Finding the Way Back

by Jill Bisker

  Everyone was of the same mind, so Connie and I ran up to get dressed. Throwing my hair in a ponytail, I grabbed my jeans, a t-shirt and a flannel shirt in case it was cool. “We really need to finish laundry today, Connie. I still have stuff in both machines.”

  “I’ll run and handle that, you can call the cable company and locksmith and then we’ll start in the dining room.”

  I picked up my cell phone off the bedside table and I noticed it was dead again. This was driving me crazy. I didn’t think the battery was so old that it would stop holding a charge. I would have to keep it plugged in as much as possible.

  Walking down the stairs I made sure to hold on to the banister. I wasn’t graceful in the first place and it didn’t help to have a ghost complicating matters. I no longer thought my grandmother tried to push me down, but the whole thing was still strange. It really started me thinking about my grandmother falling down these same stairs. Then it dawned on me. Could it have been a different ghost? The first one that was in the house already when my grandparents moved in? Could that ghost have been behind her fall? I was acting as if it wasn’t dangerous to be staying here but in some instances it could be deadly. We’d have to be careful. The whole thing was still hard to digest.

  My mom and aunt were standing in the dining room looking over the accumulated mess. My mother turned to me. “By the way, Laney, we got twelve hundred dollars for the books. That should be a nice little start for the redecorating fund.”

  “Wow, I usually don’t get more than twenty bucks for several bags of books! Of course you really had a lot of them, but still. Nice start but will not really even cover paint.”

  “No matter. It helped having some rare autographed copies and we did have a few gems.”

  My aunt smiled conspiratorially. “It didn’t hurt that Curt Babcock at the bookstore has always had a crush on your mother. She bats her pretty blue eyes at him and he’s putty.”

  “That’s not true,” my mom said, starting to blush. “Well, maybe a little true.” She turned back to the mess and picked up an old plunger. “Let’s just throw this,” she said, changing the subject, not very subtly.

  My aunt and I both chuckled.

  “What did I miss?” Connie asked as she walked into the dining room with a clothes basket in her hands.

  “We’re teasing my mom. Hey, if you’re going downstairs remember your flashlight.”

  “Got it. Say, did you tell them about Saundra yet?”

  “Saundra? What about Saundra?” my mom asked.

  We related what Louise had told us and both our mothers were mortified. “That’s why you had to call the locksmith,” Aunt Shelly said. “I was wondering.”

  “Laney, we should get a security system installed. They cost next to nothing these days,” my mom said, visibly shaken.

  “We really should,” Connie agreed. “I know someone who works for ADT.”

  “I wish we had some of Emmett’s cameras running all the time. Then we’d have solid proof. Right now it’s just ‘she said, she said.’ You know she’ll deny being here,” I said glumly. “I hate the feeling of violation.”

  “Once you get the locks changed that should put a stop to any unexpected visits. Add a security system and you’ll have it covered,” my mom said.

  We all agreed and Connie left the room to start a load of laundry while the rest of us went into the dining room to look over the chaos. Each of us grabbed a box to sort through.

  “Let’s agree that we don’t keep anything we don’t need right now. With this much stuff there’s no point keeping something we only might need sometime in the future,” I said, opening the nearest box that I remembered moving from the dining room table. Reaching inside I found light bulbs, batteries, a dirty old t-shirt, a few extension cords. Then at the bottom I came upon four one-dollar bills and some change. Holding up my prize I said, “Look what I found. We’ll have to go through every box carefully and not just dump things we think are junk. We really don’t know what we might find.” I threw the t-shirt into a trash bag we had in the room then walked into the kitchen to look for something to put the money in. I opened the nearest cupboard and found it jam packed with dishes. I removed a glass jar, put the money in it and placed it in the middle of the kitchen table, then returned to the dining room. I caught the tail end of a conversation my mother and aunt were having. “That’s just an old rumor,” my mother said testily.

  “Maybe not,” my aunt insisted.

  “What’s a rumor?” I asked.

  “Our father was well known for not liking the bank manager,” my mother started.

  “He didn’t like anyone,” my aunt cut in.

  “Yes, well, they had a falling out about thirty years ago and my father took all his money out of the town bank, cussing out the bank manager and banks in general. Now if he had just transferred it to another bank it would be one thing. But he took it all in cash, and enough people saw him to start the rumor mill flying that he took it home and hid it somewhere in the house,” my mom continued. “But we found several accounts out of town after he died so I let it go. My feeling is, however, that it just wasn’t enough. My father was an extremely successful businessman. Either he spent it all on the things in these boxes or maybe it is somewhere in the house. He was always suspicious of strangers. He wouldn’t let too many people in and if a handyman or other workers of any sort came he would watch them the entire time they were in the house.”

  “The neighbor said that handymen would run out all the time,” I noted.

  “Well if they did it was probably because of something our father did or said, not because of any ghosts. He was known to be a very aggressive man with a temper. He didn’t suffer fools quietly, and he thought he knew everything.”

  Dragging a chair from the kitchen, Connie came in with a pen and legal tablet. “I’m going to list everything anyone thinks has worth,” she said. “Then we’ll look it up and record the estimated value. I’ll start by putting it on the desk in the study.”

  Concentrating on the task at hand, I kept up a dialog in my head puzzling out all the information. It was quiet in the room except for the occasional exclamation from someone finding a treasure or more money. We piled the items that we thought had some worth in the study. I sighed putting down the vase I’d just found on the floor. It wasn’t long before that room started to look cluttered again.

  Later, the locksmith arrived and changed out the locks. I would feel much better about leaving the house occasionally now that that was accomplished. It still made me sick to my stomach to think of Saundra rummaging around the house—our house. Did she know something about hidden money? Or was she just believing the rumors?

  After spending some time sorting in the dining room I asked a question that had been on my mind for a while. “What happened the night your mother died? Do you think it’s possible she was pushed by a ghost?”

  “I can’t tell you for sure,” my mom said. “But this negative energy in the house is new, at least as far as these ghostly encounters are concerned. The odd things that happened when we were growing up were more fun. Just things being moved, almost playfully. I sometimes thought I smelled a hint of cologne, or felt the sensation of a presence. I was much more afraid of our father who was very much alive. He would explode at the slightest thing,” my mother said, starting to reminisce. “On the night Mother died Shelly and I were home all evening while our parents went to a company party. My mother had dressed in a beautiful pale pink. I still remember. It was a full, flowing kind of dress. Her light blond hair was elegantly pulled back and she looked like Grace Kelly to me.”

  “She was lovely,” Shelly added. “Even after she died it helped me to picture her as an angel. Sometimes, I pretended she was here watching over me and would just walk in from the next room.”

  My mom nodded. “We were in bed asleep when they got home. I woke when she screamed, and by the time we got out of bed to run downstairs it was already too late. She was gone. Our fath
er was leaning over her as we came down the steps and he yelled at us to go back upstairs. He looked very pale and shaken. We ran upstairs to our room and listened through the closed door together, crying. We were so scared. We didn’t know what to do. The doctor came quickly. In those days doctors often came to you. We heard him tell our father that she was dead. We were shocked. I think everyone forgot us up in that room. We clung to one another all night until we both just fell asleep together. Our father never even came to find us and see if we were okay or even tell us our mother had died. I’m sure he was lost in his own grief. It was the worst night of our lives.” Aunt Shelly reached out her hand and my mom gripped it. “It’s been us against the world ever since then.”

  I saw my mother and Aunt Shelly with new eyes. I’d heard the story before but it had never been so real and so close as this time. Hearing it in the house where it happened, looking at the actual staircase where their mother fell, picturing them as children huddling in a room upstairs—it made my own challenges in life pale in comparison.

  “Let’s take a break,” my mom said, and we all agreed. Aunt Shelly and my mom were put on lunch duty. They’d brought salad fixings and buns with them that morning, which was lucky for us. They were much better about planning and thinking things through than I was. If it was left up to me, we might have just had ketchup on noodles.

  Chapter Twenty

  After lunch, I took a load out to the dumpster and was reminded about the garage. It was probably full of ‘treasures’ also. Walking back into the house I called to my mother. “Do you know where the key to the garage is?”

  She came bustling into the kitchen. “I think it’s on my key ring.” She reached into her purse on the counter and pulled out her keys. “I’ll get a copy made in the next few days. It’s going to be a mess out there, Laney. Are you sure you want to do this alone?”

  “It can’t be any worse than the basement, but I will bring bug spray with me. I think we need the space. We need to be able to move some furniture and items we may sell out there. We’re running out of space in the study.” Grabbing my flashlight, I left the door to the basement open and ran down to get the bug spray I left by the shower. I moved quickly and ran back up the stairs again, grateful for nothing strange happening. I made my way out to the garage again and unlocked the door, slowly pushing it open. The light from outside barely made it through the one small, filthy window. The floor wasn’t paved, just packed dirt. We would need to get plastic totes to store items in if we thought we would store anything out here. There was a car parked in the middle and covered with a dust cloth. Putting the bug spray on the floor, I grabbed the cloth and started pulling, dropping it in a pile next to the vehicle. To my surprise, underneath was an adorable vintage, blue, Mercedes two-seater convertible. Apparently this was one of the things he’d spent money on. I wondered if my mom had the keys to this also or if we’d have to find them in the house somewhere. I couldn’t wait to take it out on a test drive. Continuing to look around, I was also surprised by the fact that there was hardly anything else kept in the garage. The car must have been his baby.

  Walking around the garage, I questioned how structurally sound the building was. I would have to have someone look at it sooner rather than later, but it seemed okay for now. Hopefully, it wouldn’t fall in on one of us. I heard a car drive up and park in the alley. Peeking out the door I saw a bright red Camaro’s door open, and a long stretch of bare leg ending in an impractical high heel stepping out. I never understood how women walked in those things.

  Saundra. I couldn’t believe she had the nerve to show up here. Well, good. We had some business to take care of. I wondered how she was going to get around the fact she had been in our house. The door on the opposite side of the car opened and a man extracted himself from the vehicle. He had sandy hair, a bad comb over, and jeans that were too tight and a tad short. I stepped out of the garage, slightly surprising her.

  “Why, Laney, how great it is to see you,” she recovered smoothly.

  “Really? It’s too bad I was out the other day when you came over,” I said walking up to the car.

  “When? I did end up seeing you that morning. Remember? We talked about contractors. I brought mine along for you to meet. This is Dale Barnard. Dale, this is Laney Hughes.”

  “MacKenzie,” I countered.

  “Nice to meet you, Laney. I would love to take a look at your project for you,” he answered, grasping my hand tightly and compressing all my bones a vise-like grip.

  He was one of those. Those men who try to intimidate with their brute strength. It wasn’t going to work with me.

  “Thank you, but no,” I answered politely, acting as if my hand didn’t throb. I wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction. Turning to Saundra I asked, “What were you doing in the house yesterday?”

  My directness startled her. “I wasn’t in the house,” she began.

  “Yes, you were. The neighbors saw you run out and I want to know what you were doing. Were you looking for something?”

  “I don’t know what they saw, but it wasn’t me. What would I be doing here?” she drawled innocently.

  “Don’t be blowing smoke, Sandy, we both know you were here. Now what were you looking for?” I retorted, stepping forward.

  Dale stepped in front of me. “Now hang on there, no need for violence.”

  “This is none of your business, and I’d be careful who I was defending if I were you. I just want some answers.” My anger and frustration shot up three notches. I stepped around him and yelled at Saundra, “You’re not welcome here. Get off my property and don’t come back. If I catch you in this house again I’m calling the cops. Got it?” Looking at Dale I added, “And if you think I would do business with any friend of hers, you can think again.”

  They beat a hasty retreat toward Saundra’s car. My adrenaline was really pumping now. Once they were in her car I walked up to the window and pointed my finger at her. “I’m watching you.”

  She gasped, staring at my hand and started the engine. I smiled as they took off, knowing I’d overreacted but satisfied by the result. No one was going to intimidate me anymore. Turning around I found Connie, my mother, my aunt and Emmett standing on the back porch watching me.

  I didn’t realize I had an audience. As I was about to bow, I saw movement on my forearm. A spider at least two inches long was walking up my arm. I screamed and tried to fling it off, waving my arms wildly and jumping around like a crazy person. Tearing my flannel shirt off, I threw it on the ground. Everyone reacted by running towards me.

  “What’s wrong?” Connie yelled.

  “There was a huge spider on me!” I exclaimed, my voice an octave higher than normal. I brushed my hands up and down my body, making sure there were no other spiders. “Look at my back—look in my hair—is it still on me?”

  Connie looked me over carefully as I continued to shake. “No, there’s nothing.” Our eyes met and we broke out laughing. Pretty soon everyone was laughing. Tears started streaming down my face. “I thought she was scared of me, but it was probably just the spider.”

  “I don’t know, Laney, you sounded pretty scary to me,” Emmett said.

  Great—another absurd episode in front of Emmett, who was still smiling. “Very funny, Mr. Ghost Hunter. Will you come check out my shirt?”

  “I couldn’t possibly say no to a request like that,” he said, grinning widely.

  “You know what I meant.” I hit him in the arm and felt my face get hot. “I brought my bug spray with me into the garage, but I forgot it there. I knew that place was infested and I’m not going back in until someone fumigates it with Agent Orange, or napalm, or something.”

  “We’re going back to the house if the excitement is over,” Aunt Shelly said as she and my mother headed back inside, still laughing and shaking their heads.

  “Agent Orange? We can probably find something a little more environmentally friendly. But first things first—the checking of the shirt.” Em
mett clowned, feigning a deep bow of a knight to his lady. As he swept his hand down he lifted my shirt off the ground. An enormous spider ambled across the fabric toward his hand. Emmett gave a massive yelp and threw the shirt down again. “You didn’t tell me the spider was ginormous,” he exclaimed.

  Connie and I burst out laughing again. “Not so funny when the spider’s on the other foot. I think it’s a wolf spider. It must have been hiding in the dust cloth covering the car in the garage,” I answered.

  He delicately lifted the shirt again and shook it. The spider flew off the shirt and into the grass, dashing into a pile of leaves as Connie and I screeched. “Hey, that could have landed anywhere,” I said bending over, hardly able to catch my breath. I was laughing so hard, I was lucky I didn’t pee just a little during the fracas. It was refreshing to know I could laugh at myself even when I was absurd and that it was okay. Being me was just enough and if that hadn’t been right for Simon, it might be right for someone else. I was no longer willing to sacrifice who I was for anyone.

  I caught my breath and raised my head to see Emmett looking at me with a smile. And this time it didn’t feel awkward. It just felt right.

  “I suppose we should go back in the house,” I said, smiling right back at him.

  “Yes, I suppose we should,” he said, and my heartbeat sped up once again.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I walked into the kitchen with Connie and Emmett to find my mother and Aunt Shelly sitting near the table with their feet up on chairs in front of them, refreshing themselves with a cup of coffee. A large plate of chocolate chip cookies sat in the middle of the table.

  “This is cozy,” I said, pulling another chair up to join them. They dropped their feet and offered the chairs to Emmett and Connie.