In Memory's Shadow

  Prologue

  Echo Ridge, California, thirty years ago

  The loud voices raised in argument didn’t wake her. But the startling sound of her mother screaming did.

  “Mommy,” she whimpered, sitting up in bed and rubbing her eyes with her tiny fists. She raised her voice. “Mommy.” She huddled under her fluffy pink blanket, hugging her much loved and very battered stuffed dog against her chest to keep her nighttime terrors at bay as the loud voices echoed in her room. Her parents never argued, so she didn’t understand what was going on. She could hear music. It was one of her mom’s favorite songs. She couldn’t understand why a song said that darkness was an old friend. She didn’t like it when it was dark. But it was the raised voices that frightened her now.

  When the voices didn’t stop, she climbed out of bed and carefully reached for her slippers. They were pink and fuzzy just like her blanket; Santa gave them to her last Christmas and she liked the way they kept her feet warm.

  She wondered if they were watching a scary movie. Mommy was screaming the same way she did when she found a spider in the linen closet. She carefully opened her bedroom door and peeked out. Why did it look so scary out there? And how come the night-light wasn’t on? She didn’t like to have to get up and go to the bathroom unless the night-light was on.

  “Mommy?” she whispered, feeling more and more scared. She was afraid to raise her voice. After all, she was supposed to be asleep. She tried to tell herself that Mommy and Daddy were just watching a scary movie. That’s why Mommy was screaming, she told herself as she crept toward the stairs.

  She should go back to her room so Mommy and Daddy wouldn’t know she was awake, but she wanted to know why Mommy was screaming and why Daddy was now yelling and saying a lot of bad words. She dropped to her knees when she reached the stair’s railing and curled her fingers around the bars as she pressed her face between them. From past experience she knew she could see downstairs from here.

  Her tiny brow furrowed as she watched her parents standing near the front door. The man who took care of their garden and did other stuff around the house was there, too. She knew who the man was. She thought he was nice. He would even growl and pretend to be a big bad lion, which made her laugh and shriek as if she were frightened. And he’d fixed her playhouse yesterday. Why did he look so mad now? She hadn’t done anything bad. At dinner. Mommy told her what a good girl she had been lately and how she was going to take her to see the new cartoon movie tomorrow.

  “You’re crazy!” Her daddy shouted, pointing his finger at the man.

  “Don’t you call me crazy, you son of a—” the man said in a low voice that was so chilling, goose bumps traveled up her spine. She shrank back at the fury in the man’s voice. She wanted to cry out and demand to know why he was acting so mean. Why did he make her mommy cry?

  She wanted to call out and ask them what was wrong; but something held her back. She wasn’t sure what, maybe it was because she wasn’t supposed to be out of bed, but she remained silent.

  Her mommy and daddy looked surprised when he pulled a gun out of his jacket pocket Her mommy put her hands to her throat and backed away while her dad shouted^ “You bastard!” and leapt for the gun.

  The sound was deafening and caused her to jump. Her eyes were glued to the scene below.

  Her daddy fell against the wall and sat on the floor. ItI looked as if her linger paints were splashed on his shirt and there was a weird look on his face. Mommy screamed and knelt on the floor, reaching for Daddy.

  “What have you done?” she screamed at the man. “He’s dead! You killed him!”

  But he didn’t answer. Instead, there was another loud noise and her mommy fell down beside her daddy.

  She couldn’t move as she watched the mean man touch-both her mommy and daddy. Something told her she should go back to bed before he saw her. She carefully released her fingers from the railing and inched her way backward by sliding on her bottom and her hands until she reached her door. She crept inside and carefully closed the door before she ran back to her bed and jumped in. She didn’t even bother to take off her slippers. She lay there, tightly hugging her toy dog as if he could protect her front the evil out there. She could hear music still playing, this time about a white rabbit and how pills can make you big or small. Her mommy once smiled when she asked her if it was a song about Alice in Wonderland. Now, the song just sounded scary.

  A few minutes later, she heard her bedroom door ease open. She kept her eyes shut tight, breathing softly just as she would do when Mommy came in to make sure she was asleep. It seemed like a very long time before the door closed again.

  She didn’t know how long she lay there. She didn’t get out of bed again even though a tiny voice in her head told her Mommy wouldn’t be coming in to make sure she was asleep tonight.

  Chapter I

  Woodland Hills, California, thirty years later

  “You know this running away to Hicksville, U.S.A., won’t solve anything.”

  Keely turned slowly at the sound of her ex-husband’s voice. She stared at his golden, tanned good looks and wondered why she had never before noticed the slight weakness in the chin and the arrogance in the eyes. She couldn’t say all their years together were a waste. She had a wonderful daughter as a result. But the thought of her ex-husband left a very bitter taste in her mouth. She didn’t mourn the loss of him, but she did mourn the loss of a marriage she had thought would last forever.

  “I’m not running away, Jay,” she said as calmly as was possible after she tamped down her first reaction—to deck him and hurt his pretty face. “I decided it was time to make some changes in my life. This was one of them.” She waved her hand in the direction of the movers, who were busy loading furniture and boxes onto the van.

  His brilliant blue eyes slid sideways toward a teenage girl who was chattering away with two other girls.

  “What about her?”

  Now Keely really wanted to plant her fist in his weak jaw.

  “Steffie,” she said, stressing their daughter’s name, “doesn’t like the idea of leaving her friends, but she’s willing to give it a try. After all, her father doesn’t seem to give a damn she’ll be moving several hundred miles away.”

  He flushed. “I just thought I’d ask,” he said sullenly.

  “You bastard,” she snarled, making sure to keep her voice low. She wasn’t about to let their daughter know just what a jerk her father was. “Why are you even asking now? You never cared before.”

  “I’m not the one taking her hundreds of miles away from the only home she’s ever known.” He was gentleman enough to keep his voice low so he wouldn’t be overheard.

  “And I wasn’t the one who had an affair that stirred up this whole mess,” she retorted. Keely’s fingers curled tightly into her palms. For a moment, she seriously thought about punching the man. “I realize she might be a perfect image of you, but every day I thank God she didn’t get your personality.” She stepped back and took a deep breath. “Forget it. I promised myself I wouldn’t fight with you.”

  Jay turned his head and stared at his daughter. Steffie’s shoulder-length tresses were a darker shade of blonde than his own sun-gold coloring and her eyes a darker blue that turned cobalt when she wore any shade of blue. He never seemed to notice that, though. All he saw was that her jaw betrayed the same stubborn vein as her mother’s and her temper as heated as her mother’s. When news of his affair had come out, Steffie hadn’t lost any time in telling her father exactly what she thought of him. He first blamed Keely for telling their daughter, but Steffie had overheard their argument and let it be known that a so-called good friend of hers had told her what she overheard her parents talking about When Jay lost his
wife he lost his daughter, too. His guilt would have forced him to disown his flesh and blood, but his child had already taken care of that.

  “Hey, Mom, are we going now or what?” Steffie called from the truck. She didn’t look at or acknowledge her father by word.

  Jay held out his hand. “I hope everything goes well for you, Keely,” he said formally, as if speaking to an acquaintance instead of the woman he had been married to for close to fourteen years. “Although, I still can’t imagine you wanting to go back to that hick town. It’s not as if you grew up there. You left there when you were five years old, for heaven’s sake. There’s nothing up there for you.”

  “Right now. Jay, a nice quiet life sounds like exactly what I need. I plan to fix up my parents’ house and settle in there.” She started toward the utility vehicle she’d bought for the trip. Even with the extra room, the back was piled high with things Steffie didn’t feel she could live without until the movers arrived with the rest of their belongings.

  “Bye, Jay,” Steffie said breezily, climbing into the passenger side. She smiled sweetly at her mother’s knowing look.

  “If you have any problems, you call me,” he told Keely.

  She thought about telling him she hadn’t called him before when she had problems, so why should she bother now? Instead, she gave a curt nod as she climbed into the truck.

  Jay shook his head as he studied the four-wheel-drive vehicle. “I can’t see you driving one of these.”

  “Max will be perfect up there,” Steffie spoke up.

  He grimaced. He’d never understood why Keely felt the need to name her vehicles.

  “His name is from the Mad Max movie,” Steffie explained.

  “Appropriate,” he muttered, stepping back.

  “Bye, Jay, have a good life.” Keely started up the engine and backed down the driveway.

  “Did he give you the speech about watching out for bears and tigers in the woods?” Steffie asked. “Or did he tell you that Echo Ridge probably still hasn’t gotten running water in their houses yet and you’ll have to go outside and chop wood so we’ll have heat? And all the men will call you ‘little lady.”’

  Keely burst out laughing. “You are an impossible child.”

  “Yes, but you love me anyway because I’m just like you.”

  “How true. Steffie, we are going to have the time of our lives up there,” she announced.

  The young girl immediately turned on the radio, pushing buttons until she got the rock station she wanted.

  As Keely drove onto the freeway, she felt a strange ticklish feeling creep along her backbone.

  Her parents had died in a traffic accident when Keely was five. Keely had been gravely ill with pneumonia and she was told her grandmother had come over to take care of her that day. Not long after Keely recovered from her illness, her grandmother moved the two of them south to San Diego.

  When Keely was young, she always felt as if a part of her life had abruptly ended with the death of her parents. As if something had been left unfinished. It also bothered her that she couldn’t remember them. She had stopped asking her grandmother after she saw how upset her queries made her. But she never forgot the questions that she always hoped she’d find answers for. That part of her life had been effectively wiped from her memory. But there were times she wished she knew why she remembered so little before moving to San Diego.

  It was only recently that Keely had felt a strong need to return to her roots. While cleaning out a box of papers, she’d found the paperwork for the family home in Echo Ridge. The property had been left to Keely and even when young, she’d insisted her grandmother never sell the house. So it had always been a rental. For the past couple years, it had been unoccupied, so Keely thought this was the time to move up there. She’d contacted the Realtor who’d managed the house for her. Since it was currently uninhabitable, she arranged to rent a house until she could fix hers up.

  Keely thought of the nightmare that had plagued her last night. Voices. Music from the late sixties and a terror that had her waking up in a cold sweat She eventually put it down to the movie she had watched before going to bed and lay back down, but it was a long time before she was able to fall asleep again. It seemed all too real.

  None of it mattered now. Keely was looking for a new life and she felt Echo Ridge would give it to her. Her work as a graphic designer could be done anywhere, thanks to computer modems and fax machines. For now, she would just concentrate on making this a true adventure for herself and her daughter.

  “What do you think, Steff?” With her hands on hips, her face smudged with dirt, dressed in grubby denim cut offs and a faded pink T-shirt, Keely looked more like her fifteen-year-old daughter’s older sister than her mother.

  Steffie looked around the living room. She looked as unkempt as her mother in a pair of faded gray shorts and a blue T-shirt although her curly dark blond hair had been pulled up in a ponytail. The movers had obligingly moved pieces of furniture until Keely and Steffie could agree where they wanted them, and boxes were piled up against walls. But it was the floor to ceiling expanse of glass that attracted her attention and the side door that opened out onto the deck overlooking the woods. They stood there looking at the lush trees that lined the large backyard.

  “You do realize that in a horror book there’d be some ugly ole mountain man or monster in those woods watching us all the time and wanting to carry us off to their cave,” Steffie said, turning to her mother. “Which one do you think we’re lucky enough to have? And is there any chance he could look like Brad Pitt or Christian Slater?”

  Keely shuddered. “You know very well we’d end up with someone who looked like a very old tree. I wish you’d quit reading those books!”

  Steffie widened her eyes in mock innocence. “But Mom, you told me I can read anything I find in the young adult section!”

  “I was thinking more along the lines of Nancy Drew or The Babysitter’s Club.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Give me a break, Mom. I outgrew those years ago.”

  Keely looked at her daughter and wondered if she would survive the next few years with her sanity intact.

  “Let’s concentrate on unpacking the necessary stuff now and we’ll worry about the rest tomorrow.”

  “What about dinner? I’m starving.”

  “If we’re lucky, someone around here delivers.”

  Steffie peered closely out the living room window. All she could see were trees. “I don’t know about you, but it doesn’t look as if we’ll find something close by. But it looks like there’s another house not far from here.”

  Keely went into the kitchen and searched for the box she’d marked To Be Opened Immediately. She had packed a little of everything in one box so she wouldn’t have to spend days hunting for anything they might need right away.

  “I thought I saw a house up there when we went too far trying to find this driveway. Do you want to find the phone book for me?”

  Steffie twirled her ponytail around her finger as she walked in the kitchen and searched cabinets until she found the phone books. “Hmm.” She thumbed through. “We’re in luck. There are a few places that deliver. Chinese or pizza?”

  “Anything. I’m starving and—”

  “And you don’t want to cook!” Steffie teased, picking up the cordless phone and punching out numbers. “Okay, then it’s Chinese and we’re going all out because I’m starved. I just hope they make good lemon chicken.”

  As Keely emptied the box and thought about the many changes in her life in the past few months, she listened to her daughter ask questions about certain dishes and briskly place their order. She kept wondering if she’d made the right decision about the move. She hadn’t thought Steffie would be willing to leave school with only a few months remaining in the present school year, but the teen had patiently explained to her mother that it was for the best because she’d have a chance to get acquainted with other kids before summer. And Keely knew if anyone could
settle in to a new situation and make new friends with remarkable ease it was her daughter.

  “We are set!” Steffie announced with her usual exuberance. “They actually have bacon wrapped shrimp, so I ordered that, too.”

  Keely grinned. “I guess that means we can stay.”

  “You got it.” Steffie pulled a can of soda out of the refrigerator. “How long do you think it will take to fix up your house?”

  She shrugged. “I won’t know until we go over there and take a look. The Realtor was supposed to keep up any major repairs so it should only need painting and new carpeting. The roof was replaced last year, so hopefully that means there won’t be any water damage.”

  “It’s nice and quiet up here and the roads look great for in-line skating.” Steffie popped the tab and drank deeply. “I’m all for that.”

  Keely shook her head and chuckled at her daughter’s reasoning.

  Steffie set the can on the counter and looked at her mother with a gaze that looked vaguely troubled. “Does it bother you? Coming back here after all this time?”

  Keely took the time to study her emotions and gauge the feelings that had been running through her since they arrived in Echo Ridge. There had been a faint sense of unease when she drove through the small mountain town, but she put it down to the reason why she’d left here close to thirty years ago. There was still that heavy curtain hiding a part of her life she knew she would never recover. More than one doctor had told her not to worry about it. A bad case of pneumonia after her parents’ deaths had left a little girl’s memory blank.

  “No,” she said finally. ‘It doesn’t bother me.”

  Steffie studied her mother’s face, but she didn’t look reassured.

  Later, Keely wasn’t sure what woke her up in the middle of the night. She got up and headed for the window to see if an animal was prowling around and its cry might have awakened her. She didn’t see any need to worry about the human kind. She had heard the crime rate up here was almost nonexistent thanks to a sheriff who cracked down on lawbreakers. As she looked out into the darkness all she saw was a pinpoint of light in the distance. At that moment, an animal’s howl sounded far away. At least, she hoped it was far away.