“Ellie is making good progress remodeling the house. We had fun.”
Bryce smiled and opened the passenger door for her. “It looked like you two were having a good time.” John had cooked out at his place for the four of them, hamburgers and hot dogs, and they had lingered on his back patio until the sun went down, watched the water reflecting the colors of the fading sunset in the clouds. Charlotte had spent another few private hours talking with Ellie while he and John watched a ball game. “We can stay the night in Madison if you prefer not to make the long drive tonight,” he told her.
“I’ll let you make the choice since you’re driving. I’m fine either way.”
“Then let’s go back to Chicago tonight. Traffic is light, and it’s a beautiful night.” Unspoken, he hoped the long car ride would help Charlotte sleep for a few more hours. He found a station playing her kind of music and turned it on low.
“If Ellie would just marry John, life would be really good right now,” she said, leaning her head against the headrest.
He smiled. “I’d say they’re figuring out how it might work. She was finishing some of his thoughts, and he was directing her help on the meal preparation without having to say much.”
“I noticed. She’s comfortable with him.”
“Will you tell me one day about Ellie’s history, Charlotte?”
“No. She may tell you herself. It’s darker than mine and did more damage.”
“I’m very sorry for that.”
“So am I. She was five.” Charlotte frowned. “I try not to mention even that, so forget I said it.”
“I like her, Charlotte. Whatever her history, it’s not changing that.”
“It’s not that. It’s just her story to tell, not mine.”
Bryce let a long moment pass, then decided to risk a question. “Are the oil paintings hers? Is Ellie the painter Marie?”
His wife turned her head to look at him. Bryce hadn’t expected to see sadness. There were emotions there, deep and dark, swirling in her eyes. And sadness was dominating. “I can’t answer that,” Charlotte said softly.
“Last month there was a trace of oil paint on the back of Ellie’s jacket sleeve,” he offered quietly. “And walnut oil has a faint smell, but it’s distinctive. There was the whiff of it when she walked into the office last week.”
“You observe well.” Charlotte reached over and rested her hand on his arm. “Let it go, what you’ve seen. It’s not a simple answer, of using a different name to keep some privacy. The truth is far more complex than that. She’ll tell you one day. She likes you, and that’s a large part of her decision. She eventually told John. She’ll probably tell you.”
He accepted that. “I won’t mention it.”
Charlotte nodded her thanks and closed her eyes with a sigh. “To think I used to run a full day at Graham Enterprises and have energy left over. Those days are gone.”
“They’ll return once you get some decent sleep for more than a night or two.”
“Hope so.” She gave him a tired smile. “It was nice, Bryce, being their guests. I’ll invite Ellie and John to come to dinner next week and return the favor.”
“I’d like that.” He made the turn that would take them across the river that fed into Shadow Lake. “Neither one of them ever mentioned the money.”
“Did you expect them to?”
“No. I just realized that fact and find it interesting. The only two people in our lives who know about the size of the wealth didn’t find it significant to mention or ask a question about it.”
“You’re enjoying giving the money away. They can see that when you talk about your days. I’m enjoying having a studio again and a chance to get back to some detailed drawings. They saw that too. They’ll be happy to help if there’s a problem, but otherwise it’s just our life now.”
“Anything you would change about that life?” Bryce asked, curious if she’d answer.
Miles passed by.
“I think I’d like to kiss you good-night sometimes.”
“Okay.”
“I heard that smile.”
“Did you expect me to say no?”
“I’m just thinking about it.”
Bryce glanced over. Her eyes were closed and she was drifting. He smiled, and didn’t break the silence. He was thinking about it now too.
Bryce checked the time and then the upcoming exits. They were four hours into the drive home, and he decided not to take the last of the exits they occasionally used when they stopped for gas or food. It would be better to simply get home. Charlotte was watching traffic pass by in the opposite lanes. He’d break the silence with a topic for conversation but wasn’t sure what would help. He was beginning to recognize the distant expression she got when the memories were pressing on her.
“I need to tell you something, Bryce. Something that is going to be very hard to hear.”
“I’ll listen, Charlotte.”
“They kidnapped a child the third year. A boy, a few months old. I can’t stop hearing his cries.”
He took the car off cruise and dropped their speed.
“They were going to get a nice ransom from his family. Three days later they shook him to death because he wouldn’t stop crying. I tried to intervene to stop it. They broke my wrist. I was nineteen, and an infant died because I couldn’t get him to stop crying.”
Bryce kept his silence by strength of will. If he interrupted, she was going to stop, and she desperately needed to say the words.
“I grieved for the child. I stopped eating. I gave up. I’m not really a survivor, Bryce. The cops simply found me before I died.”
He reached over, wrapped his hand around hers, felt her struggle not to pull away—and then she turned her hand, interlaced her fingers with his, and held on tight. “I can’t stop hearing his cries,” she said, her voice breaking.
She shielded her eyes when he turned on the kitchen lights. He eased her out of the jacket. “Go lie down on the couch, Charlotte.”
“I’m going upstairs.”
“I’m not letting you cry yourself to sleep behind a locked door. Stretch out on the couch, or take my bed and I’ll sit in your chair. Don’t ask me to listen to you cry and walk away. I won’t do it. I can’t do it.”
She changed directions to the living room.
Spare blankets were in the hall closet. He pulled out a couple of them.
Charlotte moved to the couch, and Bryce brought a chair over. It took an hour and half a box of Kleenex, but her breathing finally turned deeper. He watched her for a few more minutes. She looked so incredibly sad. Tomorrow was going to become the second most difficult day of their lives together. He reached over and shut off the end-table light.
“You’re not designed for that chair.”
He opened his eyes and sighed.
She was up, showered, dressed, and sitting on the couch facing him. He lowered his legs that had stiffened overnight. He’d stretched them over to the armrest of the couch sometime during the night.
“I called your name. Tried coffee. Did everything but punch you.”
“What did it?”
“The phone rang. You barely flinched the first few rings, then your eyes kind of flickered. The machine caught the call, something about a dentist appointment reminder. I hoped you would finally surface.”
“Surprised I slept. Glad I did.” He rested his head in his hands, scrubbed his face, gratefully accepted the coffee she offered. He could remember seeing the dawn.
“We need to talk.”
“Now or later?” he asked quietly.
She carefully unfolded a newspaper clipping and handed it to him.
He didn’t have to ask if this was the child. The newsprint was yellowed and fragile. He read the article, an obituary for baby Connor Hewitt alongside an update regarding the kidnapping case.
“It’s my butterfly pin on his blanket.”
He studied the photo of the infant, then carefully folded the clipping and ha
nded it back. “He was a beautiful child, Charlotte.”
“Connor’s father, Henry Hewitt, came to see me late one night at the hospital about a week after I was rescued. He opened his hand and showed me the butterfly pin. He asked if it was mine. I started to cry. And he . . . he thanked me for trying to help his son.
“If you think I cry now, Bryce, I bawled that night, so hard I about cracked my ribs. It’s probably what saved my life, that crying jag, and the fact the boy’s father didn’t blame me. I started to recover after that, slowly.
“There’s a tape. A call made from the Dublin Pub telling Henry where his son was buried. The caller wanted some cash in return for the information. Henry played it for me that night at the hospital, and I recognized the voice. Whoever it was who called to say where baby Connor was buried also whispered to me he was a cop and threatened my sister.
“Henry asked me not to tell the cops. If I said my abductors had also killed Connor, cops would close the case on his son and he’d lose his leverage to keep them searching to find this man who’d made the call. Even without his request, I had no intention of giving them any information about the man because of the threat he’d made against Tabitha. Henry used to walk the streets of the neighborhood, encouraging conversations, simply so he could check a voice against that tape. We never expected it would be years and this man still wouldn’t have been found.
“We have the man’s voice on tape, so it’s not just based on my memory. Cops have looked for him over the years in order to solve the baby Connor case, while John has looked for him over the years to solve who else was involved in my case. We both want the same man. We just haven’t been able to find him.”
“Charlotte, why did you tell me?”
She looked up from the folded clipping, met his gaze. “You deserve to know who your wife really is. You’ll try to fall in love with me, because that’s what a good husband is supposed to do. I couldn’t live with you doing that while not knowing this.”
He was already in love with her, but it would scare her to hear those words right now. He simply nodded.
“I’d like to show you his grave.”
He slid his hand around the back of her neck, nudged her head toward his shoulder and wrapped her in a hug. “It will be okay, Charlotte.”
It was a beautiful gravesite. The family stone was a pale gray granite, neatly etched cursive writing showing three people were buried here. Connor, age three months. Dana Hewitt, his mother, died three years after her son. Henry Hewitt had died two years ago.
“Henry died still hopeful the caller would be found one day. He handled the long delay better than I did.” Charlotte knelt and laid flowers on the grave. “I knew the child for only three days, but I loved him, Bryce. With everything in me I wanted to protect him. And I failed.”
Bryce wrapped his arm around her waist.
“I’m angry at God for what happened to me, but the real sharp pain . . . it’s knowing God didn’t answer my prayers to keep baby Connor safe. I watched him be killed, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.”
Bryce didn’t try to find words. There weren’t any. He simply listened and hoped she would keep talking. She’d been silent too long. When her words turned into only sobs, he wrapped his arms around her and held her.
“You could use a drink. Sorry it’s only strong coffee.”
Bryce tossed aside the piece of split wood he was holding and took the mug John offered. He’d hoped restacking the firewood beside the garage might provide something to occupy his time for an hour. But he’d spent most of the time staring off across the yard, lost in thought.
“There was no way to warn you, no way to even prepare the ground for what she was going to say. I’m sorry for that.”
Bryce accepted John’s apology with a nod. “I can see that.” He used his fist to check a chunk of the firewood. The last of the wood purchased five years ago was beginning to go soft with decay, while the wood from this year was still hard and filled with sap. They’d be able to have a good fire on winter evenings. Charlotte would enjoy sketching it. “She’s so incredibly angry, John. It’s a crippling pain. God let it happen, and she is extremely angry at Him.”
“The men who hurt her and killed the child are dead—being angry at them doesn’t get her any relief,” John noted. “The third man who threatened her sister, who called Henry to tell him where his son was buried—she’d be angry at him if we could find him and give her a name. We have his voice but have never been able to identify him. That leaves God. You stir up the memories, the pain returns, and with it the anger. All the unanswered turmoil and the why’s about what happened get directed at God.”
“She should have been talking about this over the last nineteen years.”
John shook his head. “She would have never survived if all this had become known. She blamed herself for not protecting the infant. She grieved, gave up, and willed herself to die. Baby Connor’s father broke some of that guilt. Ellie got through to her in Texas, enough to break some more of that pain. Time has helped her come to terms with the truth there was nothing she could have done to prevent Connor’s death. But she lives with it. She’s just beginning to accept it. I’m honestly surprised she told you.”
“She didn’t want me falling in love with her, not knowing this about her.”
John considered the words, gave a half smile. “Boy, does she have you pegged wrong. Put it down to the fact she doesn’t think someone could or should love her.”
“I’m beginning to realize it. It’s a difficult thing to live with.”
“Her silence gave her space to come to terms with what happened, and her silence was useful in its own way. She did what Henry asked—it was the only thing she could do for him—and it steadied her a bit to be able to do so. The baby Connor case stayed open, cops focused on finding the caller. The work was pursued aggressively. No one expected the years to pass without someone identifying him.”
“Can he be found, John?”
“I don’t know. I’ll play you the tape so you know his voice. The cops had been looking for the caller for over a year before Charlotte was rescued. They had gone through the neighborhood around the Dublin Pub in a systematic way. So I started looking from the other direction, looking at cops and those related to the investigation, working in toward the neighborhood.
“I’m afraid Henry and I missed our opportunity of finding him. Someone in the neighborhood would need to hear the tape and say that’s so-and-so, give us a name, for us to catch him. We never found that person. More likely the person who could answer the question was more terrified of the man than the reward money we were offering could overcome. I think the man was gone the day before Charlotte was rescued. Our window to catch him closed. He’s out there somewhere, but the odds of putting a name to that voice have faded with the years.”
“What happens if he’s never found?”
“She goes on with her life.” John set aside his own mug. “For much of the last ten years she had moved on. The book has stirred it up again. She’ll push this back into the past, just give her some time. It wouldn’t hurt if you were to create reasons for Ellie to be over here more the next few weeks. If Charlotte will talk about something, she’ll often trust Ellie first.”
Bryce nodded. “What if Gage finds out about baby Connor and puts it into the book?”
“He won’t find it.” John rose. “Call if you need me, Bryce.”
“I will.” He set aside his mug. “John?”
The man stopped and turned.
“This is all of it?”
John hesitated. “Maybe. The cop having ransom money, the third man’s threats against Tabitha, baby Connor’s death—she hasn’t hinted something else of that size is back there. But I know there’s more she hasn’t told me. She’s reached that line and backed away too many times for me not to understand it’s extremely painful. She’s talked some to Ellie. But it’s also probable she simply hasn’t talked about it to anyone.”
Bryce nodded and John left.
It was a significant assumption on John’s part that the reporter would not discover the link to the baby Connor case. The more Bryce thought about it, the more he understood why John was certain the connection would not be made. Gage didn’t have a single thread that could reach into the truth. The only pieces of evidence that the two cases were linked were a butterfly pin, Charlotte’s witness to what happened, and her memory that the third man’s voice matched the Dublin Pub caller.
Bryce returned to restacking wood, needing something to occupy his hands while his mind whirled with the facts, assumptions, and enormous unknowns. He could see Charlotte at her drafting table when he stepped past the corner of the garage. She was doing her best to get lost in work as well.
He took off his work gloves, rubbed his eyes. He was in love with someone who considered herself broken, who carried the burden of a child’s death she could not prevent, who didn’t know how to handle the fact God loved her and yet had somehow permitted all of that to happen.
He’d talk with her, but he didn’t have the words to offer yet.
What he wasn’t going to do was let this present reality become their future. He would figure out, one by one, the steps to help her heal. He was grasping the terrain she was wrestling with now. She had paid a steep price for far too long. He’d find the words he needed, the actions. She wasn’t going to be bleeding inside another day without his help to get those wounds closed and healed.
They had to find the guy. Every road led to the need for that answer.
He didn’t have to wonder if John had pursued every avenue to date. Bryce wondered if it would be worth praying for Charlotte to be able to remember the man’s face, to be able to draw it, but he soon set aside that idea. He did not want her having to live with the image of that third man for the rest of her life. There had to be some other way to generate a new lead, something none of them had thought of yet. He tossed another piece of wood onto the restacked pile. He’d pray for that, and not give up until they had it.
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