by Eva Pohler
“So you didn’t…?”
“No. Of course not.” His face turned dark red. “And this went on—her demanding to be touched. This went on for many months. I became more patient as I got to know her. I taught her that private parts were private, that she had to wait until she was an adult and married. I read books to her with stories that might teach her the proper way to behave. I tried to help her understand about love.”
“Did that work?”
“I thought so.” He took a quick sip of his coffee before he continued. “Then one night, there was a terrible thunderstorm. I was sound asleep and hadn’t felt her sneak into my bed. As you know, Millie and her mother sleep downstairs. Amy knew where to find me, because she bathed upstairs and she knew where my room was.”
Ellen took the wet napkin and held it to her head again, trying to stave off the dizziness.
“I’m telling you, Ellen, I was asleep.” He burst into tears—hard, heavy, and guttural. Spit flew from his mouth as he said, “I didn’t realize what she was doing.” He covered his eyes and shook. He shook the whole table. She had to steady their coffee mugs. “I thought I was dreaming. When I woke up, I was looking down at my little girl. Oh, god. And she was smiling.”
Chapter Twenty-One: Cynthia Piers
Saturday morning, Ellen did something she hadn’t done in years: she went out to the art studio in her backyard, opened all the shutters, dusted the shelves, washed her brushes, mixed some paints, and she painted.
Using the box of photos from the Gold House, she began with Marcia Gold.
After an initial sketch, she added her base colors. Then she started bringing some of the features to life—a little shading here, a little highlighting there. She had to work to get the mouth just right. She was vaguely aware when notifications chirped on her phone, but she couldn’t be bothered. She had submerged into another realm altogether where she could be present and not be present, where she could find herself and lose herself at the same time.
When she next looked up, it was dusk.
Sunday afternoon, she took the painting of Marcia to the Gold House. She hadn’t yet put it in a frame, but she couldn’t wait another second. A force beyond her control seemed to compel her to march over to the mantle, to take down the painting of Inger Borhmann, which Ed or one of his contractors must have rehung after the paint job, and to replace it with Marcia Gold. When the new painting was in its rightful place, the whole house seemed to sigh. Yes. This was right and good.
As she stepped back to gaze at the portrait a moment longer, feeling very satisfied with the way it had turned out and thrilled that she had actually painted again, her phone rang. It was the San Antonio State Hospital.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Ellen,” Betty’s voice said over the phone. “You won’t believe what happened this morning.”
“What?”
“Cynthia spoke!” Betty cried cheerfully. “For the first time in twenty years! And she’s asking for you!”
Ellen entered Cynthia’s room with a mixture of hope and dread.
The patient was sitting by the window in a different nightgown than she had worn during their first encounter. Her hair was brushed, and she was wearing slippers. As Ellen neared her, the woman glared at her.
“He loved me,” Cynthia said emphatically.
Ellen was afraid to sit in the chair across the table from the woman, so she remained standing near the bed. “Who?”
“Johnny.”
“So you are the Cynthia Piers who lived at the Gold House?” Ellen asked.
The woman stared blankly at Ellen for a long moment before she nodded.
Ellen took off her coat and clutched it in her arms as if it were a newborn baby.
“He said it was natural for patients to fall in love with their doctors,” Cynthia said. “But he loved me. He loved me back.”
“I see.” Ellen wondered if they’d been unaware that they shared the same father.
“He moved me downstairs with him. We watched television. And he let me go out with him. We ate at restaurants. We bought food for the others. He even took me to the movie theater once. I was no longer a patient when they brought me here. But they wouldn’t believe me. No one would listen to me. So I told her to hide.”
“You told who to hide?”
Tears filled Cynthia’s eyes, and she barely squeaked out her answer. “Amy.”
Ellen sucked in her lips and began pacing at the end of the bed, clutching her coat close to her.
“First the police came. Then the doctors. They took Johnny away.”
“Took him away?” Ellen was confused. “I thought he had died.”
“Yes. They came and took him.”
Ellen covered her mouth and said nothing. How long had she held onto the body before someone had come for it?
“I knew they were coming back for me. And for Regina and Carmen. I could tell. So I told her to stay in the attic. She was such a good girl. I didn’t want them to take her away, too.” Then she added. “No one would listen to me. I was not a patient! I told them to take Regina and Carmen. They were patients, but I was not! I was Johnny’s wife!”
“Did you get married? Have a wedding?”
After a few moments, Cynthia shook her head and hung it in shame.
“And Regina and Carmen? Are they still here? Still alive?”
Cynthia shook her head again. “I tried to tell them that I didn’t belong here, but they wouldn’t listen. So I stopped talking.”
Ellen turned and met the woman’s eyes. “I’m listening to you, Cynthia.”
Cynthia looked up at Ellen, as if she was trying to decide if she could trust her. “Is Amy okay? Can I see her?”
Ellen froze in her tracks. At the moment, she didn’t know the answer to those questions. She swallowed hard and did the only thing she could do. She lied.
Two hours later, Bud met Ellen out on his front porch. He didn’t look her in the eye or give her the friendly greeting he’d given her in the past. She could tell he was embarrassed that she knew his deepest, darkest secret. And maybe she should be disgusted with him and not have anything to do with him, but the truth was that she just felt sorry for him. Not knowing for certain what really happened that night, she wasn’t ready to exonerate him completely, but she wasn’t ready to judge and condemn him, either.
“Let’s take a walk,” he said as he stepped down to the sidewalk.
She followed him.
When they reached the curb, she asked, “Any sign of Amy?”
“No.”
“Has she ever been gone this long?”
“Sure, but not lately. I don’t know where she’s getting her meals.”
“Are you worried?”
“Damn straight, I’m worried.”
Ellen’s gaze fell on the house next door—on the Gold House. It looked amazing in the late afternoon sun. “Should we check the attic?”
“Yes, if you don’t mind.”
They walked across the lawn to the empty house. Ed and his team had needed to take off this Saturday. Sue and Tanya weren’t there, either. The last Ellen had heard, they were off picking out bathroom fixtures.
“Are you planning to do something about the old tree?” Bud asked her.
“We’re having it removed.”
“Good. It’s a hazard having a dead tree of that size so close to the house. I’ve wanted to have it removed myself.”
Ellen took out her key and unlocked the front door. Although the electrical had been completed recently, they were still waiting on City Public Service to turn the energy on for them. Luckily, the afternoon sun gave them enough light to make their way up the stairs.
“It looks really nice in here,” Bud said.
“Thanks. I think so, too.”
Ellen led the way to the attic stairs. There were no more locks on the doors, so she didn’t have to worry about being locked out.
“We still need to sort through all the mess up here,” she said a
s they reached the attic floor and looked around for some sign of Amy. “I don’t see her here, Bud.”
Bud crossed the room to a back corner. Ellen studied him. What was he doing? In another moment, he’d lifted a trap door.
“I didn’t know that was there!” she said.
Ellen followed and looked over his shoulder. Beneath the trap door was a small niche about four feet long by four feet wide and only two feet deep. The niche was lined with a blanket and pillow.
Ellen covered her mouth. “Is that where she sleeps?”
“Only sometimes, when she needs to hide.”
“I didn’t even know that door was there,” she repeated.
“It’s a good hiding place. It’s too bad she’s not here.”
“Where do you suppose she is?”
He closed the trap door. “I honestly don’t know. Maybe she’s in some kind of trouble.”
Ellen crossed her arms. “Bud, I know you don’t want to hear this, but I think we need to call the police.”
He looked sharply down at her but didn’t say anything for several seconds. “She’ll turn up.”
Bud led the way from the attic.
“There’s something else I was wondering about,” Ellen said as they took the steps down to the second floor.
“What’s that?” Bud asked.
“Did Amy really kill Millie’s dog?”
They reached the second floor and crossed the hall over to the next set of steps. “No. I don’t know who did, but when Millie assumed the ghost did it, it helped her, I think. It gave her some closure, at least. Pedro may have even died of old age, but it helped my case to say the ghost did it.”
“What about the neighbors’ cats?”
“Amy would never kill an animal. Hell, she could make a rat her friend.” He led the way down toward the bottom floor. “You have to remember that, except for me, she was all alone. She turned to animals for companionship. Any stray dog or cat or rat or mouse became Amy’s new best friend.”
Ellen wondered about the four dead rats she and Sue and Jan had found that first day in the attic.
Bud continued, “I just said those things about her because I needed everyone to be afraid of her, so they would leave her and this house alone.”
“I see.”
“But the person responsible for the deaths of those animals is probably Mitchell Clark.”
“Why? I don’t understand?”
They reached the bottom floor. “I don’t know either, but that’s what Amy says, and I believe her.”
“Does she know where the gold is?” Ellen asked.
“There’s no gold.”
Ellen furrowed her brows. “Are you sure?”
“Don’t you think someone would have found it by now?”
“Not necessarily.”
“She doesn’t know anything about it,” Bud said.
Ellen wasn’t sure she believed him. Then she asked, “What if Amy’s mother is alive?”
“Then she’s a terrible person for abandoning her daughter like that.”
“But what if she couldn’t help it?”
“How’s that even possible?”
“There’s something you need to know.” Ellen bit the inside of her lower lip. This was not going to be easy. She wasn’t sure if he’d be relieved or upset.
“Tell me.”
“I took some samples from the attic and sent them to an online lab. They were able to find an 86 percent DNA match with a current patient at the San Antonio State Hospital.”
“What you are saying?”
“I’ve found Amy’s mother. And she’s alive.”
Chapter Twenty-Two: The Hunt for Amy
The Wednesday before Thanksgiving, Ellen, Tanya, and Sue took three homemade pies to the Extended Care Unit of the state hospital and visited Cynthia. Tanya and Sue were curious about seeing Cynthia in person, but they didn’t want to risk frightening the patient back into silence, so they remained near the door. Ellen mentioned that they were her friends, that they’d each made a pie, and they’d come to wish Cynthia a happy Thanksgiving. Although not as talkative as she’d been during Ellen’s last visit, Cynthia did ask about her daughter. Ellen didn’t want to admit the truth—that she didn’t know where Amy was—so she told the woman that she was waiting for the right moment to tell Amy.
“Amy doesn’t know about me yet?” Cynthia asked.
“Not yet.”
Cynthia folded her arms across her chest, clasping each upper arm with the opposite hand, and began to rock in her chair. Ellen glanced back at her friends, bewildered and unsure of what to do. Tanya shrugged. Sue shook her head. Then Tanya stepped out of the room, and Sue followed her.
After another long minute, Cynthia stopped rocking, turned her bright eyes on Ellen, and asked, “Why?”
“It’s delicate,” Ellen said. “I want to see you get better, and make sure you can handle this. Both of you. I’ll keep you posted.”
And, like a coward, Ellen fled the room.
The last Thanksgiving in her childhood home with Paul and her kids and Jody and his family was both a happy and sad event. Although she and Jody found it difficult to decide what to do about the house (he wanted a place to stay when he visited San Antonio and didn’t want to sell it, whereas Ellen hoped to use her part of the proceeds to invest more in the Gold House), there was one thing Ellen did know for sure now that her mother had passed: ghosts were real. She’d already come to this conclusion the two nights she had felt her mother looking over her in the wake of her mother’s death, but that Thanksgiving day, she could feel her mother all over the house. She’d been there celebrating with them.
The Saturday after Thanksgiving, after Jody and his wife and kids had got on the road and after all the leftovers were put away, Ellen made a quick call to Bud to see if he had any news about Amy.
“Let me call you back,” he murmured.
A few minutes later, he called.
“Still no sign of her,” he said. “She hasn’t disappeared for this long in years. I don’t know what to do. I even went over and paid a visit to Mitchell Clark, thinking maybe he’d been up to something.”
“I was thinking the very same thing,” Ellen said. “Did you learn anything?”
“He didn’t let me in the door—not that he usually would. We’ve never been on friendly terms.”
“How old do you think Amy is?” Ellen asked.
“Late twenties,” he said. “Why?”
“Maybe it’s time to call the police,” Ellen said.
“Let’s give her a few more days.”
That night, Ellen convinced Sue and Tanya to go with her to spy on Mitchell Clark.
Sue offered to drive. She picked up Ellen and then Tanya and drove out to the historic district. As they drove, they planned their strategies.
“Keep us on speaker the entire time,” Ellen told Sue. “Just in case.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll only hang up if my mother calls,” Sue said with a smile.
“You better not!” Tanya gave Sue a playful punch in the arm from the backseat.
“Don’t worry, ladies,” Sue said. “I’ve got you covered. I’ll sit in front of the Gold House, and if you need me to drive up the road and pick you up, you just let me know. If you need an emergency latte and muffin, well I can get you those, too.”
“Maybe we need code names,” Ellen said. “I call Ziva.”
“You can have her,” Tanya said. “I call Agent Scully.”
“Given your phobias,” Sue said to Tanya, “I think your code name should be Mr. Monk.”
“Ha-ha,” Tanya said sarcastically.
It wasn’t long before Sue pulled up to the curb in front of the Gold House. This was the first time Ellen had seen it completely restored at night. Tears filled her eyes. The house looked regal. They just needed to get rid of the dead tree that still loomed over the property with its sad and weary branches. Luckily, the tree removal service had been scheduled to come on Thursda
y.
Ellen bit her lip as she checked the torch app on her phone once more. “Are we ready, Agent Scully?”
Tanya gave her a nod. “But we stay together, okay? Promise me we won’t split up.”
“I promise,” she said. “But I really want to hear you call me Ziva.”
“Lead the way, Ziva David,” Tanya said.
With a smile on her face and with her heart beating fast against her ribs, Ellen opened the car door and stepped out onto the street. It was after nine o’clock, and the moon was now a tiny crescent sliver. Clouds filled the chilly sky, and, except for the section of street in front of the Forrester’s house where a lamppost illuminated about thirty square feet, the night was dark.
There were a few lights on at the Robertson’s house, but the same could not be said of Mitchell Clark’s Italianate-style home.
“Ready Agent Scully?” Ellen asked.
“I guess so, Ziva David.”
Joking with Tanya and Sue had kept Ellen from being terrified over what she and her friends were attempting to do. What if this gold-digging stranger had abducted Amy? What if Tanya and Ellen were spotted by him and captured, too? Ellen had 9-1-1 on speed dial, and she wasn’t afraid to use it.
After they’d passed Ida and Sam Robertson’s Victorian, they left the street and took cover in the trees between the two houses as they made their way to Mitchell Clark’s side windows. Ellen experienced a moment of déjà vu as she recalled the night of the séance and the image of Bud Forrester peeking into the dining room of the Gold House. The screens over the windows of Mitchell Clark’s Italianate were full of dirt and cobwebs, making it difficult for Ellen and Tanya to see inside. As they inched their way around the back of the house, they kept Sue on their phones in conference-call mode. Like most of the houses in this area, there was no fence, so they had easy access to the back.