Page 3 of Cursed by Death (Ruby Jane #1)

M y house was beautiful, there was no other way to put it, and so very different from the house I’d just run away from.

My grandmother had lived here. As had my mother before she’d met my father, got herself with child and then disowned.

When Thomas had read my grandmother’s will to me I’d been stunned by all she’d left me. Stunned and really, extremely , ungrateful. She’d left me money. So much money that I wouldn’t be able to spend it in ten lifetimes even if I tried. She’d further left me this house and a house in Aspen. Neither of which I had wanted. The old lady had so much money and if she hadn’t disowned my mother when she’d gotten pregnant with me my mother might still be alive today. And, I might not have had to live through the horrors I’d been forced to endure.

Needless to say, I had been angry, snotty and downright rude to poor Thomas Grine who’d been tasked with delivering my grandmother’s will and letter.

When he’d left, he’d left me with the papers, the unopened letter from a woman whom I had never met and a card with his personal phone numbers on it. He’d told me to call him any time.

I’d had no intention of ever calling him.

The day after my eighteenth birthday, the day after I’d been booted out of the girl’s home, I called him. I had slept on a bench outside of a bus station, my stomach wouldn’t stop rumbling at me and I was in desperate need of a shower.

So, I swallowed my anger and my pride down, found a payphone and I had called Mr. Grine. Collect, no less, because I hadn’t had any money of my own at the time.

If the old lady had left me as much money as he claimed and she was dead so I would never actually have to deal with her, I would have been an absolute moron not to have picked up the phone and made that call. Being homeless and hungry, I would have ended up doing unspeakable things simply for food and shelter. I know myself, I know where my strengths and weaknesses lie. And I’m telling you, I would have done unspeakable things to not have to sleep in the gutter and put food in my belly.

Thomas had come to pick me up and that had been that. Me and my meager belongings (a whole backpack stuffed full of shit) had moved into my mother’s childhood home that day and I haven’t moved out since. I haven’t been able to get rid of Thomas either. Not even firing him seemed to work. For which I ended up being thankful for… Some days, that is.

Today wasn’t one of those days.

Thomas Grine was a man in his late eighty’s. He had shockingly white hair and an even more shocking hairline that had yet to recede. His eyes were not, nor could they ever be described as, warm or gentle. They were dark brown and cold as ice. He was a tall man, over six foot and as thin as a rail. He’d likely never been handsome and his body was too willowy for my tastes when it came to men. Or women.

His age had no effect whatsoever on his mind. He was incredibly smart, downright ruthless at times and I had never seen him show kindness to another human being outside of myself.

He was the one who’d looked into Harmond House for me. He was the one to tell me about Catherine’s death. He’d been keeping tabs on her for years. And he had people looking for the twins for years. With no luck, mind you. He didn’t understand why it was so important for me to find them. He didn’t understand why Harmond House terrified me so much. He didn’t understand any of it because no one knew the vile things that had taken place there.

And I wasn’t about to explain it to him.

This did not make Thomas happy. He didn’t like being kept in the dark on anything, and it was worse if it had to deal with me.

He’d retired not long after my grandmother kicked the bucket and, for reasons unknown to me, decided I needed him to help run my life for me. I hadn’t needed his help then and I certainly didn’t need it now. I let him run my life anyways. I think it was because we were both alone in the world and life was a whole lot less lonely when you had someone in your life to call your own. We weren’t what I would call friends. We were closer to family, even though we certainly weren’t family. I didn’t have a label for our relationship. But he was mine. And I certainly was his.

After I moved into my grandmother’s house he had taken it upon himself to move into the guest house behind the garage. He had told me he owed it to my grandmother and my mother to take care of me. Really, I think in the beginning he stayed to keep an eye on me and make sure I didn’t blow through all of the money I had been left and burn the house down while I was at it.

I never complained. I simply let him do his own thing and went about my own business.

That had been over four years ago. He never moved back out, I refrained from blowing all of my grandmother’s money and burning the house down and sometimes we even sat down and shared a meal together.

Weeks ago, when he informed me of Catherine’s death, I’m afraid I didn’t do a very good job of hiding how much simply hearing her name spoken aloud had rattled me. He’d been watching me like a hawk since. Then when he told me about the open house I told him I had to go, and had to see it one last time. Only problem with this is I think I might have sounded like I thought attending the open house would be worse than torture at the hands of the devil for all of eternity.

He didn’t think it wise for me to go and told me so. Several times. When that didn’t change my mind, he offered to go with me. That didn’t work for me either. Which I told him, several times.

The last time we had a conversation about it had been two days ago. We hadn’t talked since. I felt bad about this. He was a good man who was understandably concerned about me. He might not have known the details of what went on in that house behind closed doors while I lived there but he was not a stupid man. He was a very smart man, and even if he wasn’t, it wouldn’t take a genius to know my time in that place had seriously fucked with my head.

We might not have talked in two days but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t be at home waiting for me to get back safe, waiting to get a read on my emotions. Emotions that were all over the place. If he saw me now like this there was no telling what he’d say or do.

As I drove down the long winding driveway that led to my house I thought about turning around and driving back the way I’d come to be able to avoid him. Then I’d likely never come back. And where would that leave me? Nowhere good, that’s for sure.

Normally, the long drive up the lane wouldn’t bother me, I always took in the view. Trees, as far as the eye could see. Forest, so dense and thick the thought of being bothered by the busy road at the end of the driveway was laughable. In the summer everything was green, luscious and looked incredibly healthy. In the fall when all the leaves changed color it looked like the house had been transported to an entirely different place. The same with winter when snow struck and the ground and branches were all covered in the purest of white. When spring rolled around the cycle would begin again and be no less beautiful than it had been the year before.

I took the last bend just a wee bit too fast and my grandmother’s house came into view.

It was too big for just myself, even with Thomas living in the guest house.

The house stood two stories tall and was painted an extremely cheerful yellow. It didn’t look tall, instead it looked long because it just was. I had no idea when the damn thing was built or how long it had been in my mother’s family for but it was old and a little bit weird in its shape. The front ran long as did each side. It was built like a square with a missing side to it. This made for an interesting backyard space that was blocked off on three sides and housed an inground pool. The rest was trees. No huge lawn for me to have to mow, not even in the front of the house. What made it beautiful was the flowers. Each window had boxes that overflowed with beauty. And on the ground in front of the entire house were rose bushes bursting with colors and roses in full bloom. I had worried about being the death of those flowers but Thomas made sure they stayed alive and healthy for me.

The dirt road that served as the driveway came to a circular end in front of a three-stall garage. A long, narrow wooden balcony ran the length of the garage’s second story and disappeared around the side where it ended with a staircase.

The garage was not old like the rest of the house. Thomas told me it had been built the year before I moved in. Above the garage was a large, open room with a small kitchen and an even smaller bathroom. I could rent it out as a studio apartment if I ever felt the need.

At one point, I had thought about putting an ad in the local newspaper, looking to rent out the space. Thomas had stopped me, saying no background check would make him comfortable enough to live with a stranger, they’d have to be thoroughly investigated. I wanted to argue with him that he wouldn’t be exactly living with the person but figured since the guest house was back behind the garage that I didn’t really have a whole lot of room to argue. He’d be closer than I would. So, I gave up the idea of renting out the space to rid myself of the burden of being lonely.

I had Thomas, I really shouldn’t complain.

On that thought, I parked my sporty, white Jeep Patriot in front of the farthest garage door on the right. The Patriot had been a gift from Thomas for my twenty-first birthday. He thought the car I had before was an unsafe piece of crap. My words, not his. He would never call something a piece of crap out loud, it would be far too rude for him. It’s what he meant, though.

I got out of my Patriot smiling to myself, thinking about old man Thomas, the refined attorney, calling something a piece of crap. I would never get to see or hear such a thing in real life so I figured I might as well enjoy it while it was in my head.

I walked around the vehicle and instead of heading straight to the main house I decided to take a detour, heading around the garage and towards the little guest house out back.

The guest house was small, one-story, one bedroom with one bathroom and painted the exact same cheery yellow as the main house. It had white window boxes hanging from every window, each box overflowing with some long green hanging plant. They were quite pretty but I thought they would look better if they flowered.

I walked along the stone pathway with my head down, not paying attention to my surroundings until I came to a stop at the front door. My mind was solely on Thomas and hoping I had succeeded in keeping my emotions shoved down deep, away from the surface, in an attempt to make sure he would worry a little less about me. It didn’t hurt that I had no desire to play twenty questions with him tonight. Not when it came to my time spent in the Harmond House.

I knocked lightly on the door. I could have rung the doorbell but figured it was pointless since he’d more than likely be on the lookout for me.

My mouth got tight and my head came up when an entire minute slid by without Thomas having opened the door to let me inside. He never kept me waiting.

Had he left while I was gone? I didn’t think so. Normally, he made a point to let me know when he was going out. We had that kind of relationship and it seemed like common courtesy to let the other know when we were going to be out so no one worried.

I knocked on the door again, this time louder.

Another minute went by with no answer and I really started to worry.

I turned around and headed back towards the garage as I dug through my purse one-handed. I scanned the area as I kept pawing through my purse blind. Something didn’t feel right and I didn’t dare take my eyes off the familiar world around me to look inside my purse so I could put an end to the search. My fingers wrapped around my cell phone as I made it to the side garage door under the stairs. I pulled my phone free of my purse as I peered in through the glass paned window. Through the dark, I spotted Thomas’s black BMW parked where it always was. If he’d have gone out he would have driven his car. We were two people alone in the world save for each other. If he went anywhere he drove because there was no one else to come and pick him up.

I swallowed thickly as I looked down at the now illuminated phone screen. Something felt wrong here. Where was he?

I hit Thomas's contact and pressed down on the green button. I hit speaker so I wouldn't have to put the phone against my ear or be distracted by it as I continued to scan my surroundings. The hair on the back of my neck stood up straight and at attention as my body began to feel clammy. I could feel eyes on me coming from somewhere and instantly felt they weren't friendly.

I was losing my mind.

And the phone kept ringing on and on. Finally, it went to voicemail where I left a hurried message for Thomas to call me back and soon, or I was going to hunt him down and kick his geriatric ass.

I stuffed my phone back into my purse and blew out a deep breath, trying to calm down my nerves. It didn't work.

A sick feeling filled my stomach with dread. He was old but I never considered that he was actually old. He seemed so healthy and full of life to me that his age never even factored in. I had thought Thomas capable of anything but in reality, he wasn't. He was an eighty-year-old man getting close to ninety and, though he was healthy, his age was bound to catch up to him sooner or later.

What if he'd fallen or had a heart attack or something equally as horrible and was now lying in there slowly dying while he waited for me to come home and save him?

I dropped my purse to the ground and ran back to the guest house. I pounded uselessly on the door for another minute before trying the handle. To my shock, the door opened immediately. Thomas never left his door unlocked. Never. Even though we lived out here alone with no neighbor to be seen and no-one ever came out here to visit, he told me it was important to always keep the doors locked and the security systems engaged at all times. There were bad people everywhere, he'd told me, and we didn't want to make things easier for them by being stupid. I had to agree with him because I'd spent the majority of my life surrounded with bad people who'd done things that had fucked up my whole life. He hadn't needed to tell me twice and, not only had I kept all my doors locked 24/7 but I'd made sure the security system had been on at all times, whether it was the middle of the day or not.

I burst into his little house and frantically searched for any sign of him.

My heart sank as I took in the messy living room. The sofa was turned over onto its side, the cushions a shredded mess with the stuffing strewn all over the place. The priceless tea set he'd received from his mother upon her death bed and had lovingly taken care of since was shattered to pieces and splattered across the floor. He'd been so careful with it but that had never stopped him from using it. I'd been forced to drink tea with him out of one of those stupid cups many a time and each time I had been terrified of dropping it or placing it too hard back on its saucer and chipping it. And now it was smashed to pieces all over the floor.

My heart sank for Thomas as it also squeezed painfully inside my chest. This wasn't right, none of it was. First the door then the mess. Thomas would have a coronary if he were to see this.

Carefully, I stepped over the broken glass and mangled couch cushions and walked to the kitchen.

The kitchen was a disaster. Flour, sugar and coffee were littered across the ceramic tiles, mixed in with glass. Plates, cups, the coffee pot, all of it was in a mess on the floor.

Stumbling back, I clutched at my chest as I whirled around and sprinted towards the hallway that would take me to the bedroom.

I stopped before the closed door and the smell hit me first.

I gagged and covered my nose and mouth with my hand. What was that awful smell?

A sense of foreboding hit me hard as I put my hand up to the smooth wood and held my breath before pushing the door open.