Carol had even tried a glassblowing class once. But after walking away with several burns, she had decided that was not her thing, either. There were several dozen other activities planned by The Upside, and Carol loved living here, but she did not want to spend every single day booked with an activity that required a commitment. After all, she was retired. Her biggest activity was planning the annual Christmas musical, and she adored doing it. It was quite the undertaking, and add in the music part, Carol was in heaven. After Houston had died, she had not known what to do with her life. Deciding to move to The Upside had been the best decision of her life.
* * *
“We’ll pick her apart then,” Carol said, before saying her good-byes.
Boy, would she ever.
Chapter 18
“I’m calling so early because I have a question,” Ivy explained to Rebecca. Never mind it was half past seven. Rebecca had kids. She never slept in, and Ivy never called her this early.
“Hang on a sec,” she said.
Ivy could hear the boys and Rufus, their 130-pound black Labrador, in the background. She grinned, knowing the chaos Rebecca lived through on a daily basis. Her best friend loved every minute of it, too.
“Okay, I’m back. Jacob was trying to put Thomas’s dirty socks in Rufus’s mouth,” Rebecca explained. “Never a dull moment around here. So why the early-morning call? Is George okay?”
“Dad is fine, he stopped by yesterday. He said he’s retiring and plans to sell the airline.”
“You’re kidding?” Rebecca asked. “I cannot see him retiring and playing golf all day.”
“Me either, but he says he wants to call it quits.” Ivy paused, then added, “He asked me if I wanted to come back to work.”
Another pause.
“And?” Rebecca coaxed.
“I said no. I can’t, Rebecca.”
“Of course you can’t. I wouldn’t even think of it.”
Ivy rarely discussed this with Rebecca or anyone else, for that matter. She had been so immersed in her grief, both were touchy when the topic of the airlines came up.
“But that’s not why I called. I know this is going to make you ask a dozen questions, and I’ll answer them later, but could you ask Thomas if he knows a girl named Holly? She’s in fifth grade, too. Has long gold hair. A beautiful child.” Since there was only one elementary school in Pine City, odds were good that he would at least know of her.
“Okayyy, I’ll ask him. Hang on.” Rebecca placed her hand over the phone’s mouthpiece.
Ivy heard muffled voices, then Rufus’s loud barks. She could not help but smile. It was a real genuine smile, too. Her heart felt light for the first time in eight years.
“Yes, he knows her. They’re both in Sarah Anderson’s class. So what do you want me to ask him?”
“The Sarah Anderson?”
“The one and only,” Rebecca confirmed.
She and Sarah Anderson had been friends in high school. In fact, it was Sarah herself who had planned their infamous Orlando, Florida, trip. She laughed. Sarah had moved away after her senior year, and after that, they’d never stayed in much contact, a Christmas card now and then, then nothing.
“Small world, for sure,” Ivy said.
Here goes, she thought. She was putting her nose where it did not belong, but she could not help herself. It was as if she were being pulled in some way by this little girl’s visit, and she just could not get the image of her out of her mind.
“Ask if he knows her last name.”
“Hang on.” Rebecca did not bother putting her hand over the mouthpiece this time.
Ivy held the phone away from her ear.
“It’s Greenwood. G-R-E-E-N-W-O-O-D. You know, the same as a forest that is green with foliage,” Rebecca said.
Ivy knew what greenwood was. And she actually thought she had heard the name before, but she could not figure out in what context.
“Okay, thanks. I’ll call you later,” she said, and hung up before Rebecca could ask her why the sudden interest in one of Thomas’s classmates.
The minute she hung up the phone, she brewed her second pot of coffee, then went upstairs to get her laptop. She booted it up and poured herself a cup of coffee while she waited. She needed to update her computer. It would be considered a dinosaur by today’s standards. Her father had given it to her four years ago, for her thirty-second birthday.
As soon as her homepage came up, she went to Google to begin her search.
She typed Greenwood, Pine City, North Carolina in the search engine, then hit the search button. Thousands of hits came up.
“Dang,” she said out loud as she scanned the links. Everything from forestry products to pine trees. She had to be more specific with her search parameters. She tried to remember if Holly had told her what her father’s name was. Ivy was sure she would have remembered if she had.
She tried another search, only this time she typed in the search engine: Holly Greenwood, Pine City Elementary School, Pine City, North Carolina.
Scanning through the hits, she stopped when Pine City Elementary came up in a link. She clicked the blue line to open the link and scanned the article: Holly Greenwood, Ashley Baines, and Jeffrey Laird received the Presidential Award for the third year . . . .
“Smart girl,” Ivy said. The short article in the Pine City Banner read that Holly Greenwood had also received an award for perfect attendance. “Disciplined too.”
Was this odd for a girl who, she suspected, might be abused in some way by her father? She Googled, Patterns of child abuse in eleven-year-old females.
Thousands of links. She hit the first one, read the signs of abuse. She read five more articles before concluding that Holly fit the profile of an abused child. Acting on her gut instinct, she used the computer to look up Sarah Anderson’s phone number.
She scribbled down the number. Ivy knew she was stepping way out of line, and she also knew that anyone who discovered what she was up to would believe she was obsessed with Holly because of what had happened to her own children, but she would deal with that if and when. If anyone would know if a child was suffering abuse, it would be her schoolteacher.
She dialed Sarah’s number.
“Hello?” immediately came a pleasant-sounding voice.
“Sarah?” Ivy asked. She had remembered Sarah’s distinct Southern accent. This Sarah sounded as neutral as could be.
“Yes, this is Sarah.”
“Is this the Sarah Anderson who sneaked to Orlando with Ivy Macintosh the summer before their senior year?” She figured she might as well spit it out. There was no point if this was not the Sarah Anderson.
A little giggle, and Ivy recognized it immediately.
“The one and only,” she said.
“It’s Ivy.” Surely, she would remember her? It had not been that long.
“I remember you! How could I ever forget Orlando? What in the world are you up to? It’s been forever.” Sarah seemed genuinely excited by her call.
Ivy did not want to go into all the horrid details about her past. Maybe Sarah knew, maybe not. However, she knew she could not just blurt out the reason for her phone call. There had to be a bit of reacquainting first.
“It sure has. So I understand you’re a fifth-grade teacher now? Who would have ever thought that you, of all people, would want to teach school? I remember how we both could not wait to finish high school.”
“I know. Weird, right? I think I grew up a bit when I went away to college. Berkeley was a real eye-opener for a Southern girl,” Sarah said, then went on, “I majored in mathematics—can you believe that? I taught in San Francisco for a while, then my mom got sick, and I decided to come home. I teach at the elementary school now,” she finished.
She had to ask. “How did you lose the Southern twang?”
Sarah laughed. “It was bad, huh? Actually, I studied acting while living in California. I thought it might be fun. It was not my thing. People there are totally different from S
outherners. Lot of people thought that because I had a Southern accent, I was not the brightest star in the sky. I took elocution classes for a year, learned what they call Standard American Dialect, and it stuck. I thought about becoming a news anchor after that, just to show those hippies, but I found I loved working with children, and here I am.”
“What about you? I know you studied at Duke, but you weren’t sure what you wanted to do back then? I remember you said you wanted to work for your father, but then changed your mind,” Sarah said.
She’d always had one heck of a memory. “I went to Duke, received my master’s in business, and I did work with Dad for a while.” She took a deep breath. It was very difficult to talk about her past in such a casual way.
“I know about your family, Ivy. I am so very sorry,” Sarah added, her voice soft and comforting.
Tears filled Ivy’s eyes and stopped in the back of her throat. “Thank you. It’s been . . . rough.”
She so had not wanted to talk about the crash, but it had made national headlines. It was naive of her to think Sarah wouldn’t ask questions or mention it, as her and her father’s loss had been headlines for weeks.
“I would imagine so,” Sarah said.
“Yes, it was. Still is.” She could not put into words what her loss was like, so she was not even going to try. What she could do was change the subject. She needed to come up with a reason other than asking about Holly for her call. “I’m trying to move forward. That’s why I called. I thought maybe we could have lunch or dinner sometime.” And she really wanted to, she realized after the lie flew out of her mouth. She would ask her face-to-face about Holly.
“I’d love to. I’m free just about anytime except school hours during the week.”
Taking a deep breath, Ivy plunged right in. “What about lunch today? We could meet at The Red Barn.” The place was practically an institution. If you lived within twenty miles of Pine City, you knew The Red Barn. It was owned by a local family and famous for its Southern-style food. They’d even been featured on the Food Network as one of the top ten places to dine in North Carolina.
“We’d never get in without a reservation,” Sarah said. “But there’s a new diner on the corner of Main Street, where the All-Day Dry Cleaners used to be. It’s called The Blackberry Café, and it just opened a few months ago. I have been wanting to give them a try. I hear their food is excellent.”
“That would be great. How about we meet at noon?” Ivy asked, feeling excited for the first time in eight years. She had planned on going to see her father, but she would go later or on another day. It would be fun catching up with Sarah.
“I’ll see you there. I’m glad you called,” Sarah said before they hung up.
Okay, she had actually made plans for the day. Suddenly, just like in high school, she wondered what in the world she was going to wear?
Chapter 19
The phone had been ringing off the hook all morning long, and her father refused to answer it. Holly was about to go cuckoo from listening to it ring and staring at her math book, which Mrs. Pellegrino had brought over this morning.
It was the twenty-first century, and they did not even have a computer or the Internet. She would be able to search online for math help if they did, but her dad insisted they could get by just fine without having a computer or the Internet. He was so incredibly mean. In high school, she knew for a fact that the students used computers and the Internet. What would be his excuse then? He’d probably have her homeschooled when it was time for high school. He treated her just like she was a baby, and there was no one she could talk to about it. Miss Carol would listen, but she did not want to ruin her friendship if Miss Carol decided to talk to her father. She knew him well. He would stop all contact with her if she thought Holly was telling family stuff to her.
Her dad was the most private person. She did not get him. He did not have any friends that she knew of. He never went out on dates or anything. Maybe her dad was a criminal hiding from his past? But that could not be true because he worked at The Upside, and he’d gone to college, too. And he had married her mom.
Maybe he was responsible for her mom’s death. He had never told her exactly how she had died, other than it was very sudden and tragic. When she tried to talk to him about her mother, he always got angry and said the topic was not open for discussion.
She really needed to talk to Jen Pellegrino. She wondered if Mrs. Pellegrino knew how her mother had really died? First thing Monday morning, she was going to write a note for Roxie to take home to her mom, and she hoped her mom would answer her back, so Roxie could bring the note to school on Tuesday. Since she was grounded, she was not allowed to talk on the phone. But she was listening for her father’s truck to pull out of the driveway, just in case he decided to leave. He was holed up in his den, as usual, only coming out to get something to drink. He already had a bathroom in there. Holly figured he should add one of those minirefrigerators and a microwave oven. Then he’d only have to come out when he went to work.
If he did decide to leave, for whatever reason, she planned to call Roxie’s house and ask to speak to Mrs. Pellegrino. Then she wouldn’t have to send a note to her. Roxie was probably grounded, too, at least that is what her dad said. She was sorry her friends were in trouble. Holly would bet her allowance he did not even know if Roxie and Kayla were in trouble, that he probably told her that so she would feel bad. They did not force her to go to Miss Carol’s house in the sneaky way that she did. It was her father who did. If he weren’t such a . . . an ass, he would let her have a little more freedom.
And what would he do if Ms. Anderson invited them to her house for Thanksgiving dinner? He would say no; of that, she was sure. They would do the same old thing they did every year on Thanksgiving.
He would serve that stinky pressed turkey with instant mashed potatoes, bottled gravy, canned green beans, and that nasty jellied cranberry stuff. She considered herself lucky if he bought a frozen pumpkin pie. Then he would tell her to wash the dishes, and he would spend the rest of the day watching football games. She tried watching them with him, but every time she said something, he would tell her to be quiet so he could hear what the announcer was saying.
The man was so totally mean to her. Sometimes she wondered if maybe he was not her real dad, but only her stepdad, and he had gotten stuck with her after her mother died. She planned to find out about her mother, and she was going to tell Ms. Anderson that her dad was an abuser. He was, really. He’d never hit her, or anything, but he ignored her. She knew for a fact that Kayla’s and Roxie’s fathers took them places. Once, Roxie’s dad, Joseph Pellegrino, had taken all of them to the movies in Asheville, and they’d gone to a supercool restaurant called the Mellow Mushroom after the movie. He was fun, and he acted like he truly cared if they were having a good time.
And what did her dad do? Her dad took her to Ollie’s for pizza, and that was it. More often than not, he would bring the pizza home. He was totally cruel to her.
She heard a noise from the back of the house and quickly acted like she was studying her math. He had made her study at the kitchen table so he could “keep an eye on her,” he’d said. If he allowed her to study in her bedroom, he knew that she would not. At least he knew that much about her, which she guessed was something. She was reading Deathly Hallows, the last book in the Harry Potter series, and it was due back at the library this week. If she had to study every waking hour, she would not be able to finish the book before returning it. She had already checked the book out four times. Five times was the limit on popular books, and the school library didn’t have any of the Harry Potter books. So, most likely, she would not get to read the ending. What kind of dad denied his children a final Harry Potter ending? A mean dad, just like hers.
“Holly, I’m going to the grocery store. Would you like to go with me?” Her father stood in the doorway. He was a big man, she thought. A big mean man.
“No, I’ll just stay here and study,” she sa
id, suddenly thrilled that he was leaving her alone. She could call Roxie and ask to speak to her mother.
“All right, I’ll be back in an hour.”
“Have fun,” she called out. She hoped he slipped on a banana peel and broke a leg or an arm. Then he would be at her mercy. No, she really did not mean that. Kind of, sort of. She crossed her fingers and took it back.
He went out the back door. She listened for his truck to back down the drive. As soon as she heard him pull onto the street, she raced down the hall to where the phone was. They only had one phone, and it was not even portable. When she saw that the little alcove where the phone was located was empty, she wanted to scream! The phone book was there, the scratch pad and pencil, and the chair, but no phone.
He had taken the phone with him! He truly was an abuser and the meanest man who ever lived. What if she needed to call 911? What if he was in a wreck and the police tried to call her?
What if? What if? What if?
She could not believe he would stoop so low. It was more than obvious he didn’t trust her, but to take the phone out of the house? But wait, she thought, she hadn’t actually seen the phone in his hands. It was probably hidden around here somewhere. All she had to do was find it.
Before she changed her mind, she opened the door to his bedroom. He did not like for her to go into his room. He said she must respect his privacy. Well, since he did not respect hers, she did not feel the least bit guilty when she opened the closet and began her search. She opened a couple of shoe boxes, which were filled with important-looking papers. No phone. She moved a stack of sweaters on a shelf, thinking the phone would fit perfectly behind the clothes. No luck there.
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