She hefted her backpack to her shoulder, trained the dim light in front of her and left the door open in case she encountered something or someone she’d rather not meet.
Entering the formal living room, she quickly swept the light around the perimeter. Nothing moved—but the familiarity of the place evoked bittersweet memories. As bad as her childhood had been, she’d been truly happy for a few short months while living in this house. Especially that first Christmas after her mother had married Morris.
In the dark, cobwebby corner to her left, she could easily imagine the splendid tree that had once stood there, proudly bearing a thousand twinkling lights and an abundance of shiny gold balls. That was the first time her family had possessed enough money to buy a tree any taller than a token three or four feet. And to have it flocked with fake snow and decorated so elegantly was really an extravagance. Every year since she’d become an adult, Lucky bought as big a tree as her current abode would allow and always flocked it, on principle. But she’d been living off the money she’d inherited from Morris, which was barely enough to get by on, since she gave most of it away. In order to keep traveling, she’d had to cut down on expenses. The places she’d been renting, for a few months here and six weeks there, had low ceilings and generally weren’t the nicest. Which meant she’d never been able to duplicate the opulence of that damn tree.
She wrinkled her nose at the musty smell and glanced back at the open door before moving deeper into the house. The moonlight filtered through the bare, thick-paned windows, painting silver squares on the hardwood floor and, together with the faint beam of her flashlight, made it possible for her to see.
The Georgian-style staircase rose up in front of her. A large office with double doors jutted off to the right, along with what used to be an impressive library. Lucky waved a cobweb out of her way and poked her head into the library, then the office, relieved to find them both vacant of scurrying animals and—thank God—anything larger.
She continued her search, pausing to listen carefully here and there, until she reached the kitchen and family room. Situated at the back of the house, they were more like one big room with floor-to-ceiling windows that curved into a semi-circle and looked out over the pond at the bottom of the hill.
Unfortunately, most of the windows at the back were broken now. Bending to retrieve a small rock lying among the glittering shards of glass on the old stone floor, Lucky tossed it up and caught it again. So much had changed. Morris was dead. Her mother, too. Her brothers, Sean and Kyle, who were both older than she was, had sold the land they’d inherited and moved elsewhere. But the feeling of being unwelcome here, the resentment of this small community, seemed to linger.
Lucky threw the rock away and watched it skitter across the floor. So much for the hope that coming back would be easier than she’d anticipated. Owning a house didn’t make it a home.
Considering the state of the Victorian, she wondered whether she should sleep in her car. A metallic blue ’64 Mustang, it was fully restored and beautiful. But sitting out in her car would be as cramped as it was cold. She’d be better off inside. Despite the creepy feel of the place, she hadn’t seen anything more threatening than a few spiderwebs. Discarded trash here and there indicated that others had been inside the house since it had been closed up, but nothing showed recent activity.
Her tension easing, Lucky delved into her backpack and retrieved her supplies. Ten tall fragrant candles. Three fire-starter logs. Matches. A jug of water. Trail mix. And barbecue-flavored sunflower seeds. Her suitcase, cleaning supplies and bedding were still out in the car.
With its stone floor and broken windows, the kitchen was colder than the front of the house. But the family room portion had a wood-burning stove and provided the most natural light. Come morning, Lucky planned to make the place livable. For now—she blew on her hands to warm them—she just needed to get through the next six or seven hours.
She lit the candles, then arranged them on the marble countertop. They created a dim, ethereal glow and gave off a comforting scent that helped dispel the dank odor of neglect. Building a fire didn’t take long, either, thanks to the starter logs. When Lucky was a senior in high school and Morris had divorced her mother and moved back in with his first wife, across town, where he’d lived the final few months of his life, Red had stripped the place bare. She took everything of value down to the drapes, the stained-glass window on the second-floor landing, even the expensive knobs on the cupboards. But, thankfully, she hadn’t bothered carting off the wood by the stove. Lucky used the last of the split logs to build up her fire, welcoming the infusion of heat and hoping it would last for a few hours. Then she moved gingerly back, her feet crunching over the broken glass from the windows, which was thickest by the stove, to watch the smoldering orange flames catch and grow.
The fire seemed symbolic somehow—her first step, a beginning. But the settling noises of the old house reminded her that she still needed to explore the upstairs, just to be sure she was as alone as she thought she was.
After tapping her failing flashlight, to no avail, she went outside to collect the sack she’d placed in the backseat of her car. She replaced the batteries, left the front door standing open again for reassurance, and climbed the stairs to the five bedrooms and three bathrooms she knew she’d find there.
A dark spot on the landing showed water damage. Clearly, the wind and rain had pushed through a tear in the plastic her mother had used to cover the hole when she took the stained-glass window. Lucky frowned at the stain, disappointed that she hadn’t stood up to Red that day. Red hadn’t had any real use for the window. She’d stuck it in a closet of the mobile home she’d moved into when she remarried.
But Lucky wasn’t sure, even now, that it would’ve done any good to fight her mother. Red had been determined to take absolutely everything she could loosely interpret as “furniture”—because that was all she’d been awarded in the divorce, and she wasn’t happy that ten years of marriage to one of Dundee’s wealthiest old ranchers hadn’t netted her more.
The door downstairs slammed shut, and Lucky bit back a startled scream.
“Hello?” she called, pressing a hand to her chest.
All she heard was the keening of the wind through the eaves outside.
She gripped the flashlight more tightly, her heart pounding as she listened for footsteps. She heard nothing but couldn’t help imagining ghosts. She certainly wouldn’t blame Morris if he’d decided to stick around and haunt this old place. After everything he’d done for her mother, for the whole family, he’d been treated pretty shabbily in the end. It had been his first wife who’d come through and nursed him once his health turned.
But Morris had been a good man. Certainly he had better things to do in the afterlife, Lucky thought wryly. Chances were far greater that Red would be the one rattling chains and roaming the grounds….
“There’s not much left here, Mother,” she muttered as chills rolled down her spine. “You took everything except the Sheetrock and the two-by-fours.”
Silence settled on the house like a fresh layer of dust as Lucky leaned over the banister and shone her flashlight into the corners below. She saw bird droppings, an old rug that looked as if it had been chewed on one end, a broken chair. Lucky’s brothers, who’d stayed in Dundee a little longer than she had, once told her that Morris had never returned to the place or fixed it up after Red moved out—and they were obviously right.
Finding nothing of particular concern, Lucky walked slowly on, still apprehensive as the plastic flapped noisily behind her.
She discovered bed rails in two of the bedrooms, an old mattress with no bed rails in a third. The master had a large sitting area, which had been lovely. But the mirrored doors on the closets and the mirror over the vanity were now cracked. Graffiti covered the walls. Bitch! Whore! Killer! May you rot in hell!
A searing pain in Lucky’s