Chapter 37 - The Ghost in the Magnolia
I didn't stay in Richmond to watch the press conferences. I didn't care about the cameras flashing outside the federal courthouse or the sensational headlines that were already plastering every newsstand from Washington to Atlanta: *THE HOLLOWAY COLLAPSE: TIMBER DYNASTY CRUMBLES UNDER FEDERAL SWEEP.*
Marcus drove us south, away from the concrete and the sirens, back down toward the low country where the fog hung low over the salt marshes and the Spanish moss trailed like torn lace from the live oaks.
We pulled up to an old public boat ramp at the edge of the Santee River, thirty miles north of Charleston. The air here was warm, thick with the smell of marsh mud, salt grass, and rotting pluff mud—the exact scent that had drifted through the telephone receiver four nights ago.
Sitting on an overturned cypress skiff at the end of the rickety wooden dock was an old man in an oilcloth vest, casting a shrimp net into the brackish water with rhythmic, effortless grace.
Marcus stayed by the truck, resting his arms on the steering wheel, his eyes scanning the empty marsh road. He knew who was sitting on that dock. Every old hand in the timber camps knew the legend of Arthur Holloway's shadow.
I walked down the creaking planks, my boots echoing over the dark water.
The man didn't turn around as I approached. He hauled in the net, dumping a handful of silver-scaled mullet and snapping brown shrimp into a plastic bucket at his feet.
"You took your sweet time, Miss Holloway," he said, his voice the exact low, melodic cadence that had severed my connection in the kitchen at Black Oak.
"You could have called twenty years ago, Thomas," I said, stopping beside him, looking out over the wide, flat expanse of the river.
Thomas chuckled—that dry, rattling sound that belonged to a man who had outlived his enemies and his conscience. He pulled an old brass zippo from his pocket, flipped it open with one thumb, and touched the flame to an unfiltered cigarette. The same amber glow that had flared in the hemlocks behind my house.
"Arthur didn't pay me to save you from your mother twenty years ago, June," Thomas said, exhaling a thick plume of blue smoke that drifted over the water. "He paid me to make sure that when Eleanor finally made her move, you had the match to burn her down."
"He let Claire hit me," I said, the bitterness rising in my throat before I could choke it back. "He knew what Eleanor was turning her into, and he did nothing."
"Arthur was dying," Thomas said, turning his weathered, salt-creased face toward me. His eyes were milky with cataracts, but they were as sharp and predatory as an osprey’s. "He knew Claire was poison the day she was born. But he knew if he cut Eleanor off while he was alive, she’d hire a lawyer out of Philadelphia to tie up the land for fifty years while Vance clear-cut the hollow. He had to die quietly so Eleanor would think she’d won."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, tarnished silver key on a piece of greasy twine.
May you like
"What is this?" I asked.
"The cottage on Pawleys Island," Thomas said, dropping the key into my hand. "Arthur bought it in your name forty years ago. Not Holloway land. Just June's land. No timber. No limestone. Just four walls, a screened porch, and three hundred yards of salt marsh between you and the highway."
