Close to Home

  “Here!” was the panicked cry, and Sarah followed the sound, the beam of her flashlight sweeping the floor and hallway ahead of her, her heart hammering in dread.

  “I’m coming!”

  “Mom, hurry!” Gracie cried. “Up here!”

  Sarah reached the stairs, flipped on the switch, and took the steps two at a time as the dim light from the sconces gave off a soft, golden glow. “Gracie! Where are you?”

  “On the stairs,” her daughter responded, and she sounded less panicked, more in control.

  Sarah rounded the landing at the second floor and found her daughter lying on the steps leading to the third floor. Pale, shaking, eyes wide, Gracie was huddled against the wall, which was still covered in faded, peeling wallpaper. Her right hand gripped the railing over her head, as if she needed support to keep from sliding down the worn wooden stairs.

  “Are you okay?” Sarah said, grabbing her child and holding her close. “What happened?”

  “I saw her.”

  “Who?”

  “I saw the ghost.”

  “The ghost?” Sarah repeated.

  “Yes!” Gracie was insistent, and her little body quivered in Sarah’s arms. “I got up to go to the bathroom, and I saw something up here, and I . . . I just followed.”

  “And it was a ghost?”

  “Yes! I already said.” There was a higher pitch to Gracie’s voice, a desperation that Sarah didn’t recognize. “She was dressed in white, a long dress, and hurried up the stairs. It was like she was flying. 0I . . . I followed her, and she disappeared and . . .” She sagged against her mother. “It was freaky.”

  “It’s okay,” Sarah said, her gaze traveling up the stairs to the third floor of the house, an area that she’d avoided most of her life. She understood about freaking out, about fears, and about believing in seeing a ghost on the premises.

  “You don’t believe me.”

  “Of course I do, honey. I know you saw something, but I’m not sure what it was. You have nightmares,” she reminded Gracie softly, “and sometimes you sleepwalk.”

  “This was different.”

  “That’s what you always say. Come on, let’s go downstairs.” Sarah helped her daughter to her feet, and Gracie dared to look over her mother’s shoulder to the upper floors.

  “She’s real, Mom,” she said, sounding more like herself. Normally, in broad daylight, Gracie was a kid who had few fears. A tomboy, she played sports ferociously and held her own in arguments, even with some of her teachers. “A bit of a loner,” “definitely an individual,” and “certainly knows her own mind” were some of the comments they had made, along with “stubborn” and even “refuses to take orders.” If Gracie hadn’t been such a good student who devoured books, those same traits would have landed her in trouble in school.

  But at night, Gracie was sometimes plagued with insecurities and anxieties that made her seem younger than her years. Her nightmares seemed to have worsened since Sarah’s divorce from Noel and his moving a continent away to Savannah.

  Using the flashlight’s beam, they made their way back to the living room, where they’d camped out for the night. As Gracie scooted into her sleeping bag, Sarah stoked the fire, adding chunks of oak that she’d found, along with split kindling, in the woodshed located just off the back porch. The firewood had been stored in the shed for years, probably since before Dad had died. Tinder dry, the chunks of oak and fir, dusty and covered in spiderwebs, ignited easily.

  “What’s going on?” Jade asked, lifting her tousled head and squinting as the fire began to crackle and pop, hungry flames giving off a flickering illumination.

  “Nothing!” Gracie said.

  “I heard you scream.” Jade roused herself into a sitting position.

  “I wasn’t screaming. I just wanted Mom.”

  “Nightmare again?” Jade guessed, yawning.

  “No.” Gracie’s jaw jutted forward.

  “God, what time is it?” She glanced at her phone and then rolled her eyes. “One-thirty? That’s all? I can’t believe I fell asleep. So what happened?”

  “Gracie got lost on her way to the bathroom,” Sarah said.

  “Got lost? How could . . .” Jade frowned. “Oh, God, don’t tell me. Let me guess. You think you saw the ghost again, don’t you?”

  Gracie opened her mouth, then closed it quickly.

  Jade said, “Oh, for the love of God. This place is pretty weird, Gracie, but there are no ghosts. Sure, people may have died here, and maybe there’s a mystery or two, but no damned ghosts.”

  “Let’s not talk about it anymore tonight,” Sarah said.

  “Just sweep it under the rug,” Jade grumbled. “Pretend it’s not a problem. Great idea, Mom.” Jade cast her sister a final glance. “Don’t be talking about this when you try to make new friends at school cuz they’ll think you’re a freak.”

  “Jade, enough!” Sarah said. “Go back to sleep.”

  “It’s true,” Jade muttered. She turned her back on her mother and burrowed deeper into her sleeping bag.

  “Come on. It’s late, and we need to get up early,” Sarah said.

  “Why?” Grace asked suspiciously.

  “Lot of work to do.”

  “But no school,” she reminded, making sure.

  “Not tomorrow,” Sarah agreed. “However, if you want to talk to your dad before he goes to work, we have to call early.”

  “It’s three hours later in Savannah,” Gracie intoned before Sarah could say the same.

  Sarah nodded. “Right.”

  “Okay.” Gracie plumped her pillow, then settled back and closed her eyes. Sarah edged her own sleeping bag closer to the old couch and propped her back against the cushions to stare at the fire. The house seemed to close in on her, good memories and bad. Goose bumps rose on the back of her arms, and the shadows in the corners of the room, those spots that weren’t illuminated by the fire, reminded her of her own fears as a child. There was that “incident” on the widow’s walk, one that was still locked in a forbidden part of her memory and one she wouldn’t dwell on, at least not this night.

  Shifting to view both her daughters as they slept, she chided herself for not being honest with Grace. She should have admitted that she too had seen what could only be described as a ghost on those very stairs, that for years she’d thought she’d been going out of her mind, taunted by the rest of her family for what they’d decided were nothing more than “bad dreams” or “silly fantasies.” The worst remark had been a stage whisper made by her own mother. Arlene had confided to Dee Linn that she believed Sarah was only making up stories to draw attention to herself. “That’s what she does, you know. And the sad part is that it works on your father.” The stage whisper had been uttered just loud enough for Sarah to hear it. Unfortunately, the accusation had hit its mark, and Sarah had learned to never again speak of what she’d seen. Just as Arlene had intended.

  Sarah only prayed she didn’t make the same mistakes with her own children. Every once in a while she’d hear Arlene’s words spewing forth from her own lips, and it made her cringe inside.

  You are not like her. You know it, And you’ll find a way to come clean with your daughters, You will, But only when the time is right . . .

  She grimaced.

  She was more like Arlene than she wanted to believe.

  CHAPTER 3

  Fortunately, Gracie slept through the rest of the night, and even Sarah finally dozed off around two. She’d awoken to the sound of her cell phone vibrating its way across the floor and, seeing that the caller was Evan Tolliver, hadn’t answered.

  Evan was one of the reasons she’d left Vancouver.

  A big reason.

  He’d been her boss and had been pressuring her to go out with him. She had. And regretted it. Almost from the get-go he’d wanted to, as he’d put it, “take our relationship to the next level.” Sarah had pointed out they didn’t have a relationship and there were no more levels, but he’d never really taken
the hint, and her hours in the offices of Tolliver Construction had become uncomfortable, to say the least. As the son and groomed heir of the company, Evan had thought she’d find him irresistible. He’d been wrong. But so had she. Going out with him the first time had been a mistake, and she’d stupidly compounded the error by accepting another dinner invitation.

  On the third date, when he’d brought up marriage, he’d winked suggestively and said he wanted to “tie her down.” There had been something half serious in the twinkle in his eyes, and she’d told him right then and there that it wasn’t going to work. She’d said flat out that she didn’t want to see him again, which he’d taken as a challenge, trying to woo her, disbelieving that she would actually say no. So, after a month of weighing her options, she’d worked out a deal with her siblings and moved back to a town she’d sworn she’d hated and would never reside in again.

  “Never say never,” she told herself now as she pulled on her jeans and sweatshirt, then made her way around boxes and old furniture and far too many memories as she headed to the kitchen.

  It was a disaster, like the rest of the house, but she was able to locate the coffeemaker she’d moved with her from the condo. She ran the water in the stained kitchen sink for several minutes while she found the bag of ground coffee and filters she’d purchased. Once they were located, she plugged in the machine. Thankfully, there was still electricity and running water in the house, though the ancient furnace had given up the ghost, so they were stuck with the fire until they moved into the guesthouse next week.

  As the coffee brewed, she ran a toothbrush over her teeth, rinsed her face in cold water, quickly snapped her hair into a ponytail and caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror over the cracked pedestal sink. It wasn’t pretty, she thought, noting the circles under her eyes and how pale she appeared from such a short night’s sleep. She looked a lot like her mother in the morning light, which, she supposed, wasn’t such a bad thing. Arlene Bennett had been a striking woman in her youth, and the Bennett genes were strong enough that each of her children, from both of her husbands, had taken after their mother. Sarah had been confused with her older sister, Dee Linn, and been told she was a “dead ringer” for Theresa, their half sister, the oldest. Sarah’s chin was strong, her cheekbones high, her face framed with wild brown curls that she regularly tamed into a bun. She’d overheard that she had “haunted” eyes, but she dismissed that. Yes, they were large, and gray, while most of her siblings’ were slightly bluer, but that whole haunted thing? Ridiculous.

  The smell of coffee permeated the air, and as Sarah poured herself a cup, she decided the main house was in even worse repair than she’d first thought. Sadly, Jade’s observation that Blue Peacock Manor was straight out of Hollywood’s version of a haunted house wasn’t that far off the mark.

  Though she’d managed to find the main water main and get water running, the pipes creaked and groaned, and the hot water was lukewarm at best. Yes, there was electricity running to the home, and the old pump seemed to work, but there was nothing in the way of an electronic connection, which drove both Gracie and Jade nuts. They could use their iPhones and iPad by virtue of some wonky cell phone reception that worked in certain areas of the house, but until the local cable company hooked up the Internet, a telephone landline, and the much-missed television, they were “in hell,” as Jade so eloquently referred to her life these days.

  “No wireless? No cable? Are you kidding me?” Jade had said when she realized just how little service was running to the old manor. “You expect me to live in this mausoleum and go to a stupid parochial school, all without any Internet? Mom, what’s wrong with you?” She’d gazed at her mother with wide hazel eyes rife with accusations. “This is crazy. I mean like really, really crazy.”

  “We’ll just have to camp out for a few days,” Sarah had said, crossing her fingers against the chance she might be lying. “And I’ll make sure all the services are hooked up. I’m pretty sure that cell phones work here,” though she teetered one hand up and down to suggest that the service wasn’t all that great. “As for the parochial school, we already discussed this.”

  “You mean you handed down an edict,” Jade corrected.

  “Well, public school wasn’t really working for you, now, was it?”

  Jade had wanted to argue, and her mouth had opened only to snap shut. Taking a deep breath, she’d said, “Fine. Whatever. Think what you want,” before storming off to the one bedroom that was livable on the main floor, only to later hunker down with her sister and mother in the living room, where the fire was giving off some warmth.

  That was yesterday.

  “Today’s a new opportunity,” she told herself as she sipped from her cup of black coffee, wishing she’d had the foresight to buy some creamer, and looked around the kitchen. A gray dawn was filtering in through the windows near the breakfast nook. She’d tackle cleaning up the kitchen later, she decided. For now she intended to give the house a quick look over, just to get an idea of the condition of every room, then once she had a general overview of the disrepair and assessed the priority of the projects, she’d go through each floor more thoroughly and make detailed notes about what needed to be cleaned, fixed, upgraded, or gutted, so she could report back to her siblings, her not-so-silent partners in the project.

  Jacob and Joseph, identical twins who were day and night in personality, were on board with the whole renovation thing. However, Dee Linn hadn’t been as eager to put up any money to repair the old place. “Walter will have a heart attack if I put one dime into it,” she’d said vehemently when Sarah had called her at the end of the summer. Walter was Dee Linn’s husband of nearly twenty years and definitely ruled the roost. “I . . . I just can’t.”

  “Then I’ll cover your share, but you’ll owe me,” Sarah had said.

  “I don’t see what good fixing that monstrosity is to me.”

  “It’s an investment, okay? You own a quarter of it.” And that much was true. Franklin’s will had made it clear that the house and property were to go to his children upon his death, and though Arlene had been aghast at the idea, she hadn’t had a legal leg to stand on. Still, she’d resided in the house after her husband’s death. None of her children had wanted to force her to move until her health had declined to the point where she could no longer care for herself.

  Unfortunately, she’d been unable or unwilling, or both, to keep up the maintenance of the house.

  “I know, I know.” Dee Linn had said. “I’m not trying to be unreasonable, but, seriously, Walter will kill me if I give you any money.”

  “All right, I’ll have you sign a note to me. For your quarter of the place.”

  She’d hesitated, the silence stretching thin on the connection until she’d finally acquiesced. “Okay, Sarah, but this is just between you and me, okay? Don’t tell the boys or anyone. If Walter found out . . .”

  “Got it.” Sarah had cut her off, sick of hearing about her controlling brother-in-law and hating the way Dee Linn seemed to be afraid of the man she purportedly “loved as much as life itself” or some such crap. Walter Bigelow, DDS, was as much a tyrant at home as he was at his dental practice. Everything was his way or the highway, and Sarah had hoped more than once that Dee Linn would find the highway and thus regain her smile and self-confidence. The woman was a registered nurse, for God’s sake!

  Then again, who was Sarah to judge? Her relationships with men had been far from stellar.

  Dee Linn had let out a long breath, as if she were incredibly relieved. “Then it’s settled. So, now, after you and the girls are all moved in, I want you to come over for a little get-together.”

  “Oh, I don’t think I’ll have time—”

  “Of course you will,” Dee Linn had said, cutting in and taking control, now that the conversation was on comfortable and familiar ground. “You know, for the family, and maybe just a few friends.”

  “All the family?”

  “Of course.”
br />   “What about Roger?”

  “Well, no. I don’t think even his parole officer knows where our dear brother is, but the twins and their wives, of course, and Mom, if she can make it.”

  “Really.”

  “Don’t worry, there’s no way,” Dee Linn said. “But if I’m inviting Aunt Marge and her family, I have to include Mom.”

  “I know. But it might be a little too much right off the bat,” she’d said. This “get-together” was starting to sound like too much of a big deal, a Dee Linn extravaganza she and her children would hate. “Dee, I’m not sure about this.”

  But Dee Linn had been off and running. “I’ve scheduled the party for the Saturday before Halloween. That will give you about ten days to unpack and settle in.”

  “Barely. From what I hear from Jacob, the house is a mess, unlivable. So I figure we’ll move into the guesthouse, but it’ll take some time to get it fully functional.” Sarah had been to Dee Linn’s parties before; they were usually lavish and over-the-top and involved more than “a handful” of friends.

  “It’ll be fun! The girls will love it!” Dee Linn had predicted. “I know Becky’s looking forward to it.”

  “What? Wait. She’s already ‘looking forward to it’? So it’s already in the works?”

  “Oh, sorry, Sarah. I’ve got another call coming in. Have to run. See you then! And remember, not a word to Walter or anyone about the money.”

  Dee Linn had been off the line before Sarah could protest, and Sarah had hung up feeling as if she’d been somehow manipulated by her older sister. That feeling resurfaced now as she glanced through the dirty windows in the dining room and toward the tree-lined banks of Willow Creek as it wound under the fence line that divided the land belonging to the Stewarts from the parcel belonging to the Walsh family.

  Sipping her coffee, she ignored the familiar little tug on her heartstrings that she always felt when she thought of Clint, whom she knew was living next door.

  “Water under the bridge,” she reminded herself. “And a very old bridge at that.” Of course, it was inevitable that she’d come face-to-face with him. And the fact that he was the local building inspector cinched it.