A Stranger in Alcott Manor

by Alyssa Richards

  When she finally fell asleep she dreamed of being in the Alcott Manor ballroom in the wide-skirted party dress, waltzing with Beau. Until the walls shifted and morphed, the room fell away and the temperature dropped to near freezing. Her legs were short and bare, her shoelaces were untied. She sat in the back seat of a car she didn’t recognize. One with black seats. The seatbelt was too high and its thin edge cut against her neck.

  Her mother turned around from the front seat. Her hair was longer then, sleeker. The way it looked when Peyton was young. The scenes flipped forward, frame by frame. Choppy, like an old silent film.

  “You okay, sweetheart?” her mother asked.

  She nodded her head. Slowly. Something was wrong.

  “It’s late. I know you’re tired.” Her mother flashed her wide smile, the one that came naturally when she’d had too much wine to drink. She reached over the seat and patted Peyton’s knee. “Too pretty for your own good,” she said.

  When she returned her arm to the front seat her mother’s fingers rubbed the back of the driver’s neck.

  “Mmmm,” the driver groaned.

  “Daddy?” Peyton asked.

  The man laughed and stretched his arm around Jayne Ella possessively.

  That wasn’t her father’s laugh.

  “Daddy’s at his poker game tonight, remember? Maybe close your eyes for a few more minutes.” She leaned close to the man, ran her fingers through his hair. “After you drop me at the salon, I need you to take Peyton to the house, please. The sitter will let her in, she’s taking care of Layla.”

  The man looked in the rearview mirror at Peyton. She recognized those blue eyes.

  “You don’t want to just take her with you?” he lowered his voice. “The sitter might see me.”

  Jayne Ella shook her head. “The sitter is glued to the tv, she won’t see a thing. All you have to do is stop at the end of the driveway, Peyton can walk in by herself. Brenda called me about an hour ago. She came down with the flu and left without counting out the cash drawer or getting tomorrow’s deposit ready. So I have to do that.”

  The man sighed. “I don’t know—”

  “Please? Peyton feels warm and I don’t want her waiting around on me. It’s late, she’s so tired and I’m hoping she’s not coming down with Layla’s flu bug. Seems like everyone’s getting sick this time of year. I’ll make it up to you…”

  He faced her mother, his greedy smile turned Peyton’s stomach.

  “She asleep?” he asked.

  “Gettin’ there,” she whispered. “Few more minutes she’ll be out. Car rides are better than sleeping pills for my girls.”

  Peyton closed her eyes almost all the way, pretending to be asleep. Her mother wouldn’t notice the tiny slit of her open eyelids. Whatever secrets they were going to discuss, she wanted to hear them.

  When her mother buried kisses on the man’s neck, she changed her mind and closed her eyes all the way. This wasn’t her father! Her mother wasn’t supposed to kiss other people like that.

  “Mmmm, baby,” the man said.

  Peyton plugged her fingers into her ears. The man’s cooing and groaning sent her skin crawling.

  The scene changed again. Now she stood next to the grand staircase, the man with the sparkly watch digging a wide hole in the floor. Stacks of something shiny, golden on the floor. Her mother spun around: “Peyton!”

  The scene changed again. It was much colder this time, as she sat on the bottom step of the grand staircase of Alcott Manor. Shivering, chilled, afraid. There was a banging noise in the background. Wood breaking, splintering. A man grunting with each whack.

  Peyton startled when the wood split and she jumped to her feet. One step, then another toward the front door, determined to get out. A mix of cold and fear had her moving at glacial speed and shaking so hard involuntary noises leaked through her mouth.

  “I said sit down!” the man growled.

  She backed up, knew this was where she would die. She would never again see her sister or play with her dolls. She would never get to have her own business or get married or travel to Egypt.

  Tears fell onto her cheeks and sobs ratcheted up from deep in her chest. She crouched onto the steps again, holding her knees against her.

  “Just a few more minutes, okay? Just sit here and be a good girl.” He sounded like her art teacher when he fussed at her over jars of spilled paint. The words were kind, but his voice was scolding. The man stood in front of her, covered in sweat and dirt. She knew him. It was Beau’s daddy. Mr. Spencer. She looked down at her white dress smeared with dirt and blood.

  She woke with a gasp, the cool breeze blowing across her upper body, and Peyton shivered. Confusion riddled her brain when the sweet smell of hay filled her nostrils. She panicked, not remembering where she was.

  “What’s wrong, sweetheart?” Beau’s voice was deep and smooth like warm whiskey mixed with honey. She turned and melted into his arms, told him everything she had seen.

  Her body shook as if she were still ten and cold and frightened in the manor. Beau wrapped the scratchy plaid blanket around her shoulders. He had long known about her missing memories and how they frightened her. This wasn’t the first time he had comforted her.

  He slumped a little, like his father had let him down. He stared toward the rough brown wall of the barn. “I thought that he had affairs, but I never suspected Jayne Ella. My mother would have ruined him if she had known. She would have ruined Jayne Ella, too.”

  “I think this must be why your dad didn’t want me to marry you,” she said. “He didn’t want me to talk about their affair, or whatever they hid in the manor.”

  Beau jerked his head as if someone smacked him on the forehead. “How old did you say you were when this happened?”

  “Ten, I think. I remember getting this little butterfly ring for my birthday that year and I know I was wearing it that night.”

  “That would have been…” He counted back the years. “When I was twelve, going on thirteen, and that was—I’m almost positive that was the year there was a theft at the bank.” He told her about the gold his dad had agreed to hold in the bank safe for a client, how it disappeared, and no one knew when because the security cameras didn’t catch anything.

  “Gold…” Peyton thought about the shiny golden stacks from her dream.

  “I didn’t know about it until a few weeks before I ended up here. The police reopened the investigation, my dad had to go down to the police station. Ultimately, they said it was either an inside job or the client simply didn’t store as much gold in the safe as he said he did. Small town, small bank, there wasn’t any paperwork on the transaction. They gave everyone at the bank a lie detector test. No one failed. Not even my father. Which doesn’t mean anything. I don’t doubt that he could beat a polygraph if he wanted to.”

  “Why wouldn’t Jayne Ella have cashed it in by now? Our family needed the money too much over the years.”

  “Maybe they’ve been keeping the gold hidden until they could safely trade it in. The gold has gotten a lot of publicity.”

  She thought of how Austin was making his move to claim the manor and she told Beau more about the loans, his father’s new position at the bank, and how she wondered if he was doing this to reclaim the gold.

  “Maybe he’s taking the manor because he wants the gold now and she’s not willing to give him his share. Or maybe it’s impossible to get to it? That digging noise. It must be buried under the floorboards.”

  “Wouldn’t that area go to the basement?”

  “Not on that side of the main staircase. That first floor, what they called the summer quarters, isn’t as wide or as long as the top two levels of the house. Some of the main level sits flush to the ground. But it would be underneath the hardwoods, and the cement foundation, too, probably. I remember she said he couldn’t be trusted. The affair could have ended badly,” she said.

  “She was right about not trusting him,” he said.

  “I r
emember she told me once, that a long time ago, when she really needed him to come through for her, when she trusted him to do the right thing, he didn’t.”

  “That’s my dad. Never been afraid to put himself first.”

  “Maybe he left her.”

  “I’m sure he did. Probably led her on until the fun was gone, or until he had a good hiding place for the gold. He might have even planned the whole thing in advance.”

  She lowered her guard where the manor was concerned, opened herself up to the night in question, and tried to remember. She could hear the thwack, the definitive sound of wood splitting. Her breathing picked up and her brain spun in circles. This was the same feeling she always had around the manor. That feeling of being captive, dragged, needing to escape with her life.

  Peyton felt like she stood on a slippery bank of layered secrets, hidden truths that shifted beneath her feet and kept her unstable. One wrong step and she thought the lot of them would take her down. Her grandmother was wrong in this case. If truths were revealed from that night, she didn’t think they would set her free. Knowing them felt like they might destroy her.

  She glanced in the direction of the manor. Another little girl who disappeared long ago popped into her mind—Rachel. Partial memories jolted loose, elbowed their way to the forefront to be seen. Ten-year-old Peyton sat on the lowest step of the grand staircase, wind and rain rattled ancient windows, whispering from around the corner, a hole in the floor—a sharp inhale.

  She turned back. Beau studied her, ran his hand along her cheek.

  “What if Rachel didn’t drown? What if her body wasn’t lost in the ocean like Bertha Mae’s diary said it was? What if Bertha Mae killed her and buried her body in the manor?” Her voice sounded hollow, as if it weren’t her own.

  The idea of finding Rachel’s dead body, seeing the little girl’s small bones beneath the floorboards sent off all sorts of bells, buzzers and flashing lights inside her head. Like she had hit the bullseye. Something let go from the inside.

  “That’s entirely possible.” Beau rubbed his wide palm along her back.

  “Maybe if we find her body and can figure out what happened to her, that will bring an end to all of these memories.”

  “That’s a plan.” The warmth of his compassion told her that he celebrated this victory with her.

  She tapped three times with her left hand, then three times with her right, trying to find a deeper sense of peace. The images unsettled her, her memories still weren’t clear.

  “We’re probably losing the manor as we speak.” She picked up a piece of hay and cracked it into two pieces. She pressed the end of her finger onto the sharp broken end, feeling the prick on her skin.

  She thought of the manor being torn down—once Austin recovered the gold, she knew that’s what he would do. He never cared about the manor or its historical value. The few times he had been on Alcott Manor property all he could do was ask about the land. How many acres do y’all have here again? How much of it is oceanfront?

  He would tear it down and the bank would sell the land. A developer would snatch it up before it could even be advertised. The best properties sold on word of mouth. Maybe he would even buy it himself for pennies on the dollar. Then her family’s land would be subdivided for McMansions or a resort. But that wasn’t her most pressing concern.

  “If your dad tears down the manor, what would happen to us?” she asked.

  Beau made a noise like someone poked him in the heart. “Without the manor, I don’t see how there would be a way for us to get home.”

  It was still dark and raining when Beau roused her and explained that the scenes would change soon. She needed to get dressed. She yawned and stretched, not at all enjoying the way she felt. At some point in the little bit of sleep she managed to catch the night before, snippets of her old reality wormed its way in. Guilt knocked on the outer walls of her newfound peace and tugged at the renewed happiness in her heart. She was engaged to someone else and yet she had made love with Beau.

  When she fell into his arms the night before, it had been every bit as right as life always was with Beau. But now her heart splintered that she had done this. Ira—a kind and brilliant man who had been good to her. He loved her. And if she was going to be honest with herself, she knew that she still loved him, too.

  Beau must have picked up on the delicateness of the moment because he began to make small talk—not something he had ever been too good with when she knew him before. He was too busy, quickly on to the next thing. But now his questions to her teemed with genuine interest. While he dressed, his blue eyes focused on her with kind intent and he asked what she did with her time back home.

  “I work a lot. Crisis PR mostly. Corporate image stuff. I’m up for a promotion, Senior Vice President for an agency in Boston.” She felt silly for saying that. The promotion and the job would disappear when she didn’t return.

  “Boston…wow. That’s a big change from what we had planned.”

  She bit the corner of her bottom lip. “Truth?”

  He ran his hands through his blond hair, nodded hesitantly, as if he wasn’t sure that was what he wanted.

  “I was excited about leaving Charleston with you, and I was looking forward to the writing and the photography. But the travel might have been more your dream than mine.”

  He opened his mouth, stunned. “You were such a good writer and photographer, I didn’t realize.”

  She stepped into her dress, shrugged after she pulled it around her shoulders. “I never told you. At the time I guess I didn’t really know what I wanted. Other than to leave town and be with you.”

  He buttoned his vest and walked toward her.

  “Apparently, I’m good with turnaround opportunities. It’s a good fit for my talents.” She had not told him that Ira had helped her see how her natural interests and talents fit with her career choice. But a shadow crossed his face, as if he knew. It felt as though Ira were in the room with them.

  “If we make it home—when we make it home—how will you handle things with Ira?” he asked.

  His question hit her so squarely in the chest, she stopped to catch her breath. Guilt, her abiding demon, stood strong by her side, stealing the love they had shared the night before. “I don’t know,” she finally managed.

  “You don’t know?”

  “I mean, I don’t even know if we’re getting home or not. It’s not a bridge I’ve come to. I haven’t had a chance to even think—” Her answers sounded weak. The minute they left her mouth she wanted to yank them all back inside.

  “You haven’t thought about it,” he said flatly as if he knew she was lying.

  “No—I—I didn’t exactly plan any of this.” She couldn’t believe this was her own self talking. If he had said these things to her she would have been crushed. But the truth was she wasn’t prepared for this conversation.

  “So, when we get home, if we get home, you’re just going to go back to him? Get married like none of this happened?” He waved to the blankets on the floor where they had spent the night in each other’s arms.

  “My words are not coming out the way I mean for them to. And I think we’re jumping ahead.”

  She hoped he would nod and agree and let the issue go. They had other things to resolve. But he didn’t, so she said, “Okay, assuming we get home, I’ll have to tell him what I did and he’s going to be heartbroken. He trusted me, and I blew it.” She pressed her finger against the building pain behind her left eyebrow.

  “You regret this?”

  “No, I—damn it, stop putting words in my mouth!”

  “Was this a mistake?” He gestured to the two of them.

  The features of his face appeared to sag from the years of hurt and loneliness, she suspected. She realized what he was feeling, she knew it all too well. Emptiness was heaviest in the heart. That sort of weight could take the rest of you down with it. She’d had too many days when she thought the grief might just drag the skin from her bo
nes. She licked her dry lips.

  She waited a beat. Not because she didn’t know the answer but because she was afraid to say it. “No. Okay? It wasn’t a mistake. Not for me. But it was incredibly insensitive to someone and— Right now I don’t even know what tomorrow looks like. And I have to try to work that out first. Then I can figure out the rest of my life.” She glared at him, half furious that he was pressuring her about the two of them and half relieved that this hadn’t been nothing for him either.

  “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’ve waited a long time for you. I’ve waited a long time for us. I can’t expect the same of you, our situations have been different.”

  His shoulders seemed to droop, and she knew he was sorry. But the sting still hurt. She coughed up the barbed worry that had long been stuck in her heart. “It’s been almost ten years since we’ve even seen one another. I’ve changed. I’m not the same person you left behind. I don’t know what your experiences have been since we’ve been apart, but I can tell they’ve changed you, too.”

  “Then what was all this about?” Again, he gestured to their bed from the previous night.

  She wanted to feel the overwhelming love she had for him the night before, when she couldn’t stop herself from falling into his arms. Instead, panic, guilt and worry came rushing forth. She was irritated. More than irritated. Pissed. “I didn’t think we were offering one another any guarantees.”

  He jerked backward as if she had smacked him on the face.

  Silence screamed in the room.

  Something fierce and painful passed through his eyes and she felt a stab deep inside her chest. Her breathing stopped.

  She looked away which just made the pain hurt worse.

  He exhaled slowly, like his patience ran thin. “You think we don’t know one another anymore. But I know you, Peyton. You haven’t changed that much. You’re doing the same thing you always have in situations like this. You’re thinking about what this Ira person wants. You’re thinking about me and what I want. But you’re not at all thinking about what you want.” He waited for her to respond. His mouth stayed open with frustration, his hand was in the air, palm up as if it asked a question.