The House on Sugar Plum Lane Read online

  As Amy and the agent returned to their respective vehicles, she paused beside the driver’s door of the Honda Civic and took one last look at the tired old house.

  If only the walls could talk, people often said.

  Maybe, in this case, they would.

  The call came in later that evening, while Amy and Callie were having dinner in the kitchen.

  Amy blotted her lips with her napkin. “Keep eating, honey. I’ll tell them we’ll have to talk later.” Then she headed for the portable phone that rested on the counter.

  When she answered, Ron Paige introduced himself and went on to say, “I have good news, Amy. Mrs. Davila is willing to lease you the house furnished. And she’ll either hire someone to come in and box her mother’s personal items, or you can do it for a discount on the rent.”

  After Amy’s mom had died, one of the hardest things she’d had to do was to help her dad go through her mother’s closet, her drawers, her desk at work. But there was no way she would have hired a stranger to handle a heartrending task like that. And the fact that Mrs. Davila had readily agreed to Amy’s offer surprised her.

  “So,” the agent continued, “if you’d like to come by my office tomorrow morning, we’ll run a credit check, which is just a formality. And then I’ll make a quick call to your current landlord.”

  Amy didn’t have a landlord. In fact, she and Brandon owned both houses they’d lived in, but she’d deal with any explanations and the resulting questions later. Instead, she agreed to meet Ron at the real estate office at ten.

  After dinner, she’d give Stephanie Goldstein a call. Stephanie’s husband, Jake, worked in the same law firm as Brandon, which had been reason enough to avoid the woman these days. But Amy and Steph had belonged to the same playgroup since their children were babies, and their daughters got along great. They’d also become friends in spite of their husbands’ connection. In fact, Callie had stayed with Stephanie today while Amy had driven to Fairbrook to check out the address she’d had for Barbara Rucker.

  She wondered if Steph would mind picking up Callie at preschool tomorrow and watching her in the afternoon. Probably not. But what would she think about what Amy planned to do? It was hard to say.

  Should she even tell her?

  Snooping in the old Victorian on Sugar Plum Lane had to be one of the wildest things Amy had ever done. Of course, she’d always led a quiet and predictable life. That is, until she’d told Brandon she was moving back into the small townhome that had become a rental after his promotion to partner and their subsequent purchase of the sprawling house in Mar Vista Estates.

  Their marital separation had been a first for the Rossi family and something that no one but Amy had fully understood.

  “But he’s a good provider,” Grandma Rossi had said. “And you can be a stay-at-home mom, which is more important than ever these days.”

  Back in the 1950s, when a man’s home was his castle and his wife’s job was to make life easier on him, being a good provider had probably been essential. But there was more to life than money and possessions. So when Brandon had repeatedly put his job and his career ahead of his family, Amy had told him she didn’t want to be married anymore.

  Now she found herself living alone, but at least she didn’t have to wonder what time Brandon would be coming home or what mood he’d be in when he arrived.

  Nor did she have to worry about whether he was having an affair with one of several young women with whom he’d worked late on cases, a worry that had haunted her on many lonely nights.

  He’d always claimed to love her and their daughter, but Amy had gotten tired of trying to convince Callie that her daddy truly felt bad about all the special events he’d been too busy to attend, like the Father’s Day picnic at the preschool, not to mention the everyday things he’d missed, like dinner, story time, and tucking Callie into bed on most nights.

  Amy had tried to blame it on the law firm, but Jake Goldstein had no trouble leaving the office at the end of the workday or spending weekends at home. So it had seemed only natural to assume another woman might be involved.

  Brandon had sworn up and down that he’d never cheat, but in the end, Amy hadn’t completely believed him.

  “Will that work for you?” Ron asked, drawing her back to the telephone conversation.

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I’ll see you at my office tomorrow at ten.”

  After ending the call, Amy returned to the table, where Callie munched on the grilled chicken breast and pasta they were having for dinner. Cookie, the black-and-white cocker mix, sat on the floor next to the child’s chair, wagging its tail and licking its chops.

  “Did you give Cookie something to eat?” Amy asked.

  “It was an accident. The chicken fell off my fork, and Cookie just cleaned up the floor.” Callie looked at Amy with expressive eyes the same summer-sky shade as her father’s and bit down on her bottom lip.

  Amy, who wasn’t convinced that feeding the dog at the table had been accidental, decided not to make an issue out of it and took her seat.

  “Mommy, can Rachel come over and play tomorrow?”

  The girls had just spent the afternoon together, and while Amy hated to ask Steph to watch Callie two days in a row, she might have to.

  “I’ll talk to her mommy about the two of you getting together, but it would have to be at Rachel’s house.”

  The doorbell sounded, and Cookie let out a bark before dashing for the door. Callie started to climb from her chair, but Amy reached out and placed her hand on her daughter’s shoulder. “You wait here, honey. I’ll get it.”

  Once she got to the entry, she peered out the peephole, which revealed Brandon standing on the stoop. So she reached for Cookie’s collar with one hand and opened the door with the other, leaving her to greet him in an awkward position. But impressing Brandon was the least of her concerns these days.

  “I thought I’d bring the check by,” he said.

  Most ex-husbands dropped their alimony and child support payments in the mail, but Brandon insisted upon delivering each check to the house—and always a few days early. She supposed she had to give him credit for that.

  She pulled the squirmy, barking dog aside and allowed her soon-to-be-ex-husband into the house. Once the door was shut, she released Cookie, who immediately lay down on the floor and rolled over, awaiting a scratch.

  “Hey, little guy,” Brandon said, stooping to comply with the pup’s request for attention.

  Cookie, in his pure delight, peed on the floor, and Amy groaned. “Darn it, Cookie,” she uttered, when she really wanted to blame Brandon for showing up in the first place and interrupting dinner.

  Ironic, she thought. There’d been a time when she might have dropped to the floor and rolled over herself just to have Brandon arrive home before the nightly dishes had been done.

  “Did I hear Daddy?” Callie asked as she approached the doorway, obviously neglecting to follow Amy’s earlier directions to remain at the table.

  “You sure did, baby doll.” Brandon broke into his trademark grin, the dimpled cheeks, the lively spark in his eyes that had charmed Amy when they’d been in college.

  Callie, her platinum blond hair pulled into pigtails, ran to her father and lifted her arms for a hug, clearly happy to see him.

  For a moment, guilt sprang forth and clawed at Amy’s chest, berating her for insisting upon the divorce Brandon claimed he didn’t want. But she tamped it down, instead recalling all the times he’d disappointed her, all the nights she’d spent alone in a king-sized bed with only the television or a stack of books to keep her company.

  She’d been able to live with her own loneliness and disappointment, she supposed. But she hadn’t been able to stand by and watch her daughter suffer through the same thing, so she’d done what she had to do to make them all face reality.

  Brandon Masterson might claim to love them, but he’d never been a real part of their family.

  As Amy headed fo
r the guest bathroom for a tissue and one of the disinfectant wipes she kept in the cupboard under the sink, Callie asked her father, “Do you want to see what I made at Rachel’s house today?”

  “You bet I do.” Brandon, with his dark curls in need of a trim—when did he ever find time to schedule a haircut?—smiled at their daughter. Then his gaze sought Amy’s, stopping her in mid-stride before she was able to stoop down and clean up the dog’s piddle on the floor. Something passed between them, although she refused to consider just what it might be. She’d invested too much in an unfulfilling relationship already.

  He didn’t say a word, but he didn’t have to. She read the questions in his eyes. “How’s it going? Do you need anything? Are you sure this is what you really want?”

  But nothing was ever going to change. His career was still his life, and his tunnel-vision drive to be the best attorney at the firm had been all consuming.

  While Amy would be the first to admit that Brandon was an attractive man and that her heart still strummed when he sketched a gaze over her, she hadn’t been willing to share him with anyone, whether it was another woman or a prestigious law firm.

  At this point, she realized it really didn’t matter who or what her rival was and broke eye contact long enough to clean up after the dog.

  Callie led her daddy toward the kitchen.

  As soon as Amy had thrown away the tissue and wipes and washed her hands, she joined them next to the refrigerator, where the child’s artwork was displayed.

  Callie was pointing to her latest masterpiece, a sheet of red construction paper on which she’d glued a hodgepodge of scraps: material, buttons, and yarn.

  “It’s pretty,” Brandon told her. “Did you cut all those pieces by yourself?”

  “Uh-huh. And I glued them, too.”

  “I also like this one.” Brandon turned to a sheet of paper on which Callie had drawn a picture of her family.

  “This is me and Mommy and Cookie,” she said, pointing to the three figures that took up the left side of the paper. “And this one over here is you.” She pointed to a rather small, nondescript stick man whose only claim to fame was a big red smiley face.

  Amy knew that teachers, therapists, and social workers sometimes analyzed the pictures children drew. She hadn’t needed any kind of degree in art psychology to see that the daddy figure in Callie’s picture was small, underdeveloped, and clearly separated from the others. But Callie had drawn similar sketches when they’d still lived together in the sprawling house in Mar Vista Estates, and Brandon had been noticeably detached, too.

  “Want to see my new shoes?” Callie asked her father.

  “Sure.” When the little girl dashed off, Brandon returned his focus to the family picture. “She’s got me smiling, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.”

  Before Amy could even consider a response, his cell phone rang. He looked at the display, then frowned. “I need to take this call.”

  Of course he did. He’d never received a phone call that he didn’t answer.

  Each time Amy felt herself weaken, each time she looked into Brandon’s apologetic eyes or listened to him make promises to do better, something like this would happen. And she’d be reminded of the day she’d finally told herself that enough was enough.

  She’d had a late hair appointment and her babysitter had canceled. There was a work-related dinner party that evening—a “command performance,” he’d called it. So she’d called him at the office. “I’m going to let Callie stay the full day at preschool, and the sitter can be at our house by seven. But will you please pick her up on your way home?”

  “Sure.”

  “I can ask Stephanie to do it if you’re going to be too busy….”

  “It’s okay. I need to get home early so that I have time for a shower.”

  “You’ll need to make sure you get to the school before six,” she’d added, “because the afternoon director is going on vacation and has a plane to catch. She’ll need to leave on time today.”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem.”

  Amy had gotten home at a quarter to seven and found Brandon already dressed and talking on his cell phone. He ended the call, then smiled. “Your hair looks great, honey.”

  She’d only been able to appreciate the compliment for a second because he glanced behind her and asked, “Where’s Callie?”

  “No!” she’d shrieked. “Don’t tell me you didn’t pick her up.” She’d rushed to the phone, only to see the red light on the answering machine flashing.

  There’d been two calls from Kathy Webber, the director, asking where Amy was, each one getting a little more panicky. Then a third, telling her she’d had to drop off Callie at the home of another teacher who lived near the school, a new hire Amy had never met.

  “I can’t believe this,” Amy had said, her voice a couple of octaves higher. “You forgot to pick her up! What kind of father forgets his own child?”

  “I’m sorry, honey. I was busy, and…it just slipped my mind.”

  Had Callie been left in the care of someone she’d known, someone she’d been comfortable with, Amy might have been annoyed with Brandon instead of furious. But by the time she’d arrived at the new teacher’s house, her daughter had been sobbing hysterically.

  “Mommy!” she’d cried before racing across the room and flinging her arms around Amy in desperation. “I thought you died and went to Heaven, just like Grammy. And I was scared that nobody would find me. And that I would be all alone forever and ever.”

  “She’s been inconsolable ever since Miss Kathy left,” the teacher had said. “I’m so glad you finally got here. I didn’t know what to do.”

  Maybe Amy’s grief after having just lost her own mother had fired her up. Maybe all the times Brandon had failed to call home or show up at a family event, all the times he’d let her down or disappointed her, came crashing in on her, too. But that no longer mattered.

  Amy had scooped her daughter into her arms, held her tight and swayed back and forth, softly shushing her. “I love you, sweetheart. And I promise that I’ll never let anything like this happen to you again.”

  And she wouldn’t.

  Brandon’s final act of abandonment, which might have traumatized his daughter for life, had been the last straw.

  Once Amy had returned to the house with Callie, she’d told Brandon that he would have to attend the dinner party alone. And by the time he’d gotten home, she’d packed her bags.

  “I hate this house and all it represents,” she’d told him. “So don’t worry about me wanting to keep it in the settlement. I’ll take the condo in Del Mar.”

  “You want a divorce because I made a mistake?” he’d asked.

  He’d made a lot of mistakes.

  How could a man forget his own daughter? she’d asked herself time and again.

  Clearly, Brandon Masterson had never been cut out to be a father. Some men weren’t.

  Maybe some women hadn’t been meant to be mothers, either.

  Her thoughts drifted to Barbara Rucker, who’d grown up in the house on Sugar Plum Lane. There could be a hundred reasons why she’d given up her baby girl in September of 1966. Maybe she’d been young and unmarried. Maybe she’d been unable to care for a child, not just unwilling.

  Time, Amy supposed, and a little snooping would tell.

  She just hoped she wouldn’t regret stirring up the past.

  Chapter 2

  That same night, next door to the old Rucker house on Sugar Plum Lane, Maria Rodriguez knelt beside the tub and watched her three-year-old son play with his Winnie-the-Pooh bath toys.

  “Boing, boing,” he said, bouncing a plastic Tigger across the water’s surface and causing a splatter to slosh over the edge and onto the floor.

  Maria couldn’t help noting that the linoleum, which had once been a bright yellow and blue pattern, had dulled with age and curled away from the cracked gray caulking around the tub, revealing a strip of plywood underneath.
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  She’d have to add “bathroom floor” to the growing list of things that needed to be refurbished or repaired around the house, although she had very little money to spare on fix-it projects. And she had far less time.

  It seemed that there were never enough hours in the day. What she wouldn’t give to be able to slip away by herself for a while, to talk to someone who could actually carry on a quality conversation. If she still worked outside the home, she’d have coworkers with whom she could connect, but as it was, she was limited to chatting with her boarders or her children, which wasn’t the same.

  Ever since Hilda and Walter Klinefelter, who’d become self-appointed grandparents to her children and a godsend when it came to friendship and support, had left on a three-week European cruise, Maria’s days had stretched into each other. Still, she was happy for the elderly couple who’d fallen in love during their golden years. Truly.

  But today, it seemed, had been more trying than usual, and she was winding down fast.

  If she had a few extra minutes, she’d brew herself a cup of chamomile tea—or maybe even pour a glass of wine. Then she’d find a good book and sink into a warm bath herself. But much to her dismay, her workday was far from over.

  As little Walter—Wally for short—spun toward the back of the tub and reached for a miniature Pooh, the water sloshed against the sides again, threatening to spill over.

  That’s what she got for asking Sara to fill the bath. Sometimes it was easier doing things herself.

  “Two more minutes,” she said, warning Wally that bath time was almost over.

  “No, not yet!”

  It was amazing, she thought. She had to drag the child kicking and screaming to the tub, then had to fight twice as hard to get him out again. She reached for the pale blue towel she’d taken out of the linen closet earlier and had left on the tile counter near the sink.

  “Mommy!” five-year-old Sara screeched from the open doorway. “Danny’s calling me names again!”