House of Reckoning (6 page)

All of Tiffany’s stuff had been moved to one side of the room, and Sarah could see that it was done quickly, as if whoever had cleared the other side waited until the last possible minute to do it. Posters of rock stars were taped to the walls around Tiffany’s bed, which was heaped with more stuffed animals and pillows than it could even hold; a teddy bear was sprawled facedown on the floor at the foot of the bed, and if her hip hadn’t been burning so badly, Sarah would have picked it up and put it back where it belonged. The wall behind the second bed—which would be hers—the empty bed—was as stripped of any decoration as the mattress was of bedding, though Sarah could see the marks on the
wall where tape had been pulled off, some strips taking paint with it, others staying, along with the corners of the posters they had recently held to the plaster. The posters themselves were almost hidden behind the dresser, where someone—probably Tiffany—had shoved them after pulling them off the walls, and even now Sarah could almost hear the argument between Tiffany and her mother when she was told she had to make room for the new foster child.

The girl’s anger was palpable enough to make Sarah shiver despite the heat in her hip. Well, maybe once Tiffany got to know her, it wouldn’t be so bad. Besides, who wouldn’t be mad at losing half their room to a total stranger?

Angie put Sarah’s suitcase on the floor. “The bathroom’s across the hall, and I cleared out the second shelf of the medicine cabinet for you.” She smiled, but Sarah had the feeling it wasn’t easy for her. “I’ll leave you to your unpacking. Tiffany and Zach should be home any time.”

Sarah nodded as Angie left the room, closing the door behind her. The moment she was alone, she started toward the bed, wanting nothing more than to throw herself onto it and sob.

Which, she knew, wouldn’t change anything. Hauling the suitcase off the floor, she maneuvered it onto the bed while doing her best to ignore the pain in her crippled leg. Besides, maybe she was jumping to conclusions. Maybe she and Tiffany could become friends. “Give it a chance, honey,” she remembered her mother saying more than once when she was little and trying to avoid something—anything—unfamiliar. “Things are never as bad as they seem at first.” Her mother had always been right back then, and it might be true now.

No sense expecting the worst.

She opened her suitcase, took out a pair of shoes and her slippers, and put them carefully under her bed. Then she shook out her best white blouse and opened the closet door.

The closet was stuffed so full of Tiffany’s clothes that there wasn’t so much as an empty hanger, let alone room to add any more clothes.

She was still trying to decide what to do with the blouse—and the rest of her clothes—when she heard voices downstairs, then the sound of feet pounding up the stairs. A moment later the door burst open and a girl who looked at least two years older than her came into the room.

“So you’re the girl we have to take care of,” she said, closing the door and leaning against it as she glared darkly at her. “I’m Tiffany, and this is my room. Not ‘our’ room. Mine. Get it?”

“I—I’m sorry,” Sarah stammered. “If there’s another room—”

“If there were another room, do you think you’d be in here?” Tiffany cut in. Finally, she left the door, pushed some of the stuffed toys on her bed aside and sat down. “Let’s get things straight right from the beginning.”

“Okay,” Sarah said carefully.

“I don’t want you here. I don’t want your clothes in my dresser, or in my closet, and I don’t even want your bed in my room. You’re only here because we need the money from the county, and as soon as my dad gets more hours at the prison, you’re gonna be out of here.”

“I—I don’t want to be any trouble,” Sarah said softly, struggling to keep her voice from trembling.

“Good. Then just don’t touch my stuff. Mom says you can have the bottom drawer in the dresser, but the rest of it’s mine.” Tiffany got off the bed and used her forefinger to draw an imaginary line between the two beds. “Just stay on your side of this line,” she said. She moved to the door and opened it. “And leave my dog alone, too.”

Then she was gone, slamming the bedroom door behind her.

Give it time
, the echo of her mother whispered.
Nothing is ever as bad as it seems at first
. Taking a deep breath and ignoring the pain in her leg, Sarah leaned over, braced herself on the dresser with her left hand, and used her right to work the bottom drawer of the dresser open. She peered down into the empty drawer, then over to her full suitcase, and found herself smiling. There wasn’t going to be a problem at all—everything she owned would easily fit in the single drawer, and the suitcase itself would go under the bed. Maybe her mother was right: maybe things wouldn’t be so bad after all.

Ten minutes later everything was folded and in the drawer, and Sarah was working the suitcase into the space under the bed when she heard the front door slam and a voice shout out.

A man’s voice.

Mitch Garvey was home.

“Sarah?” she heard Angie call up the stairs. “Come down and meet your new father.”

My new father? Sarah silently echoed. I already have a father. A father who loves me. “Just a minute,” she called back.

The man’s voice—an angry voice—roared up from below. “Not in a minute, young lady! Now. Come down right now. Don’t make me stand here waiting for you. Not ever.”

Moving as quickly as she could, Sarah started for the door, but it seemed to take forever just to limp across the room. Finally, though, she was there, pulling the door open and lurching toward the top of the stairs, where she hung tightly to the banister for a moment, both to steady herself and let the pain in her hip and leg ease slightly before she started down. At the foot of the stairs, two faces were tipped up, two pairs of eyes were looking at her.

Angie Garvey was smiling that same not-quite-warm smile Sarah had seen earlier.

Mitch Garvey was scowling, his face red.

Grasping the handrail, Sarah took the first awkward step down, then another.

“Jesus Christ,” Mitch Garvey said, his voice grating with anger he didn’t even bother to conceal. “They sent us a damn cripple!”

Sarah’s fingers trembled under her foster mother’s critical eye as Angie straightened every one of the five forks, centering each on its perfectly folded napkin. “Better,” Angie declared, looking pointedly at Sarah. “Anything worth doing is worth doing right.” She turned to Tiffany, who sat curled up on the chair in the living room, watching TV. “Dinner’s ready. Go get your brother and your father.”

Tiffany jumped up, ran to the bottom of the stairs and called out,

“Dad! Zach! Dinnertime!”

Sarah took an uncertain step back from the table, not knowing which place was hers, while Angie wiped the top of the pepper shaker with the palm of her hand.

Moments later a teenage boy, a little older than Tiffany, but with the same dark eyes, came down the stairs dressed in a T-shirt and jeans.

“Sarah, this is your foster brother, Zach,” Angie said.

“Hey,” Zach said, giving her the barest of glances before he pulled out a chair and sat down.

“Hi,” Sarah said, her voice weaker than she intended. She cleared her throat.

Moments later Mitch Garvey took his place at the head of the table, and Tiffany sat next to her brother.

Sarah pulled out the remaining chair and was about to sit when Angie said, “You may serve now, Sarah.”

Sarah froze for a second, then realized there was no food on the table. She moved into the kitchen as quickly as she could and brought back bowls of mashed potatoes and string beans, setting them on the table and waiting for some sign of Angie’s approval.

When Angie said nothing, she went back for the platter of chicken breasts, and by the time she uncovered them, put a fork on the platter, and limped back to the table, Mitch was saying, “Amen,” and as she set the platter down, everyone began to fill their plates.

Sarah finally took her seat, but just as she was starting to relax, she heard Mitch Garvey say, “Bread and butter.”

Sarah looked up to see Angie peering at her, one eyebrow arched accusingly, and suddenly the entire scope of her role in this household was crystal clear.

She was the help.

The maid.

The foster child who was paid for her work with room and board.

She pushed back her chair and struggled to her feet. In the kitchen, she found butter in the refrigerator and a loaf of bread in the cabinet. She put five slices on a small plate and set them in front of Mitch. Then, stifling the sigh that rose in her chest, she sat down once again and slid her napkin from the table to her lap.

By the time the dishes were passed to her, Sarah had to scrape the sides of the bowl for a spoonful of potatoes, took the last four green beans—three of which looked like they’d been starting to rot when they were cooked, and the half chicken breast that was left after her new foster father took the other half to add to his already filled plate. She started eating, waiting for the chatter that always filled the farmhouse kitchen at dinnertime to begin. But the Garveys ate in a silence that dragged on until finally Tiffany held up her glass and looked accusingly across the table at her. “Water?”

The single word sent Sarah back to her feet. Her hip and leg stiffening from the long day that still hadn’t come to an end, she took Tiffany’s
glass and limped to the kitchen. As she filled the glass from the pitcher of cold water in the refrigerator, she heard Zach’s voice.

“Kickoff.”

By the time she’d put the pitcher back in the refrigerator and returned to the dining room, the table was empty.

Empty except for all the dirty dishes.

The family had moved into the living room to watch the game, and Sarah, without being told, knew exactly what was expected of her. She set the water down by Tiffany’s abandoned plate, then sat down at her own place and silently finished her meal.

Forty minutes later Sarah gave the spotless kitchen one final inspection and hung up the damp dish towel. She’d never minded cleaning up after dinner; she always did it at the farm, while she listened to her parents talking farm business as they lingered over their coffee. And when she was done, it always made her feel good to have the kitchen fresh and ready for the next morning.

She turned off the light and slowly made her way though the living room. Everyone but Zach was still staring at the television, while Zach himself was nowhere to be seen.

No one so much as spoke to her as she passed them on the way to the stairs.

The climb to the top seemed longer than she would have thought possible, and it seemed as if fire were coursing through her hip and leg with every step. Gritting her teeth against the pain, she clung to the banister with both hands and slowly made her way up, pausing at the top to catch her breath.

Zach was in his room, talking on his cell phone. Sarah glanced at him lounging on his bed as she passed his open door a moment later.

“Hell no, she isn’t hot,” she heard him saying. “She’s a crip.” He glanced up at her, then quickly looked away again. “And an ugly one, too.” He reached out with his leg, caught the edge of the open door with his toe, and slammed it in her face.

Four years, Sarah thought as she brushed her teeth and put on her nightgown a few minutes later. How was she going to get through four years in this house, with these people? Then, even before she could formulate an answer to her question, she remembered how her father
would be spending the next four years, and a lot more as well. Finished in the bathroom, she made her way back to the bedroom, put the linens onto the bed, and slipped between the sheets.

She turned out the nightstand light.

And thought once again of her father.

If he could get through the next four years, so could she.

And she’d do it without the crutches that were still standing by the front door downstairs in case she needed them, and she’d do it without complaining.

And tomorrow, she told herself, would be a better day.

Her father was smiling at her, a sad smile, his face lined and gray. It was the same smile he’d given her at her mother’s funeral. But they weren’t at the graveyard—they were somewhere else. She tried to look around, but everything was cloaked in a damp gray fog
.

Slowly, the fog began to lift, and Sarah knew where they were
.

The mansion—the enormous house she’d dreamed about before, the one that was empty but not empty, that was filled with voices she could not hear, people she could not see
.

But this time she wasn’t alone. Her father was with her, and someone else, too
.

Her mother?

She turned, searching the shadows around her, but saw nothing. And when she turned back, her father was walking away from her. She wanted to cry, and reached out as if to touch him, to pull him back, but just as she was about to reach him something happened and—

Sarah woke up, a sob rising in her throat.

The dream had been so real that the tears she’d tried to hold back in her sleep now ran from the corners of her eyes.

She wiped at them with the sleeve of her pajamas, then took a couple of deep breaths and tried to calm her heart.

And tried to remember what happened at the very end of the dream, what happened that jerked her awake.

Tiffany breathed softly in the bed by the closed window. The bedroom door was closed, too, and the room felt so hot and stuffy she felt as if she were suffocating. She threw off the quilt, but that barely
helped—she wasn’t quite so hot, but there was still no air in the room and she could hardly breathe.

A drink. That’s what she needed.

Maybe she should go to the bathroom and get a glass of water. But what if someone woke up? What if she ran into Zach, or Mrs. Garvey?

Better to simply try to ignore it all, relax back into the pillow and go back to sleep.

Where the terrible dream would be waiting for her.

Her stomach growled.

If she were at home on the farm, she’d just go get a glass of milk, then turn on her nightstand light and read for a while. If her mother was also awake—as she’d been so often during those last months—they’d snuggle under an afghan on the couch, wrapped up together, and just talk for a while. Not about anything.