A rose without any thorns.
That would win her over.
THIRTY-FOUR
Gert Gorin was feeling restless. Arthur was snoozing in his chair, having fallen asleep in the middle of the baseball game on television. Gert had switched the channel, watching some of Bill O’Reilly and then a little of an old melodrama starring Ava Gardner on Turner Classic Movies. But she had a sense that something was happening tonight. And Gert had learned a long time ago to trust her senses.
They’d never failed her. She had known that Millie Manning had taken that swan dive off her back deck even before any cops had arrived. Gert had heard something, a strange kind of thud. It had come from across the street, from the direction of the Manning house. Granted, the Manning house was several yards down the road, and surrounded by the big security wall and all those tall pine trees. But still Gert had heard something. She figured she had supersonic ears. She’d gotten out her binoculars, hidden behind a bush and tried to see what she could find out, aiming the specs at the Manning mansion. She had seen nothing unusual, but it hadn’t been long before she’d heard the sirens. Gert had been right. Something had indeed happened over there.
Millie Manning was dead. And her husband may well have pushed her off that deck.
Tonight Gert felt the same sort of tingling. It started at the base of her neck, at the top of her spine, and crept down her arms and into her fingers. She switched off the TV and got up off the couch.
“Hey!” Arthur croaked, immediately awake. “Why’d you turn off my game?”
“Here,” she said, tossing him the remote control. It landed in his lap. “I’m taking a walk.”
“At this hour?”
“Something’s up,” she told him. “I can feel it.”
“You’ll never learn, Gert,” her husband said.
Gert pulled on a sweater and headed outside.
The night was chilly. Summer really was ending, she realized, and fall was around the corner, and then winter not long after that. Gert hugged herself for warmth and hurried across the grass toward the road. She looked around. Not a soul to be seen. Not a sound. The lights were on in Jessie’s house, but dark in Monica’s. Gert thought she could detect a light through the trees over at the Manning mansion, but she couldn’t be certain. The other houses of Hickory Dell—where the Pierces and old Mr. Thayer dwelled—were farther down the road, hidden by the woods, and Gert couldn’t see them.
So where did this tingle in her arms come from?
Then she heard the snap of a twig.
Gert snapped her head in that direction. She spied a flash of color across the street, down toward the end of the cul-de-sac.
She was frightened. Maybe she was being foolish wandering outside in the dark. After all, a few weeks ago, a girl had been brutally murdered out here, on a dark, still night much like this one. Gert thought she should just scurry back into the house now. But instead she ducked behind a tall blue spruce tree in her front yard and peered across the street toward the place where she’d seen the flash of color. There. She saw it again.
Children.
Two children were walking through the woods down to the brook. For the slightest of seconds, the kids emerged from the shadows and walked through a column of moonlight, and Gert thought she recognized one of them as Abby Clarkson. The other child was a boy. . . .
No, Gert thought, not Ashton Pierce. Even from this distance and in the dim light of the moon, Gert could tell the child didn’t have red hair.
The boy with Abby looked more like the one who’d been sitting in her gazebo a few weeks earlier.
Now why would Jessie let her daughter wander down to the brook this late at night—and with the killer of her nanny still not caught?
The children disappeared into the trees. Gert lost sight of them.
But then, still peering through the branches of her blue spruce, she spotted something else.
Bryan Pierce, crossing the street, and slinking through the shadows toward Jessie’s house. And Gert was certain that he was carrying a rose.
Her fear finally getting the best of her, Gert scrambled back inside.
“Well, how do you like these apples?” she announced to Arthur as she strode into the kitchen. “Bryan Pierce is carrying on an affair with Jessie Clarkson!”
“I thought it was his wife who was carrying on an affair with John Manning,” Arthur grumbled, his eyes on the television set.
“I don’t know where that affair stands,” Gert said, “but I just saw Bryan sneaking up Jessie’s driveway carrying a rose.”
Arthur shook his head. “Don’t think that’s the kind of proof that would stand up in a court of law.”
“I knew that girl was trouble ever since she first hooked up with that Emil Deetz!” Gert declared. “And do you know, she lets her five-year-old daughter traipse through the woods after dark. . . .”
A thought occurred to her at that moment. Maybe Jessie didn’t know Abby was outside. Maybe she’d appreciate Gert giving her a call to tell her that she’d just seen her daughter wandering down by the brook. And even if Jessie did know Abby was outside, getting her on the phone right about now could give Gert a clue about what was going on with Bryan. . . . Maybe she’d even hear Bryan in the background.
She quickly punched in Jessie’s number on her wall phone.
“Who you calling?” Arthur wanted to know.
“Hush,” his wife commanded.
The phone rang and rang, finally switching over to voice mail. Gert frowned. She decided not to leave a message. Instead, she headed back outside to see if she could spot the children again.
Maybe she ought to walk them back up to Jessie’s house. . . .
THIRTY-FIVE
Jessie was halfway up the stairs when her phone rang. She considered going back downstairs and answering it, but then decided against it.
She was worried all of a sudden.
Worried about Abby.
Maybe it was just residual jitters after Inga’s death. But ever since she’d found the front door unlocked, Jessie hadn’t been able to concentrate on her writing.
Maybe it wasn’t jitters.
Maybe it was a mother’s sixth sense.
So she let the phone ring as she continued up the stairs toward Abby’s room.
THIRTY-SIX
“Where are we going?” Abby asked Aaron.
They had stepped over the brook and continued deeper into the woods.
“A special place,” Aaron replied, easily making his way across the sticks and twigs and stones despite his bare feet.
Abby was glad she’d worn her sneakers, even if she did keep stumbling on the untied laces.
Up ahead a dark shape loomed among the trees. Abby had never been this far in the woods before.
“I’m scared,” she said.
Aaron turned around and took her hand. “Come on, Abby. You’ll like this place.”
The dark shape in the trees, as they drew closer, revealed itself to be an old, dilapidated barn. Aaron held Abby’s hand tightly as they passed through the big open door. The roof of the structure had collapsed in several places, allowing moonlight to fill much of the interior. Aaron led Abby over several piles of wood and rusted old piping. With Aaron leading the way, the little girl felt less frightened.
“This is a very special place,” Aaron told her.
The barn smelled of old hay and mold. Abby sneezed. At one end, an old tractor rusted in the dark. Empty horse stalls lined another wall. Above, in a section where the roof still held firm, a series of beams ran the width of the barn.
“Let’s go up there,” Aaron suggested.
Abby looked up. The beams were very high, but not so high that they scared her. After all, she’d lived her first five years in New York City, and she’d often been in buildings much higher than those beams.
“Okay,” she said to Aaron.
“We’ll climb this ladder here,” he told her, pointing to a ladder that rose up from the
floor to the first of the beams, “and then walk across the beam and jump into that pile of hay over there.” Abby followed the direction of the little boy’s finger. At the far end of the barn, under the broken roof, was a mound of hay that looked soft and inviting from here. Aaron’s idea sounded like fun.
But the ladder seemed weak and rickety when Abby touched it. She instinctively pulled back.
“I’ll go first,” Aaron told her, “so you’ll see that it’s safe.”
Abby stood back and let him climb.
Aaron quickly scrambled up the ladder. It barely bent under his weight. Hopping easily from the top rung onto the beam, the boy moved like a cat across its length. He didn’t even look down. He just walked along the beam in his bare feet as if he’d done it many times before. Maybe he had, Abby thought.
At the end of the beam, he stood over the haystack.
“Watch me, Abby!” he called.
Aaron leapt into the air. He tumbled down gracefully, turning a somersault in the air. He landed on his butt into the hay, which acted like a soft cushion, breaking his fall. His laughter echoed through the old barn.
“Now you do it, Abby!” he sang out.
Abby thought it looked like a lot of fun. So she grabbed hold of the ladder with both hands and put her right foot onto the first rung. The ladder trembled in her hands and made a long, low creaking sound. She took another step up the ladder and it shook some more. She paused, worried that the ladder might break.
“Come on, Abby!” Aaron called.
Abby took a deep breath, and then another step.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Bryan stood outside Jessie’s house watching from behind a wall of lilac bushes, their blooms all dried and brown from last spring. He could see Jessie through the lit windows as she headed up the stairs. She’d turned back once, when the phone rang, but paused only for a moment. The phone had rung several times, then stopped, apparently sending the caller to voice mail. Bryan watched as Jessie disappeared upstairs.
He stood back. In a couple of moments he saw the light go on in a room upstairs. Then he heard Jessie’s muffled scream.
Bryan pulled back deeper into the shadows behind the bushes, still clutching the rose in his hands. He was glad he’d removed every thorn on his way over here, because otherwise he’d surely have cut his hand holding the damn thing in the dark. He heard Jessie’s footsteps running back down the stairs.
“Abby!” she was calling. “Dear God, Abby!”
Suddenly the back door flew open and the motion-detector light flooded the yard with a bright golden glow. Bryan moved farther into the bushes so he wouldn’t be noticed. Jessie was in the backyard now, calling for her daughter. The lights in Paulette’s cottage came on, and within seconds the older woman was at her door, asking Jessie what was wrong.
“Abby’s missing!” Jessie screamed. “She’s not in her room!”
THIRTY-EIGHT
Jessie was in an utter panic. “My baby!” she kept shrieking. “My baby is gone!”
“We’ll find her, honey,” Aunt Paulette assured her, rushing about the yard.
They heard a voice calling to them.
“I saw her!” It was Gert Gorin, huffing and puffing as she made her way up the hill. “I tried calling you, but there was no answer. I saw her walking into the woods!”
“The woods!” Jessie echoed.
“Yes,” Gert told her. “With a little boy. They were heading toward the old barn. That’s when I figured I should come get you, because that place is just too dangerous for me to go in after them.”
Jessie was already barreling down the hill toward the brook and the woods beyond. She wished Monica and Todd were home. They’d gone into the city for the night for some event hosted by Todd’s firm, and they wouldn’t be back until very, very late. Jessie knew that Todd had been in that old barn many times. He knew his way around it, since he’d been considering restoring it. Decades ago, when Jessie’s family had actually run a farm on the property, the barn had been in use. But ever since she could remember, the barn had stood there rotting, the trees growing thicker around it.
The moon slipped behind some clouds, plunging the night into total darkness.
Still, Jessie managed to leap over the brook in a single bound and head into the woods. Ahead of her, the beam of a flashlight kept bobbing from place to place. Aunt Paulette was following her, Jessie realized, and had wisely thought to grab some light for them. The older woman was aiming it ahead of Jessie so that they could at least make out where they were. Jessie sensed Gert Gorin was somewhere behind them as well.
“Abby!” Jessie yelled.
There was no response except for the flutter of wings in the trees above.
She reached the barn. “Abby!” she shouted again.
“Mommy?” came a little voice from the dark.
Aunt Paulette staggered up behind her, out of breath, trying to steady the beam of the flashlight inside the barn. They stood at the entrance facing nothing but utter darkness. The flashlight picked out the remnants of a rusted old tractor, then some decomposing crates, then a ladder leading up to one of the overhead beams.
“Abby?” Jessie said into the dark, more quietly now.
“Mommy.” Abby’s voice floated out from the darkness. She sounded frightened.
“Where are you, baby?” Jessie asked.
“Up here.”
Jessie took the flashlight from Aunt Paulette and aimed it toward the sound of Abby’s voice. At first she saw nothing. But then the light found the little girl’s face. Jessie saw that her daughter was crouched on a beam. Below her was a drop of some thirty feet to the hard earthen floor of the barn.
Jessie suppressed a scream. “Baby, don’t move,” she whispered. “I’m going to come get you.”
“I was going to jump into the hay pile, Mommy,” Abby said. “Aaron already did, and it’s safe.”
The moon slithered out from behind the clouds at that moment. Through the broken roof it revealed the mound of hay in the far corner of the barn. Gert Gorin had arrived by now, and, breathing heavily, moved stealthily across the floor toward the hay, one eye looking up at Abby at all times.
“No, honey,” Jessie said. “Just stay right there. You’re not far from the ladder. I’m going to come up and help you come down.”
“Okay, Mommy.”
Jessie handed the flashlight to Aunt Paulette, who kept it trained on the ladder.
“Be careful, Jessie,” her aunt implored.
Jessie gripped the sides of the ladder and placed her foot on the first rung. The ladder was flimsy, as if made of balsa wood. It shook under Jessie’s weight. Still, she went up several steps, all the while talking calmly to Abby.
“Sit down on the beam and hold on tight, sweetie,” she instructed her daughter. “Then move back toward the ladder on your butt. Don’t try to walk.”
“Okay, Mommy,” Abby replied, and did as she was told.
Jessie was now halfway up the ladder. Aunt Paulette stood below, aiming the flashlight at Abby and holding one side of the ladder to steady it. Gert, having checked out the haystack, hurried over to grip the other side.
Abby had worked her way across the beam so that she was now near the top of the ladder. Her little feet dangled over the side. Suddenly one of her untied sneakers fell off, spiraling down through the air and whizzing past Jessie’s face, landing with a thud on the barn floor. Gert Gorin gasped.
“It’s okay,” Jessie said, her voice steady. “I’ve almost got you, baby.”
She took another step up the ladder, and the rung broke under her foot.
“Jessie!” Aunt Paulette shouted.
“It’s okay,” she said again, taking a large step to reach the next rung.
Abby was now within arm’s length.
“Come on, sweet baby, come to Mommy,” Jessie purred. “Shake off your other sneaker. It will be too hard to climb down otherwise.”
Abby did as she was instructed. Her second sneaker pl
unged to the ground, reminding Jessie of just how far the fall would be.
“Come on, Abs.”
The little girl moved her feet down onto the top rung of the ladder. Jessie reached up and grabbed her by the waist, guiding her down to the next step. When they came to the broken rung, she held Abby tighter and moved her past the space.
“You’re almost down, Jessie!” Aunt Paulette called up to them.
Beneath Jessie’s foot, another rung snapped in two. Gert Gorin shouted out in horror.
But Jessie kept going. She was down the ladder far enough now, with Abby securely in her grip, that even if they fell, the worst they might incur was a broken arm.
“Almost home, my babies!” Aunt Paulette sang out.
And then Jessie was down, Abby safely with her. Once she got her off the ladder, Jessie wrapped her arms around her daughter and began to sob.
“It’s okay, Mommy,” Abby said. “Aaron said it was perfectly safe.”
“Where is this Aaron?” Aunt Paulette asked.
“He’s in the haystack,” Abby said, pointing.
“There’s nobody in that haystack,” Gert Gorin said. “But come here and see what is in there!”
They followed her across the barn, the flashlight illuminating their way.
“Look!” Gert said, pointing down.
There, just under the top layer of moldy stray and hay, protruded the rusted blades of an old lawn mower.
“I don’t have to spell out what would have happened to the child if she had jumped into this hay,” Gert said, shivering dramatically.
Jessie gripped Abby tightly. “Oh, no!”
“But Aaron jumped in and he wasn’t hurt!” Abby insisted.
“Where is Aaron?” Jessie asked, crouching down so she could look Abby straight in the eyes. “Did he bring you here?”
Abby nodded.
“Then where is he now?”
“I don’t know.”
Jessie looked up at Aunt Paulette, then back at Abby. “Sweetie, could Aaron be an imaginary friend . . . ?”
“No,” the little girl insisted. “He’s real.”
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