“What is your ZIP Code?”
Jessivel told her.
“Okay. So, I’ll type in five miles from your ZIP Code. That brings us to the next page. What salary range are you looking for?”
Jessivel shrugged. “I was making twelve dollars an hour at The Busy Bean.”
“I’ll put in ten to fifteen dollars per hour. It lets you indicate whether you want full-time or part-time. We’ll keep both options open. And you are at an entry level, so we’ll check that box.”
“Sounds good,” she said, knowing part-time wasn’t going to cut it.
“Ready?”
“Sure.”
Paige clicked on the “Find Jobs” box, and a list appeared.
“Look, here’s a barista job not two miles from here with an opening. Oops, they require a full year’s experience. Let’s keep looking.”
After they waded through this and two other websites, Paige asked Jessivel if she had a resumé.
“I have the one the social services worker put together for me.”
“Does it include your experience at The Busy Bean?”
“No.”
“Can I see it? I’ll create one in Word for you that is up-to-date.”
“In Word?”
“It’s a program you can use to write letters, create a resumé, write a book, if you want.”
“Could my daughter use it for writing reports? She has to use the school lab now.”
“I don’t see why not.”
Jessivel fetched a copy of her resumé, and Paige created a version of it on the laptop. She showed it to Jessivel.
“Wow. That looks so…so professional. Where can we print it out?”
“You don’t have a printer?”
Stupid question since I don’t have a computer.
“Duh! Why would you have a printer with no computer. I’m sure I can find one for you in my office—we have a small inventory of computer equipment in our storage closet. But keep in mind that when you apply for jobs online, you will likely be attaching your resumé electronically.”
Right.
“Tell me, Paige, why are you…um.” Jessivel thought better of asking the potentially hazardous question weighing on her mind.
“Helping you? Is that what you were going to ask?”
“Something like that.”
“Because we’re family. That’s what sisters do. And you know what?”
“What?”
“I kind of like you. You’re pretty crusty on the outside, and you haven’t exactly been welcoming to me, but underneath it all, I think you’re alright.” She paused before continuing. “I think you feel betrayed by our father. You think I’ve had it much better than you, and for that reason you resent me. And you’re scared of your future. How am I doing?”
“Good so far.”
“And you don’t trust me, or at least you haven’t up until now.”
“Keep going.”
“That’s all I’ve got…except for one admission.”
Here it comes. “What’s that?”
“My initial reason for wanting to talk with you has to do with something that we haven’t touched upon yet.”
“More dirt on dear old Dad?”
“No. It’s how he died. He had Huntington’s disease. Do you know anything about it?”
Jessivel shook her head.
“It’s a disease that affects the nerve cells in the brain. It can manifest itself in all sorts of ways—a person’s thinking, body movements, speech. Many other ways. And it’s genetic. Children can inherit it from a parent.”
Jessivel momentarily froze while she absorbed what Paige had said.
“Do you have it?”
“I’ve been tested, and I don’t have it.”
“But I might.”
“From what I’ve been told, there is a 50/50 chance.”
“And you don’t have it, so...”
“That doesn’t mean anything. Regardless of whether I have it or not, you have a 50/50 chance.”
“So how do I get tested…and is it expensive?”
“It’s a blood test—they check to see if you have the defective gene that causes the condition. And if you can’t afford it, I’m happy to pay for it.”
“What about Kayla?”
“She won’t need to be tested…unless you test positive.”
“And then she’ll have a 50/50 chance?”
Paige nodded.
“I want to be tested.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“The reason I ask is because not everyone who suspects they could have it wants to get tested.”
“Why not?”
“There are some things they can do to slow down the progression of it if detected early, but some people feel that since the disease can’t be cured, what good would it do to get tested—it would just be something hanging over their heads, something to dampen their will to live.”
“I’d want to know.”
“That’s how I felt too, but I wanted to make sure you understood it’s a decision that comes with some ramifications.”
“Either way.”
“If you want, I’ll make an appointment for you with my doctor.”
“Speaking of Dad, my mom just told me he sold medical equipment for a living. Is that true?”
“Yes, he did. That’s not what you were told?”
“Nope. Said he had to visit different construction sites, all over the country, to do inspections.”
Paige shook her head. “Unbelievable.”
Chapter 39
Paige’s mother clung to her arm as they approached her house. “It’s so good to be home,” she said through a sigh.
Noticing the front door was ajar, Paige stopped short.
She held out her arm to keep her mother from entering the house. “Wait here, Mom. Something’s not right.”
“What is it?”
“The door is partly open.”
Her mother pushed Paige’s arm away. “It’s just Nat’s way of welcoming me home.” Before Paige could stop her, her mother was inside.
“What the—”
Paige followed closely behind her. The first thing she noticed was the Kosta Boda vase, which had graced her mother’s foyer console for as long as she could remember, smashed on the floor. She gasped at the ransacked living room—overturned chairs, sofa pillows strewn about, drawers pulled out of cabinets.
She checked the security system panel and found it in its normal “at-home” position. “Nat!” she called out. No answer.
Paige grabbed her mother’s arm and guided her back outside. “You wait in the car,” she said as she helped her down the steps. “I’m calling 9-1-1.”
With her mother safely locked in the car, Paige called the police, who told her to stay in her car until they arrived.
“But my sister might be in there.”
“And so might the intruder. Stay in your car and lock the doors until the police arrive. They’re on their way.”
It went against Paige’s better judgment not to go in, but she did as told and joined her mother in the car.
“What about Natalie?” her mother asked. “Do you think she’s okay?”
“Let me text her and see if she responds. I’ve been told to let the police—”
The sound of sirens made both of them jump. Two police cars pulled up, each carrying two officers. A female officer approached Paige’s car. The other three went into the house, guns drawn. Paige rolled down her window.
“Are you okay?” the officer asked.
“Yes, we’re fine. But I’m worried about my sister. She might be inside.” Paige hadn’t received a text back from Natalie.
“They’re aware of that. Let’s give them a chance to check out the house and see what’s going on in there.”
They waited in the car for the officers to clear the house. Several scenarios played out in Paige’s mind. While she didn’t think Tim and Hank were the type to
break in her mother’s home, she couldn’t rule this out. They were interested in the ring, and they didn’t walk away with it during their last visit.
It was close to twenty minutes before one of the officers emerged from the house. “Your sister is fine,” he said. “Shaken up, but fine. The house is clear, if you want to come in.”
Paige and her mother entered the house where they joined Natalie and one officer in the living room. They each gave Natalie a hug before sitting down.
Natalie sagged into a chair and sat limply with her arms clenched around her swollen belly. She didn’t have any visible bruises or marks on her.
“Are you okay?” Paige asked Natalie.
Natalie nodded.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“So what happened?” Paige asked her.
“Some men broke into the house…tied me up…made a mess,” she said, stumbling over her words.
“There is no sign of forced entry, Miss.”
Natalie let out a quick snort. “Well, they got in somehow. I don’t know.”
“How many of them were there?” the officer asked.
“I said before I don’t know,” Natalie said, her left knee bouncing at a rapid speed.
“A few.”
“Males, females?” the officer asked.
“Males. I already told you that upstairs.”
“I’m just asking again so I make sure I understand. White, black, Hispanic?”
“White. I told you.”
Natalie rubbed her wrists.
“Is there something wrong with your wrists?” Paige asked.
“They used duct tape on me.”
Paige recognized the officer as one who had been there when their mother’s house had been burglarized a couple of months earlier. “Do you think the two incidents are related?” she asked him.
“Could be, but I rather doubt it. The first one was an exceptionally clean robbery. Whoever was involved in that break-in came in looking for something specific and didn’t mess up the place like this.”
“Either way, that’s two burglaries in less than three months. Have there been others in the area?” Paige asked.
“None recently. This neighborhood is exceptionally low on crime. Car break-ins mostly and not many of those.”
“What happens next?” Paige asked.
“They’ll finish processing the scene and then we’ll do a walk-through to see if you can tell what’s missing.” He pulled out a notepad. “Who all lives here?” he asked no one in particular.
Paige responded. “My mother, Elaine West, and Natalie, of course. Natalie West.”
“Who all has keys?” the officer asked.
“Each of us has a key,” Paige said. “And in case Natalie hasn’t told you this yet, she lost her key last night.”
The officer looked up from his notepad. “Really? Where did you lose it?”
Natalie squirmed in her seat. “I’m not sure,” she said, the pitch of her voice higher than normal. “I was out and lost it somewhere.”
“Where were you?”
“What difference does it make? I don’t know when or where I lost it.”
“Well, did you have it before you left the house?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you turn on the security system when you left?” the policeman asked Natalie.
“I may have. I don’t remember.”
The conversation continued without much more being learned until the officer asked Natalie one final question. “Would you mind coming down to the station where we can continue this discussion?”
Seeing the aftermath of someone having violated her mother’s home, now twice, hit Paige hard—realizing that a stranger had gone through her belongings was unsettling to say the least. She proceeded to clean up the mess, knowing these emotions wouldn’t go away simply by returning the physicality of her mother’s home back to normal, and hoping she wouldn’t feel this way every time she came here.
“I don’t know why they had to take Natalie to the station,” Paige’s mother said. “She answered all their questions as best she could.”
Paige disagreed and wondered if Natalie knew enough to ask for a lawyer if needed. “I’m not so sure of that, Mom. She was vague about the lost key and how she left the security panel. I wish now that we’d gotten a camera system. That way we would be able to see who came to the door.”
“Maybe we should have gone with her,” her mother said.
“Where?”
“To the police station.”
“Wouldn’t have done any good. They’ll want to talk to her alone.”
“Well, I think they’re making a bigger deal out of this than they have to. Nothing was stolen.”
“Your vase was broken.”
“It can be replaced.”
The way her mother was minimizing the situation baffled Paige. Like she was trying to shield Natalie from something.
“The fact that nothing was stolen makes me even more nervous. They could have taken any number of items, but they didn’t. Why was that? And if they didn’t find what they were looking for, will they be back?”
Her mother shrugged.
“Lucky for you, your safe is well hidden. We can thank Dad for that.” Paige’s father had had a floor safe installed under the carpet in their bedroom closet where Paige’s mother kept her jewelry and other valuable items. It hadn’t been disturbed during the first burglary. “Or do we need to check it?” Paige asked. She had always been curious as to what all her parents kept in there.
“Did you check it after the last break-in?” her mother asked.
“I started to, but when I saw the carpet hadn’t been disturbed, I didn’t go any further.”
“Maybe you better look in it. Tell me what’s in there…but don’t open anything.”
“Then how can I tell you what’s in there?”
“Don’t open anything sealed. The combination is my birthday.”
Paige went upstairs to her mother’s bedroom, pulled up the carpet on the closet floor, and opened the safe, which was roughly two cubic feet in size. She lifted out her mother’s jewelry box and peeked inside at her mother’s exquisite collection. Then she rifled through the papers, reached down to the bottom of the safe, and pulled out two sealed envelopes, one regular and one padded, neither one labeled. By its feel, the regular envelope appeared to contain papers. The padded one enclosed something else, hard to tell what.
Paige put everything back in place, locked the safe, and returned to the living room.
“Nothing was touched. Your jewelry box and everything else is fine.”
“That’s good.”
“The sealed envelopes were still sealed, so—”
“How many?” her mother asked.
“Two.”
“What color?”
“One brown and one white.” What difference does the color make? “The white one was padded.”
“I know of the brown one, and it should stay sealed,” her mother said with resolve. “But let me see the white one.”
Paige retrieved the bulky envelope and handed it to her mother.
She fingered it before giving it back to Paige. “Put it back where you found it.”
“What’s in it?”
“Nothing important,” she said gazing past Paige. “Just something your father probably put in there.”
When Paige returned, her mother mentioned a savings account she had in her name. “Was that bank book in there?”
“No, but when I retrieved your will from your desk, I saw a bank book in the same drawer,” Paige said. “Do you mean that one?”
“Yes.”
“A stash of quick money in case you need it?”
Her mother sighed. “My father gave it to me in case Ryan couldn’t provide for me.”
“Really? I didn’t know that.”
“There was never a need to say anything.”
“Did you ever have to use any of it?”
she asked, knowing there had been several withdrawals.
Her mother shrugged. “A few times. You may as well know this, Paige. I couldn’t always depend on your father for everything. So, yes, I had to dip into it every now and again.”
Paige wondered if any of the withdrawals had been for Natalie who was an expert at weaseling money from their mom. “That surprises me,” she said.
“There may be a lot of things about…”
“What other things?”
“Nothing. I think I need to lie down for a while.”
“You can’t stay here.”
“Why not?”
“It’s not safe. That’s two burglaries. And one missing key.”
“Unrelated burglaries, according to the policeman,” her mother insisted.
“That makes a difference?”
“They won’t come back. They know what’s here now.”
“You’re not making sense, Mom.”
“Natalie will be here.”
“Oh, that’s comforting.”
“Would you leave her alone? Imagine what she’s going through right now. Being browbeaten by the police.”
“I doubt she’s being browbeaten. But she was tied up, for God’s sake. She’s not going to want to stay here either. You guys can come stay with me for now. I have plenty of room.”
“I’m staying here. I just spent a month in a god-awful hospital room, and now I want to be home. End of discussion.”
“It wasn’t a month. Anyway, I’m not going to leave you here alone. I’ll sleep here tonight.”
“Fine. Do whatever you think is best.”
Feeling the need to lie down herself, Paige found a set of antique bells on a rope her mother had hanging in the mudroom and draped them on the front doorknob in case she fell asleep and someone tried to gain entry, a trick she had learned after her divorce when she had first lived alone. Then, she curled up on her mother’s sofa and closed her eyes.
Paige awoke disoriented and frantic. In the dream, she had been confronted by a man wearing a mask hovering over her. She would need to get the locks changed (again) and have the security company install cameras as soon as possible.
An hour later, as she sipped coffee, she reflected on the two mysterious envelopes in her mother’s safe and considered doing something unethical. After all, who would ever know? But, regrettably, that would have to wait.
The Ring Page 21
