Take It To The Grave Bundle 2: Take It to the Grave parts 4-6

I’ve missed him.

Caleb’s visits had been the highlight of my adolescence: swimming in the ocean, campfires on the beach, climbing down the drainpipe to go to the movies, sneaking out and playing hide-and-seek in the moonlight. He’d accepted me the way I was, warts and all. When he was around, I felt like I could be a normal teenager. During Caleb’s visits, Peter mostly behaved himself. He wasn’t nearly as nasty to us.

Maybe if we’d stayed together, life could have been good again.

I had to quit thinking like this. We’d been kids, and it had been a summer fling, nothing more.

Whatever we had between us, obviously we weren’t soul mates. If we had been, he never would have left.

Below me, Maisey and Caleb are saying goodbye. She wraps her hand around his neck and urges him forward, kissing his cheek. That doesn’t look sisterly. Caleb’s eyes widen, but he gives her a little hug before heading in the opposite direction. I exhale as he leaves her behind. I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath.

He slows as he nears the house, staring up at my window. Though I’m hidden behind the curtain, I’m afraid he can see me, anyway, that he’s well aware I’m watching. He always did have a talent for reading my mind.

Scrutinizing my window as if he’s searching for something, he gives his head a little shake before moving on down the beach. Did he see the curtain twitch when he was with Maisey? Can he feel me watching him? Did he want me to see him with my sister?

What are you playing at, Caleb?

* * *

I find Maisey in the rose garden. Good, we definitely need to talk. This time I’m ready to listen to whatever she has to say.

I’m about to greet her when I realize she isn’t alone.

“It’s not a big deal,” my sister says to an unseen companion, the color rising in her cheeks. I turn to go. She’s with Caleb, again? I stop when a feminine voice responds.

“Of course it’s a big deal. It’s a huge deal. I’m so proud of you, my Little Monster. I always knew you were meant for great things. You wanted to make the world a better place, and now you’re doing it. Even Peter would have been proud.”

Ugh. Not Caleb. Even worse—it’s Alice. I should have known.

Mother had asked me to give her a more in-depth tour of the gardens this morning, but I’d begged off, using my son as an excuse. I was finding it more and more difficult to be around her. She’s as loud and inappropriate as always, but now she is scatterbrained as well. I can’t fathom how she has the nerve to talk about Peter in front of us. That horrible man had hurt her too, but didn’t she understand what we’d gone through? Didn’t she get what he’d done to us? What he’d done to me? Whatever was left of our childhood when Dad died had been ruined by that nightmare.

When I take another step toward them, Alice comes into view. She’s clutching a pair of lethal-looking pruning shears, waving them in my sister’s direction in a way that makes me nervous. Where on earth did she find those? I make a mental note to warn Joel, our gardener, to be more careful while Mother’s staying with us. Alice is not to be trusted with sharp objects.

Lurching toward my sister, Mother throws her arms around her. “You have no idea how much nurses helped me when your daddy was sick. Sometimes I felt like they were the only ones who cared.” She wipes tears from her eyes as she beams at Maisey. “And to think you’re one of them now.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

Mother shrieks with laughter, stumbling a little. She grabs my sister’s shoulder with her free hand, and Maisey holds on to her arms, steadying her. “My baby doll,” Alice says. “You always were my baby.”

Yeah, right. Until Frankie came along. Then it was like neither one of us existed.

How can Maisey stand it? I’d had enough of our mother’s drunken antics by the end of the first day of this “reunion,” but my sister continues to humor her, repeatedly trying to connect with her. Why does she bother? Maybe Mom was right all along—maybe I was adopted. Maisey and I don’t share the same connection with Alice, that’s for sure.

Perhaps my sister has forgotten the many days our mother passed out on the sofa, leaving us at Peter’s mercy. Alice watched as he forced my sister to eat those rotten eggs, that moldy cheese, and never did a thing to stop him. She obviously didn’t care that her husband was making Maisey sick.

How can my sister forgive her for that? Screw Peter—Alice is the reason we didn’t have a childhood after we lost Dad. It would have been sad without him, but we would have made it through together. We would have been fine. We were fine...until she brought Peter into our lives.

Is my sister a better person, or just more gullible? Maybe she’s able to be more forgiving because she’s not a mother herself. Since I’ve had Elliot, my rage toward Alice has grown. How could she have done that to us? How could she have allowed us to be treated that way? And how could she have let Peter take custody of us while she was in prison? She should have told the judge how abusive he was. She should have told someone.

“Sarah?” Maisey has a funny expression on her face, and no wonder, since I’ve been lurking there, not saying anything. “Were you looking for me?”

“Come join us.” Mother lets go of my sister to wave me over. Maisey steadies her once again, holding her around the waist. “I was just telling your sister again how proud I am. A Nurse Without Borders—isn’t it great?”

I swallow hard. “Yes. Yes, it is.” Meeting my sister’s eyes, I say it as sincerely as I can. Even though I feel odd about her cozying up to Caleb, that doesn’t minimize how proud I am of her. Mother’s right—Maisey’s already done more to better the world than the whole sorry lot of us combined.

“And you. You’re a great mother, Sarah.” Mom flashes her teeth at me in a drunken grin. “I’m very proud of you, too. My girls, my beautiful girls.”

She moves to include me in the embrace but I step away, wary of the pruning shears, which she has apparently forgotten. Then I notice Mom’s hands. They’re smeared with dirt, and there is blood trickling down her arms. Her pink sundress has two bright smudges of green on the skirt, as if she’s been kneeling on the grass. There are a few strands tangled in her hair, along with something that appears to be twigs.

“Mom, what on earth have you been doing?”

Jumping around like an overgrown toddler, she thrusts the shears in the air. “I’ve been taking care of your rosebushes.”

“Oh, no...” I push past them to inspect the garden, cursing Alice under my breath. Why does she have to destroy everything?

Eleanor insists on growing some of her prize tea roses here, claiming the light is better on our side. While some of the plant’s leaves are a bit mangled, none of the delicate yellow blooms have been touched—yet. How fortunate I’d decided to look for Maisey. If I hadn’t, it might have been too late to save the garden.

Pressing my hand against my chest, I will my racing heart to calm down, silently counting to ten. But Alice is determined to continue her reign of terror. When she sees I’m not going to stop her, she heads directly toward the rose Eleanor plans to enter in an upcoming garden competition.

That’s it. She’s been coddled long enough.

Intercepting her, I jerk the shears away from Alice with a little more force than necessary. As Mother loses her balance, Maisey rushes to grasp her by the elbow. She scowls at me.

“Don’t you think you’re overreacting, Sarah? What’s the big deal? She’s trying to help, and besides, they’re just flowers.”

Yeah, like Ferraris are just cars. As my sister continues to look at me like I’m crazy, I feel my face getting hot. While I have every right to prevent our drunken mother from destroying my garden, the Sarah she remembers never would have put flowers before family.

What she must think of me.

We spend more on these roses in a week than her entire village in Thailand will see in a lifetime. Recalling how chummy she’d been with Caleb on the beach, I wonder if they’d been talking about Warwick and me, making fun of how elitist we are. Well, screw Maisey and her high-minded ideals, and screw Caleb, too. Not everyone is meant to be a nurse or a soldier. Maybe Eleanor’s prize-winning roses aren’t important to them, but they’re important to her, and they’re important to Warwick.

“I’m sorry.” My mother’s lower lip trembles. It’s all I can do to keep from wincing when I see how bloodshot her eyes are. Around her nose, burst capillaries mar her otherwise lovely complexion. “I didn’t mean to hurt your roses. I was only trying to help.”

Taking a deep breath, I remind myself to be patient. “I appreciate that, Mom, but Joel takes care of the gardening for us. That’s his job. You’re our guest. We want you to relax and have a good time.”

Eleanor isn’t even comfortable with Joel touching her roses, so we leave them to her. With the preparations for the party and the christening consuming her time these days, she let her precious plants get the tiniest bit overgrown. How my mother noticed this is beyond me.

“I was tryin’ to help,” Mom says again, as if I’ve argued with her. Maisey wedges herself between us, as if to protect Alice. The sight of my baby sister looking so fierce makes me want to laugh.

What does she think I’m going to do, attack our mother? Not that I haven’t been tempted. I glance at the gold wristwatch Warwick gave me for my birthday. How am I going to survive this day?

“Look at the time. I guess I should go check on Elliot. He’ll be waking up from his nap any minute, if he hasn’t already. See you later.”

The forced cheer in my voice makes me want to cringe. Where and when did I acquire this singsong way of speaking? Genny’s and Tessie’s influence must have rubbed off.

Maisey is still glaring at me, and Alice stares at her shoes, a chastened little girl, unable to meet my eyes.

“Okay,” my sister says, squinting at me like I’m someone she doesn’t recognize.