Falling into Forever Read online

  Don’t fight, she thought. Maybe it will go away. She started to submerge far below the surface. She shut her eyes tight. I don’t want to die.

  The next instant, she felt a grip around her waist, and she rose to the surface. With her head now above the waves, she opened her eyes and saw Taylor throw her a round life preserver from the boat. She saw Brad jump into the waves. He dragged her to the ladder at the boat’s stern. Then he lifted her out of the water and pulled himself up beside her to the safety of the deck.

  “Alex, you scared me,” said Taylor, rushing to her friend’s side.

  “Get a towel!” ordered Brad.

  Alexandra shivered in the wind, but soon Taylor was back with a towel that she’d found below deck. Covering her scared and soaking friend, Taylor asked, “What happened? It looked like you leapt into the water.”

  “I fell,” stuttered Alexandra, wrapping the towel tightly around her body. “I saw—um—well, I don’t know what I saw. Something was standing behind me,” her voice trailed off. She looked into Brad’s face.

  “I think you look like you’ve seen a ghost,” he said.

  “Can we go back now?” asked Alexandra, her hand gripping the necklace around her neck to assure herself that it had not become lost in the ocean during her struggle.

  “Sure,” he said. “Why don’t you come and stand by me at the wheel?” he offered, helping her to her feet.

  As the boat sailed quietly back to the marina, Alexandra’s eyes scanned the waves, waiting for a fin to break the surface of the choppy water. Safely docked, she glanced back again at the water before stepping up onto the wooden pier. But all she could see was a dolphin, flipping in and out of the waves.

  “We’ll put the top down on the convertible so that you can air-dry on the way back to your grandmother’s house,” Taylor joked as the three of them headed for the parking lot.

  Reaching the car, the girls slumped into their seats. Taylor let down the convertible top, as promised. “Thanks for everything,” Alexandra told Brad as he held the car door open for her.

  “No problem,” he said, closing the door as Taylor cranked the engine. “Do you two have plans for tonight?” he asked.

  “What do you have in mind?” Taylor asked, winking.

  “Some of my friends are getting together for a bonfire on the beach,” he told them. “You’re welcome to join us,” he said, all the time watching Alexandra.

  “Thanks,” Alexandra said, smiling. “We might do that.”

  “Ciao!” exclaimed Taylor as she punched the accelerator and squealed out of the parking lot, heading back to Peyton Manor.

  As they drove to the estate, Alexandra was exhausted and subdued from her ordeal. She didn’t want to talk. She tried to relax. She closed her eyes to concentrate and to forget the shark, which was still lurking in her memory. During the drive, to get her mind elsewhere, she thought about what Granny June had told her about her family. It was a somewhat mysterious story that involved a fortuneteller.

  Granny June’s parents, Charles and Martha, had been born in poverty in South Carolina; their parents had been sharecroppers. Granny June had said that Charles never felt at ease among his siblings, as if he had been placed there by mistake. As a boy, Charles had accompanied his father on deliveries of cotton, riding in their wagon through the streets of old Charleston. Charles saw the city’s stately homes and decided that he would never be a sharecropper like his father.

  Charles met Granny June’s mother, Martha, during the four years that sharecroppers’s children were allowed to attend grade school. When Charles was fourteen, he left the cotton fields and ran away to the trading ships in the harbor. There, an aging sea captain took pity on him and let him swab the decks of his vessel in exchange for passage to Europe. For three years, Charles had adventures that led him to the cliffs of Dover, the Eiffel Tower, and the Parthenon in Athens. Along the way, he convinced the sea captain that he needed a loyal partner, a young man to expand the business into a full trading company.

  But the sea captain needed convincing. What did he want with a trading company? He was already a successful seaman, crossing the oceans for the highest bidder, with tobacco, rum, and cotton in his hull.

  But the captain’s chance encounter with a gypsy at a port in Romania changed his mind. The fortune-teller read the captain’s palm and saw great wealth in his future if he took Charles up on the plan. Then Charles offered his hand to be read by the gypsy. She recoiled, terrified to touch his skin. Only curiosity finally persuaded her to see his palm. She said that Charles, the captain, and their families would never want again.

  When Charles returned home to South Carolina, he married Martha, and they had two children, Joseph and June. With Charles’s grit and determination, the shipping company was highly successful, and he built the estate by the ocean for his family. Joseph grew up strong and smart. Granny June told Alexandra how much she loved her brother Joseph, who helped their father run the business while she attended tea parties and auditioned dashing young men to be her worthy husband.

  Joseph embarked on a military career. When June bid her brother farewell for West Point, she would not see him again until the Army sent him home, a wrecked veteran of General George Patton’s Third Army, which had rained hell upon the Germans. Not long after coming home, Joseph died in a hunting accident on the grounds of the estate. But that was all Alexandra knew about Joseph, because her grandmother had gotten strangely silent about him. She did know that when Granny June married her beau Thomas, her parents accepted him almost as another son, allowing the couple to share their large estate and bringing Thomas into the family business.

  5

  Invitation

  After what happened to Taylor in the attic at Peyton Manor, June made sure to lock the door to the room. She saw Patrick leave to get groceries. Then she gathered the invitations for her Labor Day barbecue and went out with Dixie. She couldn’t be gone long, because Ian, her brother’s closest friend, was supposed to visit.

  With his mistress in tow, Dixie lunged eagerly down the winding gravel driveway toward the mailbox, which was just outside the security gate. Singing birds and blooming flowers kept the dog distracted while June ambled slowly behind her.

  “Whew!” puffed June, mopping her brow with the back of her hand as she plopped the invitations into the mailbox. “That driveway gets longer every day,” she told Dixie. The dog tugged on the leash as they passed back through the gate.

  Dixie’s ears pricked at the sound of rustling leaves in the trees around them and scampered toward the edge of the driveway. The dog made a low growl and stared intently into the woods. Then Dixie began to bark furiously at the dense, silent trees.

  “Hush,” June scolded. She looked up into the trees and spied the remnants of a battered and abandoned tree house. “Good heavens,” she said, gazing at the treetops. “Jonathan!” June suddenly exclaimed her son’s name, thinking of his adventuresome childhood. Where was he now? No one knew. Perhaps he was not meant to have been born. When she was pregnant, she had nearly lost the baby when she slipped climbing the steep staircase to her bedroom at the manor house, where she and her husband lived with her parents. Jonathan arrived a month early and had never looked back. Tall and lean from birth, June and Thomas Peyton’s golden child grew swiftly and precociously. This thought reminded her of someone she must speak with.

  “Quiet down girl,” she commanded to the dog and pulled her into the woods. “This way,” she told the dog, whose eyes searched the ground for a trail.

  Moss dripped from towering oaks above their heads as they walked further into the forest. Dixie whimpered at her mistress’s side. Under a massive oak ahead of them sat a crumbling, overgrown shack.

  Stopping in front of the shack, June watched the doorway. “Are you in there?” she called out.

  A figure hovered in the shadows of the doorway, watching the gray-haired woman approach.

  Dixie’s paws snapped a twig, and she whimpered again.
June clung tightly to the leash. “May I see you?” she shouted toward the shack.

  “Der a storm comin.” An old woman’s thick Gullah voice echoed through the trees, speaking a mixture of Jamaican Creole and English.

  “The girl did not disturb anything in the attic,” June called to the figure. “I don’t know why the door was unlocked. It won’t happen again.”

  “Me think someting bad gonna happen,” continued the voice in the doorway.

  “Can I see you?” asked June, stepping closer.

  Out of the doorway came a white-haired woman with brown skin and deep wrinkles. She stood in the faint light shining through the treetops. “Me dun seen it, June Bug. De spirits shown me,” she hissed.

  “Is she in danger?” asked June, tears welling up in her eyes.

  “For sure. You know dat,” she shook her head and slid back into the shadows of the doorway.

  “For every gift there is a price,” June said softly.

  Stumbling backward, she yanked Dixie’s leash and fled toward the driveway. When she reached the gravel, she was panting breathlessly. She pulled at the locket dangling from her neck and pried it open with her shaking fingers. Inside, a chubby-faced, pigtailed, five-year-old Alexandra smiled at her. “The age of innocence is over, my dear,” she said tearfully, staring at the picture. After a minute she wiped away the tears with the back of her hand and began walking to the house to see if Ian had arrived yet.

  Meanwhile, Taylor and a still-soggy Alexandra were winding their way back to Peyton Manor. Finally a cloud of dust and scattered gravel trailed from the rear end of the convertible as it purred down the tree-lined driveway toward the house. Clinging to her patience, Taylor dug her sharp, pink nails into the steering wheel, while her foot lightly grazed the gas pedal.

  “Why doesn’t your grandmother have this thing paved?” she asked Alexandra as the car slowly wound down the brown, dirt path.

  “Granny says it keeps the traffic down,” Alexandra explained as the front porch eventually came into view.

  “Do you ever feel like you’re being watched here?” asked Taylor, her eyes darting back and forth over the curtain of silent oaks lining the driveway. They came past the gate with its bronze plaque, which said “Peyton Manor.” Alexandra remembered that Granny June and her husband Thomas put up that plaque after Granny June’s parents passed away.

  “You’re just not used to being around so much nature, city girl,” Alexandra offered as her eyes were drawn to the attic window under the roof. She thought it best not to mention the rustling attic curtains to Taylor as the car pulled up to the house.

  In front of the porch, brown and red cobblestones paved a circular roundabout where a long, white Cadillac sedan sat parked. From a rocker on the wide front porch, Granny June waved at the girls.

  “Look, Ian. They’re back,” she said to her visitor.

  “Who is that?” Taylor whispered in Alexandra’s ear as she skipped past her and up the porch steps, her right hand extended to greet him. Damp and exhausted, Alexandra trudged behind, mustering a smile.

  “What happened to you?” Granny June asked as she patted Alexandra’s tangled hair.

  “She decided to go for a swim,” Taylor said, giggling.

  “Goodness gracious,” said Granny June as she sat back down in the white wooden rocker. “You remember Ian, don’t you, Alex? He knew my brother.”

  “Of course,” said Alexandra. “It’s nice to see you again.”

  The white-haired man in a light-blue seersucker suit removed his straw hat and held it to his chest as he shook her hand. “You grow lovelier every time I see you,” he said in a lilting British accent as he cupped his left hand over their joined palms. “And you must be Miss Woodward,” he said, turning to Taylor.

  “It’s a pleasure,” she said, shaking his hand.

  “Captain Brad invited us to a beach party tonight,” Alexandra announced to her grandmother as she inched toward the front door.

  “That sounds lovely,” said Granny June.

  “Are you feeling all right?” asked Ian, gazing on Alexandra’s face. She noticed the look of concern that flashed in his gray eyes.

  “Ian is a retired doctor,” explained Granny June.

  “I know,” said Alexandra. “I think I need to lie down for a little while. That’s all,” she said, pushing her shoulder against the faded-red front door.

  “’Bye,” chirped Taylor as she followed Alexandra into the house.

  “What do you think?” June asked as Ian sat back down beside her.

  “She is only seventeen, June,” Ian noted, sipping his glass of iced tea. “That makes it difficult to decipher what powers she may be aware of at this point.”

  “Yes,” nodded June. “I remember that just before Jonathan left on the plane for Frankfurt, he called me and said there was all the time in the world to worry about the future. He felt that Alexandra was still too young— that maybe it would take years for her to grow into her powers, if she had them at all.”

  “We really don’t know yet,” Ian agreed.

  “In the woods today, I saw Jasmine,” June said.

  “Stop it, June,” he scoffed. “I don’t know why you give any credence to what that crazy old voodoo witch says.

  She’s only still here because you allow it.”

  June rocked her chair furiously against the wooden porch. “I know,” she told him. “But she scares me,” she said, picking up her glass of sweet tea from the low table beside her and taking another sip. “You know, the night before Joseph left here for West Point, he told me that he was frightened. He knew there would be a war, and he guessed that he might not make it out of that war alive.

  “That was the night he decided to tell me he could see things that happened a long time ago. Good things—but sometimes bad things, too. I asked him if it happened when he did this.”

  June put down her glass, reached out, and pressed her hand against Ian’s palm.

  “Joey told me yes, and he asked me how I knew. I told him that it was the same with me, and that nanny Jasmine considered it a gift. He also revealed to me that our dad had told him once about having his palm read by a gypsy.”

  Ian leaned forward, curious. “What did the gypsy see in Charles’s palm?”

  “Well,” said June, “it wasn’t your run-of-the-mill fortune. She said to our dad, ‘Your family will be hunted for their souls. Be kind or reap the price. Their children will have eyes, as will their children and their children’s children. A man is waiting—an old man—for them to be born, and a witch is waiting for them to die.’”

  June paused and looked for a moment at the ocean. “My brother said that he didn’t want to see things, but that the visions collapsed upon him”—she motioned to the beach—“like waves breaking on the shore.”

  Ian nodded.

  “I told him that nanny Jasmine did not want me to say anything to Momma and Poppa about this gift, so we never did.”

  The two sat quietly, watching the silent trees, still hand in hand.

  Upstairs, Taylor stretched herself across her bed while she typed furiously on her cell’s keyboard.

  In her own room, Alexandra stripped off her damp clothes and climbed into a hot shower, hoping to wash away the cold shivers quaking through her body from her unplanned swim. Frazzled, she closed her eyes tightly as the water poured over her head. Again, she tried to relax and think about something else. She tried to picture the dolphin swimming next to the sailboat. But all she could remember was the frightening image that she saw before she fell: the reflection of a strange man’s figure standing over her shoulder.

  The shower warmed her skin, and she put on a tee and jeans before throwing herself across the bed. But she was too frayed to sleep. Tossing and turning, she gave up and slipped on a pair of pink rubber flip-flops that she dug out from the bottom of her duffel. There was one thing she was curious about, that she just had to check out. As she cracked open her door a bit, it squeaked. She peeked
both ways down the deserted hallway. Slipping quietly from her doorway, she stepped lightly toward the attic at the end of the corridor. The doorknob did not turn when she tried it.

  “Locked,” she said to herself, her toes curling in a blast of cool air flowing from underneath the attic door.

  Slipping to the floor on her belly, she laid herself flat against the smooth wooden planks and peeked underneath the door. Her heart thumped when she noticed something pressed up against the other side of the door. When her fingers could not stretch far enough under the door, she took off her right flip-flop and pushed the curious object out into the hallway.

  She held the thin wooden picture frame up to her eyes to see the faces through the cracked glass. It was a black-and-white photograph of a young woman holding an infant as she stood next to a man in a US Army dress uniform. Alexandra’s fingers struggled to unclasp the back of the frame. Sitting at the doorway, she turned the picture over in her hands. Yanking it gently out of the fragile frame, she read the names handwritten in fading, smeared ink: Joseph, June, and Baby Jonathan, October 1950. She flipped the photograph back over to look at the infant cradled in her grandmother’s arms.

  “Boo!” Taylor squealed behind Alexandra as she tapped her on the shoulder. Startled by her friend, Alexandra dropped the frame to the floor where it clanked against the hardwood planks. “What’s that?” asked Taylor, peeking at the photograph still clutched in Alexandra’s trembling hand.

  “I found it,” said Alexandra, slumped against the attic door.

  Taylor reached around her and tried the doorknob. “Wait here,” she said, running down the hallway to her room. In seconds, she scampered back, waving a bobby pin in the air. “Watch this,” she said as she pried open the lock.

  A squeak echoed through the attic stairway as Taylor pushed open the door. “Where did you learn how to do that?” asked Alexandra.

  “I read about it on the internet, duh,” she answered. “My evil stepmother Krystal tried to padlock me out of her closet full of Louboutin heels, but I showed her,” Taylor revealed triumphantly, hissing the name of her father’s second wife. The girls tiptoed up the steep stairwell to the attic.