The Restoration Read online

  Her words were an eerie echo of last night’s dream.

  She is no friend. She is evil.

  But had it been a dream? The wounds on her cheek were all too real.

  “Maybe. The question is, what do we do about it?”

  It was nicer out here, in the garden. In a few short days, Dallas’s hard work had made a noticeable difference, and some perennials that had been strangled by weeds were beginning to thrive again. It was wonderful to let the sun chase the chill out of their bones, and feel actual warmth upon their skin again, but that wasn’t why they were outside.

  Neither of them was comfortable discussing anything of importance in the house, even when far from the speaking tube. The atmosphere of Glenvale had always had weight to it, but it had grown heavier since last night. It felt like someone was forever watching and listening.

  “In the movies, the family always gets a priest.”

  “I think you have to be religious for that, hun.” Terri had been raised by agnostic parents, and had raised Dallas the same. Derek was a lapsed Catholic, so he couldn’t have cared less about religion. It wasn’t like he would muster up the energy to take their daughter to church.

  But Dallas was right; in the movies, the family did always get a priest, and they made it look so easy. One phone call, and a man in black robes appeared, Bible and holy water in hand. She wouldn’t know where to start. Could you drop by any church and tell them your house was haunted? Did every priest know what to do, or was it only special ones? “Besides, I’m not sure Miss Vandermere would approve.”

  “You can’t quit. You’re thinking of quitting, aren’t you?”

  “It’s not safe here. You’ve seen what happened to me.” Terri gestured to her face. “I couldn’t stand it if something like this happened to you.”

  “You always told me not to be a quitter.” The stubborn edge had returned to Dallas’s voice, and the girl shifted to face her. “You told me not to run away from my problems.”

  “That’s true, but I have to protect you. When you’re a mother, you’ll understand.”

  “I’ll never be a mother. Kids suck,” she said, making Terri laugh. “They do. Always needing stuff and asking for things. It would drive me crazy. Anyway, I’m not scared of Niles. He’s an asshole.”

  “Dallas, your language.” But she had to bite her lip to keep from smiling.

  “Well, he is. Look what he did to your face. I’m not afraid anymore. I want to go into that room and tell him exactly what I think of him.”

  “Please don’t,” she said, picturing the snarling creature from the night before. The thought was enough to drive her mad. It hadn’t resembled anything human. Whatever Niles had been during his life, he wasn’t a young man anymore – more like a monster. “It might make things worse.”

  “We need the money, don’t we?” her daughter asked in a sad, scared voice that broke her heart. Terri decided to be honest.

  “We do, but there will be other jobs.”

  “Right away, though? Sometimes it takes you months to find another one.”

  Jesus, this kid got straight to the heart of the problem, didn’t she? She had the makings of a fine financial advisor, or maybe an accountant. “I have some savings. It’ll be okay. If things get really desperate, maybe your dad will help us out.”

  Dallas snorted. “Yeah, like that’s going to happen.”

  She had a point, so Terri didn’t bother arguing. She didn’t have the energy to defend Derek today. It was a strain, always defending the indefensible. “Do you really want to stay? Honestly.”

  As she asked the question, Terri stared up at the house, which towered over them. Overactive imagination or not, Glenvale was forbidding. It wasn’t the type of place that inspired happy thoughts. She wondered if Niles’s death on the premises had forever changed the feel of it.

  A curtain twitched in the attic room, and this time there was a silhouette behind it. Someone was watching them, and it wasn’t a ghost.

  “Dallas, stay here for a sec. I have to go back to the house.”

  “Now? But I didn’t answer your question yet.”

  “Stay here. If you don’t get a signal from me in ten minutes, call 911.”

  “Wait! What kind of signal?”

  “I’ll wave at you if everything’s okay. From that window.” She pointed to the attic room, but the silhouette was gone. Magically, so was the ‘draft’.

  “Are you sure, Mom? You could get hurt.”

  Touched by her daughter’s concern, she spared a second to run her hand over Dallas’s hair. “I’m sure. I’ll be right back.”

  Running for the house, her exhaustion and fear replaced with rage, Terri thought about all the things she planned to do to her unwelcome visitor. The idea of working off some of her stress was so appealing that she managed to pick up speed. She hadn’t run this fast since she was in high school.

  What if it’s locked? she wondered, but apparently Niles wasn’t up to his old tricks today. The front door opened without protest. After thundering up the two flights of stairs, she tried the door to the attic, half expecting it to be locked as well, but no.

  She flung the door open and burst into the room, scanning the surroundings for her target.

  The room had been used for storage, just as Vandermere had told her. It was crammed with drop cloth-covered shapes. Any one of them could have concealed a person. As she seized the cloth closest to her, about to rip it off – rip all of them off – a woman stepped out of the shadows.

  “What’s wrong, Terri? You look upset,” the woman said in an exaggerated singsong. “What happened to your face?”

  “What are you doing here? I said you weren’t welcome.” It was all she could do to keep from striking Gertrude, though she’d never hit another woman in her life. Logically, she knew Gertrude had nothing to do with the events of the night before, but emotionally was another matter. “You know Vandermere doesn’t want you here.”

  “Tough titty said the kitty.” Gertrude laughed.

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean? You need help, Gertrude. You’re not making sense.”

  “It means I’m staying. You’re just the contractor,” the woman said, her tone heavy with disdain. “You can’t make me leave.”

  What was she, twelve? ‘You can’t make me’? Next she’d be double daring her. “Maybe I can’t, but I’m sure the police can.”

  “You’re cute, but I’m not doing anything illegal.”

  “How do you figure? Trespassing on private property is illegal, last time I checked.”

  “They know me here. All the police, everyone knows me.” Her voice changed, rising into a falsetto. “‘Poor Gertrude gave her life to this place, and mean old Henrietta shunted her out. It’s natural she’d get a little confused, poor thing. It was an honest mistake.’”

  While Terri was tempted to write the woman’s words off as delusional, Gertrude was probably right. No one would arrest a white woman for being so confused she’d still reported for work, even though she had been fired. Gertrude was fully aware of her privilege, and she wasn’t afraid to use it. She tried another approach. “You need to move on. This isn’t healthy. You can find another job.”

  “Not until I avenge Niles’s and Emma’s deaths and see Henrietta Vandermere pay for what she’s done.” Gertrude sounded as if she were talking about ice cream and puppies instead of murder.

  “Christ, the woman is a hundred years old! What kind of paying do you expect her to do? Besides, if your theory is right – and that’s a big if – she was a little girl when her siblings died. She shouldn’t be held responsible for what her father did.”

  Gertrude clicked her tongue. “Oh, Terri. You’re so naïve.”

  “I’m naïve? I’m not the one who’s obsessed with an employer who doesn’t want me. Why don’t you spend your time and en
ergy looking for a new job, instead of making it impossible for me to do mine?”

  “I shouldn’t have expected you to understand, but I care about Niles. I couldn’t leave his spirit here forever, wandering these halls and wondering what happened to him. I promised to set him free.” She indicated Terri’s face. “It’s obvious you’ve managed to upset him.”

  “I didn’t do a damn thing to him, but he trashed his room, shattered a priceless lamp, and attacked me. I don’t understand your devotion to him. Dead or not, that kid is a creep.”

  Gertrude put a finger to her lips, her eyes darting this way and that, as if she expected Niles to appear from out of the shadows. Maybe she did. Who the hell knew? Terri only knew she didn’t care. Let him hear. The monster deserved to hear everything she’d said, and so much worse.

  “You need to be careful. Niles can be dangerous if he’s angered.”

  Her warning reminded Terri of the one she’d given her daughter, back when she’d believed Niles was some confused kid in a costume. “I don’t give a fuck about Niles, Gertie.”

  “You should,” the woman said, ignoring Vandermere’s nickname for her. “If this is his first attack, can you imagine what he’ll do next? And what if he goes after your daughter?”

  “You know what? I don’t need this. I don’t need any of this. I restore houses, not sanity. You win – you and Niles can have Glenvale. I’m going to tell Vandermere I quit, which I’m sure will not surprise her, and then you can have the place to yourself.”

  “You don’t understand. I don’t want you to leave. I want to help you.”

  “I don’t give a fuck about you or what you want, either. You’re the one who needs help. You should be finding yourself a good doctor instead of obsessing over this stuff.”

  “Please, Terri – be reasonable. I could tell when we spoke yesterday that you care about this place, and that you love children. I get that Niles attacked you, and I’m not saying that was right, or that you should forgive him. But please try to understand where he’s coming from. That poor fellow was murdered. Don’t you want to help me find justice for him?”

  “That’s not my job. I’m here to restore the house, not help you with your obsession. Whether Niles died from natural causes or was murdered is not my problem. I can’t see how you would prove it, anyway.”

  “There has to be evidence in the house. Don’t you see? If there weren’t, Vandermere wouldn’t have fired me. She could see I was close to finding something, so she took my key and sent me away. She wouldn’t have done that if there was nothing to find.”

  Wow, talk about delusional. “Maybe she sent you away because you were so obsessed over this so-called mystery that you weren’t doing your actual job. Did you consider that?”

  “That isn’t true. I was an excellent employee. You said it yourself – when Miss Vandermere spoke of me, it was of how dedicated I was. Any investigating I did, I did when I was off the clock. And I was open about it at first, until she started getting defensive.”

  “And what, you think that indicates guilt?” Terri asked, incredulous. “I think most people would be defensive if someone started accusing their dead father of doing horrible things – the most horrible thing. Howard isn’t around to defend himself any longer, so that responsibility falls to his daughter.”

  “You don’t understand,” Gertrude said again, looking weary. “She wasn’t just defensive, she was threatening.”

  “That’s to be expected too. The Vandermeres are an important family. She can’t have you nosing about, trying to ruin their reputation with your half-baked theories.”

  “They aren’t half baked, Terri. I promise you they aren’t.”

  Terri shrugged. She didn’t care anymore, and she no longer had the inclination or energy to punch Gertrude in the nose. The poor woman was mentally ill, obsessed like Vandermere had told her. She needed help, not recriminations, but Terri wasn’t the one who could give it to her. “Well, good luck with that. But if you manage to move past this, think about what you’re doing to an old woman who’s at the end of her life. Niles is dead, but Henrietta is alive…for now. Why torture her this way?”

  Pushing past Gertrude, she pulled aside the lace curtain. Dallas still waited on the bench far below, her pale face turned upward. Terri waved, and her daughter waved back. Good. No sense getting the police involved. Terri went to leave.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I told you – I’m going to give Vandermere my resignation, and then I’m going to pack up our stuff and leave. You’ll have the place to yourself again in an hour or less, depending on how my call with her goes. But I’m going to have to tell her you’re here. She deserves to know why I’m leaving.”

  “What if there was a way for you to successfully restore this house, and get the money you were promised? Without having to worry about Niles or any of this other stuff?”

  It was a nice thought, but Terri didn’t think she had it in her anymore. The money would have been nice, but Dallas was smart enough to succeed without it. She would earn scholarships to help pay for college. Nothing was worth this much aggravation, especially money.

  “It’s too late for that. We’re leaving.”

  “How can you say it’s too late? You’ve only been here a few weeks.”

  “You have no idea how long those few weeks have been.”

  “Give me a chance, Terri. If it doesn’t work out, you won’t have lost anything, except maybe some time. But imagine if it does work out.”

  “Time, and the other half of my face.”

  “Oh no, nothing like that will happen again. I give you my word.”

  “How much is your word possibly worth, Gertrude?”

  “It’s the only thing I’ve got left, so I’d say it’s worth a lot. But you have to trust me.”

  It was a tall order, but deep inside Terri, a tiny spark of hope had flared. She did love this house; the deranged occupants were not its fault. She did want to restore it. And she wasn’t a quitter. She wanted to make her daughter proud. If Gertrude could somehow keep Niles from tormenting them while she finished the work, the aggravation she’d suffered would all be worth it.

  “If that were possible – and I’m not saying it is – what about Vandermere? You’re not supposed to be anywhere near Glenvale. If she finds out you’re staying here, she’ll fire me anyway.”

  “You were going to quit, right? Sounds to me like you’ve got nothing to lose.”

  “I don’t feel good about this.” It was true; she didn’t. She’d never deceived a client before. “What exactly is your plan? What are you going to do?”

  “You’ll see,” Gertrude said, and grinned. “Trust me.”

  Chapter Ten

  “Can you keep a secret?” Terri asked.

  Dallas’s expression was comically serious as she nodded. She made a zipping motion across her mouth.

  “I’m not sure this is the right thing to do, so feel free to tell me if you think it’s crazy. Do you remember that woman who spoke to you in the garden yesterday?”

  “Gertrude? She’s going to be staying with us, right?”

  Terri was well aware of how smart her daughter was, but sometimes it unnerved her how quickly Dallas figured things out. She was always two steps ahead – at least two steps. “How did you know?”

  “Niles told me. He’s really excited and happy about it. And he says he’s sorry about what happened last night.” Seeing the fear that must have crossed Terri’s face, she added, “But don’t worry. I told him there was no excuse for his behavior and that we would not be forgiving him.”

  “He’s still talking to you? When?”

  “When I was unpacking the rest of my things in his sister’s room. He’s lonely, Mom. He can get as mad as he wants, but he never stays away for long.”

  The idea of her daughter conversing with that�
��that thing from the night before was enough to give her hives. “Are you sure Emma’s room is the best one? That could be what’s attracting him. If you stayed in Henrietta’s old room, I bet he wouldn’t bother you.”

  “That’s okay. I don’t mind. I think Emma was cool, and I like the stories he tells about her.”

  When her daughter was an infant, Terri had braced herself for the difficult years ahead. The rebellious years, the pulling away Dallas would inevitably do before they could come back together again. She’d expected her daughter would have friends she didn’t agree with, people she couldn’t stand. But never in a million years had she imagined that friend would be a ghost.

  “I don’t think you should talk to him, Dallas. He’s not safe.” She pointed at her wounded cheek. “I don’t want this to happen to you.”

  “It won’t. He wants to be my friend, and he understands that if he did anything like that to me, I’d never speak to him ever again.”

  “Still, I want you to avoid him as much as possible, okay?”

  “Okay. He doesn’t bother me when I’m in the garden, only when I’m in the house.”

  Terri took a deep breath, trying to collect her thoughts. All she wanted to do was focus on her work without worrying about the dead. Was that so much to ask? “Are you all right with Gertrude staying with us?”

  “Sure. Niles – sorry – well, he says she knows more about the house and his family than anyone else. He says she even knows more than Henrietta because of the things he’s shown her. I think she’ll be able to help you with the restoration. And if she keeps Niles happy, that’s good too.”

  “You’re absolutely positive?” Part of her had hoped Dallas would give her a reason to tell Gertrude she couldn’t stay. There was something off about the woman, and Terri didn’t think she’d ever feel truly comfortable around her. How could you feel comfortable around a woman who enjoyed talking to ghosts? “This was supposed to be our summer together, and I don’t want you to feel that’s changed. Gertrude is going to be doing her own work in the house. We’ll probably hardly see her.”