“Kaine?”
“Yeah?”
“I put a box in your trunk before you left. I wanted to be sure you had it when you returned to Great-Great-Grandmother Ivy’s old stomping grounds.”
Maybe Leah had learned something about Kaine. The first seedling of hope grew in her chest. Something tangible was in her car, right now, a gift from Leah.
“What is it?”
“It’s our great-great-grandmother’s quilt.” A smile touched Leah’s voice.
“Where did you get that?” Kaine recalled it from years before, folded at the foot of their grandfather’s bed.
“After Grandpa died, you were away at college all preoccupied with your pre-Danny boyfriend when I went through Grandpa’s stuff. I had it stored in my closet. But I thought now that you are in Oakwood, where Ivy grew up, you might want it.” Leah’s voice waned, as if she didn’t know what to say anymore.
But it meant everything to Kaine. Maybe, since she was in Oakwood, it was time to find her foundation in family roots. What part did the family legacy play in shaping her into the driven, assertive, and now very lost person that she was?
Kaine stepped across the threshold into bedroom number three.
“I’ll cherish it, Leah, I’ll—”
“Kaine?” Leah pressed into Kaine’s choked silence.
Kaine couldn’t respond, couldn’t answer. Her hand lowered, the phone clutched in her hand. The walls of the room closed in, then expanded, and she blinked several times to bring it back to proper proportions. The shaft of light from the four-paned window on the opposite side of the room stretched across the weathered wood floor. The object propped in its path stole her breath, and the last vestige of tentative peace Kaine had found exploded into a thousand invisible pieces.
Chapter 7
Jvy
Her favorite scent of lavender wrapped around Ivy as she opened her eyes a small crack. Her vision was blurry, but she made out the deep green-striped wallpaper that met the white wainscoting in the middle of her bedroom wall. Oh, the ache, the deep ache. Ivy closed her eyes again. Darkness. Stairs. She remembered the hazy sensation of falling.
“What’s her condition?” The voice by her bedside startled her, but Ivy didn’t open her eyes. It was Joel Cunningham. In her bedroom. She wanted to argue him away, but the words wouldn’t formulate in her foggy brain, let alone escape her tongue.
Her father’s voice shattered the remaining blur. “Who did this to her, Joel? I want this fiend caught!”
“Was she—?” Joel let his question hang.
No. I wasn’t. Ivy responded in her mind. Neither of the men were answering each other’s questions, and Ivy had yet to summon the stamina to open her eyes again.
“No. No. She wasn’t.” Finally. Her father answered for her. “She’s badly bruised, as you can see, not unlike the girl we found. I swear someone tried to strangle her, but I don’t think anything’s broken. It appears she was pushed down the stairs in Foster Hill House.”
She wasn’t half dead after all, thank God! But she felt like she was. Ivy tried to move, but her body throbbed in protest.
“How do we know what happened?” Joel was fact-finding already. He was on a case, and now, Ivy realized, she was part of the case. She could have easily been lying on the same table Gabriella had lain on, and in the same condition. The realization was frightening enough and it bought Ivy’s continued silence.
“She was coherent enough when Foggerty found her to tell him she’d been attacked.” There was a tremor in her father’s voice.
“How is it Foggerty found Gabriella and now Ivy?”
“He traps the property, and he wanders. He said he heard moaning in the house and that’s when he came across Ivy.” There was a break now in her father’s voice. Dear Papa.
“Whoever did this to Ivy must have thought she was dead.” Joel seemed to hesitate. “She’s blessed, or else they may have tried to make sure that was the case and hid her like they did the girl. We may never have found Ivy.”
“Dear God.” Her father’s quivering plea sliced through Ivy’s consciousness. She should open her eyes, assure him she was going to be all right, but Joel continued.
“She’ll recover?”
“Physically, yes.” Ivy could feel her father’s fingers pushing back the hair from her forehead. “Emotionally? After all she’s been through . . . with Andrew? She’s never been the same since. I lost them both the day he drowned. In different ways. So, I don’t know, Joel. I don’t know if she’ll ever recover,” Dr. Thorpe said.
Darkness crowded in on Ivy once more, except this time it was different. It summoned the pain she’d never buried. The pain of Andrew, the pain of Joel’s abandonment, and the aching question: Why had he come home?
The second time she awoke, the memories came with force. Foster Hill House, the scarlet bed, a volume of Great Expectations, and the attack.
Ivy’s eyes flew open and she sat up in a swift motion. The room spun, and she blinked rapidly as shutters of black closed across her vision.
“Slow down,” the voice beside her murmured. She had no choice but to yield to the pressure of a hand on her shoulder, urging her back onto the pillows.
Ivy turned her head, her gaze landing on a muscled forearm, rolled-up sleeves of a blue cotton shirt, and the clean-cut jaw of Joel. She closed her eyes. More to avoid seeing his disapproval than from the spots still swirling in her vision.
Yet he didn’t say anything, so after a few moments Ivy attempted to open her eyes again. Her body awakened to the sore muscles from her tumble down the stairs. Her jaw hurt from where she had struck it on a step as she’d twisted from beneath the man’s wicked grip.
Her eyes met Joel’s. There was no criticism in his expression. She was taken aback by the tenderness she saw there, until it disappeared and his face transformed into the detective he was instead of the friend he’d once been.
“Did you see the man who did this to you?”
Yes. This was the Joel she was fast becoming accustomed to. Ivy looked away, toward the window and the trees that waved black, bare branches against a blue sky.
“No.” There wasn’t any need to expound further.
“Any physical features at all?”
“Outside of the fact that his arm around my throat was like a steel bar? No.”
Silence. Ivy should feel bad for snapping at Joel. But with awareness seeping into every cell of her throbbing body, the need to distance herself from this man at her bedside grew.
“Did he speak to you? Did you recognize his voice?”
Ivy bit her lip, then reconsidered when she bit down on a bruise. Tears burned her eyes but didn’t fall. She wanted to sleep, to curl deep into the covers and not see the light of day for hours, days even.
“Ivy?” Joel pressed.
She turned her head on the soft pillow but kept her eyes closed. “He spoke, but I didn’t recognize his voice.”
“What did he say?”
“Stop, Joel.” Ivy lifted her eyelids. “Please.”
His blue stare drilled into her. In another time and place, she might have been able to interpret the look in his eye. Now he was a stranger. A stranger who still stirred something deep inside of her. She resisted that. “Please, stop fact-gathering.”
“I need to know, Ivy. This man—he could have hurt you worse. We need to find him to determine why he’s targeting beautiful women.”
Beautiful. Ivy picked at a loose thread on the blanket that covered her. She’d never known he considered her beautiful. She stole a glance at Joel. In all her resentment toward him, she’d neglected to notice his demeanor had shifted over the years. Gone was the boy who smiled, who laughed, and who put her in her place as he toyed with the ends of her braid. The pragmatic and calculating personality hints she’d witnessed in the orphan boy had swallowed the mischievous boy whole.
Andrew’s death had darkened them both.
Yet, in spite of what happened, in spite of what Joel had done, she sti
ll missed him.
“Why did you come home?”
Joel blinked, his expression remaining impassive. “I was hired by Sheriff Dunst.”
It was a bland answer. Unsatisfactory, and the vagueness of it hurtful.
“Because of all the crime in Oakwood?” Ivy regretted speaking, the irony in her tone not only sounded wicked, but the quick flash of hurt in Joel’s eyes made guilt clutch her heart. But she shouldn’t feel guilty. He owed her an explanation she could accept.
“Because I inquired, and because it was offered.”
Fine then.
“Ivy, not now.” Joel’s eyes connected with hers, searching, pleading.
He was right. Now wasn’t the time. Not when her brain was fuzzy, muddled from her fall, when Gabriella’s baby was unaccounted for, and when a potential killer was still haunting Foster Hill.
Joel’s hand rested on the edge of her bed, its weight tugging the blanket tight at her side. The scent of his spicy cologne tempted her with its warmth, as if he himself were a safe refuge. So contradictory to her memories. It was an invisible pull, and one Ivy didn’t have the strength to resist. She moved her hand down her side until her smallest finger touched his skin. His hand didn’t stir, didn’t even twitch. She considered pulling away—she should pull away—but just as Ivy determined to, Joel’s finger curled around hers. There was no forgiveness in their connection, only longing for what should have been, instead of what was.
Chapter 8
The third bedroom was far less daunting in daylight. Even the bed, with its scarlet blanket askew and the mattress covered in debris and mice droppings, was sad. It was Joel who was intimidating. He glowered at Ivy from the doorway, his arms crossed, the scowl on his face harsh. Their carriage ride to the house on Foster Hill had been one of silence. He preferred she stay in bed, but Ivy had had enough. Twenty-four hours in bed had only sealed fate if Gabriella’s baby had been left behind in the cold. The very idea ate at her insides and made Ivy’s own pain unimportant.
“Stop looking at me as if I’m a pariah.” She twisted one of her dark strands of hair around her finger. It was hanging loose. It hurt too badly to put it up proper.
“I’ve not disowned you, but I’m coming awful close.”
She gave Joel a sharp glance. He hadn’t disowned her? Then what did the last twelve years without even a letter mean?
“I need to tell you what happened to me here, before I forget the details.” Ivy chose to ignore the more personal train of thought and focus on Gabriella and her baby instead. “The baby—”
“Ivy.” Joel’s hand on her arm caused her to pull back. He hesitated before he returned it to his side. “You need to trust that Sheriff Dunst and I are putting forth every effort to find out who Gabriella was and where her baby is.”
“I do.” She didn’t, but for now she preferred to lie.
The look he gave her was dubious at best. He ignored exploring further the truth behind her assertion. “What do you remember?”
Yes. Anything. She would do anything to help find Gabriella’s killer and now her own attacker. Ivy pushed a curl behind her ear and the movement made her grimace. Her shoulder was sore and bruised from hitting the stairs when she’d been pushed. It even hurt to talk.
“I was standing here. No. No, I was kneeling. By the bed.” Ivy remembered now. A beam of light through the lone window had illuminated the floor at the end of the bed. “I noticed the blanket. It was very red in the moonlight. I thought maybe Gabriella had slept on the bed before.”
“That’s conjecture, Ivy.”
“I am fully aware of that.” She shot a stern look at Joel. “But it may have happened.”
“True, but it changes nothing.”
“You said you needed all the details. That’s what I was thinking at the time.” Ivy pursed her lips. Dust particles danced between them in the sun’s ray.
Joel cleared his throat. “I would prefer the details of what you saw.”
“Of course.” She knew what he wanted. Straightforward facts. But one must theorize to shape the facts into any kind of potential. She mustered a small smile, a truce of sorts.
Joel blinked and his features relaxed. “All right then. Continue. What did your assailant look like?”
Ivy cleared her throat. It hurt to swallow. The sensation of her attacker’s arm around her throat returned, along with the memory of the scratchy wool of his sleeve chafing her skin. Her breaths shallowed. She needed to breathe, yet a suffocating fear gripped her as the memories overwhelmed her.
“I-I don’t know. He came up behind me.” The memory assailed her. Fear crawled into her stomach and up to her throat, squeezing at Ivy’s breath like it was happening again. “I never saw his face. His voice—I didn’t recognize it. It was—” She needed to breathe.
Ivy grabbed the bed frame. Joel was beside her in a moment, his hands on her shoulders. He lowered his face to match hers, eye to eye.
“Take a deep breath, Ivy.”
She was. Or she was trying to. Fear was a vicious enemy. She couldn’t let it best her. Ivy closed her eyes, wishing she had reconciled enough with God to pray, to feel the old assurance of His presence beside her. But her mind was empty of prayer. Instead she heard Joel’s quiet breathing, and she matched hers to his.
When her panic lessened, Ivy shrank from Joel’s touch. She didn’t want to be mollycoddled. She didn’t want to be ministered to or treated like a swooning female.
“There was a book.” Ivy reinserted herself into her memories and avoided Joel’s searching eyes.
“Where?”
“It was . . .” Ivy tried to remember. It had been dark. So dark and then— “There.” Ivy remembered. She turned to Joel as she pointed at the floor next to the bed. “It was a copy of Dickens’s Great Expectations. Someone had written in it. Scrawled with a pencil, ‘This house holds secrets. I am one of them.’”
Joel did not seem triumphant at their first real, tangible clue.
“Well?” Ivy rested her hand on the dusty footboard of the bed. She was still dizzy, but loath to admit it to Joel.
“Anyone could have written it.”
“What if Gabriella wrote it?”
“Was her name in it?”
Ivy leveled a look of derision on him. “We don’t know her name.”
“Exactly.” Joel nodded. “There’s nothing to indicate that it was Gabriella’s, or whoever she is. The book isn’t even here anymore.”
“I realize that.” Heaven help her, she might align herself with her attacker and strangle Joel. She frowned and tightened her grasp on the bed. “But, if it was Gabriella, then she’s trying to tell us something. Something about Foster Hill House. Something about how she died.”
Joel drew in a deep breath and looked beyond Ivy to the floor where the book had been the night of her attack. He braced himself with his hand on the mattress and gave a cursory glance beneath the bed. It was apparent the book hadn’t been kicked beneath it during the struggle when Joel stood up empty-handed. “While I see the importance of theorizing, we must be careful it lines up with evidence. Otherwise we’re chasing ideas.”
“Desperate situations sometimes call for it. I think the existence of a baby warrants even extreme speculation, don’t you? I don’t believe it’s farfetched to consider the fact that Gabriella was here in this house and did write that note. She was, after all, found just down the hill from here.”
Doubt flickered in his eyes. “And now the book has disappeared.”
Ivy tapped her toe on the wood floor, impatient and disconcerted all at the same time. It didn’t seem that Joel was implying someone had swiped the book after attacking her, so much as suggesting she might have never seen the book to begin with.
“The book was here.” Ivy stopped her toe from its agitated dance.
Joel nodded. His silence was a stronger answer. He turned his attention from her and began to poke about the room. He opened the closet door and peeked in. Empty. He moved to look
behind a dusty bureau and the miniscule gap between it and the wall.
So be it. Ivy let the conversation rest alongside its bedmates of doubt and mistrust. Her breath caught, partly because of her bruised ribs and partly due to the ache in her spirit. She wanted to contemplate the what-ifs, but Joel was only focused on the what-is.
Joel pulled out a drawer from the bureau and a poof of musty, dank smell invaded the room. Ivy wrinkled her nose as she came up behind him. There was nothing inside. Nothing to indicate anyone had lived here since the Fosters abandoned the house forty years ago.
“The mice are loving this place.” Joel pointed to a pile of droppings.
Ivy backed away. She reached the window and pressed her hand against the glass as she stared out over the hillside, its grasses heavy with spring’s thaw. She knew, deep inside, that Gabriella had been here, had been in this room, and had looked out this very window. But Joel was right. There had been no name in the book along with the cryptic message. Even if there were a name, they couldn’t attach it to the nameless woman found dead in the hollow tree. And now the book had disappeared. Had her attacker swiped it? That was the most logical conclusion, but again, it was speculation.
Ivy slid her hand down the window and rested her fingertips on the wooden strip that crisscrossed it. She needed to show Joel the piano downstairs, its clean keys and the sheet music. Maybe that would be the evidence to convince him someone had been in Foster Hill House recently.
“Joel, I—”
He interrupted. “I’m sorry, Ivy, but there’s nothing here. If I’m going to pursue the possibility that the book you saw was truly scribbled in by Gabriella, I need proof she was here. I can’t go back to Sheriff Dunst with pure assumption.”
“I realize that.” Ivy turned. It was a mistake. Her eyes dropped to his mouth, then rose to meet his narrowed gaze. There was savvy there, but a touch of tenderness at the edges. She tried to soften her voice, but wasn’t sure she was successful. “There’s more you need to consider.”
“I am already considering some leads.”
She didn’t miss the inflection in Joel’s words, an inflection that excluded her. Ivy turned back to the window and rested her hands on the sill. She made pretense of watching a robin flutter by to its perch on the hollow oak tree that had been Gabriella’s initial grave.
The House on Foster Hill Page 6