“She’s in shock,” Connor explained. “We have to do something to connect with her, and we have to do it fast.”
“Well, it won’t be yelling at her.” Willene stepped over the clothes and took Renata from Connor’s arms. She pulled her against her chest as she settled into a chair. With a gentle rocking motion, she moved back and forth. “Don’t you worry, child, everything’s going to be okay. Don’t worry. Willene will take care of everything.”
Connor stood up and retrieved the clothes. “We’d better call a doctor and the hospital. If we can’t reach her, we need to find someone who can.”
“She’ll be okay,” Willene said.
Connor looked at the cook and found tears streaming down her face. The harshness of the lamp cut furrows where the wrinkles touched her cheeks, heightening her age and fear.
“Wishes won’t make it true.” Connor almost choked on the lump in her throat. “Something happened in that room that pushed her over the edge.” Connor had not told the cook about the woman she’d seen in the mirror. Willene had enough to focus on with Renata.
“No,” Willene said, burying her face in the little girl’s curls. “She’s just upset. She’s going to be just fine.”
The horror of the night crept closer in the lamplit room. Connor felt her own control beginning to ravel. What had happened in that room? Instead of the images that came to mind, she thought of Clay. He was depending on her to handle things. She couldn’t give in to her own fears, not now. There was no one else to make the necessary decisions.
“Willene, we have to get Renata to someone who can help her. The longer she stays in this … condition, the harder it may be to bring her back. I don’t know what else to do.”
“The child needs some love and comfort,” Willene said, hunkering down over Renata. “That’s all. She shouldn’t have been in that water tonight. There wasn’t any need for that. None at all. When I find out what went on, someone’s going to pay.”
Connor picked up Renata’s flannel pajamas that Willene had dropped on the floor. “Let’s get her into some dry clothes and then we’ll decide what to do.”
As soon as Renata was changed, Connor picked up a dry towel and briskly dried her own hair. The time for a decision was upon her.
“I’m going to call Clay,” she said.
“No.” Willene’s voice was flat but strong. She held Renata in her arms, still rocking gently back and forth. “You can’t.”
Connor wrapped the towel around her head. “We’ve waited long enough. I have to call someone, and I’d rather let Clay make the decision where he wants Renata to go. She needs medical care.”
“The power’s out, and when that happens the phone goes, too,” Willene said. She sighed as she looked up at Connor. “I didn’t want to tell you, but I checked it earlier. The phone’s dead.”
“Great.” Connor felt her last link with help had been brutally severed. “Now what?”
“Renata’s going to be fine.” Willene straightened her back. “Let’s try to get some soup down her.” Willene eased Renata down into a chair as she stood up. “It won’t take but a minute.” She went to the refrigerator and got out a big pot. In a few minutes she had the gas burner on the stove flaring blue. “You look like you could use a little something hot yourself,” she said to Connor. “Why don’t you go change?”
“That sounds like a good …” Connor didn’t finish the sentence. To get to dry clothes, she had to go down that long hallway and up those stairs. Dry clothes weren’t worth it at the moment. “I’m fine.”
“You’re spooked.” For the first time in a while, Willene sounded like herself. “What happened in that room?”
“I saw someone else in the room with Renata,” Connor said. She found that she was whispering, even though the child seemed oblivious to everything going on around her.
“Someone in the room?” Willene was skeptical. “In this house? That’s not possible. Who would be at Oaklawn?”
“Maybe the same someone I’ve seen in the house in my room. The same someone who put a knife on the stairs for me to step on. Maybe the same someone those children have been seeing in the woods.”
“I didn’t think you believed in ghosts, Connor Tremaine!” Willene picked up a wooden spoon and went to stir the soup. “I think the child fell into the pool and the two of you got spooked and think you saw someone.”
The lamp cast eerie shadows about the room, and Connor shifted closer to the warmth of the stove and the light of the lamp. “I don’t believe in ghosts. There’s someone in this house. Someone real, and someone who may be extremely evil.”
“Connor! You’re talking nonsense. The woman Renata and Danny see in the woods claims to be Hilla Lassfolk, your own great-great-grandmother.” Willene’s spoon scraped along the bottom of the pot in a steady rhythm. “Now, that would make her a ghost.”
“The woman I saw tonight was real. As real as me or you or Renata.” Looking at the little girl sitting in a chair like a thrown-away rag doll, Connor wished she’d used another comparison.
“You could identify her?” Willene asked.
For a moment there was the hiss of the lantern and the scrape of the spoon. “I know her. Yes, I could identify her.”
“Tell me what you saw.” Willene lowered the flame beneath the soup. Her gaze on Connor was intense, upset.
“I heard Renata talking.” Connor hesitated as she looked at Renata. The child didn’t seem to hear anything they said. “I called Renata’s name. There was the sound of a struggle, then a splash. At first I thought Renata had fallen into the pool, but I saw the woman in the mirror. She could have pushed her.”
“Did you see anyone push her?” Willene’s voice was strained.
Connor started to speak, then stopped. “No, but …”
“What did you see, Connor?” Willene’s fingers were clenched on the spoon.
Connor couldn’t control the chattering of her teeth. She wasn’t cold, she was frightened. “When I got to that little hallway with all the mirrors, I looked up. I saw the woman who’d been in my room, standing behind us.”
“It couldn’t have been a reflection of yourself? Those mirrors were set up to give an illusion. Ms. Talla liked the way they echo, or that’s what she called it, an echo-image. She was always seeing things, too.”
“Stop it.” Connor turned away from the cook. “I don’t know why no one in this house wants to believe that I saw someone else here, but I did. And that someone almost drowned Renata.”
Willene banged the spoon on the side of the pot. “You saw …”
The shrill of the telephone ripped through the kitchen. Connor started forward, almost upsetting the lamp on the table. Before Willene could move across the room, Connor ran toward the telephone and picked it up.
“Is everybody there okay?” Sally’s worried voice came over the line. “A twister touched down off Tanner-Williams Road and plowed through three house trailers and that little corner grocery on the other side of the lake. Is everything okay at Oaklawn?”
Connor’s fingers were gripped tightly around the phone. “We’re fine, Sally. Do you have power?”
“Yeah, but we’ve over by Dawes. Is the power out at Oaklawn?”
“Yes.”
“Did you check the breakers? The box is on the back patio, just off the kitchen.” Sally made a humming noise as she thought. “I think Jeff’s up in his apartment. If you need him, he’ll come check things out for you.”
“That’s okay. We have a flashlight, and I can check the breakers.” Connor looked over at Willene, but the cook was busy ladling up two bowls of soup. “We’re fine here, Sally. Thanks for calling. Will you be in tomorrow?”
“Sure thing. Talk to you then.”
Connor replaced the phone. “Maybe a power surge just flipped the breakers,” she said, picking up the flashlight from the table. “Sally told me where the box is. I think I’ll take a look.”
“I hope that’s what it is,” Willene said,
putting a bowl of soup in front of Renata. “I think a little light would do a world of wonders for this youngun.”
Connor switched on the flashlight and left the warmth of the kitchen behind her as she stepped out into the hallway. The patio was just off the kitchen, and she played the light down the hall until it dropped off the edge of the porch. There was no one about that she could see. Feeling stupid and afraid, Connor forced her feet to move along the polished boards. No matter how she fought it, she couldn’t rid herself of the sense that someone was hiding nearby. Watching. Waiting for a chance to sneak up behind her.
She eased down the steps, onto the bricked patio. Most of the potted plants had been taken indoors—to the garden room, if Connor had to guess. It had the best light in the house. And as she remembered, the room had been warm, as if the heat had been left on during the night. In most of Oaklawn, the rooms grew chill when night touched down over the old house. But the garden room had been warm.
Swinging the light along the back wall of the kitchen, Connor passed over several wrought iron chairs that Old Henry was repainting. There was a birdbath and a giant wisteria vine, its twisted and gnarled branches as sinewy and thick as arms. She moved the light back to the left, finally picking up the metallic gray box that had to house the breakers. She walked quickly to it, her body registering a sense of relief.
In a moment she had the lid up. Four breakers at the bottom of the box were in the off position. It took both hands to switch them back over, but in the instant that they clicked into place, the patio sprang to life with a few well-placed lights.
Switching off the flashlight, Connor walked back to the kitchen. When she entered, Renata looked up at her. She was holding a spoon in her hand.
“It was just a breaker?” Willene’s face was split with a smile. “What a blessing. And look at Renata, she’s feeling much better now. I don’t know how breakers could affect the telephone, but that thing was dead earlier, so I just assumed that with the lights out, something had fallen on the lines.”
Connor put the flashlight on the table, her gaze still on Renata. “An amazing recovery.” She watched the young girl’s reaction to her words. Renata ignored her, lowering her attention back to the bowl of soup.
“Here’s yours,” Willene said, putting another bowl of soup on the table. “See? Everything is going to be fine here. There’s no need to call Clay or anyone else. Renata will be just fine.”
Connor sat down at the table. “How are you feeling, Renata?”
“I fell in, and you tried to hold me under.” Renata still held the spoon. A noodle hung half off the edge, balancing delicately above the bowl.
“Renata, I pulled you out.” Connor felt an unreasonable anger move over her. “Who was in the room with you?”
“I was alone. Until you came.”
“Connor, would you like some bread with that soup?” Willene interposed herself between them. She shifted her body so that Renata was completely obscured.
Connor stood up, her bare feet sticking slightly to the tile floor. “This is where we call Clay.” She picked up the telephone.
“Leave Daddy out of this,” Renata said, finally lowering her spoon, “or you’ll be sorry.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t place this call an hour ago. I thought the phones were dead.” She gave Willene a look.
“They were when I tried them.”
“If you call Daddy, you’re really going to pay.” Renata pushed her chair back from the table and stood up. “Why don’t you just leave Oaklawn, Connor? Why don’t you leave before something terrible happens?”
Connor looked at the girl, remembering what she’d said before she went in the pool. “I may burn in hell, but I’m going to call your father and get him out here,” she said. “Maybe he can get the truth out of you.”
Clay held Renata in his arms. She hiccupped occasionally, her face smothered against his chest.
“She held me underwater in the pool.” Renata burrowed harder against Clay.
“Easy, sweet, just take it easy.” Clay looked over the top of Renata’s curls to Connor’s worried face. Clay lifted both brows.
Connor paced the room, just as she’d done for the four hours it took Clay to drive from Emelle back to Oaklawn. Since her father entered the room Renata had started talking, insisting that it was Connor who’d tried to drown her. She denied that there was anyone else in the room with her.
For the last half-hour she’d been crying and hiccupping. There couldn’t possibly be another tear left in her, Connor thought. The tears were effective tools of manipulation, though. Clay crumpled before them, his own guilt worn bold in the anguish on his face.
“Why did you go down to that room?” Connor’s question, stiff with anger, cut across the soft sounds of Renata’s drying snuffles.
“I got the note you sent me asking to meet you there,” Renata answered.
“I’d like to see the note.” Connor knew she sounded hard. The evil stepmother. The cold woman without any feeling for her lover’s child. It was something off one of the horrible weekday scandal shows.
“I don’t have it,” Renata answered, her tears freshening. “I flushed it down the toilet, like you said for me to do.”
Connor paced in front of the fireplace. She knew better than to speak. Her eyes met with Clay’s and she felt his pain go through her like a sharp blade. He was torn between them, not wanting to believe that his daughter was capable of making up such a complex series of lies, not wanting to believe that Renata’s mind had created such a hellish accusation. Connor turned away from the suffering in Clay’s face and looked out the window. Clay was caught in a quandary with a lying she-devil of a child and a lover who was seeing strange women all over his house.
Dawn had broken, and the stormy night was giving way to a bleak winter gray. There would be no comfort from the outside, no relief by going to ride.
“Renata, honey,” Clay’s voice had a firm edge to it, “we’re going to have to get this straight. You can’t really believe Connor would hurt you.” Clay grasped her shoulders and lifted her until he forced her face out of hiding against his chest.
“I don’t know why she did it.” Renata’s wail was almost convincing. “I was waiting at the pool when she threw me in. She got in with me and held me under. I almost drowned.”
“Renata, I don’t believe a word of that.” All softness was gone from Clay’s voice. “Look at me and tell me what happened last night.”
Connor turned back to the scene. Renata stood in front of her father, her hair wild and tousled. She wore the red flannel pajamas Willene had dressed her in, and she looked her father straight in the eye.
In the far corner of the room, Willene drew in her breath.
“I want Connor to leave, Daddy. I don’t like her here. I know you and her do nasty things at night. I’ve heard you.”
Connor stepped forward, away from the window and toward Renata, but she was too late. Clay’s hand struck the child full across the face, a loud, echoing connection.
“Clay!” Connor cried.
“Mr. Clay, that’s enough!” Willene jumped forward from her corner, moving swiftly for a heavy woman.
But Clay had no intention of striking Renata again. The two, father and daughter, stood facing each other. If the slap hurt, Renata didn’t show k.
“You slapped me because I know what you do in the dark?”
“Sweet Jesus,” Willene said. She almost dropped to her knees, but she grabbed the back of a chair and held herself up.
Connor stood transfixed, caught in the emotional charge that hummed from Clay to Renata.
“I slapped you because you are a willful, manipulative child. You’ve done everything in your power to run Connor off, and now you’ll try to make me feel some kind of sick guilt because you’ve discovered that I love her.”
“Love her?” Renata’s smile was contemptuous. “At least Mother never pretended that she loved any of the men she f …”
�
�Say it and I’ll give you a beating you won’t forget.” Clay’s voice was level, controlled. “So you know what Talla was up to. That’s the one thing I would have spared you, Renata. I can see Talla didn’t care enough to be discreet.”
“Clay, let me put on a pot of coffee.” Connor’s body trembled with shock and emotion. She had to get out of the room.
“Let Willene make the coffee,” Clay said. “We have some things to discuss with my daughter. No one is leaving this room until we get to the bottom of some of the things that have been happening out here at Oaklawn.” Clay turned his attention for the first time from Renata and looked at the cook. “Please make us a pot of very strong coffee, Willene.” He looked pointedly at the door.
“Willene,” Renata’s voice rose, “don’t leave me.”
“You’re not afraid of your own father,” Willene said, but her voice broke in mid-sentence and she couldn’t hide her tears.
“Renata, take a seat.” Clay pointed to a chair. He went and got another for Connor and motioned her into a seat. “Now, let’s start with me and Connor. Then we’ll take up the issue of who was in my house last night and how she came to be here.”
Clay waited until Willene had closed the door. He turned to Connor. “This isn’t what I’d intended, but I was going to tell you this week. Forgive the circumstances, and I promise you, I’ll make it up to you.”
Connor felt as lost as Renata looked. They both stared at Clay. “I’m going to ask Connor to marry me, Renata, so that’s a piece of news you’d better learn to live with. She won’t be going anywhere, ever. Oaklawn will be her home, and she’ll be your stepmother, if she’ll have me as her husband.”
Connor heard the words; she understood their meaning, but she felt nothing. Both Clay and Renata were staring at her, waiting for an answer. All she could do was sit, hands folded in her lap, and stare at her fingernails. They needed to be manicured and shaped. Her hands were rough and callused, not exactly pretty hands, but honest hands. She’d always been able to control a horse with the gentlest touch.
Deception Page 28
