The Widow's Watcher

by Eliza Maxwell

  The woman was gone.

  Diane’s heart pounded as she took in the scene in front of her. The woman had disappeared and left behind her children. One who would never take another breath. The other, though. The other was clinging to Diane’s leg, hiding her face from what she couldn’t bear to look at, crying like she’d never, ever stop.

  The other. A little girl who was very much alive.

  A ribbon of shame ran through Diane at the way her heart leapt.

  She’d lost so, so much. She’d lost everything.

  Ignoring the shame, Diane made a decision standing there, one she would never be able to take back, even if she wanted to.

  Diane refused to lose this child too.

  Quickly, before the light faded, Diane returned to the cabin with the girl. She’d seen what she needed in the small garage when she arrived.

  But first, she walked into the cabin and opened the suitcase she hadn’t yet unpacked.

  She’d brought little with her when she fled her husband and his fists. A few changes of clothing, not much more. At the bottom of the case, where she knew it would be, her fingers found the crinkle of tissue paper.

  She’d wrapped it so carefully, the first thing she’d placed inside the suitcase that would travel with her to a new life.

  She tucked the tissue-wrapped parcel under her arm, then took the girl by the hand, and they headed back into the woods.

  In the other hand, Diane carried a shovel.

  When they’d drawn near to the copse of trees, the girl broke away from Diane, rushing to pick something up from the ground.

  “Moonbeam,” she cried, hugging her prize tightly to her and nuzzling it with her cheek. “It’s Moonbeam!” She held up a stuffed bunny for Diane to see. “Mommy made her for me.”

  The girl’s smile wrenched at Diane’s heart.

  “Sweetheart, can you sit right here with Moonbeam for a few minutes? Auntie Diane needs to do something.”

  The child looked up, and her happiness dimmed. “Are you going to see my baby brother again?”

  Diane knelt and tucked a strand of hair behind the child’s ear. “I am.”

  There was so much more she could have said, but she wasn’t sure how much the child would understand, and she couldn’t bear to frighten her again.

  “Will you stay here? I’ll be right on the other side of those trees. Just shout and I’ll hear you.”

  The girl sat and clutched the little bunny her mother had made for her.

  Diane turned to walk through the opening in the trees when the child called out to her.

  “Promise you’ll come back?” the girl cried.

  Diane walked back to the child and knelt again.

  “I promise.” She opened her arms wide, and the girl lunged into the offered hug. Diane held her and stroked her tangled dark hair. “I won’t leave you,” she whispered. “You’ll see.”

  The child nodded, but her worry showed.

  There was nothing for it. She wouldn’t bring the child into the trees with her, not this time.

  Diane needed to do this alone.

  Once she’d stepped into the small clearing, she looked around, burning every detail onto her mind.

  Then she began to dig.

  When the time came, Diane slowly unwrapped the tissue from the only memento she had of her own daughter’s short life. It was a soft cotton blanket, hand sewn with love while Paige had grown in her belly, safe still from the world.

  She held the cotton, worn and faded from many washings, to her face and breathed deep. She thought she caught the faintest scent of her daughter.

  With precise motions, and before she could change her mind, Diane laid the blanket in the bottom of the small grave she’d dug, lining the earth.

  Then with a strength and determination she hadn’t known she possessed, Diane took the lifeless baby boy into her arms. Gently, she laid him upon her daughter’s blanket, praying Paige’s spirit would find him wherever they were now. That she would take him under her wing.

  As the last sliver of sun dropped below the horizon, Diane gathered as many of the flowers the child’s mother had chosen for him as her arms would hold.

  She let them fall into the grave, blanketing the boy. With a final prayer but without tears, because she simply had none left, Diane covered the boy in earth.

  She buried the baby in that lovely, secluded place his mother had chosen.

  Then she turned her attention to the precious gift the same woman had left for her.

  Because somehow, Diane knew the woman wouldn’t be back. As incomprehensible as it was, Diane had seen the woman’s eyes. There was something crushed inside of her. If Diane had any doubts, all she had to do was remember the clearing and the baby she’d left behind.

  57

  “We left.”

  Diane was standing in front of the fireplace mantel, touching one finger to a white ceramic bird that sat atop it.

  “We went to Arizona. I’d always wanted to see Arizona.” Diane sighed and walked back toward Jenna, who was wiping tears from her cheeks.

  “I changed her hair. A short cut and some home dye. I kept her back from school an extra year, and I gave her my daughter’s name. All it took was a phone call or two, and a new copy of her birth certificate was mailed to me. After all, I was her mother. No one thought to check if she’d already died.”

  Diane leaned her head back against the couch and closed her eyes. “It was surprisingly easy,” she said in a tired voice.

  “And your husband?” Jenna asked. “Weren’t you worried he’d find you? There’s no way you could pass Francie off as Paige to him.”

  Diane opened her eyes and sat up. “You’re a perceptive one, aren’t you?”

  Jenna didn’t miss the sour note of bitterness.

  “I was worried,” Diane continued. “It was the money, you see. I knew he was too lazy to come looking for me for my sake. Probably glad to see the back of me, but I’d stolen from him. That, I knew he wouldn’t let go.”

  “So what did you do?” Jenna asked when Diane said nothing more.

  “I sent it back to him, didn’t I?” she replied. “What else could I do? Things were tight for a while, but I’m not afraid of hard work. I’m afraid of a lot of things, but not that. And I didn’t see another choice.”

  “And that worked?”

  Diane nodded. “I never heard from him again. For a while I worried he’d track me down, looking for a divorce. It kept me up nights, but in the end, it never happened.”

  Diane gave her an appraising look. “You happened instead.” She stood and began pacing the room again.

  Jenna had more questions, but time was slipping through her hands.

  “Do they know yet?” Diane asked suddenly, still facing away from Jenna.

  “No. I needed to make sure I wasn’t wrong.”

  “How did you know?” Diane asked.

  “When you came into the cabin that day,” Jenna said truthfully, her mind too jumbled to play games. “You were shaken. We could all see that. You told me it was the policeman. The reminder of your ex-husband.”

  Diane studied her.

  “But you barely glanced at Sergeant Allred. There was someone else in that room you were trying to avoid.”

  A shadow of a smile passed across Diane’s lips, though not a happy one. “When I saw Audrey, I was terrified she’d recognize me.”

  Jenna considered the woman. “I don’t think she would have,” she said. “She doesn’t even recognize Owen. But you didn’t come back after that. You should have come to clean today. You didn’t. In the commotion, it almost went unnoticed. But you had to have a reason for staying away.”

  Diane stared at her. “That was all?” she asked.

  A strange desire to comfort the woman who’d done this terrible thing came over Jenna, but there was nothing she could do. Diane Downey had made her bed.

  “The photograph of your grandson. The one you showed me the first day we met?”
/>   Diane reared back as if struck, then reached a hand behind her to guide herself onto the sofa again.

  “He’s chewing on something. It’s impossible to tell what it is from the photo. It could be a blanket. But it’s not, is it?”

  “Moonbeam,” Diane said with a sigh.

  “It’s the ear of a midnight-blue stuffed bunny named Moonbeam. A precious family toy, passed down from his mother.”

  Giving in to the inevitable, Diane began to cry.

  “They’re going to have questions. So many questions,” Jenna said softly, almost apologetically. “Questions they deserve answers to.”

  Diane nodded, sniffling and trying to curb the flood of tears. “Yes. But, Jenna, can you let me tell her first? Please,” Diane begged. “Let me be the one to tell her.”

  Another person might have dismissed the plea, but Jenna recognized it for what it was.

  A mother’s need to cushion her child from an inevitable and unimaginable hurt.

  58

  Darkness had long overtaken the day by the time the minivan pulled into the driveway of the cabin. Its headlights illuminated circles across the yard and house before they came to rest on the back of Lars’s truck.

  Jenna was keenly aware of the hour and the exhaustion of the woman sitting in the passenger seat.

  “You’ll stay here, like we talked about?”

  Diane inclined her head, then leaned it back against the headrest, her eyes closed.

  “I’m not going anywhere, if that’s what you’re worried about.” She sounded hollow. Empty.

  Jenna didn’t doubt that was true, even though she was about to step out of the van and leave the other woman waiting there alone. Diane had told her she’d accepted long ago that if this day ever came, she wouldn’t run from the repercussions.

  Though the aging housekeeper had been in no mood to talk as they’d driven the miles back to Raven, Jenna couldn’t help but ask, “Would you do it again? If you had the choice?”

  The interior of the van was dark, lit only by the unnatural green glow of the dashboard instruments, and Jenna couldn’t make out the other woman’s face.

  Diane shifted in her seat and turned her head toward the passenger window. The silence dragged on long enough that Jenna thought she wasn’t going to answer.

  “I’m aware of the pain I’ve caused,” Diane said at last. “I may be the only person on earth who can really know what I stole from that man by keeping his child. Even Lars . . . he knows there was a hole in his life. I know the exact shape of it.”

  Another pause, then Diane exhaled sharply. “What I did was wrong. But I’d be lying if I said I was ever strong enough to give her up.”

  Jenna blinked at the unvarnished honesty.

  “I’m done lying.”

  Jenna asked no more questions, and the rest of the drive had passed in tense, expectant silence.

  “I don’t know how long this is going to take,” Jenna said. Now that she was here, she was second-guessing herself.

  Diane folded her hands in her lap. “It takes as long as it takes.” Her unnerving calm was at odds with Jenna’s agitation.

  “I don’t think I’m the right person to do this,” Jenna said, gripping the steering wheel.

  The other woman watched Jenna as she sat exposed with all her nervousness on display.

  “Go on,” Diane said. She sounded almost motherly. “You’re bringing him a gift.”

  Jenna reached out a hand and took Diane’s in her own. She gave it a gentle squeeze.

  Then Jenna took a deep breath and clicked off the headlights. She left the engine and heater running to ward off the cold, then stepped out of the van.

  Jenna’s footsteps were steady as she crunched through the snow. When she reached the porch and found Owen waiting, her doubts fled.

  “You came back,” he said.

  She gave him a small smile. “I said I would.”

  “Is there someone with you?” Owen asked, peering into the darkness where the shape of Diane seated in the van could faintly be made out in the moonlight.

  “Yes.” Jenna threw a glance over her shoulder. She could sense the other woman watching them, waiting. “But we’ll get to that.”

  “Jenna, what’s this about?”

  “Let’s go inside,” she suggested. “I have something to tell you. Something you all need to hear.”

  He cast a final glance at the figure in the darkness, then opened the door and followed her inside.

  While Diane remained alone in the eye of a hurricane of her own making, inside the cabin the storm raged.

  As Jenna slowly and methodically laid out the story placed under her guardianship, the reactions among the Jorgensens swung wildly from one extreme to another.

  Once the tale was told, Jenna surveyed the effects her words had wrought.

  Beverly Jorgensen was seated on the couch, clutching her great-granddaughter to her. Hannah’s head lay on her nana’s shoulder, her eyes stunned. She looked so young, her face scrubbed clean of her normal dramatic makeup, and too awash in shock to maintain the guise of an indifferent teenager.

  Both faces were blotchy from the tears they’d shed while clinging to each other for support.

  Owen stood with his back against the wall, his arms folded in front of him. His eyes were trained on the shattered glass littering the floor. He gripped the prescription bottle he’d run to fetch from his father’s bathroom when it was unclear whether Lars’s heart would withstand the strain.

  And Lars. Lars, who’d risen partway through Jenna’s telling and gripped the edge of the mantel, while his shoulders shook with emotion.

  When Jenna told them in hushed words of Diane’s actions in the clearing, his knuckles had whitened and his body tensed.

  With a groan of unimaginable pain, Lars swept his hand down the mantel, sending picture frames and candlesticks flying. Glass shattered and slid across the floor into darkened corners.

  Everyone flinched, and Hannah couldn’t hold back the tears that started anew. She buried her face in her great-grandmother’s side, the only sound her muffled, choking tears.

  The seconds ticked past. Owen walked swiftly out of the room, then returned moments later with the bottle of pills for Lars’s heart. His father waved him away as he struggled to get himself under control. Jenna looked helplessly at Owen, unsure if she should go on.

  The worry in Owen’s face didn’t fade, but he raised both hands, as if to say, There’s no going back now.

  “Diane,” Lars said in a slow, hoarse voice, his back still turned to the room, “lives seventy miles from here. You’re telling me she buried my son, stole my daughter, and raised her as her own . . . seventy miles away from me?”

  Lars turned to stare at Jenna. The fierce outrage emanating from him stole her breath, and she pulled back.

  Swallowing the lump in her throat, Jenna nodded.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “That woman . . . ,” Lars said slowly, then stopped. “That woman,” he said again, his voice rising. He made a visible effort to get himself under control. Softer now, but no less fearsome, he said again, “That woman has a great deal to answer for.”

  Jenna looked around the room. It hardly seemed the right time, but would there ever be a right time? She took a deep breath and plunged forward.

  “I . . .” Jenna hesitated. “I don’t have all the answers, but . . . I’ve brought someone who does. Diane is waiting in the car.”

  All eyes swiveled to stare at her.

  “You . . . you brought her here? You brought that woman here?” Beverly asked, incredulous.

  Jenna held up her hands. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “I want to see her.” Lars straightened from his slump. “I want to look her in the eyes and ask her myself . . .” He trailed off, a war waging across his face.

  Jenna nodded. She stood and walked toward the door.

  With her hand on the handle, Jenna turned back.

  “I’ve
met her,” she said gently to Lars, who’d begun pacing the room, oblivious to the glass that crunched beneath his feet.

  Lars grew still and turned to her. She watched an enduring hope bloom upon his face.

  “Francie?” he asked in a torturous whisper.

  Jenna nodded, not bothering to hide the tears that began to spill down her cheeks. She smiled through them instead.

  “She’s beautiful, Lars,” Jenna said. “She’s married now. A mother herself. She has a little boy named Tommy.”

  Lars’s face crumbled, the words hitting his heart with the force of a wrecking ball. He choked back tears of unexpected and unreserved joy.

  His daughter was alive.

  Diane Downey looked small and old as she faced her accusers. That the accusations were justified made it no easier to witness.

  “Why?” Lars demanded. His voice was abrasive, but the burning edge of it had lessened to a smolder. “Why did you come here, insinuate yourself into our lives? To gloat? What kind of sick games have you been playing? You let me believe my daughter was DEAD!”

  Diane flinched, her shoulders shrinking farther inward.

  “Well?” Lars demanded.

  Diane glanced up, her gaze flitting around the room, an animal trapped, despite her willingness to walk through the cage door.

  “I couldn’t give her up,” she finally said, dropping her eyes to her lap where her hands gripped each other. “I truly believed you were . . . I let myself believe you were the problem. I had to believe that.”

  Lars could barely look at Diane, and Jenna watched his fists clench, then loosen and clench again. He wasn’t a violent man, but this was pushing him to his limits.

  Owen studied Diane, clearly trying to understand.

  “But why did you come here, Diane?” Owen prodded. “Why not get as far from here as possible?”

  “I came because of you, Owen.”

  Diane stared at him, pleading for something Jenna wasn’t sure he could give. Absolution, maybe? Forgiveness? Simple understanding? Nothing was simple anymore, and may never be again.

  “Paige—” Diane stopped, corrected herself. “Francine, I mean,” she said, the girl’s given name obviously difficult for her to say. “She talked about her brother. At first, I thought she meant her younger brother, but when I saw the news reports, I knew . . .”