Some Things Are Best Left Dead

By Charlotte Winstead

The story begins in 1906 as six-year-old Jacy is thrown out of the Cliff View Orphans Home by headmistress Mrs. Krault. Fast forward to 1989 and eighty-nine-year-old Susanna Brighton is celebrating her birthday in the Clover Hill Nursing Home. Among her cards is one that simply says, Dont forget and is signed Jacy. Susanna collapses with a heart attack and dies.

Susannas granddaughter Charlie begins a perilous journey to discover what it means. With the help of librarian Scoots Barker, Charlie investigates the house that was once Cliff View. They find clues, including an old suitcase in a wall and a bloody hair clip in a trunk.

When they discover the house has been sold to Charlies Uncle Darrin, Charlie confronts him and learns the whole story of her grandmothers life. Darrin pulls a gun and fires as Charlie dives out the door.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 20, 2017
• ISBN: 9781524577759

Charlotte Winstead

Charlotte Miller Winstead was born just outside the Missouri Bootheel town of Cooter. She and her husband James have been married for 43 years, they have four sons, eight grandchildren and one great grandchild. Charlotte was once the Activity Director at two nearby nursing facilities. She has written several gospel songs and has published two other mystery/thriller books. Charlotte has done genealogy for more than twenty years and has an extensive online family tree. She worked as a reporter for several years and now has a weekly column in the local newspaper.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

Winter, 1906

Hurry up, stupid girl! the woman said again, her sour face close to Jacy. She could smell the woman’s breath which was as awful as her face. Jacy pulled on her dress, stockings and bonnet as quickly as her small fingers would work but her shoes were quite another problem. She could barely see in the dimness of the room and the buttonhook refused to cooperate. She had no idea what was happening. When she tried to ask, the only answer she got was a hand clamped over her mouth.

Shut up! the woman whispered fiercely, leave the shoes. Get going! As she was dragged from the room, Jacy managed to get a hand on her battered old suitcase the woman had packed while Jacy dressed. The hallway was cold and the oil lanterns cast virtually no light. Jacy’s feet stumbled along, sometimes bumping into unseen things. She could feel her bonnet, so hastily tied, sliding over her right ear but she dared not loosen her grip on her suitcase to fix it. The woman held her other hand just as tightly as she propelled Jacy down the hall.

The woman rushed her down the staircase and came to an abrupt stop at the bottom, giving Jacy’s arm a vicious jerk. Jacy fell to her knees, her bonnet sliding around to cover her eyes, and her suitcase flew from her hand. It hit the floor and broke open, scattering her few belongings.

Jacy knelt there numb with fear until the woman pulled her to her feet and hurried her through the dark kitchen. The room smelled of old grease and eggs. The woman unlocked the side door, threw the suitcase out and shoved Jacy out after it, causing Jacy to crash to the ground.

Scratched, bruised and confused, she pulled off her bonnet. The night was pitch black and, until her eyes had time to adjust, she could see nothing. The only noise she heard was the terrifying sound of a slamming door.

May 16, 1989

Susanna Brighton rubbed her eyes, opened them and sighed as her room came into focus. She was still here. This was the Clover Hill Nursing Home and today she was 89 years old. She had somehow hoped she really was somewhere else but now she realized she had been having that dream again, the one that started shortly after she came to the Home. The dream was full of images, familiar and yet not, a life she remembered and one she didn’t. A life she had erased from her mind a long time ago.

It had come often at first, less frequently as she had become more adjusted to her new surroundings.

These days she remembered little of the dream itself, not a bad thing really, since the first few times she had awakened with a feeling of terror. Now she mostly remembered the crying, the lost, heart-wrenching wail of a frightened child. The door opened just then and morning nurse Dorothy Fielding came in smiling.

Good morning and happy birthday, Susanna! she said. Dorothy helped her sit up, smoothing Susanna’s snow-white hair before taking her blood pressure. It took more than one pumping up for her to get it. When Dorothy placed her fingers on Susanna’s thin wrist to check her pulse, it seemed to Susanna that it took longer than usual to find it.

I suppose I am still living, said Susanna. Dorothy laughed.

Yes, you are and still just as pretty as a picture, she answered. Susanna shrugged her shoulders as if she doubted both statements.

Are you ready for the party today? Dorothy asked as she recorded her readings. Susanna merely grunted but Dorothy ignored her attitude and chatted cheerfully about the celebration the Home was having that afternoon for Susanna and the other residents whose birthdays were this month.

Her conversation was interrupted by the arrival of the nursing assistants who were to help Susanna get ready for breakfast. They were nice girls and Susanna was always cooperative.

Soon she was ready, dressed in her favorite pink color, placed carefully in her wheelchair, rolled out the door and down the hall to the dining room. Several people she passed called out, Happy Birthday! and Susanna smiled and waved to them all.

CHAPTER TWO

Jacy leaned against the door in despair. She was cold, her thin gray dress no protection from the night air. She had no coat or gloves. Her suitcase contained her only other possessions: one dress and matching bonnet, an exact copy of the ones she was wearing; a long nightgown that once was pink; a few undergarments and two pair of long stockings. The only shoes she owned were the ones she left behind.

Jacy listened but heard nothing. No sound in the night or from behind the door. She smoothed back her long, thin blond hair and retied her bonnet on her head. Tears began to gather in her pale blue eyes and threatened to slide down her cheeks. Jacy took a deep, shaky breath and wiped the tears away with an unsteady hand.

She turned and stood looking at the house. No light showed in the windows, not even on the second floor where Jacy had been in bed only a short time ago. That was before she was so harshly shaken awake, ordered to dress and thrown out without explanation. It had taken less than fifteen minutes for her whole world to fall apart.

Jacy thought of the other girls, asleep in cold beds, who would wonder where she was when she didn’t appear for morning chores. No one would question Mrs. Krault, however, for fear of swift punishment.

Jacy thought for a moment of banging her small fists on the door and calling for help but the same fear of the headmistress kept her silent.

Jacy knew no home but this one, remembered nothing else. Since girls Jacy’s age were not allowed further than the small, bare courtyard, and then only for an hour in the afternoon, Jacy knew little of the world outside.

Most of her time was spent doing chores. Since she was so small, Jacy had to do the cleaning the other girls were too big to do. She cleaned out the hearth in the fireplace in the nursery and the parlor every morning.

She didn’t mind working in the nursery so much because then she got to see the babies. There were five of them now, two boys and three girls, and they were so sweet. One of the girls had blond hair just like Jacy and was very small and very sick. Jacy worried the baby would not live.

The fireplace in the parlor was a different matter. Sometimes Mrs. Krault had company in there and she had to make sure she was done and out of the way early. She had no idea why these people came here but Mrs. Krault was always in a terrible temper after they left. Usually she locked everyone in for the rest of the day.

Jacy also washed all the jars and small pots because her hands were the only ones small enough to fit inside. She was the only one who was six here. The girls she shared the Little Girl Room with were close to twelve and quite a lot bigger than she was. The ones in the Big Girl Room were older than that but none more than sixteen. By that age, they were gone.

Jacy’s biggest and hardest job was the dusting. The house was very large and there were so many things to dust that it took her hours to finish. Being slow, however, brought the sting of Mrs. Krault’s switch on her back, a fate Jacy had suffered several times. The punishment for missing a stitch while learning to sew or burning the bread when learning to cook was much worse, a slap hard enough to jerk her head around.

This was her home and her prison. But it was better than being out on the street. Hadn’t they been told stories of those who didn’t have a place like this to live, begging for bread in the cold, and how fortunate they were they had Mrs. Krault to care for them?

Girls only needed to know how to clean and sew and cook, Mrs. Krault had told them many times. Then someday they would be proper servants for the houses of the well-to-do. None of the girls who had left for these serving positions had ever been heard from again.

There was no reading or arithmetic or writing lessons, Jacy didn’t even know there were such things. What was