I wasn’t going to let the moment slip by again like it had last time. I wanted a hug. To feel her warmth. The touch of her hand against my cheek. I rushed forward, spreading my arms wide. Closed them around her. And poof! Like a bubble popping, she was gone and I was hugging myself.
A split second later, I felt a shift in the air behind me. Mama inhaled sharply, and I whipped around to see Meemaw’s wraithlike figure appear next to the armoire we’d moved down from the attic.
“Enough of the cat and mouse,” Nana said, moving toward Meemaw’s ghost with the stealth of a cat. “Show yourself.”
The command worked. Meemaw’s form shimmied, translucent and airy, then started to take shape again. Just like before, she seemed to turn from nothingness to something almost tangible. But this time I stayed put, hardly daring to breathe, let alone try to touch her again.
Mama hurried back to the lavender plant, closed her hand around one stalk, and slid it down over the purple buds. A few scattered onto the table, but the rest were cupped in her hand. A moment later, she sprinkled them right onto Meemaw. The petals sunk into her misty form before falling to the ground, but my great-grandmother didn’t evaporate. She didn’t levitate. She didn’t budge. It was as if the lavender rooted her to the spot, like glue on the base of a figurine.
“That’s better,” Nana said; then she held out her arm, palm up, waiting.
Tears pricked behind my eyelids as Meemaw slowly raised her arm and placed her hand in her daughter’s. As she moved her head, shifting her gaze from Nana to Mama, and finally to me, her form flickered. I held my breath, silently willing her to stay put.
“Meemaw,” I said, taking a tentative step toward her. The flickering grew erratic and I stopped short. It felt like a thread of static electricity ran between us. When I stopped, her flickering stopped. When I moved forward again, her form shuddered and I had that same image of Princess Leia. Only Meemaw wasn’t asking for help.
Or was she?
I ran up to the dining table, ran my hand over a lavender stalk just like Mama had done a minute earlier, then raced back to her. She quivered, her shape disappearing and reappearing, as if we needed to adjust an antennae so she could ground herself.
“Meemaw?” I struggled to keep my voice steady and my tears at bay.
Her eyes looked vacant, like gray spots in her misty, white shape, but I felt her gaze. I knew she could see me far better than I could see her. Her mouth opened and a low, whispery sound, like a breeze rustling through tree branches, slipped out.
“Are you okay?” I had to know if she was where she wanted to be, or if she was caught in some kind of limbo.
She nodded, her head slowly moving up and down, that same breathy sound escaping her lips, but this time I knew she was saying, “Yes.”
Like a handful of confetti, I tossed the lavender buds up and watched them scatter over her, through her, and around her until they settled on the floor at her feet. Her flickering stopped and she became more opaque.
I racked my brain, trying to figure out where to begin. What did you say to the ghost of your great-grandmother? She was the woman who’d single-handedly brought me back home to Bliss, had helped me realize my passion when she taught me to sew, and had tried to keep secrets from me even as a ghost. I had a wagon full of questions, but not a single one formed in my mind.
“Harlow has work to do, Meemaw. You need to let her be,” Mama said, weaving her arm through mine and sounding as if she were chastising a rascally child.
Meemaw, true to her personality when she’d been alive, simply shook her misty head as she opened her mouth and said, “Nooooo.”
I stumbled back a step, fighting the thumping pressure in my temples. “That lavender’s not working very well,” I said under my breath. “She doesn’t seem very harmonious or cooperative.”
Mama’s eyes flashed. “No, she doesn’t.” Behind me, I heard a faint sound. I turned to see the lavender growing before my eyes. It was as if someone had set up a video camera and filmed the plant over a period of weeks, and I was watching the playback. I’d seen the effect Mama had on plants thousands of times, but this… this felt different. This felt controlled.
It felt easier to breathe, like the air in the room had become cleaner and lighter. Meemaw’s form still flickered and shimmered, like it wasn’t quite stable. I was pretty sure she—and maybe Nana and Mama, too— would shut down on me again if I brought up the gowns from the armoire. Instead, I brought up the other subject I couldn’t get off my mind. “Zinnia James is in jail.”
Mama shook her head as if she couldn’t believe the news. “I heard. What’s gotten into this town—”
“She was arrested?” Nana cut in, stopping Mama midsentence.
“For killing Macon Vance, the golf pro at the club.”
The low moan of Meemaw’s forlorn voice filled the room.
I stepped closer to Meemaw, nodding. “I know. She couldn’t have done it.”
Nana sank down on the nearest chair, staring off into the distance. “No, that’s not right.”
“Murder’s never right,” Mama said.
“Of course it’s not,” she said, “but that’s not what I mean.”
Meemaw disappeared. A split second later, the skirt on Libby’s dress, hanging on the pulley contraption in the workroom, fluttered as a trail of misty air swooped up under it. Instantly, the bodice puffed out and filled, as if there were a person suddenly wearing the gown. Meemaw’s ghostly face appeared, the collar of her cowgirl blouse like an undergarment for the dress.
Nana started, her face draining. “You knew?” she said to Meemaw in the dress.
I stood at the French doors separating the workroom from the front room, looking from Meemaw in the dress to Nana, ashen-faced and wide-eyed—a disconcerting look from my grandmother. Mama came to stand by my side. “More secrets?” I muttered. Then to both of them, I said, “Knew what?”
But Nana didn’t answer me. Instead, she said, “She couldn’t have killed him. She wouldn’t have killed him.”
I stared at her. “How do you know?”
Nana’s hands shook. “I heard the report on the news. The man was killed between six and ten that night. Zinnia… Zinnia and I were at Miss June’s that night. We had dinner.”
“For four hours?”
Whatever color was left in Nana’s skin drained. “We had some things to discuss. A little bit of history. That’s not important,” she said, waving her hand around. “Zinnia was with me that night. She couldn’t have killed Macon Vance.”
Chapter 18
A few minutes later, Mama, Nana, and I sat around the dining table, each of us doing something to keep our hands and nerves calm. Mama held an embroidery hoop, poking her needle and floss through a muslin tea towel. Nana clicked her tiny knitting needles together, slowly working through the long row of the scarf she was making. A length of fabric spread across my lap, the mere feel of it giving me strength. We all stared at the lavender plant in the middle of the table. A wispy Meemaw hovered in Libby’s dress on the pulley, sounds slipping from her lips when she wanted to speak, but the words completely unintelligible.