mother and grandmother. Sally Bell the cook, Maddie the maid, and Abraham, the old black man they referred to as the chauffeur but who was really a jack-of-all-trades. Who was the little girl with dark curly hair and eyes as black as a moonless night? A playmate? A distant cousin or close family friend? In this memory, Ellie and the girl were huddled together behind an open door, hiding from something or someone. Were they playing a game? She’d spent endless hours and countless dollars working with a therapist to summon these memories from the deep recesses of her mind where they’d been locked away for most of her life. The voice inside her head grew louder, cautioning her not to let the memories out. When she backed out of the doorway and onto the porch, the voice escalated to a scream that warned her to get out of Charleston while she still had the chance.

  But where would she go? There was nothing waiting for her in San Francisco. That chapter in her life had come to an end. She slipped the key back under the mat, and inhaling a deep breath, she wheeled her suitcase across the threshold and closed the door behind her.

  Pixie was eager to stretch her tiny legs after being cooped up in her carrier during the long flight from California and the drive into town from the airport. Ellie followed along as her little dog’s button nose led them from one room to the next. To the best of her recollection, the furnishings hadn’t changed since she was last here as a six-year-old, the day the father she’d never met came to claim her. Even back then, everything had been faded and frayed. She found the dark fabrics oppressive in shades of browns, burgundies, and blues and thought the heavy furniture—enormous antique pieces with little detail and zero charm—belonged in an abandoned Scottish castle. Ellie remembered the grape juice stain on the Queen Anne sofa in the living room. She’d been punished for much lesser crimes than spilling the juice—a muddy footprint on the kitchen floor, leaving the lid off the cookie jar, hiding under her mother’s sickbed.

  When Pixie grew bored with the living room, she ventured back to the center hallway toward the rear of the house. The red damask wallpaper that lined the walls of the hall seemed more suited to a parlor in a brothel. As a child, Ellie had never been allowed to go near the antique grandfather clock. Now she felt a peculiar satisfaction in opening the glass door and nudging the minute hand with the tip of her finger. The gears sprang into action and filled the hallway with the steady ticking and tocking of the seconds as the decades slipped away. Had the clock ever kept decent time?

  She found Pixie in the dining room, licking at a spot on the oriental rug at the base of her grandmother’s chair. “Uh-uh, don’t do that. It might make you sick.” She scooped up the wiggling Maltese and tucked her under her arm. They’d eaten every meal in this dining room with her grandfather’s beady eyes leering down at them from his oil portrait above the mahogany sideboard. She knew little about the grandfather who’d passed away years before she was born. His name had rarely been mentioned by anyone in the house.

  Ellie could hear her grandmother’s stern voice instructing her to finish her dinner. “There will be no dessert for you, young lady, until you’ve eaten your peas.” Night after night, Ellie had been forced to choke down every last pea. To this day, the smell of peas summoned the taste of bile.

  Ellie had neither seen nor heard from her grandmother in thirty-four years, since her father had taken her to live with him in California. Perhaps her grandmother’s declining health had prevented her from getting in touch with her all these years. She wanted to believe her grandmother had loved her. She’d left Ellie her entire estate. Surely that was a sign her grandmother still cared about her, that she hadn’t forgotten her. Though if the woman had been as cruel as her memories suggested, why did Ellie even care how her grandmother felt about her? She was desperate, however, to know whether her mother had ever loved her. There was so much Ellie didn’t remember, and her father refused to tell her about her past.

  When she sat down in her grandmother’s chair at the head of the table, Ellie experienced an odd sensation—a powerful awareness of something or someone monumentally important to her—that sent a shiver down her spine and left her gasping for air. Gripping her dog, she squeezed her eyes shut tight. “Why can’t I remember?” she called out to the empty room.

  Her therapist had diagnosed her with dissociative amnesia. Her memory bank wasn’t empty. She remembered plenty of things about her childhood. But her inability to recall the traumatic events she’d experienced in this house had caused chronic
headaches, stomach issues, and insomnia all her life. What could possibly have happened to her here that caused such irreparable damage to her psyche? When she’d told her father she was moving to Charleston, he warned her to stay away. Maybe she should’ve listened to him. But the therapist thought that being back in this house might trigger her memories. Somehow, someway, she was determined to discover the piece of the past that would make her whole.

  The sound of the back door closing and the squishing of rubber-soled shoes against the linoleum floor brought Ellie out of her chair. She pushed open the swinging door and passed through the butler’s pantry, a rectangular room lined with storage cabinets that separated the kitchen from the dining room. She spotted Maddie depositing two grocery bags on the Formica counter. Deep lines had developed in her face, and her hair had gone gray, but Ellie recognized the woman she’d once known from the high cheekbones and bridge of freckles across her nose. How old had Maddie been back then? Surely not more than twenty-five or thirty.

  The housekeeper set her dark eyes on Pixie. “Missus Pringle don’t allow no pets in the house.”

  “Based on what her attorney tells me, she’s no longer in a position to object.”

  Of all the people who’d been a part of her life back then, Ellie remembered the most about Maddie—even more than she remembered about her own mother. The housekeeper had paid special attention to the skinny little girl with strawberry-blonde pigtails. She’d bandaged her boo-boos, nursed her when she got sick, and snuck her treats from the kitchen—brownies and fudge and frosted sugar cookies. Had her grandmother’s stringent demands hardened Maddie over time? She would have to find a way to soften her up.

  Setting the dog down on the floor, Ellie located a saucer in one of the cabinets, filled it with water, and placed it on the ground in front of Pixie. She turned to face Maddie. “Nothing’s changed around here, including you.” She gave the woman’s stiff body a hug, and when she pushed away, she was rewarded with a tentative smile tugging at the corners of the woman’s pale lips.

  “It’s good to see you, Miss Eleanor.”

  Ellie’s memories of her mother were fleeting glimpses of a willowy redhead with wide-set olive-colored eyes. They reminded her so much of herself she often wondered if these visions were figments of her imagination intended to satisfy her yearning for the mother she’d known for only six brief years. On the top of the list of things she yearned to ask her mother was why she’d name her innocent baby after a strict old woman like Eleanor Pringle.

  “Please call me Ellie.”

  “All right then, Miss Ellie.” Maddie set about emptying her grocery bags. “Mistah Calhoun called earlier. He said to tell you he’s gonna be a few minutes late. There’s a casserole warming in the oven for your dinner and a fresh pitcher of sweet tea in the refrigerator. I picked up some orange juice and coffee cream for your breakfast.” She unloaded the groceries into the ancient refrigerator. “I don’t know your food habits yet, but if you make out a list, I’ll go back to the market in the morning.”

  “I appreciate your efforts, Maddie, but I can do my own shopping. But thank you for the casserole. After my long trip, I’m relieved not to have to worry about dinner.”

  Maddie closed the refrigerator and folded the paper bags in half. She set her lips in a firm line. “That leaves me out of a job then, don’t it? If you’re planning to do your own cooking and cleaning.”

  Ellie wondered if she could afford to keep Maddie on. If she couldn’t afford to pay her, Ellie couldn’t afford to live in the house. “As long as I stay in this house, I want you to stay here with me. I won’t know how long that will be until I meet with Mr. Calhoun about the estate. You worked for my grandmother for a long time, Maddie. If, for some reason, I decide to sell the house, I’ll make sure you’re well taken care of.”

  The tension left the old woman’s body. “That’s mighty kind of you. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” Ellie refilled Pixie’s saucer with water. “I’ll make out my list and leave it on the counter for you in the morning.”

  “Yes’m. I put clean linens on all the beds upstairs and towels in the baths. They threadbare. I’m sorry about that. Lots of things are run-down around here.” Maddie appeared embarrassed, as though the burden of maintaining the household fell solely on her shoulders.

  “Don’t worry; you and I will address everything that’s worn-out around here in good time.” Ellie hoped she’d have the means to address these things. The attorney had told her little about her inheritance—only that her grandmother had left her a sizable estate. She’d spent an afternoon doing online research on the real estate market in downtown Charleston. Even in its dilapidated state, because of its close proximity to the waterfront, the house was worth millions. What she didn’t know was whether her grandmother had left her a bank account to go along with the house. “How long was my grandmother sick? Mr. Calhoun didn’t say.”

  “A few weeks at the most. She didn’t suffer none. Don’t you worry about that. The stroke left her in a coma. Mistah Calhoun and me, we made sure she had plenty of help to keep her comfortable till the end.” Maddie removed her handbag from the pantry and walked toward the back door. “All right then. If you don’t need me anymore today, I’ll be on my way.”

  The house was quiet again after Maddie’s departure, except for the sound of Pixie’s tongue lapping the water out of her bowl and the distant ticking of the clock in the front hall. Once she’d emptied the bowl for the second time, the dog looked up at Ellie with expectant eyes. “What say, Pixie? Shall we continue our tour?”

  Needing no further encouragement, the dog pranced on ahead of Ellie down the short hallway leading off the kitchen. She came to an abrupt stop in the doorway to the Florida room. Afternoon sunlight streamed in through a wall of grimy windows onto more heavy furniture and dark fabrics. Bookshelves lined the wall opposite the windows, and the wall facing the door featured a full-length portrait of her grandmother, her face set in a scowl even as a young woman. Pixie growled and scampered away. Ellie snickered. “I don’t blame you. She scares me, too.”

  They continued their exploration upstairs, starting in the gloomy bedroom at the back of the house that had once been her mother’s. A flashback took Ellie by surprise—the soft mound of her mother’s body in the mahogany poster bed, rising and falling as she drew her last breaths.

  She opened the door connecting to the adjacent nursery, the only way in or out of the room. As a child, she’d felt comforted knowing that if anyone wanted to get to her they’d have to pass through her mother’s bedroom first. Only slightly bigger than a closet, the room was spartan with white walls, an oval-shaped rag rug on the floor in shades of brown, and a child-size iron bed. She recalled lying in that bed night after night listening to her mother’s soft moans, overwhelmed by the loneliness and confusion of a small child with no father, a dying mother, and an uncertain future. On her way back through her mother’s room, she smelled a pungent odor—the stench of mildew and rot—that she hadn’t noticed a moment ago.

  Ellie closed the door on her memories and wandered back down the hall to the corner bedroom in the front of the house—the guest room reserved for guests who never visited. Unlike the rest of the house, the guest room was cheerful, with a green patterned carpet and velvet draperies that matched the bouquets of yellow roses in the wallpaper. An antique gilded bed with a fluffy white duvet and square-shaped down pillows graced the center of the room. She had no bad memories associated with this room. Feeling at peace in here, she decided to claim the guest room as her own.

  Pixie scurried off before Ellie could grab her, back down the hallway and around the staircase banister to her grandmother’s room. As a child, Ellie had been forbidden to go anywhere near this room. It was strictly her grandmother’s domain. The bed—a walnut monstrosity with turned posts, an intricately carved headboard, and a patchwork quilt of Betsy Ross vintage—took up most of the room. Sensible black dresses and shoes filled the closet,
and a collection of sterling powder jars, perfume sprayers, and brushes cluttered the marble-topped chest of drawers.

  The sound of a car door slamming on the street prompted Ellie to wander over to the French doors leading to the second-floor porch. Lifting back the velvet curtain panel, she observed a silver-haired man, presumably the attorney, remove his suit jacket and leather document folder from the passenger side of a Mercedes sedan before making his way up the short sidewalk. She turned away from the window to go and greet him, but when she crossed the room to the door, she discovered it locked. She didn’t remember closing the door behind her when she came in. She glanced down at her dog, who was staring at the door with bared teeth. “What’s wrong, Pix?”

  Pixie offered a low growl in response.

  The same vile odor she’d smelled in her mother’s room assaulted her nose, and she yanked frantically on the knob without success. She bent over to inspect the hardware but could detect no locking mechanism. The doorbell rang several times. She hurried back to the window, where she discovered the knob on the French door was also locked. On closer inspection, she realized the door had been painted shut and all the hardware removed. Strange. Why would anyone permanently seal access to such a lovely balcony? She knocked on the glass, but the leaf blower in the yard next door prevented Mr. Calhoun from hearing her. She watched him ring the doorbell again and clang on the brass knocker before searching under the mat for the key. When she heard the tapping of his leather soles on the hardwood floor downstairs, she returned to the door and began pounding on it, first with her palm and then her fist. Her heart was throbbing and sweat dripping down her back by the time Mr. Calhoun reached her.

  “What happened?” he asked. “Did you lock yourself in?”

  She held her hand out toward the doorknob. “There’s no lock on the inside. How did you get it open?”

  He hunched his shoulders. “I simply turned the knob, and it opened right up.”

  “I don’t understand.” She examined both sides of the knob. “Why wouldn’t the knob turn when there’s no lock on the door?”