by Lisa Jackson
Truth to tell, she and Clint had unfinished business, and that was the upcoming topic that made her dread seeing him again. Their white-hot, teenage affair was long over, cooled by good sense, time, and distance. Her broken heart had long since mended, thank God. She’d sworn she never wanted to see his handsome face again, and, well, she still kind of felt that way.
“Enough,” she said aloud, then swallowed the last of her coffee and set her cup in the chipped sink, which was large enough to bathe a four-year-old in. With an industrial-sized stove from circa 1940, a butcher block island, and cracked linoleum floor, the room was still cavernous. The refrigerator and dishwasher were missing, spaces in the old cabinetry indicating where they had once existed. She tried several switches and realized only a few of the lights worked. Little could be salvaged here or in the bathroom, with its stained toilet, cracked pedestal sink, and chipped, loose tile.
The other rooms on the floor were in better shape, though, so she gained heart. She ran her fingers over the pillars separating the parlorlike living area from the foyer.
Both her girls were still sleeping soundly in their sleeping bags in front of the near-dead fire, so Sarah moved on through the massive dining room and single guest bedroom. Off the foyer, a wide, hand-hewn staircase curved upward for two stories. Beneath the flight of stairs on the first floor, just off the pantry and mudroom near the back porch, was a locked door that led to a basement that had never been finished and was probably home to all kinds of creatures who had nested there.
Sarah had avoided the basement as a child, and just the thought of going down those rickety stairs to an old root cellar and what had once been a laundry area gave her a serious case of the willies.
“Stupid,” she said as her phone rang; she saw a local number on the screen. “Hello?”
“Sarah?” a gravelly voice asked. “It’s Hal down at the shop.”
“Hi, Hal. What’s up?”
“Afraid I’ve got some bad news,” the mechanic said. “Looks like your daughter needs a new transmission.”
Sarah felt her shoulders sag. “And how much will that be?”
He rattled off an estimate that would vary once they were inside and the parts had come in, but it was enough to give Sarah pause. Right now, with no steady paycheck, and every dime she had going into the house, she didn’t need any big hits to her budget.
“I’ll let you know more as I get into it,” Hal promised, and Sarah hung up, hoping that Jade’s car wasn’t going to be the next money pit. This house was bad enough.
“Rosalie didn’t come home last night.” Sharon Updike was a little worried and a lot pissed. She’d gone upstairs, peeked in Rosalie’s sty of a bedroom and seen no sign of her daughter. Nor was there any message or text on her phone explaining where Rosalie was. That girl! Why couldn’t she just toe the line, Sharon wondered as she cradled a cup of coffee in one hand and stood in the doorway of the bedroom. “Did you hear me?” she said, a little more loudly to the lump on the bed that was her husband, who, despite the fact that the sun had been up for several hours, was still trying to sleep.
“Wha—?” he said, then cleared his throat.
“I said Rosalie didn’t show last night.”
“Uh. So?” He blinked open a bleary eye, snorted, and ran his hand under his nose. Pushing up a little on the bed, he found his glasses on the night table and in the process caused a pillow to tumble to the floor.
“She didn’t call. Didn’t text. Nothin’.”
He looked as if he wanted to roll over and go back to sleep, but catching the expression on his wife’s face, he changed his mind and threw off the covers. “Prob’ly just with a friend.”
“Maybe.”
“You worried?”
“Yeah, a . . . bit.” More than a bit, but she was trying to rein in her concern.
“You call that Dixon girl, what’s her name?”
“Debbie. Yeah, I left messages for both her and her mother.” Not that Miranda Dixon would give a flying fig about Rosalie, who, Sharon sensed, wasn’t good enough to be a friend to her little “innocent” princess. What a snob. Just because Miranda had been married to her husband forever and had a nice house? Big effin’ deal. The way Sharon heard it, Miranda had been knocked up when she’d gotten married. Sharon didn’t really care about any of that ancient history. Who was she to judge? But the woman’s holier-than-thou attitude really rankled.
Now, though, she didn’t want to dwell on all that; she just needed to know Rosalie was safe.
“What about that guy she was hanging out with? Y’know, the one you didn’t like?”
“Bobby Morris?” Sharon pulled a face and took a sip from her coffee. She didn’t just not like him; she detested the punk. He was always getting Rosalie into trouble. “That was over. Month or two ago.”
“Humph.”
“You don’t think so?”
“Don’t know.”
“We should have let her get that car,” she said, sipping from her coffee cup and trying to think straight. Where would she go? Who would she have taken off with? Was she hurt? No, she was okay. She had to be okay.
“Believe me, a seventies Toyota with two hundred thousand miles on it wouldn’t have changed nothin’. Except maybe she would’ve took off earlier.” Mel gave her a look.
“You think she just took off?” Sharon asked dubiously. Rosalie would never have done that, never taken off without saying good-bye, not for good, like Mel was suggesting.
“What? You think she was, like, kidnapped?”
“Good Lord, I hope not,” she whispered. But her husband was tapping into her most primal of fears.
“C’mon, Sharon. She was probably just out partying with some of her friends and crashed somewhere.”
Sharon sent up a silent prayer that her husband’s assessment was somehow the truth. “She’s not answering her phone.”
“Maybe she’s just sleeping it off.”
She glared at him. “You’re no help.”
“You know, honey, you were a teenager once, and had your own share of trouble. Least that’s what your brother says.”
“Yeah, but this is different. I can feel it.”
“You want me to do something? Is that it?”
“Yes!”
“What?”
“I don’t know!” She heard the panic in her voice and hated it.
“Ah, hell.” Mel rubbed a hand over his unshaven jaw, then reached onto the floor, found yesterday’s jeans, and yanked them over his legs before standing, pulling them up so that they rode just below his belly. Sharon couldn’t help thinking he’d gained more weight, but then who would be surprised? This man could down two bacon cheeseburgers, an order of fries, and untold beers at one sitting. She held her tongue about his weight, though, since he’d been quick enough to notice when she’d gained five lousy pounds last Christmas.
“So what’d’ya want me to do?”
Care, she thought silently, but said, “I don’t know. Start looking for her, I guess.”
“She’ll show up.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Cuz I remember what it’s like to be a kid her age, even if you can’t or won’t.” He yanked a T-shirt over his head and stretched it over his belly. “Give me a chance to piss and drink a cup of coffee, then I’ll do whatever.” He let out a sigh, saw how upset she was, and whispered. “Oh, for the love of God, Sharon.” Walking around the foot of the bed, he reached the doorway, where he pulled her into his arms. She tried not to notice the foul odor of his breath. “We’ll find her.”
She almost broke down. Felt her legs go weak.
“Come on. It’ll be all right.”
If only she could trust his words.
“Look, I’ll fire up the Harley, and you and me, we’ll go out searchin’. But when we find that little girl, I’m tellin’ ya, she’s gonna be in big fuckin’ trouble. Okay?”
“Okay,” she whispered, grateful he was on her side and hoping beyond hop
e that he was right, that she was freaking out for no reason. But try as she might, as he let her go and playfully swatted her behind to get her moving toward the kitchen, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong.
CHAPTER 4
Sarah checked her watch. It was after ten in the morning, and the girls were still asleep. She considered waking them, then thought better of it. Moving had been difficult enough yesterday, and then the night had been interrupted by Gracie’s bad dream, or ghostly encounter, or whatever.
As she mounted the stairs, she paused in the spot where she’d found Gracie clutching the rail. In the light of day, the staircase looked absolutely normal, with no hint of paranormal activity.
“Because there was none,” she said aloud. She noted that one or two steps on the first set of risers probably needed to be repaired, but the old banister, the one her brothers had slid down on a daily basis, was still strong. She tested it, putting all her weight into trying to rip it from the wall, but it didn’t move.
Good. Her intention was to keep as much of the charm and character of the house intact as she could.
On the second floor, the bedrooms were dirty, of course, and probably needed insulation, but they could remain as they were if they were cleaned and repainted and the wooden floors were revived. Dee Linn and she had had separate rooms, Roger his own while he was still there, and the twins had shared the largest room. The single bath on the floor would also need a complete overhaul, but she’d expected as much.
On the third floor, things changed. Here was the master bedroom suite, with its marble soaking tub and shower, both in passable shape. It had a commanding view of the river and took up half the third floor. The hall bathroom was also operational, the faucets tarnished but working, the stains in the tub and sinks minimal.
“Thank God for small favors,” she said.
But there was still another room to view, the corner bedroom, the one where Gracie had sworn she’d first seen the ghost: Theresa’s room. No one had occupied it in the thirty-odd years since she’d disappeared, and even now, as Sarah walked down the old patterned hallway runner to the corner bedroom, she felt a chill in the air, a slight shifting in the atmosphere.
All in your mind,
She reached for the doorknob, and when she turned it, she experienced a chill, a tiny frisson of ice that swept up her hand and arm. With the cold rush came a memory.
“Don’t you go in there! Sarah Jane, do you hear me, you stay out of your sister’s room!”
Arlene’s voice seemed to reverberate down the empty hallway, her strict, demanding tone still echoing in Sarah’s head, though that particular warning had happened when Sarah couldn’t have been more than six or seven.
Theresa had disappeared years before, so Sarah had no real recollection of her eldest sister, and recognized her only from snapshots and pictures taken over the years before Sarah’s birth, photos that ended abruptly when Theresa had been sixteen and disappeared for good.
Arlene’s warning still hung in the air, the image of her twisted, pained face burned into Sarah’s brain. “You know better than to step foot in that room, so don’t you dare!”
Sarah, then, had let go as if the glass doorknob was white-hot, her mother’s wrath palpable though she’d merely been a curious child who had just wanted a glimpse into her sister’s private life, to understand more about the girl who’d become a saint in their mother’s eyes. “She’ll come back, you wait and see,” Arlene had insisted time and again, becoming an avenging angel who guarded the sanctuary and eventual memorial to her eldest daughter with her life.
And a willow switch.
Arlene had used the snapping whip sparingly but effectively; she’d lashed Jacob’s and Joseph’s butts and the back of Sarah’s hands when she’d deemed harsh punishment to be warranted.
Only Dee Linn had escaped their mother’s fury. And Theresa, possibly, though Sarah had never really known. Theresa was an enigma to her, a ghost in the sense that she existed only in her very young memory, and even then, Sarah wasn’t certain the images were real or just her subconscious coming to the fore. Roger was certainly more real, drifting in and out of the house—as well as jail.
“Troubled,” Arlene had said, “so troubled.” However, Sarah often had wondered if her mother’s explanation for her eldest son’s problems was an excuse for something darker, something that couldn’t be cast aside with a simple excuse.
Standing in the hallway, Sarah imagined her mother’s high-pitched voice reprimanding her, and for a second she paused, closed her eyes, and cleared her mind.
Get a grip, Arlene isn’t in this house, She hasn’t been for years, And Theresa never returned, did she? She escaped this prison of a home, As for ghosts, they don’t exist except for inside your own weak mind, You know it, and you know when it started, don’t you? The “incident” on the rooftop in the rain? You remember?
“No,” she whispered aloud and realized her fists were clenched, the muscles in the back of her neck so tight they ached.
Mom can’t see you now, Sarah, and just because Gracie thought she saw something in this room is no reason to buy into the idea of a ghost,
“Stop it,” she warned herself. She wouldn’t let all her fears and insecurities as a child creep back into her consciousness. Setting her jaw, she pushed on the door to Theresa’s bedroom.
It didn’t budge.
“Oh, come on.” Again she tried, but the door was swollen and stuck. She rattled the doorknob, then threw her shoulder against the panels. With a groan, the door opened suddenly, and she nearly lost her balance as she half fell into the room.
The cold room.
Colder by at least five degrees.
An icy spot in the house.
Don’t go there,
She saw the window on the north wall near the fireplace and noticed it wasn’t quite shut. Naturally the room was cooler. Also, the damper could have been left open or rusted out in the flue. Though the marble face surrounding the firebox was intact, the wooden surround and mantel were cracked, the white paint wearing thin, a layer of dust covering the narrow shelf. On one knee, she reached into the blackened firebox, felt for the handle on the damper, and pulled. It screeched shut.
The room seemed more lifeless than the rest of the house, but Sarah shrugged off the feeling as she walked to the window facing the front of the old building and looked through the glass panes to stand where Gracie had been certain she had seen someone. There was no evidence anyone had recently been on this spot. The dingy, gauzy curtains were covered in spiderwebs, complete with dead, trapped insects, and looked as if they hadn’t been disturbed in a quarter of a century. The sill on the window was dusty, as was the floor, and there were no footprints visible, no handprints on the grimy panes.
She tried to close the window, but it too was stuck, the casing swollen.
“No big mystery,” she told herself, examining her older sister’s room with an adult eye. It was older and time-worn. The faded, floral rug, mildewed and tattered, lay over the dark wooden floors. Dusty sheets were draped over a four-poster bed and a small night table. In the alcove a vanity was exposed, its sheet having slid halfway off the fly-specked mirror to pool on the floor near the small closet.
Theresa’s retreat.
Arlene’s memorial.
“Mom!” Gracie’s voice rose to the rafters. “Mom! Your phone’s ringing!”
Along with her daughter’s voice, Sarah heard the faint sound of her cell’s default ringtone. “On my way,” she yelled, hurrying out of the room. Flying down two flights of stairs, she found her youngest daughter on the first floor, Sarah’s cell in her outstretched hand.
“Evan.”
“Oh.”
“I didn’t answer.”
“Good thinking.” She snapped up the phone, then shoved it into the front pocket of her jeans. “Hungry?” she asked, steering Gracie toward the kitchen.
Gracie shrugged.
“Sleep okay?”
“Yeah.”
“No more bad dreams?” Sarah asked.
“It wasn’t a . . . ,” Gracie sighed. “No.”
“Good.”
“What were you doing up there?” Gracie hooked a thumb toward the ceiling.
“Inventory, I guess you’d say. Maybe reconnaissance.”
Sarah searched through a couple of sacks she’d brought in last night. “Thought I’d just take a quick look to see what needs to be done before we get started with construction.”
“Jade up?”
Gracie looked at Sarah as if she were as dense as concrete. “No way.”
Sarah nodded. Good, At least the battles won’t start for a few hours, For once, she was content to let her teenager sleep away the morning. All that would change come Monday morning, of course, when school started for the girls. Sarah couldn’t imagine what a battle that would be. For now, though, there was a semblance of peace.
“Let’s not wake the sleeping dragon, okay? So how about peanut butter and jelly . . . or jelly and peanut butter? We’ve got both.”
“Mom . . . ,” Gracie said, half amused, half embarrassed by her silly joke.
Sarah grinned at her youngest. Maybe things were going to be okay.
CHAPTER 5
“So I guess you heard that Sarah’s back in town,” Holly Collins said as Clint swiped his debit card through the machine. He was standing at the counter of Collins Lumber, an all-purpose supply store located in a warehouse that had survived two world wars, three generations of ownership by a member of the Collins family, and still stood just off Main Street.
“I heard,” Clint responded, stuffing his card into his wallet.
“Of course, it’s because she’s planning on renovating that old wreck of a house.” Holly waited as the machine chunked out his receipt. “She’s single now, you know.”
“Is that right?”
“C’mon, Clint, don’t play dumb with me. I bet you’ve kept tabs on her. You two were pretty hot and heavy back in the day.” She ripped off the receipt and handed it to him.