Chapter 8

Four Days Earlier

Cliffs towered above them to the left and dropped away on the right. Jules tapped a nervous rhythm on the steering wheel, hating that she was going twenty-five miles under the speed limit because the curvy mountain road into town completely freaked her out. At least the sun was high in the sky, so everything was well lit. Vaguely, Jules recognized that the view was beautiful, the craggy mountains surrounding them furred with evergreens and aspens until the bare, blue-gray peaks poked out above the tree line. She couldn’t really appreciate the scenery, though. All she could do was concentrate on not driving her family off a cliff. Four or five cars were stacked up behind them, so Jules steered into a pullout and stopped to let them pass before entering the westbound lane again. To add to her humiliation, one of the vehicles that passed her was an extra-long RV. Another was a semi.

Ty snorted. “You’re driving even slower than—”

“I know, Ty. Thanks,” she interrupted, trying not to snap. Her sleepless night and driving marathon, capped by this treacherous mountain road, had drained her reservoir of good-natured comebacks and robbed her of her patience. Once she passed through a gap in the rocks barely wide enough for the two-lane road, houses and shops appeared, and the speed limit dropped to a much more tolerable twenty.

The kids were quiet as they looked around. “It’s small,” Ty said in a neutral voice.

Silence filled the SUV until Jules asked, “Is small good or bad?”

There was a silence as they considered the question. “I haven’t decided yet,” Tio finally said, and the others made sounds of agreement.

“Fair enough.” Jules was too tired and, at the same time, too wired to have any kind of first impression of their new town. “Sam, could you be my navigator?”

Sam picked up the handwritten directions. “T-turn right on B-B-Bridesw-well.”

“We passed Brideswell several blocks ago,” Tio said.

With a sigh, Jules flipped her turn signal so she could go around the block and head back toward Brideswell. She was pretty sure this road trip would never end.

After that first false start, the directions were clear, and they found the right street number attached to a crooked mailbox. The deeply rutted driveway seemed to go on forever, twisting this way and that, the pine branches reaching out to brush against the Pathfinder. The closeness of the evergreens dimmed the sunny morning, and Jules’s simmering anxiety rose to a boil.

As she turned left, avoiding exposed tree roots and rocks that threatened to grab the tires, the trees thinned, and the house came into view. The place had been white a long, long time ago, but all the exterior paint had faded to a wind-stripped gray. The front porch looked a little cockeyed, and the area in front of the house resembled a sparse hayfield rather than a lawn. A small, lopsided barn stood a short distance from the house.

Dee sucked in a breath. “There’s a barn, Jules. Can I get a horse?”

“Uh…” The question barely penetrated as she tried to take in the huge amount of work the house would require. Going from a shoebox of an apartment to this…there was no way. She wasn’t handy enough for this house.

“Can I?” Judging from the increased excitement in her little sister’s voice, she’d taken Jules’s hesitation for actual consideration.

“Let’s try to keep ourselves alive for a while, Dee, before we start adding dependents, okay?” Parking in front of the sagging porch, Jules braced herself and got out. It was warm but dry—nothing like Florida had been. She slapped at a stray fly, managing to smack her own ear but missing the bug. As her siblings piled out of the SUV, she circled to the rear hatch. Movement helped. If she’d stood staring at the wreck of a house, she would’ve sat on the ground and burst into tears.

Tossing the computer bag strap over her shoulder, she passed the backpacks to their rightful owners, the weight of Tio’s bag almost taking her down. Sam reached past her to grab her suitcase, and she gave him a smile of thanks.

“I thought you said no computers.” Ty frowned at the case resting against her hip.

“This is just the bag,” Jules explained. “And instead of a laptop, it holds all our brand-new paperwork, plus”—she dug out a key ring and dangled it in front of him—“the house keys.”

Ty snatched the keys from her hand and ran to the porch steps, Tio close behind.

“Careful!” she called out, cringing as their shoes clomped noisily on the aged wood. “That doesn’t look too stable.” To her surprise, neither boy fell through the porch floor as they grappled to see who would be first inside the house. After watching to make sure the porch could hold her brothers, Dee made her careful way up the steps after them.

Sam kept pace with Jules, and she turned to him with a smile that was only partially forced. Dilapidated as it was, the house was theirs—hers and her family’s. This had always been her dream, and she wasn’t going to let a few loose shingles ruin the moment. “Ready to see the inside?”

His doubtful look was enough to make her laugh. Always-conscientious Dee had closed the door behind her when she entered the house, so Jules grabbed the doorknob. Straightening her shoulders, she patted the laptop bag holding their new identities and pushed open the door. The interior was dim after the bright, late-morning sunshine, and the kids’ excited voices echoed off the walls deep inside the house.

Taking a long, slow breath, Jules stepped into their new life.

The house was a wreck—and yet gorgeous at the same time. Jules took a step farther into the entry and tripped when her toe caught on an uneven floorboard. Unbalanced, she grabbed the ornate railing that edged the staircase, steadying herself. Voices and alarmingly loud squeaks from overhead told Jules that the three younger kids had made their way upstairs.

The dated wallpaper was peeling and gouged in spots, revealing sections of an even-more-dated pattern. Cobwebs and dust covered every surface, and dead leaves and corpses of miller moths were piled in corners. Through a wide, arched doorway, she could see what was most likely a living room, although the age of the house made her want to refer to it as a parlor. Living rooms were in modern homes, places for televisions and wall-to-wall carpet. This looked more like a room where they’d gather around the fireplace and knit.

Jules snorted. She’d never held knitting needles in her life. Glancing at her brother’s impassive face, she quickly sobered. “What do you think, Sam-I-Am?”

Instead of answering, he made his way down the hall, silently glancing through doorways as they passed a wood-paneled, shelf-lined room that Jules mentally dubbed “the library,” a bathroom with an honest-to-God claw-foot tub, and a room she assumed was the dining room, judging by its proximity to the kitchen.

She followed Sam into the expansive room that bore no resemblance to her apartment’s tiny galley kitchen. There were numerous cupboards, although several of the doors were hanging cockeyed or missing altogether. To her relief, the appliances, as ancient as they appeared, did not require firewood or hand cranking or whatever else century-old appliances had needed to operate. The room was large enough to hold a good-sized table and chairs.

Her attention left the worn counters as she focused on Sam. “We can fix it up.” Pushing away the doubting voices in her head that were screaming at her, telling her that she had no clue how to even start, Jules tried to fake optimism. “A little paint, some…um, nails? It’ll be like…well, maybe not new exactly, but better. Definitely better.”

“JuJu.” To her surprise, the corners of Sam’s mouth were twitching up again. “It’s p-perfect.”

No amount of fake cheer could keep her forehead from wrinkling in confusion as she glanced around the battered kitchen. “Perfect?”

“Yeah.” His smile grew, loosening the permanent knot in her stomach just a little. “Come on. We’d b-b-better get upst-st-st…up there b-before the kids claim the g-g-good b-bedrooms.”

She couldn’t stop herself. Rushing forward, she caught her brother in a hug. As soon as she felt him stiffen in her hold, she released him. “You’re the best, Sam-I-Am.”

His face flushed, he motioned her toward the hallway. “Yeah, yeah.”

There really were no “good” bedrooms. The upstairs was chopped into oddly shaped spaces with no apparent rhyme or reason. Several had slanted ceilings following the angle of the roof, creating areas where Jules, as petite as she was, couldn’t even stand upright. What they lacked in quality and size, however, they made up for in quantity. She counted six rooms—but no second-floor bathrooms, to her dismay. Sam followed the twins’ voices down the hall, disappearing into one room as Dee popped out of another and ran toward Jules.

“Jules,” Dee breathed, her face glowing. “There’s another upstairs. And you know how you get there?”

“How?”

“A secret staircase!” Her dramatic whisper increased to a shriek by the end. Grabbing Jules’s hand, Dee hauled her to what appeared to be a linen closet. When Dee yanked open the door, an impossibly narrow stairway was revealed. “See?”

“I see.” Jules peered through the gloom that covered all but the bottom few steps. A shiver ran through her as she thought of all the things that could be lurking in the ancient attic—mice and bats and skeletons. Possibly serial killers. She fumbled just inside the doorframe. “Is there a light switch?” If not, there was no way she was squeezing herself into that narrow, dark space.

“Is there electricity?” Tio’s voice asked from behind them.

Jules turned to look at him. “Do you mean ‘is the electricity turned on’ or ‘is there any electrical wiring in this house’?”

“There’s electricity,” Dee answered for him as she reached to where Jules had been fumbling before. “See? It’s buttons, though, not switches.” The skinny staircase was illuminated by the harsh yet dim glare of a bare bulb. Jules exhaled with relief. At least there was power in this old wreck of a house. Dennis must be paying the bill. Would he expect her to change the bill over to her name? If so, it’d be the first test of her fake identity. Her throat felt like it was closing. Reaching up, she tugged at the V-neck of her shirt and coughed, trying to clear the imaginary impediment.

“W-what’s wr-wr-wr…” Sam’s huff of an exhale was short and impatient. “W-what’s the matter?”

Too late, she dropped her hand to her side. “Nothing.”

He just gave her a look and waited silently. Ty joined them, and all her siblings grew solemn as they watched her.

“Nothing,” she said with more force. “I’m just thinking of everything we need to do to make this place livable.”

“Beds,” Ty said. Jules held back a cringe. She hadn’t even thought about that.

“A TV.” That was Dee’s contribution.

“D-dishes.”

“A computer. Oh, and Internet.”

That’d be another test of her identity—and more monthly bills.

“Food.” Ty’s voice held the same longing that Tio’s had when he’d mentioned the computer. “Soon, please. I’m starving.”

“A horse.”

She rolled her eyes at the last offering, trying to fight down her panic. After paying for their new identities, Jules had very limited funds to set up a household of five—four of whom were still growing out of their clothes. Her initial impression of the house was that it would take an enormous influx of cash just to keep it from falling down on top of them.

As if to underscore her growing anxiety, a heavy rumble of thunder echoed through the house. Jules shot a nervous look at the ceiling. If the roof was weather-worthy, she’d be shocked.

“C’mon, Jules,” Dee urged, tugging on her hand. “Let’s look upstairs.”

Deciding that whatever lurked in the attic couldn’t be worse than the worries that were multiplying in her mind, she allowed her sister to pull her up the narrow stairs. Each one creaked worse than the one before, and Jules’s stomach lurched with every step. She expected to fall through the ancient treads at any second, and she clutched Dee’s hand a little harder. The heavy clomping of the boys’ feet behind them made her cringe.

As they passed through a door at the top of the stairs, she exhaled for the first time since they’d started ascending. Her relief at not falling to her death made her slow to take in her surroundings at first. When she finally looked around, Jules blinked in surprise.

She’d been expecting an unfinished, dirty attic, but the room—although definitely needing a good cleaning—reminded her more of an artist’s studio than a storage space. A stained-glass window set in the triangular east wall lit the space with muted colors.

“Wow.”

“I know!” Dee was practically dancing in excitement. “Isn’t it the best? If I hadn’t already picked the elf room, I’d totally want this room.”

“Hey, there’s stuff over here,” Ty called from across the space. He’d opened a short door set in the wall and was pulling things out of the storage space. Dee ran over, and Tio joined them more leisurely.

“Elf room?” Jules repeated absently, watching Ty drag out an antique-looking trunk and a globe. She wondered how out-of-date it was, with no-longer-existing country borders and names. It might be a good history lesson, at least.

“Ju-Ju?”

Sam’s serious tone made her focus on him. “What is it?”

“I w-want it. P-p-please.”

It took her a second to realize he meant the attic, rather than the old globe. She’d already mentally assigned the room to Ty and Tio, since they’d always refused to be put in separate rooms, and she wasn’t sure if there was a room on the second floor that would fit both of them. A single glance at Sam’s tight expression and clenched fists was enough to immediately change her mind. “Okay.”

For a long moment, he watched her warily, studying her face as if to make sure she was serious. Eventually, his shoulders relaxed slightly. “Thanks.”

“It’s going to be freezing in the winter and broiling in the summer, you know,” she warned.

His almost-there smile was back. “I kn-know.”

“I have no idea how we’ll get a mattress up those steps.” The thought reminded her of all the things they would need to get that day. Thunder, louder than before, crashed, sounding as if it was right above them. In the crackling silence following the boom, there was the tinny sound of a doorbell.

They all froze—none of them even breathing—until lightning lit up her siblings’ faces, the stark light emphasizing the terror in their expressions. The sight reminded Jules that she was the responsible one now, the one who had to pretend not to be scared out of her mind that the cops were at the door, ready to break in and grab the kids, to drop them back into Courtney’s clutches.

The horror of that thought snapped Jules out of her temporary paralysis. “Everyone stay up here. No, wait.” There were no exits on the third floor. Jules made a frantic mental note to install some way to escape from the attic in the near future.

If she was hauled off to jail right now, though, that wouldn’t be necessary.

Wrestling her panicked thoughts back under control, she took a deep breath and let it out in a shuddering exhale. “Okay. Head for the kitchen and out the back door to the barn. Y’all can hide in there—or behind there, if it looks like it’s going to fall down on your heads.” She met Sam’s frantic gaze and tried to force a smile. “Maybe it’s just the welcome wagon.”

The doorbell rang again, longer and more insistently that time, and Jules started down the narrow stairs, her heartbeat hammering in her ears. The kids followed her, their tentative footsteps a heartbreaking contrast to the pounding joy they’d shown running up them just minutes earlier.

Did I do the wrong thing? Jules wondered as her teeth found a raw spot on the inside of her lip. The physical sting wasn’t as painful as the rush of guilt. She’d taken her siblings from a life of affluence, and in exchange, forced them to live in fear, always hiding, always having to look over their shoulders.

“I don’t want to go back,” Dee said in a tiny voice as they descended the stairs to the main level.

“You won’t.” The resolute way Sam said the words, without a stutter, erased Jules’s doubts. Courtney might’ve been able to give them material things, but they’d have a better life with Jules, even if it was a life on the run.

At the base of the stairs, Jules turned toward the front door and then paused, looking sternly over her shoulder at the scared-looking group. “Whatever happens, you stay hidden. Got it?”

The younger three nodded, looking worried, but Sam sent her a tight-lipped frown that promised nothing. The doorbell rang for the third time, and she waved them toward the kitchen. Only when they disappeared through the doorway did she start to walk toward the front door, each step slower than the one before it.

The dirty, stained-glass panel running the height of the door revealed just the vaguest of outlines. Jules could tell that whoever was out there was big—very, very big. She hoped the dim interior of the house hid her from whatever giant lurked on the porch, waiting for her to answer.

Taking a deep breath, she let it out as she stretched up onto her tiptoes so she could see out of the peephole. Jules blinked, her lashes brushing the door, and the figure on the porch came into wide-angle focus.

She stopped breathing, stopped thinking. All she could do was stare. The cops were here. She’d barely gotten the kids to their new home, and she’d already failed her siblings. Her knees went watery, and her vision was strange, putting a gray film over everything, including the officer’s nightmarish face, distorted by the peephole glass.

The world rocked a little, and she had to take a step back to catch her balance, cutting off her view of the cop.

This is it, she thought. Nausea flooded her, and she swallowed hard. Her brain spun with images of jail and the kids going back to Courtney…

No. The complete unacceptability of the idea cleared Jules’s mind. There was no way she was going to allow that.

A heavy fist landed on the wood of the door, pounding several times, startling Jules and sending her skittering backward. Her heels hit the bottom stair, knocking her off balance so she sat heavily on one of the steps. As her heart pounded in her ears, Jules gripped the banister spindle and tried to think.

Should she reveal herself, walk outside and accept her fate, allowing Sam and the kids time to escape? Or should she not answer, delaying the inevitable? If she was arrested, Jules doubted the kids would run. Well, they probably would run—right toward her, trying to defend their sister.

She’d keep quiet then, ignoring the knocking and the doorbell. It might not give them much time, but maybe Dennis could find them somewhere else, somewhere that was actually safe, somewhere the cops weren’t at her door within minutes of her and the kids’ arrival.

The thumps on the door stopped, and Jules held her breath. Was the cop leaving, or was he just going to get reinforcements? The shadow behind the glass shrank and then disappeared altogether. Jules stayed frozen, waiting for the next step—more footsteps on the porch, a voice from a megaphone telling her to surrender, the door splintering after a hit from a battering ram.

Instead, there was silence. For several long, long moments, all Jules could hear was the rasp of her anxious breaths. Then, there was the rough roar of a diesel engine turning over.

Confusion knotted her eyebrows. That didn’t sound like a squad car, or even a squad SUV. That was a truck—a big one. Pushing off the stairs, she took quiet, cautious steps to the door. The figure was gone, but a large object remained on the porch. Squinting, she tried to make it out, but the peephole didn’t give her a good-enough view.

Biting the inside of her lip, she slowly, soundlessly turned the lock and opened the door a crack. Jules peered out just in time to see the rear of a florist’s box truck trundling down the driveway. Her gaze dropped to the object on the porch. It was a potted plant, wrapped in a bow with a card attached.

Her laugh rang out, and she clapped her hand over her mouth to mute the sound. Flowers. What she’d thought was a cop had actually been a delivery driver, complete with dark-blue uniform. Her heart drummed against her ribs with residual adrenaline, and she couldn’t stop laughing into her muffling hand.

The delivery truck rounded a bend and disappeared from view. Still feeling spooked, Jules opened the door just wide enough to grab the pot. Once she’d secured the front door behind her, she brought the plant into the kitchen and opened the attached card with shaking fingers. Irrationally, she half-expected the flowers to be from Courtney, a sort of I’ve-got-you kind of mind game. When she saw what was written in the card, Jules’s lungs finally relaxed enough for her to take a breath.

Welcome to your new life. —Dennis