Close to Home

by Lisa Jackson

  Sarah was in the kitchen, lost in thought, when Xena first started barking. She’d let the dog outside for a few minutes, and now she hurried to the front door to find Xena on the porch, hairs on her back and neck standing on end, eyes fixed on the dark distance. Stiff-legged, tail up, she was growling and barking.

  Opening the door, Sarah said, “What is it?”

  Another spate of wild barking ensued, as if she were even more excited at Sarah’s presence.

  “Xena! No! Come on inside!” Sarah was beginning to think Xena was still too much of a puppy to be effective.

  Whining slightly, head lowered, and tail at half-mast, the dog followed but still let out a low, unhappy growl as Sarah locked the door behind them.

  “I know,” she said, patting Xena on her head. “Come on.” The dog padded after her to the kitchen, and Sarah assured herself there was nothing outside, no one watching the house. Nonetheless, she was certain she’d feel safer next week when the guesthouse was finished with its two doors, new windows, and state-of-the-art dead bolts.

  It’s not the house, she reminded herself, but couldn’t help feeling vulnerable here. That ticked her off. The truth of the matter was that when Clint was around, she felt safer. Yes, another adult helped, and yeah, a man provided a different kind of presence, but she wasn’t going to fall into the trap of being a helpless female. Not at this point in her life. And as for Clint Walsh, she wasn’t going to be intimidated by him just because he was Jade’s father, nor would she go running to him just because he lived close by.

  Pop!

  She heard the sound of a car backfiring, she thought, though it was far away, of course, as there were no roads close by.

  Xena scrambled toward the back door, barking furiously.

  “Stop! Good grief. No more!” She quickly found a dog biscuit in a box on the counter and gave the dog a couple. Xena chomped loudly. “There ya go,” Sarah said and heard another faint series of far-off pops.

  Car backfiring?

  Firecrackers?

  Or gunshots?

  Grabbing her phone, she went to the back door and opened it, so that if the sounds repeated she could pinpoint them.

  Xena scrambled after her, and Sarah had to grab her collar to restrain her from taking off. “It’s nothing,” she told the dog and considered calling the police. And say what? That you think you might have heard the report of a rifle being shot, when you know in your gut that’s not what it sounded like? Maybe it was local hunters, out late at night with scopes, or stupid teenagers, like her brothers when they were younger, “out plinkin’ in the woods,” as their father used to say. Or maybe a car backfiring. She could call and complain about trespassers, but she wasn’t sure the noises, whatever they were, had originated on her property. Nervously, she bit her lip. Xena kept up her whining and barking, and no amount of shushing seemed to settle her down.

  “Gracie!” she called when Xena wouldn’t stop.

  “Come on,” she said to the dog, dragging her back inside again and locking the door behind them.

  “Grace?” she called as she headed toward the dining room, where Gracie had all kinds of papers spread out on the table. Phone to her ear, she was eyeing the pages.

  “. . . yeah, you too . . . uh, I will . . .” Gracie was smiling and twiddling a pen in one hand. “She’s . . . um . . . I don’t know. Just a minute.” She turned the phone to her chest and yelled, “Jade! It’s Dad!”

  Great. Sarah shook her head, and Gracie got the message. “Sorry,” she said into the phone as she held her mother’s gaze. “Jade’s not around . . . I will. Uh-huh. Promise . . . okay . . . Love you too.” She hung up and said, “Sorry, guess it’s kind of weird for her now. With two dads.”

  “Didn’t you hear Xena?”

  “Yeah.” She shrugged. “Did she see a squirrel or something?”

  Xena pushed her big head between them, still whining. “Grace, it’s night,” Sarah said. “She didn’t see a squirrel.”

  Gracie rubbed Xena’s ears. “What’re you barking at, huh?”

  “I know you were on the phone, but did you hear anything?” Sarah asked. “Like a car backfiring?”

  “Nope.” She shook her head and pulled some of the papers that she’d scattered over the table closer. Sarah wondered if she was overreacting again, her nerves frayed from all her conflicting emotions. Oblivious, Grace said, “Look at what I found on the Internet. I forgot to show you earlier. This is Angelique Le Duc and her family. Check it out.” She slid a page across the old table.

  Sarah stared down at a copy of an old-time photograph in black and white and tried to tamp down her annoyance at Gracie’s obsession with all things related to Angelique. Taking a deep, calming breath, she struggled to put her feelings aside as Gracie pointed to the picture of a stern-looking man with a mustache. “Okay, so this is Maxim, and this is Angelique.” Her finger moved to the image of a petite woman with large eyes, straight nose, rosebud mouth, and dark hair pulled away from her face. A widow’s peak gave her face a heart-shaped appearance that was accentuated by a strong, pointed chin. She was holding a boy who wasn’t quite a toddler in her arms. “She was Maxim’s second wife, so that’s why some of the kids are almost her age. This is George, the oldest. He’s probably about seventeen.” The boy standing next to Angelique was as tall as his father and just as grim, though no mustache was visible, “Then there’s Helen.” She pointed to a slim waif of a girl whose expression was blank. “I think she’s maybe a year or two older than me, then Ruth, she’s the blonde in the apron—”

  “Pinafore.”

  “Oh. Well, she was around nine, I think, which would make Louis five.”

  Sarah nodded.

  “The baby’s Jacques,” Gracie said, as if she knew them all intimately.

  “He looks around two,” Sarah said. “Where did you get these?”

  “I did the research during study hall and printed it out at school.”

  “You work fast,” Sarah observed.

  “Nah. That was just the last part, most of the stuff I got online here on the iPad.”

  Sarah had seen her daughter tuned into the tablet for hours. Now she knew why. “Shouldn’t you have been doing your homework in study hall?”

  “Yeah, but this is important, Mom. This is Angelique Le Duc, and see what she’s wearing, the white dress. That’s the same dress she’s wearing when I see her. Like on the stairs.”

  Sarah’s mind was still on the backfiring noises, but she dragged her attention to the photo. Something was off here. “You recognize her?” she asked Grace.

  “This is the woman on the stairs, the one who can’t pass over, she’s trying to get me to help her! I told you that already.”

  “But—”

  “You don’t believe me, either.”

  “No, honey, I do. I know you see something.”

  “Her! I see her!” Gracie left in a huff, and Xena, taking her cue, followed. What Sarah wanted to explain, but didn’t know how, was that although the woman in the photograph might well be Angelique Le Duc—and she was maybe the ghost that Gracie was convinced she’d seen—she wasn’t the woman in white that Sarah had seen as a child. Nor had she been wearing the old-fashioned dress that Angelique was wearing in the picture. Sarah’s personal specter, though she might have resembled Angelique, was another woman altogether.

  What the hell did that mean?

  In a second of insight, she remembered being in the attic, barefoot, cold . . . wet? Shivering, she’d looked toward the cupola, certain she’d heard footsteps on the widow’s walk, though no one was supposed to be up there. So why the noise? Were those voices carried on the wind?

  Heart in her throat, she’d started for the few stairs leading to the roof when she’d seen it, a flash in her peripheral vision. A woman.

  She’d nearly screamed, then realized she was looking into an old full-length mirror that had been shoved to a spot near the stairs, its dust cloth puddled beside it on the attic floor.
/>   Walking closer, and feeling foolish, she had smiled at her own silly reflection.

  But it hadn’t smiled back at her.

  Her face remained somber and thin, nearly sheer, as if she were seeing an image over her own, like one of those old double-exposed photographs, two images caught in one picture frame. The clothes weren’t what she was wearing; a dress was superimposed over her nightgown.

  Horrified, she backed up a step, and as the girl in the mirror opened her mouth to say something, Sarah had let out a strangled scream.

  The image vanished quickly.

  She was alone in the attic, her hand over her mouth, her heart thundering in her ears, the feeling that she’d just had a face-to-face with a ghost indelibly etched in her brain.

  “Sarah?” her mother had called from somewhere down below, and Sarah had fled the attic, unsure of the noise on the roof, unsure that she’d seen anything in the weak light, unsure that she wasn’t losing her sanity.

  Now as that memory came to the surface, she realized that her “ghost” wasn’t Gracie’s. “Terrific,” she said under her breath. Now instead of being haunted by one ghost, there were two.

  Or, very possibly, none whatsoever, and what did that say about herself and her youngest daughter?

  CHAPTER 25

  “I’ll take care of you, don’t worry.” Sarah was lying naked by the side of a stream, the scent of the water heavy in her nostrils, Clint’s muscular body was stretched atop hers, the tip of his nose touching hers, the sweat on his forehead shimmering from the heat of the summer day. The sky above him was as blue as a mountain lake, no clouds visible, a jet’s vapor trail dissipating. He kissed her, his beard stubble scraping her skin, his tongue supple and strong, playing with hers, running along the inside of her teeth.

  Heat rose within her. She wanted him, oh, God, she wanted him, and as her mind swirled and the smell of sex tinged the summer air, she knew she would do anything he asked.

  Anything.

  He leaned down and breathed across her naked breast.

  Her nipple puckered in anticipation, her insides aching with need. “Make love to me,” she begged.

  “Oh, darlin’, you know it.” Big hands splayed across her spine, pulling her closer still. Eager lips slid silkily over her skin.

  Sarah melted inside.

  His mouth encased her nipple, and she cried out, fingers delving into his hair, holding him close, his tongue flicking over her skin.

  “Love me,” she whispered, clinging to him.

  “I do.”

  If only she could believe him, could trust those simple two words. But there was something wrong, a darkness that was coming, she could feel it.

  His tongue ran hot circles around her breast. His teeth bit, just enough to make her inhale sharply with desire. Her back bowed, and he touched her lower, fingertips running a quick, light trail down her abdomen and to the juncture of her legs.

  As he explored her, feeling the liquid warmth of her longing, he smiled, that crooked cowboy grin that she’d found so endearing, though sometimes she didn’t know what it meant. Did he really love her? Was he playing with her?

  “Oh . . .” His fingers probed deeper, and she was suddenly breathing hard and fast, wanting more, dragging him closer, sensing the darkness descend, the sun and sky disappearing to a darkening landscape. “Clint,” she whispered.

  He pushed her back onto the dry, suddenly brittle grass and nudged her knees apart with his own.

  She loved him. She’d always loved him!

  Groaning, his own breathing ragged, he thrust into her. “Sarah, oh . . . oh, God, Sarah . . .” His hands moved upward and seemed to tangle in her hair in desperation. “If you would just trust me.”

  She closed her eyes. “I do.”

  “No.”

  “Of course I do,” she said, but he’d stopped moving, the lovemaking ceasing, heat and desire recoiling.

  “I will keep you safe.” Cool drops hit her face. One, then another and another. Tears? Sweat? “I promise.”

  His voice had changed.

  Opening her eyes, she saw that it was night, and no longer was Clint making love to her, but Roger was holding her in his arms, rain pouring over them as he started to carry her across the roof to the cupola.

  Fear tore through her.

  “I won’t let him hurt you,” Roger said tenderly, and she saw that he was crying. “I won’t . . . I promised her. I promised . . .” And for the tiniest of heartbeats, she saw the image of her sister, Theresa, floating above them, only to disappear into the roiling storm clouds overhead. “I promised.”

  Sarah sat bolt upright in her sleeping bag.

  Gray morning light was filtering through the windows of the living room where she and her daughters were sprawled in front of the now-dead fire. Her heart was pounding, her skin damp with sweat, the memory of the dream crystal clear. One second she’d been making love to Clint on a hot summer day; the next it was night, dark and stormy, and through the rain Roger was carrying her naked body to the cupola.

  Shivering, she told herself it was just a dream, nothing more; there was nothing to be read into the disturbing images. Of course she would have a restless night with dreams of Clint after she’d finally revealed her secret. The image of her sister and brother probably resulted from all the weird feelings she had tied to this monstrosity of a house that she hoped to turn back into its original, beautiful form.

  “There’s a metaphor in there somewhere,” she told herself as she scooted out of her bag and felt the morning’s chill. She wouldn’t let a stupid dream screw her up. She could do that easily enough when she was wide-awake, thank you very much. “Coffee,” she whispered, and headed to the kitchen, where she’d make a pot before tackling the whole process of rebuilding the fire.

  Her muscles ached, and her mind was still clouded by a night of worrying about Jade and Clint and how the new father-daughter dynamic would play out. She went through the motions of measuring coffee and water before hitting a button and hearing Mr. Coffee gurgle to life. Then before the machine was finished brewing the pot, she poured herself half a cup and walked barefoot to the back porch.

  The dog followed, to wander down the long porch steps and sniff around the backyard, searching for squirrels or other creatures of the morning. After relieving herself near a hydrangea that had lost its color, Xena picked her way through Arlene’s once-loved garden, then stopped suddenly. Nose in the air, the dog stared past the garage, guesthouse, and barns to a spot only she could see.

  Mourning doves?

  Bats?

  A coyote or rabbit moving through the underbrush?

  Or just nothing? So far, the dog hadn’t shown herself to be all that brilliant.

  As if hearing Sarah’s thoughts, Xena let out a quiet whimper and pranced nervously, looking upriver toward the fields that were butted by the forest and the family plot, where many of Sarah’s ancestors had found their final resting place.

  Again, Xena whined, a little more loudly.

  “You’re okay,” she assured the dog and sipped the strong coffee with its shot of caffeine, a little boost she needed this morning. She hoped the hot drink would clear her head and chase away the cobwebs in her mind that still held onto pieces of her disturbing dream. Rotating her neck to stretch out a kink, she watched the sun rise in the east, a brilliant orb muted by a layer of thin fog lying on the back of the river. Wispy tendrils crawled through the cracks in the cliff face hanging low, like the nightmare that lingered. “Finished?” she said to the dog. “Let’s go. Come.”

  As Xena returned, wet feet bounding up the stairs, Sarah forced the nightmare back into the dark corners of her mind, where it belonged.

  “Screw the whole ‘being missing for twenty-four hours’ thing!” Len Fowler was leaning over Lucy Bellisario’s desk, his face red, his graying hair disheveled. “Candice is a good girl who never once gave us any trouble, and she didn’t come home last night!”

  “Mr. Fowler, please,
have a seat,” Bellisario suggested, motioning to one of the chairs on the other side of the desk. The clock mounted on the wall of her office indicated that it was barely eight o’clock in the morning. Len Fowler looked as if he hadn’t slept in a week, though it was probably the very twenty-four hours he was discussing. Discreetly, so that he wouldn’t see any information about Rosalie, she turned her computer monitor away from his line of sight. “You can certainly file a Missing Persons Report.”

  “I was already down there,” he said, raking fingers through graying hair that was already standing on end. “Did that.” But he did sit in the nearest chair, all of his intensity seeming to drain away, leaving him an emotional shell of a man, his rumpled clothes suddenly looking much too big for his body. “I left my wife there with . . . with . . .” Confusion clouded his features.

  “Officer Turner?” she supplied.

  “The black woman? With glasses and short hair?” Before Bellisario could respond that, yes, he’d described the Missing Person’s Officer, he went on, “I left my wife with her, giving her more information, but it’s not good enough, don’t you see? Whoever took that Jamison girl must’ve gotten Candy too. That’s why I came up here, I heard you were the detective who was trying to find her and thought maybe you could help us. Oh, God.” He dropped his face into his open palms and fought the urge to break down.

  “Why don’t you tell me about where your daughter was last night?” she suggested, pushing a box of tissues across her desk, just in case he broke down completely.

  Trying to pull himself together, Len said, “Candy was at her friend Tiffany’s in the late afternoon. They’re in the school band together, and they’ve been friends forever, so they were going to have pizza and whatever it is teenage girls do.”

  “Tiffany—?”

  “Monroe. We, well, actually Reggie called.” He cleared his throat and explained that Reggie—Regina—was his wife of twenty years, then gave a blow by blow of what he knew about his daughter’s whereabouts, which wasn’t much. “The girls just hung out, as I understand it, and then Candy must’ve gotten a wild hair and decided to walk home. Reggie was running late, I guess,” he said, lines creasing his face. “We called all her friends, relatives, acquaintances, everyone we could think of, even the hospitals, and no one’s seen her.”