by Wendy Webb
“It’s so lovely,” I murmured, staring at the bedroom set and wondering how many hundreds of years old it was.
“Guest bath is here,” he said, opening another door, where I saw a claw-foot tub, a glass shower, and light pinewood paneling on the walls.
“And the master suite,” he said, revealing a huge room with a king-sized bed, its headboard and footboard made out of logs, and a woolen blanket, striped with red, yellow, and green, draped over it. A fireplace, where coals still smoldered, was flanked by the now-ubiquitous leather armchairs and ottomans and another flat-screen television. Sunshine streamed through a wall of windows, where I saw the river burbling past, along with several horses in a distant field. Across the room there was another door, which was ajar. I presumed this was the master bath.
“Let’s take our tea and sit by the fire, shall we?” he said, leading me back down the hallway toward the living room, where I settled into one of the armchairs.
“You said you renovated these rooms recently?” I asked him, looking around at the fresh paint and gleaming tongue-in-groove wood paneling. “I ask because, well, the main house is so ancient and this all seems rather new.”
He nodded, sipping his tea. “I did indeed. Just this past year. It had always had rooms—the stable hands of the past lived in here—but they were very run-down.”
“I remember,” I said, the words escaping my lips before I even knew what I was saying.
Drew stared at me. “You remember?”
I shook my head. “I don’t have any idea why I said that,” I told him. “What I meant was I can imagine. This isn’t how a stable should look.”
The look on his face dropped, just a bit. And for a moment I got the distinct impression that whatever I had said had disappointed or confused him. He stood to pour himself another cup of tea, and when he turned back around toward me, the smile was back on his face.
“Now, I spend a lot of time out here,” he went on, as though I hadn’t said anything. “It’s the strangest thing, but I began to feel the presence of my ancestors very strongly in the main house.” He shuddered and turned his gaze to the fire. “It was as though the house itself… the portraits…” I could tell he was caught up in the memory of it. He shook his head and turned toward me.
“But that’s silly. You must think I’m completely daft.”
“Not a bit,” I said, thinking he, too, might have had a rather otherworldly experience in the house. I wondered whether to bring up what had happened to me, but I decided against it. “The house has a way of spooking you, doesn’t it?”
“Sometimes it does. So many memories hanging in the air.”
“I can see what drew you to come here, though, and I can see why you stayed. And frankly, although the house is breathtakingly beautiful, there’s also a coldness to it, a formality. This place you’ve created here is comfortable and warm and cozy.”
He smiled. “And it’s more in keeping with its surroundings, isn’t it, with the Northwoods decor. I wanted this place to reflect the local culture, not rebel against it, as the main house has done.”
“Exactly,” I said, sipping my tea and noticing for the first time a portrait above the fireplace. I stood up to look at it more closely. Andrew McCullough, dressed in a kilt, with a woman and two small children, and dogs that looked to be malamutes curled up by their feet.
“Your great-great-grandfather?” I asked him.
“Yes,” he said, coughing slightly. “And his family.”
I detected a tone of melancholy in his voice, and wondered if he was thinking about a family of his own. All of a sudden I realized I didn’t know if he had ever been married, or had any children for that matter. There was much about Drew that was still a mystery.
“And what about you, Julia?” he said, interrupting my thoughts and changing the subject. “What brought you to Havenwood? I know you’re meant to be a companion to Mrs. S., but why did you decide to give up your life to come here?”
I had been dreading those questions. I wasn’t interested in telling Drew my history, even though he had been relatively honest with me about his. So I chose my words carefully.
“My husband died a few months ago,” I began.
“Oh, Julia, I’m so sorry.”
I shook my head. “Thank you. Anyway, I was sort of at loose ends. He died, the bills were piling up, I discovered”—I hesitated—“discrepancies in our finances. I basically went from having everything to nothing in the blink of an eye.”
He leaned over and put a hand on mine. I felt an itch in the back of my throat and hoped I wasn’t about to start weeping. That was all I would need.
“And that’s when Adrian showed up at my doorstep. I don’t know how he found me, but he did. He made the offer for me to come to Havenwood, and with nothing to lose, I accepted. I was here the next day.”
“And now?”
“Now? When I first got here, it was overwhelming, to tell you the truth. I’d seen pictures of the estate but I didn’t imagine it to be so—”
“Daunting?”
“Exactly.” I nodded, then shuddered. “Mrs. Sinclair has her schedule—her quiet time in the morning and all of that—and initially I wasn’t quite sure what to do with myself during that time.” I cast an eye out the window toward the house, which stood looming like a specter across the snowy lawn. I didn’t see any signs of life.
“But then I got to know Mrs. Sinclair a bit better. And you,” I added shyly. “Yesterday was so much fun. I’m feeling more at home, like I really do belong here. It feels like…”
“Like what?”
“Like I’ve been here longer than just a couple of days. I can’t explain it, but things seem both familiar and strange.”
“You’re always welcome here in the stables,” Drew offered. “I’ve usually got the fire going, and a pot of tea on the stove. And something stronger in the pantry if you’re in need of it. Stop by anytime, even if I’m not here. You’ll need to get out of the house, from time to time. Believe me. It does have a way of making you feel that everything in the universe is contained within those brick walls. You need to breathe the fresh air every now and then to remind yourself that the outside world exists.”
I exhaled. He really was impossibly kind.
Suddenly, I remembered what I was doing there. I had been so caught up in listening to Drew that I had almost forgotten. “Oh, my goodness!” I said. “I came down here to tell you that Adrian is hoping you can take the dogs and track those footprints, to see where they came from.”
He nodded. “I was planning to do that this morning, just as I saw you, actually.”
“Would you mind terribly if I went with you?” I asked.
“Wouldn’t mind a bit.” He smiled and unfolded himself from his chair, crossing the room to the wall where he had hung our jackets. “But only if you bundle up.”
SEVENTEEN
We crunched together through the snow. As we neared the front door of Havenwood, the dogs took off running down the length of the patio and disappeared around the side of the house.
“Girls!” Drew called to them. “Come!” We waited for a moment, expecting them to bound back around the corner, but they didn’t reappear.
He raised his eyebrows. “The girls don’t so much obey commands as take them under advisement.” He chuckled, starting off in the direction they had gone. “I wonder what they’re after.”
“An animal, maybe?” I offered, following him. We rounded the corner of the house and there they were, snouts to the ground in front of one of the bay windows, sniffing and scratching at the snow. Nearing them, Drew and I saw what had captured the dogs’ attention. Footprints. And not the ones we had seen the night before. These were fresh, and in front of the drawing room window.
“Were you walking around out here earlier?” he asked me.
I shook my head. “I wasn’t.”
“Well, then it looks like our visitor was back,” he said, furrowing his brow. “I wonder what
this is about, then.”
We walked around the house to the kitchen door, following the footprints all the way. Drew pointed to the trail, which snaked its way across the lawn, toward the forest beyond. I clearly saw what I couldn’t in the darkness the night before—a person had come from the stand of trees, walked up to the house, and had gone back again. There was no doubt.
I remembered how trapped I had felt in my house in Chicago after the news broke of Jeremy’s death—the media, his victims, and even curious gawkers were always lurking at my windows, trying to get a look at the grieving widow. And this was feeling all too familiar. I was beginning to believe that we hadn’t attracted a curious villager when we were in town the day before. A chill shot through me when I thought of my house burning to the ground.
Was I endangering Havenwood and everyone in it just by being here?
“Are there tourists in the area this time of year?” I asked, grasping for any other explanation. “People who might be curious about the house? It is such an oddity, after all, this enormous estate in the middle of the wilderness.”
He shook his head. “Not generally,” he said. “The house isn’t exactly in the guidebooks. People would have to know it’s here, or stumble across it while hiking on the trails or canoeing on the river. And they don’t do any of that in late November. This is our downtime. It’s too cold for the summer sports but there’s not enough snow for the cross-country skiers and snowmobilers.”
He squinted at the trail of prints. “But then again, it’s easy walking right now. Whoever it was didn’t have to use snowshoes. Later on in the season, he never could have walked in the forest without them. He’d be up to his waist in snow. But now, all he’d need is a good pair of boots, and you certainly don’t come to this area without those.”
“So it’s not out of the realm of possibility,” I said, satisfied with that explanation and liking the innocence of it. I could imagine myself on a hike in the wilderness, stumbling across this massive estate, and simply having to come closer to get a better look.
“Come on,” he said, setting off along the trail of footprints. “Let’s see where this leads us.”
He whistled for the dogs, and they came bounding from where they had been, one on either side of Drew and me, and one behind us. I was beginning to really like having their protection.
We walked in silence for a while, going deeper and deeper into the forest. The enormous pine trees reminded me of photos I’d seen of the giant redwoods in California. They towered above our heads and seemed to close in around us, partially blocking out the sun. I noticed the chill becoming more intense, the dogs’ breath hanging in the air around them in tufts.
“These trees must be hundreds of years old,” I said, my voice seeming to shatter the very stillness into tiny pieces.
“Red pines,” he said. “The estate is one of the only areas around where there has never been any logging. It’s quite wonderful, don’t you think, to be able to see this forest just as it was, hundreds of years ago?”
I craned my neck to look upward, so mesmerized by the trees that I almost forgot we had another, darker purpose for being out there.
We followed the footprints through the forest until they led us to a clearing, where a lake appeared, seemingly from out of the blue. It wasn’t yet frozen over but the water looked ice-cold, a slight mist rising from its surface and dissipating into the air.
“Look at this,” Drew said, pointing down to the lakeshore. At first I didn’t see what he was pointing to… and then I did. The remnants of a campfire, the snow around it fully packed down. Somebody had made camp here.
“It looks like our visitor spent the night,” Drew said, kicking snow at the campfire ashes to make sure they were out. “And look here.” He moved closer to the lakeshore and bent down.
I saw what he was pointing to. Tracks, as though somebody had pulled a boat—a canoe, likely—out of the water and onto shore.
Drew stood up and looked me in the face. “This wasn’t some curious villager following us home, Julia. Whatever could this be about?”
In that moment, it became as clear to me as the water before us, lapping at the snowy shore.
I sat down on a nearby log and put my head in my hands. “Drew,” I said, wishing I didn’t have to say the words. “I think I know exactly what this is about. And it has nothing to do with Havenwood, and nothing to do with Mrs. Sinclair or Adrian, and nothing to do with you. It has to do with me.”
“You?”
“Whoever this is, he’s looking for me.”
Drew squinted at me. “And, from your expression, I’m guessing he’s not looking for you to deliver the Publishers Clearing House grand prize.”
I managed a smile. “Not that, no. I’m afraid my being here is putting all of you, and Havenwood, in danger. I’m going to have to leave. Today.”
The problem was I had no place to go.
EIGHTEEN
I got to my feet and started marching back through the forest the way we had come, the dogs close at my heels. It felt like the pines were closing in around me. I had thought I was finished with everything that had happened to me in the past year—I really had begun to leave it all behind. And yet, here it was again, refusing to let me go.
Tears stung at my eyes and began to stream down my face. I wiped them away with my mittened hands before they froze on my cheeks. I quickened my pace, trying to outrun the emotion.
Drew caught up with me, grabbing my arm and turning me around toward him. When he saw the tears, he gave me a look of such compassion and concern—and that was all it took. The floodgates opened, and I began to let it all out, my shoulders shaking with the force of it. Drew wrapped his arms around me and held me close, rubbing my back and whispering words I didn’t quite understand.
I cried for the marriage I thought I had, for the friendships I had lost, for the funny, gentle man I thought I had married who turned out to be a sociopath, for the people he hurt. All the pain and frustration I had been holding inside for months bubbled to the surface.
As I pulled away, Drew handed me a handkerchief that had been in his pocket.
“I’m sorry,” I said, taking off my mittens to blow my nose. “I didn’t mean to do that. I must look a fright.”
“Nonsense,” he said, smiling down at me. “But you need to tell me what this is about, Julia. Right now. I want the truth, and believe me, I don’t care what it is. I will have heard worse. You can tell me you murdered sixteen people in cold blood and I’d still be on your side.”
“Sixteen? Really?”
His mouth curled into a grin. “I draw the line at seventeen.”
I couldn’t help but chuckle, despite it all.
“Seriously, Julia. You need to tell me everything, especially if you think your being here is putting Havenwood in danger.”
So much for leaving my past behind. My blissful anonymity had lasted all of two days. I looked around me at the rugged pines and delicate snow cover, and realized that even here, in the pristine Havenwood wilderness, it wasn’t possible to escape my past. The truth was too powerful.
I took a deep breath, and as we walked through the forest toward Havenwood, I told him everything. How Jeremy swindled me, our friends, and hundreds more out of their life savings. How all of our friends had abandoned me, thinking I was part of it. How the media hounded me relentlessly. How lawsuits were floating out there with my name on them. How the angry victims had threatened me. And how Adrian had promised to make all of it go away, if I would just come to Havenwood with him.
Now that I was talking about it, telling Drew the nightmare that had been my life for the past year, I couldn’t stop. It was like a dam inside of me, the one that had kept my heartbreak and anger and frustration about this whole situation at bay, had burst. Finally, someone would listen to my side of things. And care. I couldn’t stop if I tried.
“Holy Jesus,” he said under his breath.
“And you haven’t heard the worst
of it yet,” I said. “The day after I left Chicago for Havenwood, my house there burned to the ground. The police suspect it was arson.”
“And you think whoever set your house afire is our visitor, here to do the same to Havenwood,” he concluded.
I could see the edge of the forest in front of us, with Havenwood standing guard in the distance. The image of flames coming out of its windows, lapping at the stone facade, swirled in my brain. I stopped walking and looked at Drew.
“Yes. That’s what I’m most afraid of. You all have been so kind to me. If anything were to happen to you—”
He held up a hand to stop my words. “Does Adrian know about the fire?”
“He was in Chicago at the time. He was there.”
Drew nodded, as though this were nothing remarkable. It made me wonder, not for the first time, exactly who Adrian was.
“Good,” he said. “I’ll have to get with him straightaway to make a plan of action. I gather Mrs. Sinclair knows none of this?”
“She knows about my history, but that’s all. Not about the fire.”
“That’s good as well. Let’s keep it that way. I’m sure Adrian will agree with me. After dinner tonight when Mrs. Sinclair takes her leave, we’ll sort this out. Adrian and I will take care of this.”
He began walking toward the house. I called after him. “But isn’t the best thing for me to just leave?”
He walked back to me and took me by the arms, his face so close to mine I could feel his breath on my cheeks.
“You cannot leave here, Julia,” he whispered. “You just cannot. Not now.”
I just stood there, my eyes locked with his. I couldn’t move, or even breathe. Just being this close to him felt like magic and energy and whispers and danger were all around us. He smiled slightly, as though he were feeling it, too.
He leaned into me, and the air between us thickened. I knew he was going in for a kiss. And although part of me wanted nothing more than to throw my arms around him, my reason won out. I stiffened and pulled away.
“Please don’t,” I said.