The Caretakers

by Maxwell, Eliza

  It’s the minibar that drags her from the car.

  With a stretch and a sigh, she takes her suitcase out of the trunk and walks toward the light.

  An annual quilters’ convention has her tossing the same suitcase back into the trunk and slamming the lid a few moments later.

  “What the hell do quilters need to convene about anyway?” she complains to no one, then recalls the quilt her mother made for her that’s folded neatly over her bed in her empty apartment. “Sorry, Mom,” she mumbles, sending a quick glance upward.

  And now she feels like an ass.

  What is she doing, sitting in the parking lot of a hotel with no vacancies, growing more frustrated by the minute? She’s chasing her tail, running from the still smoldering ruin of her life. Running from everything and everyone.

  Even Margot. She finally had a chance to reconnect with the most important person in her life, and she’s run to the middle of nowhere just to avoid the conversations they need to have.

  She is an ass. The world’s biggest ass.

  Tessa jams the key into the ignition and cranks it harder than she needs to. The engine roars to life.

  She should go home.

  Not to her empty apartment in Brooklyn. In a burst of clarity, Tessa sees it for what it’s always been. A place to sleep between her working hours.

  She should go to her real home. To her mom’s farmhouse. To her twin sister.

  Her hand creeps up and touches the brass key on the chain her mother slipped onto her neck so long ago.

  “Let it remind you that you always have a home to come to, no matter how far life takes you.”

  Tessa hopes that’s true. But maybe it’s just a string of pretty words. Tessa’s not sure she can tell the difference anymore.

  23

  KITTY

  Dreaming. Waking. Kitty’s not sure she can tell the difference anymore.

  What rest she does manage to get, fitful though it is, ends with the faint and muffled sound of sobbing. Kitty’s eyes flutter open and she stares into the dark that fills the space between herself and the ceiling, ears pricked.

  She waits.

  Nothing.

  Was it a dream? A misplaced memory back to plague her, like a child bent on mischief, poking at her with a pointed stick? The possibility isn’t so bothersome as the thought that the tears were real, shed in the dead of night with no one to hear but Kitty in her sleep-addled state.

  She listens closer.

  Still nothing.

  With a deep sigh, dredged from the marrow of her bones, she slides from beneath the covers. Sleep won’t be back, not for a while yet. Another sacrifice on the altar of age.

  She shuffles lightly toward the kitchen, careful not to disturb her siblings. The soft chuff of the refrigerator door would give her away, but no one is awake to hear. Not bothering with a spoon or fork, she breaks off a small portion of cold apple pie to nibble on.

  If Deirdre notices, Kitty will just blame it on Aiden.

  A flash outside the window catches her eye, and her hand stills, the bit of pie suspended halfway to her mouth. She leans over the sink to peer into the darkness. There it is again.

  A visitor? At this hour? It’s not Aiden. He returned from his walk long ago. Her eyes move to check the clock on the wall.

  The light flickers through the trees, then turns away from the cottage, toward the big house.

  Kitty pops the bit of pie in her mouth, licks her sticky fingers, then turns to find her shawl.

  With unhurried steps, in her nightgown and slip-on garden shoes, she makes her way down the trail toward Fallbrook. The moon is bright, and subtle shadows filter through the branches overhead, but Kitty could find her way blindfolded.

  The forest thins, revealing the familiar sight of the empty house. The only thing out of place is the twin glare of headlights. Another person might be wary, but Kitty is relieved by the undeniably real sound of an engine and the soft thud of a car door. Her ghosts have never shone lights through the woods before, and she’s glad to see they haven’t taken up the practice.

  A distinctly corporeal figure moves in the shadows around the car with no hint of stealth. The trunk opens, and Kitty moves closer.

  She’s standing next to the car, watching curiously, when Tessa Shepherd closes the trunk, then lets out a piercing scream that startles a gasp from Kitty.

  Tessa manages to slap a hand across her mouth and stifle the sound.

  “My goodness, you scared me,” Kitty says, clutching the shawl near her throat.

  “Kitty?” Tessa’s panicked breath slows and she lets out a choked sort of laugh. “Jesus, I didn’t hear you walk up. What are you doing out here so late?”

  “I could ask you the same thing,” Kitty points out. “An odd hour for another visit, isn’t it?”

  The young woman’s eyes slide away from hers, and she glances about as if searching for an answer.

  “Honestly? I don’t know what I’m doing here,” Tessa admits, raising her hands, then letting them drop. “I got kicked out of my room at the bed-and-breakfast, and I was in the car, headed for home, but when I should have turned right, I felt myself taking a left.”

  She meets Kitty’s eyes again, her gaze full of unanswered questions.

  “Have you ever had that sense that there’s someplace you need to be? Like you’ve forgotten to turn off the stove and your subconscious is telling you to go home and check before you burn the house down?”

  Kitty shrugs. “I’ve never had much need for a subconscious. I have Dee for that. If there’s somewhere I’m supposed to be, she’s not likely to let me forget it.”

  One corner of Tessa’s mouth lifts. “Sisters.”

  “Were you staying at Bracknell Lodge?” At Tessa’s nod, Kitty’s brows draw tightly together. “And Maddie Coburn kicked you out? Why in the world would she do such a thing?”

  Tessa’s face goes blank in the way Aiden’s does when Kitty asks him something he’d rather not answer.

  “It’s a long story,” she says, the words tumbling from her lips in a rush. “I was thinking maybe I’d sleep here . . . If no one would mind, that is.”

  “Here?” Kitty’s eyes widen. She looks Tessa up and down, then turns to look at the crumbling remains of the big house, still illuminated in the glare of headlights. Kitty is used to the place. It’s a part of her life in the same way an extra limb might be. There’s nothing about it that scares her, including the occasional ghost, but even she can’t imagine bunking down beneath what’s left of that roof.

  “It’s crazy, isn’t it?” Tessa says, reading the thoughts on her face. “I know. Completely insane. I should just sleep in the car.”

  Kitty shrugs. “I suppose you own the place now. It’s yours to do with as you like, and I doubt the walls are going to cave in overnight. But I can’t guarantee you won’t wake up covered in spiderwebs and bird poop.”

  “You’re right,” Tessa says. “Of course, you’re right. I’m sorry. I . . . I get caught up in things, I guess.” She shakes her head. “My sister would say I’ve lost my mind.”

  “Would you listen?” Kitty asks, genuinely curious.

  Tessa smiles, but there’s a sadness in it. “Not when I was younger,” she says. “But I’m not sure I’m the same person I was then. Our choices . . . they can change us, can’t they?”

  Kitty tilts her head and studies this woman with the wistful note in her voice.

  Imogene’s daughter.

  Kitty knows that look. It’s the look of a person who’s lost something and is casting around to find it again. It’s the look of a woman who would give everything she owns to speak to her mam one more time.

  “What choices have you made that changed you?” Kitty asks gently.

  Tessa closes her eyes. A pained expression crosses her face. “It’s a long story,” she says again, but this time the words are slower. Whatever is hiding behind them has a hold on her, and it won’t let go.

  “I’ve got nowhere e
lse to be. Come on,” Kitty says, nodding toward the porch, bathed in indirect light. “Let’s sit and you can tell me about it.”

  Tessa hesitates, but Kitty doesn’t. She walks toward the steps and lightly brushes off a place for the two of them to sit, then settles herself down with a groan for her aching joints.

  She glances up at the younger woman, who hasn’t moved, and pats the place beside her. “I won’t bite.”

  This pulls a small smile from Tessa. She gives in and walks around to the driver’s side of the car. Quiet overtakes them and darkness follows as she turns off the ignition and kills the lights.

  Tessa takes a seat by her side as their eyes slowly adjust to the darkness.

  Eventually, Tessa begins to talk and Kitty listens. She’s a good listener.

  Imogene’s daughter tells her about her job as a documentary filmmaker, a life that sounds glamorous and exotic to a woman who’s spent her days comfortably ensconced on a patch of earth as familiar as the lines on her own face.

  As the tale of Oliver Barlow unfolds, Kitty sits rapt, as she once would for her mam’s stories. Tessa’s words, though, don’t have the buffer of time and distance that her mother’s anecdotes of the old country had.

  This is no fairy tale.

  Her heart aches for the poor, innocent Valerie. And for the heavy burden of guilt that has Tessa straining under its weight. Even for the angry policeman and the pain he’s enduring for his sins.

  “Back when this started, I told myself I was doing a good thing,” Tessa says. “I was fighting for justice for a man the system had wronged. I patted myself on the back when he was released, and let other people do the same.”

  She stares off into the distance, her face bathed in starlight. “I was so obsessed, so driven. Once I made up my mind, I never considered I might be wrong. That I might be one of the bad guys.”

  She turns and looks at Kitty. “I’d made mistakes before. Lost things because of it. People who mattered. But this time, a girl lost her life.”

  Tessa shakes her head. “Oliver claims he’s coming for me, and the police want answers I don’t have. But I don’t know anything, and the truth is . . . the truth is, I don’t trust my own judgment anymore.”

  She casts a long, searching look over her shoulder to the house at their backs.

  “Whatever secrets live here, no matter how terrible, they’re no threat to me. Not like what’s waiting out there. I just . . . I can’t help but feel like this is where I’m supposed to be.”

  Kitty’s not sure what to say to that.

  Tessa smiles ruefully. “You don’t look convinced.”

  “No,” Kitty says, shaking her head. “But . . . well, you might feel differently if you knew the whole story. I’m not sure Fallbrook is a place anyone is supposed to be. It hasn’t been for a long time.”

  She can feel Tessa’s eyes on her, her curiosity reaching tentatively into the silence between them. “What happened here, Kitty?” Her voice is soft now. A voice for a church service. But no one would worship at this house.

  Kitty searches for a way to answer her question. Images tumble through her head, but they’re haphazard. Out of order. The Cooke children and the Donnellys. Mam. The second Mrs. Cooke, forever an outsider. The baby she never wanted.

  And Lawrence Pynchon. His arrival was a lit match to a slow-burning fuse, creeping closer to an irrevocable finish.

  She thinks too of Deirdre. Then strangely, the sounds of sobbing she’d woken to.

  Could it have been?

  How to put into words the enormity of it all?

  Kitty opens her mouth without any real idea of an answer. The simplicity of what comes from her lips surprises even her.

  “A family came to an end.”

  There’s more, of course. So much more, but nothing so important as that.

  24

  TESSA

  There’s more. There has to be more, but it’s late and Kitty is tired. Tessa insists on walking her home.

  “Don’t be silly,” the older woman says. “I could find my way in my sleep. And you’ll only have to walk back on your own.”

  Tessa holds up the flashlight she retrieved from the trunk of her car.

  “Always prepared,” she says brightly, though in truth, she’s not looking forward to a solitary trek back through the trees, even a short one.

  “I wish you’d reconsider.” Kitty offered their sofa, but Tessa was unwilling to impose on the elderly siblings. Bad enough to deal with the upset of a new landlord at this point in their lives. She won’t add to an awkward situation by forcing herself on them as a houseguest too.

  “Don’t worry about me,” Tessa assures her. “I’m fine sleeping in the car.”

  But Kitty looks doubtful. “If you’re worried about Dee, she won’t mind. I know she comes across as standoffish, but she wouldn’t want you curled up in that tiny little car of yours. Mam would roll over in her grave at that kind of hospitality.”

  Tessa is touched by her concern. She leans closer. “Then we probably shouldn’t tell either of them,” she says in a whisper. “Now let’s get you home.”

  Tessa carefully studies the path through the woods, ranging over it with the beam of her flashlight. She doesn’t want to lose her way when she returns without Kitty as a guide.

  The woodland sounds are louder here, a bit closer. A bit more real.

  “Kitty?” Tessa asks.

  “Hmm?”

  “Does anything live in these woods that I should look out for?” she asks, despite her earlier bravado.

  “Oh no,” Kitty says with a wave of her hand. “Nothing to worry about. There’s the occasional black bear, of course, but we haven’t seen one in a few years.”

  Tessa’s eyes widen and her gaze swivels toward Kitty. Her foot catches on a root, and she stumbles but manages to right herself without falling on her face or dropping the light.

  Kitty places a hand on Tessa’s arm to steady her. “Careful there.”

  “Bears?” Tessa strives for a casual tone with questionable success.

  “Oh no, not right now,” Kitty says. “We’d have seen tracks and other signs if there was one near, but not a whisper of any lately. And Aiden would know. Sometimes I think he only came home because he missed these woods so much.”

  “Is Aiden older or younger?” Tessa asks. Anything to move the subject past bears.

  “He’s the oldest, then Deirdre, then me. But Aiden joined the merchant marines when he was younger. Traveled all over. Broke Mam’s heart when he left. I still have the postcards. I don’t know how this place can hold much appeal after the things he’s seen, but I guess you’re never too old to come home.”

  Her mother’s brass key sits warm against Tessa’s chest. She unconsciously reaches up to touch it.

  “Here we are,” Kitty says, and Tessa glances around them. Tucked into a clearing and bathed in moonlight sits a little stone house with ivy climbing the walls.

  “Oh,” Tessa says. “This is lovely.” She’s not sure what she expected, but this little cottage could have been transported straight from the pages of a children’s picture book.

  In the stories, a house like this invariably has a witch living in it. But Tessa has always had a soft spot for the witch. Obviously, tossing children into an oven is bad, but Hansel and Gretel’s parents should have taught them not to eat other people’s houses, even when they’re made of cake. It’s rude.

  “Are you sure you won’t sleep here, Tessa?” Kitty asks.

  “No, thank you,” she says, holding back a smile. “But it’s a kind offer.”

  The cottage hardly looks big enough to hold three people, much less an unexpected guest.

  “Okay, but wait a minute before you go back. I have something for you.”

  Unbidden, Tessa conjures an image of an old woman offering a glossy red apple, polished to a shine. Kitty’s figure moves up the steps, then disappears behind a heavy wooden door with cast iron fittings.

  Tessa yawn
s. Exhaustion is catching up with her. Even the seats in her car sound welcoming right now.

  Kitty reemerges from the storybook cottage. Somewhat to Tessa’s disappointment, there’s no sign of a poisoned apple. But then, Tessa’s no Snow White. Instead, Kitty offers her a blanket, which Tessa accepts with grateful thanks.

  Anything less would be rude.

  25

  Something skitters across her path on the way back to Fallbrook, but Tessa isn’t frightened by small, skittery things.

  “They’re more afraid of you than you are of them,” her dad would say. Which is fine and good, until she’s up against something, or someone, with no fear of her at all. Someone with nothing left to lose.

  What then, Dad?

  Fallbrook stands as silent and still as Tessa left it, outlined against the night sky. A painting with nothing but blues and blacks, and a few touches of moonlit silver.

  A familiar frisson of anticipation travels up her spine. Tessa gives herself over to it, gladly letting it blot out thoughts of Oliver and things she can’t change.

  The night has a chill, but with Kitty’s blanket draped across her shoulders Tessa barely notices.

  The beam of her flashlight seeks out the double front doors.

  She should get some rest. Shut and safely lock her car doors, then curl up and find whatever sleep she can manage. But curiosity is something Tessa is powerless against, and she has long since stopped trying to fight it.

  The door creaks as she pushes it open.

  More skittering, but Tessa’s steps are slow and light. She doesn’t want to frighten anything that’s taken shelter inside these walls. She’s the interloper here.

  Tessa walks as far as she’d come with Kitty earlier in the day and takes her time seeking out the nooks and crannies that she barely had a chance to register before. Old furniture, pieces too big to move, sit hidden and lumpy beneath dusty sheets.

  She walks farther, her beam traveling up the curved staircase, then down again to darkened doorways that line both sides of the room, tempting her to discover what waits down those hallways and around corners she hasn’t yet seen.

  But Tessa isn’t quite foolish enough to attempt a full exploration of the house, alone, with only a flashlight. She just wants a sip, a taste to slake her before she closes her eyes. Something, anything, to think about other than the problems she created.