The House on Sandstone Read online

  The House on Sandstone

  The House on Sandstone

  By

  KG MacGregor

  ©2004

  Nothing much to disclaim here. This is an original story, though the main characters bear a mild resemblance to familiar faces. The town of Leland, Kentucky, is fictitious. Any similarity to persons living or dead is coincidental.

  Thanks to my Sweetcakes for her help and inspiration. I'm always interested in feedback, and you may direct that to [email protected].

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  Chapter 1

  "No, Mrs. Trout, I checked the drawer myself and I went through the closet and the bathroom too. Are you sure you brought them with you to the hospital?" Justine tucked the phone beneath her chin as she typed the complaint into the computer form. "Did you look in your car? Sometimes people get here and decide to leave things…Yes, I'll wait."

  In eight more minutes, all the incoming calls would get a recording advising them to call back during office hours. It had been a crazy weekend at Grace Hospital and the complaints department–which consisted only of Justine Hall–was catching most of the fallout on Monday. A full moon had kept the emergency room full of all kinds of foolishness, and there were five babies born on Saturday, a single-day record for Leland, Kentucky. But the biggest commotion happened Sunday morning when Reverend Russell had suffered a heart attack in the pulpit. Practically the whole Presbyterian congregation came in behind the ambulance, filling up the parking lots and the lobbies, blocking the halls, and badgering the nursing staff every ten minutes for updates. The good news was that it was only a mild attack. The bad news was that two of the deacons had gotten into fisticuffs over who was going to get to preach the next week, and that led to a bloody nose and a broken hand.

  "You found 'em? That's great! I was hoping…No, it's okay, Mrs. Trout. People have their minds on other things when they're coming to the hospital. These things just happen." In the right-hand column, Justine entered the resolution: Teeth found in car.

  Four minutes to go. Justine wasn't usually a clock watcher, but she had something big planned for later and she needed to get her workout out of the way first. Hopefully, she'd make it to five without… Rrrrrrnnnngggg! Dang it!

  "Grace Hospital, Patient Services. This is Justine Hall. How can I help you?" She brought up a new form on the computer, then stopped. "No, Trey. If your father says no, then the answer is no…You can ask him to call me and we'll talk about it, but I'm not giving you permission after he's already said you can't go." The redhead rolled her eyes as she listened to the teenager's argument. "Trey, your father and I both went to college. We are not the two stupidest people in the world…I told you to have him call me. We'll talk about it. That's the best I can do, honey…I love you…I said I love you." Seventeen had somehow gotten to be too old to tell your mother you loved her. "Bye-bye."

  Justine sighed in resignation as the red light blinked to announce a message. Technically, it had come before five o'clock; so technically, she should answer it before heading out.

  "Hi…uh, I was calling about my mom's bill that she got today. She was in the hospital last month for a…what was it?...a cardiac catheter thingy. But her bill says she had a…a heart transplant. She, uh…doesn't remember that, and we can't find any really big scars.

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  But if it turns out that's what they did, we can't afford it so they'll have to swap it back.

  Tell you what, I'll just call back on Tuesday…I hope you enjoyed this little entertainment break."

  In spite of herself, Justine laughed at that one. It never ceased to amaze her how often procedure codes got entered wrong into the system. Whoever was doing that probably had no idea of the confusion and trauma they caused. At least this woman who had called tonight seemed to have a sense of humor about it, and that always helped. Sometimes, people just flew off the handle and ranted until their veins were ready to pop.

  With the flip of a switch, Justine turned the phone over to the answering machine. Ten minutes later, she was at the hospital's Wellness Center, decked out in spandex tights and a tank top, and claiming a free treadmill. Her plan was to run four miles here then do two circuits on the weights, her usual Monday-Wednesday-Friday routine. Easing into a steady pace, her mind wandered back to that last phone call and she chuckled again.

  "What's so funny?" A thin man slipped onto the treadmill to her right. Like Justine, Dr.

  Brian Coulter was a fixture at the Wellness Center, serious about setting a good example for his patients.

  "Oh, hi, Dr. Coulter. Nothing really. I was just thinking about a phone call I got today."

  "How many times do I have to tell you? Call me Brian. We're all friends here."

  "I know. It's just that I think it gives patients more confidence to hear everyone address the doctors with authority."

  "But we all have to let our hair down sometimes, don't you think?"

  Justine hoped that wasn't the case with Dr. Coulter–he sported a world class comb-over that flopped to the wrong side whenever he ran. Still, he was a nice man and a well respected obstetrician. Sometimes, though, he needed a little–

  "Say, why don't we go for a drink when we're done here? You can tell me all about what's got your funny bone tickled."

  "Dr. Coulter, I'm afraid I already have plans for this evening." Plans that do not include going out with a married man.

  "Sure…some other time then?"

  "I'm afraid I have plans for those evenings also."

  "All of them?"

  Justine smiled gently and nodded. "And I think it would be best if we didn't have this kind of conversation again. People might overhear and get the wrong idea. And you know 4

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  how they like to gossip." If anyone in town knew that for a fact, it was Justine. "Besides, Dr. Henderson would probably frown on that kind of socializing among the staff."

  Besides being their boss, Jim Henderson was a longtime friend of Justine's late father, and their loyalty to one another was clear to everyone on the staff. Brian was bright enough to take a hint, as he didn't need a dressing down from the hospital administrator.

  **********

  "What did they say?" Nadine Griffin stretched across the kitchen sink to open the window a crack. With bread in the oven and stew on the stove, it was stuffy in the small house.

  "I got an answering machine. If you want me to, I'll take the paperwork up there in the morning and see if I can get it straightened out." Carly reached for a cookie from a bag on the counter, only to have her hand slapped away.

  "You'll spoil your supper. Look at you…you're not eating right. I bet you eat cookies for dinner."

  With cognac, the blonde woman thought. And sometimes I top it off with a cigar.

  "Are you sure you don't mind taking care of that bill? I can have your dad deal with it. I don't want you to have to worry about that stuff while you're home." Her daughter hadn't been back to Leland in almost four years.

  "It's no big deal. Daddy has enough to do, what with Perry gone to Ohio all week. In fact, I was thinking I might ride with him tomorrow if he had some deliveries."

  "Now that's just what I mean. You shouldn't feel like you have to work so hard when you're here. Goodness knows, you work hard enough as it is. Just take it easy and relax for a change."

  "I am relaxing. I like going along in the truck. Besides, Daddy has no business trying to haul furniture by himself. He's sixty-eight years old, for gosh sakes. And so are you. If I want to come home and do a few things to help out, you should let me. It'll make me feel better about having to be gone so much, and maybe we can all think of it as a
vacation."

  Nadine had to smile at that. It really was good to have Carly home, especially for so long this time–eight whole weeks. And she looked healthier than when they'd gone to visit her in Israel. She was tanned and her blonde hair was short and streaked with a few strands of gray. She'd lost a few pounds since the last time she'd been home, enough to make Nadine think she wasn't getting enough to eat.

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  "Why don't you call your father and tell him supper's almost ready?"

  Carly reached for the phone again, dialing by rote the number at Griffin Home Furnishings. She delivered her mom's message in a commanding tone that brooked no argument and hurriedly set the table. The drive from the store would take her father less than three minutes.

  "Listen, before Daddy gets home...Is your heart really okay? I mean, you aren't keeping anything from us again, are you?"

  "I'm fine, Carly. I swear, you're just like your father. You'd think I'd been caught lying all my life."

  "Well…you didn't tell either of us about that biopsy until it came back negative." That was almost ten years ago, when Nadine's doctor had found a suspicious lump in her breast.

  "My heart is…okay, for the most part. I have a small place that's…well, it's not blocked, but it's…kinda squeezed. Dr. Sanders thinks that's what's making me so dizzy when I hurry around too much. He's put me on some medication, and I haven't had any problems since then…if you don't count the headaches. But they're not as bad as they used to be, now that I'm used to the medicine. And I don't have to go back for a checkup until March, so he must not be too worried."

  Carly was still skeptical, but what choice did she have if her mom wanted to keep things from her? However, that glitch in the paperwork might be just the thing to get her doctor to talk if there really was something wrong.

  Nadine was filling the soup bowls just as the pickup pulled into the drive. In a few minutes, they'd sit down to a Norman Rockwell moment…almost perfect. The only thing it needed was one more person at the table. Somebody for Carly.

  "Hey, Daddy."

  "Hi, sweetie. It's so good to come home and see your car in the driveway every day."

  Lloyd Griffin tossed his cap onto the counter and headed to the sink to wash up.

  "Hey, won't you get in trouble wearing a Barber cap?"

  "No, I've got my Diggers on. You have to cover all your bases." The two competing boot factories were owned by brothers whose bitter feud was one of the best things to ever happen to Leland, Kentucky. Daryl Barber split from brother Wayne to form his own company, hiring away the workers with better wages, only to have Wayne lure them back with better benefits. Nearly every family in Leland had someone who made hiking boots, and virtually everyone in town wore Barber Bucks or DB Diggers.

  "That's so silly. I can't believe you go to all that trouble."

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  "Easy for you to say. Everywhere you go around here, people look at your feet first."

  Like all the other merchants in town, Lloyd avoided a display of favoritism between the two factories. Some days he wore the flip set, Bucks with a DB cap. Either he wore the two logos together or not at all.

  "I should get some new boots while I'm here. Mine got stolen from the hotel room." On her last job, Carly Griffin had lived in downtown Jerusalem, wary of moving into one of the neighborhoods for fear of where the next bomb would go off. She'd had one close call at an open-air market, and that was more than enough to convince her to stay close to the hotel when not on the job site.

  The 42-year-old headed one of the Labor Orientation Teams for Worldwide Workforce, a consulting company that specialized in helping industries expand abroad by recruiting and training local employees. After twenty years with the company, she was growing weary of the rotation from one country to another, with only a couple of months stateside in between. Her applications to corporate in Louisville had been ignored for more than ten years; it didn't really pay to be successful in the field abroad because all that got you was another rotation. It was the guys who couldn't hack it overseas that kept getting kicked upstairs.

  "I don't want to get in your business, honey, but your mother and I are both glad to have you out of the Middle East, and if you want us to live to be old people, you won't take another job in that part of the world."

  "Amen to that!" Nadine echoed.

  "I told you both not to worry about me. I was always safe while I was there." Except for that one time, and you'll never hear about that. "Our hotel was a long way from the war zone."

  When her parents had visited last spring, they could all hear the explosions in the distance, and the sounds of sirens and gunfire were constant through the night. "All I can say is that I'm glad they're not bombing in Madrid."

  "This stew is really good, Mama." Time to change the subject. Carly wasn't about to mention the Basque terrorists, but she had to admit, she would sleep better on her next job in the Spanish capital than she did in Jerusalem. Still, she wasn't looking forward to another year and a half abroad.

  **********

  Justine stepped from the shower and pulled the plastic cap from her head, fluffing the reddish brown hair around her neck. There hadn't been any point in washing it tonight–it 7

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  was just going to get messed up later when Jon ran his hands through it. She smiled in anticipation of the special evening she had planned. The phone interrupted her dreamy thoughts as she slipped into the plush terry robe.

  "Hello…oh, hi JT." Her ex, Jason Thomas Sharpe, Jr. "No, I did not tell him he could go.

  You know better than that. I told him to have you call me and we'd talk about it…But I have plans tonight, so make it quick." Taunting her ex-husband with these little hints was one of her favorite recreational activities.

  Justine had been divorced for six years, and both of their teenage children lived primarily with JT. Over the last three years, she'd lost weight and gotten in shape, and JT's interest in her had reignited–in the form of compliments on her figure or hairstyle; casual flirting; and even once, a blatant invitation to "ride Woody"…for old times' sake, of course.

  Justine had answered with a promise to tell his wife if he didn't knock it off. She hadn't meant it–she would never insert herself in the middle of their marriage–but JT didn't need to know that. As near as she could tell, she was JT's only extra-marital interest these days, and she seriously doubted he would rise to the occasion if she ever called his bluff. It was possible, she thought, that the 49-year-old man was finally growing up.

  "JT, stop talking at me and listen. I don't think Trey is old enough to go away for a weekend without adults. Is that what you want to hear?" She waited while the man on the other end of the phone calmed down. "Then hallelujah! It took twenty years, but we finally agreed on something…Listen, I've got to go. I need to get ready for Jon." That would get his jockeys in a knot, she thought.

  Checking the clock on the mantle, Justine finished her preparations. Hurrying from room to room, she turned out the lights and set the stereo on soft jazz, adjusting the volume so that it was barely heard. In the den, she pulled the coffee table from the center of the rug to create an open space directly in front of an already roaring fire. One by one, she lit strategically place candles so that they flickered from all around the room.

  **********

  "That was delicious, Mama. If there's one thing I miss more than anything else about Leland, it's your cooking."

  Nadine just glowed in her daughter's praise. She'd been setting the table for forty-six years, and Lloyd no longer seemed to notice what was on it.

  "Now if you don't mind, I think I'm going to take a little walk through the neighborhood while my dinner settles."

  "You're not fooling me! You're going out to smoke one of those fancy cigarettes."

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  Carly grinned at the face her mother
made. "That's right. But at least I don't smoke them in the house." The younger woman pulled her coat from the hall closet and slipped it on, checking the pocket to make sure she had her Dunhill Lights and lighter. She would have a cognac by the fire before turning in. Over the years, that routine had helped her to take the edge off the day and fall asleep without too much tossing and turning.

  "The path through the park goes over Stony Ridge to Sandstone now."

  "Oh yeah? Maybe I'll check it out." Carly delivered a kiss to her mother's wrinkled cheek.

  "I won't be long."

  Stepping into the darkness on the porch, she filled her lungs with the crisp November air, a welcome change from the dusty haze of Jerusalem. Yessiree, this time, she was really glad to be home.

  Stony Ridge was a steep hill that divided the homes on Carly's street from the city limits.

  In the old days, it was symbolic of the chasm between the haves and have-nots. The Griffins were far from poor, but the low margins on furniture didn't afford many luxuries.

  Nonetheless, they'd been happy in the two-bedroom house on Stony Ridge Road.

  The old park held mixed memories for Carly. She'd started coming here almost twenty years ago on her first trip home after going to work for Worldwide on a job in Bolivia.

  Back then, she'd told her mom that she just needed some fresh air to clear her head; but in fact, she'd hid in the woods like a teenager to sneak a smoke.

  That's when she first discovered the houses on Sandstone. From the top of the wooded hill, she had seen the construction underway; obviously, these would be some of the nicest homes in Leland when they were finished, and they were just inside the city limits.