House Of Secrets

by Tracie Peterson

  Geena shook her head. “I thought it was all a game. You know, like the fire drills at school.”

  “It wasn’t a game to Momma. She honestly believed we were in danger. She also believed that most every man who caught sight of her was crazy for her. She believed herself to be irresistible.” I hadn’t meant to use Geena’s word from the previous evening. If she remembered it, she didn’t show any sign. But I couldn’t help but recognize the parallel between the two. My stomach clenched.

  “Do either of you remember how she acted in church?” I stood up, suddenly unable to sit still anymore. I turned away, and I could barely speak over the lump lodged in my throat. “She’d stand up during the service and declare that the pastor or one of the deacons or other men in the congregation wanted to have an affair with her. She claimed she was confessing her sins and theirs—although nothing had ever taken place.”

  “I do remember once when a kid in my Sunday school class said my mom had made his mom cry,” Geena said. “But I was only six or so. We didn’t go to church a whole lot after that.”

  “No, we didn’t. We couldn’t.” My voice hardened. “The ‘good Christians’ of the congregation didn’t know how to deal with the mentally ill. Mom frightened them, talking about working for the FBI and giving gruesome details about the killings. The pastor asked Dad to keep mom home so she wouldn’t disturb the congregation anymore.”

  “Why didn’t Dad go to church with us?” Piper asked.

  “He always said he knew there was a God, but that was enough. He figured if God was truly all-knowing and all-powerful, then there wasn’t anything he could do to change God’s mind about the future. He didn’t believe God would be swayed by our begging, so why pray.”

  “I’ve felt that way too,” Piper said. “I think that’s why I’m so surprised that he’s changed his mind now. How could a person completely switch the way he looks at something—especially that important?”

  “I don’t know,” Geena murmured. She let the crossword puzzle book slip from her lap. “I still can’t believe you’ve kept this from us. What else do you know, Bailee? Tell us everything. Start at the beginning.”

  I suppressed a shudder. I couldn’t possibly begin to share everything. “Momma sometimes woke us up in the middle of the night. She would load us into the car, and we’d drive all night. She said we were escaping the FBI.” I studied my sisters for a moment. “Geena, you must remember some of those drives.”

  “I do, vaguely. But like I said, Momma always made it seem like a big game to me.”

  “I remember once when we did get up in the night to go for a drive,” Piper suddenly said, as if it were all just coming back to her. “It was just before we came here the last time. I think we were living in California.”

  I nodded and tucked my feet up under me. “We were. We lived just north of San Francisco. Dad was handling a major consulting job in the city. We had a housekeeper, as well as a nanny. Mom hated them both—she said they were spies. Anyway, one night when Dad was away, she waited until the housekeeper had gone home for the night and the nanny was asleep, then loaded us up in the car.”

  “Why would they leave us alone with her if she was so bad off? Why wouldn’t someone stay awake? Why wouldn’t the nanny keep us with her?”

  Piper’s questions were some I’d asked myself, but I didn’t really have a solid answer. I only had guesses. “Momma could appear quite . . . normal. Quite healthy. In fact, there were times when I was even convinced that the bad times were behind us. The staff was fairly new. They didn’t know how she could be. Dad had probably warned them or said something to let them know she had problems, but when she acted normal there was no reason to believe she was a threat to anyone. Especially for a person who wasn’t familiar with schizophrenia.”

  “So Mom had us leave in the night. What happened?” Piper asked. “Because I don’t remember. I think I fell asleep in the car and when I woke up the next day, I was back in my bed.”

  “Mom drugged you.” I waited for their reaction.

  “Drugged? Both of us?” Geena’s tone betrayed her disbelief.

  “Yes. I didn’t realize that was what was happening at the time, but later I figured it out. She would give you something to make you sleep. She’d put it in a cookie or pastry.”

  Geena’s eyes widened. “I remember her giving us something to eat every time we went for a ride.”

  “Exactly.” I could see they were starting to understand. “I didn’t know at first that she was doing this. She didn’t give me the treat—she said I had to wait. She said it was my responsibility to take care of you two, that I needed to make sure you were safe and that nothing bad could happen to you. She always offered me one of the cookies when we got home—after I’d helped her get you two to bed. Sometimes I ate it and sometimes I didn’t.”

  Geena shook her head. “No wonder you’ve always watched over us like an armed guard at a bank.”

  I didn’t comment on that. There wasn’t time, because Piper was already moving on with her questions. “But why did she drug us? Why did she take us out in the dead of night? How could she possibly believe there was a real danger? The only danger to us was her.”

  “I don’t know what to say.” I looked at my sisters and then let my gaze travel beyond them to the back of the room. “I began snooping around to learn what schizophrenia was after overhearing Mrs. Brighton on the phone. I didn’t like the information I found—it sounded so hopeless.”

  “It is rather hopeless,” Geena interjected. “There isn’t a cure.”

  “That doesn’t make it hopeless,” I said. “There are medications that really help.”

  “But a person has to be willing to get help,” she countered. “Obviously our mother wasn’t one of those people.”

  “Sometimes she got treatment. Remember the times when she was supposedly off working with the FBI?”

  I saw the understanding in Geena’s expression as she half stated, half asked, “She went to a loony bin during those times?”

  I nodded. “Or the hospital. Dad tried to force help on her, but she didn’t want it. I read some old records that Dad had hidden in his office. Mom didn’t trust doctors or medicine. She was paranoid about getting any kind of help. For a time she allowed Dad to help her with medicine and food, but after a while she believed everyone was trying to hurt her. Even Dad.”

  “And he was,” Geena responded.

  “At least that last night,” Piper declared. She reached for one of the sofa pillows and hugged it close.

  “Well, you seem to know everything; what else did Mom do to us?” Geena asked. Her emotionless expression gave me the distinct impression she blamed me for our mother’s problems, like if I would have said something, she might not have gotten worse. But it was no more than I’d told myself. Blaming myself for Mom’s death—for her problems in life—was something I was quite good at doing.

  “She used to hide us in various places. Boxes, closets, trunks, you name it. She felt it was the only way to keep us safe.” I tried to keep my voice even. “Once she put all three of us in the trunk of the car. Piper was a tiny baby and I held her in my arms.”

  Geena’s eyes widened. “I can’t stand small spaces.”

  I knew that same fear. I didn’t even like to use the elevator at my condo. “There were times when . . . when her actions endangered our lives. She put Piper in a garbage bag once. I was able to get her out of it before she suffocated, but it was close.”

  “Mom nearly killed me? When did that happen?”

  “When you were an infant.” I felt my body tremble. “It wasn’t the only time. She did it with Geena too. Sometimes I still have nightmares about it. She tried to hide us once in the water. It was so cold that we all had hypothermia.”

  “Why didn’t Dad do something about it? Why did he let her go on like that?” Piper asked, her voice rising.

  Now came my moment to confess. “I don’t think he knew—after all, he wasn’t around all tha
t much, and when he was, I think he ignored Mom’s idiosyncrasies. As for why I didn’t tell him . . . Momma told me I couldn’t say anything . . . to anyone.” I bit my lip. I was just a little girl, and my mother’s word was gospel. “I’m sorry that I wasn’t smarter about things. I should have said something.”

  “Yes, you should have,” Piper agreed. “You could have stopped it from happening.”

  Her reproachful tone hit me hard. Could I have stopped it?

  “She was just a child—just like you and me,” Geena countered, surprising me. Perhaps she didn’t blame me after all. “We all could have said something at the time. Bailee can’t be held responsible. But Dad can. He should have known better. If the doctors told him Mom was schizo, then he should never have allowed us to be left alone with her.”

  “And when you knew why she acted that way,” Piper said, narrowing her eyes at me, “you should have told us. You should have told Dad about the things that were happening even if you were scared. That way he could have protected us.”

  “He tried to provide for our safety,” I argued. “That was the reason for the housekeepers and nannies. It was the reason he tried to work less during the summer—probably the reason we came here.”

  “And the reason we moved so often,” Piper declared. “I always thought it was because of his job, but it was because of Mom, wasn’t it? Because she made things difficult.” Her words were clearly edged with anger.

  “Most likely,” I admitted. “She sometimes caused problems with neighbors, as well as the church folks. I think Dad felt the need to relocate and start over in hopes of pretending things could eventually get better. I think he hoped that sooner or later Mom would find the right blend of medications and actually take them on a regular basis. But she didn’t. She was convinced the doctors meant to do her harm.”

  “Why didn’t Dad have her put away?” Piper asked. “He obviously knew how dangerous she’d become—at least there at the end. Why didn’t he do something like that instead of . . . kill her?”

  Geena spoke before I could. “Because it’s not that easy to put someone away. The years of ridding yourself of crazy relatives is long past. There were so many false cases—situations where folks just wanted to put away wealthy relatives so they could take over their estates, for example, that laws were changed. You can’t just force a person into treatment anymore.”

  “But couldn’t the courts have done it?” Piper asked, her voice cracking.

  “Dad tried.” They both looked at me. “He tried to have her committed several times. From what I saw, however, the court interviews were never more than fifteen or twenty minutes and Mom appeared perfectly rational. One judge even commented that she was the epitome of reason and sanity and he wondered if the husband wasn’t the one with issues.”

  Piper shook her head. “Well, you’re just full of knowledge.”

  Geena gave me a rebuking look. I could see they were both more than a little angry. “Believe me, I really wanted to say something much sooner, but I was . . . well, I was afraid. Afraid you’d be angry at me. And obviously you are.”

  Ignoring my excuse, Geena spoke. “I’ve studied this from a legal perspective. I can easily see the situation happening just the way you’ve described. That’s why there are so many mentally unstable people out on the streets. It’s why some family members just walk away, never to be heard from again. Mental health can’t seem to strike a happy medium.”

  “So crazy people are just allowed to call the shots and in turn risk the lives of children and others?” Piper asked.

  I’d asked the same questions most of my life, but I simply said, “They have rights too.”

  Geena was less concerned. “Unfortunately, their inability to understand what’s happening to them, or to convince themselves that medications can be useful in keeping them on even footing, tends to send them veering across the line where their rights end and ours begin.”

  Piper looked like she might well be sick. “Well, if Mom was crazy—if she was schizophrenic like you say and did all those horrible things—someone should have considered what she was doing to us . . . what a danger she was to us.”

  “Someone did,” Geena said, meeting my gaze.

  For several minutes none of us said another word. I could see that they were thinking the same thing I was. Maybe we shouldn’t say anything about our father’s deed. Maybe it was best to bury this in the past and leave it there. After all, if he’d tried to get Mom help, and I knew he had, then maybe he had been as desperate to protect us as the courts were to protect Mom. Maybe it really came down to his believing there was no other alternative.

  My heart ached at the thought of him struggling to figure out how to keep his children safe from the woman he loved—the mother of those same children. If he divorced her and left Mom to her own devices, she would most likely have died anyway. And, she probably would have found a way to take one of us—if not all of us—with her. If he’d put down ultimatums, it might only have caused Mom to do something rash. I couldn’t think of a single solution that didn’t involve the potential for further danger to us.

  “I have to do this for the girls. It’s for them. They will be safe.” His words echoed over and over in my mind.

  Tears came to my eyes. I hadn’t allowed such a show of emotion in a long, long time. I had thought, in fact, that I was cried out. I refused to give in to my sorrow and blinked back the drops. How could we move forward with our plan to talk to him? How could we betray the only one who had done what he could to protect us?

  My mind rebelled against my heart. It was murder. It was wrong—even for such a necessary and noble purpose. How could I condemn my father for doing the only thing left for him to do? How could I not condemn him for such a heinous act?

  Chapter 8

  By three in the morning I still couldn’t sleep. I paced my room like a caged animal and found it impossible to relax. I opened a window and drew in a deep breath. Outside, the moon’s reflection in the water beckoned me. I pulled on sweats and sneakers and headed downstairs and out of the house.

  I took the stone steps down to the beachfront, careful to hold on to the rail. Dad had built it when we were children, telling all of us that the slippery surface could prove deadly and that we must always use the railing. Old habits weren’t easily put aside.

  A damp, chilly breeze made me glad I’d grabbed a jacket just before exiting the back door. As I reached the beach, I zipped the coat up and stood for a long time just staring out at the water. The setting reminded me of Mark. He’d once asked me to take a moonlight dinner cruise with him in Boston Harbor. He’d said it was purely business, but I’d declined, thinking it sounded dangerously romantic. In this day and age of sexual harassment lawsuits, I was surprised that Mark continued to express an interest in me. Maybe he knew I wasn’t the suing type. Or perhaps he saw the longing in my eyes.

  Jamming my hands down into the pockets of my jacket, I walked for a short distance, listening to the water lap against the shore and dock. I remembered a time when Dad had rented a boat for us. We had spent the entire day on Puget Sound. Momma had refused to come for some reason, but Dad wouldn’t be deterred. He loaded us girls in our life jackets and away we went. That day would stand out as one of the few childhood memories that made me happy.

  I had been eleven that summer, and I wanted nothing more than to get in that boat and float away to some far-off place. I didn’t want to come back to the house or to the routine of school and Mom’s problems. I hadn’t realized until now just how depressed I’d been. I’d always pictured myself as having it together—feeling very grown up and wise. Now, however, I knew those feelings had merely been cover-ups for the truth. I was terrified and tired, and those things had led me to depression.

  Why depression? Why not anger or anxiety?

  “But I was angry and anxious too,” I reasoned. Somewhere down the beach I heard a dog bark, but otherwise I was completely alone. I stopped again and focused on the s
ky. The stars were visible, but I knew very little about them. I used to imagine that I could connect all of them together and make some incredible picture. Of course, that’s exactly what I had tried to do with my family as well.

  “I really wanted to believe we could be a happy family. I wanted the perfect life—the happy mother and father, the well-adjusted children.” If only I could have connected all the dots.

  A sense of weariness washed over me. I felt really old. I had been born old, I thought. There was never a time when I remembered acting or feeling like a little child. I felt the weight of responsibility for so much, so early. People had always commented on what a serious child I was. In fact, I remember once sitting at a birthday party watching a magic show. The man was doing his best to keep the audience in stitches of laughter, but I wasn’t impressed. I was bored. I knew the magic wasn’t real. It seemed I’d known that all of my life.

  I walked back toward the house. I’d left the back light on to find my way. It illuminated the deck and yard below just enough to paint shadowy figures across the width of our property. The tall yews and cedar rose up like towering guardians, keepers of the land who sheltered us away from view and maintained our secrets. It gave me a chill. If I walked into the water—slipped beneath the blackness—no one would ever know. I would simply be . . . gone. The trees would bear witness, but never evidence.

  Frowning, I questioned where those thoughts had come from. I wasn’t suicidal. I didn’t have any intention of ending my life. I just wanted the past to die once and for all. Was that really too much to ask?

  I climbed the steps to the deck and plopped down on a cushioned chair near the rail. Gazing heavenward, I shook my head. “What am I supposed to do?”

  Only the sounds of the night echoed back. I hugged my arms to my chest and felt overwhelmed with a sense of loss. Tears came unbidden, and though I wanted nothing more than to buck up and be strong, I had no strength left.