Close to Home Read online

  Jade hated it on sight, but then, she hated just about everything that was her life these days, and seeing Grandma Arlene wasn’t going to improve her mood. The drive here had been tense; her mother had been silent, and that hadn’t ended when she’d wheeled the Explorer into a vacant parking space.

  As Gracie got out of the backseat, Jade climbed out of the front, only to feel the chill of raindrops upon her bare head.

  Great. Just fabulous.

  She wrapped her ankle-length coat more tightly around her and forced her hands deep in its pockets as she followed her mother and sister inside. For some unknown reason Gracie didn’t seem to notice how lame this visit was.

  For a second, Jade felt the sting of guilt for her thoughts, then quickly dismissed that emotion as totally undeserved because she really wanted to like her grandmother, but it was impossible. She had friends who thought their grandparents were the absolute coolest. Cody’s grandpa was a kick, a man Cody loved and respected. His grandma, Violet, was a sweet thing who baked cookies, and knitted, and took in stray cats whom she adored. Violet had a collection of old vinyl records she loved to play for Cody as his grandpa showed him the arsenal of weapons he kept in a special locked room with the skins and heads of animals he’d “nailed”—everything from a stuffed alligator placed near the stone fireplace to a cougar crouching on one of the crossbeams of the vaulted ceiling. That part was kind of gross, she thought, as she walked through the glass door of the building to feel a blast of heat as hot as the very fires of hell. She really didn’t like the fact that Cody’s grandpa took great pride in killing the beasts, but Gramps’s arsenal of old guns and knives was pretty cool. Cody loved it all, especially the old World War II German Luger, and a machine gun complete with ammo belt that Gramps kept in his “war room” in the basement.

  Despite the old man’s affinity for warfare and hunting, both he and his “bride” of fifty-plus years were fun and loving and had the laugh lines to prove it.

  Jade hadn’t been so lucky. She’d never met her father’s parents, which was no surprise as she’d never met her biological father, a mythical male beast who had impregnated her mother and apparently had no name. As far as her adopted dad, Noel McAdams went, his parents were in Savannah, where he now resided after the divorce. She’d met them only a few times, so they hardly counted anymore. Sarah’s father, Grandpa Frank, was long dead, so that left Jade stuck with Arlene, a crotchety, mean-spirited old woman who seemed to blame the world for her fate.

  Today, Jade figured, would be no exception.

  After signing a guest registry and receiving badges at a reception desk, they were escorted by Mrs. Adele Malone, a cheery-faced, plump woman who chatted incessantly. She led them past a room filled with floral couches and chairs, where some of the residents were reading the paper or watching TV, then past an empty dining area, to a wide corridor where she smiled and waved to several women pushing walkers.

  “Here we go,” she announced at an elevator flanked by fake plants that looked suspiciously like marijuana. They probably weren’t, but Jade preferred to believe that some twisted decorator had thrown them into the decorating mix as a joke.

  On the third floor, Mrs. Malone, still chatting on and on about the great things that were happening at Pleasant Pines, guided them to a room and knocked softly on the door.

  The whole place gave Jade a major case of the creeps. Oh, it was nice enough; most of the residents greeted them in the hallways, some with walkers or wheelchairs, others walking slowly, but happy enough. They were all so happy that Jade secretly wondered if they were all on some kind of antidepressant.

  All that changed when Mrs. Malone rapped her knuckles against a closed door and said in a singsong voice, “Mrs. Stewart? You have guests.”

  When there was no response from inside, Mrs. Malone knocked again, gently opened the door, and popped her head inside. “Your daughter and granddaughters are here to see you, Arlene.”

  Again, nothing.

  Undaunted, the caretaker swung the door open and stepped inside a compact suite. “Come on in,” she said, waving one hand quickly behind her to usher the small group inside.

  Sarah stepped inside while Gracie and Jade hung back, huddled around the open door.

  “Mrs. Stewart?” Mrs. Malone said again, more loudly. “You have company.”

  “Go away,” was the sharp response.

  “It’s your daughter and granddaughters,” Mrs. Malone repeated as she approached an overstuffed couch where a frail woman sat surrounded by pillows and a stuffed rabbit. Not quite white, her hair was thinning and straight. Owlish glasses were propped on the bridge of her nose, a chain securing them around her neck, should they fall off.

  “Wait here a second,” Jade’s mother said quickly over her shoulder as she approached the couch. “Hi, Mom! How are you?” She bent to take her mother’s hand and brush a kiss across her cheek, but Grandma Arlene visibly recoiled. Her bony face twisted in revulsion.

  “You?” she accused in a low, raspy voice. “What’re you doing here?”

  Undaunted, Sarah straightened. “The girls and I moved back into the house, you know that, to renovate it. But we took a break to visit you.”

  “What girls?” Arlene demanded, her angry eyes sliding in their sockets as she trained her gaze to the doorway, where Gracie and Jade stood, half in, half out of the room. “Why are they here?” Arlene’s thin lips were bloodless, her cheeks creased deep with wrinkles, her eyes a blue so pale they appeared ghostly.

  “We wanted to visit you,” Sarah explained.

  Arlene’s lips quivered. “I thought you were dead.”

  Mrs. Malone’s hand flew to her chest.

  “What? Mom, no.” Sarah was shaking her head, her pasted-on smile wavering slightly. “I know it’s been a while. I’ve been by, but you were sleeping.”

  “Why in heaven’s name would you let me think you were dead?” The old woman’s fury exploded, her fingers, already bony, gripping the arm of the faded couch as if they were talons. “What kind of daughter does that to her mother?” Her voice was rising, her arms visibly shaking. “I should have known with you! The nuns told me that you had strayed. They warned me. Don’t you know that the Madonna is the key to your salvation? The Holy Mother? She’s the key. Are you a heathen?”

  Mrs. Malone stepped in. “Arlene, Sarah just brought her girls by for a visit.”

  “Sarah?” the old lady said, her breath coming out in a rush.

  “Yes, your daughter.”

  Arlene blinked rapidly and her mouth worked. “My daughter is Theresa!” The fire that had flashed so hot seemed suddenly doused, and her lips trembled as if she might break down. “You’re not . . . ?” She looked down for a second, gathering herself, and Jade actually felt sorry for her, for her obvious confusion. Anxiously, Arlene rubbed the back of one age-spotted hand with the other. “I . . . I don’t understand. Where’s Theresa? Where’s my baby?”

  Sarah had crouched down beside the chair. “We don’t know, Mom. We still don’t know.”

  “I think she’s with John,” Arlene said suddenly.

  “John? John who?” Sarah asked.

  “Or was it Matthew?”

  “Mom, who’s Matthew?” Sarah didn’t understand.

  “Maybe they were friends of your sister’s,” Mrs. Malone suggested softly. “Or family members.”

  “They’ll keep her safe,” Arlene said. “I know they will.” The angry woman was completely gone, leaving in her wake a dazed, broken old lady who started mumbling gibberish as she blinked behind the lenses of her oversized glasses.

  “Maybe this isn’t a good time,” Mrs. Malone said, her forehead lining with worry.

  Well, duh! In Jade’s estimation, this might be the worst time in the world. Poor Grandma.

  The caretaker added, “Perhaps you could come back another day?”

  “Mom?” Sarah asked, but Jade knew it was over. Whoever or whatever had been possessing this shriveled shell of a body m
oments before had shrunk away and was now hidden. Jade just hoped it would be forever.

  They stepped into the hallway again, and Mrs. Malone said, “Sometimes she retreats. If you’ll just give me a sec—” She pulled out some kind of walkie-talkie from her pocket and called for help. “You can go if you’d like and I’ll call you later,” she said as a tall woman with thick graying hair scraped into a bun at her nape and an expression that said she was all business hurried toward them.

  Dressed in blue scrubs with a name tag indicating she was an RN, she drew Mrs. Malone aside for a quick, hushed word, then stepped through the door of Grandma’s room.

  “Is this normal?” Sarah asked.

  “She has her good days and bad days.” Mrs. Malone glanced at the half-open door, where the nurse was already trying to communicate with Arlene. “Obviously this isn’t one of her best.”

  The woman was just full of understatements. God, how did she hold down her job?

  “We’ll come back,” Sarah said, and for that Jade was relieved. The sooner she was out of this place, the better.

  Outside she finally felt as if she could breathe again and didn’t care about the rain pummeling from the dark sky.

  “That place is awful!” she declared as her mother hit the remote for the door locks and Jade dashed across the parking lot to flop into the Ford. Her sister and mother were quick to follow, and as Gracie clicked her seat belt, Jade slid a hard look at Sarah. “Just for the record, Mom. I’m never going back to that place.”

  “Of course we are, to see Grandma—”

  “Why? She’s horrible. And she didn’t even recognize you. She even thought you were dead. How weird was that?” Jade fiddled with her own seat belt, securing it before Sarah dived into the same old boring lecture about safety.

  “She just confused me with my older sister, Theresa, that’s all,” Sarah said.

  “That’s all?” Jade flung her head back against the headrest.

  “She’s sick, had a stroke, and there’s some kind of dementia going on.”

  “She’s lost it. Okay. Fine. I get it. She’s got Alzheimer’s or whatever,” Jade said. “I feel sorry for her. It’s sad, okay? But this is just too out there for me, Mom. I don’t even know her, and she obviously doesn’t want to know me, either. I’m not going back there.”

  “Me, neither,” Gracie said from behind her sister. “Jade’s right.” For once, she was actually in Jade’s corner. Hard to believe. “She’s all kinds of crazy and—”

  “Enough!” their mother snapped in frustration as she started to back out of the parking space, only to slam on the brakes as the car across from them was backing out as well. “Come on, girls! She’s my mother. Your grandmother. Show a little respect and some compassion for a sick woman.”

  Jade said, “Why? She obviously doesn’t want us here. Any of us. And I just don’t get why you keep trying to make it seem like it’s better than it is.”

  Sarah closed her eyes a second as the rain drizzled upon the fogging windshield.

  “Uh oh,” Gracie whispered, and Jade could almost hear their mother counting to ten in her head as she gripped the steering wheel so hard her knuckles blanched. Finally, calmer, she drew in a deep breath and shook her head before backing up again. “She’s my mother,” Sarah said again, softly. “She raised me.”

  “Explains a lot,” Jade said, then saw a flash of hurt cross her mother’s face. Inwardly Jade squirmed, but she set her jaw.

  Sarah said, “She wasn’t always like this.”

  Finally, they were headed down the long lane to the main road.

  “Mom, Grandma’s always been weird. You know it. Anyway, I’m sorry that she’s your mother, but that’s on you. I’m . . . I’m just saying she’s like a witch or something.”

  “Jade . . . ,” she murmured.

  Jade wasn’t about to back down. “Mom, face it, Grandma’s evil.”

  “For the love of God, she’s ill. That’s all. Try to dial back the drama.”

  “That’s not all. You keep lying to yourself about her, and other things too. When everything doesn’t turn out perfect you’re surprised.” She saw her mother flinch at that one, but it was just too bad.

  “Let’s just be nice to Grandma, okay?” Sarah slowed and let a huge truck rumble past, then turned onto the road that led into the heart of Stewart’s Crossing. “Show some compassion and empathy. If we’re lucky enough, we’ll all get to be her age someday.”

  Like in a million years!

  “Okay,” was the grumbling assent from the backseat.

  “Sure,” Jade finally agreed. She did feel a little bad about how harsh she was, but still . . . she remembered Grandma Arlene and what she’d been like as a younger woman. “I’ll be as nice to her as she is to me.”

  “Fine,” Sarah said, her eyes steadily forward. If Jade didn’t know better, she’d think her mother might actually be agreeing with her.

  CHAPTER 7

  It was cold. So damned cold.

  And dark, the blackness complete.

  “Let me out of here!” Rosalie yelled, but her voice was raw, her tone pleading, and though she pounded on the locked wooden door, no one responded. It was as if she was alone in the world, and she wanted to burst into tears again, though falling apart hadn’t helped the situation so far. She was locked in a barn of sorts, her “room” a stall with sides so close she could nearly touch each wall if she stood in the middle. The only light that came in was through a window nearly eight or nine feet above the wooden floor. But now, it was dark again, sometime in the early evening, she thought, her stomach rumbling from lack of food.

  More scared than she’d ever been in her life, she searched for a way out of this place, just as she had from the second she’d been dumped here. She’d fought and kicked and screamed, furious and terrified all at once. Her voice was raspy, her face felt puffy from crying, and her hands, bound together with tight cuffs in front of her, were bleeding and scraped from pounding on the door. Even her legs hurt; she’d kicked the solid wood panels so hard she’d sent a jarring pain up her right leg.

  “Damn it all!” With her two hands clasped together, she rubbed her leg now, but it still ached.

  She didn’t know where she was, but not horribly far from Stewart’s Crossing, she guessed. The entire ride in the truck, from the moment she’d been abducted and driven through the woods and hills, had taken about half an hour, and was less than twenty miles from the diner. She’d kept an eye on the clock and odometer during her abduction to this isolated building in the middle of the woods.

  Gone were his sexy smile and cowboy demeanor. The friendly man who’d left great tips and always made pleasant conversation as he’d sipped his coffee had vanished completely, replaced by this stone-faced freak.

  Probably the nice man hadn’t existed at all; that good-guy façade that had helped trick her had slid off his face to reveal a monster she was certain was capable of murder.

  Her mind traveled along dark roads of thought as she considered what he might do to her, and she was nearly physically sick. So far he hadn’t touched her, except to bind her, but all that could change, and the thought of what might be her future caused her blood to turn to ice.

  You have to stay strong, to be smart, to find a way to change your destiny, Shivering, she swallowed back her fear.

  She’d been a fool, she realized. Mentally berating herself, for what had to be the millionth time, for her stupidity in climbing into his truck, she slid down the door to sit on the floor.

  Once she’d realized he was kidnapping her, she’d expected him to rape her or torture her or kill her, but so far he’d only hauled her kicking and screaming into this frigid, stark room. A small cot had been pushed into one corner, along with two bottles of water and a bucket to pee in.

  “All the comforts of home,” he’d said cruelly as he’d dumped her onto the cot with its faded sleeping bag and musty pillow and left her there, still in the damned handcuffs.

 
; She’d spent all night pacing and kicking at the door, alternately crying and screaming, but all the while trying to figure out how to escape and wishing fervently that she’d taken the ride Gloria had offered, that she’d walked straight home and hadn’t gotten in the truck, that she’d done anything other than let herself be lured into this awful trap.

  “I hate you!” she yelled, and her words almost echoed back at her. She was certain she was alone. All alone.

  Would her mother ever find her?

  Would that jackass Mel convince Sharon that she’d just pulled her same old trick of staying out all night? Would they start searching?

  Please, please, please, she prayed to a God she’d sworn she didn’t believe in. Let someone find me!

  Surely even Mel would start to believe this was serious. Oh, God, she hoped they were searching for her, that someone had seen her get into the jerk-off’s truck, that someone recognized the creep, or had taken down the numbers from his license plate or . . .

  Oh, it was useless, she thought as she got to her feet and felt tears rain from her eyes again. She crumpled into a heap on the stupid cot and drew the sleeping bag up around her shoulders. It had been a long time already, long enough that she was really hungry as well as scared to death. The bastard wouldn’t just leave her here, would he? To starve to death? He wouldn’t have left two water bottles if he wanted her to die of thirst. Her mind spun with all kinds of horrid scenarios, and she wondered if something awful had happened to him, and though she hoped it would, who would know where to find her? Maybe she’d just die in this stinky, moldy sleeping bag.

  Oh, dear Jesus, she had to find a way out of here. Had to! Tears rolled down her cheeks, and with the cuffs digging into her wrists, she brushed them aside.

  Mom will find you, She will, You know that,

  The trouble was, Rosalie didn’t know it . . .

  She didn’t know it at all.

  So far she wasn’t exactly batting a thousand in the mother department, Sarah thought as she climbed the creaky stairs to the third floor. Her older daughter was brazen and uncaring enough to call her grandmother evil, and her younger daughter was convinced she’d seen a ghost in the premises. Twice. So much for family stability.