by Jessi Gage
“Long as I can, that’s how long. I like it here. And it’s not all intermediate care and assisted living, either. There are apartments across the parking lot for us independent folks. Right on a golf course and everything. Did I mention the Jacuzzi? Or Fred Beltlinker? Now that’s a hunk of man if I ever saw one. I don’t mind that he’s only got the one leg. He’s got everything else that counts, and some of his own teeth, too. Moved out of intermediate yesterday and stopped in this morning to tell me his son brought him a new floaty thing for the pool. Personally, I wouldn’t mind a midnight skinny dip with that man.”
After scrubbing that image from her brain, Jade asked, “What about the house?” And what the heck would she do with herself now? She’d come up believing Grandma Nina was laid up at home, needing help to do every little thing. She’d made the trip with a purpose. Now she felt useless. Grandma Nina was better than fine. She was in senior heaven.
“Figured the smart thing would be to look for a renter.” She waved her hand to indicate the room. “Help offset the cost of this place. It’s a good house. Paid for, too. Don’t want to sell it. It’ll be yours after I go, you know.”
Jade sat up in her chair. “What?”
“It’s going to you. In my will. Jillian’s getting the money. You’re getting the house. With your mom gone, rest her soul, it’s just you girls I’ve got left, and don’t think I’m going to blow everything on pampering myself. There’ll be plenty left for each of you to have a little something. Why, the house was worth a good three-hundred Gs at the last appraisal. And property value only goes up. Land is where it’s at. Land and gold. You never go wrong with either.”
Jade groaned. “I don’t care about the house, Grandma. I mean, why are you talking about dying? This is crazy. You’re not dying.”
“Sure I am. We’re all dying. Some of us are just closer to it than others. According to the statistics, I could very well go this year. Did you know a woman’s risk of death doubles in the year after a hip fracture? It’s true. I saw it on The Doctors.”
“You’re not going to die.”
“Of course I’m going to die. If not this year, it won’t be far off.”
“You’re not dying. Stop it. You just broke your hip. They fixed it. You’ll do some PT. You’ll go back to your house. I’ll be your on-call nurse. I’ll even get a job and pay for your cable and internet. I’ll drive you over to see Mr. Belt-whoozit whenever you want. So, who do I have to talk to to sign you out or whatever?” She was sitting up now, facing her grandmother with a leg crooked on the bed. Her knee was bouncing.
Grandma Nina gave her The Look. That one with the narrowed eye. When she was little, she used to swear that look gave her grandmother the power to read her mind. As usual, The Look zeroed in on the one thing Jade didn’t want anyone to see, especially her grandmother.
“I hope you gave as good as you got,” she said quietly.
Jade pressed her lips together and looked away.
“Your mother always tried to cover the bruises, too, but makeup doesn’t hide the swelling. Was it the Italian Stallion? What’s his name, Brad?”
Jade blew out a breath, making the wisps of hair around her face tickle her cheeks. She nodded.
“You stay in the house as long as you need to, honey.”
Jade heard her own pulse in the silence. She was so busted. Grandma Nina had been able to tell in ten minutes she hadn’t come up to help, but to run away. She was supposed to be taking care of Grandma Nina, but Grandma Nina was taking care of her. Just like always.
“So,” her grandmother said. “How’s The Palace? Casey treating you right?”
She must have the only grandmother in the world who asked how it was going at the strip club like it was an ad agency and her boss was a classy businessman in a suit and tie. Guess when your daughter died a crack addict you didn’t mind so much if your granddaughter took off her clothes for money. At least Jade never did drugs.
“I kind of quit.” She winced, feeling like an idiot. Maybe she’d overreacted to Brad hitting her. Most people didn’t leave their home, job, and state because their boyfriend hit them. But then most people probably didn’t grow up witnessing what could happen if they stayed.
Logically, each repeat offense should be harder and harder to forgive. Too bad her mother had never subscribed that particular bit of logic. The first time she’d been battered was the closest she’d come to ending things. Each succeeding black eye seemed like less of a big deal until violence became part and parcel of relationships.
Jade hadn’t wanted to take the risk she would be the same way. She’d vowed that if a boyfriend ever hit her, he would get zero second chances. That’s why she ran when Brad hit her. He couldn’t do it again if she wasn’t around. Seemed like a no-brainer at the time. Now, it seemed like overkill.
Grandma Nina shrugged one shoulder. “You’ve been talking about quitting for a while. Everything happens for a reason. Maybe it’s time to put that Classics degree to use.” She folded her hands over her stomach, relaxed. “Why don’t you stay a while? Look for a position at a library around here. Lord knows I’d love to have you closer. And your friends in Boston are just a few hours away. I don’t need you, honey, but I sure do like having you around.”
Jade’s throat closed up with warm emotion.
Her grandmother saved her from having to say anything. “You’ll pay me rent when you get a job. Until then, you’re my guest. Now, Joe McIntyre shut up the house for me, so you’ll need to get the keys from him or Betty. They’re in the white house next door. I think he flipped the breakers. Make sure to stop in the basement first thing and turn them back on. Oh, and you’ll need to run the water ’til it clears. Sediment builds up in the pipes something awful. Now, what’s Brad’s number? I’m going to give that loser a piece of my mind.”
* * * *
When Jade made it back to the house, she was greeted with a cellophane-wrapped plate of snickerdoodles and a business card stuck between the sun porch door and the jamb. Tucking a Perfect Pita take-out bag under one arm, she plucked the card free. It was for Herald and Son Lawn Service. The handwritten message on the back said, I meant to give you this when you stopped by earlier. This service does a wonderful job, and they are affordable. All my best, Betty M.
“Okay, okay, I can take a hint.”
An hour into their visit, Grandma Nina had announced she needed a nap and told Jade to get some lunch and move her stuff into the house. Like the dutiful granddaughter she was, she obeyed to the letter. Once she’d dragged all her bags up to the master bedroom, which her grandmother had insisted she take, she headed for the shed out back to look for a lawn mower.
It would suck mowing a lawn in the hazy Vermont humidity, but after a three-hour drive, fast food, and the best snickerdoodles known to man, a workout was in order. Besides, it was weird being in the house alone. She couldn’t remember a time when she’d been inside without her sister or her grandmother or Grandpa Earl. Mowing the lawn would give her time to work up the courage to stay in the big, old house all by her lonesome tonight.
The backyard used to be beautiful with its three acres of lawn sloping to the bank of a lily-pad covered pond. A screened-in gazebo near the bank made the perfect summer-night refuge for two little girls with sleeping bags and flashlights. Tall pines, maples, and birches blended with neighboring properties to create a magical woodland ripe for exploration. It had been a kid’s paradise.
Now the grass was patchy and knee-high. Weeds hid the lattice-skirt of the gazebo. Even the quaint red shed behind the house sported streaks of rust. Grandma Nina would flip if she knew how bad it looked. Good thing she would never know. Jade would get it ship-shape in no time.
The smallest of her grandmother’s keys opened the padlock on the tool shed. Jade let her eyes adjust to the dark then scanned the interior for a lawn mower. There. Huddled among the hanging, rusty yard tools was one of those push mowers with twisty blades. Those were rusty too.
“Well, damn it.” With the grass high enough to lose a toddler in, a rust-locked push-mower wasn’t going to cut it. Seeing as she didn’t owe Grandma Nina rent until she landed a job, she figured she could cover lawn care until she could afford to splurge on a mower from Sears.
Shutting out the heat with the kitchen’s sliding glass door, she dialed Herald and Son Lawn Service and listened to the voicemail kick in. The isolation of small-town life must have already started to sink in, because the friendly and masculine invitation to leave a message had her thinking about lazy hours around beer-stained pool tables. Shaking off the wistful longing, she left her message then went up to the turret bedroom to unpack.
When she’d come upstairs earlier, she’d only stopped long enough to drop her bags inside the master bedroom. It had been dark inside with the drapes drawn, but she hadn’t bothered with the lights. Now, as she pushed open the heavy, paneled door, she swiped the switch on the wall. Only when nothing happened did she remember she was supposed to flip the breakers. Which were all the way down in the basement.
Might as well unpack while she was up here on the second floor. Then she could go get the juice back on to the house.
A tug on each panel of brocade drapes brought in a flood of afternoon sunlight. Very warm afternoon sunlight. After shimmying all four turret windows up for air, she put her hands on her hips and assessed her new room.
Four poster bed, neatly made with a floral-patterned bedspread, antique dressing table and highboy in the same dark wood as the bed, mirrored tray littered with a dozen perfume bottles, lace doilies on the bedside tables. It was just how she remembered it.
This room had been the stuff of fantasies when she was a little girl. She’d so rarely come in here that each time had seemed like an adventure. A vivid memory made her heart smile: her and Jilly taking turns sniffing the perfumes with their eyes closed and guessing the brand, then playing dress up with Grandma Nina’s Sunday best, stacking on their body weight in pearls and costume jewelry, then posing in front of the full-length mirror.
She had so many fond memories in this house. And no one to laugh about them with.
Jilly was half a world away in Peru with the Peace Corps, and Grandma Nina was in the world’s coziest senior home.
Seeing as her grandmother was so comfortable, she might as well make herself comfortable too. Peeking in the closet, she found some wardrobe stragglers, a few garments in dry-cleaner’s bags, a tweed blazer that must have been Grandpa Earl’s, a hatbox, and a crate filled with winter gear. Clearing enough space for her clothes, she piled everything else in the hall until she figured out where to store it all. Between the closet and the antique dresser, she had plenty of room for her wardrobe without needing to clean out the highboy.
By the time shadows stretched across the wood-plank floor, her luggage and clothes were all tucked neatly away. Content with the state of her new bedroom, she gathered up an armload of Grandma Nina’s things and headed downstairs.
Opening the door to the guest bedroom, she hit the light switch with her elbow. Nothing happened.
“Duh.” Better go flip those breakers before it got dark. Dumping her armload on the brass bed she used to share with Jilly, she turned to go and something caught her eye low on the wall. Jilly’s old Barbie nightlight. A shudder went through her as she remembered the way that stupid nightlight would sometimes cast shadows that made her feel like she was being watched.
“Old houses cast interesting shadows,” her grandmother had told her one morning when she’d mentioned seeing a ghost the night before. “It was probably just the curtains moving, playing with the glow from the nightlight. There’s no such things as ghosts.”
“But it was a man,” Jade had insisted. “It had on a top hat and a cape.” She’d almost woken her sister to ask if she could see it too, but she hadn’t wanted to frighten Jilly.
“What an imagination you have,” Grandma Nina had said on a chuckle. She’d offered Jade a plate of macaroons and a glass of pink lemonade, and suddenly it seemed moronic to have gotten so worked up over a silly shadow.
The next time she saw the shadow, she had rolled over and ignored it and thought to herself, It’s just the curtains moving, even though she’d checked and the curtains had been perfectly still. Meanwhile, the shadow with its top had and billowing cape had crept the full length of two walls then turned its head and nodded to her before disappearing out the door.
She’d forgotten about that shadow. She hadn’t seen it every time she and Jilly had spent the night, but she’d seen it enough times to dread sleeping in this bedroom. She shuddered again and said to the room, “There’s no such thing as ghosts.”
She closed the door and headed for the basement in search of a breaker box. Just in time, too. Beyond the kitchen windows, the sun was throwing its last slanting rays over the tips of the pines.
Chapter 3
Emmett’s boots squeaked over protective plastic as he padded from his bathroom back to what had originally been his dining room, but was now the front office of Herald and Son Lawn Service. Thanks to his recent garage remodel, he had all the storage and maintenance space a growing lawn-care business needed. The one thing he lacked: an employee bathroom. He had plans to put one in next to the break area. Until then, he rolled out a fresh runner of carpet-protecting plastic each week so his staff didn’t have to take off their boots when they went into his house for a restroom break.
The smell of pot roast in the Crock-Pot tempted him to call it a night and shovel in some dinner, but he headed to his desk instead. Monday meant payroll and filing last week’s work orders. And his voicemail light was blinking.
He churned out payroll in twenty minutes. Then, sinking his teeth into a candy bar, he dialed up voicemail on speaker while he began sorting work-orders alphabetically by client.
Theo banged into the shop, his arms covered in grease up to his elbows. “Damn X-two broke down on me again,” he informed Emmett as he clomped to the work sink and pumped his palm full of cleanser. “Had to do half the Pond View’s front lawn by hand.”
“Sucks,” Emmett mumbled through a mouthful of chocolate and peanuts. He’d done the whole lawn at Dover’s popular upscale restaurant by hand more than once before he could afford his first riding mower. For one man, it was a full-day job. No wonder Theo was getting in so late.
Theo’s voice rose over the sounds of running water and Mr. Bigley’s recorded voice complaining that his morning newspaper got shredded by Emmett’s crew this morning. “When are you going to scrap the two, man? You can afford an X-four. It’d make things way easier.”
“Having a good mechanic on staff makes things easier.” He gestured at Theo with his candy bar. “You telling me that two’s more than you can handle?”
Theo used the brush to scrub under his nails and flashed the grin that got him all the ladies. “Hey, man, if you got it, I can handle it. All I’m saying is that thing’s going to start costing you. You okay with buying new parts every other week?”
He shrugged, his attention on jotting down the name and number of a prospective client with an unapologetic Boston accent and a voice as smooth and refreshing as iced tea on a hot day. All thoughts of John Deere parts flitted out of his mind.
“Shit, man.” Theo strode closer while wiping his hands on a towel. “She sounds hot. Can I have her?”
“Have her?” He resisted the temptation to listen to the message a second time, and instead hit delete. First thing tomorrow, he would hear that gorgeous voice again. The address was on his sweeping route.
Looked like there was a new girl in town. Jade Alderwood.
Theo grinned. “Yeah, as a client. And if the whole package is as hot as her voice, then…” He waggled his eyebrows.
Emmett bristled, and not just because he had to reprimand Theo at least once a season for hitting on a client. The thought of Theo flashing that smile at this client hit him like a fist to the gut. Irrational, since Emmett didn’t even know her yet.
> Theo craned his neck to read his scrawl, and Emmett quashed an impulse to shift his hand to cover the woman’s name. “Jade, huh? She’s got to be smokin’ with a name like that. That’s like a stripper name or something. I could fit in a residential day after tomorrow.” He tossed the towel over his shoulder and went to the break area. “Want me to give her a call in the morning and set it up?”
“Nah, man, I got it. House is on my Tuesday route. I can swing by in the morning, check her out—uh, check out her yard.” He winced at his slip, hoping Theo hadn’t caught it.
No such luck. Theo chuckled as he cracked the top off a water bottle. “Feeling lonely without Chelsea, Herald? What’s it been, like four months, now?” He sprawled in a folding chair and slugged back half the bottle.
“Six,” Emmett grumbled. “And I don’t pay you to analyze my personal life.”
“Or lack thereof.”
Emmett muttered a good-natured agreement, but gave Theo his back while he filed work orders. That comment had hit a little close to home.
“I’m off the clock,” Theo said. “That means I can analyze your personal life all I want. Hey, what’s in the Crock-Pot tonight?” He opened the door to Emmett’s living room and made a show of inhaling. “Shit, man, pot roast? How could Chelsea dump you? I thought chicks loved a man who can cook.”
“Go home, Theo.” He didn’t need to know it had been Emmett who had broken off the two-year relationship. And he sure didn’t need to know the reason he’d broken it off. Chelsea had given him an ultimatum: get hitched or get lost.
When his parents had split, he promised himself he would never fall prey to the big-D. He’d been fourteen at the time and had believed that if he was patient, he would eventually find The One. She would be perfect for him and his heart would know her immediately. Loving her would erase his fear that marriage was merely a phase a person went through rather than the life-long commitment the Bible said it should be.