Shadows of Lancaster County

by Mindy Starns Clark

  I sat on the side of the bed, stunned. In his kindness, Reed had taken the time to go shopping for me, to buy me something more appropriate for a January wake than a summer dress and strappy sandals. If I wasn’t so tired of being embarrassed, not to mention cold, I would have refused such a generous gift. As it was, I needed this dress more than I had wanted to admit. Maybe I would accept it but insist on reimbursing him for it later. It was a size smaller than I usually wore, but when I tried it on it fit just fine, and the necklace and shoes would be the perfect addition.

  I brushed my hair and fixed my makeup as quickly as possible, so that I would have time to look at the file I hadn’t yet seen, the one marked “Jensen” that I had stolen today from the lab. Pulling the papers out from under the mattress, I put the Schumann files aside and held my breath as I opened the Jensen one, hoping to learn the truth about Isaac.

  Instead, my heart skipped at beat at what I saw. There, printed clearly across the label, wasn’t Isaac’s name at all.

  It was my own name: Annalise Bailey Jensen.

  THIRTY-SIX

  In Reed’s car, driving toward the wake, I was so upset and distracted

  I could hardly breathe. He knew something was wrong but didn’t press me to talk, and I was glad. As we sped through the patchwork-quilt hills of Lancaster County, I couldn’t stop thinking about the file, about the words I had read over and over, terms I didn’t understand like “protease,” “DNase,” and “chelation.”

  More than anything, I wanted to tell Reed about it and have him explain it all to me, but I remained silent. It wasn’t just that I had stolen the files and committed a crime. It was that I truly didn’t want him to know if I was some sort of genetic freak, that my body had apparently been genetically tampered with at some point in the past.

  I couldn’t bear the thought of him seeing me as damaged goods.

  As I was wrestling with these things in my mind, Reed’s phone rang, and I was glad when he answered it and talked for a while. I didn’t even listen to his half of the conversation. I just stared out the window and asked God to give me some clarity and direction in this moment.

  I was so lost, so utterly scared and confused. Closing my eyes, I couldn’t help but picture Bobby, who was also very likely lost and scared and confused. Silently, I prayed for God to protect and guide him as well.

  Once Reed finally hung up the phone, he tried to lighten the mood by telling me about his life in DC, his work, his girlfriend. I feigned an interest in her, and though part of me didn’t want to hear, another part of me needed to hear.

  Reed explained that he and Heather had met last year at a dinner party and had begun dating soon after that. Heather was a lobbyist for the banking industry, brilliant, graduated magna cum laude from Princeton. As he talked, I got the feeling they didn’t see each other all that much, even though their relationship was exclusive. I thought of his comment the other day, that he probably worked too much, and I wondered if maybe she did too. That couldn’t be good for any relationship.

  “We’re at that point where she’s pushing me to meet her parents,” he said, flashing me a grin. “I know what that means. She says I keep finding excuses not to.”

  “Do you?”

  He drove for a while, considering my question. As soon as we passed the welcome sign for Hidden Springs, I knew we were close. Reed made a left turn and drove to the end of the block.

  “I suppose I have been wondering if I have a problem with commitment,” he finally replied, slowing to turn again, this time into the parking lot of the funeral home. “Now I’m starting to wonder if it’s commitment that I have a problem with…or just commitment to her.”

  With that, he pulled into the first available space and turned off the car. Across the street from the funeral home, I could see several yellow sawhorses lined up in a row, a police barricade, forming to keep the press at bay.

  As we got out of the car and headed up the wide front steps toward the door, I thought about what Reed had just said. I kept wondering exactly when he had begun to ask himself that question about commitment. Had he been rethinking their relationship before coming here? Or had those questions started only after he had spent time with me? I may still love him, and I may still think we belonged together, but the last thing on earth I wanted to do was break up his relationship with someone else.

  The press was out in full force, but with a heavy police presence there, the best they could do was snap photos from afar and shout questions to us that we didn’t answer. Reed and I both ignored the hoopla, and as we stepped into the hushed dignity of the funeral home, I was relieved to know we had at least crossed the first hurdle unscathed. Glancing at my watch, I saw we were a few minutes early, which was probably a good thing. I still hadn’t seen Haley since coming to town, and I had hoped to have a quiet moment with her before the crowd grew too big.

  At a rack near the door, Reed helped me off with my coat, and I realized that I hadn’t yet thanked him for the outfit. I did so now, apologizing that I had been too distracted to mention it before. “You’ll have to let me pay you back, though,” I added.

  His response surprised me by its gravity.

  “Please don’t, Anna. When I woke up this morning, it struck me that our attendance at Doug’s wake is going to be all over the news, probably for days to come. I know how much you hate seeing yourself in the media, so at the very least I thought you should feel confident with how you’re dressed.”

  “But it must have cost—”

  “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that I had a few spare minutes and my hotel is right near the outlet mall and I just wanted to do this, one friend for another. Okay?”

  Looking into his handsome blue eyes, I could tell it was important to him that I accept his kindness as a gift, no reimbursement allowed.

  “Okay,” I said, sliding my coat onto a hanger and placing it on the rack. “For what it’s worth, I needed this more than you could imagine. Thank you.”

  “Well, for what it’s worth,” Reed replied in a soft voice as he placed his coat on the rack beside mine, “you look quite incredible, if I do say so myself.”

  Smiling shyly at the compliment, I turned my attention back to the reason why we were here.

  Moving toward the closed casket at the front of the room, I spotted Haley when I was halfway there. Her arms flew open when I was still a good ten feet away, and I moved quickly into her hug. She smelled vaguely of Scotch, but at least she seemed sober for now.

  “Wow, California must suit you, Anna. You’re so tanned and healthy looking,” she said as we pulled apart.

  I wanted to give her a compliment in return, but the truth was that she looked terrible. Of course, she was here for her husband’s funeral, so I hadn’t expected her to look great. But I was still taken aback by her appearance. At just twenty-nine, there were already lines around her mouth and beside her eyes. Always petite, now she was positively skeletal. The skin-and-bones look did not become her, not even dressed up in couture clothes and an expensive haircut.

  “I’ve missed you so much,” I said finally. “How are you doing? Are you okay?”

  She nodded, though it was obvious this hadn’t been the best week of her life. More people began coming in, and after she and Reed greeted each other with a hug, I told her we would get out of the way.

  “We’ll talk later,” she whispered to me just before she was descended upon by a pack of blubbering relatives.

  Reed and I respectfully filed past the coffin and then made our way to Mr. Wynn, who was standing at the other side, talking with a small cluster of people. Still robust and handsome in his sixties, when Mr. Wynn realized that the tall blonde waiting to speak to him was his daughter’s old best friend, his eyes filled with tears.

  “Annalise Jensen, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes. What are you, a fashion model now? Look at you!”

  “Thank you. You look great too, sir.”

  I gave him a warm hug, remembering as I d
id the conversation Reed and I had had just yesterday, when I suggested that Mr. Wynn could have killed Doug. I knew now I didn’t believe it, not for a minute. He was rich and powerful, yes, but he was not a killer, not even close. He was more like a well-dressed, well-heeled teddy bear.

  “Reed, how are you, son?” he said, shaking Reed’s hand and patting him on the shoulder. They chatted like the old friends they were, and I remembered how very present Mr. Wynn had been after the fire and through all our trials. Because he had recruited and hired the three interns, he had seemed to feel personally responsible in a way, and he had even offered to pay the legal expenses of any of us who couldn’t afford to cover our own.

  It had been his fancy lawyer who convinced the police to drop charges against Lydia, and as far as I knew he had funded most of Doug’s defense team. My parents had refused to accept his help, probably out of sheer pride, but I had always thought it awfully decent of him to offer.

  As more people lined up behind us, we finished conversing with him and stepped out of the way. Next stop was Haley’s mom, Melody, who looked a little lost. She was standing near the back of the room, clad in a filmy blue-and-green dress, her blond hair clipped up on one side with a pearl clasp. When we reached her, after hugs and hellos, she kept hold of my hand for a while. Inwardly smiling, I thought of my old nickname for Melody: The Floater. It certainly seemed as if she was about to float away now, and that she was clinging to me like a helium balloon fighting against its own string.

  “Are you okay?” I finally asked, and she shook her head.

  “Haley doesn’t want me to stand with her, so I went and stood over there. But then Orin wanted to stand there, so I came over here. I don’t know where I’m supposed to be. I feel so stupid.”

  Kindly, Reed suggested that Melody could man the guest register near the door, saying that way she could greet people and make sure they signed the book while staying clearly out of the way of her daughter or ex-husband.

  “Thank you, Reed!” Melody cried, letting go of my hand to kiss his cheek. “You always were the brilliant one in the bunch.”

  At that, Melody floated across the room to her new post, the eyes of several male guests noticeably turning to watch as she passed by.

  “Boy, even at fifty-something, she’s still the best-looking gal in the room,” I said.

  “Present company excluded, of course,” Reed wisely replied.

  Once I forced myself to stop thinking about the file with my name on it that was hidden back at the farm, the next two hours passed quickly. I was surprised at how many people I recognized. Some of our old friends from high school had come, as had various friends of Haley’s family I had met over the years. Doug’s parents were also there, of course, though they were even less sociable at their son’s wake than they had been at his trial.

  The biggest surprise was how many Amish people had turned out for this, despite the fact that many of them had had to hire drivers to get here because it was a little far to come via horse and buggy. I saw a lot of old Amish friends, the same ones who had rallied around us in the wake of the fire. Near the end of the afternoon, I was even more surprised to see Nathaniel, Grete, Caleb, Rebecca, Ezra, and even Tresa all come filing in. Seeing them there, I realized I should have known they would be coming—and offered them a ride. As the surviving children of the couple Doug helped to kill in the fire eleven years ago, their presence spoke volumes about forgiveness and faith in action.

  At one point, I simply stood to the side of the room and scanned all of the faces around me. As I did, I couldn’t help but wonder if we would ever know who pushed Doug Brown to his death. In truth, it could have been almost anyone, even someone in this room.

  The bigger question, to my mind anyway, was if whoever killed Doug had succeeded in killing Bobby as well.

  “Have you seen the ladies’ room in this joint? It’s humongous,” Haley said to me once the crowd had dwindled down.

  Grabbing my arm, she pulled me toward a side door as I gave Reed a look of general helplessness. There was an empty sitting area in the front half of the bathroom, so Haley and I sat on two overstuffed chairs in the corner and talked. Soon, she lit up a cigarette, even though there were No Smoking signs everywhere. She always had been a rebel.

  Except for the smoke, it actually was a pleasure just to sit for a bit and catch up with each other in private. Haley still had a wicked sense of humor and a way of blurting out exactly what was on her mind. She told me a bit about her life and how unhappy she and Doug had been. Now that he was dead, she said, all she could do was lament that she hadn’t tried harder to be a good wife and to make the marriage work.

  She asked about Bobby and where I thought he had gone and what I had been able to figure out, but I kept the conversation vague, not wanting to divulge too much at that point about my investigation. I had her describe for me their strange encounter the night he took the motorcycle, but from the way she talked, it sounded to me that she had been pretty drunk at the time—and that the story had become embellished in the retelling.

  Eventually she asked about Reed and me, as I had known she would. I told her we were spending a lot of time together trying to find Bobby, but that we were just friends now and always would be just friends.

  “Well, poo, that’s no fun. He’s still so hot and totally loaded. He has, like, tripled his family’s wealth in the last few years just by wise investing. Did you know that?”

  I shook my head and tried to think of a tactful way to say that Reed’s money had never been a big selling point for me. Rich or poor, I loved who he was on the inside.

  “Daddy said he’s got a lot of WYI in his portfolio.”

  “WYI?”

  “Stock. Wynn Industries stock.”

  I sat up straight, a chill racing down my spine.

  “Reed owns stock in Wynn Industries?”

  “A boatload.”

  “How? I mean, isn’t he on some big DNA ethics board? How can he serve on that if he’s invested in a company that deals with DNA?”

  She shrugged.

  Our conversation ended there as a female employee of the funeral home stuck her head in the door and told us they were closing up for the evening.

  “And there is no smoking in here, ever.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Haley replied with a catch in her voice. “It’s just that I miss my late husband so much…”

  As her eyes grew wide and full of tears, the woman backed off, the door bouncing shut with a quiet thud.

  “You’re worse than ever,” I said, shaking my head, remembering the drama that Haley loved to create everywhere she went.

  “Not really,” she replied calmly, tucking away her cigarettes. “I’m just older than ever and skinnier than ever and uglier than ever.”

  “Haley…”

  “Oh, come on. I saw your face when you came in. You never could lie.”

  “All right. You don’t look healthy to me.”

  With that, Haley reached up, grabbed the top of her hair, and pulled off what turned out to be not a pricey haircut but an expensive wig. Underneath, her head was completely bald.

  “Yeah, well, chemo does that to a person.”

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Haley and I parted ways at the front door of the funeral home, her wig secured back on her head, the knowledge that she would likely follow her husband to the grave within the year almost too much for me to bear. According to her, she was enduring the chemo for her father’s sake, as he refused to let her give up, but she felt sure it wasn’t going to make much difference in the long run. At her request, no one outside of the immediately family even knew she was sick, and she asked me to please keep it that way.

  “What about your drinking?” I asked, knowing the time for being delicate had passed. “Doesn’t that interfere with your treatments?”

  “Honey, I probably won’t make it to Easter,” she said as we pulled on our coats. “Do you really think it matters if I self-medicate now and then?�
��

  On the drive back to the house, I closed my eyes and pretended to rest, though my mind was reeling from too many devastating things: the news that Haley had cancer, the discovery of a file with my name on it, the knowledge that Reed owned stock in Wynn Industries.

  Once again, Reed Thornton had turned out not to be the man I thought he was at all. How many more times in life would I have to be burned before I got wise to the fact that he was bad news?

  Twice during the drive home he asked me if I was okay, but I just mumbled something about having a headache and being emotionally exhausted.

  We drove the rest of the way in silence, and when he pulled to a stop in the driveway of the farmhouse, I jumped out of the car before he even had a chance to turn it off.

  “Thanks for the ride,” I said, relieved to see that the whole family was just now getting home as well. A big twelve-passenger van pulled up behind us, and people began popping out, one by one. Further back, along the road, a coterie of paparazzi was lining up as well.

  “Anna,” Reed said, calling to me in a low voice.

  I wanted to pretend I hadn’t heard him, but it was kind of obvious that I had. I walked back to where he was standing in the open doorway of his car.

  “What?”

  “Did I do something to offend you?”

  I looked at his face, at the gorgeous blue eyes, the chiseled jaw, the perfect mouth. Had I really made no progress in the past eleven years when it came to evaluating people? Or was my problem more specific than that, one of simply not being able to evaluate this particular man who stood in front of me?

  “It’s all about the pedestal, Reed. Whenever I put you up on one, it topples over. I’m just trying to keep things from toppling too far.”

  And I’m just praying the person who killed Doug and ran Bobby off the road wasn’t you, I thought but did not say.

  “Fine. Give me a call.” Reed obviously didn’t know all that I was thinking, but he could tell the subject was closed. With a resigned expression on his face, he got back in his car and pulled out of the driveway right behind the big van.