Close to Home

by Lisa Jackson

Jade figured that the minute she stepped into the hallway Mary-Alice was probably texting all of her friends, maybe the whole damned student body about what a loser Jade was.

  Who cared?

  You do, More than you want to admit,

  Closing her eyes, Jade leaned on the counter where the sinks were mounted. What was she doing? It was one thing to avoid her “angel,” but making an out-and-out enemy of Mary-Alice Eklund was just plain stupid. She let out her breath slowly and opened her eyes to catch her uniformed image in the mirror. She just wasn’t cut out to be an Our Lady Crusader. She just didn’t buy into the whole allegiance-to-my-school thing. Never had. Never would. Didn’t her mother know that? Why did Mom insist on punishing her?

  Leaning over the leaky faucet, she splashed some water over her face and told herself to cool off, to not let Mary-Alice get to her. She yanked down a paper towel and for the first time noticed posters on the walls inside the restroom urging the football team to win the big game this weekend.

  Really?

  In here? So that as you came out of the stall or were combing your hair or adding lip gloss or whatever you’d feel some sense of rah-rah for Our Lady’s football team.

  Jade leaned closer to the mirror and brushed a bit of fallen mascara off her cheek. Another poster caught her eye, black and white with a picture of Rosalie Jamison front and center, a reward offered for evidence leading to her safe return. Fleetingly she wondered about the missing teenager, who, according to what she’d heard in the hallways, hadn’t gone to Our Lady.

  “Lucky,” Jade said, then regretted the word the minute it slipped out because it seemed that this was serious.

  Bracing herself for the rest of the day, Jade hiked her backpack higher on her shoulder and was starting to text Cody again as she pushed open the swinging door of the restroom. Head bent, she ran into a tall dude who was talking to his friend while half running in the other direction. “Hey!” she cried as her cell phone slipped out of her hand to skid across the polished floor and smash into a radiator. “Watch where you’re going!”

  “Me?” He swung around, skidding to a stop, and she was about to lay into him when she recognized him. Liam Longstreet. Of all the rotten luck! Mary-A’s boyfriend and a jock with an athletic swagger and killer smile.

  Perfect.

  His friend was shorter, thicker, with red hair and a smattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose.

  Other than these two idiots, the long corridor was empty.

  “Whoa,” Liam Longstreet, who needed to shave or get serious about that beard shadow, stared down at her from somewhere around six feet two inches. He held out both his hands, fingers splayed, and took a step back. “Sorry. Didn’t see you.”

  She scrambled for her phone, but it had slid closer to him, so as she reached for it, her boots slipping a little, he snagged it from the floor. “Give me that!” she ordered.

  In a second her life flashed before her eyes. What if he kept it? Saw her pictures and her texts to Cody? Read everything she’d ever written? Saw her in various states of undress and posted those pics on Instagram or Twitter or wherever? What if he called or texted the friends on her contact list? Panic crawled through her as she realized that, with her phone, he could do to her what Mary-Alice, his girlfriend, had threatened.

  “Said I was sorry.” But he still didn’t release the phone.

  “So prove it.” She held out her hand defiantly, palm up, while inside she was crumbling. Desperate. There were photos of her and Cody kissing and touching and . . . oh, crap! “Give it back.” Oh, God, was her voice actually trembling?

  She hadn’t even noticed that Liam’s friend was taking in the exchange with a twisted smile on his face and a glint in his eye.

  “Let’s take a look,” the friend suggested, “See what she’s got in there.” He took a swipe at the phone, but Liam’s fingers curled around it.

  Jade said, “That’s private property.”

  The tardy bell rang loudly, echoing down the empty hallway. Great, she was late. Again. “If you don’t give it back to me, I’m going to tell Father Paul that you stole it from me.” The threat about going to the priest had worked with Mary-Alice, so maybe . . .

  “Don’t do it, man. She’s fuckin’ freakin’! Doesn’t want us to see what she’s got on it,” the friend advised. “Oooh, this could be good.”

  What a Neanderthal! Jade’s stomach curdled. “You steal private property, you’re off the team and probably expelled from school,” she said, lifting her chin. “Now, give it back.” Her arm was still outstretched, and somehow she wasn’t visibly shaking, even though she was trembling inside.

  “Don’t do it,” Redhead advised again.

  Liam shook his head. “I said I was sorry.” Without so much as a glance at his friend, he placed the phone in her open palm.

  Relieved beyond belief, Jade wrapped her fingers over the phone and dropped it quickly into her bag, but to add insult to injury, she felt her cheeks flaming. The big dumb-ass. His friend, shorter by three or four inches, still had a stupid smirk plastered across his freckled face. “What’re you laughing at?” she demanded, bristling.

  “You. Who the hell are you?” he asked.

  “No one you need to know.” Jade started to move away from them.

  “You got that right,” he agreed, shaking his nearly shaved head. “Jesus, Longstreet, that was a mistake. You had her, man. You had her.” Throwing another superior glance at Jade, he sneered, “But, hell, what would you want with her? Come on, Longstreet. Let’s roll.”

  “Good idea,” Jade said and turned on her heel, feeling two sets of eyes watching her backside.

  “Crazy bitch,” the shorter guy muttered, and Jade wanted to turn and face him, yell back that he was an A-one dick, but decided she’d done enough damage for the day.

  “Grow up, Prentice,” Liam muttered.

  So now he was playing the nice-guy role? Oh, sure. The guy who was hooked up with “Angel” Mary-A? Not likely. Really, could life really get any worse?

  “You’re a fuckin’ asshole, Longstreet,” Prentice retorted. “Just an observation. Don’t take it personal.”

  Jade caught a glimmer of why her mother hated it when she let an f-bomb fly. Maybe she’d quit swearing. Or at least try to, though it was hard not to swear a blue streak at dicks like Longstreet and Prentice. At the stairs, she cast one curious glance over her shoulder and saw Longstreet’s friend catch her eye, only to flip her off.

  Grow up, she mouthed and if looks could kill, she’d already be six feet under. Prentice looked positively psychotic, but Liam was already walking away, rounding a corner, probably having already forgotten the incident.

  “Losers,” Jade said under her breath and hurried quickly toward her next class.

  Longstreet couldn’t be that great if he hung out with that jerkwad of a friend. From the corner of her eye she saw that the red-haired dirtbag was laughing now. She knew that she’d made another couple of enemies.

  So far she was batting a thousand.

  “What’s that?” Scottie asked when she and Gracie were walking to the cafeteria for lunch and she caught a peek inside Gracie’s backpack. She was looking at the journal Gracie had found in the basement. Gracie had slid it into a plastic freezer bag to protect it and kept it with her all the time.

  “Nothing.” So far she’d told no one about the old book she’d found in the basement, but she would have to soon. Because she needed an interpreter. The pages were so old and frail they almost cracked when you leafed through them, and the writing, a fluid feminine style, had faded with time but was still legible. The only problem? The whole diary was written in French, and though Gracie had tried typing in some of the phrases, using an online translator from French to English, she’d barely made out any of the content.

  She knew the year was 1924, but other than that she hadn’t made out much.

  “Do you know French?”

  Scottie shook her head, her brown hair shifting
across her shoulders. “No. But my aunt Claudette does. She used to live in Paris.”

  “Does she live around here?”

  “New York. Why?”

  “I need someone who can read French.” Other kids were filling the hallways, talking, laughing, and cursing, carrying books and checking their cell phones. Couples hung on each other, while packs of friends clogged the corridors. Gracie and Scottie had to wend their way through the throng and yell over the cacophony of voices and clang of slamming lockers.

  “You’re a dick, Carter!” one boy yelled over his shoulder as he jogged toward the cafeteria.

  “Bite me, Maloney!” was the response.

  “Why do you need a translator?” Scottie asked as they rounded the final corner to the cafeteria and the smell of tangy pizza sauce reached Gracie’s nostrils.

  Should she tell the other girl? Scottie was genuinely interested, but Scottie was a bigmouth. You just couldn’t trust her with a secret.

  “Oh, it’s just something my dad wants me to do,” Gracie said. “Because, he, like, wants to take me to Paris and the French Riviera, and he thinks it would be best if I knew the language.”

  Scottie pulled a face. “I would do it then. To go to France. My aunt Claudette, she used to be Claudia before she moved over there, she says it’s fabulous. No, wait.” Scottie paused and lifted her head at an angle, as if she were posing. “Paris, the City of Light is très magnifique! ”

  “I thought that was L.A.”

  “No, that’s the City of Angels.” She frowned. “Or maybe lights, plural.” She shrugged. “Anyway, Aunt Claudette thinks you should do anything short of killing to get to Paris.”

  “All I need is a translator.” She knew that Jade had taken a little French, but not that much, and besides, she couldn’t trust her sister with a secret like this—not Jade, who didn’t believe in anything and thought Gracie was an idiot, or worse. Gracie was pretty sure her mother could speak some French too, but no way was she going to ask Mom. She would utterly flip.

  “So what about Miss Beatty?” Scottie suggested. “You know, the music teacher? She splits her time between here and the high school.”

  “So?”

  “She teaches French too. My cousin had her last year.”

  “Can your cousin read it?”

  Scottie shook her head. “She got a D one semester, and Uncle Ned flipped cuz he wants her to go away to school. In my family, Aunt Claudette is your best bet.” Her gaze moved away from Gracie as it always did. Scottie was one of those people who always expected someone more interesting to show up. “Oh,” she said, “There’s Rita! You have to meet her. She’s like super fun and is going with a sophomore at Our Lady.” Scottie lowered her voice. “Her parents don’t know. She sneaks out to meet him behind their backs.” Her eyes glinted a bit as she shared the gossip, and Gracie decided for sure that Scottie didn’t need to know about the journal.

  No one did.

  Not even Jade, who so far hadn’t mentioned that she’d spied Gracie coming out of the basement. What was up with that?

  Gracie crossed her fingers that Jade wouldn’t spill the beans to Mom, or anyone else for that matter. Not until she had somehow managed to get the journal translated and then, hopefully, help Angelique Le Duc cross over.

  CHAPTER 16

  At the dining room table, Sarah was making notes to the plans, caught in thoughts of somehow adding a master suite on the main level. She was having trouble with the position of the existing plumbing. She’d talked to the head of a demolition crew, as well as an excavating contractor, and reminded herself she really needed to go down into the basement and look for water damage or any cracks in the foundation, and also check the old behemoth of a furnace, which, no doubt, would have to be replaced. So far she’d avoided descending the hundred-year-old stairs to the unfinished rooms beneath ground level—what had once been a root cellar, laundry, storage, and place for the original wood-burning furnace before it was replaced somewhere around 1960. She’d been reluctant to explore that dark, spider-infested area where she’d been trapped as a child.

  But wasn’t that exactly one of the reasons she’d come home? To face her old terrors and lay them to rest, to restore this house to its original grandeur as she repaired some of the deepest cracks in her soul?

  Her cell phone rang and she answered, “Hello?”

  “Sarah, it’s Aunt Margie! I heard you’re renovating that dreadful old house, and that you’ve moved in.”

  “Temporarily, but yes, the girls and I are here.”

  “Fabulous. I’m on my way.”

  “What? You mean now?”

  “Absolutely. I’ll be there in five and I’ve got a surprise for you!” She clicked off, and Sarah was left sitting at the table, holding her phone and thinking she really didn’t need any more surprises. But that was Aunt Marge, or Margie, as she called herself, as different from her older sister, Arlene, as night to day.

  “They’re the yin and yang of the family,” Joseph had said once, years ago, when Sarah had been about ten. On Thanksgiving, when the family had gathered together at this very table, Aunt Marge, drink in hand, had flitted and smiled and flirted with all the men while Arlene had dutifully served everyone. Not to be outdone by her younger sister, Arlene drank as well, the gin and tonics flowing. But as Aunt Marge had become more gregarious, Arlene had turned sour and glum.

  “Those two are more like good and evil,” Jacob had observed. The Stewart kids were all in the kitchen, running errands for their mother, making certain the holiday was perfect, at least in their mother’s eyes. Jacob and Joseph were supposed to be hauling in more wood for the fire, but as usual, they were slacking off, while Dee Linn, in a bit of a snit, was checking on the pies cooling on the counter. The kitchen was warm and smelled of spices and roast turkey, the crystal glasses spotless and glittering, but the day had felt false to Sarah, a display without any true meaning. They’d prayed and given thanks, and there was a bale of hay and fat pumpkins and squash decorating the front door, but the feeling she’d thought should be a part of the holiday was missing. At least for her.

  Cousin Caroline, not expected to do any work as she was a guest, had escaped the dining room and was leaning over the counter, playing with the extra salt and pepper shakers. It had seemed she was making sure her cousins caught a glimpse of her very visible cleavage. “Aunt Arlene is really on a crusade today, isn’t she?” She’d picked up a basket of rolls that Sarah had taken from the oven where they’d been warming. “What a witch . . . or is she more of a bitch?” Caroline had been fifteen at the time and had wrinkled her nose, trying, as always, to be cute around the twins, or any boy for that matter. A flirt like her mother, she was pretty, with nearly black hair and a flawless olive complexion, but in Sarah’s estimation, Caroline was a real pain.

  “Don’t!” Sarah had said. Her mother had instructed Sarah to bring the basket to the table, but Caroline had plucked a roll from beneath its orange napkin and taken a bite.

  “Don’t call your mother what she is?” Caroline had teased, her eyes sparkling.

  “Don’t . . . take a roll, yet,” Sarah had clarified. “They’re for dinner.”

  “But you don’t care if I call your mother a b-word?” Caroline pushed, just as Clark had walked into the room and heard the end of the exchange.

  “Quit picking on her,” he’d said as the swinging door shut behind him, cutting off the sounds of conversation from the adults at the table. “She’s just a kid.”

  Sarah had been thankful for the interruption but hadn’t liked being reminded that she was the youngest.

  Clark added, “Aunt Arlene wants us to take our seats.”

  “Oh, my. A royal command. We’d all better hurry and obey,” Caroline said airily, again with an eye roll. She tossed her hair over her shoulders, timing things so that as she pushed through the swinging door to the dining room, then released it, it nearly hit Clark square in the face.

  “So, who’s the real bitch
,” he muttered, just loud enough for Sarah to overhear.

  “Mmmm,” Caroline had said, but her eyes had shot daggers at Clark. She and her older brother had always been at odds, and it had spilled over to adulthood as well, Sarah knew.

  The memory faded just as Sarah heard a car arrive. Marge hadn’t been kidding when she’d said they would be right over. As she walked out the door to meet her, she saw not just Marge, but Caroline and Clark too, all of them getting out of an older model Mercedes. Marge was still tall and slim and walked steadily, without so much as a cane for support. She was wearing a sweater and a hip-length jacket over slacks. A long scarf was wrapped around her neck. She’d slowed down, of course, but there was still a bit of spring in her step, and she greeted Sarah with a bear hug. Caroline and Clark, both bundled in long coats, looked on a bit uncomfortably, Sarah thought.

  “Surprised?” Marge asked.

  “Very much so, yes.” Sarah stepped out of the doorway. “Come in.”

  Marge bustled forward, and her children, not nearly as enthusiastic, each muttered a brief “hi” as they passed by. Sarah pulled the door closed behind them.

  “Oh, my,” Marge said, eyeing the inside of the house, walking slowly from the foyer to the living room/parlor and hallways. “So dark in here. I just had to see for myself, and I was hoping the place was in better shape on the inside than out. I haven’t been here in years,” she admitted. “You know, your mother and I . . . well, it was always complicated.”

  “You hated each other,” Caroline said, unbuttoning her coat.

  “No, it was just—”

  “Don’t lie, Mom. We all remember how it was,” Caroline insisted flatly.

  Some of the gaiety went out of Aunt Marge’s eyes. She wore glasses now, and her once-auburn hair was lighter and blonder. Her children too had aged. Clark had filled out, become a tall man with broad shoulders. Caroline was still trim, but her hair was shorter and streaked to hide the beginnings of gray that were invading her once-dark locks.

  “Come into the parlor,” Sarah offered. “I have coffee—”