AN: A lifetime of gratitude to alienor_woods for her cheerleading and sharp eyes; and to but_seriously for listening to me talk about this until I'm blue in the face.
teeth in the grass
chapter one
Outside of Greenwood, MS
approximately 100 miles north of Jackson, MS
"They say the devil went down to Georgia," the old man muses, his eyes fixed, despite the filmy white coating the pupils, on the brilliant sunset splashing orange across the clouds. "Well, I'll tell ya, they ain't never been down here." He reaches into his shirt pocket for a faded red bandana to wipe away the sweat beading across his forehead. A useless endeavor in the Delta humidity, and one he repeats no less than twenty times a day. "The devil's always been here, girly."
The soft creaking of his rocking chair plays staccato against the worn grain of the front porch. "Ask anyone," he says, voice defensive as the rocking stops with a sharp final note. "I ain't no liar."
The front door behind opens suddenly, followed swiftly by the flimsy screen door. "Daddy, ain't nobody out there. Quit talking to nothin'," a woman's voice says exasperatedly, as though repeating an oft said refrain. The old man is quiet, and after a suspicious beat, both the screen and front doors shut with firm clicks.
"'Course there's somebody here," he mutters. The slow rocking resumes, and with it, the creaking. "The devil's here."
—
New York City, NY
"Another feature on scarves," Caroline Forbes grumbles irritably to her cubicle mate. "How many does one magazine need to run in a year? How can there possibly be that many ways to wear a freaking scarf?"
Elena Gilbert swivels in her seat and points at Caroline with her pen. "At least you got a feature, Forbes. I'm over here copy-editing Kayleigh Patterson's story on going from brunette to blonde to back to brunette, and I swear to God," Elena leans forward, "If I have to read the phrases 'beachy waves', 'blondes have more fun', or 'caramel highlights' one more goddamn time, I will stab my eyes out with this pen."
Caroline arches an eyebrow. "Kinky."
Elena rolls her eyes, spinning her chair back towards her desk. "Needless to say, I would take the scarves shit off your hands in a heartbeat." She whirls back around, suddenly electrified. "Speaking of kinky and scarves—"
"Don't even think about it," a new voice warns; both Caroline and Elena automatically straighten at the sound. "I expect the both of you to produce the quality of articles that are expected of writers here at Town and Home." Their assistant editor, Whitney, fixes Caroline with a look that makes her wonder just how much she overheard. "Caroline. Natalie wants you in her office in five." And, having laid down those ominous words, she turns and glides away on a cloud of Chanel, the sound of her Loubitouns clicking sternly on the floor.
As soon as she's gone, they exchange looks before Caroline slumps low in her seat, exhaling a breath she didn't even realize she had been holding. "Fuck," she says, blowing escaped wisps of hair out of her face.
"Yep," Elena agrees.
—
The long-whispered rumor around Town and Home is that Natalie Gallagher, having cut enough throats and stepped over enough bodies in her perfect Givenchy pantsuits to the editor position at the magazine, had, upon winning the job, immediately overhauled the design of the spacious office on the twenty-eighth floor so that it echoed that of Anna Wintour at Vogue. The existing staff, thoroughly scandalized as wood paneling had been stripped to reveal the pale sheetrock underneath, had wondered amongst themselves if she even realized that Town and Home wasn't a fashion magazine at all, but in fact, a lifestyle magazine.
When she had installed plush cream carpet, their suspicions were confirmed—Natalie Gallagher had no idea.
It is with this in the back of her mind that Caroline steels her nerves and walks towards Natalie's corner office. She hesitates outside of the door and smooths the lines of her thin blouse before knocking once.
"Come in," Natalie calls out, and Caroline, feeling very much like she's walking the metaphorical plank into shark-infested waters, enters.
"Caroline," Natalie says as Caroline sits down as gracefully as she can muster in the gunmetal grey chair across from the large glass desk, "I know you're very busy doing the—" she glances down at a few pages resting in front of her and taps her pen against them, "scarves feature, but—" her gaze sharpens and Caroline sits up ramrod straight. "Katherine, on the travel desk, has just left us for her maternity leave, which means I've found myself with approximately five blank pages between Ideas for a City Rooftop Garden and Ariana Grande's makeunder in the November issue."
It takes all her self control to not blurt out immediately that she'll do it, that she'd walk barefoot on broken glass to not have to write about the versatility of scarves again. Caroline swallows, counts to seven, and says, in her easiest, breeziest tone, "How can I help?"
Natalie's grin is all bared white teeth. "I do so love a team player," she says smoothly. "Scope: outside the city, preferably personal, with a bit of flair." She looks over at her iMac screen, lensless glasses sliding down her nose. "Proposal on my desk by Friday."
Caroline is so busy nodding furiously, her pen scratching at her notepad, that it doesn't occur to her until she's almost back to her desk that it's already Wednesday afternoon.
—
The idea comes from her mother, off all places.
"We read Mimi's will today," Liz Forbes says from hundreds of miles away, her face a pale blue in the glow of Caroline's MacBook Air. "You were, uh, —well. Mentioned."
Caroline looks up so quickly that the bones in her neck pop.
As a kid, she had spent every summer with her great-grandmother in the tiny town of Avery, Mississippi. Caroline vividly remembers sleeping in one of her great-grandmother's spare bedrooms from early May through mid-August, sweltering when the window unit went out, and counting shooting stars from the tall window in the room that had been deemed hers. She'd been her Mimi's shadow—always underfoot, Mimi used to say, her face full of affection.
Right up until that summer between sophomore and junior year when her fifteen-year-old self had decided that she was now much too grown up to be shipped down to the Mississippi delta to tend to pansies and shuck peas on a dusty front porch with an eighty plus year old woman. I want to go to cheer camp! Caroline remembers yelling, and the memory brings color to her face, a splinter of shame wiggling itself under her skin.
"I was?" she says faintly, fingers tightening around the stem of her wine glass.
Her mother looks tired, her eyes puffy and shadowed. "Yeah. She, uh, left you the house."
Caroline freezes, the glass of chilled rose halfway to her lips. She sets it down slowly, her mouth suddenly dry. "Hawthorne House?"
"Yeah. Hawthorne House." Liz runs a hand over her blonde bob, the grey of her roots peeking through. "I didn't realize you two were still so close. I'm sure it was a blessing for Mimi, after your grandpa and your dad passed."
Caroline flushes guiltily. They weren't close, not anymore. The last time she'd spoken to her Mimi was months ago, to wish her a happy ninety-fourth birthday. Mimi had wanted to chat, Caroline remembers, but she'd blown her off with a promise to call back when she got out of the meeting she was running to. She'd forgotten—the meeting ran long, her subway commute left her hot and tired and sweaty—the list of excuses she had was as long as her arm; but she told herself she'd call back the next day.
And she hadn't.
But she doesn't say anything. "Anyway," Liz continues at her silence, "at some point, you need to get down to Mississippi to take possession."
"Wait, I have to move?"
"No, no," her mother reassures her quickly, "the lawyers just need your signature on a few things."
Her heart sinks. "I can't use e-sig?"
"It's Mississippi, Care." Liz shakes her head, smiling a little. "Maybe in fifty years, you'll be able to use e-sig, but until then…" she trails off and shrugs. "They're being as flexible as the timetable allows, but the deadline is May 15. Think you can swing that?"
She leans forward, her face half-cupped in her palm as she considers the small wall calendar hanging behind her desk. "Um. I think so, I just—ugh, I need to talk to my boss." Her head drops into her hands and she fights back a groan. "I just got assigned this travel feature, and—"
"Do it on Avery," Liz suggests. "Didn't you just say a few months ago that small towns were, and I quote, all the rage?" Her mother does finger quotes into the webcam. Caroline nearly chokes on her rose.
"All the rage in coming of age films, Mother. Not in magazine articles." Just the thought of pitching the idea to Natalie makes Caroline reach to refill her wine glass. "And even those small towns usually have a hook, you know? Something that pulls the audience's interest. Avery is boring."
"Then find an angle," her mother counters, and she sounds a bit offended. "You know, most of the buildings in Avery were built long before the Civil War, including Hawthorne House. And there's that old drive-in movie theater off the town square; I think it's one of the few left actually in operation, which is pretty cool. Oh, and there's that store that had a smuggling ring in the basement during Prohibition—"
"Okay, Mom," Caroline cuts in, raising one hand in defeat. "You've made your point."
"Just pitch it to your editor and just see what he says," Liz suggests and Caroline wrinkles her nose.
"She. My editor is a she."
"Good for her," Liz says with the same air as one might say, I could not give less of a damn. "Listen, Care, if you convince her—" she sends a pointed look directly into the webcam, "to let you work from Avery for a week or two, you should fly into Atlanta. Spend some time with Steven. It's been really hard on him, being alone in the house without your dad. I'm sure he'd appreciate the gesture."
Another flash of guilt slices through Caroline. "Yeah," she mumbles, not able to meet her mother's eyes through the screen. "Yeah, that's a good idea, I'll text him once I know more." The timer on her phone buzzes, indicating that her very adult dinner of garlic mashed potatoes is ready. "Mom, I gotta go. I'll keep you posted on what my editor says."
"Sounds good, sweetie. Give Steven a call, even if you can't make it by to see him." Her mother's face is soft as she waves goodbye into the webcam, and it fills Caroline with a sudden wave of homesickness. She inhales, letting the feeling linger as she tries to remember the last time she even left New York State, much less the last time she was in Virginia.
Maybe, if Natalie can be convinced to let her do this assignment, she can rent a car and drive down to Mystic Falls for a few days. Get her head on straight before heading further south—she could fly out of Norfolk down to Atlanta, swing by and see Steven—
"Slow your roll, Forbes," she orders as she opens the oven. "Get the article approved first."
The hardest part.
—
"I love it," Natalie declares, her chin resting on her hand as she gazes at Caroline thoughtfully. "City girl goes back to her roots in rural Alabama—"
"Mississippi," Caroline corrects, but Natalie waves her off, clearly uncaring.
"—rediscovering her family's past, all in the setting of a small, dying town in a portion of the country completely untapped by coverage. I mean, the potential for richness here is just…" Natalie trails off, tapping her pen against the glass desk. "I'm bumping this from article to feature, Caroline. How long did you say you would need to be there?"
Caroline shifts in her seat. "Um, probably a few weeks, tops, but I think I can probably cut it short if I need to—"
"Absolutely not," Natalie cuts her off. "I want you down there as long as needed." Her eyes sharpen behind the black frames of her lensless glasses. "I want to feel as though I know the townspeople, Caroline, as though I'm there with you. Do you understand what I'm asking?"
Not really. "Yes, one hundred percent."
"Excellent. Tie up any loose ends here, then I want you on the next flight down."
—
Caroline doesn't quite follow Natalie's instructions—the earliest the lawyer in Jackson can see her is in a week, so she rents a car and makes the trek down to Mystic Falls.
"I don't understand," Liz says over the chicken and dumplings she's made for dinner—Mimi's recipe, Caroline remembers fondly as she ladles a second serving into her bowl. "How long are you going to be in Avery then? A month? Two months?"
Caroline stirs her spoon in the small ceramic bowl, folding her legs underneath her as she settles into the porch swing across from Liz's chair. "Her exact words were 'as long as I need to be.' Clear as mud."
Liz's forehead wrinkles. "And they're...paying you? To stay down there and write for an issue that won't come out until November? Doesn't seem very fiscally sound, frankly."
"Yep." Caroline sets the bowl down on her lap and does jazz hands, wiggling her fingers as she goes. "That's the lifestyle magazine industry for ya!"
Her mother chews slowly, her face thoughtful as though she's debating on if she really should say what she wants to say. "Not to cast doubt on your editor, who I'm sure is extremely smart and well suited to her position—"
"Sure, we can go with that," Caroline mutters under her breath.
"—but I thought the journalism industry was dying. In fact, your exact words when you were listing out the pros and cons of taking this job were: magazines are dying a slow and painful death." Liz laughs a little. "It was in the cons column, if I remember right."
Caroline waves her spoon in the air. "Honestly, Mom, I don't ask a ton of questions. As long as the direct deposit hits, you know? Besides," she scrapes the utensil around the edges of the bowl to get one last spoonful, "this whole thing was basically your idea. And this way, I can stay down there and deal with house stuff until everything is settled instead of trying to handle stuff remotely."
Liz considers her point and nods, though clearly still a bit baffled by it. "There's peach cobbler for dessert, if you're craving something sweet." As she heads into the kitchen, she calls out over her shoulder, "I also dug some old photos of you and Mimi down at Hawthorne House out of the attic. We can go through them later, if you want."
Her curiosity spikes and she finishes her chicken and dumplings hastily. "Yes, please!" she calls back, unfolding herself and nearly tripping over her feet as the blood rushes back into her legs.
Later ends up being two helpings of peach cobbler (with ice cream) later, and Caroline's eyes are threatening to drift shut. "Food coma," she whines to Liz, who looks entirely unsympathetic.
"I told you you'd regret that second bowl." Liz pushes a stack of old Kodak envelopes towards her. "Now, I'm not sure your generation remembers, but hold photos by the edges, Care. Fingerprints."
"I'm twenty-six, Mother, not six."
There are far, far more photos than Caroline was expecting. Some are Polaroids, the edges worn so thin by careless handling that Caroline is half afraid they'll crumple into dust in her hands; others are faded five-by-sevens, with the date stamped in bright orange on the bottom corner. The more faded the photo, the younger Mimi seems to get—the skin of her face smooths, her hair gets longer, and her figure gets trimmer.
"Mom." Caroline waves a particularly good find in the air and holds it out for inspection. "Mimi was a total dish! Look!"
Liz leans forward in the oversized plush chair to take the photo from Caroline's careful fingers. "Oh, that's a good one," she breathes, flipping the photo to look for a date. "Looks like 1955 was a very good year for her." She passes it back to Caroline's eager grasp.
In the photo, Mimi's blonde hair is cut so that the curls at the bottom bounce at the sharp line of her jaw; her coat dress is nipped in at the waist, and from what little Caroline can make out from the stark black and white, it looks to be black or a similar dark shade. Green maybe—she remembers that Mimi loved a deep emerald, remembers running her small child's hands over a line of soft green dresses hung neatly in a closet that smelled faintly of mothballs.
Mimi is tiny in the photo, Caroline notes with a bit of envy, her ankles looking like delicate little things in her high heels. There's only a small boy in the photo with her—Grandpa Martin, looking all of five years old and full of mischief. She can tell from the photo alone he's nearly vibrating with pent up energy, his eyes trained fully to some scene off camera while Mimi's grip looks to be deathly tight even from seventy-odd years in the future.
"Who knew the delta could get that much snow," Caroline comments, her eyes traveling from Mimi's fur muff to the wintery ground beneath her round-toed heels.
Liz snorts as she flips through the box on the coffee table. "Not much use for that fur in Mississippi now, I'll tell you that much. It was ridiculously hot last week and the lawyer's office had just lost their air conditioning unit."
"Well that sounds like hell," Caroline mutters, carefully placing the photo back in its weathered envelope.
Her mother shoots her a grin. "Enjoy," she says, tipping her near empty glass of red wine in Caroline's direction. "I'm heading to bed. Early deputy meeting tomorrow. Sleep tight, sweetie." She leans forward to kiss Caroline's forehead, and her scent lingers in the air long after she vanishes into the back bedroom.
Caroline doesn't immediately follow, instead choosing to remain seated on the couch and continuing to look through the old photos. She gets a tiny thrill whenever she comes across one of herself with her father, or with Mimi.
Her great-grandmother, called Mimi because toddler Caroline had shrieked it at her at every turn, a baby's bastardization of mine-mine, had been widowed when her son was just a child, and both her son and grandson had passed on before her too. It had always struck Caroline that Mimi must've suffered from a particularly nasty strain of rotten luck, to have her most beloved ones leave her behind with so many more years yet to live.
She had ended up, if Caroline's math is right, outliving her husband by nearly sixty years, her only son by nearly thirty, and her only grandson by eight.
A curse, Liz Forbes had called it once.
—
Caroline awakens the next morning to an email from Natalie bearing the subject line Urgent: Have You Arrived with nothing in the email body. Groaning, Caroline pushes herself out of her childhood bed and lets an exasperated breath hiss through her teeth. "Have I arrived, Jesus H Natalie, at least Google how long it takes to get from New York City to Avery, Mississippi before you send me stupidass emails—"
Her scalding shower helps to slake a little of her irritation, but some still lingers. She'd been planning to spend a few days here, not a wham-bam-thank you ma'am of a visit—it feels like she's barely even seen her mother.
"This is why they're paying you, Forbes," she reminds herself as she hauls her suitcase onto the bed. At least, she thinks with no small amount of disappointment, she'd hardly unpacked.
Small mercies.
—
Seven hours total travel time and Caroline is finally, finally—
—at Steven's door.
She's exhausted, it's raining, she's resolved to be on the road before sunup tomorrow morning for the six hour drive ahead of her, and somehow her nervous system still finds the energy to kick up its flight or fight response at the sight of the neat little mailbox with Forbes stenciled on one side.
The last time she was here was for her father's funeral.
Her hand is rising to knock on the door when it swings open, revealing Steven, who looks—
—incredibly displeased with her—
"Caroline," he scolds, reaching for her suitcase and ushering her in with a wary glance at the dark clouds that have gathered in the distance. "You should have called me to come pick you up at the airport, did you rent a car? You know they gouge you something awful at airports, I do hope you're billing the rental fee back to your office—"
As he leads her inside, she reflects on just how impossible it is to not like Steven—though at sixteen, she had tried her damndest. Caroline feels her face heat at the memory and, pushing it away, sends him a grateful smile as she dodges the pack of dogs that crowd her upon entering the house.
"Atticus!" Steven commands, and when the largest of the dogs sits immediately, the rest follow his lead. They look up at Caroline with large, soulful eyes and she rolls her own.
"Quit begging," she tells them with mock disapproval. "It's unbecoming of Southern gentlemen."
"Your mom tells me you're doing an article on Hawthorne House," Steven calls out from the kitchen; she can hear the opening and closing of the cabinet doors and it makes her heart constrict. Steven was never the cook in this house.
"Yep. Well, not so much Hawthorne House itself, but like, a returning to your roots piece." She makes a face at the stupid wording Natalie had insisted on using. "My editor is super excited for it, so y'know. Pressure's on."
"You've always been a fabulous writer, Caroline. I'm sure her confidence is well-founded." Steven appears in the foyer. "I hope white is okay," he says, holding out a dark green bottle for her approval. When she nods, he disappears back into the kitchen, though this time she follows him and four dogs follow her, their nails clacking against the tile floor. "I...attempted to make you dinner, but I'm afraid the outcome was less than appetizing." His nose wrinkles. "Bangkok Alley should be arriving momentarily."
"Thai sounds perfect," she tells him honestly, accepting the glass he offers. "I hope you don't mind if I have an early night, Steven, I'm leaving in the morning and that drive—"
"Is ghastly," he finishes for her, nodding in understanding. His eyes twinkle at her. "Believe me, I remember. I hope you've downloaded several audiobooks for the stretch after Birmingham."
Caroline groans, her head dropping into her hands. "Ew. God, don't remind me."
Once the pad Thai has arrived, Caroline says casually as she chews her noodles, "Did you and Dad...go to Hawthorne House a lot? After I stopped?"
Steven considers her thoughtfully. "I wouldn't say it was often. Probably twice a year, maybe a little more if we thought your Mimi sounded blue. In all honesty, she came to stay here more often than we went there."
Caroline blinks in surprise. "Really?" And she knows it's silly, because obviously Mimi had left Hawthorne House to take up residence at Butterfly Gardens Nursing Home in Jackson. But it seems wrong, somehow—the thought of the old antebellum house sitting empty and silent, its windows as dark as lifeless eyes.
It makes her shiver.
Steven doesn't seem to notice. "You know," he muses as he swirls his wine, "Between you, me, and the fencepost, I never liked that house."
She raises her eyebrows at him. "Why not?"
He shrugs and helps himself to more pad Thai. "It's supposed to be haunted, you know."
Her fork clatters loudly to her plate; the sharp sound makes the dogs jump up. "What?"
Steven seems surprised that she's surprised. "Sure. You know, with its history and all the things that have happened there."
Caroline stares at him blankly. "I seriously have no clue what you're talking about," she says, brow furrowing. "What history? What things?"
He waves his own fork at her nonchalantly before scooping up more noodles. "According to your father, several...er, branches of the family tree met rather...untimely ends, shall we say, in or around Hawthorne House." He shrugs again. "But I never independently verified this information with your Mimi, so please do take it with a grain of salt. Bill did have a flair for the dramatic." Steven sends a pointed gaze to where she had dropped her fork, but she barely notices.
No way. Not Hawthorne House, the setting of some of her most favorite and treasured memories. "That can't be true. I've never heard that."
But, Caroline reflects, when would she have been told? Her father had died nearly a decade ago, and their relationship had been in the infancy of its rediscovery. She'd spoken to Mimi only sporadically for years, in birthday and Christmas phone calls, and who tells ghost stories to their high school aged great-granddaughter? That left Liz Forbes, who, while a favored former in-law, was still not a blood relation. No, her mother probably wasn't even aware.
Steven fixes her with a look. "Not even how your Mimi, tough as nails though she was, outlived two generations of Forbes men? Three, if you count your great-grandfather?" There's no bitterness in his voice, but she feels a twinge of it within her own heart all the same.
Caroline goes still. "My great-grandfather died from the flu. Which wasn't exactly uncommon back then."
"True," he agrees, and she thinks he might be fighting off an indulgent smile.
"Papaw died in a car crash," she continues, and again, Steven offers no argument, simply nodding. "And Dad..." she trails off, and her stepfather looks down at the table, neither of them willing to press any further on that particular bruise. "A run of really shitty luck," she finishes lamely. "Mom called it a family curse once, but ghosts? Ghosts aren't real."
Steven doesn't look entirely convinced. "As I said, all of this information came third hand—from Mimi to your father to me," he says. "Maybe somewhere down the line, the stories got tangled, but what I can tell you is that your father didn't understand how Mimi could stand to live by herself there." He shudders, and Caroline thinks vaguely that her father wasn't the only with a flair for the dramatic. "Doors opening and shutting, footsteps in the hallway with no one around, things disappearing and reappearing around the house. That kind of thing."
"I never noticed anything like that," she insists, swirling the last sip of her wine in the glass before downing it in a gulp. "And I slept there for, like, what has to be years when you add up all the summers together."
Steven nods once, as though acquiescing to her superior knowledge. "I'm sure you would have noticed something if it was actually haunted, my dear."
And she would have.
Wouldn't she?
"Regardless," he cuts in, interrupting her racing thoughts, "Haunted or not, I refuse to let you drive to Hawthorne House in that awful rental. Your dad's car is still in the garage. You'll take it."
The knowledge that he still has Bill Forbes' car throws her, chasing away everything else. "You—why do you still have Dad's car?"
The smile that ghosts across Steven's face sends a pang through her heart. "Couldn't bear to sell it," he tells her honestly. "He would want you to take it. Leave that thing with me, and take the car."
—
Caroline ends up caving the next day, handing over the rental car keys to Steven and accepting the use of her father's as they stand in the pale light of the morning sun. When she offers to pay him some variation of the rental fee, Steven looks downright offended over his steaming cup of coffee. The rain had swept through overnight, leaving behind a cloudless sky and a thick blanket of humidity.
"He would have insisted," Steven says, waving her off. "Why waste the money when there's a perfectly good car sitting useless in my garage?"
But she draws the line when he tries to send her off with one of his dogs.
"Just take Finch," he coaxes, and upon hearing his name, one of the dogs curled up near the front door perks up, his tail thumping interestedly against the floor. "He's very well trained, and you know, I worry about you all alone in that tiny backwoods town. They're very...insular down there. And it's been quite a while since your last visit."
Her first instinct is to defend Avery, but it dies quietly behind her teeth. He isn't wrong—outside of the walls of Hawthorne House and away from Mimi's protective wing, she had felt a bit like an outsider once she had gotten old enough to notice.
"You're not wrong," she concedes finally, "but what if he got out and got lost? I'd never forgive myself."
Steven waves off her concern dismissively. "He is very well trained, Caroline. Finch!" he calls out, and the dog stands, bounding over to where they sit, his tongue panting happily. "There's a good boy, sit for your big sister—" Finch's rear plops down obediently next to her and Caroline is charmed despite herself.
"How about this," she bargains, scratching under Finch's chin, much to the dog's delight, "give me, like, a week or a two on my own, and if I need protection of this very good and ferocious boy—" she punctuates the endearments with coos and more scratches, this time behind Finch's ears, "—I'll give you a call, and you can meet me in Birmingham for a doggy drop off."
"Deal," Steven says agreeably.
Finch's head has swiveled between the two of them, and his expectant dark eyes tug at her heart.
"Two weeks, my boy," she hears Steven say comfortingly to him as she loads the car. "You'll see her in two weeks."
—
Caroline makes it through Birmingham without incident, thanks in large part to the backlog of podcasts she had downloaded to distract from the boring sameness of the interstate. She counts no less than eight Alabama Highway Patrol cars once the city is in her rear-view mirror and sets her cruise control to seventy-five.
The road turns bumpy when she crosses into Mississippi, the asphalt a patchwork of various shades of grey and black, the mismatched concrete evidence of where potholes have been poorly filled.
She doesn't head south for Jackson just yet, instead continuing straight west towards Greenwood, towards Avery. The exit signs tick off names that Caroline hasn't thought of in years—Columbus, Winona, Coffeeville—each of them a reminder of the dwindling miles that remain between her and Hawthorne House.
It isn't until she sees the tiny, sun bleached sign for Avery, hanging just below the larger, more official sign for Greenwood, that she turns her podcasts off, her grip tightening ever so slightly on the steering wheel. She takes the exit, something like apprehension building in her chest.
The old silo is still standing, and for some reason, its presence jutting into the sky is comforting. As a child, Caroline remembers the silo marking her internal countdown to their imminent arrival to Hawthorne House, to Mimi. The kudzu has worked at claiming the tall cylindrical structure, climbing up the walls and wrapping itself around the brick until the majority of the silo has been swallowed by its green vines, but the dome at the top still gleams a rusty red in the mid-afternoon sun. Feeling suddenly, inexplicably light, Caroline rolls her window down halfway, and scrolls until she finds a sunny, bright playlist to stream through her aux cord.
Every half mile, she finds herself remembering someone she hasn't thought about in years—Ms. Mavis, the antiques dealer who chain smoked and watched The Young and the Restless on a tiny tube tv whose screen was less picture and more static; Mr. Rusty, the town drunk who somehow sobered up every morning by six am to pilot his ancient crop duster across the various crops growing the fields; Rosemarie Foster, who, rumor had it, had been the other woman of a state senator down in Jackson. All of their faces flicker across Caroline's memory as she speeds down the tiny, barely paved highway. The remnants of gravel kick up in her wake, white dust flying behind her.
She inhales deeply, the thick, wet air and the flowery scent of honeysuckles filling her lungs to capacity. The humidity weighs the air with water, but there's enough of a breeze that Caroline isn't too concerned yet with the damp, though she's certain that within a week, she'll be singing a different tune. She hadn't bothered packing her hair straightener for a reason.
The kudzu has grown wild. It marches up the tree trunks and covers the ground, a tiny ocean of green leaves and vines. Caroline slows as she approaches the nearly invisible turn onto the driveway for Hawthorne House. She's never made this drive herself, never had to squint at the road to find the slight dip where asphalt turns to gravel. The realization makes her turn the music down until it's barely audible, the sound of the gravel crunching beneath the car tires easily drowning it out.
The driveway is still lined on both sides with large, leafy magnolia trees, their branches heavy and long enough to reach out and touch each other over the roof of the car, nearly blocking out the sunlight. The line of trees breaks at the beginning of the front yard, where a weeping willow tree hunches over a small, wrought iron bench, nearly eclipsing it from view. The tree is far bigger than Caroline remembers, the slender branches dangling down to graze the grass that struggles to grow beneath its shade. She parks the car near it and hops out eagerly, making her way over towards the weeping willow.
She had named it Mother Willow, she remembers, nostalgia panging. The product of watching Pocahontas every day for an entire summer, and her delight upon discovering that the tree in Mimi's front yard was the same kind as the one who doled out motherly advice. She had pretended to talk to that tree for weeks, and Mimi had gamely played along, pretending to hear the tree talk back.
There is a sudden tightness in her throat and Caroline swallows hard before taking a deep, steadying breath. It's a mistake: the scent of magnolia blossoms is nearly overpowering, and threatens to throw her backwards in time. Mimi had never worn perfume, she remembers with sudden, crystal clarity, because she hadn't needed to: the scent of the magnolias clung to her clothing, her hair, her skin. She had trimmed the large white blossoms from their branches and set them in vases around the house, and Hawthorne House had smelled like it too.
Squaring her shoulders and setting her jaw, Caroline turns slowly, letting herself take in the full view of the house.
Nothing could have prepared her for it.
From an outsider's perspective, she supposes it looks much like any antebellum house—the large white columns in the front that extend up to the point of the roof, the wrap around porch with its smaller white columns holding up the floor of the second story's porch, the faded blue shutters that bookend each tall window, the stone steps that lead up to the front door—all hallmarks of the standard sort of architecture littered across the southeast. At the far end is a porch swing, and two old rocking chairs, their paint chipping, frame the front door.
But Caroline knows that her father built the bird house that stands several feet down from the house, knows that her grandfather had painted the shutters to a deep navy that now appears as a washed-out soft blue. She knows that Mimi had planted the pansies that still bloom in the flower beds around the front steps, and remembers helping water them as a child, a mason jar clutched in her small fist.
Slowly, as though the house is a living thing that might spook should she approach it too quickly, Caroline makes her way towards the front door. The wind chimes—hung, she knows, by her grandmother years before her father had been born—clink lightly together, humming in the breeze.
The porch is covered in a thick layer of dust, and there are more than one discarded snake skins lying haphazardly across the planks; Caroline tries not to gag. She reaches for the storm door and pulls—
Locked.
"You'd be Caroline, then?" a woman's voice rings out. Caroline nearly jumps out of her skin at the sudden intrusion on her silence, whirling on the voice before relaxing. She hadn't even heard the woman approach.
"Yes, hi," Caroline says, collecting herself, though her heart rate has yet to come down. "Sorry, I don't know why I just expected it to be unlocked." She gives a small, self-deprecating laugh before sticking her hand out. "Caroline. Um, I think maybe I spoke to you on the phone? You must be with Jean's office." The woman doesn't confirm or deny, so Caroline continues hesitantly, "The realtor? Bringing the keys?"
Something passes across the woman's face, and she nods once. "I'm Mary," she says shortly, and her handshake is calloused but firm. It's then that Caroline sees a small girl with pigtail braids peek out from behind Mary's long dress.
Caroline bends down slightly, holding her hand out again. "Hi," she says kindly. "I'm Caroline. What's your name?"
The little girl eyes her hand before hiding her face in Mary's hip.
"She's Hannah Grace," Mary says, voice softening just a bit. "A little wary around strangers, but we're getting there." Her tone turns brisk, and Caroline can't help but appreciate her no-nonsense approach. It reminds her, achingly, of Mimi. "Now, here are the keys—" she holds out the handful of brass in her hand for Caroline to take, "—the big one is to the front door, the silver one is the glass door, and that small brass one is to the shed out back behind the pond. I wouldn't recommend going out to the shed alone, now—"
"Why?" Caroline asks quickly, tensing. "What's in the shed?"
Mary fixes her with a sharp look. "Snakes, I'd imagine. The cottonmouths have been particularly nasty so far this year and we're not yet out of spring. The pond out back also tends to attract the occasional water moccasin, and they sometimes take refuge there."
Right. "Of course," Caroline mumbles, feeling slightly chastised at her ignorance.
"There's not a lick of food in the kitchen," Mary continues, as though Caroline hadn't said a word. "So I'll imagine you'll want to go to market and stock up before you get too comfortable." She looks down at that little girl still hanging shyly behind her. "We'll be off then, Hannah Grace"
"Right, of course," Caroline agrees, her eyes sliding distractedly to the drive. "And please tell Jean that I'll call her once I get settled." Realization hits as the pair turn towards the bend in the driveway. "Wait, did you—did you walk here? Please, I can give you a ride home—"
"We've not got too far to go," Mary interrupts firmly, taking Hannah Grace's small hand in her own. "But thank you for your kind offer."
Caroline doesn't watch them go, instead turning back towards the front door, the keys heavy in her hands. When she turns back, the pair of them are gone.
—
Caroline can't say how long she stands on the front porch, the warm breeze occasionally ruffling her shirt and lifting her hair from her shoulders. The only sound is the song of the wind chimes, and the rustling leaves that surround her. She'd forgotten just how quiet it could get out here, miles away from anything.
"Alright," she says aloud, meeting the eyes of her reflection in the glass door and nodding sternly. "Big girl pants, Forbes."
The lock takes some wiggling, but gives way eventually, and the screen door still creaks as it reaches the halfway open point. She had forgotten that, and just how heavy the solid oak front door was.
The dust that kicks up as she enters makes her eyes water, her nose stinging. Caroline reaches for the light switch she knows is on the wall right next to the door, but the bulbs don't spark. Sighing, she pulls her phone out of her back pocket and starts a note—get electricity turned on. Wrinkling her nose, she adds under it and water.
Nothing has changed since she was last here, nearly a decade ago. The worn couch is still across from the brick fireplace, the white deer antlers still hung above the mantle that holds several small frames. There is an old antique secretary directly next to the front door, with a comically modern plastic quill pen from Mount Vernon sticking out of an old brass ink bottle. Caroline had bought it for Mimi in the fourth grade, and the sight of it still sitting in the small bottle tugs at her heart.
Not for the first time since her trek southward from New York, she wonders why she hadn't made more of an effort to keep in touch with her great-grandmother. Teenage foolishness had long worn off, and yet she still hadn't bothered to give her but an occasional call.
Sighing heavily, Caroline pushes the regret aside and heads for the kitchen—
"Oh God," she exclaims, rearing backwards away from the doorway, one hand coming up to cover her nose and mouth.
Something has died in this room, the scent of it hitting her nose like a freight train. Her hand isn't enough to keep it out, so she pulls the collar of her shirt up to cover the lower half of her face even as she tries not to inhale through her nose. Unable to bear it any longer, she backs out of the room, waving her hand in front of her face in an effort to disperse the horrible smell.
Coughing into her palm, she goes back outside, sitting down in one of the rocking chairs and trying not to gag.
"Okay," she says aloud to the emptiness around her, "first, we get power and water. Then we deal with whatever died in the kitchen."
—
"What kind of podunk-ass town doesn't give receipts," Caroline grumbles under her breath, shooting her nastiest glare over one shoulder at the small brown brick building behind her. Sure, they were turning on her water and her power, after demanding a three-hundred-dollar deposit and refusing to give her an invoice. Even after she had explained that she would need it to get reimbursement from her accounting department!
She cranks the car, still glaring daggers at the building in front of her, and peels out of the gravel road until she pulls up to a crossroad with an unfamiliar building in one corner.
The fields, stretching as far across the landscape as the eye could see, are the same as they ever were. The short stems are capped by snow white bulbs baking in the late afternoon sun, and the blowing of the wind occasionally picks up enough dust to create a visible, light brown breeze. The occasional house breaks up the monotony, and Caroline surprises herself by being able to list off the last names of the families that live in them: Hawkins, Pinckney, Hamilton, Brown, and the last house she's pretty sure belongs to the Willards.
The bar though—that's new. Number Seven, the faded yellow sign reads. Caroline's forehead crinkles as she strains her memory, trying to place what had been here previously. It wasn't Rodney's General—that she had passed on her way to Hawthorne House, and it wasn't the old post office, the burned-out skeletal remains of which still stood (barely) at the edge of town. The rest of the buildings that make up Avery's comically small downtown are further down the road at the town square.
Her eyes narrow in suspicion at the small building with modest signage. How likely was it that someone new had come to Avery, Mississippi? And on top of that—to start a bar of all things?
"You gonna go in, or you gonna buy it a drink?" a familiar voice drawls, interrupting her train of thought. A heavy hand claps down on her shoulder.
Caroline manages to hide her groan, but only just. "Fisher Hamilton," she says in greeting, forcing cheer into her voice. "Long time."
"Too long," Fisher agrees heartily. "Heard about how Ms. Forbes left you that house in her will. Figured you'd be coming down soon enough, and when I saw Bill's car, well—" He pauses to take a breath before motioning towards the bar. "You goin' in? C'mon, first rounds on me as a welcome home gift!" He doesn't wait for her, making his way towards the entrance. Caroline follows reluctantly.
The inside of the building gives her no additional clues as to its past life. It looks like the inside of what she imagines every rural bar in a small Southern town looks like—a long bar top, lined with stools that look as though they've seen better days, a menagerie of liquor lining the back wall behind the bartender, booths lining the outer walls, and a jukebox near the door. On the back wall, near the restrooms, hangs another sign, a replica of the one outside: Number Seven.
Curiosity wins out over pride as she sits down next to him at the bar top. "Hey Fisher, what used to be here?"
Fisher pulls the most beat up twenty she's seen in her life and tosses it down on the bar. "You remember ol' Jimmy Franklin?"
Her nose wrinkles. "Not...really?"
He laughs at that, a deep belly laugh that makes the bar top around him vibrate. "Nah, I don't guess you would, you bein' Riley's age and Jimmy bein' older than me." Fisher pauses and she suspects it's for dramatic effect; he'd always had a theatrical streak. "His daddy owned this building, used to be a gas station. Jimmy turned it into the bar, but let it get real worn down and shit." He shrugs. "'Ventually, he couldn't make the payments on it no more, and an out of towner came in and snapped it up."
"An out of towner?" Caroline repeats incredulously.
Fisher nods, wiping at the sweat that is beading along his upper lip. "Quiet fella, keeps to himself mostly. He—" one of Fisher's pockets begins to ring, and he winces, holding up a large finger. "Mind if I take this? Think it's my ex-wife…"
"By all means," Caroline says, but he has already slid off his seat and made his way to the exit. Fisher Hamilton, she thinks with a slight shake of her head. She had played with his little brother Riley as a kid, had even nursed a tiny crush on him for a few weeks during one summer that had painfully concluded with her finding him kissing Lauren Carmichael behind a thick oak tree down by one of the tiny tributaries that sprung off of the Yazoo River.
Lost in thought, she wonders vaguely if the bar is strictly drinks only or if there might be some semblance of bar food when a grease-stained paper menu is slid across the bar top towards her.
"You're new," a smooth, British-accented voice says pleasantly.
Caroline doesn't look up. "You're new," she parrots back, inspecting the menu closely. "You must be the out of towner who…" she trails off as she finally looks up. Oh. "...bought this place from Jimmy," she finishes lamely.
The bartender—bar owner, she amends —holds his hand out. "Klaus," he says with an easy, far too charming grin. And maybe it's because everything about him feels wrong—the accent, the perfectly fitted black dress shirt he's wearing in the heat of late Mississippi spring, the watchfulness hidden in the depths of his blue eyes—but her heartbeat kicks up, and she can't tell if it's attraction or warning bells. "And you must be the prodigal daughter returned from exile up North."
"Prodigal great-granddaughter," she corrects. "Caroline." He holds her hand a beat too long before releasing it and she blurts out the first thing that comes to mind. "Why are you so dressed up? This is a dive bar." She winces—after all, it's his dive bar—and adds sheepishly, "No offense."
"None taken." He doesn't answer the question. "Get you anything?"
"Um. Sure." She glances back down at the small menu and picks the first thing that jumps off the page. "Catfish sounds great."
"Oh, you're getting the catfish?" Fisher asks as he re-enters. "Good choice. Caroline Forbes, I do apologize, but I've gotta run." His hand comes up to his heart. "Sara Leigh would sure love to have you over for dinner once you get settled. Don't be a stranger now, you hear?"
"Of course," she lies as he nods his goodbye to Klaus and exits once again. She turns back towards the bar and exhales, slumping forward onto her elbows, her chin in her palms. "What is the strongest beer you have?"
That makes him laugh, and her insides warm at the sound as he turns to the fridge behind him and pulls out a bottle with a crown-wearing alligator drawn on one side. "Eight percent alcohol," he confirms as he pours it into a chilled glass and sets it down in front of her. "You'll want that with food if you plan on driving yourself home."
Caroline groans, slumping down further. "Right. That twisty gravel road is probably the Bambi Autobahn right about now."
He's watching her as he cleans a glass, and she allows herself a moment to admire the way the muscles in his forearms move from below lowered lashes. "Bit of a rough day, it seems," he remarks casually.
She eyes the beer, then him, and thinks fuck it before taking a long, reckless swig. "You have no idea," she confides as she sets the glass back down.
"Try me."
That alcohol seriously hits fast, especially on her empty stomach, because it's on the tip of her tongue to say I'd love to, but she catches herself just in time. She'd left one night stands behind a long time ago, and Avery is the size of her thumbnail—there's no way she'd be able to avoid him afterwards. Caroline is good at flirting, has always been good at flirting, and what's more, she enjoys it. But Avery, Mississippi isn't Manhattan, and it would do her well to keep that fact close at hand. "Okay, but just remember—" she points at him warningly, "you asked for it."
"Understood," he says dryly.
Caroline ticks off her trials and tribulations on her fingers. "First of all, I'm only here because my great-grandmother died and left me her house, and I had to come down here from New York because somehow, in the year of our Lord two thousand and twenty, the city of Jackson, Mississippi—a state's capitol, mind you—can't accept my e-signature on a stack of legal documents."
His mouth twitches as though he is fighting back a smile. "My utmost condolences on your loss."
"Thanks. Second of all, said house has no water, no power, and worst of all, no Wi-fi, which is particularly bad for me, considering my job is only letting me stay gone for an extended period of time because they want me to write about—" Caroline gestures around with her free hand, "—this. This place, this town, which I can't exactly do without Internet access." She slumps, letting her forehead drop onto stacked fists. "And something died in the kitchen, and it smells seriously foul."
Klaus is no longer fighting back his smile. "You can use the bar Wi-fi," he offers genially, pulling a napkin from beneath the bar top and scribbling onto it before pushing it in towards her. Caroline sits up straight and turns the napkin over in her hands.
"That's really nice of you, but it's a temporary solution," she says. "Oh, also, the county can't issue me a receipt for the three hundred dollars it took to get the water and power turned back on at Hawthorne House, which really is just the cherry on top of my shit sundae." Before she can think the better of it, Caroline reaches forward and polishes off the remainder of the beer. "Just an all around outstanding day for me."
As though on cue, a plate of steaming hot fried catfish appears in front of her. Thank god, because her very valid reasons for not sliding her phone number back across the bar have all but vanished in the haze of the alcohol and she needs something to occupy her hands. She's pretty sure she's openly staring at his forearms in the rolled-up sleeves of his button-down dress shirt.
It's easily been a decade since she's had fried catfish, and it's almost too hot to eat without burning her tongue, but Caroline finds she's absolutely starving.
"When I first moved here," Klaus says, his tone idle, "it took me three separate attempts to convince Avery Gas and Water that I was in fact actually living at the address I provided." He leans back against the back counter. "The third try, they very suspiciously asked what my business was in their town and when I would be leaving."
It's hardly shocking. "Avery doesn't like outsiders," she tells him, reaching for a hushpuppy before realizing she didn't order any. Caroline narrows her eyes. "I didn't ask for any sides."
He shrugs, utterly unabashed at being caught. "Would be a terrible blow to business if I let you leave inebriated," he points out. "Consider it a welcome home gift."
Caroline chews on her lip. "I'm not, like, really from here. I just spent the summers here," she confesses, pulling the plate full of hushpuppies towards her as though he might take them back with this revelation. She almost continues, almost spills her guts to this man she's only just met about how odd it is to be back here in a place that is so synonymous in her mind with Mimi, without her. She only just manages to curb the impulse.
Klaus slings the rag he had been using over one shoulder. "From one outsider to another, then," he says, mock toasting her with the glass he had been cleaning before stashing it away under the bar.
The door opens behind her and his attention shifts to somewhere over her shoulder; Caroline polishes off another hushpuppy before reaching into her bag and pulling out her phone to connect to his Wi-fi.
Instantly, her phone begins to vibrate, the brightness of the screen illuminating her face in the dim lighting of the bar. She groans as the missed texts and calls begin to roll in, the names flashing briefly behind each other: Mom, Steven, Elena, Natalie—
She taps her email app and searches Natalie's name. There have been three more emails under Urgent: Have You Arrived, and Caroline pulls up the latest one (the body simply reads "please call ASAP"). Sighing heavily, she slides down off the bar stool and tucks herself into the nearby wall, her phone at her ear.
Natalie answers on the first ring. "Caroline," she says briskly, skipping any form of greeting, "I trust you've made it safely?"
"Yes, I'm so sorry, I lost signal hours ago and just found Wi-fi—"
"I've decided to change your assignment," the editor cuts in. Caroline's heart sinks in disappointment. Great, back to scarves, she thinks with no small amount of bitterness, her head dropping back to rest against the wall. And to think, she had been seriously looking forward to digging into Hawthorne House!
"Instead of a long feature to run in November, I've decided you should also send in smaller, bi-weekly pieces about your life in Avondale—"
"Avery," Caroline mutters, and she can almost see Natalie waving her off dismissively in her mind's eye. She turns to the bar and snags a napkin, pulling a pen out of her bag to take notes, tucking the phone between her ear and her neck.
"—with a few tips and tricks included. Do you know what percentage of our subscribers live in rural communities, Caroline?" Caroline opens her mouth reply, her pen tearing through the flimsy napkin surface, but Natalie powers forward. "Thirty two percent. That's an incredible untapped market, and we would be doing our advertisers a disservice if we didn't use this opportunity to cater towards that audience." Natalie pauses. "Do you understand what I'm asking of you?"
"Yes, I think so—"
"Excellent. Of course, it means you'll be there much longer than previously anticipated; I do hope that's not an issue." Natalie pauses briefly, as though waiting for any protests.
"Um, that's totally fine, I just need to know how long so I can sublet—"
"Through the summer. Send Whitney a note, she can surely house a summer intern in your apartment." There's the sound of shuffling papers, then, "I expect your first article to be sent to me by next week's end." And with that, Natalie hangs up without a goodbye.
Caroline straightens, and stares down at her phone in awe before pulling her wallet out and scanning the bar for Klaus. He appears in front of her as though he read her mind, and when he sees her wallet, he shakes his head. "As I said," he says with a slow half smile that makes her stomach dip, "from one outsider to another."
She blushes.
God, maybe she should just leave her stupid phone number.
—
Caroline resists, but only just, and before she can make any rushed decisions, she leaves the bar, grimly staring down the barrel of having to clean out the dead thing in the kitchen. The town won't be sending someone to turn on her power or water until the next day, and Caroline refuses, absolutely refuses, to sleep in the same house as something that smells so foul.
Armed with gardening gloves that extend up past her elbows and several bottles of Clorox, Caroline wraps the only scarf she brought with her around her nose and mouth. "Okay ladies, let's get in formation," she says, bouncing on her toes slightly to hype herself up before taking a deep breath and diving headfirst into the kitchen.
Her first thought is that her scarf is worse than useless, but her second is that maybe somehow, the stench has gotten worse in the span of only a few hours. "Why do you hate me," she wonders pleadingly aloud to no one in particular—the universe, Hawthorne House, fate.
Quickly, as though they are live wires, she flings open the doors of the cabinets under the sink, only to find dust covered bottles of household cleaners. God only knows how old they are—Caroline thinks briefly Mimi herself may have bought them before moving to Butterfly Gardens. The thought only needles her with sadness, so she pushes it away and resumes her quest for whatever died.
"Lower cabinets clear," she announces to the empty air, standing up so fast that for a moment, she sees stars.
She opens the cabinet door just to the right of the stove and immediately has to jump back, coughing and waving one gloved hand in front of her covered face. Inside is a very dead and very decomposed possum, clearly having met its untimely end hunting in the shelves for something to eat.
"Oh God," Caroline moans miserably, trying to both not look and look just enough to gently scoot the poor thing into the large black trash bag she's holding out. As soon as it's secured in the garbage bag, she ties off the ends and sprints towards the door. "Ew, ew, ew, ew," she chants as she races outside, blessed fresh air hitting her face even below the scarf. She drops the bag into the garbage can and pulls down the scarf, inhaling deeply. To her surprise, her hands and knees are both shaking.
"I don't think I'm cut out for country living," she confesses to the nearby weeping willow. Its branches sway in the breeze, but otherwise, it remains silent to her plight.
The sun is dipping below the horizon, marking the end of her first day in Avery, and Caroline turns back to look at Hawthorne House as the magnolia trees cast their long shadows against it.
Her brow wrinkles in confusion. If she didn't know any better, she'd swear the soft cream curtains hanging in one of the upstairs windows moved. There—the fraying edge of one side pulls away from the middle of the window, as though gripped by invisible fingers belonging to someone who wants to peer out at her trying to catch her breath in the driveway—
Caroline shakes her head firmly, and when she looks again, the curtains are perfectly still. A trick of the light or — "Dead possum fumes," she decides before squaring her shoulders and heading into the house.
She needs to light some candles and open some windows before night falls.
—
tbc.
AN: Every grandmother has a secret recipe they will not share no matter how much you beg (mine made this chocolate cobbler and it was *chef's kiss*).
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