“You think there was someone else there?” I asked slowly.
“It’s the only thing that, like, makes sense,” Rachel said. “Isn’t it? Someone or something got him to climb the stairs. And who knows what happened then?”
Chapter Six
BY THE TIME I STARTED BACK TO ST. ELIZABETH, HAVING failed to get Rachel to come with me, I was confused and disturbed. Traffic on the interstate flowed freely, giving me plenty of opportunity to chew on what Rachel had said. Despite Braden’s history of depression, I was inclined to agree with her that he hadn’t seemed suicidal at the ghost hunt. Preoccupied, maybe, but not suicidal. Besides, who would choose such a bizarre place to end their lives? And, throwing oneself down a couple of flights of stairs was hardly a guaranteed ticket to the cemetery, as Braden’s fall proved. Surely, anyone intent on ending his life would pick a more effective method? Without even wanting to, I quickly thought of three or four better methods.
And an accident seemed almost as unlikely as suicide. Braden was a football player, an athlete, for heaven’s sake. How likely was it that he would trip going up the stairs or stumble coming down and not be able to catch himself on the rail or regain his balance? And why had he gone upstairs in the first place? I tried to think it through from his perspective. Rachel goes to the bathroom, leaving Braden in the parlor. He’s tired of doing EMF readings. He wanders into the hall and looks around, maybe studies some of the paintings. Then . . . what? He hears the booms from the fireworks and decides to go upstairs to get a better view. I shook my head. That didn’t make sense. He’d have gone out the front door to see what was going on.
I realized the speedometer had crept over eighty and eased my foot off the accelerator. Despite not wanting to be, I was more than half convinced that Rachel’s answer was right: someone else had been there. Someone being on the landing wasn’t necessarily a problem, but where had they disappeared to when Braden fell? Why hadn’t they gotten help? An itchy feeling crept up my back and I wriggled my shoulders against the seat back to erase it.
Without my consciously planning to, I ended up in front of Mom’s house rather than at my apartment. The light purple Victorian with the dark purple and white gingerbread had been my home until I went to the University of Georgia. When I left college after two years to go to beauty school, I’d moved back in and lived there until I followed Hank to Atlanta and began working at Vidal Sassoon. The magnolia trees with their spreading branches and glossy leaves, the hammock swinging gently, and the spacious veranda with its mismatched chairs and elephant plant stand cum table were so familiar I frequently didn’t notice them. Right now, maybe because I’d spent time in the fear-clogged and antiseptic hospital environment, I felt a rush of affection for the place. Fire ant hills and fallen pecans dotted the yard and I avoided the former and scooped up a handful of the latter as I took the walkway around the side of the house and let myself into the kitchen.
“Mom?”
“Up here, honey.” Her voice came faintly down the back staircase that went from the kitchen to the upstairs hall.
Leaving the pecans on the counter, I grabbed a banana and peeled it as I climbed. I found Mom in the guest bedroom, ripping wide strips of packing tape from a roll and crisscrossing them over the window panes. She wore black knit slacks, a white tee shirt with black stars on it, and white sneakers and was standing on a step stool. She looked over her shoulder as I came in and smiled.
“You really think Hurricane Horatio is going to hit, huh?” I asked around a mouthful of banana.
“Well, that’s what the forecasters are saying. And it might be a category three before it hits the coast, so I think it’s best to be prepared, don’t you?”
“Probably.” I plopped the banana skin in the trash can. Tearing some tape off the roll, I handed it to Mom. The tape didn’t keep the windows from breaking if a tree limb or flying lawn chair hit them, but it helped keep the glass from scattering all over the room.
She stuck it on the highest window and tried to smooth out a wrinkle as I told her about my conversation with Rachel.
“That poor boy,” she said when I finished. “And his poor parents. I’m so blessed that neither you nor Alice Rose ever had any problems like that, although I did wonder if Alice Rose might not have been a teensy bit depressed after Owen was born.”
“Really?” I hadn’t noticed anything different about my younger sister after she had Owen.
Mom nodded. “Don’t you remember how weepy she was, and how she kept worrying that the house was going to burn down or that Wade would get in a wreck on the way home from work?”