Stranger in the House - Softcover

Patricia J. MacDonald

3.92

851 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 044018455X ISBN 13: 9780440184553

Publisher: Dell, 1983

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National bestselling author Patricia MacDonald spins a tale of nerve-shattering suspense that leads readers down the dark, winding roads of a picture-perfect suburban town.

WHAT DID HE SEE?
WHAT DOES HE KNOW?

Eleven years ago, Anna Lange's life was shattered when her young son, Paul, disappeared -- though she never gave up hope that he might be alive. Now, her son has been returned. The joyful family reunion is short-lived, however, as the nervous, withdrawn Paul begins to behave strangely. Anna's husband and daughter grow fearful living in the same house with him. But Anna believes that Paul is still recovering from the extreme psychological trauma he experienced the night he disappeared -- though he claims he has no memory of that time.

Does he or doesn't he? Someone remembers -- and will stop at nothing to keep the truth a secret. Now Anna will have to contend with a nightmare from the past that will either tear her family apart, or destroy them together....

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About the Author:

Patricia Macdonald's suspenseful, intricately plotted tales have won her a wide audience across America, as well as in France, where she is a #1 bestselling author. Her previous novels include Not Guilty, Lost Innocents, Secret Admirer, and the Edgar Award-nominated The Unforgiven. Her newest thriller, Suspicious Origin, is now available in hardcover from Atria Books.

Chapter 1

ELEVEN YEARS LATER

"How do you like your tea?" Iris asked.

"It's great," said Anna. "Fresh mint. Is it from your garden?"

The two women were sitting at one end of the plant-filled conservatory of the Stewarts' opulent home. The sun streamed in on them, and a breeze from the open doors riffled the leaves of the plants.

Iris nodded. "Henry brought it in this morning."

"I always mean to put some in my garden, and then I forget."

"I'll tell Henry to dig some up for you," Iris said eagerly.

"Would you? That would be great."

Iris and Anna relaxed in their chairs, enjoying the sun and the breeze. Anna leaned over the glass table and picked up a pile of envelopes that were lying beside the bowl, addressed in Iris's careful hand. "What are you up to here?" Anna asked.

A pained look crossed Iris's face. "Oh, we're giving a party. For the Hospital Guild. It's going to be rather a large affair, to raise money for the new cardiac wing."

Anna nodded. "I read about it in the paper. I didn't know the party was going to be here."

"Well, Edward is the chairman of the fund-raising committee, you know."

Anna nodded, noting that Iris was clenching her hands together in her lap. "You're good at organizing things," Anna reassured her. "It will be a great success."

Iris gave a small sigh. "I hope so," she said. "There's one for you in there." Iris pointed to the stack of envelopes.

Anna found the envelope addressed to the Langes and smiled. "Tracy, too?"

"Older children." Iris shrugged. "That was my idea, I thought they'd pep things up."

"Great," said Anna. "When's the party going to be?"

"A week from tomorrow. The thirtieth. I hope you're free. I'm a little late with the invitations."

"The thirtieth," said Anna softly, staring down into her glass of tea. "That's Paul's birthday." She looked up at Iris. "He'll be fifteen this year."

Iris's eyebrows rose slightly. For a moment she regarded her friend thoughtfully. "Is that so?" she murmured. "Well...that's good. Where's Tom today?"

"With Tracy. They're playing tennis. Is Edward home?"

"Oh, no. He had a business lunch today. He just bought another company. The Wilcox Company, I think it's called. They have something to do with helicopter parts."

Anna stirred the ice in her glass and looked up under her eyelashes at Iris. You would never know to look at her, Anna thought, that her husband was a millionaire. Edward, whose company manufactured private aircraft, was always a model of correctness and elegance in his appearance, while Iris dressed simply and seemed to give only the minimum attention to her hair and makeup.

Nonetheless, they seemed to get along together, and Anna had always ascribed it to opposites attracting.

"Well, I've got to be getting back." She placed her empty glass down on the end table and got up.

"Anna, I meant to ask you. How's Tracy's job at the vet's working out?"

Anna frowned, thinking of her daughter. "Oh, she loves being around the animals. She doesn't get paid for it, but she seems to enjoy it."

"There, you see! That's great," said Iris. "I had a feeling that all she needed was an interest."

"It's helped," said Anna absently, although she felt a twinge of annoyance at Iris's simplistic solution to the problems she had with Tracy. Her shy, introverted daughter was turning into a moody, difficult teenager who seemed to resent her mother more each day. But Iris always acted as if a little change in the routine would solve everything. And perhaps in Iris's pampered, childless life, that was all the solution she needed, Anna thought ruefully.

"Why don't I ask Henry to get you those mint plants right now?" Iris suggested, opening the glass door to hail the gardener in a straw hat, who was crouching in a flowerbed beyond the pool. Anna realized that she had been unconsciously staring at him.

"No, no," she protested hurriedly. "Don't bother him."

"It's no bother," Iris insisted.

Anna shook her head but smiled at her friend's kindness. She felt guilty for her uncharitable thoughts about Iris, remembering how often she had taken comfort in Iris's confidence in Anna's ability to make things right. Often, when she had been down, it was a visit from Iris that had forced her up. She gave her friend a brief impulsive hug. "Not today," she said. "I'd better be getting along."

"If you have to," said Iris. "Don't forget. Put that party on your calendar."

"I will," said Anna. She walked out the door and down the steps, then headed down the incline past the pool, greeting Henry, the gardener, as she went by. Her route home through the Stewart estate was long and meandering but it was a walk she always enjoyed. She followed the path through the gardens, skirted the frog pond, and wandered in the grape arbors until she came to the high hedges and the narrow stream that separated their properties.

Anna decided, before she went in the house, to get a few vegetables from her garden for dinner. She was proud of her garden this year. She had culled a few tips from Henry and had raised a bountiful crop of vegetables. Everything had grown vigorously, probably because much of the garden plot had lain fallow for so many years. After harvesting two lustrous inky eggplants, a few tomatoes and a bunch of beans, Anna headed back toward the house. Sometimes, especially when the fall came, and Tracy returned to school, Anna thought about going back to work. She always decided against it, although she never admitted her real reason to Thomas. She wanted to be home, just in case. Just on the unlikely chance that Paul found his way back to them, she wanted to be there. Anna walked past the spot where the children's play yard had been. She stopped and sank down on the rusty glider, staring dully at the patch of lawn. It was green now and planted over with flowers. I'd better not mention Paul's birthday, she thought. Tom will only get upset.

She knew how much he didn't like to talk about it. But each year she felt compelled to bring it up, as if it were somehow vital that his parents speak his name aloud, acknowledge his birth. Every year Thomas would turn away from her with a grim look on his face. She didn't do it to pain him. It just seemed that it was important. Then, last year, when she mentioned it, he had suddenly gotten angry.

"Anna, I can't stand it when you say that. Every year it's the same thing. 'Paul is eleven today. Paul is twelve today. It's Paul's thirteenth birthday.' Why do you always have to mention it?"

"Because it is his birthday," she insisted. "Because I want to remember it."

"It's like some grisly joke. Paul's birthday. As if he were still alive and about to walk in that door."

"But, Tom," she protested, "I do believe that he is alive. Don't you? I mean, we don't know any different. We need to have hope, darling."

But Thomas had turned away from her without another word, and the subject was closed between them once again, as it had been for most of the years since Paul was gone. She could not pinpoint the time when they had stopped discussing it. But the child's disappearance had been like an amputation on the body of their marriage. Tom wanted to cover it, to hide it and pretend it hadn't happened. Or so it seemed to Anna, as she restlessly sought help, advice, some reassurance that she would one day reattach what seemed irretrievably lost. As if by agreement, they avoided talking about it. It was the best they could do.

Anna examined the ground from her seat on the glider, to see if any trace remained of the play fence, any faint outline of where it had been. The grass had grown over it. There was not a sign. It was as if it had never existed.

Anna walked up to the back porch and entered the cool, quiet house. She placed the basket on the butcher block beside the sink and turned on the tap, placing a copper colander into the clean porcelain basin. The only sound in the house was the rush of the running water. Normally she liked nothing better than to be busy in her comfortable kitchen, but now a melancholy mood descended on her. She held her wrist under the water, like a mother testing a baby's formula, and gazed over the plants on her windowsill into the stillness of the sun-dappled backyard.

Suddenly she became aware of a sound like tapping. Turning off the water, she listened again. Someone was knocking at the front door. After wiping her hands off quickly on the soft terry towel next to the sink, she hurried through the house to the foyer and opened the door. At first she saw no one there. Stepping out onto the front porch, she observed the familiar back of a man descending the flagstone steps to the driveway where his car was parked.

"Buddy," she called out, "come back. I'm here."

Detective Mario Ferraro started and then turned slowly around to face the woman standing in the doorway. She was smiling in welcome. Over the years he had come to know her well. Long after Paul's case had been officially abandoned, she'd continued to call him with questions about psychics or other missing children or any case that bore any similarity to her own. He had responded with what he hoped was patience and care to each of her desperate hopes, tracking down any fillip of a lead that came his way. "It's that poor woman again," a rookie named Parker told him the last time she had called with news of a child who had turned up in Houston. That poor woman.

He knew that was how the others saw her, but secretly he admired her courage and her tenacity. After losing her son and then the baby, she had pulled herself together and committed herself to the search. Some people thought it was abnormal, but Buddy saw the logic in her efforts. But for the grace of God, he had reminded himself often, he would have had to make such a choice as hers. He had decided to help her. One night Thomas had taken him aside in the kitchen and apologized to him for Anna's relentless questions and leads.

"There's no getting through to her," Thomas had said. In a way Thomas's reaction had bothered him more than Anna's. But he'd held his tongue. "I don't mind," he'd told Thomas. "I can imagine what she's going through."

"What's the matter with you?" Anna asked, squinting at him. "You look kind of sick."

Buddy Ferraro smiled with one corner of his mouth. "I'm glad you're here."

"I was out in the garden. I didn't hear your car come in. I hope you haven't been standing here for long."

The detective shook his head. Buddy climbed the steps haltingly. When he reached the porch where Anna stood, he looked at her and frowned, pressing his lips together. Anna linked her arm through his and led him into the house. "My garden," she said, "is really terrific this year. I've got something for you to take to Sandra. Eggplants and tomatoes. You get that wife of yours to make you eggplant Parmesan. No excuses. I'll give you a big bagful to take home."

"Anna..." he began.

Arm in arm they had passed through the foyer and into the bright L-shaped living room, which was filled with flowers, baskets of magazines, and needlepoint pillows on the furniture. Anna released the detective's arm and gestured toward a chair next to the fireplace at the end of the room. "Please sit down," she insisted. "I haven't seen you in such a long time now. I'm glad you came by. I was just in there starting to feel sorry for myself." She moved her knitting bag off the chair matching his and sat down opposite him.

Buddy perched on the edge of the seat and leaned forward.

"Can I get you something to drink? Club soda or a beer?"

The policeman shook his head. "It's good to see you," he said quietly. "But this isn't just a friendly visit. I have some news for you."

Anna gasped as if he had slapped her. Over the years she had been like a disappointed lover, waiting for a missive that never came. In time she had grown to expect the postman, not the letter. Now, suddenly, the detective was turning it all around. She stared into his eyes, trying to read what the message might be.

"Is Thomas home?" he asked quietly. "I think he should be here."

"He's not...he's out," she whispered, her eyes riveted to the detective's face.

Buddy Ferraro frowned. "Maybe we should..."

"It's Paul," she said. She clasped her hands together and pressed them to her lips. "Tell me," she whispered.

Buddy nodded and cleared his throat. "Anna," he said, "I don't know how to say this. It's going to be a shock."

Anna began to shake her head as she stared at him.

Buddy hesitated. "Paul's been found. He's alive."

Anna crushed her trembling fists to her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. His words hung in the air before her, waiting for her to comprehend them. But a tingling fear suffused her, paralyzing her. She felt that if she tried to grasp what he said, take hold of it, it would somehow be snatched away from her. All hope, everything she had prayed for and clung to for all these years would vanish instantly and forever. "Don't lie to me, Buddy," she warned him in a shaking, nearly inaudible voice.

"I wouldn't, Anna. You know that. It's true. You can believe it. He's alive." Buddy was surprised by the tears that sprang to his own eyes. He pressed his lips into a crooked smile.

Anna sat frozen in her chair for a moment. Then, slowly, as if in a trance, she slid from the seat to her knees on the floor, clutching her arms around her chest. Her head was bowed; her eyes were shut.

Buddy sprang forward from his seat, prepared to grab her, thinking at first that she had fainted. Then, understanding, he exhaled and sat back in his chair. Bowing his head, he crossed himself quickly.

When Anna raised her head, her face was like a flower opening, turning out fragile petals one by one.

Buddy offered her his hand. Anna reached for it and kneaded it between her icy fingers. "Tell me everything," she whispered in a choked voice. "Where is he? Is he all right? Is he safe?"

"He's fine," Buddy assured her and reached into his pocket, removing his handkerchief and handing it to her. "Here."

While Anna wiped her eyes, the detective began to explain. "It happened this morning. We got a call from the sheriff of Hawley, West Virginia. He had been contacted by a minister in town who had evidence that Paul has been living all these years in that town as the son of a couple named Albert and Dorothy Lee Rambo. It seems that the woman was dying of cancer, and last week she contacted this minister, one Reverend Orestes Foster, and gave him a letter. Told him to open it at the time of her death, which occurred day before yesterday. The letter amounted to a confession that she and her husband had abducted Paul and raised him as their own son, and it also revealed Paul's identity, which apparently they were aware of all along."

"You're sure it's Paul."

Buddy nodded. "It's your boy all right. She still had the little clothes he was wearing when they took him. Pictures of him. The works. Evidently the woman...

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