Part 35 (1/2)
night when Sarah was found on the widow's walk,
feverish and delirious.
IS WHERE.
But Sarah has vowed to make a fresh start and renovate
the old place. Between tending to her girls and
the run-down property, she has little time to dwell on
the past.... Until a new, more urgent menace enters
the picture.
THE FEAR IS.
One by one, teenage girls are disappearing. Frantic
for her daughters' safety, Sarah feels the house's walls
closing in on her again. Somewhere deep in her
memory is the key to a very real and terrifying danger
And only by confronting her most terrifying fears
can she stop the nightmare roaring back to life once
more...
Please turn the page for an exciting sneak peek of Lisa Jackson's CLOSE TO HOME.
on sale in September 2014 wherever print and e-books are sold!
Chapter 1.
October 15, 2014 Blue Peac.o.c.k Manor ”G.o.d, Mom, you've got to be kidding!” Jade said from the pa.s.senger seat of the Explorer as Sarah drove along the once-gravel lane.
”Not kidding,” Sarah responded. ”You know that.” Winding through thick stands of pine, fir, and cedar, the twin ruts were weed-choked and filled with potholes that had become puddles with the recent rain.
”You can't actually think that we can live here!” Catching glimpses of the huge house through the trees, Jade, seventeen, was clearly horrified and, as usual, wasn't afraid to voice her opinion.
”Mom's serious,” Gracie said from the backseat, where she was crammed between piles of blankets, and mounds of comforters, sleeping bags, and the other bedding they were moving from Vancouver. ”She told us.”
Jade shot a glance over her shoulder. ”I know. But it's worse than I thought.”
”That's impossible,” Gracie said.
”No one asked your opinion!”
Sarah's hands tightened over the steering wheel. She'd already heard how she was ruining her kids' lives by packing them up and returning to the old homestead where she'd been born and raised. To hear them tell it, she was the worst mother in the world. The word ”hate” had been thrown around, aimed at her, the move, and their miserable lives in general.
Single motherhood. It wasn't for the faint-hearted, she'd decided long ago. So her kids were still angry with her. Too bad. Sarah needed a fresh start.
And though Jade and Gracie didn't know it, they did too.
”It's like we're in another solar system,” Jade said as the thickets of trees gave way to a wide clearing high above the Columbia River.
Gracie agreed, ”In a land far, far away.”
”Oh, stop it. It's not that bad,” Sarah said. Her girls had lived most of their lives in Vancouver, Was.h.i.+ngton, right across the river from Portland, Oregon. Theirs had been a city life. Out here, in Stewart's Crossing, things would be different, and even more so at Sarah's childhood home of Blue Peac.o.c.k Manor.
Perched high on the cliffs overlooking the Columbia River, the ma.s.sive house where Sarah had been raised rose in three stories of cedar and stone. Built in the Queen Anne style of a Victorian home, its gables and chimneys knifed upward into a somber gray sky, and from her vantage point Sarah could now see the gla.s.s cupola that opened onto the widow's walk. For a second, she felt a frisson of dread slide down her spine, but she pushed it aside.
”Oh. My. G.o.d.” Jade's jaw dropped open as she stared at the house. ”It looks like something straight out of The Addams Family.”
”Let me see!” In the backseat, Gracie unhooked her seat belt and leaned forward for a better view. ”She's right.” For once Gracie agreed with her older sister.