The House on Foster Hill

by Jaime Jo Wright

  “Nine years after the dead girl was found,” Kaine mused. She ran her index finger down the paper. She could barely read the handwriting.

  Grant peered over her shoulder. “Obviously Ivy married, so what was her married name?”

  Kaine looked closer at the census. “I don’t know for sure. My grandfather’s name was Prescott, and my mom had us take that name instead of my father’s. But my grandfather’s mom was from Ivy’s line. I don’t even know what her maiden name was.”

  Grant shifted back to the genealogy Mr. Mason handed him. He scanned it until he came to Joy’s name.

  “And the Foster family?” Kaine set aside the census records. She didn’t even know what she was looking for. The census was line after line of names, households, occupations, and so forth. She’d have to call Leah later to see if she recalled Grandpa Prescott’s mother’s maiden name.

  Mr. Mason heaved a sigh. Apology filtered through his eyes as he met hers. “I have some of the Fosters’ family tree here.” He handed her two sheets of paper, again copies. “But it only goes up to 1909.”

  “Why did it stop? I mean, why didn’t anyone continue writing it down?” Kaine noted Myrtle Foster’s name in the genealogy.

  Grant took a break from surveying Joy’s genealogy to look over Kaine’s shoulder again. “Well, they did move out of Oakwood in the late 1840s. I’m surprised anyone kept track of them at all after that.”

  “Myrtle Foster was married to Billy. He was born in Alabama and transplanted to Wisconsin. They had a son and daughter born in the early 1850s. So they would’ve not been quite teenagers when the Civil War started.”

  “What happened to her husband?” Grant frowned, leaning closer to read the copy. “I always heard Myrtle was run out of town, but not much about him.”

  “He left Oakwood to join a vigilante group for the South.” Mr. Mason pointed to a line of text. “Left his family behind and was killed by Union soldiers.”

  “So Oakwood ostracized his family too.” Grant nodded, his lips puckered in concentration.

  Kaine’s eyes rested on his lips. She quickly looked away as Grant spoke again, his sideways glance making her blush. “I bet they didn’t send vigilantes home for special honors and burial.”

  “’Course not.” Mr. Mason took the genealogy sheet from them and surveyed it with a squint of his faded blue eyes. “Looks like the records stopped with the death of the Fosters’ son, Arnold.”

  “Who recorded this family tree?” Kaine asked.

  He shrugged. “Don’t know.”

  “Whoa.” Grant’s exclamation drew their attention to Joy’s family tree. “Check this out.” He pointed to a branch, and Kaine leaned into him.

  “What is it?” she said.

  “Joy’s grandmother. She didn’t die until the late 1960s.”

  “So?”

  “So she was only sixteen when all this went down with Gabriella and Ivy.”

  “How old was Ivy when it happened?” Kaine lifted her eyes to the museum curator.

  “Her mid-twenties,” Mr. Mason answered.

  Grant winked at Kaine. “Like you.”

  “I’m thirty.” She ducked her head and stared at the paper. “What if Joy’s grandmother and Gabriella were held captive together in Foster Hill House?”

  Mr. Mason shook his head. “I never heard of women being held at the house. Just the story of the murdered girl.”

  “Well,” Kaine went on, “we know Gabriella was kept there—for some reason, somehow. If Joy’s grandmother knew her, that’s the only feasible way they could have been connected.”

  “What makes you think they knew each other?” Mr. Mason set the Fosters’ genealogy back in the manila folder.

  “Joy. Some stories she remembers her grandmother telling her,” Grant said with a quick look at Kaine. She bit her tongue. He was right. They needed to sort out all the clues before they broadcast Gabriella’s letters and Maggie’s diary to Oakwood.

  Mr. Mason cleared his throat. “Sounds like you’re leveling some pretty hefty accusations on Foster Hill House.” He chuckled. “Patti won’t like it.”

  Patti. Always Patti. Kaine raised an eyebrow at Grant, but he didn’t seem to follow her suspicion. Of course not. Her mysterious caller and the handprints on the window of her car had all been from a man. Patti couldn’t be behind any of it.

  Kaine’s pulse was racing. “It’s not an accusation, Mr. Mason. We’re just trying to find out what happened there so many years ago. My great-great-grandmother almost gave her life to uncover what happened to these women. To Gabriella, to Joy’s grandmother . . .” Kaine looked down at Joy’s family tree. “Maggie.” She put her finger under the name. “This woman probably knew everything.” Kaine turned to Grant. “Why would she know what happened and take her story to the grave? She never let on that she alone could solve the entire mystery surrounding Foster Hill House. Why?”

  Mr. Mason broke into Kaine’s string of questions. “Maybe she didn’t want to upset her future.”

  “Huh?” Kaine couldn’t help the perplexed curl of her upper lip.

  Mr. Mason shrugged. “Sometimes the only way you can silence the bad being done and protect the ones you love is to hold it all inside and never breathe a word.”

  The plush carpet was soft beneath Kaine’s bare feet. She sat cross-legged in the middle of Joy’s living room floor, Grant beside her. Midnight’s arrival had sent Joy and Megan to bed. Kaine picked a piece of fuzz off the leg of her bright pink lounge pants as Grant pushed a copy of a newspaper clipping toward her. She took it from him and their fingertips grazed. Kaine froze and looked at the man across from her, but he was engrossed in a library book on the history of Oakwood, comparing it with another page in his hand. She studied his hair that stuck up in ruffled places, the straight line of his nose, his carved lips, and his jaw. His arms were strong beneath a long-sleeved blue United States Navy T-shirt, and he wore his own pair of sweats that made Kaine wonder what it would be like to snuggle up with him. Instead, here they were dissecting incomplete town documents with copies afforded them by Mr. Mason and library resources.

  Grant leaned forward and picked up his iPad. “I’m going to see if I can pull up that census that Mr. Mason had. I bet we can find Ivy Thorpe if we look hard enough.”

  Kaine had called her sister, but Leah hadn’t come through with Ivy’s married name. She didn’t ever remember hearing it, and outside of Prescott, all they recognized was Thorpe, the name Ivy had seemed to hand down. As if she had never married yet mothered the future genealogy.

  Kaine didn’t respond but instead reached for a book. Somewhere in all these documents and books, the puzzle pieces had to fit together. Tomorrow, she was going to read every single diary entry Gabriella had penned on the pages Kaine had carefully placed in a shoe box and slid under the bed in Megan’s room. Joy had finally acquiesced to reading her grandmother Maggie’s diary. Kaine longed to read it herself, but what for her was a puzzle piece to her situation, to Joy was an emotional journey into her grandmother’s tumultuous past. Perhaps, with those previously unknown pieces, the links would connect.

  “Hey.”

  Kaine looked up.

  Grant was studying her, the tablet propped in his lap. “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” Kaine breathed. “Yeah, I’m fine.” And she was. For the moment.

  Grant shoved the tablet from his lap and reached for her. Without considering any consequences, Kaine followed his lead and nestled into his side as he tucked her there. She was right. He was nice to snuggle into.

  He bent his neck to look into her face, and Kaine tipped her head back.

  “I’m not going anywhere.” Grant traced his finger down her cheek.

  Kaine’s skin tingled along the trail his finger made. “I know.”

  Grant’s eyes smiled back at her. Kaine might consider drowning in them someday, if she could only get past her fear.

  “We’ll get through this,” he reassured her.

 
“We?” Kaine baited him. Maybe it was wrong to, but she couldn’t help herself.

  “We sounds good to me.”

  Kaine couldn’t argue. But it had only been a month since she’d come to Oakwood. It was so soon, so early in knowing him, so—

  His lips were soft. Gentle. Confident. Kaine closed her eyes. Maybe God did speak, but through circumstances and not words. Maybe He had led her here not to uncover something tragic but to answer her prayer for hope. Kaine leaned into Grant’s caress. Maybe Grant was part of that hopeful equation.

  He kissed her again, never increasing in passion, his kiss merely expressing the beginning of their tenuous relationship. Grant pulled back and leaned his forehead against hers.

  Kaine was thankful he’d kept the kiss light. Her insides were dancing with the thrill of the moment and also the fear of what was to come.

  Grant twisted and reached for one of the library books. His movement, casual and sure, assuaged her trepidation. He was a genius when it came to squelching her anxiety. He was taking things slowly, and Kaine might be beginning to love him just a little for that.

  “Can I show you something?” he asked.

  Grant held out a book opened to a page with a glossy black-and-white photo of Ivy. Kaine met Ivy’s eyes. They were alive in the photograph, filled with spirit, and there was a small quirk to her upper lip as if she was smiling. Not in humor, but as if she knew something the photographer didn’t and was satisfied to take her secrets to the grave.

  “Why does she look like she’s hiding something?” Kaine said.

  Grant bent over the book. “She does, doesn’t she?”

  “I wonder if . . .”

  “If what?” Grant’s voice lowered.

  “If she knew the truth after all. Like Maggie.”

  “You mean, what if Ivy did solve the mystery of Foster Hill House?” Grant’s eyebrows flexed upward.

  “Yes. But, she never told anyone.”

  Grant’s eyes dropped to her lips, then raised back to her eyes. He offered a lazy smile, and Kaine tried to make sense of her frazzled and fragmented thoughts. “I suppose that’s a possibility.”

  Kaine avoided Grant’s smoldering gaze and instead studied Ivy’s face. Her mouth, her cheekbones, her hair swooped into a haphazard pile on the top of her head, dress with puffed sleeves, and a locket.

  “Grant!” Kaine’s finger landed on the locket with a flash of her red chipped fingernail polish.

  Grant slid Kaine’s finger aside. “So it is Ivy’s locket.”

  “That’s the one we found in the attic!” Kaine straightened on the floor to face Grant, but her finger pounded Ivy’s face.

  Grant scooped up his iPad. He flicked his fingers in opposite directions on the screen, enlarging the scrolling handwriting. “I have the census here. Okay. We need to find out about what happened to Ivy after all this.”

  Kaine peered over his shoulder. “I don’t know her by anything other than Ivy Thorpe.”

  Grant nodded. “I know. But what about her father? Let’s look for the name Thorpe and just see what we find.”

  Was it wrong that she rested her chin against his shoulder just so she could smell his spicy scent? He didn’t seem to mind as he worked the tablet.

  “Wait.” Kaine lifted her head. She pointed. “There. Matthew Thorpe. I remember that name now—from the family Bible my grandpa had. It was Ivy’s father.”

  “Ah ha!” Grant grinned. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

  “Matthew Thorpe resides with Joe Coldham and wife, Ivy, ages thirty-five and thirty-one. Daughters, ages ten, five, and two.” Kaine finished deciphering the script.

  “The census was taken nine years after the dead girl was found at Foster Hill House,” Grant added.

  “I know my great-great-grandmother was married in—” Kaine pulled the library book back onto her lap and skimmed over Ivy’s picture to a brief description of her—“1906.”

  Grant didn’t answer, and Kaine lifted her head to study him. His brows were furrowed as he stared at the tablet.

  “What is it?” Kaine couldn’t help the feeling of familiar unease that resurfaced inside her.

  Grant’s mouth contorted in contemplation. “The census was taken in 1915. Ivy married Joe Coldham in 1906. That’s nine years later.”

  “So?”

  “So their eldest daughter? She’s ten years old, not nine, or even younger. Which means Ivy’s daughter was born before Ivy married.”

  “But . . .” Kaine leaned back with her shoulders slouched. Kaine snatched the tablet from Grant’s hand. “She can’t . . . she can’t have . . .” The pit in her stomach grew and erased the warm peace of just moments before.

  “If Gabriella and Maggie were both held in Foster Hill House, and Ivy was attacked and almost killed there, what if the killer did to Ivy whatever it was he did to Gabriella and Maggie?”

  Kaine removed Ivy’s locket from where it hung around her neck beneath her T-shirt. She unlatched it to reveal the lock of hair. “This. It’s like baby hair. What if . . . ?” She let her sentence hang. She couldn’t speak it, couldn’t voice the horrible abuse she was terrified had been visited on Ivy.

  “You’re thinking Ivy was raped?” When Grant said the words, it made Kaine snap the locket shut. She’d seen it so many times before. The abused, the victims of sexual violence, pregnant, the aftereffects of an abortion, or raising a child that resembled their abusers. It was horrific. It was worth never speaking of again. Of wiping from the pages of history. Kaine recalled the Bible whose family tree ended with Ivy’s name.

  She cleared her throat and fought back tears. “What if Ivy’s daughter was the result of whatever she endured at Foster Hill House? What if it was the same horror Maggie never wished to talk about and Ivy took to the grave?”

  Grant’s scowled. “Wait. Are you talking about sex trafficking?”

  Kaine laid her palm over the photograph of Ivy in the library book. “People think the concept of the sex trade is modern day.” She closed the book on Ivy’s face. “But it’s been around since man decided that the value of women was the same as their livestock.”

  “It would explain a lot about the comings and goings at Foster Hill House through the years.” Grant nodded. “Even the women Myrtle Foster claimed to have seen.”

  Kaine didn’t want to contemplate it further, but all the facts were pointing toward the horrors she’d worked with her entire career.

  “But why Foster Hill House? In small-town Oakwood? It’s not like this is Chicago where you’d find a hub or a network.”

  Grant’s question was valid, but to Kaine it made sense. “Canada.” She pointed to the iPad. “Pull up a map.”

  Grant took a few seconds, but soon the tablet had loaded a map of Wisconsin, Illinois, the Great Lakes to the east, and Lake Superior and Canada to the north. Kaine studied it for a long moment, then pointed.

  “See? Traffickers have routes, sort of like the Underground Railroad did. If women were abducted in Canada, they would need to bring them south, toward Chicago, or to logging and mining camps along the way. They were known to transport women from Canada and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in ships on the Great Lakes. More likely than not, Chicago was the hub where women could be transported via rail out west.”

  “How do you know all this?” Grant interrupted.

  Kaine grimaced. “You learn how this stuff works after you’re immersed in helping to save these women. It wasn’t much different in Victorian times or the early 1900s. Mail-order brides?”

  “Really?”

  Kaine nodded and continued. “Some mail-order bride advertisements weren’t really that. There was a sex-trafficking ring in Chicago way back when, and they’d advertise for brides to transport them out west. But instead of finding husbands, they were sold to brothels.”

  “Man, that’s sick.” Disgusted, Grant shook his head. “So you think Foster Hill House was a stop-off point between Canada and Chicago?”

  Kaine drew
in a deep breath as she reached up to unclasp Ivy’s locket from her neck. “I think Foster Hill House was the perfect hiding place. It was obscure, out of the way, off the map. An abandoned house no one cared about. A midway point.” She set the locket on the floor by the books. The very idea of it hanging around her neck made her skin burn with the memories it held.

  Silence enveloped them until Grant cleared his throat. “But Ivy wasn’t sold. She survived.”

  “So did Maggie,” Kaine nodded.

  “Then why did they stay in Oakwood? After all the horror, why not flee from the memories?”

  Kaine met Grant’s eyes. “I need to find out.”

  “We need to find out,” Grant stated.

  Kaine nodded her agreement. Abuse had followed her family for generations. Abuse had scarred her, affected her marriage, and the side effects of abuse had taken Danny’s life. Now it reared its ugly existence again, only from the pages of her own history. It had followed Kaine, since 1906.

  “It’s time we lay Gabriella to rest forever,” Kaine murmured. “It’s what Ivy tried to do before she fell victim too.”

  Grant reached for Kaine and tugged her once more into the comforting circle of his embrace. He rested his chin on the top of her head. “Crazy, but it seems that over a hundred years later, someone still doesn’t want us to exhume the truth.”

  “But we will,” Kaine whispered. “For Ivy, for Gabriella, for Maggie . . . For me.”

  Chapter 38

  Jvy

  Something crawled over her hand, and Ivy snatched it back. A spider probably, or a cockroach perhaps. God only knew what dwelt in this claustrophobic pocket behind the wall. Darkness enveloped her, and she had only enough room to sit with her knees curled to her chest. A tiny strip of light poked through the seam where the panel met the wall. Ivy had tried to move the panel, but it had to be latched on the outside somehow. She wasn’t the first to try. She could feel the indentations where other fingernails had scraped the wall.

  It was becoming horribly clear as time ticked by that this secret in the walls of Foster Hill House stretched beyond Gabriella. Maggie must know that secret. Ivy had seen the fear in the girl’s eyes when she’d visited Widow Bairns and she remembered that fear long after she had gone to Joel and Sheriff Dunst to communicate her suspicions.