House of Reckoning (9 page)

So the servants’ quarters had been added later, and most likely the carriage house as well.

Bettina lifted the photograph from the little corners that held it to the black album pages and set it on her grandfather’s desk, next to the drawing by the young student.

Sarah had even included the sapling.

A chill ran up Bettina’s spine.

Today, the enormous shutters that protected the fragile windows and occupants of the old stone house from the nor’easters that roared down the lake in the winter sagged on their hinges. But they were still operable, and Bettina occasionally employed them when the winds were bad enough.

But in both the photograph and the drawing, the shutters were the same—square and even.

New.

The front doors in the drawing and the photograph were the same, and different from the current front doors, which Bettina’s mother had replaced before she had even been born.

Somehow, Sarah Crane—new to Warwick—had plucked the image of her house out of thin air, and drawn it in her classroom not as it was now, but as it had been when it was new.

Bettina unconsciously rubbed the goose bumps that rose on her arms and turned to look at Rocky, who now sat quietly at the doorway and gazed at her with calm brown eyes.

“What do you think?” she asked him.

The dog merely kept looking at her for another moment, then stood up and trotted away, probably in search of the cat who had been the only mother he’d ever known.

“Spooks me, too,” Bettina said softly to the now empty room. As she leaned in to turn off the desk lamp, she looked one more time at both the photograph and the incomprehensible drawing.

Sarah Crane would get an A for the assignment.

And she would keep a close, watchful eye on the girl.

Sarah waited until everyone was seated and everything was as perfect as she could make it at the Garveys’ dinner table before she slipped into her seat and put her napkin on her lap, then checked to make sure everyone else had already helped themselves to the tuna noodle casserole before putting a single small portion on her own plate.

And she made sure there was plenty left for both Mitch and Zach to have second helpings, even though her own stomach was begging for more food. But already she’d learned that the more invisible she could make herself, the better off she’d be in the Garveys’ house.

Almost as if she’d heard Sarah’s thoughts, Angie Garvey’s eyes fixed on her. “How was your first day at school, Sarah?”

Now all four of the Garveys were looking at her, and Sarah sensed some kind of trap being set. But how could such a simple question—a question her own mother must have asked her thousands of times—be a trap?

Maybe it wasn’t—maybe Angie really was wondering how she’d liked school. “Good,” she finally said.

Everyone kept looking at her.

“Fine, I mean,” she hurried on. “I liked it. School was really good.” Her eyes darted from Angie to Mitch, and she could see she still hadn’t said enough. “Lots of homework,” she ventured.

Without taking his eyes off her, Mitch drained his beer and tipped the empty bottle toward Zach, who took it and immediately jumped up to get his father another one. “Homework’s good,” Mitch said. “Trouble with schools nowadays is not enough homework. When I was your age, we didn’t have time to hang out and get in trouble—we had work to do. Lots of it.” Then his eyes bored into her. “And when we were asked a question, we answered it. Didn’t make folks pull every word out one by one.”

Sarah took a sip of water and sucked in her breath, thinking fast. What did her foster father want to hear? What was she supposed to say? “Well,” she finally began, “I found all my classrooms without too much trouble, and my locker is in a really good place, practically in the middle of the whole school.”

Mitch went back to his meal, and as if they had been signaled, so did the rest of the family.

Sarah relaxed slightly. “I really like my art teacher, Miss Philips.”

All four heads snapped up, and once again the family was staring at her.

“D-Did I say something wrong?” Sarah stammered. What was going on? What had she said?

Angie Garvey sipped from her own glass of water, then dabbed her napkin at the corners of her mouth. “Bettina Philips is not someone you should be associating with,” she said, the distaste for the woman’s name clear on her face. Then she added, “She is a witch.”

Sarah’s mouth dropped open. A witch? What on earth was Angie
talking about? But before she could ask, her foster mother answered her unspoken question.

“This is a Christian community,” she declared. “And there is no place in it for the likes of Bettina Philips.”

Sarah’s eyes flicked toward Mitch, but his expression was as implacable as Angie’s.

“Outside of class, you must never speak to her,” Angie went on. “In this house—in every good house in Warwick—we do our best never to speak of her at all.”

Sarah could barely believe what she was hearing, but her foster mother was still not finished.

“On Sunday,” Angie Garvey continued, “you’ll have a chance to cleanse your spirit in church.”

“I—I don’t understand,” Sarah began, finally setting down her fork as her appetite deserted her. “She’s my teacher. All we talked about was …” Her voice trailed off, but now everyone’s eyes were fixed on her again and she knew she had to say something else. “We talked about art,” she said, her voice coming out in a whisper that sounded desperate even to her own ears.

“Then let me make it real clear,” Mitch said, jabbing at the air with his fork. “You don’t speak to that woman except to do whatever you need to do to pass her class. Not one extra word. You don’t talk to her, you don’t talk about her, you don’t even look at her. Got it?”

Sarah put her hands in her lap. “Yes, sir,” she whispered.

“Jesus Christ, Angie,” Mitch said, still glowering at Sarah. “All we need is for this kid to be getting ideas from Bettina Philips!”

Angie put a calming hand over her husband’s, and a moment later he shook his head in disgust and returned to his meal. But Angie’s expression told Sarah that she was in total agreement with her husband and that she had better pay very close attention to what Angie had just said.

She chanced a look at Tiffany, who only shook her head and looked away.

The message was more than clear.

She was now forbidden to speak to the one and only person in Warwick who had been nice to her.

Lily Dunnigan tried to work the crossword puzzle while her husband read the evening newspaper, but the house was quiet.

Too quiet.

She couldn’t concentrate.

And Nick had been unusually cheerful at dinner. He’d eaten everything she served him, then disappeared up to his room to do his homework.

And she hadn’t heard a peep out of him since.

No wonder she couldn’t concentrate: usually by this time of day the voices in his head were so out of control that he was upstairs sobbing or banging his head against the wall—anything to shut them out. But not tonight.

Could they finally have hit on the right medication? Was it actually possible? She set her crossword aside. “I’m going up to check on Nick.”

Shep Dunnigan barely glanced up from his paper. “He’ll never be normal if you don’t start treating him like a normal kid.”

“I’ll just go see what he’s doing.”

Shep sighed loudly and rattled the paper as he turned the page. Lily walked softly up the stairs and tapped on Nick’s door. “Come on in,” Nick said.

Lily opened the door and peeked in. Nick sat at his desk, writing in a spiral notebook. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“Chemistry,” Nick said. He made a couple more notations, then set his pen down. “Done.”

“All finished?” She moved into his room and perched nervously on his bed. Though it seemed as if she’d been praying for a sight this ordinary all Nick’s life, actually seeing him act like a normal teenager with no worse problems than too much homework was difficult to believe.

“I wish,” Nick said as he put his heavy chemistry book into his backpack and pulled out a tattered paperback. “Still have to write a book report on this.”

Lily hesitated, wondering if she should just leave well enough alone, but before she could stop herself, the question leaped from her lips as if of its own volition. “No voices tonight?”

Nick swiveled his chair so he was facing her. “They’re actually leaving me alone.”

“You mean it’s working? We’ve actually found the right dose of the right medicine?”

Her son shrugged and his eyes shifted away from hers.

There was something he wasn’t telling her. “What is it, Nick?”

“Nothing.” He began swiveling back and forth in his chair, a nervous tic that put the lie to his answer.

“It’s something.” She reached out and took the arm of his chair to stop the swiveling. “Are you taking some other drugs?”

“No,” he said, but his eyes still avoided hers.

“Then what?”

Nick hesitated, but then finally spoke, his eyes turning quizzical. “Well, a weird thing happened.”

Lily steeled herself for whatever he was about to tell her.

“There’s this girl.”

A girl? Whatever she had expected, it wasn’t this. “A girl?” she echoed. “You’ve met a girl?”

“Well, I haven’t really met her yet. She’s new. She’s staying with the Garveys. Her name’s Sarah Crane.”

Lily had heard that Angie Garvey was getting a foster child. “So what was weird about it?”

Once again Nick hesitated, and for a moment Lily thought he might just close down. But then he actually grinned.

“The voices stop when she’s around,” he said.

Lily let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. “What do you mean, they stop?”

“Just that—when she’s around, they just stop bugging me.”

“Well, I don’t call that weird,” Lily declared. “I call that wonderful. So tell me about her.”

He looked up at her. “There’s nothing to tell. I don’t even know her yet.”

“Well, whatever makes you feel better makes me feel better,” she said, standing up. “So get to know her, okay?” She leaned over and kissed the top of his head. “I’ll let you get back to your homework.”

“Okay. Good night.”

Heading back down to the living room, Lily picked up her crossword puzzle, but now, instead of the silence, it was an overwhelming feeling of hope that kept her from concentrating. “Guess what?” she said to Shep, putting the puzzle aside once again.

Shep glanced disinterestedly in her direction. “What?”

“Nick’s found a girl.”

Shep lowered his newspaper and looked at her.

“Which isn’t the best part,” she went on. “The best part is that his voices go quiet when he’s around her.” As Shep looked at her in disbelief, Lily finally let her face break into the grin she’d been holding back.

“You’re kidding,” Shep said.

Lily shook her head.

“What’s her name?”

“Sarah Crane. She’s a new girl at school.”

A shadow passed over Shep’s face, and he was silent for a moment, then stood up. “I think I’ll go have a talk with him.”

Lily’s belly clenched. If her husband went upstairs and started pressuring Nick—

But what could she do? Shep was Shep, and she could only do so much to shield her son from him. So she held her tongue as she watched him walk up the stairs.

Nick tried to focus on the words on the page in front of him, but he couldn’t. He hadn’t quite lied to his mother, but he hadn’t told her the whole truth, either, and he knew she’d been happy at what he had told her. He hadn’t told her just how weirdly the voices had reacted to Sarah Crane, and he sure hadn’t told her about the horrible hallucinations he had in the cafeteria when the other kids were being nasty to Sarah.

He hadn’t told her because he knew she’d never understand.

She’d think he was getting worse, and he wasn’t.

He was getting better. He could feel it.

He took a deep breath, went back to the book, and focused once again on the words on the page.

But before he got through the first paragraph, his bedroom door opened simultaneously with a single loud knock.

“Hi,” his dad said. “Studying?”

“Yeah.” Nick couldn’t remember his dad having been in his room more than a couple of times in the last year, and now that he was here, the voices were suddenly muttering again. He should have known his mom would tell his dad about Sarah Crane; he should have kept his
mouth shut. Now he was going to have to listen to one of his father’s pep talks on how to act like “a real teenager.”

By which he meant “a normal teenager.”

Sure enough, his dad was wandering around the room, touching his printer, looking at the books on his shelf, picking up a CD. Stalling.

“Hear you’ve got a girlfriend,” he finally said.

“Not really a girlfriend,” Nick replied, keeping his eyes on the book in front of him.

“Sarah Crane,” Shep said, and now Nick could feel his father’s eyes on him.

He finally looked up and nodded.

“She’s the daughter of one of my prisoners.”

Nick nodded again. “I heard something about that. She’s staying with the Garveys.”