***
A few days later, she found herself alone in the living room of her childhood home, silence echoing around her. She was back. In Montana. Her mind whirled at the implication of being back in her hometown before reality kicked in and she reminded herself that her step-father was never going to cause her distress again. ‘Denmari’ as he used to insist on being called, was gone; dead and buried- his legacy of terror officially at an end. She had watched him being lowered into the ground only hours ago. So why didn’t she feel like it was over?Maybe it's this house; she considered the unsettling possibility for the first time in weeks.
Cool air filtered in through the window, the breeze crisp and cleansing. If only that was all it would take to cleanse the black marks that seemed to mar her soul down deep. In the quiet stillness of the night, every creak and groan the old house emitted sounded like a shot in the dark.
Paige steeled herself against the paranoia that seeped around the edges of her consciousness and made some semblance of an effort not to jump at every little noise. That was the old Paige. The one who jumped at the slightest hint of danger, the one who kept her head down and tried her damn level best not to make waves. That spineless woman had died along with the man who had haunted her nightmares and crushed her dreams for most of her life.
"Father." The word felt cold and alien on her lips. Uncomfortable. Giovanni Denmari had been a lot of things to a lot of people, but he hadn’t ever been a father to Paige. Tormenter was closer to the truth. And she felt him still, here in this house that hadn’t been her haven since she was six years old. He was firmly embedded in every nook and cranny of the three thousand square foot monster.
Everywhere she looked a piece of him remained. Those were his books gracing the mahogany shelves in the library, his heavy crockery dishes that had long since replaced her mother’s fine china and silver cutlery. The masculine paneling in the study was his, as was the stale odor of cigar smoke that clung to the room with such tenacity that she was certain it would never be removed from the carpet and draperies and walls. His clothing still hung in the closet, for Christ’s sake. She threw back the shot of potent amber liquid in one smoothly practiced movement.
Another trademark of the 'new' Paige, for the old one had shied away from liquor and pretty much anything else deemed unbecoming for a lady. Don’t smoke don’t drink don’t swear, don’t talk back, don’t think, don’t feel, don’t decide because such thoughts were wasted on a female, don’t...try.
"Fuck you." She toasted the ghost of terrors past with a cynical twist of her lips. The old Paige felt the slightest twinge of guilt at such a hostile statement, heartfelt as it was. The nuns at school would have been horrified to see the girl they had all regarded as their most promising student blossom into a young woman who drank hard liquor, smoked cigarettes, and spewed hateful sentiments about a dead man. Her own father, no less.
No, she reminded herself. Step-father. Her father had been dead for years. Giovanni Denmari was a cruel bastard who had used and abused her mother for eleven years and raised her orphaned daughter out of charity-if you could call shipping a young girl off to a Catholic boarding school 'raising’, though she knew she shouldn’t complain about that particular parenting slight.
Catholic school had at least provided her with a safe and semi stable, if rigid, environment. The nuns had been the ones to encourage her to apply to the state University. They had even written letters of recommendation and thanks to advanced placement testing Paige had graduated with a BA in Technology in fewer than three of the four years that was the average allotted time length for the program. So, nun bashing was definitely out, she reasoned with a ghost of a smile.
The moon was high in the sky, the air cool and crisp and clean, the kind of night that held magic in the air. October had always been her favorite time of year; she loved everything about the season, the temperature that was cold without being all out frigid, the festivities, and the fresh breezes that breathed life into everything it touched.
She loved shoving the windows wide open and feeling that first gust of wind in her hair, airing out the large rooms in the house, spaces on the verge of being stagnant from all of the summers where air conditioning was a necessity. The wind in her face never failed to clear her head and so she frequently took long walks in the afternoon and evening hours; the later the better, as far as Paige was concerned.
But a walk wasn’t on her agenda at that particular moment, she thought, turning a slow circle in the den, stopping when her wild gaze came to rest on the ugliest carved wooden bird she had ever seen; Denmari’s doing, no doubt. It matched perfectly with the other dead-animal depictions that lined the walls like taxidermy shelving. No more, she vowed, marching over to the ugly bird. It came off the wall easily enough and Paige grunted in satisfaction as she held its’ heavy weight in her hands. It was exceptionally ugly. And tacky. And it had been his. Paige knew at once that it had to go and she took immense pleasure in striding through the house to wrench open the back door. The bird made a satisfying crash after she sent it hurtling through the air. It didn’t escape her notice that the thing landed in the old red brick lined burn pit.
“Good idea.”
Lips curving into a smile, she went back into the house, tromped into the hallway and took the stairs two at a time until she was standing, breath coming in short erratic bursts of adrenaline, in front of the closed door that had been Giovanni Denmari’s bedroom suite.
Paige shrugged off the eerie sensation of being watched by a thousand unseen eyes and resolutely threw open the door to the musty room, flipped the light switch and crossed the plush white carpet to the closet, refusing to veer from her course.
The closet door was flung open with the same lack of ceremony the bedroom door had received; shirts and pants and sport jackets were ripped from their padded hangers and tossed in an uncaring heap in the middle of the double bed that still sported his sheets and matching quilt.
Paige wrapped the pile of clothing in the bed linens that still bore his scent and wrestled the whole bundle down the wide staircase, dragged it behind her through the house, out the back door and into the burn pit it went.
An hour later, a tangle of broken dishes, linens, drapes, deer head, and a wide assortment of odds and ends filled the pit. Paige gave the top layer a good healthy dose of gasoline, lit a match, and jumped back as flames sprang to life in the still night air. She would have liked to have lit a cigarette off of it, like actors did in the movies, but she didn’t dare get much closer to the inferno she had created. The burn pit was large and deep, but she wasn’t entirely sure that it had been safe to pile it so high, she thought, eyeing the crackling mess with caution and taking yet another step back. Oh well, she finally shrugged, there weren’t any neighbors close enough to be affected if things got out of control, and the house was insured, though the thought of losing all of her mama’s things made her stomach clench. So she waited on the outskirts of the yard, watching shadows and branches twist and weave in the orange glow cast by the fire that was still going strong. When the pile had burned down far enough to be level with the brick wall of the pit, Paige took the garden hose off the circular rack that was mounted to the side of the house, turned on the spigot and sprayed the fire until even the enormous cloud of white smoke had dissipated into the black night.
She didn’t bother to wind the hose up and properly put it away, like Denmari had always insisted on; instead she simply turned off the water, tossed it into the grass and took off across the yard for a walk through the garden, uncaring of the late hour and the dark.
She was always mindful of her surroundings, no matter what the hour. After all, she was a modern woman; she read the newspapers and was well aware of the kind of violence that could befall a woman, especially a woman alone on the street.
Usually she kept to the grounds that surrounded the estate if the moon was up by the time she made her way out the wide front door of the house. And why not?
The property was undeniably beautiful. It would never be a lush paradise, being as mostly pine and sturdy flowers and vegetation graced the stone walkways that meandered through more than fifteen acres of land. She used to think of the space as her own mountain getaway, even though they weren’t technically 'next to' any mountains.
Her fingers trailed along the maze-like hedges that made up the garden and every so often she stopped to sniff at the white bell shaped blooms that popped out here and there. When her mother had been alive, she had tended the garden by herself, devoting long hard hours to the design and care and upkeep of the vast space. The place had been a collaboration between Layna Frey and her first husband Christopher, Paige's real father. It still amazed her, even after all these years, that such a huge, gorgeous place was not only the dream but the product of two people and two people alone.
In recent years, she reflected with only a trace of regret, professional gardeners tended to the trees and bushes and shrubs and flowers. As much as Paige would have loved to carry on her mother’s fine tradition, she had the polar opposite of a 'green thumb'.
No, her thumb was black as coal and she was sure that any plants left in her care wouldn’t have ever lived to tell the tale. There was no denying it-things tended to shrivel and wilt and die around her. Had she been left to tend her mother’s beautiful garden, the entire mass of green life that surrounded her would have probably committed plant suicide within a month.
“I thought I’d find you out here.”
“God!” Paige whirled to face Erik, one hand still clutching her galloping heart. “You scared me; did you have to sneak up on me like that?”
“Who’s sneaking?” He asked with an amused tilt to his head.
“I guess maybe I wasn’t paying attention.” She shrugged, not really all that concerned with her momentary lapse in vigilance.
“I’d say that’s understandable,” He replied, falling into step beside her. “Are you headed back to the house?”
“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea. I have to be up and moving pretty early tomorrow. A little extra sleep wouldn’t hurt.”
“A shower wouldn’t hurt either.” Erik wrinkled his nose. “I can smell you from here.”
“I stink?”
“I’m trying to decide what smells worse, you or the burn pit.”
“Oh, you saw that, huh?”
“It was hard to miss, even without the lingering aroma of charcoal and cheap cologne.”
“I cleaned out the house.” She told him in belated explanation.
“I gathered as much.” Erik nodded sagely. “So. Remind me again, what time do you we leave in the morning?”
“We’re due at the lawyers’ office at seven-thirty.” She sighed.
“I’m surprised he’s open so early; he must keep your kind of hours.” Erik teased.
“Laugh away, but I just want to get this over and done with so we can go back home.”
“Don’t worry; we’ll be back in New York before you know it.”
Erik’s reassurance, heart-felt though she knew it was, did little to ease her anxiety over the impending day. She was grateful that Erik had volunteered to accompany to her the will reading, though. It wasn’t that she couldn’t have done it by herself, just that she didn’t prefer to go this one alone.
Paige said goodnight to Erik before ducking into the small bathroom that was tucked away beneath the stairs on the first floor. She would have used the considerably larger bathroom that connected to her upstairs bedroom, but a quick perusal earlier in the day had revealed a clean but unused space without towels, soap, or wash rags. The three-quarter bath below the stairs, on the other hand, was well stocked with all the necessities and so she showered there before going up to bed.
It took only thirty minutes of tossing and turning to convince Paige that she was in need of a little help and she trudged irritably down the stairs in search of something hot to drink. Once she’d downed a mug of the chamomile tea her mother had often made to help her bring about sleep, her eyelids felt pleasantly heavy. Her sleep still proved restless, though, and more than once she woke with the sheets twisted into ropes around her legs, her head filled with images that had become her all too familiar fantasy over the years. She came awake suddenly from a dream in which strong hands had been probing gently between her thighs as she had writhed and begged for more. In this dream, Erik’s blue eyes had been locked on hers with an intensity that robbed her of breath and speech.
Paige heaved a frustrated sigh and rolled over, taking the covers with her and shoving a pillow between her knees to ease the ache that had settled between her legs. It was true what they said-all of the good ones were either married or gay.