Close to Home (9 page)

Arlene, who refused to even consider a resident ghost or anything unexplained, insisted whatever had scared Sarah was all in her mind—the result of a fever or bad over-the-counter drugs coupled with a child's overactive imagination.

Until today Sarah had never passed the door to the upper staircase without the skin on the back of her arms breaking out in goose bumps, a visceral warning, while a tenebrous childhood memory shifted in the nether regions of her brain.

Now, she pressed her forehead to the cool glass of the cupola and closed her eyes for a second, taking in a deep breath.

Forget it, Let it go, You're a woman now, A mother, Not a scared little girl,

With renewed determination, she tried once again to open the door to the roof.

“Come on, come on,” she said, pushing hard until at last the door burst open and she fell forward, catching herself before she did a face plant on the slick widow's walk.

The air outside was heavy and moist, with rain falling and wind rushing through the gorge that surrounded the river far below.

Using her flashlight, she examined the roof tiles and railing, but it was much too dark to make a valid assessment.

The roof around the flat widow's walk was pitched and gabled with steep dormers and chimneys, and the dome of the cupola spiked upward. Venturing to the railing, Sarah stared across a sloped area of the roof to look straight down to the cliff on which the house was mounted. Though it was too dark to see the Columbia River, she heard it roaring as it pursued its swift path westward.

What had happened to Angelique Le Duc Stewart that night nearly a hundred years earlier? Her body had never been found, nor had anyone seen her husband, Maxim, again. There were rumors of a horrible fight, a story said to have started with Maxim's daughter, Helen, who had witnessed a horrifying struggle between them on this very roof.

It had been theorized by the townspeople of Stewart's Crossing, and confirmed by Maxim's children, that Angelique and Maxim, locked in a stormy marriage, had clashed in their final battle high on this rooftop, only to fall to their deaths in the icy, furious river.

Sarah's skin prickled again at the thought, her blood turning cold. She understood about fury within a relationship, anger and fear and, yes, even violence, with those you most loved, but still she felt a darkness in her soul, and when she looked westward, following the river's swath through the gorge, her mind's eye saw Angelique and Maxim, wrestling here—each with a weapon, according to legend—fighting on this slippery rooftop with its short railing.

According to stories passed on by generations, Maxim had been after her with an axe, had chased Angelique ever upward until she had nowhere to go but over the edge. Had she jumped for her life? Tried to escape? Or been thrown over the railing and fallen to her death?

She heard a scrape of something—a footstep?—over the howl of the wind and looked back to the open door to the cupola. No way. She was alone up here. No sane person would want to be up here in the storm, though of course she'd climbed those last few steps, hadn't she?

Nerves strung tight, she glanced over the nightscape of the roof and, of course, saw no one. No person. No ghost. Nothing.

Get over yourself, Sheesh! No reason to be jittery,

Blinking against the rain, she peered over the edge of the railing and squinted, searching for the river she could hear and smell but, in the pitch-black night, could not see.

She envisioned a beautiful woman tumbling through the darkness, white dress billowing around her, dark hair flying wildly, the roiling water below ready to swallow her—

Bang!

The loud sound ricocheted off the roof.

Sarah jumped.

Her feet slipped.

Biting back a scream, she caught herself with one hand on the top rail.

From the corner of her eye, she saw a flutter of white, that very same billowing white dress!

The ghost! Again!
Just like before . . .

Pulse pounding in her ears, she turned, half expecting to catch a glimpse of a specter disappearing like smoke into the darkness.

“Mom?” Gracie's scared little voice reached her just as she recognized her daughter shivering in the rain—just as she had done thirty years earlier.

Oh, sweet Jesus,
Sarah nearly collapsed, the sense of déjà vu overwhelming.

“Gracie?” she whispered, having trouble finding her voice. Gracie's face was ghostly white, her hair in wild, wet ringlets. “What're you doing?” Sarah's voice was a little sharp, an edge of panic to it. She hurried toward her daughter. “Let's go back inside.”

“What're you doing?” Gracie echoed. She was in her nightgown, her feet bare, again, much the way Sarah had been nearly thirty years earlier.

“Checking out the roof.”

“In the middle of a storm? At night?”

“Not my smartest move. Come on, let's get out of the rain.” She decided that she wouldn't mention anything about facing down her own fears, not just yet. After shepherding Gracie inside again, she yanked the door to the cupola shut behind them, then followed her daughter down the spiral staircase leading to the attic. “You're soaked,” Sarah said, one hand on Gracie's shoulder as they followed the bluish beam of the flashlight through the maze of clutter in the cold garret.

“So are you!”

“I'm wearing a jacket.”

“Big deal.”

“Hey, it's something.” Over Gracie's shoulder, Sarah shined her bluish beam from her phone down the next steep flight downward. “You don't have a flashlight?” Her panic was subsiding, the spike in her adrenaline declining. She finally regained her equilibrium as they reached the steps to the third floor.

“Nah.”

“How did you find your way? It's a rabbit warren of junk up here.”

Gracie lifted a shoulder. “Dunno,” she said as they stepped onto the worn floorboards of the upper hallway and, after Sarah secured the door to the attic, started toward the main stairs. That's how it always had been with Gracie. Sometimes it was as if she possessed some kind of heightened precognition; other times she was a regular kid.

“You've got to be freezing,” Sarah said, trying to usher her daughter toward the main stairs.

But Gracie stopped dead in her tracks at Theresa's room and grabbed the doorknob. “Something happened in here.”

Sarah's newfound equilibrium took a hit. “Of course things happened in there,” she said. “Just like in every room. The house is nearly a hundred years—”

“I mean something
bad
happened in here.” Gracie was shaking her head.

“
What do you mean?”

“I'm not sure.” She turned the knob, and as the door creaked open, she stepped into the bedroom.

“Gracie, no. Let's go,” Sarah said, wishing her kid wouldn't do this kind of thing, that Gracie would just play soccer, or be attached to her smartphone as if it were a lifeline, or hang out with friends . . . just not be such a loner. “Have you talked to your dad? Told him about the move?”

But her daughter wasn't listening. Nor did she bother to snap on the overhead light. “It's cold in here,” she whispered, and her breath actually fogged a bit.

“Of course it is. There isn't any heat and you're soaked.”

Sarah flipped the switch, and pale light filtered from one of the two bare bulbs from the broken fixture overhead. “And the window doesn't seal, and the damper in the fireplace is probably broken, causing a draft.”

“That's not what I meant.”

Sarah paused, then gave up. “Yeah, I know.”

Biting her lower lip, Gracie walked to the fireplace and touched the mantel, her gaze traveling to the cracked mirror. “What happened here?”

“I really don't know. It was my sister's room.”

“But not Dee Linn's, right? She was on the second floor with you and Uncle Jake and Joe.”

“That's right.” They'd discussed some of this before. “It's Theresa's room. You never met her, and I don't really remember her, either.”

“Huh.” Gracie picked up a small figurine, a statue of the Madonna that had been standing alone on the mantel for decades. “Kind of weird.” Gracie blew the dust from the tiny statue. “And no one knows what happened to her?”

“Everyone says she ran away.”

“Do you believe that?”

“I don't know what to believe. Mom says she's alive somewhere, that Theresa ran away because she couldn't follow the rules of the house, that my father was too strict.”

“Was he?”

“Not with us, but he might've been different with Theresa and Roger. They were older, his stepkids.”

“Where was their dad?”

“Dead. He'd died a year earlier, I think. Mom was a widow when she married Dad. We can talk about this downstairs, after you're changed.”

But Gracie seemed a million miles away as she rotated the little statue in her hands.

“Honey?” Sarah prodded, feeling a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature in the room.

“You think she's dead?”

Oh, Lord,
“Maybe. I hope not.” Feeling as if she were walking across her sister's grave, Sarah crossed the short distance to Gracie and plucked the ceramic Madonna from her fingers.

“But, Mom, something happened here, didn't it?” Gracie pressed, turning her white face to her mother. “Something really bad.” Sarah's blood turned to ice, as her words from a world away echoed in her mind.

“What happened in here?” Sarah had demanded after Arlene had caught her snooping. “Something bad.”

Arlene's response had been instantaneous. She'd clamped her fingers around Sarah's arm and dragged her youngest daughter into the hallway. “Don't you ever go in there again. Do you hear me? If I catch you, Sarah Jane, I swear, I'll make you stay in your bedroom for a month! How would you like that?” she'd threatened as she'd closed the door to Theresa's room and found her key. Her jaw had been set, her color ashen, her fingers quivering as she'd locked the door.

Once the room was secure, she'd let out her breath and leaned against the oak panels. Seeing that her fingers were still gripping Sarah's arm, she'd let go immediately, almost as if she'd been burned. Tears had welled in her eyes, and she'd knelt before her youngest. “Oh, honey, I'm sorry,” she'd whispered, nose to nose, as light from the lower floors illuminated the stairwell. “I don't know what got into me.”

Sarah hadn't bought that. She believed to this day that Arlene had understood her motives clearly.

With one hand, her mother had pushed a lock of hair off her forehead and glanced at the ceiling, as if she were waging some inner battle with herself. “But you mustn't go into Theresa's room again, all right?”

“Why?” Sarah had demanded, the handprint on her upper arm still visible.

Arlene's gaze had traveled from the mark on Sarah's arm to her eyes. She must've seen some kind of defiance or even a spark of hatred in them because she'd grabbed Sarah then and held her tight, the smells of her perfume and last cigarette still lingering. “I just want you to be safe, baby, that's all,” she'd said, and it had seemed heartfelt, her voice cracking. When she'd held her daughter at arm's length to impress upon Sarah how sincere she was, Arlene had even blinked against tears shimmering in her eyes. “Believe me, I just want to keep you safe.”

Now, standing in the very bedroom she'd been warned to leave alone, Sarah wanted desperately to say the same things to her own child.

Instead, she'd cleared her throat and said, “Come on, let's get downstairs and make some hot chocolate. Tomorrow's a big day. The last one before you start school.”

“I know. Ugh.” Gracie was less than enthused, but at least she didn't argue. As Sarah shepherded her daughter out of the room and snapped off the light, she saw the peaceful little Madonna statuette upon the ledge, and just for a second, she was certain the serene little Mary stared right back.

R
osalie threw back the top of the musty old sleeping bag.

She was sick of lying here in this miserable horse barn, sick of crying her eyes out, and really sick of feeling so damned helpless. What was it her Gram had always said? “The good Lord helps those who help themselves.” That was starting to make a lot of sense.

She'd spent the last two days covered on her cot, wishing her mother or the police or
some
-damned-body would show up to rescue her, and so far, it hadn't happened.

He'd
returned for all of five minutes, scaring the crap out of her as she'd heard an engine, the outer door creak open, and the ring of his boots along the old floorboards, louder and louder with each purposeful stride.

She'd cowered in the corner, holding her sleeping bag to her chin, her eyes following his every move. He'd stayed near the door, blocking her escape, and had dropped off a microwave meal that had been heated but was by then cold, then emptied her crude chamber pot and left a couple more bottles of water.

When he'd tried to engage her, she'd kept a stony silence, and that had really pissed him off.

“Better learn some manners, girl,” he'd said with a knowing smile. “Real quick.” Then he'd slammed the door shut and disappeared.

She shivered at the memory.

How
could she ever have trusted him?

Now, the barn was silent. Not even the sound of quick thuds and scurrying footsteps of squirrels disturbing the silence.
Do something, Anything,

You have to get out of here, Rosalie, Just because he hasn't raped or tortured or killed you yet, doesn't mean he won't,

Tamping down the fears that had been her constant companion since he'd kidnapped her, she decided to make use of the few hours of daylight that illuminated this prison cell of a room. She rolled to her feet, and tried the door again. Of course it was locked tight. She didn't bother with screaming or yelling as her voice was already raw; she'd exhausted herself trying to get someone outside to hear her by banging on the walls and shrieking at the top of her lungs for what seemed like hours.

All to no avail.

Think,
she told herself now. All she had were her wits, and though her grades in school had never shown her intelligence, she knew she was smart. Hadn't those IQ tests she'd taken shocked the socks off of Mrs. Landers, the school counselor who'd about written her off as a total loser?

So now she had to use those brains to her advantage. Since screaming and threats hadn't moved her captor, she thought she should pull out her acting skills, make him think her spirit was broken, that she'd become docile, and go along with him so that he would trust her and she could find a means of escape.

At the very thought of playing the weak little girl she actually gagged. She couldn't play meek and malleable when all she wanted to do was rip the guy's throat out, cut off his balls, and gouge his eyes for doing this to her. The thought of hanging her head and pretending to curl up in fear at the sight of him galled her.

No effin' way was that going to happen.

She'd find a way out of this prison or die trying.

She looked through the room again, searching for some way out or at the very least a weapon.

Nothing at first glance.

And the window was too high. Even if she managed to tilt the cot up on its end, she wouldn't be able to climb it and reach the window and slip through. The old glass was probably thin and might break easily, but it was made up of small panes surrounded by a wooden frame. The door was solid. She'd already tried.

However, the walls of the stall didn't reach the ceiling. There was about two and a half feet of open space between the sides of the box and the beams running overhead. If she climbed up on the cot to hoist herself over the wall, she could land on the other side and maybe get out that way. Unless that stall was locked as well. But why would it be? It was empty.

She eyed the opening. She'd have to balance the cot against the wall and reach up to loop her hands over the edge. They were cuffed, but not useless. If she managed to pull her body to the top of the stall, she could peer into it, see that it was safe, roll over and drop down on the other side.

It was worth a try, right?

Except that the cot was lightweight, with a thin aluminum frame that wouldn't support any kind of weight when it was turned on end. The legs were short and folded inward for storage. Trying to balance on them would be tricky.

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” she said, quoting Grams again.

It was now or never.

After pushing the fabric side of the cot against the wall, she tried to climb onto the legs.
Bam!
She fell immediately, landing hard on the floor. Pain rocketed up her spine, and the tiny bed tumbled backward to land upside down on her.

“Damn it!”

Not good,

But she wasn't giving up. Once she'd caught her breath, she turned the stupid cot onto its end again and, gently, being careful with her weight, attempted to rest her body on it. Once stable, she slowly dragged her feet under her. She managed to plant one foot on the short leg, then slowly draw her other foot up the side and—

Thunk!

Down she came again.

Her head banged hard against the floor, and the damned cot fell atop her once more.

“Shit!” she cried in frustration, and tears filled her eyes. “Shit, shit, shit!” She kicked the flimsy bed to one side and lay on the floor staring upward at the rafters high above. Her head throbbed, and her back ached. She was no better off than she'd been when she started. In fact, she was worse, considering her injuries.

Rosalie wanted to cry, to break down in bitter tears. She hoped her mother would come for her, but she knew deep in her heart that she was on her own. She'd have to rely on her own wits and agility to save herself.

Or else, most likely, she would die.

 

Our Lady of the River was even lamer than it sounded.

Jade thought she'd prepared herself, that she'd formed a pretty good idea of how bad it would be before she ever pushed open the wide glass doors with the name of the school and two angels etched into them, but she'd been wrong. The place was positively archaic, with its stained-glass windows, shiny linoleum floors, and pictures of saints decorating the walls.

But she was stuck.

At least for a while.

Hiking up her backpack, she headed toward the school offices. She hated transferring schools and being the new kid all over again. It had happened twice before in her lifetime and it sucked big-time. As a junior she wondered how she'd survive this place, with its already established cliques and social strata.

Maybe she didn't want to know.

Now, the hallway was empty, its floors gleaming, a beat-up bank of lockers flanking one side, floor-to-ceiling windows letting in light on the other. Deep down, she knew that this was the first day of what would be the school year from hell. She'd be the new kid again, taunted, teased, maybe bullied and alone for at least a while—until some nerd or geek or worse took pity on her and tried to welcome her into a pathetic circle of the socially unacceptable.

Rather than dwell on the inevitable, she texted Cody again and told him she wanted him to visit her here. She'd rather drive to Vancouver, of course, but with her car on lockdown in the shop, that was impossible.

She found a sign pointing her toward the counseling offices, and she headed in that direction, grateful that for once, her mother hadn't insisted on joining her, even though Sarah had made noises about escorting her into the school and introducing herself to the counselor.

Inwardly Jade shuddered. She'd made Sarah drop her off a block down the street and had entered through a back door near the cafeteria, where the smells of tomato sauce battled with an underlying odor of pine-scented cleanser. There was just no need to have another reason for the kids to make fun of her. They'd have plenty already. And though Sarah had seemed a little wounded about Jade's refusal, she'd acquiesced. After all, she'd done enough damage by registering Jade at this freaky old school, the very high school where Sarah had been a student.

Just effin' . . . perfect,

Of course Jade had been forced to wear the Our Lady of the River uniform, and it was about as bad as it could be: Plaid skirt to her knees, white blouse, uncomfortable navy blue jacket.

Save me,
she thought as she walked past a huge mural of a Crusader astride a white horse. A red cross was emblazoned upon his white tunic, and he wielded a long, deadly-looking sword in his right hand. The painting was immense, filling an impossibly tall wall near the gym. Jade stared at it briefly, then wended her way past the athletic department and through a rabbit warren of offices that, aside from the computers, looked like they were straight out of the 1800s.

The counselor was waiting for her in a tiny office filled with notebooks and stacks of papers and smelling of invisible, hundred-year-old dust that couldn't be hidden by any amount of room freshener. For the next hour Jade tried not to slouch in an uncomfortable plastic chair while the sickeningly pleasant Miss Smith, a redhead with doe eyes, receding chin, worry lines creasing a huge forehead, and a patient smile “worked out the kinks” in Jade's schedule. While her fingers flew over the keyboard of a computer, she kept talking about boring extracurricular activities and clubs she was certain Jade would “just love.”

Worse yet, the slim woman was obviously as nervous as she was. Miss Smith's fingers shook a little on the computer keys when they weren't hooking and rehooking a wayward lock of hair over her ear.

The minutes crawled by while they were tweaking the schedule until, in the end, Miss Smith declared it perfect.

Yeah, right, Nothing about this place comes close to perfect,
Jade thought, climbing to her feet.

“Wait!” the counselor called out to her, getting up from her chair. “I need to get you a hard copy.”

“Oh.”

“Also, at our Lady of the River, each new student is assigned an ‘angel' to help with the first week or two of school. You know, to help out and show you the ropes, so to speak.”

“Why? So they can hang themselves?” It just slipped out. Jade was tired and cranky and nearly sick to her stomach at being here, but she knew immediately from the way Miss Smith's face shut down, she'd goofed. “Sorry,” Jade mumbled quickly, “just a joke.”

The prim counselor cleared her throat. “In any event, we like every new student to feel included and make friends. You might not yet know it, but recently a local girl went missing, so we're doubling our efforts to make sure no one is ever alone at Our Lady.”

“Isn't it safe here?” Jade asked.

“Of course! But, um, you can never be too safe, can you?”

For once Jade held her tongue. She didn't blurt out another smart-ass quip about God watching over the hallowed halls of this school because she was stuck here for now, and it didn't make sense to make things any worse than they already were.

“So,” Miss Smith went on, as the printer purred and spat out Jade's “final” schedule, “Mary-Alice Eklund, your personal angel, should be arriving shortly. Her friends call her Mary-A.”

Oh joy. Jade could hardly wait.

Miss Smith stepped into another office to retrieve the documents and returned with a pasted-on smile and several pages. Appearing as relieved as Jade that their meeting was about over, she straightened the pages that held Jade's schedule, map, and student rights information, then crisply tapped the edges on her desk and slid them into the stapler before pounding it with her fist. “Oh, here's Mary-Alice now.” Miss Smith's grin widened as a fresh-faced blond girl wearing the standard Our Lady uniform, lips shiny with gloss, and a perky ponytail nearly bounced into the small room.

“Hi!” the blond girl enthused. She was petite, had perfect skin, and a cute little smile that didn't quite touch her eyes. “Welcome to Our Lady!”

Jade forced out a “thanks” she didn't mean.

“Trust me, you're gonna love it here.”

Jade merely lifted her brows.

Quick introductions were made, and before Jade could scream, “Let me outta here,” they were off, out of the claustrophobic office and back into the wide hallway. From inside her hot-pink purse, Mary-Alice's cell phone rang. Without breaking stride, she checked the screen, frowned, then dropped it back into a pocket and just kept on talking.

Mary-Alice was a senior and captain of the dance team as well as “on student council and a member of honor society,” she'd said, almost as if she thought Jade might be impressed by her résumé.

Jade was marched quickly through the maze of hallways, Mary-Alice chattering on about the benefits of attending the private school. “This is the social science wing, where you'll have American history.” She pointed to an offshoot of the main corridor. “And the library is upstairs. Watch out for Sister Donna. She's kind of old school. Thinks no one should utter a word and is always shushing everyone.” She tossed Jade a knowing grin before bouncing down the halls and introducing Jade to a few of the teachers. Most of them weren't nuns, but they all had the same enthusiasm about the school that Mary-Alice exuded.

It was enough to make Jade consider running for her life.

Worse yet, they ran into a priest walking in the other direction.

Oh, great,
She hated trying to make small talk with priests or monks or anyone in the church, for that matter.

“Father Paul!” Mary-A waved and was quick to gain his attention.

Jade wanted to disappear.

A stooped man in gray slacks and matching jacket, the priest wore a black shirt with a clerical collar. His was one of those bland faces with a practiced, oh-so-patient smile. Father Paul had to be eighty, maybe older. His hair was thick and snowy, his face a craggy landscape that suggested his life, or priesthood, hadn't been easy.