No Place Like Home (Holiday Classics) (4 page)

“It’s one o’clock in the morning,” a nurse with wiry gray hair said indignantly. “You’ve managed to wake up the whole facility. Our patients need their rest.”

“The gate’s a shambles,” one of the security guards said out of the corner of his mouth.

“We’ll pay for it,” Sara said quietly.

“Yes, you will pay for it. I have to take you in,” the trooper said. “You can make arrangements with the judge in the morning. Then again, if he’s off hunting because this is a holiday weekend, you’ll have to wait till Monday morning. Let’s go.”

The triplets ran to Cisco and hugged her. “We’ll be back. You aren’t mad at us, are you?”

“Good Lord, no. This is the most excitement I’ve had in the last six months. Don’t worry, I’ll get someone to post your bail. Try to stay out of trouble. Was it a mind bender when that ugly gate went down?” she asked gleefully. “Did your adrenaline soar out of control?”

“The thrill of a lifetime.” Sam grinned. “It was just like Tom Cruise in
Mission Impossible,
or was it
White Line Fever
? Whatever, it was a great feeling, and the Rover doesn’t have a dent in it.”

“Okay, macho man, let’s go,” the trooper said, leading Sam and his sisters out to the patrol car sitting in front of Building 16. “Get in,” he barked.

“You don’t have to get ugly about it,” Hannah snarled. “We just wanted to see our grandmother. We have every reason to believe she’s not being treated well here. We wanted the element of surprise to be on our side in order to make an accurate assessment of the situation. We’re willing to pay for the gate.”

“And was she?”

“Was she what?” Hannah snarled again.

“Mistreated?”

“I don’t know. You got there right after we did. She didn’t look too good to me in the little time I had to observe her. What do you guys think?”

“Not good,” Sam said.

“Definitely not herself,” Sara said. “Look, is it really necessary to arrest us?”

“You broke the law. Yes, it’s necessary. What are you, triplets?”

“Why do you want to know?” Hannah snorted.

“My grandmother donated two wings to this place. She’s not going to like your hauling us to jail. We both know that the people that own the place are not going to sign a complaint against us, so why are you putting us through this?” Sara demanded.

“Because you broke the law. Now, sit there and be quiet. You get one phone call when we get to the station. Consider yourself lucky that I don’t handcuff the three of you.”

The Trips looked at each other.

At the station, the trooper signed them in, then shoved a black desk phone toward Sam.

“Unless you guys know someone who has money to post our bail, it’s Dad who gets the call.” Hannah and Sara nodded miserably. Sam dialed. When Alexandra picked up the phone he mouthed her name to his siblings. “I’d like to speak to my father, Alexandra. Well, wake him up, this is important. Actually, it’s very important. I realize what’s important to me might not be important to him. Let me put it to you this way. My sisters and I have just been arrested. We need Dad to post our bail so we can get out of jail.” His eyes were desperate when he looked at Sara and Hannah. “You’ll tell him when he wakes up! Thanks for nothing. We won’t forget this, Alexandra. You never want to piss the three of us off at the same time. Remember that, too.”

“Looks like we’re here for the night,” Sam said, hanging up the phone. He turned to Hannah. “The next time you get a brilliant idea like that, keep it to yourself.”

The trooper herded them along, down a long hallway to a small room with a rough table, four chairs, and a dirty two-way mirror. “I’ll send someone in to take your statement.”

“Hold it! Hold it!” a voice shouted from the hallway. “I’m here to post bail!”

“And you are…who?” the trooper queried, his jaw setting angrily.

“Mrs. Cisco’s physical therapist. Finley Cooper.”

Sam frowned. He knew that name from somewhere. He stared at the physical therapist, but his facial features didn’t ring any bells. Like his sister, he shrugged.

“Mrs. Cisco asked me to post bail for her grandchildren.” He pulled a wad of bills big enough to choke a buffalo out of his bag.

Forty-five minutes later, after a phone call to a very vexed county judge who just happened to love Cisco candies, the triplets exited the station behind Cisco’s therapist. They thanked him profusely as he led them to his car, where they piled into the back-seat. The ride to the assisted-living facility was made in total silence.

They thanked the therapist profusely again when they climbed out of his car. Sara took a moment longer than her brother and sister. She bit down on her lower lip. “My grandmother doesn’t belong here. We disagree with our father’s decision to put her here. I just want you to know, and feel free to tell anyone on the staff, that we’re going to get her out of here. One way or another.”

“Look, I’m just a therapist here. I don’t get involved in family disputes. Plus, I’m just here on a temporary basis filling in until the New Year, when my buddy gets back from his wedding cruise. If you have a beef or a complaint, take it up with the administration. Another thing, bailing out spoiled rich kids doesn’t fall under my job description.”

“Which spoiled rich kids are you talking about? We aren’t spoiled, and we aren’t rich. Our grandmother might be rich, but we sure as hell aren’t. We go to college on academic scholarships we earned, and we all have part-time jobs. We support ourselves. If you have a problem with that, send us a bill, and we’ll compensate you for the trip to town to bail us out. If you’re an example of who’s taking care of our grandmother, then we have a right to be worried. Good night, Finley Cooper, temporary physical therapist,” Sara snapped.

“Guess you told him,” Hannah said. “He’s kind of cute in an angry sort of way. Let’s go, I’m freezing.”

This time, their greeting with their grandmother was more subdued. Freddie, though, was just as wired and wanted to play.

“Knocking down that gate was not exactly a wise thing to do,” Cisco said. “Your father isn’t going to take kindly to the report, and trust me, there will be a report,” she said wearily.

“Miz
Alexandra wouldn’t wake up Dad when we called to ask him to post our bail,” Sam said through tight lips. “That makes three stupid things we did in a little over a day. Walking out on good old Dad, plowing down the gate, and getting arrested. He’ll fry our asses over this.”

“Get off it, Sam. We’re of age. All he can do is yell at us. He does that anyway, so what makes this time any different?” Hannah demanded.

“I don’t know, it just feels different for some reason. The stakes are higher. In case you haven’t been listening, this is serious business for a change,” Sam said.

“It’s late,” Cisco said. “We have to think about sleeping arrangements.”

“It’s okay, Cisco. We have sleeping bags in the Rover. We’ll tuck you in, then grab some sleep ourselves. Are you glad we came?” Sara asked anxiously.

“I’m so glad you came I don’t have the words to tell you. I sat here all day feeling sorry for myself thinking about all of you at your father’s. You’re here now, that’s all that matters. You don’t have to tuck me in, but you can kiss me good night. Freddie and I have a routine we go through, and if I want it to work for us both, then we have to do it religiously.”

When the door to the bedroom closed behind their grandmother, Hannah looked around and hissed, “This is one ugly place. I’m glad Cisco can’t see what it looks like. The word
institutional
would be too kind. It smells like an institution, too.”

“Let’s leave it all for tomorrow. I’m knocked out,” Sam said. “I’ll get the sleeping bags. If you two get any more brilliant ideas, don’t include me in them.”

“What’s with him?” Hannah demanded.

“I think guys get a little pissy when they get hauled off to jail. It does something to their psyche. You notice, we just rolled with it,” Sara said.

“It was exciting, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah.” Sara giggled. “You really think Finley, the physical therapist, was cute?”

“Nah, I just said that,” Hannah said, dodging a videotape that Sara sailed across the room in her direction.

“Maybe we shouldn’t have thrown those lists at him as we walked out of the dining room,” Sara said. “I’m thinking that was pretty childish on our part.”

“By the way,” Sam said, returning with the sleeping bags, “I remembered. Finley was an Olympic skier. That’s why his name sounded familiar. He blew out both his knees. Never skied again.”

“That has to be pretty rough, giving up an Olympic dream,” Hannah said.

Thirty minutes later, they were settled for the night, snug in their respective down sleeping bags.

Sara turned until she was on her stomach and said, “When…”

Hannah, so in tune with her siblings, jumped in and finished what Sara was about to say. “When he didn’t show up for our high school graduation, that’s when it all went downhill. He was too busy entertaining Bambi what’s her name. A trio of valedictorians, a first in the school’s history, wasn’t important enough to him to show up. It was all downhill after that,” Hannah said.

“We can’t unring the bell, so let’s just go to sleep, okay? Tomorrow’s another day. We can get up with the chickens and beat it to death then,” Sara said, rolling back over before she curled up in her sleeping bag. “Night.”

“Night,” her siblings echoed.

From the bedroom, they all heard a soft woof.

H
e was in that delicious place in sleep, half-awake, half-asleep, as he struggled to recapture the dream. His leg stretched out, certain it would touch Lexy’s silky leg. Good thing? Bad thing? He wanted the dream back. Better not to think about Lexy. He squeezed his eyes shut and was immediately transported back in time to the happy place in his dream. A place that was tranquil and beautiful, with wonderful, loving people.

“We’re ready, Dad,” the triplets called, their gear piled up next to the car. He looked up to see his mother standing in the doorway. God in heaven, what would he have done without her when Margie died? What would the triplets have done without Cisco? She was the glue that had kept them all together. She never complained, never had a cross word for any of them. She’d stepped right in after the tragedy, and their lives never missed a beat.

He stared at her a moment later, loving the gentleness and strength of character he saw on her face. She smiled, a smile that always made his world right side up. It was a smile that said, we can do this together. She was beaming now, her cheeks pink with excitement for all of them. Even from where he was standing he could see the sparkle in her eyes. Sometimes he wondered why he was so surprised at her abilities. She’d risen from the ashes when his father died way too early in life. With very little money in the bank, a skimpy insurance policy, she’d started to make candy in the kitchen after she worked all day at the telephone company. It was a mother-son operation. She made the caramels and taffy, and he wrapped them when they cooled down. Then on Saturday mornings, they delivered them to all the stores in the area.

It took three years before his mother decided to go the catalog route with gift boxes of candies for the holidays. Another two years expanding the cottage at the foot of the Allegheny Mountains, and they were off and running.

“We’ll bring you a present,” the Trips shouted.

“I can’t wait to see what it is. No dead fish now!” Cisco laughed.

“You guys sure you didn’t forget anything?” he asked, climbing behind the wheel.

“Nope. We packed
everything.
Let’s go, Dad!”

This was their first camping trip since Margie died. In one way he was looking forward to it, and in another way he was dreading it. The two-hour ride up the mountain had always included sing-alongs, jokes, and storytelling. He didn’t know if he could pull it off with the same gusto as Margie had. He was going to try like hell. Maybe, though, they needed to change things. Not that he wanted to forget his wife; nor did he want his children to forget her. The past belongs in the past, he told himself.

Hard-Hearted Hannah brought it front and center. Twelve years old, and she knew exactly what he was thinking. “Let’s talk about things. Let’s make promises we will never break. Okay, Dad?”

“Well, sure. What do you want to talk about?” he asked as he steered the car up the winding roads, the scent of evergreens wafting through the open windows.

“Boys!” Sara and Hannah squealed.

“Girls!” Sam bellowed.

The questions came faster than bullets.

“When can we shave our legs?”

“How can we get the curl out of our hair?”

“When can we get our ears pierced?”

“What if a girl hits me? Hard?”

“How am I supposed to carry her books and mine, too, and still stand up straight?”

Earth-shattering questions they already knew the answers to because Cisco had made sure they knew. Cisco never left things hanging. He knew they knew about reproduction and all the womanly things they were supposed to know. Sam knew what he was supposed to know, too, because Cisco left nothing to chance. They were testing him, pure and simple. His answers took up the first hour of the drive, with the Trips giggling and laughing at his discomfort.

He knew he’d passed when Sam said, “Okay, now, let’s get to the promises. You can go first, Dad, because you’re the authority figure. Any promises we make today, we have to honor forever and ever. Is it a deal?”

“Of course it’s a deal,” he said happily. “A promise should never be broken. A man or a woman is only as good as his or her word. I want you all to remember that. Since I’m going first, here’s what I would like you to promise me. I want your promise that you will never knowingly do anything to shame your grandmother, me, or yourselves. Whatever you undertake in life, I want you to give a hundred percent and no skimping anywhere along the way.”

“We promise,” the Trips said in unison.

“Good. I promise the same thing.”

“Can we promise always to spend Christmas together? It was Mom’s favorite time of the year, and she said she didn’t care about other holidays, but everyone had to be home for Christmas,” Hannah asked, a catch in her voice.

“That’s a really good promise. I promise,” Jonathan said.

“We do, too.”

“I have a question before the promise,” Sam said. “What will happen if…if something happens to Cisco? Will you get married again? What if we don’t like who you’re going to marry?”

Jonathan cleared his throat. “Nothing’s going to happen to Cisco for a very long time.” He hoped he spoke the truth. “We’ll go on, though, if something does, just the way we did when your mom died. We’ll stick together because we’re a family. Family is the most important thing in the world. I promise you that I will not marry anyone you don’t like. I would never do something like that to you. I want you all to stop reading those wicked stepmother stories. Do you hear me?”

“We hear you,” they bellowed.

“Promise us that we can always stay with Cisco. Promise us that we’ll take care of her if she gets sick.”

Jonathan nodded. “That’s an easy promise.”

“I’m going to write all this down when we get back home, and we’ll each get a copy,” Sara said. “We have to save this list of promises forever and ever, okay, Dad?”

“You bet. They’re all wonderful promises. They’ll be easy to honor.”

The balance of the trip was filled with other promises.

“Promise we can date when we turn sixteen.”

“Promise we get to drive every weekend when we get our licenses.”

“Promise three trips a year to New York and to Mom’s grave in Metuchen.”

And then the best promise of all. “Let’s all promise to love each other the way Mom loved us and not let anyone or anything ever come between us.”

Jonathan laughed. It was such an easy promise to make. He pulled the car to the side of the road and came to a full stop. He turned to look at his children and smiled as he plopped his hand down on the back of the headrest. Six hands slapped down on top of his. His left hand was the last to complete the tower. This was the Trips’s way of sealing the deal.

Fishing, hiking, swimming, campfires, storytelling, sharing memories. It was going to be a wonderful five days.

The sound of the telephone woke him from his dream. He groaned and rolled over, his eye going to the caller ID next to the phone. He rolled back over. He didn’t want to talk to Alexandra at five-fifteen in the morning. He didn’t want to talk to
anyone
at five-fifteen in the morning.

Today was supposed to be a nothing day. A day just to stay in, possibly watch some videos, go out to dinner, or even brave some of the stores on Fifth Avenue. He hated shopping with Alexandra.

He knew he wasn’t going to be able to get back to sleep. He might as well get up and have some coffee.

His head started to pound when he swung his legs over the side of the bed. Damn, how much wine had he guzzled last night? Obviously a lot, since he hadn’t felt like this since shortly after Margie died. Back then, he drank just to be able to sleep. Sometimes it helped the gut-wrenching hurt, and other times it just left him feeling numb. He probably would have turned into an alcoholic if Cisco hadn’t stepped in and straightened him out.

On his way to the bathroom, he stopped long enough to stare down at the zebra-covered chaise lounge. He wondered if he’d ever sit in it. He took two more steps before he saw the folded papers the Trips had tossed at him. Their copies of the promise list they’d made long ago. Just the sight of them made his head pound harder. Almost as hard as his heart was pounding. He’d deal with those later. Much later.

In the bathroom, taped to the mirror, was a note from Alexandra. He thought his head was going to spiral right off his neck when he read it.

Jonathan sat down on the edge of the Jacuzzi. “Son of a bitch! Arrested!”

Twenty minutes later he was shaved, dressed, and in the kitchen, the telephone in his hand. It wasn’t until an hour later, when he had nothing to show for all the calls that he had made, that he realized all he had to do was scroll back the caller ID, and the number Sam called from would pop up. He raced into the bedroom. The only call that came in after seven-thirty was a number he didn’t recognize. He looked down at the note Alexandra had left him. She’d said she tried to call after she got home. Her number wasn’t there. Was that because she hadn’t left a message?
Damn, I can’t think straight this morning.

He gulped some more aspirin before he called the number on the caller ID. He felt light-headed when he heard the words, “Laurel Hills Police. Sergeant Lomax speaking.”

Jonathan identified himself and stated his reason for calling. “Can you connect me with the arresting officer?” Damn, the Trips said they were heading back to school, and instead they’d gone to Laurel Hills to see Cisco. He listened, his shoulders sagging. He thanked the desk sergeant before hanging up. He needed to think.
How in the hell did it come to this?

How?

The Laurel Hills Assisted Living Facility came to life at five-thirty in the morning. The triplets woke the moment the front door opened, bringing a cold draft swirling into the room. They looked up to see a cranky-looking nurse and an aide who looked even crankier. The nurse peered down at the three young people, and said, “Overnight guests are not permitted. We have rules here.”

Hannah was about to tell her what she could do with her rules when Cisco appeared with Freddie. “It was a bit of an emergency,” Cisco said apologetically.

“C’mon, dog,” the aide said, yanking Freddie on the leash that Cisco was holding on to. Sam was unzipped and on his feet in a heartbeat, pulling Freddie’s leash out of the aide’s hand. “I’ll walk her.”

“Suit yourself. Walking dogs at this hour of the day isn’t my cup of tea.”

“I hate this place,” Hannah said, beating at the sleeping bag with her closed fists.

“All right, Loretta, let’s take our shower. And let’s not be difficult this morning. I had a bad night last night with all that went on around here,” the nurse said snidely.

“I’ll tell you what,” Sara said. “My sister and I will help our grandmother. You can go now and recover from your bad evening. Like right now,” Sara added, her voice ringing with cold steel. Hannah was on her feet and holding the door open.

“This is irregular and will have to go on report,” the nurse blustered.

“Oh, well,” Sara said.

When the door closed behind the nurse, Cisco laughed. “I wish I had the guts to do that. She’s a real curmudgeon.”

“Do you need help when you shower?”

“No, actually, I don’t. I have a waterproof sleeve that fits over my cast. I know where everything is. I’d like to be able to take a shower without someone watching me. Thanks, girls.”

“Take your time. Yell if you need us,” Sara said.

When the door closed behind Cisco, Hannah looked at her sister. “I hate even thinking this, but do you think once we leave, the people at this place are going to take their anger out on Cisco? We haven’t been the ideal visitors, if you catch my drift.”

“I was wondering the same thing. The long and short answer is, I don’t know.”

Sam and Freddie sailed into the room just as the phone rang.

The Trips looked at one another. They mouthed the word, “Dad,” at the same time.

No one made a move to pick up the phone.

“He’s just going to keep calling,” Sam said. He played with Freddie’s leash, swinging it one way and then the other before he looped it over the doorknob.

The phone continued to ring. They all ignored it. Finally, it stopped ringing.

“We can stay till Sunday afternoon, but we’re going to have to go to a motel if the rules say we can’t sleep here. Once Cisco is asleep, we can leave and be back here by five-thirty when she wakes up. We need to make some kind of plan. There must be a dozen motels in the area, so that’s not going to be a problem,” Sara said.