Barn Burner (Jubilant Falls series Book 1)

by Debra Gaskill

  Addison’s shoulders shook with grief. Once again, she’d failed at being a mother. She’d missed all the signs—no, she’d seen them and chosen to ignore them, pouring her attention into running the newspaper, not into what she should have been doing, raising a child who was healthy and secure. She might as well have been June, disappearing from her child’s life when she needed her most.

  “I should have been home with you sweetheart, I should have been home with you!” she cried.

  The doctor, a tall professional-looking blonde woman with a clipboard and severe black glasses touched her gently on the shoulder.

  “She can’t hear you. She’s sleeping off the effects of the sleeping pills she took, not to mention recovering from the loss of blood.” The doctor offered her hand to Addison to help her stand. “I’m Dr. Fairfax, chief of adolescent psychiatrist services here. I’d like to talk to you in the hall, if I could.”

  Wiping her tears from her cheeks, Addison followed Fairfax into the cold sterile hallway. Numbly, she wrapped her arms around Duncan.

  “Your daughter was certainly determined to do herself in.” Fairfax flipped through Isabella’s chart. “Your husband told me that she was suspended from school this week and that the school psychologist suspects she is bipolar.” It was a statement, not question.

  Addison nodded.

  “Do you know what that means?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not sure.” She looked up at Duncan, who had obviously heard this speech before.

  “It used to be called manic depression. In most adults, it presents with the classic symptoms of extremely elevated moods—elation, grandiosity—for an extended period, followed by extreme depression and sometimes suicide attempts.”

  “Doc said that in adults, you see huge spending sprees or sometimes, well, some behavior that—” Duncan stumbled on his words.

  “Uncontrolled sexual activity,” Fairfax finished for him. “It’s called hyper-sexuality.”

  “You don’t think Isabella—I mean, there’s never been any boys around our house at all and she hasn’t spent any time with friends in ages.“

  “Then that’s probably not an issue,” Fairfax said. “Bipolar disorder is very different in children, but hyper-sexuality can be a symptom. Mr. McIntyre told me there had been a pattern of mood swings, some violence and now this suicide attempt.”

  “She struck her math teacher the other day—I couldn’t believe it! Then I heard that she beat the hell out of a locker door.”

  “Yes. I need to ask you a few questions, Mrs. McIntyre,” Fairfax pointed toward a conference room. “Let’s talk in there.”

  Addison looked at Duncan. Tears rose in his eyes as he patted her on the shoulder.

  “We got us one sick little girl, Penny. We got to do what we need to so we can fix her,” he said softly.

  Fairfax stopped and held open the conference room door. “Mr. McIntyre, I don’t mean to be cruel, but if my diagnosis is correct, this is not a situation like a broken arm, where she can wear a cast for six weeks and then be OK. With proper medication, it can be controlled.” The doctor paused. “But manic depression is something your daughter may have to live with for the rest of her life.”

  “The rest of her life?” Addison stumbled through the door and sank into a molded plastic chair. Duncan followed, sinking into the chair beside her. Seating herself primly across from them, Dr. Fairfax didn’t respond, but opened Isabella’s file, scanning it for details.

  “Why do you think she has bipolar disorder?” Duncan was the first to break the silence.

  Fairfax ignored the question. “Mrs. McIntyre, tell me a little bit about your mother, June Addison.”

  Addison shrugged. “I don’t remember a whole lot—she left when I was little.”

  “Mr. McIntyre told me she had some extreme or questionable behaviors that could be indicative of bipolar disorder.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you remember her being really depressed?”

  “I remember her sitting in the bedroom in the dark for days. I remember she drank a lot. When she got like that, I learned to stay away from her. I was really young then.”

  “Did anything happen before her behavior changed?”

  Addison shrugged. “I don’t remember—that was forty years ago.”

  Duncan leaned toward her and touched her arm. “What about all those shopping sprees you told me about? And the men you said used to call the house?”

  “Yeah, but Dad always said she was just a crazy whore, so he divorced her. She’d sleep with all the guys down at the Highway Patrol post and be gone for days.”

  “And the shopping?”

  “You know, I don’t have many good memories of my mother as it is.”

  “But unless I get a complete picture of your family background, I can’t help Isabella,” Fairfax prodded. “This disorder can often run in families.”

  With her hands gripping the edge of the table, Addison sat up straighter and stared at the white, sterile ceiling. Tears began to toll down the side of her face.

  “Mrs. McIntyre, I know this is hard. It’s always hard the first time your child comes into a mental health facility.“

  “The first time?” Addison’s head snapped back down and she glared at Fairfax. “You’re assuming my child will be back here again?”

  “Unfortunately, yes. It often takes more than one hospitalization and lengthy therapy to get a child stabilized after a diagnosis of mental illness.” Fairfax’s tone was detached.

  “Penny,” Duncan leaned closer and whispered. “Penny, she doesn’t mean anything by it. We’ve got to get Isabella better. If she’s got this bipolar thing, then we’ve got to treat it. Dr. Fairfax is only here to help.”

  Addison squeezed her eyes shut. “But if my mother was really sick when my father threw her out of the house…” She hadn’t thought of that night in so long. Memories broke over her in waves, scenes from a life she would have sworn she couldn’t remember, but really never forgot: the night she saw her mother for the very last time.

  It was Daddy’s voice, loud and strident coming from down the hall at their little house that woke her up. The moon was full and shining through the flowered curtains on her bedroom window.

  “You goddamn whore! You’ve fucked every last man at the post and now you’ve nearly run me into goddamn bankruptcy! I’m going to lose my goddamn job—do you hear me? I’m going to lose my goddamn job!”

  Momma’s wild laughter rang down the hallway and through Penny’s open bedroom door. There was the sound of a slap and Momma’s scream. Penny slipped from her bed and ran down the hall. Hiding behind a potted palm, its leaves brown from lack of attention and water, she peeked around the corner into the living room.

  Momma lay face down on the couch, holding her hand against her mouth. As she tried to sit up, Daddy stood over her, his hands on his hips, a piece of white paper shaking in one upraised hand. “I’m getting the hell out of here, you hear me? You’ve ruined me professionally—I won’t ever be promoted because I can’t look any trooper in the face at roll call and not know if he’s slept with my goddamn wife!”

  Momma curled up in a ball on the couch, blood running down her chin and down her wrist and onto the couch’s pale peach upholstery. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I can’t help it! I’ll go, I’ll go! I’ll go tonight! Just let me take Penny with me!”

  “Hell, no! You will not turn my daughter into a whore like you! I am going to have you declared an unfit parent, you know that? I can take you into any court in the land and no judge in his right mind will ever let you take our daughter! Just get the hell out of here, right now!”

  “You can’t take a child away from her mother! You can’t!”

  “Watch me.” Daddy waved the letter in front of Momma’s face. “Four thousand dollars in debt—almost a whole year’s salary! And now some goddamned department store lawyer is going to garnish my pay! Do you see what you’ve done? Do you see what you’ve done
to me and your daughter?” He waved the paper again.

  “But what will you tell her when I’m gone?” Momma was pleading now.

  “I don’t know. I’m taking Penny to my mother’s tonight. You better be gone in the morning when I come back.”

  Penny had stepped out from behind the plant then. “Daddy, no! Daddy! Momma, don’t go! Mo-om-m-ma!!”

  Walt Addison’s eyes were cold and hard as he’d gathered his daughter into his arms. He pulled a jacket from the front closet and wrapped it around Penny as they strode out the front door and into the car parked in the driveway. Penny knew not to say anything when Daddy got this way. Momma called it his cop face, ready to shoot somebody if they made him mad enough, she’d say. Instead, Penny pressed her face against the back window as he put her in the back seat of the Corvair and drove into the night.

  Addison closed her eyes tightly and shook her head as the doctor’s words echoed in her head: Hyper-sexuality. Uncontrolled spending sprees.

  After a long moment, she finally spoke. Her words were soft and subdued.

  “My mother slept with other men a lot. My father was a state trooper and she apparently had sex with a lot of the guys at the post. At one point, I know her spending was so uncontrolled that my father’s wages were garnished.”

  “I understand the difficulty of telling someone this. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say there’s a good chance Isabella has the same thing your mother has—or had. We need to do some more tests and once we get Isabella stabilized; she’ll need to start on some medication. Lithium is the drug of choice for this disorder, although some anticonvulsants like Depakote have been shown to work well. We’ll keep her on the adolescent wing for a while, see how she handles the medication, run a few more tests. Do you have any contact with your mother? If you do, it could be very helpful if we could talk to her.”

  Addison shook her head. Suddenly, it all made sense. June wasn’t just a whore who didn’t love her, she was a good woman, underneath it all. She had to be—the woman who held her and twirled her around in circles in the living room of that little house had loved her, really, really loved her, Addison realized. June was just a sick woman her father had thrown out onto the streets. He’d taken June’s only daughter away from her and kept Addison from knowing what it’s like to have a mother in her life.

  “I don’t know where she is. She left when I was young.”

  Is it possible we could talk to you father? Is he still living?” Dr. Fairfax’s words cut through her thoughts.

  Addison’s words came slowly.

  “My father might talk, I don’t know. He threw her out of the house years ago,” Addison paused. “But if she was sick, how could he have done that?”

  “If it happened almost forty years ago, the attitudes toward mental illness weren’t what they are today. He could have thought she was doing it intentionally, rather than being in the grip of a mental disorder. Do you think he’d talk to me?”

  “Dr. Fairfax, you don’t come from here, do you?”

  “No. No, I don’t.”

  “You don’t know what a legacy my mother left in this town then. Everybody knows everybody in Jubilant Falls, at least the old timers do, and my family has been here for at least two forevers. My mother was a major embarrassment to my father. It wasn’t until she left that my father was able to get back on his feet and people could respect him again. He’s not likely to talk about anything relating to June Addison. I’ll try, but I’m not promising anything.”

  Chapter 14

  Piles of paperwork—permission to treat, promises to pay, permission for other doctors to talk about her case to the hospital, permission for the hospital to contact the school about her behavior, forms explaining that Isabella would only be allowed four visitors for thirty minutes each night, and other forms explaining reasons for treatment—Duncan read them through, asked Dr. Fairfax thoughtful questions, then signed them before shoving them toward Addison, who dumbly scrawled her own name where he indicated. She couldn’t tell anyone else what she’d signed or if she’d signed anything at all.

  Two hours later, they were driving from the hospital to the old Victorian house where Walt had brought his daughter that night so long ago.

  “We’re here. You want me to talk to him?” Duncan asked softly.

  Addison had kept her eyes closed throughout the short fifteen-minute drive across town. Feeling the pickup truck stop and the engine shut off, she slowly opened her eyes.

  “All I know is that my baby tried to kill herself and my dad threw my mother out on the street, all because of they both have—had—this same illness,” she said.

  “Honey, it’s not something you can help. Doc said it’s a chemical imbalance, like diabetes. All she needs is to take this medication and she’ll be OK. Like she said, if it was diabetes, she’d take insulin and that would be the end of it.”

  “People don’t get thrown out of the house for being diabetic, Dunk. People don’t get suspended from school because they’re diabetic. If my father had known my mother was bipolar, he could have gotten her treatment and I could have had a childhood like everybody else—and maybe our daughter could have, too.”

  Duncan laid his head briefly on the steering wheel. “You can’t change that, honey. You don’t know that’s what would have happened.”

  “I don’t know anything at this point.” Addison wiped a tear from her eyes. C’mon, let’s get this over with.”

  “Do you want me to do the talking?” Duncan, his eyes filled with pain, laid a heavy hand over hers.

  “No.” She was silent again as one of those perfect moments of early summer enveloped the truck cab: a butterfly flitted past the windshield and the neighbor’s sprinkler filled the air with the smell of wet green grass as a puffy white cloud slipped across the horizon. Any other day she would have stopped and drawn the scent of the freshly wet grass into her lungs, smiled as the delicate insect danced on the soft breeze. Not now.

  “I can’t believe she wanted to kill herself, Dunk. I can’t believe Isabella wanted to die.”

  Duncan reached across the cab and rubbed his hand across his wife’s arm. “I know, baby. I know.”

  Addison grabbed her purse and opened the car door. “Looks like Dad is over by the porch pulling weeds.”

  Walt still lived in the rambling white Victorian house with its elaborate gingerbread, black shutters and overdeveloped gardens, where four generations of the Addison family spent their childhood. When Walt’s mother, the woman his daughter knew as Grammy, died, he’d inherited the place.

  The house was regularly the showpiece of the Jubilant Falls Historical Society’s Christmas Tour of Homes, something Addison wryly noted appeared a little unseemly for her father to enjoy so much. Before his retirement; Walt Addison had a reputation as a first class hard ass.

  He’d been completely retired for about ten years now. After the divorce, he’d spent twenty years as the Plummer County post commander, stepping down in his mid-50s to work as an investigator at the state headquarters forty-five minutes away in Columbus. The day he turned 62, he turned in his badge and began turning his attention to his mother’s flowerbeds.

  He’d never dated another woman—or none that Addison knew about.

  Walt heard her approaching and stood up, wiping his dirty hands on the seat of his overalls before reaching to hug his daughter and shake his son-in-law’s hand.

  “Well hi, Penny, Duncan! What brings you to this end of town?”

  “Dad, we have to talk. It’s about Isabella—and June.”

  ***

  Walt Addison moved slowly around the kitchen, pouring a pot of water into the sleek stainless-steel coffee maker, pulling three mismatched mugs from the punched tin cabinets and fishing uncertainly in the silverware drawer for spoons, as if it would delay his daughter’s questions.

  “Dad, we need to talk about this. The doctors think Isabella may be bipolar—manic depressive—and they think June might have been too.�
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  He placed the mugs and spoons in front of the coffee maker and stood with his back to his daughter, his fists clenched on the countertop, his head hanging down.

  “I never thought I’d have to think about that woman again,” he said softly.

  “Izzy tried to commit suicide, Dad.”

  Walt swiveled to face Addison, his eyes filled with pain. “Oh my God, what happened?”

  “She swallowed a bunch of pills and tried to slash her wrists. She’d been thrown out of school for assaulting a teacher and she’s done some other damage. Duncan told the doctor some of the stuff Mom—June—did before she left and they think she might have been manic-depressive. If she really was bipolar, it could run in families and that could explain why Izzy did what she did. That’s why I need to know the truth about June.”

  Walt hung his head but didn’t respond.

  “I need to know, Dad. The doctors at the hospital need to know,” she repeated.

  Walt was still silent.

  Addison’s voice broke with emotion and frustration. “If June was sick, Dad, why did you throw her out? Why didn’t you get her treatment? Why did you throw my mother out of our house?”

  The coffee maker beeped to signal the end of brewing. Walt turned away again to pour the coffee.

  “Why won’t you answer me? Dad, why did you throw Mom out of the house?”

  With his back still turned to his daughter, Walt clasped a blue ceramic mug by its handle and raised it in the air. With a sudden sharp motion, he slammed it onto the counter. Duncan and Addison jumped back in their kitchen chairs as pieces of the mug flew across the counter. He whirled around, his eyes hard, pointing at her with the C-shaped mug handle, like his long-ago service revolver.

  “You’ve fallen for it, haven’t you?”

  “What?”

  “You’re just like all the rest of them. You’ve started to believe this mental illness crap!”