Stunner

by Niki Danforth

  I watch the figure lurk about the house, trying to see inside. I’m sure he’s casing the place to determine whether anyone’s at home. The soft rain isn’t noisy, and I can hear him mumbling. I guess that’s Bobby Taylor down there. In the dark light, while I can’t tell if his bare arms have those abundant tattoos, I would bet it’s that creep and feel a shiver go straight through me.

  I reach down to Warrior for reassurance, and he rubs his head against my leg, waiting for my command. I feel him quiver. “Warrior, stay quiet,” I whisper.

  Warrior does the opposite and whines loudly. The guy’s head jerks up, and I back away from the window at once. “Quiet,” I repeat softly to my dog, putting my finger to my mouth. “Shhh.”

  “Who’s up there?” Bobby—or so I suppose—growls from below. “Teresa, that you? I know the old guy’s not here, so come down and talk to me.” Yep, the sound of his voice confirms that it’s Bobby Taylor.

  I cautiously peek out as he backs up from the house to get a better view of the entire structure. “Aw, Terry,” he says. “I thought you were finished with all this. Why’d you want to come back to this house again after all these years?”

  Again? I jerk my head back from the window and stare into the room. What’s he talking about? I glance outside. He paces back and forth through the pool of light, and even though the rain has stopped, I see his tee-shirt is soaked and now clings to him like a second skin.

  “Don’t-cha remember?” he says, almost mumbling but I can pick it up by staying very quiet. I think I hear him say, “You swore you’d never come back here…after what happened to you and your mama.” And then I feel it once more—a familiar flickering at the edges of my memory. My dog stirs, and I put my finger over my mouth and whisper, “Shhh,” to quiet him down.

  Bobby walks up the front steps and bangs hard on the door. He slams the heavy brass doorknocker repeatedly, yelling, “Teresa!” over and over.

  “Get down here! I wanna talk to you,” he demands. “I can help you get revenge.”

  Revenge? In my mind I hear Juliana’s voice saying, You’ll ruin everything, spoil everything. My radar is on full alert. This revenge factor has always worried me. Revenge for what?

  Bobby’s getting very worked up now. He jiggles the door knob, attempting to enter the house. Warrior’s agitation grows, and he growls. The guy moves over to the windows, trying those, too. My focus is scattered, confused by Bobby’s ramblings.

  “Teresa! I know you’re in there,” he yells. Why doesn’t he just go away? “Teresa, I can help you, and you can help me. Joe is puttin’ a lot of pressure on me for money…for some deal. Terry, I need money.” His tone is desperate.

  Wait a minute. Joe? Does he mean respectable Joe who runs that model drug prevention program in Scranton? Joe, who says he hasn’t seen his brother, Bobby, in such a long time? What kind of deal does Joe have going? If he wants help from Bobby, it must not be very above board.

  Bobby bangs his fists against the front door. Oh my god, I’m pretty sure I forgot to lock the kitchen door when I came in.

  “If you won’t come out, I’m coming in.” He rams his body against the big door.

  Warrior breaks into a fierce bark, and I make a dash for the upstairs keypad in the center hall. I enter the distress code, which goes straight to the police. In an instant, spotlights turn on and brighten the area around the entire house. Simultaneously, a screeching siren goes off and a digital voice booms from a speaker announcing, “Police notified and sending help.”

  With Warrior barking ferociously, I dash to a nearby window and peek down below. Bobby Taylor is momentarily frozen, prior to making some kind of a fight or flight decision. It’s as though someone has yelled, Stop or we’ll shoot. His arms are bent out from his sides as if to ward off a blow, and his head turns in all directions, looking for a physical attacker. Then he snaps out of it.

  “Teresa, you bitch. You can’t hide behind these rich f—s forever,” he screams, circling in the pool of light. Then he comes to a dead stop. “I’ve got it! I’ve got a better idea.” Huh? What better idea? “You wait! You’re gonna love this one,” Bobby Taylor threatens. Laughing, he turns on his heels and runs out of the light.

  Once away from the house, he cuts behind a bush, and I hear a motor start. He guns the engine, and the motorcycle shoots onto the wet gravel, where he skids into a left turn and speeds away.

  Wanting to go after the intruder, my dog continues barking loudly. “Settle down, Warrior,” I command. He stops. I can feel my heart thumping away a mile a minute. I open the window and inhale as much of the night air as I can, which finally calms me. Warrior drops to the ground and puts his face down between his paws, his brow furrowed as if he’s worried.

  I collect my thoughts, which are a confused muddle at the moment. What did he mean: Why’d you want to come back to this house? When was Juliana ever here before this visit with Frank?

  I can still hear him, and I’m sure he said it—You swore you’d never set foot here again…after what happened to you and your mama. What is Bobby Taylor talking about? And how does Joe Taylor fit in? Lastly, what better idea does Bobby have for Juliana?

  I turn off the blaring alarm and wait for the police.

  Chapter Forty

  The police arrive five minutes after Bobby Taylor is gone. Any sooner and they’d have passed each other on the property. But as the cruiser raced up our road to respond to the distress call, I made a snap decision.

  I know our local officers—another advantage of small-town life—and tell them I’ve dropped by to pick up a book at the house, and while here, the attempted break-in occurred. I give them the details as they really happened, except I leave out two major items—one, that I know the identity of the suspect, and two, the suspect’s yelling about Teresa. That’s the account I stick with when I call Rita right after the police depart Meadow Farm. I leave it to her to pass on the story to Frank.

  After Bobby Taylor’s outburst, I need to figure all of this out. If I’m to believe what he shouted, then Juliana has already been at my family’s farm at some point in the past. This is not her first visit. My mind returns to my memory of the little girl hiding under the dining room table, bawling, with her arms wrapped around our dog, Glory. Is it even possible? But the child I remember was named Maria.

  The rolling thunder outside agitates Warrior. Crack! My dog and I jump. The lightening sounds as if it’s right over us. I wonder if these loud noises take Warrior back to Afghanistan when Tommy was shot down.

  By now it’s four in the morning, and Warrior and I sprawl on the floor of Meadow Farm’s library, with me flipping through an old picture album. This one is forty years old, from the 1970s.

  “Unbelievable.” I stare at a yellowed photograph of myself in 1971, wearing my favorite cork platform shoes and my preppy version of hot pants. Preppy just means they weren’t obscenely short and skin tight. I remember clearly how my mother was not happy at all when I showed up in this outfit, and she was even less happy when I came home—next picture—in a purple maxi coat topped by a pink floppy hat after my trip to London with my best friend and her mother.

  I stare at the photo and remember how much I loved that purple coat. While Warrior naps on the floor and quietly snores, I continue flipping through the pages of the album, surveying my brothers and me growing up in the ’70s.

  I stop. Found it. The picture I was sure was in one of these albums. And there she is, the same little dark-haired girl I remembered tearing through our dining room. In this photo, she’s slouched over and sitting cross-legged on the floor at the foot of a sofa with her arms draped around our Lab, Glory. Her mother, sitting on the sofa, leans forward with her hands on the little girl’s shoulders. The woman smiles for the camera. The little girl looks startled. Scribbled in ink underneath the picture is the caption Rosa & Maria with Glory. The year is 1979.

  I look closely. I slip the small picture from the photo corners that keep it in place on the page and grab a
magnifying glass from Frank’s desk so that I can examine it in more detail. It falls from my fingers and floats to the floor, landing face-down. I notice pale writing on the back. Warrior opens one eye to watch me pick it up. The faded words are still clear enough to read—Rosa & Maria-Teresa Gonzalez.

  Son of a gun! So Bobby Taylor was telling the truth. Maria-Teresa, Teresa, Terry, Julie, a.k.a. Juliana lived at Meadow Farm as a little girl. In my head I hear the echoes of Joe Taylor’s voice when I was at his office to learn about his school drug program. Her mother worked somewhere in New York or New Jersey. I don’t remember where.

  At the time, it never dawned on me that Teresa and her mother had lived here, at Meadow Farm. With us. And that’s why Juliana knew about our secret tree house; she, we, had all climbed up there as kids.

  And now the memories begin to flood back. I remember this adorable little girl and her mother, Rosa. As with Rita today, the Meadow Farm household could not have run without Rosa Gonzalez.

  I look for any indication of Juliana’s adult face in this beautiful child. It’s hard to say. I remember I had thought Juliana reminded me of Angelina Jolie when I first saw her, but I realize now that definitely more than her movie star features were nudging at me.

  I flip through the 1980s album and spot other photographs as Maria blossomed into a lovely girl-almost-tween. The full mouth and high cheekbones evolved on the girl’s face over the years, and her dark, piercing eyes are the same ones I’ve seen in Juliana. I note how much, as a tween, Teresa also looks like Francesca in Scranton, like a twin sister who time-traveled a few decades. Then in 1985 the pictures of Teresa and her mother stop. I don’t really have to ask myself why.

  I close the albums, listening to the rain splatter on the terrace outside the library’s French doors, and every painful detail comes back from that time in 1985. It’s an understatement to say it was not my finest moment.

  I was home for the weekend from my job as a production assistant on some Hollywood-entertainment show in New York. I hated that job. It was tedious, boring, and I couldn’t stand the woman for whom I was working.

  I arrived from the city in a foul mood, only to discover a pre-teen Maria in my room. I walked in as she pranced in front of my full-length mirror trying on my clothes and jewelry.

  I exploded. Blew up. I was nasty, definitely way up in the bitch-decibel level. I demanded Maria get out of my clothes pronto right in front of me. Which she did, scared to death. Tears were running down her face as she ran from my room holding her own clothes in front of her to shield herself.

  I cringe when I think of my awful behavior. But I wasn’t finished. As I put my things away, I discovered a treasured ring missing. I assumed the worst and tore down the hall after her.

  I found Maria in her room crying. She was only twelve, for god’s sake, a child. But I didn’t let that stop me from accusing her of stealing the missing ring, which meant so much to me because Frank and Peter had given it to me for my birthday.

  Rosa intervened and demanded I leave her daughter alone. She insisted she had taken the ring and had sold it. She stuck with this pathetic story, and later, my mother fired her with severance pay…such a sad conclusion to Rosa’s seven years of working for my family.

  The whole scene was out of control. My mother instructed Frank and me to drive Rosa and Maria to the bus station, as Rosa had requested. Rosa wouldn’t say where they were going, just that they planned to go where she had family. I still remember how stoic and proud Rosa was as Frank helped them with their shabby suitcases. But the moment was all too much for Maria, who had nonstop tears streaming down her face.

  As he placed their suitcases near the bus stop for Pennsylvania, the girl broke away from her mother and ran up to my brother. She pounded at him with her fists, crying out, “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.” Frank, looking sad, just stood there and took her blows, until Rosa pulled Maria off of him.

  I waited there without moving and didn’t intervene to help my brother. I knew I had made a mess of things and that I was scum. I felt such shame.

  Frank and I got into the car and drove home in silence. When we arrived, Mother presented me with the missing ring, which had turned up in a laundry hamper filled mostly with my dirty clothes. The implication was that the ring had been in one of my pockets. My mother looked at me with such disappointment, because I had been so quick to accuse.

  It was too late to go after Rosa and Maria; we knew Rosa had too much pride to return. They were gone, and we didn’t know where they were in Pennsylvania. We didn’t try too hard to find out, either.

  Stupid, stupid. How could I have been so very stupid? All little girls want to try on big-girl clothes. When I think back, I can’t believe how I let that innocent event snowball into accusations of jewelry theft. It was one-hundred percent my fault.

  I know that we all have moments in our past that leave us feeling ashamed of ourselves. Until today, I realize I had successfully buried this memory because I don’t think I ever forgave myself.

  Then I see the link. I remember their bus was going to Pennsylvania, setting the young Maria on her angry journey toward leading the Scranton Gang a couple of years later.

  I also can’t get that image of Maria pounding her fists against Frank at the bus station out of my mind. Has Maria Teresa, now as Juliana, been waiting all these years to get her revenge against our family, more specifically, Frank and me? Is Frank walking into a trap? Has another trap already sprung, setting my brother against me so that I’m in exile?

  I dial Frank’s cell. He picks up, and before he can say anything, I blurt out, “I have something to tell you about when we were kids…you won’t believe—”

  He clicks off without saying a word. I redial, but he’s turned off his phone, and my call goes straight to voicemail. I glance at my watch and groan—it’s five in the morning. Of course he hung up; he was fast asleep in Manhattan. I blew it. I’m such a jerk.

  Chapter Forty-One

  “Morning, everybody!” It’s later—a respectable nine o’clock—and Warrior and I enter the kitchen at Meadow Farm to find Rita filling my niece’s mug with steaming coffee. The wonderful smell of caffeine jolts through me after a sleep-deprived night.

  “Oooh. I’ll take one of those, too, please,” I say to Rita.

  Warrior nuzzles his wet face in Laura’s lap. She’s home from her overnight in Manhattan, and my dog drools over the prospect of breakfast tidbits. “Enough, Warrior,” I say. “Now, sit.” He does, but his eyes shift from me, the boss lady, up to my niece, hoping for a tiny piece of her toast.

  “Breakfast, Ronnie?” Rita asks, pouring my coffee. She’s the one who invited me over, wanting complete details about the attempted break-in last night. Plus I’m determined to speak to my brother as soon as he gets home, to tell him what I’ve remembered about Maria Teresa Gonzalez many years before.

  “What are you serving this fine morning, Rita?” I ask.

  “Veggie omelets.”

  “I’d love one. Thank you.” I take the steaming mug from her. “So, Laura, when does your father come home from the city?”

  Our housekeeper jumps in. “Frank called a half-hour ago,” Rita says. “He’s at an early meeting and will be back soon, in an hour or so.”

  “And Juliana with him?” I ask.

  “She’s already back,” Laura says. “The driver delivered her an hour ago. She’s upstairs—”

  “That’s good—” I say.

  “Aunt Ronnie, a lot of noise is coming from her room, like maybe she’s packing?” Laura puts her cup on the table. “Right before I came down I thought I heard her cell ring, and then it sounded as if she was crying.” She looks at me helplessly. “It feels like a repeat of last time when she and Daddy had that fight. Please do something. I’m not sure what to say to her.”

  I get up from the table with my mug. “How does Juliana take her coffee, Rita?”

  “Black.” She’s already pouring another cup and hands it to me.
“I’ll wait to make your omelet,” Rita says as I head out of the kitchen.

  I walk up the stairs and down the hall carefully with the two filled mugs. The door to Juliana’s room is ajar, and I peek in. I see her pulling clothes off hangers and tossing them into a gigantic suitcase.

  “Knock knock,” I say, and she freezes with her back to me. “How about a hot cup of coffee to clear away the cobwebs?” She turns and stares at me, as if caught doing something wrong.

  I walk in and extend the mug toward her, but she doesn’t take it. I put it on her nightstand, next to her books and Kindle. “Juliana, are you OK?”

  “Yes.” She stands completely still for the longest moment and then wrings her hands.

  “I see you’re packing,” I offer, giving her a chance to talk. She glances nervously at her belongings strewn across the bed. “Are you and Frank going somewhere?” She still says nothing. “Does Frank know you’re leaving?” I ask. She seems anxious. “Rita says he’ll probably be here soon. Shouldn’t you wait until you’ve talked with him in person?” Does this lady run away whenever a problem arises? I wonder what kind of lovers’ quarrel they had this time.

  She sits down on the bed, looking defeated. “I don’t have enough time,” she says. What does that mean?

  I take the mug on the nightstand and try again to hand it over. Now, she accepts it and drinks. Feeling a little relieved at this minor thaw, I sit in a chair opposite her. “How can I help?”

  She appears surprised and begins to speak, but a half-choked sob comes out instead. Then she starts to cry. I walk over, sit next to her. She scoots away keeping her distance from me.

  “Look, I know we haven’t gotten off to a great start—” Her huge sob interrupts me. “Just let it out, Juliana. It’ll all be OK.” She has a long cry and finally breathes deeply as if it’s coming to an end. I hand her the tissue box from the bureau.