Heart and Home (13 page)

He leaned in toward the
steering wheel, the shadows moving off of his face. It would have been much
easier to resist if he hadn’t hit me with those amazing eyes. Yes, I wanted to
see him again, but I also wanted to turn and run so fast and so far.

“I don’t know, Troy. I don’t
have any place in my life for complications right now, I mean…”

“It’s just dinner,” he said.
“Nothing complicated, I swear.”

“I don’t know.”

“Come on,” he urged, that
grin of his stretching across his face. “Everybody eats. We’ll just eat
together and see how it goes from there.”

I drew in a breath and held
it for a moment. Releasing it made me feel a little light-headed, but I hid the
instability by leaning into the door. “Okay,” I gave in.

“Really?”

“I guess it couldn’t hurt
too much.”

“It won’t hurt at all, I
promise.” He grinned again, and this time I shook my head. “How about I pick
you up around six-thirty tomorrow night?”

“I’ll be ready,” and
probably still hungover, I realized. “Thanks for the ride home.”

“Anytime.”

I released the door handle
and nearly stumbled out of the truck. I was about to close the door when I
wondered if there wasn’t something more that I should say. I lingered for a
second, and then closed the door. I turned toward the house and noted that
there was a light on upstairs. The peeled back curtain snapped closed and I
shook my head. Great, now I’d have to face my dad while I was drunk. I couldn’t
think of a single instance that I’d been drunk in front of either of my
parents, and I certainly wasn’t looking forward to it.

Troy waited at the curb,
watching until I reached the door. I jammed my key into the lock and turned the
knob before turning to wave at him. His shadow lifted a hand in goodbye, and I
slipped into the house, relocking the door. Leaning against it, I listened to
the sound of his truck turning around, and then taking off into the night.

I passed by the light Dad
left on in the living room and turned it off, then slipped in through the
kitchen and turned off the light above the sink. I headed toward the steps, and
stumbled backward when I looked up and saw my mother standing at the top of the
staircase in her nightgown. Only even as it was her, it wasn’t. Surrounded in a
bright, white light, the fabric of her gown moved against some otherworldly
wind as she reached a hand out toward me. Her lips moved, but I couldn’t make out
or hear what she was saying. Pressed against the wall, I shook my head and
closed my eyes tight against the impossible.

“This is not happening,” I
insisted as my heart drummed madly in my chest. “There’s no one up there.”

When I looked up the
stairwell again, I was right. There was no one there, but a strong scent of
lavender filled the cool air and drifted down the stairs to meet me, along with
a faint feeling that made me grip the banister. I thought I’d sobered up some
on the ride home, but apparently not. I studied the top of the staircase, my
knees trembling as I started to climb toward the top. I could hear my father’s
snoring as I neared the landing, and my already racing heart sped up as I
realized that if he was asleep, it was someone else looking out the window.

The lavender aroma was
strong in the place she stood only moments before, and the air there was cold
as ice. I moved through that space and looked back down the stairs before I
moved toward the bathroom. Dad’s door was closed, but the door to the sewing
room was a jar, and the light was on. My stomach clenched tight as I moved
toward that room, and when I pushed the door slowly opened, I half expected to
come face to face with ghost I knew for certain I’d seen just moments before.
The room was empty, much to my relief. I turned off the light and closed the
door before finishing my journey to the bathroom.

Once behind the closed door,
I splashed cold water onto my face, but no matter how many times I splashed in
hopes of bringing some kind of sense or sobriety to myself, I couldn’t get the
image of her out of my mind. Drying my face, I finished up in the bathroom and
stepped back out into the hallway. I almost fell over when I saw the door to
the sewing room wide open, and the light on. I didn’t go near it again, but
instead scampered toward my bedroom in hopes that I could hide from the fact
that I was losing my mind. Behind the closed door, I clicked on the lamp and
flopped down onto the edge of the bed and tried to make sense of what I was
seeing.

If it was my mother’s spirit
haunting the house, why hadn’t she moved on? Was she trying to tell me
something? Had my dad seen her, or was I just losing my mind?

All I wanted to do was slip
into the comfort of home and try to figure out this Troy situation, but I
couldn’t even daydream about him as I curled up in bed, still dressed in the
clothes I’d worn to go out.

Paranoid and scared that at
any moment the ghost of my mother was going to come walking through the wall
into my bedroom, I lay wide-eyed in my bed with the light on until uneasy sleep
finally overtook me.

Chapter Thirteen

I was standing in the middle of a field at dusk with no sense
of direction and a hefty helping of panic thumping on my heart. I had already
been running, but no matter how far I ran there was no end to the seven foot
tall rows of golden stalk and brittle leaf. Musty damp and rotting plant life
mingled with the rich scent of earth, and the chill in the air made my lungs so
heavy I could hardly catch my breath. To make matters worse, the sun was rising
in the eastern sky, but a thick fog rolled in to obscure an already hopeless
path.

There was a whisper on the wind, my name spoken by an
unforgettable voice.

“Mom,” that desperate word echoed in fading circles off of
the nearby foothills. I turned in search of the source, but it diminished, only
to be replaced by a new voice.

“Janice,” her voice rippled through the rustling stalks.
“Janice? Where are you?”

“Hello?” My call wrought silence from the drenched air that seeped
into my clothes and chilled me to the bone. “Is there someone out there? Mom?
Anyone? Hello?”

It started as a faint rustling of dry leaves, and then it
drew closer. I’d seen enough horror movies to know that whatever was on the
other end of that movement was probably not going to be good. I turned and
started to run away, directionless and filled with fear. My feet pounded the
earth so hard I could no longer distinguish their rhythm from my own heartbeat.

“Janice,” I skidded to a halt as a tall, hooded figure
appeared in the midst of the row I was running down. Great, leave it to me to
run into death in the middle of a horror film scenario. Before I could turn
back, the figure spun, lowering the hood to reveal my mother’s face. I drew
back in awe, torn between rushing into her arms and running away. “Janice,
everything you’ve done has been for this.”

“Mom?” Curious feet moved me forward, despite my trepidation.

“Everything you’ve done has been in preparation of this
time.”

“What does that mean?”

She shook her head and looked down at the hands folded at her
waist. “When the time is right, all will be revealed, but fear not. You are on
the right path.”

“What path?” I was close enough that she was able reach out
and grab onto my hands. It was instinct that made me draw away in fear of the
arthritic hands reaching for me, but there was an unspoken pleading in her eyes
that calmed me. Her hands were like gnarled tree limbs wrapping around mine as
she leaned close.

“Follow the way, follow the path.”

“Mom, I don’t understand. Just talk to me, please. Just tell
me what you want me to know!”

A strange sound cut through the fabric of our reality and
both my mother and the field we stood in began to fade the way a radio station
faded outside of signal range. One moment she was standing there, her mouth
moving over unheard words again and again, “Follow the path…”
 

I pushed off of my pillow
with a gasp and a sharp stab of pain to the temple. After a moment of
struggling with consciousness, the strange sound was easily identified as the
telephone ringing in the hallway, and though I really didn’t have the ambition
to get out of bed and answer it, it was relentless.

I dragged myself out of bed
and staggered down the hall, finally grabbing it off the hook and lifting it to
my ear. “Hello?”

“You sound about as bad as I
feel,” Becky noted.

“I really shouldn’t have had
that Long Island Iced Tea.”

I thought she laughed, but
couldn’t be sure. “I don’t know. It did give you a boost of confidence there
when you asked Troy to dance. That really took me by surprise.”

I asked him to dance, didn’t
I? As memories of the ride home came trickling back to me, I chalked that up as
a minor success compared to my near psychotic breakdown.

“I think it took me by
surprise,” I said. “And Troy too.”

“He seemed pretty pleased
about it.”

“Did he?” It was too early
to be having that conversation, or any other conversation for that matter, and
the dryness in my mouth made it taste like something I didn’t even want to
identify.

“Are you kidding me?” I
heard the sound of children’s television in the background and a little boy’s
voice. “Janice, he is seriously smitten with you.”

“You really think so?” I
leaned back against the wall and looked down the hallway. The sewing room light
was off, and the door wide opened. I wondered if my dad turned it off when he
left, or if it mysteriously turned itself off.

“You are kidding, right?”

“Well he did ask me out to
dinner tonight.”

“And you accepted because it
was the right thing to do, didn’t you?”

“I almost didn’t.”

“What do you mean, you
almost didn’t? Are you crazy?”

Now it was my turn to laugh.
“I just may be crazy, actually. We had a really awkward conversation after we
dropped you off, and I think I made a total ass of myself.”

“No, you were drunk,” she
said. “You can use that as your line of defense if he brings it up at dinner.”

“You know, you’re something
else,” I said. “I really don’t know if going out with him is such a good idea,
especially since I’m leaving on Sunday.”

The phone went silent for a
moment, and I wondered if maybe she’d hung up, then the station break on the
television ended.

“Well, I know you said you
didn’t want to stir anything up, but I’m going to be perfectly frank with you,
Janice. You can get mad at me if you want, but I’m looking at it this way.” She
paused for a moment as if to prepare me for her view. “I know the circumstances
are really strange, but to me it seems like God or fate or whatever you want to
call it is trying to tell you something.”

The image of my mother
standing at the top of the stairs in that otherworldly pose flashed through my
soggy memory.

“And I think whatever force
is working in your favor would tell you that you can’t walk away from a chance
at love because it doesn’t fit into your agenda.”

“Love, Becky?” I swallowed
against a dry throat and wondered if there was any Tylenol in the bathroom.
Stretching the cord into the bathroom, I began to root through the medicine
cabinet. “He asked me out to dinner, and you’re already calling it love.”

“Hey, I’m hoping for a June
wedding. I want to be a bridesmaid, please.”

“You’re impossible,” I
snorted.

“Hopeful,” she corrected me.
“Optimistic.”

I knew my only hope was to
steer the conversation quickly away from my love life. “Listen to me, talking
about myself.” I found a bottle of ibuprofen and decided it would have to do. I
filled a paper cup with water and took four pills to battle my headache. “How
is Brennan?”

“Oh, he’s fine. Turns out he
wasn’t really even sick, so much as he just wanted his mom. The little
goofball. I guess he figured out pulling the sick card was a way to get what he
wanted. They learn so fast, it’s almost scary.”

“Well, I’m glad he’s okay. I
was a little worried.”

“He’s fine. In fact, Marty
has the day off, so I was calling to see if you wanted to go out to lunch, and
then I could take you over to get your car.”

“Do I have time for a
shower?”

“Is an hour enough time?”

“Should be.”

“Then it’s set. I’ll pick
you up in an hour.”

My headache dulled to a
tolerable ache by the time Becky and I settled into a booth at Katy’s Diner.
Becky didn’t look like she was feeling too great herself, but her vibrant
spirit overpowered the hangover, and she was all about preaching reasons I
should just go out with Troy and have a good time.

“Seriously, you said
yourself you were a little lonely in the city, and your schedule made it hard
to date.”

“Exactly,” I held up my
hands in defeat. “If my schedule in the city makes it hard for me to date guys
there, imagine how it will affect any kind of relationship I might try to have
with a guy three hundred miles away.”

“Weekends,” she said, as if
that was the grand answer to all of my problems. “And you’d still have your
space. It could be romantic starting up a long-distance relationship. Heck,
Janice, it could change your whole life.”

“First off, I work a lot of
weekends and late nights,” I pointed out. “Secondly, long-distance
relationships are hardly romantic. They almost always end in heartache and
disappointment. And another thing, I don’t know if I want to change my life any
more than it’s already been changed.”

“How many long distance
relationships have you personally had, or is that a statistic you heard on Dr.
Phil or something?”

Shaking my head, I burst
into laughter. “Dr. Phil? Does he even have a show anymore?”

“He was the first person who
popped into my head,” she grinned.

Katy Greenberger, the owner
of Katy’s Diner, slipped a plate in front of each of us and stepped back to
inspect us both. She’d been in the same year with us at school, and was one of
the quieter girls that often got picked on, like Becky.

“What are you two over here
giggling about?”

I shot Becky a warning
glare, which resulted in her replying with, “Wouldn’t you like to know?” And
before she could press us any further, Becky distracted her with compliments
about the steaming dish of New England clam chowder in front of her.

“So Janice,” Katy crossed
her arms. “I’m surprised to see you’re still in town. I honestly thought you’d
be on your way back to the city. Does this mean you’re here to stay?”

“Oh, no,” I shook my head.
“I stayed on an extra week to help my dad get a few things taken care of. I’ll
be headed back to the city on Sunday.”

“Shame,” she shrugged, as
she started away from the table. “I thought for sure you’d be back to take over
The
Standard
after it collapsed. You always were a real good writer in
school, and this town sure could use a proper paper again.”

“Now there’s an idea,” Becky
brought the spoon to her lips and blew away the steam. “You’d have no reason to
worry about starting a long distance relationship with Troy because you’d be
right here.”

I tilted my head at her and
gave her a look I hoped conveyed in the nicest way possible that I wasn’t going
to let her say another word about it. “Seriously though, could we put Troy on
the back burner for a minute? I want to ask you something.”

“Sure,” she straightened up
in her chair and put on a serious face. “What’s up?”

I wasn’t really sure I
wanted to go through with it, because talking about it out loud meant that I
was acknowledging it as real. That had the potential to wind me up in a
nuthouse if too many people thought I’d lost my mind. I pushed a meatball
around my Italian Wedding Soup for nearly a minute before I lifted my eyes to
hers.

“Do you believe in ghosts?”

“Ghosts?” She held her empty
spoon half-poised. “You mean like spirits of the dead, ghosts?”

I felt my head give in to a
reluctant nod.

“Well,” she started, “do you
remember all that talk when we were kids about the ghost of Missy Moffatt?”

“That girl who died in the
drunk driving accident on prom night in 1977?”

She nodded, and then for a
moment she looked down as if she wasn’t sure she wanted to go on. It took her
several minutes to work up the courage to speak again.

“There was that whole story
about her appearing on Stryker Road every prom night, covered in blood.”

“Yeah, but I thought that
was just a S.A.D.D. story someone made up to deter us from partying on prom
night.”

“Well, I didn’t go to prom.
No one ever asked me, in fact, I worked that night. I’d gotten off just around
midnight from the sub shop and was driving home. Stryker Road runs along the
trailer park and the river, and I wasn’t even thinking when I took the long way
home. Anyway, I was coming up on the turn where the accident supposedly happened
and there was a young woman in a prom gown pacing back and forth. She seemed
almost… I don’t know. It was like she glowed a little, or was outlined in light
or something. Not even thinking, I pull over and roll down the window, asking
if everything is okay, only it’s like she doesn’t hear me. I can hear her
sobbing and muttering, and that’s when I realize she’s bleeding. So I call out
again and ask if she’s all right, if she needs a ride or something, and as she
looked up at me, she just disappeared into the thin air.”

Becky’s story sent shivers
down the backs of my arms. “Wow.”

“You’re the only person I’ve
ever told that story. Like, I never even told Marty, for fear he’d think I was
a nut job.”

I swallowed and looked down
at the food in front of me, suddenly not feeling hungry. “What did you do?”