Home at Rose Cottage Read Free

Jessie’s lingering behavior problems was enough to test the patience of a saint. As a baby, she’d screamed her dissatisfaction night and day. Now she was simply unpredictable, sunny one minute and hysterical the next.
    Most days Mike was up to the task of dealing with her mood swings, but there were times when it was all he could do not to break down in exhaustion and weep for the damage that had been done to his beautiful little girl.
    That was one reason he’d chosen the small town of Irvington on the Chesapeake Bay. There was plenty of work to be had here, but the pace was slower and lessdemanding than it would have been in a major city. If he needed to spend extra time with Jessie, he could do so without feeling he was shortchanging his clients. And, because his reputation was excellent, he could pick and choose among those who sought his services, making sure that each of them understood that Jessie would always be his first priority.
    “We need to go now! ” Jessie commanded. Even at six, she had the imperial presence of a queen commanding her subjects. She lowered her voice and confided, “I think ghosts live here, Daddy.”
    Mike grinned at her. It wasn’t the first time she’d expressed a negative opinion about the rundown place, but the addition of a ghost was something new. “What makes you think that, pumpkin?” he asked.
    “Something moved at the window. I saw it.” Her lower lip trembled, and panic filled her eyes.
    “Nobody lives here,” Mike reassured her. “The house is empty.”
    “Something moved,” Jessie said stubbornly, clearly near tears. Whether she’d actually seen something or not, her fear was real. “We need to go! ”
    Rather than argue, Mike accelerated and continued on to the school. Any logical response he could have made would only have escalated the tension, and the rare serenity would have been shattered.
    As soon as they were away from the house, Jessie’s shoulders eased and she gave him a tremulous smile. “We’re safe now,” she said happily.
    “You’re always safe when I’m around,” Mike reminded her.
    “I know, Daddy,” she said patiently. “But I don’t like that place. I don’t want to go there again. Not ever. Promise.”
    “We have to drive by it every day,” Mike said.
    “But only really, really fast,” Jessie insisted. “Okay?”
    Mike sighed, knowing that reasoning with his daughter when she was like this was a waste of breath. “Okay.”
    “Have a good day, pumpkin,” he said a few minutes later when he left Jessie at the front door of the school. “I’ll be right here when you get out this afternoon.”
    He’d discovered early on that she needed to be reassured again and again that he would be back, that he wouldn’t forget about her. The psychologist he’d spoken to said Jessie’s need for constant reassurance was yet another effect of not having her mother in her life, of knowing that Linda had abandoned her. Some days he wondered if he shouldn’t have lied and said Linda was dead, if that wouldn’t have been less cruel, but he hadn’t been able to bring himself to do it. Maybe he’d naively held out hope that someday Linda would straighten herself out and want to be a part of their daughter’s life.
    “Bye, Daddy.” Jessie turned away, then looked back at him, her expression filled with worry. “You won’t go back to the bad house, will you? I don’t want the ghost to get you.”
    “No ghost is going to get me,” Mike promised, sketching a cross over his heart in the way he always did to reassure her that he meant what he said. “I wear ghost repellent.”
    Jessie giggled. “You’re silly,” she told him, though genuine relief flashed in her eyes.
    Then she was gone, racing to catch up with a friend. Mike stared after her, wishing it could always be this easy to calm her fears. Some nights there was no consoling her. Some nights she had nightmares she refused to describe, calming only when he held her.
    When