Page 42 of For Love & Torture
Using our old ritual, I extend my pinky finger. “I pinky promise that I will not laugh at a word you say, Jenny.”
She wraps her pinky around mine and it’s just like old times again. Somehow.
“Grant, since I’ve been alone a lot at the house we all grew up in, I’ve been experiencing things. Eerie things.” Her eyes dart to one side as if she’s just seen something out of the corner of her vision.
“Eerie things? At Mom and Dad’s house?” I shake my head, as that house has been in my dreams—or nightmares, rather—for far too long. And now she’s experiencing eerie things too? It’s all more than merely coincidental and I can feel the electricity in the air. “Like what, Jenny?”
“Like dark shadows that dart around at times. And things are moved around, too. I put a sponge down on the kitchen table and walked out of the room for only a second. When I came back in, I went to grab it and it was gone. Like it had utterly vanished.” She chews her lower lip nervously. “Later I found it in the oddest place.”
“Where did you find it?” I ask, thinking she probably didn’t realize she carried it with her somewhere, instead of actually putting it down on the table. Her thoughts must’ve been preoccupied with thoughts of her marital problems.
Gulping, I can tell she’s very uneasy with telling me this, or even thinking about it. “It was in Mom’s closet in their bedroom. Not that I was digging through her closet or anything like that. I heard something upstairs—a banging sound—and I hurried up there and found the door to their bedroom was standing wide open. I knew it had been closed before. So I grabbed a baseball bat out of your old bedroom and headed to find what I thought might be an intruder.”
“And what did you find, Jenny?” I ask as I look closely at her face, which had gone a bit pale.
Shaking her head, she goes on, “Grant, I went into their bedroom and found Mom’s closet door was wide open. Dad’s was closed and nothing in the room had been disturbed. I went to close the closet door and saw the light green sponge lying on top of one of Mom’s shoes.”
“No way,” I whisper. “What did you do then?”
“I screamed as if I’d seen a monster in that closet instead of a cheap sponge, and I hauled ass is what I did.” She laughs a little. “I drove straight home to get my husband to go back with me, because in my panic, I left the front door unlocked and I wasn’t even sure if I closed the damn thing.”
“And when you went back?” I ask her.
Shaking her head, she looks shaken. “When I went back—alone because he wouldn’t go with me—I found the door was closed, and locked. And when I went inside, I found every light was on in the house. So I called Jake and asked him to come over. He did and we went through the entire house, finding nothing missing and we turned everything off again, closed all the doors and left.”
“Have you gone back after that?” I have to ask because I know I wouldn’t have.
“Like I said, my marriage is rocky and uncomfortable, so I have gone back over there.” Her eyes cloud with tears. “Grant, Mom’s there and she wants to talk to you. I don’t know how I even know that. But I do. I believe it with everything I have in me. She wants you to go to that house so she can tell you something. Something important. You see, I’ve heard her call out your name on three separate occasions. As if she’s calling out to you, like she’s trying to find you.”
That cannot happen. I can’t do it. I can’t.
I sit and look at the ground, which looks to be moving back and forth slowly, but it’s me who’s moving. So many nightmares, so many bad feelings about that house. And she wants me to go there and do what? Perform some kind of a séance?
My silence spurs my sister on, “Grant, I know you’re scared.”
Scared?
Am I?
“I think you misunderstand my silence.” I look at her, instead of the ground. “I’ve had a lot of bad feelings about that house. I’m not scared, just uncomfortable with the idea of going there and trying to communicate with our dead mother.”
With a shake of her head, Jenny tells me something else, “Grant, I have this overwhelming feeling that Dad is innocent. I can’t shake it. And I know you don’t know this, but I was actively against Dad at first. This feeling is new for me. Please, help Dad, Grant. I think you’re the only one who can.”
I’m the only one who can help Dad?
Do I want to do that?
My father and I were close once. It was that closeness that had me hurting so much when I thought of him hurting my mother. A woman he loved so much it didn’t seem possible.
“Jenny, I’ve heard Mom’s voice now and then since about a year after she died. And I’ve pushed it out of my head each and every time. I’m not sure I can communicate with her.” I kick the dirt as I think it would be of no use for me to go to the house.
Jenny’s hand touches mine. “Grant, please. At the house, things might be easier for you. And we’ll all be there to support you too. Grant, we all need you for this. Mom needs you and Dad needs you—you’re the key to making things as right as they can be once again. Please, big brother. Please don’t let our family completely die. Don’t let your stony heart end our family for good. Please.”
Blinking, I find myself stunned that she called my heart stony. I mean I knew it was sheltered. But stony?
That made me sound so inhuman. Like some monster who goes through its life without a care for anyone other than himself. I care for others. Don’t I?
My fear of Isabel being hurt by that man has me keeping her at my home even though she’s mad at me. Even though she’s giving me the cold shoulder, I still care about her and won’t let her leave yet.
