Fall to Pieces

Chapter 9

But that was impossible.

"Home sweet home," trilled Paulette. "Let's run in and and see if my wonderful, sweet Johnny has been knocked out by his painkillers yet. We can bring your stuff in later.

She jumped out of the van and ran lightly up the steps of the porch, then stopped and waited for Hermione. Hermione unlatched her seatbelt slowly and opened her door. 'whats wrong with you?' She asked herself.

"What is it, Hermione?"

"Nothing." She stepped up onto the porch after Paulette, fighting down her growing unease. Paulette led the way into a big, paneled hallway with a staircase leading straight up ahead of them to a landing with windows There was a narrow table against one wall, with a lamp on it sending out a welcoming glow. Several closed doors led off the hallway into other rooms. A drop cloth and buckets of paint sat on the floor next to the stairs. The house smelled old and musty, overlaid with the sharp freshness of new paint.

"I'll showy ou around after we say hi to your dad," said Pauletee, flicking on the light at the foot of the stairs. "Watch out for the mess." She stepped over a wallpaper roll on the first step and headed up. "There are eight bedrooms, can you believe it? We'll use five or six for guests and keep the rest for ourselves."

Hermione followed, her stomach tense. Somehow she knew it was coming, sensed it, but didn't know what to do to stop it. The fear, along wiht the exhaustion, had not been left behind in Battleboro Heights after all. Both had followed her here. At the top of the landing the stairs curved to the left, she climbed them after Paulette's light step with heavy dread.

She clenched her teeth so hard that her gasp sounded only in her head. Straight ahead of her stretched the oak-paneled hallway. There were four doors along either side. Their brass dorknobs gleamed in the soft light from the overhead chandeliers. And at the end of the hall was a door standing open. Hermione sotpped.

She closed her eyes, then opened them, but the hallway looked the same. It was the same. She pressed her hands over her eyes to blot out the sight of the hallway before her.

"What, Hermione?" Paulette put her hand on Hermione's arm. "Whats wrong?"
"It's the hallway from my dream." Hermione whispered, eyes closed.

"Oh, wow!" said Paulette worriedly. "What dream?"

John's voice boomed from the end of the hall. "Hermione? Paulette? Is that you?"

"We're home, my love!" called Paulette. "Be right there!"

At the sound of John's familiar voice, Hermione uncovered her eyes. She clenched her hands into fists at her sides-they were shaking badly as the old man's on the plane. She took a heaving breath to calm herself.

"Hey, save the tour for later! Just get in here and let me kiss my daughter," bellowed John from the end of the hall. "Or i swear I'll drag myself out of this confounded bed and-"

"We're coming, Dad!" called Hermione. She hurried ahead of Paulette down the hallway to the door at the end, stealing herself as she stepped into the room. She fully expected to see the same bed where the woman had lain covered in blood, where the man had turned to her, angry and accusing. But no, the bed was against the wall opposite the windows. And it was a different bed, of course, and the person lying in it wasn't a woman at all but her own father, his ankle encased in a white cast and lying raised on a pillow. There was no blood anywhere.

"Dad!" Hermione ran to him with a glad cry.

"It's great to see you, honey." He said, hugging her. "I could just kick myself for falling off that damn ladder. What bad timing!"

"I'm just glad you're okay."

"Oh, I'm fine. But my paper-stripping days are over for a while. Six weeks, looks like." He pulled her down on the bed and reached out to hand to draw Paulette over. Paulette took his hand and stood at the side of the bed, smoothing his hair.

"My two ladies," he said, grinning. "Together at last. Well, Hermione? Was I right? Isn't Paulette a wonder?"

"Yes," said Hermione, surreptitously peering all around the room. She was still trembling.

"And Hermione is everything you said she was." said Paulette. She stroked Johns face. "Poor Lamp Chop, you look totally shattered. How about if I take Hermione on a house tour and then get her settled for the ngiht? You just go to sleep now, and we can all talk in the morning."

He closed his eyes. "It's just this pain medication they gave me. It knocks me out."

"Hermione's going to be here a long time," Paulette said reassuringly. She headed for the door. "Coming Hermione? Let's get you something to drink, at least." She turned back to John. "Can I get you anything, my poor, battered beloved?"

Even through her daze, Hermione had to wince at Paulette's goo-goo voice. Jenny would be on the floor laughing.

John kept his eyes closed. "Nothing for me, Puppy. Just take good care of Hermione."

"Good ngiht, Dad." Hermione said softly, and followed Paulette back into the hallway. They didn't go back down the main stairs but instead headed down a steep, uncarpeted flight at the back of the house, ending up in a big, old kitchen with stained red lioleum on the floor.

Paulette closed the door to the back stairs firmly, then gestured to the cahir at the round table. "Here, sit down and make yourself cozy. What do you want? How about lemonade? I'm afraid I don't have any Coke. That stuff isn't good for you."

"No, really, I'm fine."

"I'm having a cup of herbal tea join me?"

"Sure."

Paulette bustled around the big kitchen, chattering as she asembled her tea things and put the water on to boil. "Can you believe the size of this kitchen? Of course, there must of been servents once. It's a challenge to make a meal here, with the fridge over in one corner and this big old stove over here, and the sink over there by the windows! They sure didn't know about efficient meal-making then, did they? Then again you had to keep your sevents busy, I guess. After we finish papering the downstairs, we're going to start remodeling this kitchen. I like old things, if they usable. But i don't reallly go for vintage just because. You know?"

Hermione nodded, hardly listening. She was looking around the kitchen, shivering a little despite the warm night air breezing in through the screened window over the sink.

The children hung their coats on hooks by the back door.

This knowledge came to her, unbidden. But-what in the world? What children?

Paulette held up a china mug patterend with roses. "Like this? I found it in one of the cupboards. It was probably there for years. This house was empty for a long time before we moved in."

Hermione sat still, feeling lumpish and numb while Paulette flitted on fairy feet around the big room. She tried to force some of the tension out of her muscles by taking slow breaths. She thought of Jenny, at home now, probably watching a video. Maybe Jerry was there, too. For an instant she longed to be with them.

She'd been desperate to get away from home, desperate to come to this safe heaven. And yet, one glance down that hallway had told her this was no heaven at all.

finally the tea was brewed to Paulette's satisfaction. She carried the small teapot to the table. Then she opened a thin canister and arranged some cookies on a plate. She set it in front of Hermione. "There. Mint tea from the mint growing right in our own garden. And homemade oatmeal raisin cookies-specailly made with love for my only stepdaughter in the world!"

Paulette pulled out a chair and sat at the table across from Hermione. She poured them cups of tea and watched intently until Hermione took a cookie and bit into it. "It's good? You like it?" Her voice was eager, her blue eyes sparkling.

Hermione nodded.

"And do you like the house?" She frowned. "What did you man about a dream you head?"

Hermione hesitated. No sense letting this nice woman decide on the very first night that she had a neurotic stepdaughter. "I like the house," she said. "It's just that it was a shock, at first, because I've had dreams about a long hallway-sort of like the one upstairs." She reached for another cookie, half-convinced now that the hallway was only similar to the one in the dreams. Not identical. A lot of big houses have long hallways.

"Were they good dreams?" Paulette studied her. "Or bad?"

Hermione finished her cookie, "how about that house tour now?"

A/N:I update soon. and i thought i'd leave the house tour until the next chapter. please review! and im sorry if there's any misspellings...nobody's perfect...