“Hey! Watch it!” He stumbled forward but caught himself and had a wounded look on his face as he glanced over his shoulder.
“We don’t have time for this shit!”
So angry he thought he could snap the half-wit’s neck with his bare hands, he climbed behind the wheel. Fortunately, the girl was so traumatized she hadn’t figured out that she could have crawled over the seats and sprinted away. He yanked the door closed and hit the gas while the damned seat belt alarm dinged. “Buckle the fuck up!” he yelled, and for once, thankfully, the idiot listened.
Sarah stared out the window. Jade, furious, had wound herself into a sleeping bag and was icing her out by taking up residence in the one bedroom on the first floor. For once, Sarah decided to give her daughter space. Jade had wanted the truth but wasn’t ready to deal with it, and Sarah had been a little rash in picking up the phone and calling Clint. It was a relief that the burden of the secret would be off her back, but now she had other demons to deal with. She was certain anyone who’d ever taken Psychology 101 would tell her she’d blown it, big-time. But there it was. The biggest secret of Sarah’s life, one she’d guarded for nearly eighteen years, out.
She’d been blindsided by Jade and reacted. Probably stupidly. Forcing a mammoth, emotional confrontation that would probably only make both Jade and Clint hate her, at least for a while, though time, she hoped, would be on her side.
She didn’t want to have the same relationship with her oldest daughter as she did with her own mother.
She’d better get ready for Clint.
As if she ever would be.
Returning to the living room, she started putting firewood from the carrier into the cold fireplace, stacking the oak as her father had shown her years earlier. Before she lit the fire, Sarah rocked back on her heels and stared at the open grate, feeling the shadows in the house close in on her as they had so many times in the past. Though she loved it here, there was a melancholy to these ancient walls, a sadness that she’d told herself was all because of the tension and emotional drama that had played out here in her youth and probably long before.
With night having settled in, she was reminded of sitting in this very room in the dark, with only the fire as illumination, her father sleeping on the long couch, while her mother rocked in the chair nearest the flames, knitting as if by rote, never missing a stitch, her gaze glued to her work in the dim light, her needles clicking in an unending, staccato beat, the fire hissing. Red embers glowed. Hungry flames cast shifting, golden shadows. Her father’s old hunting dog had usually been curled on the rug next to the couch and the discarded newspaper, and every now and again, Franklin, reading glasses still propped on his nose, would let his arm stretch down so that he could scratch Lady behind her ears.
Once when Sarah had been in grade school, she’d been walking from the kitchen to the stairs and heard her mother’s voice, as clipped as the sounds of her knitting needles. “It’s all your fault, you know,” Arlene had said, and though her back was turned, Sarah sensed that her mother’s lips were tight, suppressing the fury that was radiating from her thin body.
Her father hadn’t responded to his wife, which, of course, infuriated Arlene all the more.
“That they’re gone. Theresa and Roger. Both of them,” she’d said tightly. “It’s because you didn’t love them enough, treated them differently. And it wasn’t because they were older, like you always claim. It’s because they weren’t your blood and you had to punish me.”
Silence.
Through her anger, she’d managed to keep knitting.
Click, Click, Click,
“I never should have married you, because it was a lie,” she charged on. “You swore you’d take in my kids and love them like your own, but you didn’t, did you? And . . . and . . .” Her voice had broken then, a quiet sob erupting. For a few long seconds all Sarah heard was the rapid click of the needles. Then, in a lower voice, Arlene added, “I hate you. You know that, don’t you? For ruining my life and taking my children away from me.”
Barefoot, Sarah sneaked closer, her heart pounding. Surely her father had something to say to those ugly accusations.
But he didn’t say a word, and Sarah knew she should just sneak away, pad silently up to her room, and pretend she hadn’t heard a word. Instead she bit her lip, her hand sweating over the glass of milk she’d retrieved from the fridge. Hardly daring to breathe, she peeked around the corner, her vision slightly impaired by one of the two pillars guarding the entrance to the room.
Mother was in the rocker, slowly swaying, her back to Sarah, but other than that the room was empty. Her father wasn’t stretched on the couch, and Lady wasn’t curled up on the floor.
Just her mother.
Alone.
Sarah’s blood turned to ice.
Slowly, silently, she backed away from the darkened room to the staircase, where she planned to make good her escape. Her heels hit the riser of the first step, and she turned to dash up the flight of stairs.
“I know you’re there, Sarah Jane.”
Sarah froze.
“Don’t you know it’s impolite to eavesdrop?”
Sarah nearly dropped her glass.
“Get to bed before I get myself a switch!”
Sarah scurried up the stairs on her tiptoes, never making a sound, not taking so much as a sip from her glass, certain Arlene would follow after her and make good her threat.
Shivering under the covers, she’d waited.
Arlene hadn’t followed.
The next morning, Sarah was convinced she hadn’t slept a wink, but the full glass of milk that she’d set on the night table and left untouched was missing, and she didn’t remember anyone removing it, so she must’ve dozed off. Or had her mother climbed up the old stairs to stand in the doorway, backlit by the hall fixture, her shadow long on the wall, a willow switch clenched in her hand? Had it been part of a distorted nightmare, or had Arlene stood in the doorway, eyes glowing like a demon, fingers twisting over the switch, rage contorting her beautiful features as she’d gazed down on her sleeping daughter?
When she’d finally gone downstairs, Sarah had found Arlene humming at the stove, bacon sizzling in a frying pan, a stack of pancakes warming in the oven, the smell of hot maple syrup filling the kitchen. Dressed in work clothes and reading the paper, Dad was seated at the table in his worn chair. He’d barely glanced up, but said, “Good morning, Sunshine. Runnin’ a little late, aren’t ya?”
“Oh, for the love of God, Frank. We’ve got plenty of time,” Arlene declared, pouring batter carefully on a long griddle. “Come on now, Sarah, grab some hotcakes!” Her mother looked over her shoulder and offered Sarah a grin and a wink. Almost as if they held a private little secret. She then placed a stack of pancakes and a couple of slices of bacon on a plate in front of Sarah and handed her the syrup. “You slept so long this morning. You must’ve been exhausted.”
“A little,” Sarah said warily as she sat at the table where two empty plates, streaks of syrup evident, had been left. A couple of glasses stood empty as well. Obviously her brothers had already mowed through their breakfasts. “Bottomless pits” their father had often called the twins, and there had been a touch of pride in his voice.
Dee Linn’s spot was bare. As always. Arlene had quit fighting outwardly about breakfast with the ever-dieting Dee Linn a year before, though Sarah suspected from the underlying tension between mother and daughter that the war was still ongoing but had morphed into a stony, simmering silence.
At least Arlene seemed in a good mood this morning, and Sarah relaxed a little. Cutting into the warm, buttery pancakes and tasting the sweetness of the syrup made the morning seem brighter. Arlene’s off-key humming and her father’s interest in the sports page convinced Sarah that things were back to as normal as they could be. She dug in eagerly, polishing off the stack. Once finished, she wiped her mouth with her napkin just as she heard the sound of Dee Linn’s heels scurrying down the stairs.
/> “Hurry up!” her older sister called impatiently as she breezed past the kitchen to the anteroom off the back porch where the coats were hung. “I can’t be late to first period,” she called from somewhere near the back door. “Sister Annabelle will kill me if I’m tardy one more time!”
“Coming!” Sarah was feeling better. Dee Linn would take her to school and she could forget all about last night.
“Don’t forget your milk,” Arlene said as Sarah climbed off her chair.
Obediently, she grabbed the glass and realized it wasn’t cold, that it had been sitting. But she couldn’t be too concerned now, she had to get moving. Dee Linn was already bustling back through the kitchen and refusing any kind of food before it was even offered.
“I’m not hungry,” she said, as she did every morning. “Are the boys ready? God, where are they?”
“Most important meal of the day,” their father said, glancing over the tops of his reading glasses.
“That’s just some radical scheme by the cereal companies to force people to choke down their overprocessed, sugary cardboard.” She clomped her way to the staircase. “Jake! Joe!” then returned to the kitchen. “Can you get them going?”
“Yelling won’t help,” their father said and snapped the paper.
Arlene turned off the burners of the stove and glanced over her shoulder. “Want me to get my switch?”
“What? No!” Dee Linn stared at Arlene, but their mother wasn’t looking at her older daughter, she was staring straight at Sarah, and for an instant Sarah thought of last night’s nightmare, of seeing her mother, willow switch in hand, filling the doorway of her room.
At that moment frantic footsteps pounded from the upstairs, thundering down the staircase to herald the twins, pushing and yelling, backpacks flying, as they raced into the room. Their heads were wet, hair gelled into place, faces scrubbed until they were red. The smell of some kind of aftershave rolled in an invisible cloud around them.
“Take your plates to the sink!” Arlene ordered. “Both of you!”
The twins looked about to argue, and Sarah was grateful that the heat was off her, that Arlene’s attention was turned to her rambunctious fourteen-year-old sons. “Oh, for the love of God, Joe, just how much cologne did you use? You can smell it from a mile off. You don’t need to use a fire hose when you apply that stuff!”
“Listen to your mother,” their father said.
“Let’s get going!” Dee Linn was about to have a conniption fit.
Still wrestling a bit, the boys grabbed their plates, and Arlene lifted her brows at Sarah, who got the message and started chugging her warm milk.
Until something hit her tongue and the back of her throat, something that wasn’t liquid and . . .
Quickly she spat the milk back into her glass and saw a black clot, with wings and legs . . . a dead fly floating on the surface. She met her mother’s eyes just as her stomach bucked. Dropping the glass on the table, sloshing the remains of the milk and the fly, she raced out of the room to the downstairs bathroom, where she upchucked all of her breakfast into the toilet.
How had the fly gotten into her glass?
Had it just died there overnight, because Sarah was certain that was the same milk she’d poured the night before, that her mother had left it out to make a point. But the fly? Had it landed in the milk and been trapped, or had her mother actually . . .
Lifting her head, she caught her mother’s reflection in the mirror over the sink. Arlene was just staring expressionlessly. “What happened?”
“You know what happened!” Sarah choked out. “You put it there!”
“Put what where?” Arlene asked.
“The fly, Mom. In my milk!” Grabbing the hand towel, Sarah wiped her face.
“There you go again,” Arlene said on a sigh. “Imagining things.”
“I did not imagine that fly!” Sarah’s stomach roiled again, and she spat into the sink, then placed her head under the faucet and let the water run over her tongue and lips as she tried to get rid of the awful feeling that something was still stuck to the back of her mouth. She gagged several times and felt her mother standing behind her, probably smiling.
“Mom! Can you get her moving?” Dee Linn wailed over the sound of water rushing from the faucet. “Now I’m gonna be late for sure!”
“Your sister’s sick. Maybe she should stay home and—”
“No!” Sarah straightened and wiped her face with the hand towel her mother was holding. “I’m going.”
“Then you’d better run,” Arlene said, her lips pursing. “We don’t want your sister to drive too fast this morning.”
Sarah flung the towel into the sink.
“It’s just an insect, Sarah. Too bad it was in your milk, but it won’t kill you, you know. It’s not poison. Always the drama queen. Of course I didn’t put it there. How could I? Why would I?”
“I heard you last night,” Sarah whispered. “Talking to yourself. Blaming Dad for Theresa and Roger leaving.”
“Oh, for the love of God!” Dee Linn appeared in the doorway. “I don’t know what this is all about, but I’m leaving. With or without you!”
Sarah’s stomach roiled again, and she turned quickly to dry-heave bile into the toilet. By the time she’d cleaned herself and grabbed her backpack, Dee Linn was furious.
“What’s wrong with you?” she demanded, shepherding Sarah back through the kitchen and the pantry area, where their mother, one arm wrapped around her slim waist, was smoking a cigarette. She mouthed the words “Speak no evil,” in a cloud of smoke, and Sarah ignored her. How many times had Arlene warned her of just that, to keep quiet? By the time Dee Linn had gathered their brothers together, forcing them to give up a quick game of catch with a football in the backyard, they were, indeed, late.
Sarah got a tardy slip at the elementary school, and according to the twins, they both had to do an extra set of push-ups in P.E., while Dee Linn had been “mortified” by Sister Annabelle in homeroom at Our Lady of the River.
Now, nearly a quarter of a century later, Sarah remembered that night and day vividly, the most indelible memory being her calm mother, watching her children leave as she smoked her cigarette on the back porch.
Her relationship with her mother had never recovered.
She’d sworn, when she’d given birth to Jade years later, that theirs would be a perfect mother/daughter relationship. That naïveté had worn off with the ensuing years, and she was convinced that perfection didn’t exist, but at least she wanted a decent, fun-loving kinship with Jade, one that would last through the years.
But of course she’d lied.
Big-time.
So she could beat herself up about it, or somehow try to repair the damage. At least the truth was out.
“He’s here!” Jade called from the dining room.
Sarah had been so caught up in the past, she hadn’t seen her daughter slip into the foyer to stand by the windows near the door.
“Okay, let me handle this, and then you can talk to him—alone, or not. Or I’ll be there.”
“What about me?” Gracie asked. She’d pieced together what had transpired a few minutes earlier, and Sarah had been forced to confirm the truth.
“Can you and Xena hang out in the kitchen or dining room for a few minutes? Then we’ll see how it goes. I’ll probably join you.”
Jade was shaking her head. “I don’t want to be alone with him.”
“I’ll be right here. Don’t worry. It’s going to be okay,” she said, though she didn’t see how.
“This is a nightmare,” Jade said under her breath as Sarah mentally counted to five, walked through the foyer to open the door, and realized her daughter was right: the night had taken a turn from bad to worse.
Clint Walsh wasn’t standing under the harsh glare of the single porch light.
Nope.
The person waiting at the door was none other than Evan Tolliver, the man she’d told she’d never want to see aga
in.
Apparently he hadn’t gotten the message.
CHAPTER 20
Jade wanted to die.
Right here.
Right now.
If only God would take her, everything would be better, but now she had to face the truth and a father who probably hadn’t wanted her way back when (or a mom who had told him the truth) and didn’t need the inconvenience of a teenager right now.
As she hung back from the doorway, her heart jackhammering, her insides twisted into a billion knots, she saw not the man who was supposedly her father, but that jerkwad Evan Tolliver standing on the porch and trying to pour on the charm. Him being here would only make things worse.
How could her life get any more complicated?
She wasn’t the only one who was feeling this way. Gracie, still as a stone, finally looked from the doorway to Jade, then took a step backward into the shadows, while the dog let out a low growl that sounded like a warning. Good! Jade hoped Evan heard it, got the message, and took the hell off.
Wrapping her arms around her middle, she thought of the man she now knew was her father. Why hadn’t Mom had the guts to be honest when she’d first asked about her father? Why keep the secret? If everyone had been on page one from the get-go, there wouldn’t be all this drama, all this angst. Everyone would understand the way things were. Maybe Jade would even have had a relationship with the man. But, oh, no, Sarah had bottled up the truth, and now Jade was faced with meeting a stranger and . . . what? Hope to form some kind of daddy-daughter bond with him?
Get real.
Mom had really fouled up, and not just in this instance. Jade was certain her mother had kept secrets about the family in general. Despite the fact that Sarah was working on this project with her siblings, there were obviously major rifts in the family, which wasn’t much of a surprise.
Really, Mom was just plain weird, probably because the whole damned family was kind of out of some gothic novel. And the ghost thing was something else too. Was it real? Jade didn’t know and certainly didn’t care. She just knew her mother hadn’t been truthful about her biological dad and hadn’t been able to hold onto her adoptive one. Noel McAdams had walked out the door a few years back, and Jade had never forgiven Sarah for that bonehead move. Noel McAdams had treated her as if she were his own until Mom pissed him off and he split for good, taking off for the other side of the country and basically disappearing from their lives.