Out of the Shadows (Bellingwood Book 12) (10 page)

Andrew and Kayla had come in with the news that the story had gone all around the school and they thought they should organize a protest. Rebecca told them she could deal with it. Since she was going to be black and blue anyway, she preferred not going to school. The kids promised to get her homework assignments to her the next day. Kayla took Rebecca's math homework with her so she could turn it in on time.

When Heath came upstairs, he took one look at Rebecca's face and turned bright red. He'd been ready to take on the world for her. Polly tried not to feel proud of the fact that he was so protective of Rebecca, but she knew she had less to do with that than Rebecca did. Those two had grown close as sister and brother because Rebecca had dug in and insisted. She'd been relentless with Heath all along. Polly and Henry had done nothing to help that relationship - the two kids had done it themselves.

Obiwan jumped up onto Rebecca's bed. He'd become more and more comfortable there and spent many nights sleeping with the girl. Polly nodded and stood for a long moment watching them in the light of the moon. She was proud of that girl.

She quietly slipped into her own room. Henry was reading a woodworking magazine and the cats had taken up residence on her pillow. Han was sleeping up against Henry's legs, leaving barely enough room for her on the bed.

"How's she doing?" Henry asked.

"She's asleep and Obiwan is keeping watch," Polly replied.

He put his book down and reached out to take her hand. "How are you doing?"

"I'm still mad as hell. I don't know what to do about this. I can take on a battle and complain about her to the school board members I know, or I can let this be a learning experience for Rebecca. I don't know exactly what it is she’s learning - nothing like what I'd teach her about situations like this, but at some point she needs to learn how to discern whose authority is trustworthy and whose isn't." She smacked her leg, startling the dog. "I'm so pissed. It wasn't fair. Rebecca didn't do anything wrong. At. All."

"She's learning that life isn't fair, but you still have to do the right thing," Henry said quietly. "If you want to raise a ruckus, you could probably get a large number of people to back you up, but is that the battle you want to take on? And, secondly, is that how you want to use your power in the community?"

"I don't have any power."

He laughed. "Of course you do. You’re a respected business owner. You are seen as fair and reasonable. You’re generous and caring and genuinely give back to Bellingwood. You have power. What are you going to do with it?"

"So you're saying I could get this woman fired?"

"If you want to, you probably could. It seems to me that she has enough bad press. Maybe they're looking for a reason to make her go away. I don't know what her contract with the district looks like."

Polly sighed. "But I don't want to be seen as that person. And I don't want Rebecca to think that anytime something isn't fair to her, I'll step in and get the person who messed with her fired. Sometimes life stinks and you have to keep living through it."

Henry nodded.

"If I have power in the community, I don't want to throw it away on something negative like this either," Polly said. "I'd rather fight for something good rather than against something bad. And just because she screwed with my kid doesn't mean that she can't do her job. If nothing else, she was committed to her belief in the situation. Even if I’m just as committed to the fact that she was wrong."

"Rebecca saw you be respectful today," Henry said.

Polly interrupted him. "Well, not terribly respectful. I walked out."

"But you didn't scream or shout. You didn't throw a tantrum. You didn't threaten the woman in front of the kids. None of that. And you never said anything bad about her to Rebecca, no matter how angry you were. That's a big deal, Polly. Not a lot of kids see that type of behavior when things don't go their parent's way."

"I'll probably have to have another conversation with Rebecca about respect, even when it doesn't seem fair," Polly said. She found a space for her head among the cats. Luke finally leaped to the floor and then jumped up on the first ledge of the cat tree.

"I’m thinking about Heath and his work down in the barn," Henry said quietly.

"Yeah?"

"He said something to me tonight about hating it and wondered if I had any work for him."

Polly turned on her side to face him. "What did you say?"

"I told him that I needed time to consider it."

She slumped "I told Grey that I was staying out of this. He said I fix too many things and make it too easy."

"That's why we love you," Henry said. "Does Grey have anything out there?"

"No. Not yet. Unless..." Polly propped herself up on her elbow. "Are you guys doing that hockey ice thing? We could pay Heath to help Grey get it dug out and start the work."

Henry nodded. "That's not a bad idea. It would give him something to do. I’m not sure if Heath is ready to be proactive about this, but we should help him."

"We're going to fix it, aren't we?"

"It's our job as parents. That's my story and I'm sticking to it," Henry said with a laugh.

"Whew. Thanks. I didn't want to be in this one all by myself. I'm glad you're as bad as me."

Henry reached across the dog and kissed Polly's lips. "We should be bad together."

"Your dog is in the way."

"Your cat is too."

CHAPTER TEN

Her own nightmares were fading, but Rebecca hadn't slept well again, so Polly let her sleep the next morning. The fear of being kidnapped and the memory of what Joey and Marcus Allendar had done to those other young women was no longer vivid in her memory, but Polly still woke up in a sweat in the middle of the night.

Fog had rolled in overnight and didn't seem to be in any rush to clear off. Polly thought about dressing in her sloppiest clothes and a warm robe and curling up under a pile of blankets with a good book. Some days she hated having to be a responsible adult.

She poured another cup of coffee and looked out the front windows, though she could barely see the highway. Jeff drove in and a few minutes later, Stephanie pulled in and parked her car beside Jeff's. The two other cars in the parking lot belonged to new people Sylvie had hired to work in the kitchen with Rachel, especially on weekends. It was still only Friday, but that probably meant there was something going on in the auditorium today.

Heath had been quiet again this morning. He'd asked about Rebecca and had offered to take the dogs out for their morning walk, but any breakthrough conversations they'd had apparently didn't carry over from day to day. He was going to have to figure this out. Polly was all out of words.

That made her chuckle. She was never out of words. It's just that sometimes they were more difficult to put into the right order. One of these days Heath would start communicating. She hoped it happened before he left their home.

"Polly?"

She turned around and cringed. Poor Rebecca. Her face was swollen and she was going to sport a heck of a shiner. "Yes, honey. How are you doing?"

"It hurts." Rebecca brought her hand up to her face, lightly touching it while grimacing.

"I know it does. I'm so sorry. Maybe next time you bring up a book to block the punch instead of using your face."

"Next time?" Rebecca asked.

Polly shrugged. "You never know. You're my daughter now. Anything can happen."

Rebecca gave her a weak smile. "Are you trying to scare me?"

"Is it working?" Polly dropped two slices of bread into the toaster. "Do you want scrambled eggs this morning?"

"No. Just jelly. Is there any bacon left? I can smell it."

"Bacon and jelly sandwich. That sounds horrible."

Rebecca scowled at her. "Yes it does. You know what I mean."

Polly took the plate of bacon out of the oven and put it down on the peninsula, then took a piece for herself. "Do you want to do anything today? The weather is weird, but we can go out if you want. Do you want to go see Jessie and Molly? Or maybe we can call Joss and spend time with the twins. It's up to you."

"I don't want anybody to see me like this," Rebecca said, touching her face again.

The toast popped up and Polly put it on a plate in front of Rebecca, moving the butter and jelly in front of her.

"We can stay home all day. But, if you have a black eye, shouldn’t you show it off? I mean, it's a sign that you’re courageous and a little tough, don't you think?"

"But I look horrible."

"You look like someone hit you. It's not something you can change. Be proud of it. If people stare, scowl at them. If they ask questions, answer them. You have nothing to be ashamed of."

Rebecca looked up at her. "You don't let us get away with feeling sorry for ourselves, do you?"

"That's just a waste of time," Polly responded. "By now the story of how you got that black eye has been told and retold in town. You might as well make the best of it. Take the attention, let people feel sorry for you. Maybe we can convince Camille to give you a free hot chocolate."

"Whatever," Rebecca said. "You'd pay for it anyway."

Polly chuckled. "Okay, maybe. But let's not hide away. Okay?"

"Okay then. Can we go where I want to go?"

It felt like this was a trap. "Where is that?" Polly asked.

"You aren't going to like it. But it's what I want to do."

Polly bit her lip, paused and waited. When Rebecca didn't continue, she asked, "Where are we going?"

"I want to go to the Springer House again. With you."

"That would be trespassing. It wasn't right when you kids did it and it certainly wouldn't be right for me to do that."

"Can we go and park in front of it? I want to look up at that window and see if the ghost will show up again. Please?"

Polly shook her head. "It's not fair. You look at me with that broken up face and I can't say no. But I want to wait until some of this fog lifts. It's much too spooky to be looking at a haunted house with this kind of weather."

Rebecca's face lit up. "Thank you! You're the best. Can we take your good camera?"

"Sure. We'll take the camera. It would be nice to get some photographs of that house anyway. I can't believe it's still empty. Somebody should fix it up and put it on the market."

"But nobody will buy a haunted house, will they?" Rebecca asked.

"There's no ghost," Polly replied. "There has to be a very real explanation for what people have seen in that house. It's just an old house with a lot of character. If you fix the front porch, put real windows back in, clear up the yard and paint the house, it would be gorgeous."

"If you can put up with an angry ghost," Rebecca said. "Maybe it's never been fixed up because she scared off the workers and nobody will set foot on the land again."

"You never know," Polly said with a shrug. "You never know."

~~~

By noon, most of the fog was gone, but the gloom of the day held on. Dark clouds blanketed the town and the sky looked like it could burst with rain at any moment. Polly smiled as she and Rebecca got in the truck. If there was a good day to check out a haunted house, today was it.

"We aren't trespassing," Polly reminded Rebecca. "We're just looking. Okay?"

Rebecca had found a pair of Polly's old sunglasses. With their immense rims, they covered her black eye and then some. She lifted them up and glared at Polly. "You keep telling me that. I promise to be good."

"Fine then. We're just looking. We aren't going to see anything because there's nothing to see." Polly wasn't sure whether she was reassuring Rebecca or herself.

When she turned on to Beech Street, she saw the big house ahead, foreboding in the gloom. The large overgrown trees were shedding their leaves and the bushes that had obviously been planted for privacy now rose high and sprawled into the yard. Someone had trimmed the outside of the bushes to keep them away from the sidewalk, but they were still out of control. Once-white siding was now grey, dingy and sometimes missing from the walls of the house.

"Polly," Rebecca whispered.

"What?" Polly parked in front of the house across the street from their target.

"More of the boards are gone from the windows upstairs. Do you think other people broke into the house to see if it's really haunted?"

Polly nodded. "Maybe. That's too bad. It would be sad if they got in and destroyed things. But it wouldn't surprise me."

"If there was only a husband and his wife and she lived alone there when he was in the Army, why did they have such a big house? It’s like a mansion."

"Maybe they thought they’d have a big family when he came home," Polly said. "But you're right. It's a mansion."

"Wouldn't it have been awesome to sit in that porch on the second floor in the winter? Especially if all those windows were glass. You could watch the snow come down all around you and still be warm." Rebecca pointed to the solarium. "I'd love to have a big couch out there with lots of pillows and blankets. The dogs would curl up with me and I'd draw." She gasped. "I'd paint there! That would be awesome! I could look out over Bellingwood and see trees and houses and birds. I'd paint them all."

"That
would
be nice," Polly said, enjoying listening to Rebecca ramble.

"Maybe if Andrew and I get married someday, we'll buy this house and hire Henry to fix it up for us." Rebecca stopped herself and gave Polly a surreptitious look. "That's silly, isn't it? I'm too young to think about that."

"You’re never too young to start dreaming about your future," Polly said. "Just don't try to make it happen before the future actually gets here. When I was young, I used to fall asleep picturing my dream house. I had the rooms drawn in my head. I knew where everything was going to be; how the kitchen was laid out, the bedrooms. Everything." She smiled. "One of my dream houses had a giant tree in the middle with a big courtyard. I built the house around that tree. There were covered walkways all around the inside so that animals and bugs couldn't get inside, but it was beautiful. I had a little difficulty imagining the odd shaped rooms, but I made it work."

"How old were you when you did this?"

Polly thought for a moment. "Probably after the first time I went to a dance with a boy. That's when I started thinking about growing up and living on my own." She chuckled. "Of course my future looks nothing like I ever dreamed it would be."

"What happened to that boy? Is he still here? Have you ever seen him again? How long did you date him?"

"Hmm," Polly said thoughtfully. "We went steady for maybe six months." She laughed. "But I look back and it was so sweet and so innocent. We barely ever talked to each other. We never dated, just saw each other at school and then he asked me to go with him to a couple dances."

"Why did you break up?" Rebecca asked.

"I don't even remember," Polly said. She huffed a laugh. "It would have been so important at the time, but I truly have no memory of breaking up. And I only have vague little snippets of memories about us going steady. I haven't seen him since we graduated from high school. I have no idea what he's doing now."

"Do you ever want to see him again?"

Polly looked over at Rebecca. "No. We were never friends. We didn't run in the same crowd and neither of us had any reason to spend time together after junior high. Now it's one of those sweet memories of a life I lived years and years ago. Why are you so curious?"

Rebecca shrugged. "What if that happens to me and Andrew? We quit being friends and then when we graduate from high school we never see each other again." Her face screwed up as if she wanted to cry. "I'd hate that. I don't want to stop being his friend."

"Oh honey," Polly said. "You two have so much in common and you’re good friends now. I was never friends with this boy. I still have no idea why he asked me to that first dance. But I promise, whether or not you and Andrew become close enough to be girlfriend and boyfriend, you’ll never lose your friendship. I'm friends with Sylvie, Jason works at Sycamore House, and Andrew will probably always come to the house after school. Your relationship won’t fall apart."

"Polly look," Rebecca whispered, pointing up to the solarium.

Polly followed Rebecca's finger and said, "I don't see anything. What am I looking for?"

"I just saw something inside."

Polly chuckled. "No way. You're just scaring yourself."

"No," Rebecca protested. "I really did!"

"What did you see?"

Rebecca's continued to speak in a whisper. "I think it was the ghost. It was a girl in a white dress and she was floating."

"She can't hear you clear over here," Polly whispered back.

"But it's creepy. Now do you believe me?"

"I didn't see anything, honey."

"That's because you weren't looking. Quit staring at me and watch the house. I know I saw her."

A tap at Rebecca's car window made both of them jump and squeal. As soon as Polly took a breath, she wound Rebecca's window down to an older gentleman who was dressed in a wool jacket and carrying a Chihuahua.

"Are you girls looking for the Springer ghost?" he asked. "It's a tad early in the day for her."

"You've seen her?" Rebecca asked, her voice filled with awe.

"I know she’s there. That's why Brutus and I walk on this side of the street. No one ever walks in front of that house. She's made it very clear over the years that she doesn't like trespassers. The best time to see her is at dawn. That's when she killed herself, you know. But the poor girl doesn't show up every day. It must be exhausting to never find your eternal rest. I imagine she has to gather her energy so that she can show up when she does."