I pulled at the seatbelt, high and tight around my neck, only for it to snap right back into place, cutting into the flesh at my throat.
‘I’ll take that to mean you’re doing better.’
Catherine relaxed against the backseat, seatbelt-less, as Barnett, the Bell family’s third-generation driver, chauffeured us away from the house.
‘You gave us quite a scare, fainting clean away like that,’ she said, lightly combing a strand of red hair out of her face.
‘It’s never happened to me before,’ I replied. ‘I feel fine now.’
According to my grandmother, I’d passed out in the hallway on the way back from the powder room and she and Ashley had carried me up to my room where I slept the whole afternoon away. I couldn’t remember a thing. One minute we were in the library, Catherine casually breaking the news that my name wasn’t actually my name and the next, I was out. I didn’t even remember getting up to leave the library, let alone making it into the hallway.
‘Must be the jetlag,’ she suggested. ‘Or the heat.’
Or maybe my brain had just decided enough was enough and opted to take a couple of hours off, I did not say out loud.
The last rays of the late afternoon sun lit up Catherine’s face, bouncing off the silver leaf-shaped pin she wore at the collar of her white shirt and making her eyes sparkle. It looked like an antique, with delicate strands of precious metal woven around one another in an intricate filigree design and a milky white stone set in the centre that hinted at rainbows within, when the light hit it right.
‘As long as you’re feeling better,’ she said with a perfunctory pat of the hand. ‘Tonight should be a fun time.’
Neither of us had mentioned the argument. I was still upset, still confused, but the sting had gone out of my anger and there was no point in picking a fight with Catherine over choices my dad had made. Catherine and Ashley were the only family I had, the last thing I wanted was for my brand-new grandmother to decide I was more trouble than I was worth and send me away, all alone with nothing and no one.
‘Where are we going?’ I enquired politely.
Catherine glanced over at me and smiled.
‘We’re going to meet the rest of the family.’
Or at least I thought they were the only family I had.
‘We have more relatives?’ I sat bolt upright and my seatbelt yanked me back. ‘Here in Savannah?’
‘We sure do,’ she confirmed, eyes sparkling. ‘They’re not a very chatty bunch but I just know they’re going to love you.’
The drive only took about ten minutes. Our sleek black car slowed down at a four-way stop, a small stone-clad church on the left and a larger red-brick building on our right. Aheadwere two tall stone columns, each topped with a sad-looking figure, their solemn heads bowed.
‘Bonaventure Cemetery,’ I read aloud as we drove slowly through the gates. ‘Thisis where we’re meeting the rest of the family?’
‘Where else would they be, honey?’ Catherine gave me a questioning glance. ‘It’s not as though your ancestors can come to you.’
Visiting a bunch of dead people was not my idea of a good time but she was positively gleeful as the car crawled along the narrow concrete road, moving even slower than we might on foot and leaving plenty of time for me to shudder at the graves as we passed. This wasn’t like any other cemetery I’d ever seen. Instead of stark, evenly spaced rows and regulation headstones, driving through Bonaventure felt more like travelling through time and ending up in a fairytale woodland. The statues and monuments seemed to be part of the natural way of things, like they had grown up out of the ground alongside the trees and plants and ferns, all of them different shapes and sizes. Some were sparkling marble and sharp corners, as though they’d been installed yesterday, and others had been softened by lichen and moss, all the edges worn away as the earth reclaimed them for itself. The air held a powdery scent and the fading light cast a muddled, soft green glow over all the grey stone and white marble and, just like downtown Savannah, everything was draped in Spanish moss. It poured over the gnarled branches of the oaks, tickling the tops of crypts and wrapping itself around the necks of angels like long, soft scarves.
Or a noose.
‘Bonaventure has been here as long as we have, it’s part of our heritage,’ Catherine said, staring dreamily out the window. ‘It’s quite beautiful, don’t you think?’
‘I think it’s a cemetery,’ I replied, goosebumps prickling up and down my arms. How could a patch of land full of dead bodies be beautiful? ‘I’m not really a big fan.’
‘We treat death a little differently here,’ she conceded as we passed a large parcel of land full of identical small white slabs. ‘People who have passed over are still part of our family. Years ago, we Savannahians treated Bonaventure more like a public park than a regular place of rest. Families would picnic here, spend time with their departed loved ones, even court their beloved on these grounds. Would you believe it’s still to this day one of the most popular places for proposals in the whole state of Georgia?’
‘I’m starting to think I’d believe anything about this city,’ I murmured as we drove on. ‘They really let people drive around it? Isn’t that disrespectful?’
‘Only if disrespect is your intention.’
She straightened the folded-back cuffs of her shirt as the car slowed to a stop. ‘To answer your other question, visitors are welcome to drive around the cemetery during daytime hours but our commitment to the preservation of Bonaventure has always been appreciated. As such, our family is afforded special privileges. Thank you, Barnett, we’ll walk the rest of the way. You can circle back and wait for us at the entrance.’
I gave Barnett a polite nod when my car door opened but all I really wanted to do was slam it shut and beg him to drive right back to Bell House as fast as he could. Catherine might have other ideas but cemeteries left me cold. Even though Dad didn’t leave a will, he’d always made it clear he didn’t want to be buried and left alone in a place like this so I’d scattered his ashes over Llyn Y Fan Fach, one of his favourite lakes in the Brecon Beacons. It was beautiful, somewhere I knew he’d be happy to spend eternity, and not trapped in a box in the cold, hard ground.
‘It’s so peaceful,’ Catherine murmured as Barnett drove away, leaving us stranded. ‘So calm.’
