“Meg? My Meg?” Right under her nose, and she hadn’t guessed. But it made total sense— hair so dark and auburn that it could have been dyed, skin that was pale, even the limited scope of Meg Henry’s world and the simplicity of her enthusiasm. There was her jumpiness at sudden sounds, and the poker she had been carrying that first day. She hadn’t been cleaning the fireplace— she had been frightened that Darden had found her out. And then there were the questions Meg asked, questions that came a bit too fast, seemed a bit too odd. Did you ever wish you had dark hair? Do you like your freckles? Do you worry about your biological clock? Do you have a boyfriend? Meg Henry wasn’t all that much more socially adept than Jenny Clyde.
“My Meg,” Casey repeated, embarrassed that she hadn’t seen then what seemed so obvious now. “But she hasn’t been my Meg for long,” she reasoned aloud. “Before me, she was Connie’s Meg. Clearly, Connie knew who she was.”
“Yes.”
“Did he hire her for that reason?”
“Yes. His longtime maid was retiring. Jenny knew how to cook, and she knew how to clean. He liked the idea of having her close.”
“Because she’s kin,” Casey said, and addressed another piece of the puzzle. “What’s the connection?”
“Your great-grandparents,” Jordan answered. “Their name was Blinn, and they were from Aroostook County, way north in Maine.”
“Blinn? As in Cornelius B.?”
Jordan nodded. “The senior Blinns had two daughters, Mary and June. The daughters were separated in age by more than a dozen years, and were never close. Mary was the older. She married Frank Unger, moved to Abbott, and gave birth to Connie. Years later, June married a local boy, Howard Picot, and gave birth to Jenny’s mother, MaryBeth. That made Connie and MaryBeth Picot first cousins. MaryBeth met Darden Clyde at a county fair, moved to Walker to marry him, and gave birth to Ethan, who died, and then to Jenny.” He took a breath, let it out. “That makes you and Jenny second cousins.”
Casey might have had trouble repeating the lineage, but she got the key points. Connie and MaryBeth Clyde were first cousins. Casey and Jenny were second cousins. Casey and Meg were second cousins. Amazing.
“But Connie was a visible guy,” she said. “Didn’t it occur to Darden that Jenny might take refuge with him?”
Jordan was quietly apologetic. “Connie might have been visible in your circles, but in Walker? They didn’t know the name Unger, and they didn’t know psychology. Besides, Darden thought Jenny was dead.”
Thought. Past tense. Casey didn’t want to think she might have changed that.
Setting the possibility of it aside for now, she said, “Connie hired Jenny, knowing she was his cousin. Did you come to work for him before or after that?”
“Before.”
“You got him to hire her?”
“I told him about her. He hired her himself.”
“How did he come to hire you?”
“Daisy’s Mum had been doing his plants for a while. I recognized his name on the roster and started doing the work there myself.”
“Why would you recognize the name, and not Darden?”
Jordan’s smile was dry. “I was a cop, and the son of a cop. I grew up hearing the kinds of background information most people never hear. When MaryBeth died and the trial took place, family names were the kind of trivia that we busied ourselves with. So I knew who and what Connie was. Then, when I came here and met him, he and I clicked.”
“Did he know where you were from and what your connection was to Jenny?”
“I told him. He was comfortable with it.”
“And you own the shop,” she said, unable to keep a thread of accusation from her voice.
Jordan nodded. “I bought it when I moved here.”
“From Daisy?”
“She wanted to work there without the responsibility of ownership.”
“You didn’t tell me you owned it.”
“You didn’t ask.”
No. She hadn’t asked. “Why did you buy it?”
“Because I love plants. Because I wanted a steady source of income. Because I needed to put down roots somewhere. Beacon Hill was a good place. Daisy’s Mum was a good fit.”
“But you’re an artist. I saw your work at your parents’ house.” She didn’t tell him she thought it was wonderful. She was still peeved to have been kept so completely in the dark. “How can you do both?”
“I plant by day and paint by night.”
“Where do you paint?”
“I have a studio upstairs.”
“And you sell your things?” In galleries in Boston and New York, his mother said.
“I also do illustrating.”
“Illustrating?”
“Of plants, for things like Audubon publications.”
Casey was thoroughly impressed. “Why didn’t you tell me you painted?”
“You didn’t ask.”
“Did you have to parade as a gardener?”
“I am a gardener,” he said without apology. “I love planting things and helping them grow.”
Casey had a sudden awareness. “The police station in Walker. All those vines. And the roses near the house. You did those!”
He turned hesitant. “The roses aren’t dead?”
“Not at all. The ivy could probably use a pruning.” When he seemed relieved, she asked, “Haven’t you gone home to look?”
“Not lately.” He sat back, the image of resignation. “You met my dad. What do you think?”
Casey smiled. “I adore your mom.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Diplomatically, she said, “I think that you and your dad are very different people.”
“That’s for sure. He wouldn’t be pleased if he knew my part in Jenny’s escape.”
“Not even all these years later?”
“No. He’s a by-the-rules kind of guy.”
“But Jenny escaped Darden. Wouldn’t he appreciate that?”
Jordan gave a doubtful shrug.
“Did you write the journal?” Casey asked.
“No. Connie did.”
“Connie.” She hadn’t suspected that. “When? Why?”
“When Jenny— Meg— came to work for him, she was still edgy and unsure. He wanted to help her without actually treating her as a client, so he encouraged her to write out her story, but she wasn’t a writer. She couldn’t fill blank pages. So Connie agreed to do the writing himself if she told him her thoughts. She got into that. Connie may have held the pen, but the words are mostly hers.”
“But you worked with Connie on the section about you.”
“Yes.”
“Did he ever consider having it published?”
“No. He considered it confidential. It was therapeutic for Jenny. Once the whole thing was down on paper, she could let it go.”
Casey understood that. Journaling had come into vogue as a therapeutic tool for just that reason. Still, she was disappointed thinking about the letter C and the note Connie had scrawled. If he had written the journal himself, they might have been notes to himself.
“Did he mean for me to see the journal?” she asked now.
“He never mentioned it to me. But if he left it in his desk, I’d say he did. Connie didn’t do things by chance.”
“He died by chance,” Casey pointed out. “He didn’t plan that. He didn’t have advance warning. It was a sudden, massive heart attack. There was no history of heart problems.”
Coming forward, Jordan put his elbows on his knees, linked his hands, and smiled sadly. “There was, Casey. He had a mild heart attack before I ever knew him, and he hadn’t been feeling well in the months before his death. Ruth knew, although I doubt anyone else did. He put up a good front, then kind of sagged when he got home. I saw him at home, so I knew. He sensed what was coming. He left his affairs neatly arranged.”
Casey felt an odd relief. She did want to think that he had deliberately left the beginning of the journal in hi
s desk drawer for her to find. That did, though, remind her of Jordan’s concern when she had shown up there earlier that evening. Connie had written, How to help?
She sighed. In a cautious voice, she asked, “Have I messed up bad?”
Jordan didn’t answer— which, as far as she was concerned, was an affirmation loud and clear.
“Meg’s in danger?”
He shrugged. “Don’t know. Darden’s living with another woman now. Maybe he won’t care.”
“Fat chance,” Casey declared. “Pathological people don’t just let go. He’ll come after her if only to let her know that he’s still in charge. He’ll stalk her. He’ll lurk in the shadows. He’ll intimidate her to the point that all the progress she’s made will be reversed.” She’s kin. How to help? “She told me she lives on the flat of the hill. Is it a safe place?”
“There’s no doorman, but the front door is locked.”
“Well, that’s lovely,” Casey muttered sarcastically. “He just has to wait nearby until someone else opens the door, then slip in with a smile, saying he’s visiting his daughter. No one’ll suspect that a man his age is a threat. Aeeeyyyy.”
“He won’t get to Meg’s place unless he learns her name. Meg Henry means nothing to him.”
“Casey Ellis does. I introduced myself by name any number of times. I said I was from Boston.”
“The phone book will give him the address of your condo, but there’s nothing to connect the condo with the townhouse, and the townhouse is where Meg works.”
Casey swallowed. She squeezed her eyes shut in a telling way.
Jordan understood. “Ah, Christ,” he murmured.
Without opening her eyes, Casey said, “I gave my business card to the editor of the newspaper. It’s my brand-new business card, the one I just did up at Kinko’s with the address of my brand-new office.” She opened her eyes and wailed softly, “I was trying to help. I didn’t know where Little Falls was, so I went looking, and I didn’t know Jenny was supposed to have died”— she stared hard at Jordan—“because I hadn’t been privy to the last set of pages.”
“Hey, it’s not my fault. I didn’t know he was leaving any pages for you to see. When he gave the last chapters to me, I assumed he was breaking the journal up for safekeeping. He never told me I was holding them for you.”
“And I didn’t ask what you had and what you knew,” Casey droned. Bending forward, she pressed her face to her knees. “I wanted to help— I mean, really wanted to help. He’d never asked me for anything before. I wanted to do it right.” Sitting up again, she gave Jordan a dismal look. “I have a way of messing things up. I act without thinking. We’re talking mega-impulsive. There I was, up in that luncheonette, asking in a big loud voice how they could be sure Jenny was dead if there was no body. I suggested she might have been carried downstream, gotten out, and walked away. I asked who might have given her haven. When they asked if I thought she was still alive, I said yes in my big loud confident voice. So where does that leave us?”
“On alert,” Jordan replied.
“Maybe no one will tell Darden,” she said hopefully, but his expression told her otherwise.
“Talk of your visit will spread around town, but so will talk of Darden going on the warpath. If my dad hears that, he’ll call.”
“Does your father know Jenny’s alive?”
“No. But he knows she was the reason I left. He’ll put two and two together— the timing and all— and he’ll call. For whatever faults I found with his style of law enforcement, I never questioned his smarts.”
“Then we just wait?”
“Not much else to do right now.”
“Do we tell Jenny?”
He thought about that for a minute. “Not yet. There’s no sense in frightening her.”
“She’ll hate me.”
“No. She adores you. Right from the beginning, she was telling me how smart and sweet and beautiful you are.” He paused. “I didn’t argue with her.”
Casey felt a melting inside. When he looked at her that way, sexy and knowing, he was her gardener again. But now she knew he was much more— entrepreneur, artist, savior of Jenny Clyde. Casey needed time to process it all.
She looked away. Seconds later, she glanced at her watch. It was nearly eight, still light outside Jordan’s window, but growing mellow as the sun lowered. She felt a sudden urge to be in her garden. She needed the comfort it would give her.
But she couldn’t get herself to go home yet. Another urge was even stronger.
Rising, she said quietly, “I have to visit my mom.”
Jordan was just as quickly on his feet. “I’ll take you.”
“No need. My car’s right outside.”
“So’s mine.”
“But what if someone calls to warn you about Darden?”
He pulled a cell phone from his pocket. It was smaller and far more high-tech than hers.
“Ah,” she said. “I should have guessed. Do you always carry that?”
He nodded.
She thought of the times they had stood so close that clothing was pressed to near nothing. “I never felt it,” she remarked.
He stared at her. You were too busy feeling other things, she could all but hear him say.
With a growing warmth on her cheeks, she turned toward the door.
Jordan guided her down the stairs and out a back door to the Jeep. Part of her wanted to ask if he didn’t have a luxury car stashed away along with all of his other secrets. The other part of her, though, was content with the Jeep. Entrepreneur, artist, gardener— it fit him.
He negotiated the traffic skillfully, knowing just where he was going. When he pulled up in front of the nursing home without a word of direction from her, she said, “Do you deliver the flowers from Connie yourself?”
“Sometimes. But I’ve never met your mother, if that’s what you’re asking.”
It was. Casey was thinking back to the discussion they’d had on a bench in the Public Garden, when she had first told him about Caroline. He had been genuinely sympathetic. He had asked appropriate questions. Nothing he’d said would have been inconsistent with his knowing Caroline’s situation. He might have indeed put those flowers on Caroline’s dresser himself, even talked with her, and still his questions would have been apt.
Casey opened the door and slid out of the Jeep. When she turned back to thank him for the ride, he was already rounding the car. Putting a light hand at her back, he guided her to the steps, and she didn’t object. She had been here many times with friends when Caroline had first been injured. The closest of Caroline’s Providence friends still came from time to time, and Brianna still came with her once in a while. But once in a while wasn’t now, and Brianna wasn’t Jordan. When she was with someone, a link to the living world, the ache inside her wasn’t so bad.
Casey smiled at the woman at the front desk and continued up the stairs with Jordan by her side. She waved at the night nurse on the third floor, and went on down the hall. When she paused on the threshold of her mother’s room, it had nothing to do with Jordan being with her, and everything to do with the IV drip, the oxygen tube, and the heart monitor. These were new.
“Oh God,” she whispered softly.
“When did you talk with the doctor last?” he asked.
“This afternoon while I was driving back from Maine. Seeing it’s something different, though.”
“Should I wait outside?”
She shook her head no. She wanted him with her. The hollow inside would be devastating if she was alone.
Caroline had her back to the door. Casey rounded the bed, switching on the small bureau lamp as she went. It illuminated a sweet bouquet of apricot roses. She touched them to show Jordan that she appreciated them, then went the rest of the way to be by her mother’s side. She kissed Caroline, but it was a minute before she was able to work her mother’s free hand out from under the sheet. It felt cooler than usual. Sitting on the edge of the bed, Casey warmed it agai
nst the knot in her throat.
Swallowing down the knot, she forced a brightness into her voice that she didn’t feel. Caroline’s eyes were still half open, which meant she hadn’t settled in to sleep for the night. “Hey, Mom. How’re you doing?” When Caroline didn’t respond, she said on a hopeful note, “You’ve given the doctors a scare. But the IV must be doing the trick. Your breathing’s no worse.” It was no better either— a low rasp through faintly parted lips— but Casey continued to keep her voice light. “I brought you a guest. He’s a friend of mine.” She tacked on a whispered, “I think,” and glanced up at Jordan.
He hunkered down by the side of the bed so that he might be in Caroline’s line of sight. “Definitely. Hi, Ms. Ellis.”
“Caroline,” Casey corrected.
“Caroline.”
“College graduation was the cutoff point. After that, she wouldn’t respond to my friends unless they called her by her first name. She wanted to be considered their friend, too. Didn’t you, Mom?” When Caroline offered nothing more than that low rasp in and out, Casey scolded, “You have to say hello back.”
After a prolonged silence, Casey let out a breath of her own. Heartbreak collided with frustration, producing a spark of annoyance. “Jordan worked for Connie. He designed the garden at the townhouse. It’s spectacular, Mom. So’s the art on Connie’s walls. His wife, Ruth, did a lot of it. She has a place in Rockport. I drove up there on Friday. She’s a very nice person.”
“Casey,” Jordan warned quietly.
She ignored him. “And then there’s Abbott. That’s the name of the town where Connie grew up. I was there this morning. Omigod, was it only this morning? I feel like an eon has passed since then. It was a hoot, Mom. I didn’t know which house was his, but I saw ones that might have been. I saw the ruins of the old shoe factory where his mother probably worked. And I saw where he went to school. It’s closed up now. The kids are bused.”
Casey felt Jordan staring at her. She glared back. “What? Is this wrong, Jordan? I’ve spent the last three years saying all sorts of sweet and positive things, and it hasn’t helped. Maybe this will.” She returned to Caroline. “Besides, you probably recognize me more this way, right, Mom? I was always challenging you. I was contrary more often than not. Jordan, here, is a more pleasing person.”
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