by Jan Coffey
Lightning ripped open the sky directly behind the derelict place. The inside of the house came to life momentarily with the flash of light.
“My God,” she murmured. “It looks haunted.”
Léa felt what remained of her courage seeping out of her.
“Okay. This is it. Now or never.”
Turning off the engine, she grabbed her purse and cell phone, and jumped out of the car. Out of habit, she paused in spite of the drenching rain to lock the door before running for the front steps.
A dog barked from the porch of the next house.
Léa stepped over the missing step, but the second one, too, groaned and gave way a little. Cringing, she mentally added it to the list of things that would have to be fixed immediately.
Léa’s shirt was plastered to her skin, and her hair was dripping by the time she stood on the porch.
“I wish I had a dog.” She glanced curiously at the large golden retriever, still barking noisily at her. With his front paws on the porch railing, he didn’t look like he was about to let up any time soon. Léa’s hands were trembling, but she somehow managed to find Ted’s key to the house deep in her purse. She put it in the lock, but it wouldn’t turn.
“Come on.” Wondering if they’d changed the lock and not told her, she glanced around her for a key box with a combination that some real estate agents used. But there was nothing. Frustrated, she dropped her purse and phone on the porch and, holding the old doorknob with one hand, tried to jiggle the key with the other.
The door swung open.
It hadn’t been locked, and Léa stood for a moment, smelling the musty scent and peering into the too familiar darkness.
~~~~
“Heather, could you bring Max in?” Mick called from his study. Without looking up, he continued to plug the last numbers into the computer. He wanted to finish the estimate. If there was one thing he hated, it was having paperwork slow down a job.
A sharp flash of lightning was followed by another clap of thunder, and the dog’s barks became more furious.
“Heather?” he called again, but there was no answer.
Mick closed the computer file. Just as he pushed away from the desk, the lights in the house flickered.
“Heather!”
Walking out of his office, he looked in the kitchen first. All the dishes still sat on the table. The pots and pans on the stove hadn’t been touched. Nothing was cleaned up. But he should have figured that, considering their argument during dinner. He marched into the front room.
“Heather!” he shouted from the bottom of the stairs.
This had been a bone of contention between them since the day she’d come back to live with him again. Moping around all day. Refusing to leave her room for the most part. Never lifting a finger to help with anything. He’d asked and then ordered her to come down for dinner tonight. She’d showed her face, but then had sulked and picked at the food and found something wrong with everything he’d made.
Granted, Mick wasn’t ready to fill in as guest chef at any fancy restaurant in Philly, but he was pretty damn sure his dinners were more normal than anything she’d been getting in her mother’s house.
Finally, he’d lost his temper and stormed away from the table, telling her to clean up.
And as a result, his dinner was still sitting in a lump in his stomach. Hers remained untouched on the table. Nothing like a nice, quiet family dinner.
The dog’s barking was getting on Mick’s nerves. Opening the screen door to the porch, he called the animal. Max looked once at Mick and then went back to barking.
“In!”
Reluctantly, the golden retriever took his paws off the railing and came across the porch. Tail wagging, the animal shoved his ninety pounds of wet fur and muscle through the door. Mick reached for the towel he kept in the wicker basket but was too late, as Max proceeded to shake himself in the middle of the living room.
“You are an idiot,” Mick said gruffly, wrestling the towel around the playful animal before wiping up the worst of the puddle on the floor.
Standing up, he glanced wearily toward the stairs. Natalie had warned him about this on the phone when he’d suggested having Heather come back and stay with him. Remarried for less than a year, his ex-wife, a successful pediatrician, couldn’t deal with their daughter’s rapidly deteriorating attitude any longer. Natalie, unwilling to jeopardize her new marriage, was ready to send the fifteen-year-old to an exclusive boarding school in New Orleans. But that was a choice that just didn’t set well with Mick.
He started up the stairs. He didn’t know what had gone wrong or when, but he hadn’t recognized the purple-haired young woman he’d picked up at the Philadelphia airport earlier this month. Dressed in black from head to toe, she had enough pierced jewelry to double for a lightning rod.
In fact, it was probably a good thing she was under cover with this storm.
At the top of the stairs, Heather’s door was closed.
Strange colored hair and earrings and nose rings and eyebrow rings and Lord knows what other kinds of rings—Mick could live with all that. Hell, the way he saw it, years ago he’d been plenty rebellious himself.
What he somehow had to learn to get past was Heather’s ‘I don’t give a damn about anyone or anything’ attitude. That was something else entirely.
He knocked on the door. No answer. He knocked again.
“Heather?”
No music blasting. No ‘go the hell away.’ Maybe things had improved since dinner. Max appeared next to his master’s leg and nosed his way in.
The room had clearly been shaken, turned upside down, and then shaken again. Shoes and mixed piles of dirty and clean clothes and half-emptied suitcases and stacks of books covered practically every inch of the hardwood floor. Mick stared at the mess and found his temper rising again. His daughter was lying on the bed, her face to the wall.
A bolt of lightning lit the window, the clap of thunder following immediately.
“Heather!” he snapped, stepping over a black trench coat lying in a heap in front of the door.
The lights flickered and went out for a moment. When they came back on, the red numbers of the clock on the bedside table started flashing. Heather hadn’t moved, though.
“You didn’t do one thing that I asked you to do down there. I don’t know what you’ve been used to, living with your mother, but I am not going to hire someone to come in and pick up after you every day.” He kicked a sneaker out of his way. “I’m not asking a lot. Just basic stuff. Like looking after yourself. Picking up your own mess. Simple things that separate us from the animals.”
Still no response.
Max jumped on the bed and nestled his wet fur against her legs as lightning flashed again. The house shook with the ensuing boom of thunder, and she started. She definitely wasn’t asleep.
Mick didn’t know what was happening to her. To them. Her mother had warned him about Heather’s change in behavior, about the problems at school, but still he hadn’t been prepared for this.
“But aside from this mess, every now and then you might show me that you can act normally. Walking and occasionally carrying a conversation would be nice.” He gentled his tone, trying a different approach. “Look, Heather, I know teenagers need a lot of sleep, but I don’t think I’ve seen you do much of anything else since you’ve been back.”
The dog sighed a complaint of his own as he laid his muzzle on her hip. Mick frowned, realizing that this approach wasn’t much better. He was still carping at her.
“Hey, I know I’m a terrible cook, but you used to put up with it before.” He gently touched her purple hair and stared at her pale profile. Her eyelids moved, but she wouldn’t open them. “I wasn’t too pleasant tonight, ordering you around, but I am just tired of this new attitude. I want the two of us back the way we were.”
Nothing. He withdrew his hand and picked up a leather jacket. Under it was an empty bag of Oreos. Max moved slightly to inhale the crum
bs.
“Come on, baby. Why can’t you at least talk to me? I know something must be wrong. Whatever it is, we can take care of it…together.”
Heather pulled her knees into her chest, but didn’t say a thing.
Frustration was burning a hole in his stomach. He looked at the bright flowery curtains, at the matching wallpaper, at the bedroom set that his daughter had picked out herself three summers ago. The old teddy bear sat up by the headboard. She’d been a happy, loving kid. How had everything gone so wrong?
He looked down at her young face again.
“We can’t go on like this, baby. Tomorrow is Saturday. Except for dropping a couple of things off here and there, I’m gonna take the rest of the day off. You and I will just spend a few hours together. We can go for a ride, if you want. We’ll just talk, and figure this new ‘us’ out. How’s that sound?”
When he leaned over to brush a kiss on her cheek, she turned and buried her face deep in the pillow. It felt like a kidney punch.
“Good night, baby.” He pressed a kiss into her hair and straightened up. Watching her as he moved to the door, Mick switched off the light before going out. Max stayed behind, snuggling contentedly against her legs.
The storm was continuing to light up the windows as Mick descended the stairs. He felt totally inept in dealing with his own daughter, and that bothered the hell out of him. Although it was nine years since he and Natalie had divorced, they’d both done their best to stay in touch and remain involved in Heather’s life, despite the three thousand miles that separated them. But somehow, during the last couple of years, everything had gone sour.
Cleaning up the kitchen was what Mick needed to sort out his thoughts. It took only a few minutes to wash the pots and load up the dishwasher, but he was feeling a little better as he switched off the light over the sink. Looking out at the rain pelting the kitchen window, he noticed the light on in the Hardys’ house across the lawn. He stood for a moment and watched. A shadow passed in front of the light, and he remembered Max barking.
Mick had run into Betty Walters downtown when he was having a late lunch at Hughes Grille one day last week. She’d told him they were going to give up trying to sell the house for the family, and had asked Mick again if he was interested in buying it. He could probably get it cheap. He still wasn’t interested.
Someone passed in front of the window again.
Pulling a flashlight out of a drawer beside the sink, Mick started for the back door.
~~~~
“I’m pregnant.”
Ted’s breath caught in his chest. The joy he felt at the news was almost overwhelming. But he remained still. He couldn’t let her know how much this mattered to him. He couldn’t let Marilyn guess how much he’d be hurt if she decided not to keep their baby.
“I’ve been on the pill for years. I don’t know what happened. I think I must have become too relaxed since I’ve been…well, only with you.”
For the first time, she looked vulnerable. Frightened, even. Ted walked to her and gathered her in his arms. “Did you want this to happen?”
She nestled against his chest. “I…I think I did. I do. I wanted to get pregnant. I wanted to have your baby.”
He couldn’t hold back his emotions anymore. “I love you, Marilyn. God, I love you.”
“I want to run away and get married. Now. I want to do everything right for our baby.”
Chapter 4
No wonder they hadn’t been able to sell the house.
To say that the place was a dump was being pretty darn generous, Léa thought. The last tenants hadn’t even taken their broken furniture when they’d left. After that, there had been no one around to haul out the trash and clean up.
Léa made a quick run through the upstairs. The sink and tub and toilet in the small bathroom were heavily stained. Despite the rain, she opened the window wide to let out the dank odor. From what she could see by the light in the hallway, the condition of the three bedrooms was not much better. Garbage bags of what she only hoped were old clothing were heaped up here and there. Broken furniture, a ripped box spring, and a number of stained mattresses were scattered about.
Renting a Dumpster would be at the top of the list of things she would need to do.
At least someone—most likely the realtor Betty Walters—had made an attempt at making the downstairs rooms presentable. The three connecting rooms had been swept, with more broken furniture and boxes and bags of junk piled in one corner.
Léa walked toward the back of the house. Standing in the doorway to the kitchen, she fumbled with a shaking hand for the switch on the wall for the overhead light. She found it and tried to turn it on. It wasn’t working.
She peered into the darkness and felt the cold wash through her trembling body. She’d kept control over herself, walking through the rest of the house, not thinking of the fact that this room had been her room, or that room had been her parents’ room. She hadn’t allowed herself to think of the time she had tickled Ted in the bathroom and caused him to split his lip on the sink.
No, she had successfully detached herself from the reality that this was the place where she had spent her childhood. This was the place where her life had been formed. This was the place where her parents had…
But now, looking into the darkness of the kitchen, realizing that everything was the same, Léa felt the clawed hand of panic gripping her stomach. She backed out of the doorway and practically ran through the family room toward the front parlor.
The lightning seemed to be all around her as she made a couple of quick trips to the car. Her sleeping bag. An overnight duffel. A small bag of groceries that she couldn’t bring herself to take to the kitchen. That was everything that she would need for the night. Léa wished she had brought a flashlight.
She stood dripping inside the front door with her insecurities, her fears, her grief all crushing her.
But she was not about to let herself fall apart. She had come too far. A job needed to be done. She only needed to wait for the morning to get started.
There was no locking the front door, so she latched the tarnished old chain. As far as the back door, she couldn’t bring herself to pass through the kitchen to check. Tomorrow was soon enough to look into the cellar.
Many things obviously hadn’t changed in Stonybrook. People still didn’t lock their houses. The townspeople still carried the sense of security that nothing could go wrong. No theft, no breaking and entry, no drunkenness or drug abuse, no assault, no other crimes worth mentioning.
The residents of Stonybrook just kept on living in a dream world, despite the wake-up call her family seemed destined to sound over and over.
Léa pulled off her wet sneakers and socks and spread the sleeping bag on the floor by the wall. There were no draperies or shades on the windows, but she didn’t mind. She didn’t want to feel shut in and alone in the house. Léa opened the windows looking out onto the porch. She breathed in the smell of rain. The old fashioned screens were missing from the windows, and she wondered vaguely if they were stored in the basement with the storm windows. A spark of memory from years ago passed through her mind. She thought of her father, religiously changing the screens for storm windows every year on Columbus Day. She looked out past the overgrown bushes, down the street, at the line of Victorian houses set back gracefully from the road.
It appeared that now, even after twenty years, Poplar Street had kept its look of respectability. A doctor, two retired schoolteachers, an architect…she couldn’t remember all of the neighbors’ jobs, but they all had been solid, responsible, important. John Hardy had fit right in at one time, running the mill. Even Léa’s great-grandfather, who had lived here before them, had owned and run the only pharmacy in town.
They’d belonged here on this street, in this town, as much as anyone else, Léa used to remind herself. But still she had sat by this same window so many nights, wondering what the other families on the street were like inside the walls of those res
pectable homes. When she was much younger, she’d wondered how mean other fathers got when they drank. She would sit and wonder if the other kid’s mothers were like her own, saying they were too sick to come out of their rooms, hiding their bruises and their shattered illusions about love.
Léa pushed away from the window and ran her bloodless hands up and down her arms. Her clothes were wet. She was cold. She didn’t want to be here. Her gaze wandered inescapably to the door of the dark kitchen. She felt goose bumps standing on her skin.
Her mother’s unseeing eyes were open when Léa and Ted walked into the kitchen that afternoon. There was blood on her face, on her neck, matted in her dark blond hair. There were deep gashes on her chest, on her arms. But Lynn Hardy’s eyes were open, as if she were waiting for her children to get home. A sob formed in Léa’s chest, and she pressed a hand to her mouth to control it. She blinked back the tears and saw her father leaning against the door jamb, his revolver in hand, ready to take his own life, as well.
There was a flash of lightning somewhere very close to the house. As the clap of thunder exploded an instant later, the hall light went out completely. Léa’s heart froze in her breast. She couldn’t move. For an agonizing minute, she could not tell reality from the imagined.
But then, with sanity came the fear that toed the electric edges of panic. Thoughts of another being in the house…perhaps cutting the power…raced through her mind. She scrambled for her purse and the can of pepper spray.
Crouching with her back to the wall, she glanced out through the windows. Everything—every house and streetlight—was enveloped in the same blanket of darkness. The storm had knocked out power in the entire area. For several moments she remained where she was, breathing deeply and forcing back the panic.
