Chapter 10

Visibly trembling, Grandma stood at the top of the stairs. “She’s here, Annie. She’s waiting.”

Annie crossed her arms as if to protect herself. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“The woman in the water. She saw her husband off in the boat. She saw you, Annie, and now she’s here. In this house. She’s back.”

Back? From where? From Annie’s vivid imagination? She pushed away the mental picture of the woman with cold eyes, staring at her as a dream, a vision of a muddled mind.

“No, Grandma. You’re wrong,” she said, because she had to. Because thinking anything else led to a madness from which she might never return.

Grandma paled as if she had been bleached. Alertness left her eyes and turned them empty again. She tottered on weak legs, tried to turn away, and loosened her grip on the balcony as her knees wobbled and gave.

“No!” Her feet propelled her up the steps in twos then threes.

The old woman slumped to the landing and slid forward. In seconds she would plummet, to the bottom steps in the foyer and a broken neck.

Grandma’s dead weight shifted her body, twisted it in an angle that dropped her down another step. Her necklace broke, scattering bright, luminous pearls that bounced the length of the stairwell in tones like that of a fragile wind chime touched by a light breeze. Some pearls rolled off the edge and fell to the first floor far below.

Annie tried to scream but found no voice as she leaped across the middle landing, scraped her arm against the full-length mirror with the turn, and stumbled over a handful of pearls.

Hold on, sweetheart. Annie’s coming. Just another second.

Her legs ached, muscles strained and pulled, her breathing came in painful gasps.

Grandma’s shoulders leaned forward, bumped against the banister, and fell back.

Another few steps and Annie would be there.

One more and it would be over.

She dove at the old woman, caught her before the last slide that would have ended on the hard floor below. Threw her back against the stairs. Annie wrapped Grandma in her arms, held her tight then rocked her back and forth. Her ragged breath turned to uncontrolled, relieved sobbing combined with fear of what could have been.

Grandma’s soft hand patted her arm reassuringly. “It’s all right, Annie. We can make some more pudding. I’ll eat it just the way it is. You know I will.”

Annie stroked Grandma’s hair and cried and laughed at the same time. “Of course you will, darling. I can always count on you.”

She caught the two of them in the mirror then, a frazzled young woman, hair slick with sweat, holding a much older, frail woman in her arms. Sometimes she wished it could be the other way around. She kissed Grandma on the head.

“You know I wouldn’t give anything for you. Not a thing.”

****

Grandma was resting now.

Annie had sat quietly in the big armchair in the master bedroom until Grandma fell asleep, then walked the narrow staircase up to the attic room. The steps creaked and groaned with her weight and matched the cadence of her grumblings. Her legs hurt, but it was nothing compared to what it was bound to be like in the morning, and nothing like what Grandma had been through. The first aid kit, and some elastic bandages would have been nice. Too bad she couldn’t remember where they were right now.

She supposed that meant her future as a Good Samaritan candidate was forever in jeopardy. Still, she mumbled a word of thanks that everything turned out okay and offered whatever it took that this would never happen again.

Payback was hell, and so were these narrow steps under the circumstances. She massaged her scraped arm and pulled open the wooden attic door. The old hinge of an empty lock dropped dust sprinkles. She wondered now at her rationalization to put Grandma in the most inaccessible room in the house when navigating steps was her most difficult task.

For her safety, the attic room was in Grandma’s best interest. And the master bedroom with its great double bed, antique furnishings, and fireplace was in Annie’s selfish interest, but at a cost far greater than she was prepared to pay. Grandma would enjoy the master bedroom now, as she should have in the first place, while Annie absolved herself with anti-inflammatories and hydrogen peroxide. Turnabout was fair play and all that.

She brushed a hand across the bedside table in the little room—no dust yet—tugged at the comforter on the bed, and punched the pillow.

Sniffing the air, she deemed it stale and tried pushing open the lone window to freshen the place. The circular window refused to budge. Obviously more show than function. She pressed her face against it. It was cool against her skin and turned her breath to condensation that she wiped away with her shirtsleeve.

Outside it was a beautiful, early fall day. The sky was a brilliant blue, the clouds rippled and wavy. A hint of a breeze blew small crests on the bay waves. Live oaks swayed with the wind and dropped bits of moss across the lawn. Such a nice day and view.

But it would be even better from the widow’s walk. A panoramic view waited for her if only she could get up there.

She could if she wanted to.

But was alienating the Manns’ hospitality and angering the owner worth a few moments of solitude and a view of the bay? There might even be an eviction for destruction of private property in it. Right now, she had no place else to go.

She rubbed her chin with the damp shirtsleeve then brushed a loose strand of hair out of her face. No, it wasn’t worth it. The view from here, the master bedroom, the verandah, or any place else in the house was plenty. It was by far a better picture than she could get from the grim subdivision in Atlanta. So that was that; she wouldn’t jeopardize her right to stay in Manchester Place.

Grandma coughed, shifted in the bed downstairs then quieted.

Annie raised an eyebrow at how easily sound traveled in the house. She stomped. A dullness echoed quietly under the floors, reverberated down the hall, around corners, and far below her. It was the wood floors and framing, or maybe a crawlspace deep under the house that promoted the echoing.

Another cough, another creak from the bed, meant Grandma was sleeping restlessly. Small wonder after what she had just been through.

Annie walked to the door for another listen. There were no more sounds of Grandma stirring. Then she looked down the narrow steps to the hallway and the main stairway beyond. A shiver crept up her spine at the height from this viewpoint. A fall from here was fatal at best, so that only something threatening, frightening beyond words, would prompt her to navigate these steps if she were in Grandma’s condition. What could have been bad enough to force Grandma from her room?

The woman in the water.

Annie rubbed away the chill in her arms. Grandma had seen Annie’s daydream and tried to warn her. It was a harmless dream, a little unnerving maybe, but hardly worth the risk of a lethal fall.

Most remarkable was that Grandma had seen it without benefit of Annie telling her. She knew some people had this kind of ability to tap into other people’s minds, but that didn’t make it ominous, dangerous, or true. The vision was a quick dip into mind play, into fantasy, that’s all, and Grandma had simply picked up on it with her special talent. That didn’t make the woman in the dream real.

Unless the woman was real.

She had to get hold of herself and stop this line of thinking right now. While she was at it, there’d be no more late-night spooky movies to plant additional seeds.

A deep breath later, she felt better and stepped out onto the landing to pull the door closed. It creaked and spilled a small pile of rust from the old lock hinge.

Expecting the hinge would crumble at her touch, she was surprised to find it intact. The flat, rectangular piece connected to the hinge moved freely and held when she tugged on it. It probably only needed a new lock. Then no one could get out of the attic room without assistance and take the chance of falling down the stairs again.

It would be safe, but it wouldn’t be right. Grandma was a person after all, not some vicious animal that needed to be caged, even though the two of them had missed disaster by a single step. Maybe, just maybe, this was a way to prevent any further incidents like that occurring, not a permanent situation, but something when she couldn’t watch Grandma every minute.

“Annie?”

“Coming.” She bolted down the stairs to the master bedroom and threw open the door.

Grandma was curled into a tight ball under the thick comforter. The huge bed dwarfed her.

“I’m sorry. I don’t want to be so much trouble. I don’t mean to be.”

Annie sat on the edge of the bed and reached for the old woman’s hand. “You’re no trouble, sweetheart.”

“I am. But I’ll try to do better.” She pulled the cover up under her chin and closed her eyes.

“Grandma?”

“Hmm?”

“Do you remember what you said when I found you on the top of the stairs? Do you remember what you saw?”

Grandma shifted under the cover. Wrinkles appeared on her forehead, followed by a faint smile of embarrassment. “What was it? I don’t recall exactly.”

Annie sighed heavily, patted Grandma’s hand. “It’s okay. It doesn’t matter anyway.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s okay. Really.” She leaned over and kissed Grandma on the forehead. “Get some rest now. I’ll let you know when supper’s ready.”

“I love you, Annie.”

“I love you, too.”

“And Charlie loves you. More than you might know. Take some time for him, will you?”

“I will. I promise. Get some rest now.”

She padded softly out of the room, closed the door, and leaned against it. Wiping away moistness from her eyes with the back of her hand, she saw the rust stains on her fingertips. There would be no lock on the attic bedroom door. Confusion or not, Grandma just needed a little extra attention, and she’d get it. So would Charlie.

She smiled at the thought of Charlie with his tousled hair, a perpetual smudge on his glasses, and the impish grin when he completed a particularly difficult drawing. Suddenly she missed him more than she knew was possible. The two of them shared the same house, yet sometimes they were miles apart. The Manns with their fishing trips and gingerbread treats had spent more time with him these past days then she did. They had become the mother and father he didn’t have right now.

Poor Charlie. He was bound to be having a hard time of it, what with his father rarely around. She closed her eyes against the pain of the letter now crumpled in the fireplace. Charlie would know sooner or later that there were problems if he didn’t already know about them.

She would spend more time with him, and not just through his schoolwork. He needed her, and she needed him. They would get through this thing together, the two of them and Grandma.

I promise.