Flashback Page 2

  Finally reaching her door, Laura fumbled with her keys and then dropped them on the cement with what sounded to her like a loud clang. As she picked up the keys with trembling hands, the metal tinkled and pinged like a wind chime. She forced the house key into the lock, looked back over her shoulder, and pushed the door open.

  Once inside, Laura slammed the door, locked it, and fastened the deadbolt. She’d left the air conditioner on that morning, and the apartment felt cool. Leaning back against the door, she closed her eyes, gulping in air. As she uttered a silent prayer, she tried to slow her breathing. A sharp pain racked her chest, but she felt herself calming down. The grief counselor had taught her the technique, and it worked. I’m home. I’m safe, Laura told herself.

  3

  Laura opened her eyes and looked gratefully at the apartment that had been her home for twenty years. She stood in the living room, her back still braced against the front door. In front of her was a narrow hall with doors to two bedrooms and a bathroom, and to the left was the kitchen. The place hadn’t changed much in all the time she’d lived there. When Megan had moved in, she had commented that the place looked as if it had been sealed in a time capsule for two decades, but that since she was into the 80s, she liked it.

  Should I call the police? Laura wondered. What would I tell them—that a man was following me? The police would ask if he’d approached her, spoken to her, or threatened her in some way. Reminding herself that it could just be a coincidence that they were in the same location several times in a row, Laura decided to ask Megan’s opinion when she got home.

  As Laura scrutinized the small apartment, she had to admit that it looked outdated and worn. Nothing except the carpet had changed since her parents had moved in during the mid-80s. The couch and loveseat were cornflower blue with peach flecks, and those colors were mirrored in the calico rabbit on the floor. A large oak-laminate bookshelf held a stereo—complete with a turntable—and a small collection of books.

  Laura didn’t own many books, not because she didn’t read but because she tended to check them out from the library. She did, however, own a set of Barbara Michaels’ suspense novels. When she purchased them for fifty cents each at a library fundraiser, she had already read them all, but she couldn’t bear to see them discarded.

  “Why are you selling these?” she’d asked Tom London, the elderly, bearded librarian, as he stood between book-laden tables at the fundraiser.

  “No one checks out Michaels anymore,” he declared. “Mary Higgins Clark has succeeded her, and even Higgins Clark is on her way out.”

  “But these are classics!” Laura exclaimed as she began stuffing the books into her shopping bag.

  Tom smiled. “You’re one of the few remaining devotees of Gothic romance.”

  “Romance?” Laura replied quizzically. “These are mystery novels—suspense.”

  Tom chuckled. “I guess they’re whatever you make of them.”

  Laura had started reading Michaels in high school, and perhaps she had become a bit obsessed with the series. She used to daydream she was in one of Michaels’ scenes, and there was always a dark, handsome man in the picture. The man had to have dark hair, as that somehow resonated better with a brooding disposition, and he had to be brooding—to have some dark secret that made him interesting in an almost psychotic way. In the end, his secret would always be revealed, and he and his heroine would be freed from the chains that held them to a dark past, free to join each other in a blissful future.

  Laura wished she could turn her current situation into a Michaels’ novel. She imagined herself running down the street, the stalker chasing her. Suddenly a dark, handsome stranger would appear, and she’d run into his arms. “Save me! He’s obsessed with me. He wants to carry me off to his mansion!” The good-looking stranger would sweep her up in his arms and carry her to his own mansion, which was actually more akin to a small palace, because he was really a European prince. Indeed, her imaginary prince would be living incognito in St. Louis to avoid being forced into marriage by his parents, but he was required to marry in order to inherit the throne. Now in love with the lovely though anxiety-ridden Laura McClain, he could return to claim his rightful place in the kingdom with his beautiful new princess.

  After focusing her mind on such pleasant thoughts, Laura felt her heart slow to a normal rhythm. She finally pushed away from the door and tossed her keys into the basket on the table beside the loveseat. Then she took off her shoes and picked them up. Walking past her large freshwater aquarium, she stooped to glance in at the tropical fish that gathered near the top, some sticking their puckered lips above the water’s surface, and informed them that she would feed them momentarily. She then risked a peek out the front window and, seeing no silver Mercedes, closed the curtains, being careful not to knock over the odd assortment of antique bottles filled with plants and other trinkets lined up on the floor beneath the window.

  Since her childhood, terrariums had been a hobby of Laura’s. Whenever she found a yard sale in the neighborhood, she would search for unique old bottles. Sometimes she found unusual little things—usually stashed in a shoebox most garage-sale shoppers overlooked—to go in the bottles. She filled the bottles halfway with potting soil, inserted the plants, and then added various curios. Many of the jars had wide mouths, but for narrow-mouthed jars, she used plastic terrarium tweezers to situate the plants and other objects.

  Entering her bedroom, Laura placed her shoes on the rack at the bottom of the closet, then closed the closet door. Perhaps it was a compulsion, but she couldn’t stand to see a closet door or a drawer left open. Her bedroom was always neat, in spite of its mismatched décor. Her mother had given her the pink quilt on the bed, so she still used it even though it was almost threadbare. In contrast, the desk that held her computer and printer was aggressively modern, made of brushed nickel and frosted glass. A photograph of Laura and her mother hung on the wall above the desk. Laura was twelve years old in the picture, and it was one of the few formal photographs her mother had sat for.

  After crossing the room to the vanity, Laura sat in front of the mirror. She took off her clip-on earrings and stopped to look at herself, noting that she could have used a little more makeup under her eyes today. The sleepless night—the dream—had taken its toll, and she looked haggard. In addition, the news about her aunt’s estate had been bothering her for more than a week.

  Virginia. As far as Laura could recall, her parents had mentioned the place only once or twice in her presence. It was almost as if Sarah and John McClain had appeared from the fog when they arrived in St. Louis before Laura was born. At the time, John had sold insurance, and a promotion had brought him to St. Louis—or so her mother had told her.

  Brought on by the stress of his job, a heart attack killed Laura’s father before she turned eight. She and her mother had continued living in the same apartment. After her mother’s death, Laura had made only necessary changes. She could have moved into the master bedroom, but she had seen no need to do so. This bedroom was not that much smaller, and it had been easier to get rid of most of her mother’s things to make room for Megan’s belongings than to move her own things as well.

  As far back as Laura could remember, her mother had been efficient and driven, never wavering from her goal of helping her daughter make it safely through life. In fact, Sarah McClain had been so stubborn that no one could stop her once she made up her mind. Laura sighed as she supposed it was that determination that had helped her mother survive widowhood and poverty.

  Laura knew her mother had loved her; after all, she had sacrificed a great deal to make sure Laura received an education and started a successful career. Sarah had held an odd assortment of jobs while she worked her way through secretarial school, ending up with a decent job as a legal secretary. All of her extra money went toward a savings account for Laura’s college education. Sometimes Laura had felt as if her mother expected someone or something to break down the door and take her daughter aw
ay. Laura attributed this defensive mode to her father’s early death. Sarah probably lived in fear that she’d lose Laura, too, and Laura often wondered what her mother would have been like had John McClain lived.

  Laura still had vivid memories of her father—always polite but aloof. Laura remembered that she could never tell what he was thinking and that she would get exasperated at his reserve. Now that she was older, she wished she could have gotten inside his brain and seen what made him tick—what he wanted from life. She thought he’d loved her, and yet she hadn’t understood him and doubted he had ever understood her. But he was gone, and the chance to get to know him in mortality was gone as well.

  For her entire life, Laura’s parents never talked of their pasts, and they seemed to avoid questions about themselves. Whenever Laura inquired about her mother’s childhood or young adulthood, a wall went up, and eventually Laura just let it go.

  Laura stared into the mirror, looking beyond her own image to the closed closet door. Suddenly she froze in horror. The door was closed now, but when she had first entered the room, she had put her shoes in the closet without having to open the door. While she could have left it open that morning, she couldn’t remember the last time she had done so, and she was quite certain she had closed it today.

  Slowly she stood, her heartbeat speeding up. She stepped over to the bedside table and soundlessly opened the top drawer, then sighed with relief that her diary was there. But the relief vanished in a heartbeat when she realized that the ribbon was not in place over the diary’s cover. Perhaps it was paranoia or superstition, but she always placed a silk ribbon across the top of the diary in such a way that she would know if it had been moved. As an adolescent who suspected that her mother was prying in her diary, the idea made sense, but Laura knew that as an adult, it was an odd habit.

  Nonetheless, as Laura stared at the diary, her heart pounded in her chest. Someone had been reading her diary while she was at work! That morning, before leaving for the school, Laura had quickly recorded her dream before going to work, after which she distinctly remembered replacing the ribbon. She always replaced the ribbon. There’s no way Megan would—Laura stopped herself before she even finished the thought. Megan couldn’t have been the one snooping through her diary: Megan had left the apartment before Laura that morning.

  Laura looked up, her eyes darting from side to side as she wondered if whoever had invaded her privacy was in the house right now. She wanted to run out of the bedroom and out of the house, but she was immobilized by a fear so intense she could not make her muscles move. Maybe he was hiding in a closet or behind a door, or maybe he was in the bathroom behind the shower curtain. What if he pounced on her as she ran through the living room? She conjured vivid images of her stalker—his pale face with deep crevices, his dark, deep-set eyes. With an experienced predator, she knew she wouldn’t have a chance.

  Suddenly Laura realized that he might be hiding in her bedroom. Maybe he was in the closet, behind her clothes, so she hadn’t seen him when she’d put her shoes away. Maybe he had reached for her but she had closed the door too quickly.

  Standing by the bed, Laura shifted her gaze toward the floor. Perhaps the stalker was lying under the bed, waiting for her to move closer so he could reach out and grab her. With that thought, Laura darted for the bedroom door, hitting the doorframe hard with her shoulder and then stumbling into the living room as she tried to catch her balance. The front door loomed before her. Just moments ago, the bolt and lock had represented security. Now they stood between her and the outside world. She thought the intruder would get her before she made it out, but she still managed to pull at the bolt with one hand and turn the lock on the doorknob with the other. She was going to make it out! She flung open the door and plunged out, but immediately she banged into something.

  “Laura, what on earth?”

  When Laura saw Megan’s surprised face looking up at her from the ground, she burst into tears. “There’s a man in the apartment!” she screamed. “He followed me home from work and got here before me.”

  “Laura, that makes no sense. Now calm down.”

  * * *

  Laura sat on the couch in her living room, her hands shaking and her heart still beating frantically. Through the wooden dowels separating the kitchen from the living room, she watched Megan in the kitchen.

  Megan removed a carton of lemonade from the refrigerator and poured two glasses. She set one on the table in front of Laura and then sat on the loveseat across from Laura with the other.

  As she had bravely searched every corner of the apartment, Megan had looked at Laura like she was a paranoid, hysterical ninny—at least Laura thought so. Even Laura thought her own explanations—the open closet door and the diary ribbon—sounded preposterous.

  Yet she was glad Megan had shown up when she did. She had no idea what she would have done once outside in her bare feet. Her car, which she rarely drove, would obviously have been useless without the key. Maybe she would have run down the street and knocked on someone’s door. Maybe she would have run to a nearby park and hidden until she felt safe to go back—but who knew if she would ever have found the nerve to return. More likely she would have found a phone and called Megan to come and get her.

  Laura smiled faintly. “I guess you can see now why I could never move to Virginia.”

  Megan sat forward on the loveseat and set her lemonade on the table. “Laura, don’t be silly. You were up most of the night, so you’re tired, and you know how your anxiety increases when you get really tired. It was an anxiety attack—and you actually handled it quite well.”

  Blood rushed to Laura’s cheeks, and she looked down, uncertain how to respond. Megan was probably right. Her tiredness had caused her overactive imagination to conjure up things that simply were not happening. “Still. I’m not ready for a big change like Virginia—not yet.”

  “No one is ever ready for a big change like this. Major life changes don’t usually wait for people to be ready. We dive in headfirst and do the best we can. We make mistakes—and we learn.”

  Laura stood and walked to the window, noticing that Megan had opened the curtains. “You really think I can do this?”

  “I’m absolutely certain, Laura. Just remember who you are.”

  Laura looked intently at Megan. “Sometimes I’m not quite sure who I am.”

  “Perhaps this experience will help you figure that out.”

  A flicker of movement outside the window caught Laura’s eye, and she turned and studied the street. Two large oaks stood between her apartment and the sidewalk. Was someone hiding behind one of the trees? Had someone darted from one to the other? More likely a bird had flown from one to the other. Laura frowned, then turned back to Megan. “I suppose a trip to Virginia is one way I could get away from the man I think is following me.”

  Megan stood and walked to Laura. “Oh, no you don’t. This isn’t about running away. This is about discovery—finding out about yourself and the family you don’t know. Maybe it will be like coming home.”

  4

  She ran, the darkness pressing against her like a potent force ready to envelop and consume her. She could see a gentle glow ahead, but as she reached it, she fell, and her body dropped into nothingness . . .

  Laura jolted forward, and her eyes flew wide open. She heard a gasp that must have come from her own mouth. Glancing across the aisle of the bus, she saw an old man staring at her, smiling curiously.

  “Fall asleep, did ya?”

  Laura rubbed her eyes and wiped her sweaty forehead, then ran her hand across the top of her head to rest on her braided ponytail. The air in the bus felt muggy, and Laura’s jeans and cotton shirt clung to her damp body. As she stretched, she peered out the window at a hollow of farmsteads and orchards where the meadows rolled in the distance to misty, purple-blue mountains.

  The flight from St. Louis to Washington DC had only taken about two hours, but she’d been on this bus for several hours. Heading into
a tree-coated wilderness speckled with an occasional gas station or diner, Laura wondered what she had gotten into. She already missed civilization, with its shopping centers, grocery stores, and drugstores, not to mention dentists, doctors, and hospitals. Not that she liked to go to these places, but she liked to know they were there when she needed them.

  Suddenly the bus slowed and then pulled onto the shoulder of the road and stopped. As the doors opened and someone exited the crowded vehicle, Laura looked out the window. Shaking her head, she wondered where the person was headed—she could see only a highway and lots of trees.

  “May I sit next to you, young lady?”

  Laura turned from the window. The short and stocky elderly woman standing in the aisle had obviously just gotten on the bus.

  “Sure,” Laura replied awkwardly. No one in St. Louis had ever asked to sit next to her on the bus; if a seat was empty, you just took it.

  The woman threw a bulky bag on the overhead luggage rack as if it were a potato sack, then lifted herself into the seat as the bus pulled back on the road.

  “Hattie O’Donnell,” she declared, extending her hand toward Laura.

  Laura hesitated before grasping it. “Laura McClain.”

  “Where are you headed, Laura McClain?” She had a pleasant southern drawl.

  “Bufordville.”

  “That’s where I’m headed myself. My sister Lettie married a boy from Bufordville. Well, he’s dead and gone, but I visit Lettie once every few weeks. She’s getting feeble these days, I tell you. Never know when she’ll up and die on me, and that’ll make me the last of the Hansen girls. I was the baby, you see.”