Redemption (Legends of Graham Mansion), page 1
REDEMPTION
Legends of Graham Mansion
Book One
Amazon Edition
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REDEMPTION
Legends of Graham Mansion
Book One
Copyright © 2012 by Rosa Lee Jude & Mary Lin Brewer
Published by Two Southern Belles Publishing
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the publisher and above author(s) of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Dedication
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty One
Twenty Two
Twenty Three
Twenty Four
Twenty Five
Twenty Six
Twenty Seven
Twenty Eight
Historical Timeline
The Keys to Our Success
The Story Behind the Story
About the Authors
DEDICATION
To the man who saved the Mansion
Josiah Cephas Weaver
PRESENT DAY
ONE
Tap, tap, tap, a cold March rain pelted the old cobalt blue and clear glass window panes. Grae’s mood matched the weather - dreary, sullen, and dark. She was a classic seventeen-year-old girl in all the outward ways, but inside revealed a secret self, a girl longing for adventure. She sat curled up in a ball on the window seat, arms encircling her legs, head tilted to the left and resting on her knees as she gazed out at the fog. It was her “safe ball” position as her brother Perry called it.
Since moving to Virginia the previous fall, Grae had spent a lot of time sitting in the room of glass, as she deemed it. It wasn’t a move that she wanted to make; she’d left the only life she’d ever known in the midst of her senior year of high school. From a suburb of Charlotte, North Carolina, to a small town in the Blue Ridge Mountains, the change was dramatic, but it had to be.
Her emotionally distant father had used creative accounting to deceive a legion of his investment firm’s clients and amassed a double life for himself. He’d conned his family as well into believing his visionary investment strategy was making everyone wealthy. He didn’t envision that the FBI and the Securities and Exchange Commission would learn of his exceptional abilities and take exception with him. The Enron scandal had taken away the possibility of just a warning and probation. White collar criminals could now expect tougher prosecutors, sterner judges, and harsher sentences.
All their assets were seized and sold to pay off his debts. Ten days after the bars of a federal prison cell in Butner, North Carolina, closed behind Grae’s father, her mother slammed the back door of a U-Haul truck on all they had left of their previous life, and the journey began.
Her mother, Mary Katherine, “Kat,” brought them to her hometown in Virginia. It was a move designed by shear need. Their gilded suburban life was gone and all the luxuries with it. No more two-story colonial on a cul-de-sac or playing golf and tennis at the country club. No more designer name clothes for Grae, or personal archery lessons for Perry. Tom White shot a bull’s eye through that life, and left three survivors.
Now a middle-aged housewife returning home in her aging Jeep, Kat lamented not keeping in touch with at least a few hometown friends and regretted the promising career she gave up in finance. It was the love of her life, Tom, now Prisoner No. 61726-054, who craved the perfect family, the stay-at-home wife persona. Kat gave him that, along with a piece of her soul. So, with no money, no possessions, no recent work history, and two teenagers, Kat went home. Back to a world she never thought she would return to, but which gave her comfort in her desperate situation.
Grae’s grandmother, Belle, died the previous year after an early stroke took her mobility and her dignity, but not her sense of sarcastic humor. That sarcasm gene was passed to Grae, much to the aggravation of her mother. Grae’s grandfather, Peirce, “Mack,” had been the caretaker of Major Graham Mansion since he retired a dozen years earlier. Age never slowed him down, but his dear Belle’s death made him an old man. After her passing, he rented out their lifelong home and moved himself into the Mansion to escape the pain of the present by attempting to preserve the past.
The Mansion was a massive place. The original structure was built in the 1830s with additions made a few decades later that brought it to its current 11-room, 11,000-square foot size. Each room on both the first and second floors seemed to have a life of its own. While the walls and their décor had changed through the decades of the house’s life, the majority of the floors, doorframes and trimmings were original, as were the Mansion’s tall windows. Legend said that a local door tax charged a tax payer by the door, so the floor-to-ceiling windows throughout the Mansion helped to ease that burden.
Summers spent as a caretaker’s helper while in his teens gave Mack a sentimental perspective to his duties and some incredible stories about its history. The owner worshipped Mack and depended on him to take the lead in preservation and needed repairs. Even though it had been almost half a century since it had been used as a residence, he was given permission to move his daughter and grandchildren into the Mansion when they needed a place to live.
And that was where Grae found herself on that rainy March day - in a big old drafty mansion with a history as old as the country she lived in, but a world apart from anything she had previously known. Grae was grateful that the owner allowed Grandpa to move them in. Space certainly wasn’t a concern with five large bedrooms on the second floor. Since arriving on the edge of winter, there had not been much opportunity for exploring the outdoors, but Grae was itching to get out and explore the thousands of acres of pastures and rolling hills, the slaves’ quarters, barns, Cedar Run Creek, the old iron forge, and even the cemetery, if spring ever decided to return.
They arrived just before Thanksgiving and since then she’d mainly tried to be invisible. As the only new student in the senior class, she became the center of attention and rumors. She arrived with a 4.0 grade point average in accelerated classes, so the teachers had grand expectations of her scholarly aptitude. Guidance counselors immediately began having long conversations with her about appropriate colleges. Grae knew her once padded scholarship fund was now non-existent and had most likely included other people’s money. The counselors didn’t seem to immediately know this tidbit of information and started naming Ivy League institutions. Grae just nodded, not wanting to leak her family history any sooner than necessary, but realized one day, when the word scholarship was mentioned, that the secret was out. If the counselors knew, then no doubt the students did.
Grae left her window seat and began walking through the house. Everything about their former home had been bright and new. It was a stark contrast to what she now saw and it affected her disposition.
“Hey, Miss Dreary Face, have you left your window perch to mingle with us common folks?” Grae had thought that it was fun having a little brother when she was younger, now she thought that being an only child might not be too bad.
“Peirce,” Grae enjoyed calling Perry by his given name, it annoyed him. “Do you have to be breathing in my presence?”
“Watch it, Grae.” Kat walked up behind her daughter. “That’s not the kind of interaction I want to hear between you and your brother.
Grae sighed and ran up the staircase. She seemed to always get caught. “I’m going to my room. Call me when Perry has left for college.” Her mother yelled something after her, but Grae chose to ignore it.
Standing at the doorway, she surveyed her room. She’d chosen this one in particular, not because of its blue walls, but for its two closets. Like just about every room in the house, it had a long history and according to some, she had a roommate.
In one corner was a full-length mirror that looked to be as old as the Mansion. Even in the old tainted glass, seeing her reflection, she saw the second reason why invisibility was impossible in her new world. Grae inherited most of her physical features from her mother. Her brilliant blue wide-set eyes seemed to simultaneously take on two different shades. As soon as she was old enough, she’d asked for contact lenses to mask this unusual feature, not for sight correction, but purely for aesthetics. Her long slender frame came from her father and made her a star on the basketball and volleyball teams. Yet she cast the illu
Her father’s jet black hair crowned her head and she currently wore it straight with a part in the middle and a length that touched the midpoint of her back. It had a hint of blue to its sheen. Lately, she had noticed some whiteness developing near her forehead and had changed the angle of her part to hide it. One especially snotty girl at her former high school said the color could only come from an unnatural source, “Only dying your hair or being a witch could give you that color.” Grae had wished for magical powers to make that girl disappear. She laughed softly now thinking that perhaps that girl had indeed disappeared. She ran her fingers through her hair, saying to herself, “It is a weird color.”
“Not as weird as the girl who wears it.”
Grae turned to find her brother leaning against the doorframe to her room; Perry was two years younger than her and already almost a foot taller. As dark as her hair was, his was almost that light. He had freckles across his nose and brown eyes like Grandpa Mack.
“Who asked you?”
Ever since they left Charlotte, their relationship had been strained. Perry liked it in Virginia and only saw it as a temporary move. He believed their father was innocent and that an appeal would soon result in his freedom. As close as he was to their mother, he refused to see how their Dad had treated her. Tom never laid a hand on his wife, but daily slapped her with words and belittling. Perry accepted his father’s excuse that it was his way with their mother. Grae saw through the excuse, saw her mother’s slumped shoulders, her nervous attention to make everything in the house perfect, her crying softly when she thought she was alone.
“You asked a question, I answered it. You don’t see anyone else here do you?” Perry tumbled onto Grae’s bed, shoes on her comforter.
“Feet off,” she pointed. It was one of the few nice things she was able to bring from their home. In this dull, old room that hadn’t been painted in her lifetime, it added a splash of color with its psychedelic pattern. “You’re the one who says we have company here, that we are disturbing their space. Maybe I was talking to one of your dead friends.”
Like their Grandma Belle, Perry sensed things that others did not. Grae didn’t doubt that her brother had this ability; their mother had taught them to be open to things that were beyond their literal world. Grae just didn’t care. Let the ghosts handle their own problems; she had enough of her own. It was fun to aggravate him about it, mainly because it was so unlike him otherwise. What good was communicating with the dead if you couldn’t see the truth in the living? Their breathing mother had been belittled on almost a daily basis by the man who was supposed to love her. It seemed to Grae to be so contradictory, to only see parts of the truth.
“You know, Sis, if you weren’t such a sarcastic pain in the rear, you might have more friends, living and dead.” Perry jumped off the bed and walked out of the room. Before she could even turn back to the mirror, he returned. “Oh, Mom wants you to go to the store.”
“Great!” Grae looked back into the mirror after Perry left. “Gav will probably be there, he usually works on Sunday afternoons. I don’t want to see him.”
There was no way that she could pawn this task off to Perry, who at 15, didn’t have his license yet. Gav was another reason that she couldn’t be invisible. Her jet black hair and olive skin gave her a strangely exotic look, something that had not escaped the eyes of the young men of the school. This immediately decreased her popularity with the girls, especially the popular ones. She didn’t care about all the guys’ attention, but those snobby girls didn’t know that. She wasn’t interested in their friendship anyway, but it made it hard to be friends with any of the girls; each little group seemed to have a different reason why they didn’t want to associate with Grae White.
Except for one girl, her name was Carrie, and she was a junior. She didn’t seem to be in anyone’s group, yet no one was mean to her in any way that Grae could see. She had sought Grae out and thought she was cool. Grae was excited to make a friend until she found out why Carrie was so interested. “I can’t believe that you live in the Mansion,” Carrie said one day during lunch. “It’s like my favorite place.” Grae’s look of confusion made Carrie explain. “It’s SpookyWorld! I went to it five different times last fall. It was awesome!”
Every September, the owner and an army of volunteers transformed the Mansion and grounds into all the horror movies that ever invaded dreams. Thousands of people toured each weekend and saw a different side of the historic property. Kat brought her children up one October weekend several years earlier, and Grae was amazed at all the work that went into it. Since moving there, she hadn’t thought about the fact that now she lived in SpookyWorld.
Grae didn’t want a Spooky groupie and tried to avoid Carrie, but the girl seemed to be everywhere. Waiting at Grae’s locker in the mornings, or saving her a seat in the cafeteria, and Carrie even changed her class schedule so they had the same study hall. It was hard not to be nice to her; she was so friendly and didn’t ask her any personal questions. Carrie just seemed to accept Grae for who she was. But the girl was so bubbly, it really got on Grae’s nerves, especially in the mornings. Then one day, as Carrie jabbered on about some scary something from the last spooky season, he sat down.
Grae was amazed that Carrie didn’t stop talking. Most girls clammed up when a cute guy appeared within five feet. She’d seen this guy before, he was hard to miss. Body of a Calvin Klein underwear model, smile of a movie actor, and the hair of a rock star; everyone called him Gav, short for James McGavock. He was the quarterback of the football team, the captain of the basketball team, a star runner on the track team, and president of the senior class. Oh, and he was smart too…like Einstein smart. He was perfect, and, for some reason, he was sitting across from her opening a carton of milk, 2%, and there were three little cartons of it on his tray. Grae could feel about a hundred sets of female eyes on her, like ants crawling at a picnic; no matter how many were shooed away, more appeared to replace them. Every girl and many of the boys were watching, and all Carrie could do was talk about the chainsaw massacre guy in the barn.
“Carrot, is there anything else you can talk about? The whole room is trying to eat and doesn’t want a description of a chainsaw man’s decapitation skills,” Gav said. He gave Grae a big Hollywood smile.
Grae watched as Carrie stopped talking, turned and rolled her eyes at Gav.
“Jockness, you just don’t get it,” Carrie said. “It’s awesome, and Grae understands, she lives there.” Grae longed to be invisible, literally, at that moment.
“You’ll have to excuse my sister; she’s really hung up on the horror stuff. I think she was adopted.” Gav paused and flashed that smile again. “My name is James, but most people call me Gav. Please don’t hold Carrothead against me.”
“Sister? Carrie’s your sister?” Grae looked back and forth at the two of them. They didn’t look like siblings. Carrie had bright red hair, thus the Carrothead nickname. Gav’s hair was lifeguard blond. Carrie had a face full of freckles; Gav had a dark tan, even in the winter. She would have never put them together in the same family.
“I’m afraid so,” Carrie said. “It’s really embarrassing since he is Mister Everything.” Carrie paused and smirked at him. “You really didn’t know that the Senior God was my brother, did you?”
Grae shook her head. She really hadn’t thought about Gav at all. He seemed to be more the type of guy that you looked at, rather than thought about.
“That would be a first…a girl that hung out with me without wanting to get closer to this one.”
Carrie’s words struck Grae’s heart. She could imagine that Carrie was befriended frequently by girls that only saw her as a way to get Gav’s attention. They were hurtful, backstabbing girls, who once they got what they wanted or gave up, probably treated Carrie horribly. All Grae had seen was Carrie’s SpookyWorld obsession. In reality, maybe all Carrie wanted was someone that might really be her friend.
