The House on Foster Hill

by Jaime Jo Wright

  Chapter 41

  Jvy

  A second gunshot’s reverberations sent a flurry of wings into the air as more birds fluttered from the treetops.

  Joel.

  Ivy broke into a run, only this time she ran back toward Foster Hill House. Her foot slipped on a patch of ice, but she quickly regained her balance before careening forward into the mud. She grabbed at her ribs, sore from her collision down the stairs and now exacerbated by her struggle with Myrtle Foster’s son.

  The sound of crashing in the woods to her right caused her to whirl around. A man leaped over a log and sprinted through the trees, slapping at branches that attempted to break his attempt to flee. Foster.

  The compulsion to get away from the threat only a few hundred yards from her collided with her instinct to protect those she loved. Regardless of everything, regardless of the unresolved, there had been a time she and Joel stood beside each other. Tragedy ripped them apart, but now Ivy recognized the truth. The one who had allowed their loyalty to be severed wasn’t Joel at all, it had been her.

  Ivy veered into the woods toward the sound of snapping twigs and the shouts of the men. She scurried over a fallen tree, wincing as her body argued against the movement, and swiped away a cobweb that stretched between branches. Raindrops that dripped from the foliage soaked her dress. Ivy recognized the path Foster had taken. He was headed toward the pond. The same pond where they had swum, fished, and where Andrew died.

  Several yards ahead, Joel’s form cut her off as he dodged a tree. He was all right. Relief only urged Ivy forward. Where was the sheriff? Had he fired the initial shot that had sent Joel on a mission to back him up, and was he the one who’d fired the second shot as well? Ivy hesitated, not wanting to get caught in any cross fire. She grabbed a small sapling to stabilize herself when she saw Joel and Foster, facing off at the bottom of the hill.

  “Foster!” Joel shouted.

  The older man tossed him a glance. The intensity of Foster’s look was so different from the Foster she had seen at the house. Even from a distance, Ivy could see he was panicked.

  Foster turned and ran toward the pond, mud spraying his pants as his feet slipped on the soft ground. Joel dashed after him as Ivy watched, frozen. She could do nothing. There was no way she could catch up, no way she could intercede. It was the same helpless feeling she experienced when she’d watched Andrew plunge beneath the ice. Only this time it was Joel whose life hung precariously in the balance. Prayer could give Joel the strength he needed, but she had prayed once before, so many years ago and almost in this very spot. That prayer had ended in the event that forever steered their lives onto different paths.

  Joel’s steps were sure, cutting a straight line through the muck toward Foster. Ivy squelched a cry as he jumped and Foster crumpled beneath him. Together they crashed to the earth. Foster grunted and wrestled beneath Joel. He got his arm out from beneath Joel’s clutch and pushed Joel to the side.

  Ivy released the tree and scrambled down the hillside, stopping only when she heard Joel grunt after Foster’s fist drove into his gut.

  “Get away from me!” Foster yelled, drawing his arm back to aim his fist at Joel’s face. Joel twisted to the side, and Foster’s hand pummeled the ground. Joel shoved his arm under Foster’s armpit and wrapped his forearm around the man’s neck, pushing backward. Foster yelled and punched at Joel’s stomach again. Joel absorbed the blow as he pushed Foster off him.

  Ivy winced, her breaths coming in gasps, watching as the men wrestled each other. Foster came back at Joel, his hands reaching for Joel’s neck. A third gunshot echoed through the woods, and Ivy ducked as if she could avoid the bullet.

  Sheriff Dunst burst from the woods into the clearing by the pond and behind Foster. His rifle was jammed against his shoulder and poised to take another shot, this time at Foster instead of the sky. Foster froze in place. Joel panted, trying to catch his breath.

  “On your knees, Foster!” Sheriff Dunst commanded. His eyes showed recognition when he looked beyond Joel and saw Ivy. She stayed low to the ground.

  Foster dropped to his knees. Joel sprang forward and drew the man’s arms behind his back. He gave a sharp yank, and Foster hollered out in pain.

  “That’s for Ivy,” she heard Joel say between gritted teeth. It almost hurt to hear him defend her. This was the Joel she had always wanted and was so certain no longer existed. She could tell he had no qualms about the way he locked the handcuffs Sheriff Dunst tossed him painfully tight around Foster’s wrists.

  “Who?” Foster snarled.

  “Don’t play ignorant with me.” Joel jerked Foster to his feet.

  “I had plans for her,” Foster argued, struggling against Joel’s hold.

  “Try it and I’ll shoot. I mean it.” Sheriff Dunst leveled the gun on Foster.

  “It’s my house. I have a right to be there,” Foster went on. “You all chased my mother away, but I came back.”

  “How long have you been funneling women through that house?” Sheriff Dunst demanded. He glanced to where Ivy had sunk to the ground, the wet earth soaking through her dress.

  “Longer than you’ve been alive.” Foster spat at the ground in a defiant move against the lawman.

  “That’s impossible,” Sheriff Dunst said.

  “There’s big business in it,” Foster laughed, and the sound resonated inside Ivy’s head. “The people of Oakwood have been too stupid to see it since my father before me. I don’t owe you anything.”

  Joel shoved Foster, and the man tripped and stumbled to the ground. He stared up at Joel, mud spattered on his face. “Hey!”

  “What have you done with the women?” Joel said. His back was still to Ivy, but the expression on Sheriff Dunst’s face told her he was none too pleased that she’d followed them into the woods.

  Foster snarled, “We sold them. Just like my father used to do.”

  “To who?” Sheriff Dunst demanded.

  Foster glanced at him. “Whoever wanted them. I don’t know. We’re just a midway point. I’m a runner is all.”

  Sheriff Dunst shook his head in disgust. “And your father was a part of this?”

  “Right under my mother’s nose.” Foster laughed again. “My father made her believe she was crazy. She would catch a glimpse of one of them girls sometimes when he snuck them from the secret room and down the hall to hand off to the next carrier. He told her she was insane and that she was lucky he didn’t put her in an institution. Crazies run in my mother’s family, you know.”

  “Not just your mother’s.” Joel yanked him to his feet and slammed him against the trunk of a pine tree. “Why did you kill Gabriella?”

  Foster frowned. “Who?”

  Ivy stiffened, leaning forward to catch every word.

  “The girl you stuffed in the hollow oak tree.” Joel gave Foster a shake.

  “Her?” Foster sniffed. “She deserved it.”

  “Why’d you put her body in the tree when you knew someone would find her?” Sheriff Dunst interjected.

  “I didn’t think anyone would find her until later. I didn’t have much of a choice. The ground was still half frozen.”

  Ivy clapped her hand over her mouth as Joel slammed his fist into Foster’s stomach. The man doubled over.

  Joel stood over him. “Where’s her baby?”

  Foster coughed, trying to catch his breath. He didn’t answer. Joel reached down and clutched the man’s neck, his face inches from Foster’s. “Where is the baby?”

  Foster glared at Joel, then his eyes lifted and he caught sight of Ivy. Her body went cold at the fury that emanated from the man fighting against Joel’s hold.

  “Where!” Joel’s hand tightened around Foster’s throat. Foster kept staring at Ivy. She couldn’t blink. She couldn’t breathe. She had to know.

  “Find it yourself,” Foster finally said.

  Sheriff Dunst’s stern shout didn’t stop Joel from plowing his fist into Foster’s gut one more time.

  Sile
nce emphasized every tiny sound as Ivy’s father stitched a cut above her eyebrow from where Foster had backhanded her. She avoided his eyes, but the ministrations of his hands were soothing to both her body and spirit. There had been moments when she wondered if she would ever see him again. The memory of the hidden space in Foster Hill House and the hints of the evil that happened there humbled Ivy. She could have been killed. She had always promised herself she’d be prepared for death, but now that she had faced its sincere possibility, she realized how much her life meant to her, even with its dark edges and painful moments.

  The examination room door burst open.

  “Joel!” Her father’s face brightened at the sight of him, as if Ivy telling him that Joel was all right had not been enough to appease his worry.

  Ivy twisted on the table to see him. He was still covered in mud, his hair matted, his shirt torn and his trouser pocket ripped. Disbelief shone in his eyes as he locked gazes with her.

  “Why did you follow us? You weren’t thinking at all! You could’ve been killed!” The accusation in his voice did not match the worried expression in his eyes.

  “Because she has always done what she wants.” Dr. Thorpe muttered under his breath as he pulled the thread through her skin.

  Ivy winced. Both at the truth in her father’s words and the sting of the stitching.

  Joel dropped onto a chair, his elbows on his knees, and rested his forehead on his palms. “If something had happened to you . . .”

  “It didn’t.” Ivy bit her lip as her father tied off the stitch. How did she tell him she had followed because she thought something terrible might have happened to Joel? The kiss they had shared in the woods only hours before seemed a distant memory now.

  “Ivy, you should’ve let Joel do his job.”

  Ivy met her father’s reprimand with shock. Her father snipped the last stitch and stepped back.

  “Dr. Thorpe.” Joel lifted his head from his hands. A muscle twitched in his jaw. “May I speak with Ivy?”

  Ivy’s father glanced between them.

  “Alone,” Joel added.

  Dr. Thorpe walked to a basin of water to wash his hands. “All right then.” He sloshed water on his forearms, shook his hands, and reached for a towel. When he turned, he leveled a fatherly gaze on Ivy. She squirmed. She always hated it when he looked at her that way. She didn’t know if she should feel criticized or loved.

  “Ivy, you took years off my life when you disappeared.” He rolled down his sleeves. “I lost Andrew—” the doctor’s voice cracked—“and most of you with him. I don’t know what I would’ve done had I lost what little of you I have left.”

  Her father brushed a kiss on Ivy’s cheek. His mustache tickled her skin, and Ivy remembered his kissing her as a child. There was nostalgia behind her father’s peck, an unspoken plea. Like her, he needed resolution too. Andrew was buried. Gabriella was buried. Many more would be buried. She could not continue to hold on to the grave.

  The door closed behind him, leaving her alone with Joel.

  “You’re absolutely filthy.” She slid off the examination table. A glimpse of her reflection in a mirror on the wall showed Ivy how bruised her face really was. As for cleanliness, she wasn’t in much better condition and still in her soiled nightgown, covered only by the blanket she pulled tighter around her.

  Joel brushed at the dried mud on his sleeve, oblivious to the dirt that crumbled to the wood floor.

  “Did Foster give up where Gabriella’s baby is?” She hugged herself as Joel’s gaze skimmed her neck where her gown was torn. She squirmed beneath his observation.

  Joel cleared his throat. “He won’t talk. I think he’s miffed he gave up as much as he did.”

  “We can’t quit. We need to find—”

  “I have no intention of quitting. Now that you’re back and safe, we’ll be interviewing Maggie to see what she knows. Maybe she’ll talk now that Foster has been detained.” The inflection in Joel’s voice was clear. She was to leave it to him.

  “At least there’s no more danger.” Ivy’s observation was met with a dark glower.

  “You heard what Foster said. Foster Hill House has been siphoning women to Chicago for decades. God only knows who else is out there. Foster is only a small part of a much bigger circle.”

  Ivy crossed the room to the window, next to the chair where Joel sat. She rubbed her arms as she stared through the glass at the front walk. Her breath was shaky and she let it out, the trauma from the last twenty-four hours settling in her muscles. She startled when Joel’s hands rested on her shoulders. His body was behind her, his grip firm but making her skin tingle beneath its warmth.

  “You knew I’d come for you, didn’t you?” he said.

  Ivy turned, and Joel dropped his hands. “With God’s providence, I saved myself.”

  She didn’t mean for it to hurt him, but hurt flashed across Joel’s face anyway. “I wish,” she started, “I wish things had been different. I wish your letter hadn’t been lost in the mail. I wish I hadn’t created inaccurate conclusions about why you left.” Ivy toyed with her sleeve. “I wish . . .” She paused, then met Joel’s eyes. “I wish you had saved Andrew.”

  “I wish I’d saved him too,” Joel whispered. “I tried, Ivy.”

  “I know you did.”

  “It killed me not to be there with you, that night at Andrew’s grave.” Joel rested his palm gently over her bruised cheek. “I knew you were there, alone, waiting for me, and I didn’t come. I failed you. I failed Andrew.”

  She couldn’t speak. The emotion lodged in Ivy’s throat defied her desire to say something, anything, to relieve Joel of the pain of responsibility for the events of that day and the night of Andrew’s funeral.

  Joel dropped his hand, and the absence of warmth from his fingers on her face was stark. “I miss Andrew as much as you do. I have had to think about that day over and over and ask the Lord to still the questions of what I could have done differently to save Andrew and to be there for you. And now, I’m home and I watched you bury yourself alongside a dead woman you don’t even know. You live in her death. You have risked your life for a woman’s child, and that woman never earned your allegiance, nor has she betrayed it. Didn’t you hear your father? When will you learn to live again, Ivy? To see the people around you who love you instead of dwelling in grief and death?”

  His question hung between them, unanswered but poignant. It begged her to forgive, to trust. It pleaded with her to release him from the guilt of that day and from the loss of that night. Joel’s hand lifted again, hesitated, then reached out to swipe at her cheek. He pulled it away and on his fingertip glistened her tear.

  For the first time since Andrew’s death, Ivy allowed herself to feel something other than betrayal and determination. For the first time, Ivy wept.

  Chapter 42

  Kaine

  Kaine fell to the floor, as if dropping would provide her cover from a flying bullet. The sound of the gunshot ricocheted in the room. Mr. Mason aimed the pistol at her.

  “What do you want from me?” she gasped as she rolled onto her back, unwilling to stand for fear any significant movement would cause him to fire again, this time directly at her.

  The vast foyer seemed cavernous as Mr. Mason took a few steps toward her.

  “I wanted you to go away.” His hands were shaking, and the gun wobbled. Kaine bent her knee and planted her foot on the wood floor. He lowered the gun toward her leg, and Kaine stopped. “I knew I needed to come here today. You’ve involved Grant, and Joy now . . . it’s Pandora’s box. You should have gone away.”

  “You’re crazy,” she whispered.

  “I tried to steer you away. I’ve tried to steer people away from the history of this place for decades.” Mr. Mason raised his eyes and gave the vaulted ceiling a cursory once-over. He dropped his gaze back to Kaine. “When Maggie robbed the museum in ’63, I knew then—one day a Prescott would show up at Foster Hill House. It’s karma. But I wanted to st
op it.”

  “What are you talking about? Maggie, Joy’s grandmother?” Kaine raised her other knee. Slowly. So he wouldn’t notice.

  Mr. Mason removed one hand from the gun to scratch his nose. “Funny old lady, she was. Eighty-three years old and robbing the museum. She took Ivy Thorpe’s quilt, a few pictures, but she didn’t find Ivy’s death journal. No, she didn’t. And I knew all along it was her, though no one else figured it out. Who would suspect a doddering old woman of trying to keep mementos for herself?”

  Kaine had to agree, but then she hadn’t expected this of Mr. Mason either. And, if Maggie was anything like her granddaughter Joy, she could totally picture it.

  Mr. Mason stared beyond Kaine toward the window where dust particles danced in the light. It was as if his mind had taken him elsewhere, distracting him. Kaine braced her palm against the floor. The only thing left to do now was shove upward and jump to her feet. But how could she keep the fidgety old man from popping off a random shot? In the distance, Kaine heard the police siren. Grant had succeeded in his 911 call. But where was he now? She had to keep Mr. Mason chatting and pray Grant didn’t get shot barreling through the door.

  “Why would Maggie steal my great-great-grandmother’s quilt?”

  Mr. Mason turned in surprise. “Because she was a sentimental old fool who thought it should stay in the family. She wanted to spite the Fosters, to spite me. And what do you mean your ‘great-great-grandmother’? It was Ivy Thorpe’s quilt.”

  “She is my great-great-grandmother,” Kaine insisted. The man was crazy.

  “No, no.” Mr. Mason’s smile was almost sad, as if he pitied Kaine. “Your great-great-grandmother was not Ivy Thorpe.”

  Kaine pictured the family tree. How Ivy had a child listed before her marriage. If what Mr. Mason said was true, then Ivy hadn’t been assaulted and borne a child? But whose child was it, and how had it become a part of the census under Joe Coldham and Ivy’s home?

  “Then who was my great-great-grandmother?”