Grant narrowed his eyes. “Was your great-great-grandmother from around here?”
“I guess. I don’t know much about her really. For that matter, I don’t know much about my ancestry at all, pre-my-grandpa.” Kaine stuck her hand inside the car. Olive sniffed it, then laid her muzzle back on the blanket she’d clearly claimed as hers now.
“What was her name?”
“Ivy Thorpe. She’s in our family Bible, and the family tree ends there. It doesn’t list her married name, even though she obviously did marry. My grandpa’s name, Prescott, is the only family surname I know after that.” Well, that was info dump. But it was obvious there was something about the quilt that captivated him. His eyes kept dropping to it.
Grant cleared his throat. “I see.”
Kaine edged around him and opened the driver’s side door. She tossed the quilt onto the passenger seat out of sight. “You see what?”
Even Kaine could hear the sharpness in her voice. Grant Jesse’s cryptic behavior wasn’t complimentary to the anxiousness still riddling through her.
“It’s nothing,” he said with a shrug, making a pretense of waggling his fingers at Olive. “My mom likes old quilts, and my brother owns an antique shop south of here.”
“Try again.” Kaine crossed her arms. “Why the fascination with my family quilt?”
“It’s true,” Grant went on. “My brother does own an antique shop. My family took vacations to museums growing up, and my dad was a history professor at the university before he and Mom retired in Arizona. We’re all history buffs.”
Kaine raised an eyebrow.
Grant’s jaw muscle twitched and he released a sigh. “Look. Ivy Thorpe is sort of a household name in Oakwood’s history books. And that quilt? It went missing from the museum here in Oakwood back in the sixties. There are pictures of it at the museum.”
Kaine squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again. Nope. He was still there with his silly story of a stolen quilt. She didn’t need this right now. Not after this morning. “My sister gave me this quilt. It’s been in my family for years.”
Grant pulled his hands from his jean pockets. “I didn’t mean to accuse you of anything, really. It just took me by surprise—seeing it.”
Kaine whispered around the lump in her throat, “You’ve no right to question my family, or me.”
Regret filtered across his face. His poignant stare rocked her, as if he was studying her, reading her, seeing inside of her.
“I need to go.” Kaine turned sideways to get into her car, but Grant’s firm grip on her arm stopped her. She looked down at his corded hand, then at him.
“I’m sorry, Kaine. I didn’t mean to offend you. There’s just a lot of history in Oakwood, and your being here sort of stirs it up.”
Kaine shrugged off his hand, his touch burning through her sleeve. “How so?” Did she really want to know?
Grant hesitated, seeming to weigh his words before continuing. “You know the story about the dead woman found at Foster Hill House way back at the turn of the century?”
Kaine nodded, not keen on remembering it. “Joy told me.”
“Well, Ivy . . .” Grant paused.
Kaine waited expectantly. Grant cocked his head to the right. He was doing that studying thing again.
“Yes?” she pressed.
Grant shook his head slowly. “You really don’t know, do you?”
“Know what?”
“Ivy was the second woman found at Foster Hill House. She was attacked and left for dead. That was what made her a legend here in Oakwood.”
Chapter 10
Joy was perched on a stool behind the counter at the station when Kaine entered. The cheesehead from their previous encounter had been replaced with a faux ruby-studded tiara. With her navy blue blouse and gaudy pearl necklace, Joy gave the appearance of someone past her prime playing dress-up with toddler princesses. Kaine envied the older woman and her unabashed identity.
“Kaine!” She slid off the stool and surged around the counter.
Before Kaine could react, her face was pulled into Joy’s shoulder, and she was embraced in a motherly hug of concern.
“You’re all right!”
“Mppfff . . .” Kaine tried to answer, but could only breathe in the flowery scent of Joy’s laundry detergent.
“Oh dear.” Joy pulled away. “I’m suffocating you.” She released Kaine and stepped back a few feet. “But, oh my, you had me worried. That creepy old house, and you in it, alone.”
Worried? Kaine hadn’t expected Joy to waste her time fretting over a perfect stranger. She couldn’t deny it felt nice, though, to know someone here in Oakwood cared.
“I’m fine.” Kaine didn’t want to burden Joy. “I’m staying at the motel.”
“Oh, good.” Joy smiled and waved a hand adorned with a fake ruby ring. “That motel is so old-fashioned. They don’t even have keycards! But it’s clean and welcoming.”
Kaine laughed in spite of her day. The massive blue plastic keychain emblazed with the number four for her room took up way too much space in her purse
“It is clean.” And it felt safe. For now.
“That it is. I’ll sleep better knowing you’re not fighting off evil spirits in that old place.” Joy’s concern soothed Kaine’s frayed nerves. Grant’s revelation about her great-great-grandmother Ivy Thorpe sent Kaine’s mind wandering in a direction she didn’t like. Ivy was linked directly to the house she’d purchased—she had almost been murdered there, shortly after the mysterious young woman. Grant had told her that history recorded the dead woman as Gabriella. Kaine hadn’t wanted a name, even a nickname, associated with the story of a murder victim. But, unfortunately, now there was one, and Gabriella rang through her mind repeatedly, alongside Danny’s name.
“No. No evil spirits.” Kaine swallowed the familiar rise of panic in her throat. Just evil people. A person, actually.
“Well,” Joy said, toying with her pearls, “anyone who spends more than a night in that haunted house would need to be examined for sanity.”
“It’s not haunted.” Kaine’s thoughts swooped to Danny’s picture propped in the middle of the abandoned bedroom. No, not haunted. Worse. “Has—has Megan maybe been wandering over to the house again?” It had been the second crazy impulse of the day. First, adopting Olive, and now swinging into the gas station with the vague hope that somehow she could find a reason to explain away the intrusion of her nightmare into her fledgling peace. But she knew, even as she asked, that Megan wouldn’t have the slightest clue where to find a picture of Danny, and zero motivation to place it in the bedroom.
“Oh no. Has something happened?”
“Um, just a picture from the internet of a family member of mine. It was in the house, and if it was from Megan, that’s okay, I just—”
“Got a little jumpy?” Joy supplied.
That was an understatement. “Yeah.” Certainly. Jumpy.
Joy’s drawn-on eyebrows dipped into a befuddled V between her eyes. “I don’t see how Megan would know to do that, or why she would. But I can ask.” She turned toward a back room, speaking over her shoulder as she walked. “I had to bring Megan to work today. Grant had things to do, and my other options aren’t that great.”
Calling for Megan, Joy waited. Kaine regretted stopping by the gas station. There was no explaining the picture away, and she hated pinning even a suggestion of blame on Megan. A few seconds later, a young woman with Down syndrome shuffled out from the back room. She was adorable for twenty-two. Her hair was pulled into a ponytail, a large silk sunflower sticking out at the top of it. Megan was dressed in inexpensive but stylish jeans and a cute plaid shirt.
Joy reached for Megan, and Megan took her mother’s hand, a friendly smile stretching her rounded cheeks, reaching eyes that shone with spirit.
“Megan, honey.” Joy tucked a loose tendril of dark blond hair behind Megan’s ear. “This is Kaine.”
“Hi, Megan.” Kaine reached out her ha
nd, and Megan took it as she offered a toothy grin. Kaine instantly wanted to be Megan’s best friend. She embodied life.
“Hi, Kaine!” She shook Kaine’s hand with exuberance.
“Honey, have you been back to Foster Hill House?” Joy straightened her daughter’s collar. Megan stared at her mother, as if attempting to judge whether she was in trouble.
“Since the daffodils, sweetie,” Joy added.
Megan glanced at Kaine, and honesty oozed from the girl’s sweet blue eyes. “No. Mama, you told me no and I obeyed.”
“Thank you, sweetie.” Joy rested her hand on Megan’s shoulder, and they both turned to Kaine expectantly.
She had known the answer before Joy ever asked Megan. But this confirmation robbed Kaine of her last sliver of irrational hope. The truth slammed into her with force equal to when she’d first found the picture.
He had followed her here and found out she’d bought Foster Hill House. A house that hid mysteries about Gabriella and Great-Great-Grandmother Ivy that were still unsolved. A house with a history of violence. A house that seemed to promise more to come.
Chapter 11
Jvy
Joel’s incessant pacing made Ivy nervous. He marched from one end of the room to the other in the front parlor of Foster Hill House. The piano mocked them from the corner, its cleanliness once again emphasizing that the house was not as abandoned as most believed. Ivy could see Joel’s mind churning with possible explanations and many unanswered questions.
She still held the scrap of material from Gabriella’s dress, rubbing it back and forth between her index, middle finger, and thumb. But her focus was on the piano music. While a conversation from long ago flooded her memory, she was reluctant to bring it up. Especially with Joel, who would share the memory. It would only bring life to the past neither of them had mentioned.
Joel stopped before the piano, his hands at his waist and his coat shoved back. He stared down at the keys, then his hand reached out and a finger followed the notes on the yellowed sheet music. His shoulders raised in a deep sigh, and when he spoke, he didn’t turn around.
“Do you remember?”
Ivy almost didn’t hear him, his voice was so low. It took a different tone altogether than the one he’d used up until now. This time it was personal. Intimate. She couldn’t answer. Instead, Ivy crossed her arms, her wool coat stretching over her back with the movement. The window was a very good place to focus her attention, along with the gray and damp woods beyond.
“Andrew and his Beethoven?” Joel’s question raised bumps along Ivy’s skin. He had neared her and reached out to touch one of her curls. “Dark like coffee,” he’d always said. Only he didn’t say it now. He was quiet, as if waiting for her to answer. How could she? This was what she’d avoided for years. The memories, the feelings, the pain.
Ivy hugged her arms around herself tighter and pulled away so that the curl slipped from Joel’s hand.
“He loved his music.” Joel wouldn’t stop.
Ivy walked away from him and pressed her forehead against the cloudy, dirty windowpane. It was cool against her skin.
“Yes,” she whispered. Grief was fast to sweep over her. The same grief she witnessed with almost every death since Andrew’s. With every stroke of her pen as she wrote the stories of the ones who’d passed away in Oakwood. Remembering anyone and everyone but Andrew. Their stories must be kept alive, remembered, because she understood what it was like to see a loved one forgotten. No one seemed to remember Andrew. Even her father avoided all reminiscing of him. He had faded into the annals of time, until now. But Ivy didn’t want to remember Andrew with Joel. Never with Joel.
Joel cleared his throat. “Do you remember the time Andrew said he heard Beethoven coming from this house?”
Of course. She’d recalled that memory the night of her attack, though now she couldn’t avoid it. Ivy turned, and Joel’s gaze slammed into her. “We told him he was crazy.”
Joel nodded. “That we did.”
They shared a long look, laden with sorrow and the unspoken words that hung between them since the day Joel abandoned her in her grief.
Joel grimaced. “It wasn’t fair. Andrew heard music in everything, but we should have believed him.”
Ivy brushed past Joel to the piano. She lifted the sheet music from its stand. “It wouldn’t have changed anything. He still would have died.” Ivy leveled a glare on Joel. “You still would have left.”
“Ivy—” Joel’s jaw clenched. He stepped toward her, but she whirled away from him and slapped the music back into place.
“All Andrew’s observation tells us now is that someone has been using this house for well over a decade. Maybe random vagabonds.”
“Random doesn’t fit the fact it’s Beethoven, and the same melody Andrew told us about twelve years ago.” Joel’s voice switched back to a distant professionalism.
Ivy hid a shuddered sigh. Good. They were always a fair team at concocting a balance between her creative thinking and Joel’s logical frame of mind. This was much safer.
“The facts. We need to list them.” Joel traced a path across the floor to stand beside her. Ivy moved to her left to avoid even the feeling of warmth from his body.
“We know Gabriella was here, in Foster Hill House, for some reason. We know she recently had a baby. We know she was strangled,” Ivy began. She brushed a cobweb from the candelabra that sat atop the piano.
Joel nodded. “You were almost strangled.”
Ivy swallowed. The memory was raw. “I was. But he pushed me down the stairs as opposed to stuffing me in a tree.”
“Why didn’t he bury Gabriella? Why try to fit her into the trunk of a dead oak? He had to know someone would find her.”
Ivy nodded and turned toward Joel, capable of controlling her emotions once again. “Maybe he was in a hurry. It was unexpected. He hadn’t planned on killing her?”
Joel curled his lip and shook his head. “We’re assuming it was a he who murdered Gabriella.”
Ivy fiddled with the button at the cuff of her dress sleeve. “Well, it was a he who tried to kill me. I would say the odds are high there’s one person we’re facing rather than two potential killers. In that case, then, he’s male.”
“That’s a safe assumption. What further evidence do we have?”
Ivy knew Joel’s question was rhetorical, that he was thinking out loud. She could see the gears of his mind turning, calculating and compartmentalizing. She was eager to assist.
“The piano.” Ivy glanced toward it. “It’s obvious it has been somewhat cared for—at least the keys kept clean. And the sheet music is the same as what Andrew heard years ago.”
“Someone has a penchant for Beethoven. And Dickens, assuming you’re correct about the book you saw.”
Ivy started for the doorway of the parlor.
“Where are you going?”
She called over her shoulder, “I’m going back upstairs. I did see the book. If whoever attacked me moved it, but didn’t take it from the house, then it’s still here. And if it is, we need to find it. Gabriella may have written about her baby in it, and that is the most critical fact right now. We haven’t explored the attic yet, and we should.” Ivy pulled her skirts up with her hand and began to ascend the stairs.
Joel followed her. “I’m coming with you.”
“I wasn’t holding out hope that you’d let me go alone.” Ivy rolled her eyes at the empty hallway that greeted her at the top of the stairway.
“Why does that offend you?” Joel’s voice was incredulous, but Ivy didn’t look behind her to read his expression.
“Because you’re implying I am helpless,” Ivy mumbled, hiking down the hallway. She reached the door at the end of the hallway and stared up into the dark void of the attic.
“You did almost die here.”
Ivy bit back a yelp but couldn’t hold back a flinch as Joel’s words whispered eerily into her ear, awakening the fear she’d been attempting to suppress.
“Stop it!” Spinning around, she made a move to push him away with her hands.
Joel took hold of her raised forearms and drew them against his chest. His blue eyes speared hers.
“I am not a monster, Ivy Thorpe.”
She stiffened, tugging on her arms. “I never said you were.”
“Can we set the past aside?”
Was he sincere? Frustration boiled inside her, making her bite her lip until she tasted blood. “Set it aside?” Ivy regretted the tremor in her voice. Like an old pair of shoes? That cavalier? Joel’s thumbs stroked her hands as he gripped her wrists. She tugged against his hold again.
“I know we have history, Ivy, but can we move forward instead of holding past regrets so close?”
Ivy tipped her head in disbelief. “Yes. Certainly. We shall toss away the years of silence, the fact you left me alone to tell Andrew goodbye. That you, the poor orphan boy with no family, pretended to be part of us and then left without a backward glance, as if the Thorpes meant nothing to you. That you didn’t save Andrew!”
The last words hissed through clenched teeth. She didn’t have tears; she didn’t even have grief now. It was anger, pure and just. Ivy wrestled her wrists free and stumbled backward.
Joel worked his jaw back and forth. His eyes narrowed, his expression hardened. “You have always been so sure of yourself. That you were always right and that you had a complete grasp of the circumstances.”
The icy words were not what Ivy expected, and they did not cool her fury.
“Shall we go up?” She waved at the stairs. They were at an impasse. She needed space from the conversation. He riled her emotions, and she had precious little patience for emotions.
He extended his arm as if to say carry on. His movement made the unseen wall between them even higher. Their footsteps matched as they climbed the stairs to the attic. Ivy could hear Joel’s breathing was controlled, but not at all rhythmic. He was angry too. He always breathed that way when angry. She tightened her hold on her dress, lifting the hemline so she didn’t step on it.
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