“It’s okay, I’ll help you find another place in the meantime. This is probably just going to be a short delay.” He kept his voice calm while the wet carpet squished under his step. No need to panic her.
The water ran soundlessly into the tub, and the overflow splashed onto the tile floor and echoed off the white walls. Yes, he’d get someone out here ASAP to get rid of Asher, then everything would settle down.
He searched the bathroom, but it was clearly empty. No one in sight. But he could feel Asher, feel his presence as if it were a second skin. And he could feel Asher watching his every move.
“Oh? Why’s that?” Disappointment weighed heavy in her voice.
With that he changed his mind, he should tell her his theory that Asher was in the house, because that would keep her away. He didn’t want her to get hurt. He reached over the tub, and the first lever squeaked when he moved it to the off position.
“Well, I guess this might sound a little far-fetched to someone who hasn’t spent as much time in the manor as I have, but I’ll just ask you to keep an open mind here for a minute.”
Asher stood close to Tom while he leaned over the tub on tiptoe to reach the levers. Flooding the bathroom had been easier than he thought it would. Moving things just took concentration, that’s what he’d learned today. Extraordinary concentration with focused intent made things happen. But that was true no matter what your desire in life, right?
Like right now. He couldn’t have Tom ruining what was left of his life. Layla was almost within his grasp.
Benjamin Alcott’s bathtub was wide and raised, and Tom stretched over it oh so precariously. Perfect position.
Asher focused hard as he placed his palms on Tom’s head. One… Two… On the count of three, he shoved with all his might and Tom slipped and slammed his head against the side of the tub. A metallic tone rang into the room. The upper half of him slid into the water along with his phone. Tiny bubbles and a sinewy thread of blood rose to the surface.
Asher brushed his hands against each other. “Nothing to worry about,” he said in the direction of Tom’s phone, where Layla’s name shone brightly on the screen. “Nothing to worry about.”
8
Peyton and Layla stood on their mother’s gray cement driveway with the red brick edging. On the drive over Layla had told Peyton about the insurance policy, the caretaker position, and finding Mason in the manor. In turn, her sister responded with bolstering, confidence-enhancing advice about how to handle this unexpected information, which largely boiled down to: Take the job! Move into the manor!
“I wonder if Jayne Ella feels any guilt over how she pressured me to marry Asher. Considering how all that turned out. Considering what his motives really were.”
“If Jayne Ella feels any amount of guilt about anything, then there’s hope for the world yet.” Peyton side-hugged her two quick times and kissed her on the cheek.
Layla glanced at the darkened backyard where she and Peyton played for hours in the plastic pool with the tiny slide. Peyton would dutifully empty the pool whenever too many grass shavings floated in the water, and Layla would get the hose to refill it. Their mother had since replaced that area of the yard with a fancy in-ground pool that had a tanning ledge and a hot tub. All for her granddaughters.
“What do you think about living at the manor? I know it’s got that creepy history because people have died there. But Mason’s working there and that could be a positive, right? He couldn’t take his eyes off you at the manor.” Peyton lifted her hair off the back of her neck and turned into the breeze.
“I think I ought to ask our mother for the money.”
“Oh,” Peyton said as though she had been punched in the gut. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. In fact, I think that’s a downright bad idea.”
“There isn’t anyone else who has that kind of money,” Layla said.
“She’ll hold it over your head. If you borrow from her, she’ll use the debt as a weapon to control you. You’ll never be free of her.”
“The bank’s not any different. They’ll own my soul until I pay them off.”
“But they won’t dole out emotional blackmail and send you on expensive guilt trips like Jayne Ella.”
Layla pressed at a stress pain just over her eyebrow. If she looked in the mirror she was sure she’d see her mother’s face over that spot. Jayne Ella had that kind of effect on a person.
“Then maybe she would pay off this debt as an advance on my inheritance.”
“Oh, Lord. I can hear her now. ‘Layla just couldn’t wait until I was dead. She had to have my money now.’” Peyton’s voice was high and her accent was heavily Southern when she imitated their mother.
“Better that you push hard to get the manor ready for tours so you can have that income. Jayne Ella has been good with the girls?” Peyton asked.
“She’s been better about helping with them than their father was.” Asher, while he perfected the role of ideal dad when the girls were around, had a different point of view when she needed babysitting support. “You wanted ‘em, you work out the childcare.” Brilliant gem of a man that he was.
“A lot of men don’t help. You weren’t alone on that.”
Weren’t. Past tense. Relief flowed like she’d crossed the finish line in some sort of painful race. She survived her husband and a marriage that nearly took her down with it. She stretched her jaw open and it clicked.
When Asher proposed soon after they’d started dating, Jayne Ella told her: Take it! Girls like you don’t have many options! Take the offer!
Her relationship with Asher had been good in the beginning. Too good. On their first date they stayed up all night talking and laughing. She thought life had overlooked her wrongdoing, because he made her feel loved. He made her feel pretty. He made her feel wanted.
For a while.
Peyton pressed her lips tightly together, and Layla knew her sister was working hard to hold in all the words that wanted to spill forth. She knew Peyton would much rather see her in Alcott Manor with all its creepiness than owe their mother anything.
“Look. I just want you to be able to take care of yourself, and you would save a ton of money by staying there. It’s obviously not a perfect environment, but not having to pay rent, insurance, electricity, trash, recycling—that’s probably, what? A thousand a month? Maybe more when it’s all totaled?”
“Yes, but last time I was there I saw something--a few somethings, actually--that just sort of wigged me out.”
“You’re not looking to live there forever. By the time you move out, you’ll have saved enough to put a down payment on a small house for you and the girls. We can all do whatever we have to when it’s short-term. Right? Particularly when there’s a payoff at the end.”
Layla had rationalized that seeing the dog and the cake were just weird coincidences. She was in a lucid dream, which was sort of a distant cousin of meditating. Maybe a person could pick up on things when they were in that very open state of mind. Psychically speaking. Maybe she was being a little clairvoyant—seeing a couple of things that were about to happen. Maybe.
Remembering the cake crumbs sent a shimmy of adrenaline through her. They also reminded her that she had to be careful. Because she’d learned the hard way a long time ago that her lucid dreaming at the manor made things happen in her waking world as well.
“And I have a bad history with the manor. None of it bodes well.”
“Your history with the manor happened in high school. I doubt anyone still blames you for Brooke’s death. The police cleared you. Not to mention if our mother gives you the money that would end up being a total nightmare.”
Peyton’s wide-eyed expressions were so much like their father’s. Layla had very few memories of her father anymore, since he only spent time with his new family. She still referred to them as new, although after all this time his family wasn’t that new anymore. “A nightmare at a distance, though. Which is better than sharing space with one.
”
“If you’re feeling guilty, don’t. Brooke’s death and the way Mason acted, none of that was your fault.”
Layla sighed. It actually was her fault. That guilt weighed heavy throughout her body, like she carried a bag of rocks on her back.
“It was just an awful time, and I don’t want to relive it. Not with Mason, or anyone. I have enough going on in my life right now. If Mom gives me a reasonable out, I’m taking it. It would be better than staying at the manor. Stuff just goes wrong there.”
Their mother and both of Layla’s girls walked outside, each of them balancing a book on their head.
Jayne Ella’s large bust, slender waist and tailored clothing made Layla think her mother was stuck somewhere in the 1950s. Everything about her was Sears catalog perfect.
“Oh! Peyton! Sweetheart!” Jayne Ella let the book slip from her bottle-red head and gave her eldest daughter a kiss on each cheek and examined her outfit. “Welcome home, honey. Don’t you just look sharp?!”
“Aunt Peyton!” Layla’s daughters hugged and kissed their aunt, who they didn’t get to see nearly enough.
“Emma! Gracious, honey. Even in a ponytail your hair is about to touch your waist,” Peyton said. “And Anna Kate, good heavens, I’m almost looking right into your eyes you’re so tall!”
“Have you lost more weight?” Jayne Ella ran her hand over the back of Layla’s scrubs and pulled on the extra fabric at her waistline.
“A few pounds.” Layla wiggled away from her mother’s touch. This reminded her how Jayne Ella used to pinch a roll around Layla’s middle exclaiming: “This is fat. Just pure fat. How are you going to get rid of this?”
She wrestled old anger and shame over her lifelong battle with the scales. It was a well-worn exercise that usually ended up with a fudge covered cookie chaser. Chocolate coated emotions were the least painful.
“Well, keep it goin’, honey. Keep it goin’,” her mother said in that cheer whisper that Layla hated. Her encouragement in that particular tone sounded hollow, like she was just saying the right thing but didn’t really think Layla would win the battle of the bulge.
Jayne Ella returned the book to the top of her head, extended her well-manicured hands to the side and strolled across the driveway.
Layla didn’t mind leaving the girls with her mother. As awful as she had been to her over the years, Jayne Ella was far better with her grandchildren. In fact, she was almost ideal.
Playing the part.
She never commented on her kids’ weight.
She shouldn’t because they’re skinny as rails.
Or what they ought to weigh.
She’d better not.
She thought that maybe Jayne Ella knew that for as much as Layla didn’t stick up for herself all that well, she knew that Layla would protect her girls until she drew her dying breath. And like a mama grizzly, too.
“That’s it, girls. Nice and tall. Chin just a little higher, Emma.”
“What is this?” Layla held her building temper by the string of a frayed cord.
“Now, honey.”
It wasn’t the cheer whisper Layla hated, but it was close. Her tone was of the everyone-knows-this variety and it lit a fire deep in Layla’s gut that made her crave more chocolate.
“Slouchy posture isn’t good for the vital organs, right, girls?”
“She’s right, Mama. You know they have standing desks now because sitting is so bad for you.” Emma patted her tummy with the fingertips of both hands.
“That’s what Gramma’s boyfriend is making. Stand up desks.” Emma goosed her older sister in the ribs and dashed away in an unexpected game of tag. The books tumbled to the ground with a bang-bang.
Anna promptly rolled her eyes and gritted her teeth. “It’s standing desks, not stand up desks, you—”
“Kind words, Anna Kate,” Layla warned. “Hands to yourself.” She’d said those words ten million times before today and she knew they ignored her. Their hands would be pinching and poking and pulling whatever they could to get back at the other. Just as she did with her sister when they were their age.
“Slouching is the new junk food. It’s a bad habit.” Jayne Ella raised her eyebrows in a told-you-so-fashion and then mouthed the words “It’s lazy.”
Layla teetered on the edge of a verbal barb before she decided to let her mother’s behavior go. She couldn’t refute what her mother was saying, but something about it put her on the hairy edge of irritation.
Maybe it was because she could still feel her mother’s knuckle run down her spine. “Sit up straight. You’ll look thinner,” she’d said when Layla was younger and usually when they were out at a restaurant.
She decided it was that tone of assumed rejection that bothered her. As in, we have to be perfect or else. Her mother had adopted that tone when their dad moved out.
Once inside, Jayne Ella poured sweet tea over ice for the two older girls while the two younger ones played outside. “Now, tell me, honey. How did the meeting go with your attorney? Did you get all that worked out with the insurance policy?”
Layla caught herself mid-sip and returned the glass on the table. “Not really. No.”
She relayed the story in detail, how Asher had left a ton of debt that she had to pay off, how she was losing the house as a result and how she wondered if her mother would be willing to help. She intentionally left out the part about how Asher had raised the value of her policy. Her mother had a special gift for wearing her out and she just couldn’t go over that again. Not right now.
“I’ve already accepted an offer from Tom to live at the manor. It’s a caretaker position, but that’s a very temporary solution. What I really want is to be as independent as possible. So I was wondering if you would buy a house for us? And then you could sell it a few years from now and keep the gains. Or maybe you could front me some money as an advance against my inheritance? I know it’s a lot to ask. But Asher has left us in a bad situation.”
She also left out how Mason was working at the manor and she wasn’t sure how well it would go if the two of them shared such close quarters.
“Well, honey. Of course I’ll help you.” Her mother rubbed and patted her on the knee again. Several times. It was her mother’s sure sign that she was all in.
“Thank you.” Layla breathed a sigh of relief. “I never thought I’d ever have to ask you for money.”
“Well, don’t you worry, I’ll take care of this. How soon do you have to be out of the house?”
“They’ve offered us sixty days.”
“Plenty of time. We can probably find something close by before then. And if we can’t find something that suits, y’all can move in with me until we find what works.”
“Here?” Layla’s chest tightened. “We wouldn’t want to crowd you.”
“Nonsense. You’re my girl. Family is always there for family, right?” Jayne Ella waved off Layla’s concerns. “I’ll clear out the guest room for the girls, and you can take your old room.”
The very thought of moving back into her old room in her mother’s house made her feel as though the walls inched their way toward her. She could almost feel the bright yellow paint from her mother’s living room walls on the skin of her arms.
The look in Peyton’s eyes was part I-told-you-so and part run-for-your-life.
Her mother was taking over. Just as she always did. If Layla moved in, her girls would start to listen to their grandmother more than they did her. And wouldn’t that make Jayne Ella so happy?
The manor wasn’t a perfect option for several reasons, though it was a far sight better than moving in with her mother.
“The girls could stay here for a few nights here and there, but I’d have to think about anything more lengthy than that. I need more of my own space.” Hell would serve ice cream before she moved into her mother’s house. “Maybe I ought to just stick with the caretaker job at the manor. The girls and I could live there until the restoration is complete.”
“You don’t have any experience in that area, so I can’t imagine you’d be very good at that. Alcott Manor is a family-wide project. If you mess anything up, you would catch the brunt end of your relatives’ anger. I really wouldn’t want to see you go through that. And what if the girls ruin something? How would you pay to replace it?”
It sounded like she was offering protection and sage advice, but she wasn’t. Layla knew when she left her mother’s house that she’d feel worse about herself and her life than when she arrived. Her guilt level was rising, and there was no way to head it off.
Peyton had been right. If she chose to live in a property that her mother owned, or if she accepted money from her, then their mother would have control over her life in a way that would suffocate her. She could feel it in her gut, accepting her mother’s handout was all wrong.
“Besides, the girls can’t live there. Their father died there.” She whispered her last two words, even though the girls were outside.
“They don’t know where he died. Only that he was on a job and that he had a bad fall. Besides, they can avoid that area of the house.” She knew her mother had a point, though, and she began to mentally write her worst-mother-of-the-year acceptance speech. “As I said, I’m sure they would enjoy staying with you for a few nights here and there. But I think what you’re really saying is that you think I’ll screw it up and you don’t want to be on the brunt end of our relatives’ disappointments.”
“Well, honey—” The end of her “honey” pitched up, as though she had to placate something irrational that Layla had said.
“No, it’s fine, Mom. Really. It doesn’t matter, because I’ve decided to go with Tom’s offer.”
Her mom sat speechless. Peyton stifled a smile.
Layla didn’t know what her future held or how she would straighten out this financial mess. But she knew that whatever she forged for herself and her girls from here on out would have to be without her mother’s financial aid.
A Murder at Alcott Manor Page 6
