Richmond House: A Modern Gothic Romance (Astoria Trilogy Book 1), page 1
Richmond House:
A MODERN GOTHIC ROMANCE
LEIGH MAYNARD
Richmond House
Copyright © 2022 by Leigh Maynard
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locals is entirely coincidental.
Astoria Trilogy
READING ORDER
1. Richmond House
2. Richmond’s Fall
3. Richmond’s Legacy
To my husband, who became a reader when I needed him most.
Contents
Prologue
1. Greer
2. Greer
3. Greer
4. Greer
5. Jace
6. Greer
7. Jace
8. Greer
9. Jace
10. Greer
11. Jace
12. Greer
13. Jace
14. Greer
15. Jace
16. Greer
17. Jace
18. Greer
19. Jace
20. Greer
21. Jace
22. Greer
Richmond’s Fall
Prologue
1. Greer
Author Note
Also by Leigh Maynard
Acknowledgments
About the Author
“May God bless you, and may your bones bleach in the sands.”
Capt. H. Lawrence
Clatsop Spit, Astoria, Oregon
Oct. 25, 1906
Prologue
GREER
February 2011
I shifted in the semidarkness, uncrossing my legs, and glanced at the clock on the wall above my mother’s hospital bed. Moonlight pouring through the thin beige curtains behind me coupled with the ambient light from the nurses’ station down the hall made it possible to watch every second pass. Falling asleep was out of the question—the overlapping beeps of the IV pump and heart monitor were muted, but too irregular to form a soothing cadence. The unrelenting odor of bleach burned the back of my throat.
I tucked my hands under my thighs and used my body weight to anchor them in place, the flimsy plastic chair I sat in squealing its disapproval.
Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.
I glanced at my mother’s face and inhaled sharply at the open eyes that greeted me. Sunken, balanced on a slash of cheekbone that seemed to melt away beneath, her eyes moved over my face.
“Greer,” she said on an exhale.
I leaned forward and covered her hand with mine. Hers was cold and translucent, the small bones as delicate as a baby bird’s. I knew I could easily crush them. For a second, I wanted to.
“I’m here, Mother. How are you feeling?”
She stared at me and shook her head slightly, raising her bony shoulders as if to indicate that it didn’t matter how she felt.
Only how she looked.
“How?” she asked in a reedy voice. She struggled to swallow.
“You fainted again. I found you on the floor, and when you wouldn’t wake up, I called for an ambulance.”
She pressed her lips into a thin line.
“I’m sorry,” she pushed out through her dry lips. “I don’t know why.”
Yes, you do. You know exactly why.
“Maybe we should try doing those daily affirmations again. To redirect your focus away from restricting,” I said gently, trying to stick to the script her doctor and therapist agreed would be least triggering.
“Haven’t been restricting. Not lately.” She closed her eyes. Her skeletal fingers moved out from under mine, then slowly through the darkness toward the back of her other hand. She scratched at the side of the tape holding her IV in place in slow motion.
That she hadn’t been restricting was a lie, of course. The slender, beautiful woman I remembered from my childhood was now emaciated beyond all pretense of normal. She’d worked toward it every minute of every day, toward becoming so thin, so small, that someday she’d cease to exist. Now, it was the only thing she cared about.
The door to my mother’s room opened noisily, and a heavyset nurse in Seahawks-themed scrubs appeared, using her foot to keep the door propped.
“Greer Richmond?” she asked, not bothering to lower her voice even though it was the middle of the night.
“Yes?”
“I need to speak to you. Privately.”
My mother’s eyes were still closed. The chair creaked again as I stood, the starched white shirt and plaid uniform skirt I’d donned yesterday morning before school now creased from hours of sitting. I smoothed my hands down the front of my skirt before walking past the nurse and out into the hallway.
“Ms. Richmond, I’m Dana. I’ll be Blair Richmond’s attending nurse for the next twelve hours.”
I nodded, suddenly struck by how tired I was. Of everything. The nurse consulted her clipboard.
“It’s my understanding that your mother’s past diagnoses include anemia, osteoporosis, and acute malnutrition resulting from long-term anorexia nervosa. Is there anything else we should be made aware of? Anything that’s developed or worsened since her last hospitalization?”
“Not that I can think of.”
My mother was awake when I returned to the room.
“I’m sorry. I was with the nurse.” I crossed back to my chair. “She said you’re going to have to eat, or the doctor will start pushing calories through the IV. They’re going to do it right away, after breakfast if you refuse it.”
“Ridiculous,” she said on another breathy exhale.
She turned her head to look at me as if expecting the conciliatory nod, the subtle murmur of agreement I’d offered her since she’d first explained to me how misunderstood she was all those years ago. As much as I wanted to give her what she needed, I allowed myself the rebellion of silence. Just this once. When her loaded stare became unbearable, I tapped a comforting pattern against my knee, counting the passing seconds as groups of three, manifesting in my mind with each trio—like a child making a birthday wish before blowing out the candles—that this was our last trip to the hospital. That my mother would be well.
Sensing my mood, she turned away. Long minutes passed before she spoke again.
“I wasn’t always this way. I used to not care so much. But my father…”
Speaking cryptically about her father, my grandfather, was something my mother seemed to do more and more of these days. I’d never met Sterling Richmond, even though we lived in Seattle, and he lived just three hours away on the Oregon Coast. When I was a kid, he’d sent letters—one every few months—begging me to visit, alongside birthday cards stuffed with cash and boxes full of presents at Christmas, which my mother promptly returned to him unopened. But I hadn’t heard from him in years now. Probably since middle school.
“I was never good enough,” she continued. “I was never good enough for him. That house…” She groped the blanket at her side in search of my hand, eventually finding it and executing a weak squeeze I’m sure was meant to convey solidarity. “That house was built on secrets. Lies.”
She sighed as if steeling herself against the indignities of the coming days. This wasn’t her first trip to the hospital. Knowing she would drift off soon, her body starved for the nutrients it needed to keep her up and running, I floated the question I’d been asking for years in hopes the darkness of night and her ever-increasing willingness to divulge the details of her past would act as a sort of truth serum.
“Who is my father?”
She didn’t answer, just locked her jaw and stared ahead, sightless. I pressed on. “Just tell me. Whoever he is, I promise I’ll be okay with it.”
Her eyes closed again; her raspy breathing evened out. I thought she’d fallen asleep when she began to speak in a hoarse voice so soft it was almost a whisper. “Let it go. Please, Greer. He asked me never to reveal his name in exchange for…”
“In exchange for what? The money he sends every month?”
“The money is just…a means to an end.”
“A ‘means to an end’? What end?”
“Keeping you away from Richmond House,” she murmured. “From the monsters inside.”
1
Greer
February 2014
The sun descended slowly, lighting up the sky behind us as we drove from one end of town to the other along Astoria’s riverfront highway.
“Are you sure this is the way?” I leaned forward and asked through the cab’s open plexiglass window, breathing in the stale remnants of cigarettes past.
A pair of watery blue eyes met mine in the rearview mirror. The identification clipped to the back of the driver’s faded maroon seat cover indicated his name was James Ducky. I bet he went by Jim. Probably Jimmy.
Jimmy Ducky.
“Map says it is,” he finally offered.
I interlaced my fingers in my lap, holding them together tightly as if praying. Jimmy had a smoker’s voice, like tires on gravel, and he seemed to punctuate every few words with a series of hacking coughs. I guess that’s why he hadn’t bothered saying much on the drive from the airport in Portland. I didn’t mind, but the lack of conversation meant I’d sat agonizing over the same repetitive thoughts for the better part of an hour. The closer we got to Richmond House, the more I struggled to control my anxiety. I concentrated on keeping my hands still and looked out the window.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the way I’d found my mother’s dead body just a few short weeks ago, underneath the ruffled pink comforter of her girlish canopied bed. Her heart had given out after more than two decades spent battling her demons, her body finally deciding it couldn’t take anymore.
I felt numb, but not with shock. Her death wasn’t a shocking or unexpected outcome. With every passing year—every passing day, really—she’d looked more and more macabre, her eyes hooded, her lipstick waxy on her dry lips, her once-thick, blonde hair wiry and sparse.
Late last year, when it’d become clear she was fighting a battle she wasn’t going to win, we’d gone together to preplan her funeral. “Just in case,” she’d told herself. So, there’d been little for me to do during the days following her death but wait to lay her to rest.
She hadn’t wanted anything to do with the family crypt, but I’d felt compelled to inform Sterling Richmond—her father, my grandfather—of her death and upcoming funeral. While they hadn’t spoken since she’d left Richmond House more than twenty years ago, he had a right to know that his daughter had died. As far as I knew, he was her only living relative.
I’d dug my mother’s childhood address book out of the box under her bed and found what I was looking for listed under “H.” “Home,” it read in my mother’s hesitant script. “110 Merman Drive, Astoria, Oregon.”
I’d written to my grandfather the next day. His reply had been prompt. Succinct. He’d written back that he was sorry for my loss but unable to attend the service. He’d sent a floral arrangement instead—the kind of large, showy piece that dominated the space behind the casket, bursting with enough red and pink roses to supply a small city during Valentine’s Day weekend. My mother would have loved it. Her funeral had been a sparse affair—but for one gaudy floral arrangement—with just a handful of mourners at the cemetery on a frosty February morning.
True to his word, Sterling Richmond hadn’t attended the service, but by replying to my letter, he’d opened the lines of communication between us again, just as I’d decided to dedicate myself to uncovering my mother’s truth. My truth. I’d written him again, asking to visit him at Richmond House. This time, his reply hadn’t been prompt. It had taken so long I thought he wasn’t going to answer me at all. But he had, inviting me—reluctantly, it seemed—for a “short” visit. At least a few weeks, I hoped.
“Just a few more miles, I think,” Jimmy volunteered, managing to keep his cough at bay while executing a turn from the main thoroughfare onto a one-lane road built on a spit extending into the Columbia River. In the distance was a small, heavily forested peninsula.
Now, I was almost there, and for the first time, my mother wasn’t around to gate-keep the answers I needed to move on with my life. My return to Richmond House represented the opportunity for closure after a childhood spent struggling to take care of someone I was convinced wanted to die. I needed to discover who my mother used to be. Who my father was. Once I did, I could finish college and leave everything and everyone behind once and for all.
I pulled my long hair over my shoulder and started a braid to keep my hands from the endless tapping that had taken over my life the past few years. A “manifestation of anxiety,” my mother’s therapist had said when I’d asked him about it. Whatever it was, I had put it behind me as well. I didn’t need to tap anymore. I looked down at the braid I’d created. It was blonde, the exact shade of my mother’s hair, though most of hers had fallen out by the end. Maybe I’d become a brunette. Or a redhead.
New life, new hair.
Jimmy made slow progress up the one-lane road as it rose through the trees, forced to navigate each turn while also making sure no one was approaching from the other direction. My body flashed hot—then cold—with every switchback. By the time the house came into view, I could feel my heartbeat in my ears. The cabbie released an appreciative whistle at the sight of my family’s estate.
Just breathe. This was your mother’s home. You’re going to find out what happened to her here.
On a hill at the center of a clearing stood a magnificent Queen Anne Victorian built facing west toward the mouth of the Columbia River and the Pacific Ocean beyond. The massive, well-manicured lawn I’d seen in the pictures my mother kept in that box beneath her bed had regressed to a sort of unkempt grassy field that surrounded the house. A half dozen or so dry-docked boats in various states of disrepair littered the expanse, broken windows and rusted-out bottoms on display. The foot-high grass took on a yellow hue in the fading light, making it look like they were sailing on a gilded sea.
The road we’d been following faded into nothing at the far edge of the field at least a quarter of a mile from the house. Jimmy looked confused until he saw the well-worn tracks that looped around to his right, approaching from the south. The house looked even more prominent as we drew closer, its regal, forest-green exterior bathed in light.
He pulled to a stop next to two cars parked alongside a modern, detached garage—an impossibly small, red convertible with a soft top that wasn’t new but couldn’t reasonably be considered vintage, and the same kind of expensive, boxy-looking Mercedes SUV I’d seen pull up to my old high school en masse on visiting days. Were these my grandfather’s cars? Or had he assembled a welcoming committee?
I opened the car door and stepped out, my eyes roaming the Victorian’s high nooks and crannies, imagining the generations of Richmonds who’d made this house a home, before registering motion in my peripheral vision. Turning my head to the right, I saw a pissed-off Canadian goose galloping toward me at an alarming speed.
“Oh no, no, no,” I murmured, grabbing my leather backpack from the floorboard of the backseat, and leaving the relative safety of the interior of the cab behind to jog around the back of the yellow taxi with the bird in full pursuit, wings raised and hissing like the spawn of Satan.
I should’ve stayed in the car.
While I ran in ever-widening circles trying to outwit the demon bird, or at least render it too tired to chase after me, I looked over to see Jimmy calmly removing my matching set of Louis Vuitton luggage from the trunk.
Unbelievable.
“Garbage!” I heard a woman shout.
Maintaining a safe distance from the goose, I took in the group of strangers standing some ways off—two men and a woman—their twilight shadows lengthening above them onto the house like eerie puppets.
“Garbage!” the woman shouted again. “Get over here, you stupid bird.”
The goose gave one last hiss before standing down. At first, I was impressed, but instead of walking toward the woman like a trained pet, “Garbage” strutted around the back of the house to avoid her.
I held up my hand in an awkward greeting as the group approached.
So much for first impressions.
With as much dignity as I could muster, I smoothed my leggings and pushed my white cashmere sweater off my left shoulder before closing the distance between us. We met in front of a wide set of steps that led up to a partial wraparound porch and the house’s front entrance. I recognized the beds of crepe-paper blossoms flanking the steps as Evening Primrose, the brand-new blooms bursting open one by one now that the sun was almost down, filling the breeze with their sweet vanilla scent.
