HAUNTED REDEMPTION
(The Cascade #1)
Rebecca Royce
Chapter One
The fluorescent light of the nurse’s office whined and flashed once before making a loud popping noise. I cleared my throat. Normally, I’d be concerned about the two signs of demonic presence in my children’s school. However, the mid-day constituted a pretty low wattage time for the evil beings preying on the unknowing. For the last six months, I’d returned to paying attention to the signs of the paranormal I’d ignored since my eighteenth birthday. Right then, however, more pressing matters concerned me, namely the lice in my six year-old daughter’s hair. I swallowed the bile threatening to rise at the thought of disgusting creatures and tried to focus on what Ms. Lilly said to me.
Something about treatment. I really did want to hang on her every word. Although I’d been a mother for a decade, this was my first encounter with the dreaded L-word, and truthfully, I had no idea how to take care of the problem.
“Or you can call the Lice Mamas.”
I sat forward. “I’m sorry, the what?”
“I’m not allowed to advocate for any paid service but given how you’ve recently gone back to work…” The emphasis she placed the last word suggested she held my current state somewhere between the garbage in the dumpster and the bugs crawling around my daughter’s head. Ms. Lilly was, of course, also working and, I was fairly certain, a mother. However, in our small section of Austin, Texas, the working moms were few and far between. The school catered to the stay-at-home types as we, or at least I had been when I’d been home, acted as unpaid volunteers, doing every bit of busy work the teachers couldn’t get to.
The dads worked. The moms worked out. Or, in some very rare circumstances, the opposite happened, and the moms provided for the stay-at-home dads’ gym memberships. Still, the situation remained the same. The school was used to their students having a parent at home who could be contacted at any and all times.
My divorce made things ten times harder for both my kids and the school. We were now one of those families where someone wasn’t always available to rush over in a heartbeat every time they called. I’d never before noticed how often they called. Lately it seemed to be at least two to three times a week with something they wanted to discuss about one of my three children.
Today the call involved the bugs in my daughter’s hair.
Somehow, the existence of Molly’s lice would be because I’d become a working mom, a not paying attention to the small things in my kid’s life kind of a mother. Molly didn’t only have the disgusting creature’s eggs. Oh no, they’d actually hatched and were hopping around in her locks.
Another thing I could add to my list of failures. Not that I ever really kept such a list. It was more like an internal beating I gave myself every morning and night.
Forgetting the mask to the costume for Halloween. Not providing healthy snacks for teacher appreciation week. Never being able to host a playdate. Lice. Fail. Fail. Fail. Big fail.
“Yes, thank you. You were saying about Lice Mamas?”
“Right.” Ms. Lilly dug in her purse, a stuffed green bag with a worn hole in the leather side. Her e-reader poked out the top, and she pushed it back down before handing me a card. “Also, once you’ve dealt with them you might think of having your daughter wash her hair with rosemary shampoo. It’s a trick from Israel. They have a big lice problem there, and everyone uses rosemary shampoo.”
I had no idea if that small detail about the lice in Israel was true or not, but I nodded while I took the card. The main point here continued to be my Molly’s head full of lice, which meant, given the laws of probability for my life lately, all of us were going to have lice. Her two older brothers, Grayson and Dexter, were going to be infested, and so was I.
My head itched on cue, and I tried not to scratch. I couldn’t have lice. The idea was too repulsive. There couldn’t be bugs crawling around in my hair, jumping about, making themselves at home …
I shook my head and tried not to think about the creepy crawlies digging around on my scalp. “Thank you for calling me. I’ll get her home and contact the Lice Mamas.” Were there really people making money removing the creatures from the heads of those unfortunate enough to have gotten them? What a purely genius idea, and why hadn’t I thought of it?
“You’ll like them. They have great results. Of course, Molly can’t return to school until the lice are gone.”
I shifted in my seat. Having my six-year-old home was going to create a wrinkle in my working plans for the week. I couldn’t do my job with her. Well, in reality, I actually could. But I wouldn’t. Not if I could avoid doing so. Unlike my own upbringing, my children would never be dragged along to see the worst parts of the universe.
They’d stay safe and secure in Mitchell’s Ranch, our beautiful—albeit Poltergeist-the-movie-resembling—planned community in the northwest corner of Austin.
“The cost is well worth the treatment,” she finally finished and pointed toward the door where she wanted Molly and me to exit.
I stood and then didn’t move another inch. She wanted me gone, I could see it in the way she kept looking at the door. “Cost?”
Since their father and I split up, things were tight. My years of not working coupled with my completely useless degree in English from my liberal arts university hadn’t prepared me for much. I’d never worried. Levi, my ex, made a great living, and I’d assumed we’d always be together. Yes, it was possible in this day and age that I had been that stupid.
“It’s two hundred dollars a head.” She shrugged. “Or you can treat the lice yourself.”
I sucked in my breath. Eight hundred dollars if we all needed to be cured of the bugs.
My daughter looked at me. She hadn’t moved since I’d arrived to pick her up, not even to scratch her lice-ridden head. I smiled at her, hoping my impression of a happy person reached my eyes. The one thing Levi, her father and my ex-husband, and I could agree on was that we needed to keep the children happy as best we could.
We’d both learned how to put on a good show.
“I’m sorry about the lice, Mom.”
My head itched, and I ignored the sensation. I either had the bugs or I didn’t. For two hundred dollars, the Lice Mamas would take care of the problem for me. I shuddered. I needed to start making more money.
“This is not your fault.” I squeezed her hand. “Lice happen. No big deal.”
Her fingers were still so small in mine—only she and her brothers were suddenly not so small anymore. She wouldn’t be tiny for much longer. Like thinking of them brought them—and maybe it did; with the door I’d recently reopened in my life, the weird cosmic coincidences had come back in a major way—my two sons turned the corner and came down the hall. Grayson looked like his father more and more every day. They had the same dark hair, blue eyes, and killer smile, although Gray wasn’t smiling currently. He’d narrowed his eyes and directed his just-like-his-father’s angry stare at his little sister.
Molly’s fingers tightened in mine, and I steeled my spine. Gray used to be a wonderful big brother when my middle son, Dexter, came into this world. They were twenty-four months apart and the best of friends. He’d been less enthusiastic at the birth of his sister twenty-seven months after. His attitude toward her never improved. She irritated him then and continued to do so.
Next to him, Dex grinned. He had more of a Madison look to him. He resembled my father when my dad had been a much younger man. His hair was blond, unlike my own dark brown locks. The genetics skipped me and went from my father to my son. I wish other parts of my father’s genetic makeup left me alone, too. I took a deep
breath. Thinking about things I couldn’t change helped nothing.
They came to an abrupt stop in front of us. “An early day.” He threw his hands in the air like he’d scored a goal on the soccer field. “And since I’m leaving before Mrs. Brown could assign homework, it means I don’t have any.”
Third grade logic. I grinned back at him before turning to Gray. “You don’t look as joyful.”
He leaned over, ignoring me altogether to address his sister. “Do you know how humiliating it is to be ripped out of class because your sister gets bugs in her hair? To have everyone assuming I have them, too?”
Molly’s previously serene eyes filled with tears. I didn’t blame her. Gray had taken the news of our divorce harder than the other two and had the most trouble adjusting to it. That didn’t mean he got to be unduly cruel to his little sister.
“That’s enough of that.” He was ten but lately he acted more like fifteen, eye rolling and everything. I needed to speak to his therapist. Again. “Your sister didn’t ask for lice, and if you can’t say anything nice, then please don’t say anything at all.”
With my well used line—I must have said some version of the phrase ten times a week—we walked out of the school. Three sets of eyes followed our movements. Monica, Alice, and Brittany—school volunteers galore— each coifed and in their yoga pants and long tunics of various pastel colors. Monica stood the smallest of the three in both height and weight. She was probably officially a double zero pants size after her last cleanse. I’d heard her speaking about it at the last PTA meeting I’d attended, the night my whole life had fallen apart. Alice had a round face she hated and breasts I wasn’t convinced were real. Brittany always wore her diamonds, even with her workout clothes.
Right then, they were giving me the death glare. The news of the lice must have hit the parental airwaves—namely the local email server that let the mothers around find a new plumber and/or spread the most local gossip as as fast as they heard the news. I hadn’t seen the messages yet, but then I’d stuck the email loop on daily digest instead of regular emails. I couldn’t handle anymore the constant stream of chatter about brands of refrigerators and where the best place to buy ballet slippers was. Once upon a time, I had loved it.
Like Monica, Alice and Brittany had once loved me. Before I’d gotten weird, which might have been forgivable if I hadn’t also thrown their world into chaos by getting the big D. I’d let the world know things hadn’t been perfect at home, and that was unforgivable. How were they to keep fooling themselves if I wouldn’t anymore?
What they didn’t understand, and wouldn’t because I could never explain how screwed up everything had become, was I never wanted to break up with Levi. My ex-husband held my heart in his hand as firmly as he did the day I married him. We simply couldn’t trust each other anymore, and with the lack of trust, there seemed to be no coming back.
All of their judgement aside, I missed them. The easy coffees in the morning, the smiles at afternoon gym classes, the wine we sometimes drank at playdates all filled my days with a sense of togetherness in the otherwise isolating world of parenting young children. We weren’t alone; we were going through mommyhood together.
Alice sighed loudly. “Where did she get lice?”
“No idea.” They’d take my answer to mean child neglect when truthfully I wasn’t at all certain any of them would have known where their children ran into lice.
I squeezed Molly’s hand. “But we’re going to go see the really fun Lice Mamas. Come on.” And then I was going to go home and wash, dry, disinfect, and lice-free my house if it was the last thing I ever did.
“Can we go? Now? Puh-leeze?” We would have left anyway, even without Gray’s jumping around and looking like he wanted to be anywhere else. I nodded once as my oldest son glared at three women who had helped plan his last birthday party as though he’d rather see me hit them with my car than speak to them. His younger siblings remained blissfully unaware of things, but more and more I knew he had not.
Grayson knew exactly how his life had changed. and if the hostility coming off him was any indication, most of his angst stayed directed at me.
****
Two hundred dollars a head? I could hear Levi’s incredulous gasp as though he were in the room with me instead of two blocks away in a rental house. He still paid half the bills in our home until we sold it, which, for the moment, we both agreed wouldn’t happen until the kids left school. Unless something changed and we had to let it go.
I took a sip of the bad red wine I’d grabbed at the grocery store the day before. I winced as the sour taste travelled to my throat. Back in the day, before Levi and I had kids, we’d spent on really great wine, prided ourselves on our ability to discern tastes. Women who weren’t sure they could keep their houses because they couldn’t pay their bills didn’t get to purchase expensive bottles of alcohol anymore.
I agree. The price is outrageous. But it was pay it or risk a further infestation of the grossness. I texted him in reply, then set the phone down.
The kids were all put away for the night. I smiled at the thought. Putting them away was how I thought of them when they exited to their rooms for bed every evening. I read to them and then I put them away, as though they were in their proper spots, stored where they could be safe until I saw them again in the morning. Unlike me, they didn’t know they weren’t actually safe in their beds. I’d spent years in denial about safety myself. If I pretended I was normal, then somehow I would be.
The first night they’d spent at Levi’s and not with me, not safe and put away, I’d wept in my pillow. The second time I’d binged watched old television shows.
I still didn’t enjoy their absences; I’d only gotten used to the loneliness of not having their presence feeding happiness into the house. They made the actual space feel better by simply being in there.
Hell, who was I kidding. I’d not even gotten used to not having Levi come home at night, and it had been half a year since he’d left for the first time.
The phone dinged and I looked down to read my ex’s message. I’ll drop off a check for $400 tomorrow. I owe you half for their health. This counts as health.
Thanks.
I knew a lot of women suffered when their ex’s refused to hold up his end of the bargain. That hadn’t happened to me. Levi Yates would never abandon his children, and although he pretty much hated me these days, he still tried to make my life a little bit easier in small ways instead of endlessly punishing me.
I rose and walked outside to stand on our porch. My porch, I corrected. Levi didn’t live here anymore. The porch belonged to me alone, as did my financial crisis.
I was qualified to do exactly a single thing. Deal with demons, ghosts, possessions, bad energy, past life issues, and otherworldly things no one ever wanted to discuss. I’d take a demon issue over lice any day of the week. I patted at my still sticky hair. It was going to be a long night. I’d had eggs nesting in my scalp, and I couldn’t let myself think about it, not even a little bit.
Since Levi and I separated I’d had no choice except to put my toe back into the world I’d left when I abandoned my parents profession for a normal life. The only problem was I couldn’t do the job half time. People didn’t want a part-time exorcist, and since I’d shut my eyes and refused to see the darkness around me anymore, I didn’t know the right folks in Austin to point me toward the higher paying jobs. Craigslist could only take me so far. Saging a house was a safe pastime, but it didn’t pay much, and after months of it, I was bored to tears. Nine times out of ten, what the homeowner had was not a ghost trolling the hallways that needed to move on but something as simple as a rodent issue in the attic. I could never tell them they didn’t need me when I required the money so much, and the deceit weighed on me as much as anything else.
I needed to return full time to the game.
I needed a broker.
Not letting myself think too much about what I needed to do, I dialed my father.
We’d spoken the day Levi left me and every day since. My mother, always the chattier of the two, called daily. She’d let me know in no uncertain terms how excited she felt to be back in my life, which only added to my very well deserved guilt about cutting them all but out of my life for over a decade.
Thirty-five-years-old was too long to hold onto childish anger. They’d done the best they could given who they were. And when I needed them, they continued to be there.
A sound inside caught my attention, and I looked to where Gray turned off his lamp. I knew why my parents never abandoned me even if I deserved the treatment. I loved three prime examples in my life, three souls I’d never let down if there was any chance to help them.
My father answered on the first ring. “Kendall.”
He never said hello, always acknowledging the person immediately in lieu of a greeting. Dad had been able to do that even before the advent of cell phones displaying names. According to my mother, all the way back to rotary phones he’d always known who called on the other end of the phone, a small psychic ability to go with his tremendously larger ones.
“Dad.”
He hadn’t changed in the twelve or so years since I’d cut them off. When I turned twenty-four, he’d finally accepted I wasn’t coming to work with him and Mom. After that, he’d stayed away for my sake. I’d hated lying to Levi about my upbringing. From the beginning, I’d understood he’d never be the type to understand.
My ex couldn’t see the things I did, and for his ignorance I remained grateful. I hoped my children inherited his lack of sight.
“How are you?” For Dad, he acted downright chatty. He didn’t enjoy talking on the phone, and since I’d called for a favor when I sincerely did not deserve one, I’d spare him the small talk and get to business.
I sat on one of my lounge chairs facing where we’d once hoped to put a pool. We’d bought the furniture thinking it was funny, cute to anticipate the pool with a whole patio set before we ever added the swimming hole.
Haunted Redemption (The Cascade Book 1) Page 1