“Don’t blame Ruby. It wasn’t her fault.”
“Whose fault was it, then?” Kitty shouts.
He turns to look at her, and his whole being seems stitched together with sadness and grief.
“We both know the answer to that, even if you don’t want to see it, Kitty. It was mine.”
Her heart breaks all over again, and hearts are one of the few things Aiden can’t mend.
“No,” Kitty whispers, shaking her head. “That’s not true. It’s not. I remember.”
“It is true.” He takes her hand in his. “But Kitty, you need to understand, it’s not me that Deirdre lies for.”
Kitty’s throat feels thick and dry. She struggles to swallow against the awful, bitter taste in her mouth.
“She’s protecting me,” Kitty whispers. “She thinks you did it. She’s thinks I can’t handle the truth.”
He studies her, then sighs. “Do you really believe that? Can you think of a single time I gave Dee, or anyone, a reason to suspect I had something like that living inside of me?”
The puppies. The scruffy little mama dog, who gave birth to one too many pups to care for. It was Aiden who massaged his tiny body when he was born not breathing. Aiden who cared for him and kept him warm. Aiden who bottle-fed him when his brothers and sisters pushed him out of the way.
“No,” she says. “No.”
It was Aiden who stood, ostracized, in Everett Cooke’s study, accused of a crime he’d never have committed. It was Aiden who was betrayed.
As if he can read her thoughts, he says again, “Ruby’s not to blame, Kitty. Ruby was never to blame.”
But the memory is close and it’s raw. It hurts to recall, hurts like it was only yesterday.
A taste of wild blueberries lingers on her tongue. The basket in her hand is full, and Peter’s is too, despite the vast quantities they picked that never made it past their mouths. He’d found her. She was upset by one thing or another, and he begged her to join him in the woods.
As usual, he’s lifted her mood, and she’d like to return the favor.
Peter is six now, and he seems happier since the return of his sister from boarding school, but he’s still too quiet by half.
“Are you getting along with Mr. Pynchon okay?” she asks, though the man’s name sticks like a bone in her throat.
Peter shrugs. “He doesn’t pay much attention to me,” he says. “I think he likes Ruby a lot, though.”
Kitty doesn’t voice her thoughts on that. Not to Peter. But she too has seen the way the new tutor looks at Ruby, with her glossy auburn hair and the curve of her hips.
“Mam will make us a pie with these, Pete,” Kitty says instead, nudging his shoulder with hers. “Maybe even two.”
He smiles, but it falls from his face when he turns away, like it was there for her benefit alone. Kitty feels an overwhelming need to hug him tight, to pull a true smile from his face, one that lights him up all the way to his eyes.
Does she have some sense how gravely things are about to change?
The two of them emerge from the woods near the back of Fallbrook, and the sounds of raised voices reach her ears. One voice, to be exact.
Peter and Kitty come around the side of the house and stop short at the scene in front of them. Helena isn’t angry. She’s triumphant. A gorgon holding the stone head of the vanquished high in the air.
Her voice is the one that rings out, sharp and clear and cold, from her place at the top of the porch steps.
“Don’t think for a moment that I won’t send the police after you if you or your family choose to help yourself to any more of the silver, Mrs. Donnelly.”
Kitty’s eyes find Mam, whose shoulders are hunched. In her entire life, Kitty can’t recall seeing her cry, yet tears are coursing down her plump cheeks. Aiden stands with an arm protectively around her shoulders, the two of them with a pain in their eyes that Kitty has difficulty comprehending.
“Go on, now. You heard Mr. Cooke. You have until tonight, and not a minute more, and you should be grateful for that. I suggest you don’t waste time.”
Kitty’s eyes flash to Helena, who is stiffly mirroring their stance with her arm around Ruby’s shoulders. Ruby’s face is blank and drawn. She looks more like a beautiful statue than a human girl.
She appears to take no comfort in her stepmother’s embrace.
Deirdre emerges from the front door of Fallbrook, looking confused and disoriented.
She’s been in the upstairs parlor, the one that was converted to a schoolroom with the addition of Lawrence Pynchon to the household. Kitty can tell from the distracted, love-addled expression in her eyes. She’s come from a music lesson. With him.
Helena gives Deirdre an openly scornful glance when she appears behind her.
“You too, girl,” she says. “You’d best hurry and catch up. There’s no place for you here anymore.”
Deirdre lowers her gaze, but not before a searching glance in Ruby’s direction. Ruby doesn’t meet her eyes.
Peter bolts suddenly from Kitty’s side, around the corner of the porch to stand in the yard between the two groups of people.
“What’s happening?” he shouts. He turns to stare at Mam’s and Aiden’s retreating backs, but they don’t turn around, even though they must hear him. Mam’s shoulders hunch even lower than before, as if she’s taken an unexpected blow.
“Come along, Peter,” Helena says. She turns Ruby back toward the front door of Fallbrook, and Ruby goes where she leads.
Peter doesn’t move.
“Peter, I said come along,” Helena repeats, her voice sharper now. “This doesn’t concern you.”
Deirdre hurries down the steps, ignored by Helena now that she’s been dismissed. She kneels in front of Peter and hugs him tightly, then whispers something in his ear that Kitty can’t hear.
“I said now, Peter,” Helena barks.
From somewhere inside, the baby begins to cry. Awake from her nap, little Imogene has woken into a world that’s turned on its head.
Deirdre touches her forehead to Peter’s and nods through tears, then she stands and ushers him toward his stepmother’s waiting form.
Reluctantly he goes, but not before one last, longing glance over his shoulder.
Deirdre forces a smile, but Kitty knows her face. She won’t be able to hold back the sobs for much longer.
Frozen in place, Kitty can’t wrap her mind around what’s just happened.
Only when the front door of Fallbrook shuts resoundingly, with the finality of a church bell tolling at a funeral service, and Deirdre turns to follow Aiden and Mam, does Kitty find her voice.
“Dee,” she shouts, running after her. “What’s happened? What’s going on?”
She grabs her by the hands, but Deirdre’s given in to the sobs, and it’s hard to make sense of what she says. It takes a long time for Kitty to piece together what’s taken place.
“Mrs. Cooke accused Aiden of stealing,” Deirdre says, through tears and snot.
“No,” Kitty says. “Aiden would never.”
But Deirdre is shaking her head. “He admitted he had them,” she cries. “He says he found them and was returning them. The candlesticks. The silver ones from the dining room that belonged to the first Mrs. Cooke.”
Kitty goes cold.
“And it might have been okay. Mr. Cooke might have been talked around, but . . . but . . .”
“But what?” she demands. But Deirdre’s sobs are shaking her chest, and her words are hard to decipher.
“It was Ruby,” Dee finally says. “Ruby burst into the library, and she said Aiden did it. Aiden took the candlesticks, and . . . and . . . Mr. Cooke is throwing us out. We have to leave, Kitty.”
From somewhere inside the house, Lawrence Pynchon’s violin begins to play, and Deirdre gives herself over fully to the tears. Kitty can do nothing but hold her while she cries.
Her family.
Kitty is numb, her nerve endings burned away. Her family is
being thrown out of their home.
Aiden tosses a final rock into the pond. The biggest one, saved for last. It lands with a plunk. He brushes his hands against his pants before he sighs and takes a seat next to her on the grass. “Who was she crying for, Kitty?” Aiden asks by her side.
“For you,” Kitty insists. “For us. For all of us.”
“Are you sure about that?”
Kitty doesn’t know what to say. Doesn’t know what Aiden’s trying to say.
Except that she does know. Deep down, she knows.
“Not for him,” she whispers. “She wouldn’t cry for him.”
Aiden gives her a sad smile. “Fifteen sounds so young, doesn’t it? A child still, but those are the years when a girl’s heart first tests its wings, searching for a chance to fly.”
Kitty shakes her head, denying the words that have a haunting ring of familiarity.
“But Pynchon didn’t love her back,” she whispers. “He was a flirt, but there was only one girl who really caught his eye.”
“Only one girl,” Aiden agrees. “Ruby. And I was in the way of that. Until those candlesticks went missing.”
Kitty frowns, cocking her head to one side. She can imagine Lawrence Pynchon stealing the first Mrs. Cooke’s silver. Can even imagine him planting them somewhere Aiden would be blamed. But . . .
“What has that got to do with Dee?” she asks her brother.
Aiden shrugs. “Maybe nothing,” he says. “Or maybe a great deal. I believe Dee knows I didn’t take those candlesticks, Kitty. And I think she knows who did.”
Kitty shakes her head. “What are you saying?”
“What if, with one word, Deirdre could have prevented everything? It would have been Pynchon who was sent packing, branded as a thief. Just a word. But she didn’t.”
He’s leading her by the hand, one step at a time, toward a new version of the truth, one Kitty doesn’t want to see. But even with her eyes squeezed tight, she must follow the sound of his footsteps where they lead.
37
TESSA
Tessa raises her head at the echo of footsteps.
She stares at the door for a beat, then jumps up and pounds her fists against it.
“Help!” she cries, beating harder and faster. “Help me! I’m locked in!”
The sounds stop, and Tessa listens until they start again. Heavy footfalls are coming her way.
Too late it occurs to her that Margot’s footsteps wouldn’t sound like that. Nor the Donnelly sisters, with their light, shuffling gaits.
And Aiden Donnelly died seventy years ago. If he’s wandering around Fallbrook, he’s not wearing work boots.
Tessa backs away from the door, her heart beating almost as loudly as her fists were beating on the door.
Oliver.
He’s come for her. She thought she was safe here. Thought he couldn’t find her.
But she was wrong.
Tessa rakes her eyes around the room, searching frantically for anything she can use as a weapon. She has nothing but a phone with no signal and a black marker that’s nearly out of ink.
The slow steps are coming closer. She quickly debates the effectiveness of stabbing a person in the eye with a marker, then spots the chair next to the wall.
Tessa runs for it, grabs it by the back, and swings it around. Her pulse jumps in her throat. The doorknob is rattling, turning back and forth.
It’s too late to shove the chair under the door, and that only works in movies anyway, so she picks it up and holds it in front of her with the legs pointing out.
Her arms strain under the weight, but it’s the best she’s got.
There’s a click and the lock disengages.
With a creak, the door swings open. Tessa grips her chair like a novice lion tamer in her first day on the job.
“Shepherd,” a deep voice says. “What are you planning to do with that?”
The chair drops from Tessa’s grip with a heavy thud.
“Winters,” she says with an exhale of pent-up breath. Her pulse is still racing. “Jesus, you scared me.”
He leans against the doorjamb and slides one hand in his pocket. His face is lined with exhaustion.
He looks old.
Another person might comment on the state of the room, or Tessa herself. She’s filthy and disheveled, her clothing has been slept in, and she has tear streaks running through the dirt and dust on her face.
Lloyd Winters isn’t interested in any of that. His face is twisted, mouth taut, like there’s a bad taste in his mouth he can’t rid himself of.
“I need your help, Shepherd,” he says, forcing the words past his lips before he chokes on them. The disdain on his face tells her everything she needs to know regarding his feelings about that. “Unless you’re too busy playing around in your little haunted house.”
Tessa has cleaned up as best she can with facial wipes from her suitcase, which was still packed in the trunk of the car.
Winters waits impatiently on the front porch. She can feel his eyes on her but needs the time and space to prepare herself for whatever has brought him to find her.
She joins him on the porch. They don’t sit. This isn’t a social call. Winters stands with his shoulder against one of the columns that frames the steps and stares outward. Tessa leans her back against the other and watches him.
He doesn’t meet her eyes.
“How did you find me?” she asks.
He shrugs. “It wasn’t hard. I knew you weren’t in New York or at your mother’s house, so I went back to Bracknell Lodge. The owner told me you were gone but mentioned you had an interest in this place.”
Mrs. Coburn. So much for lying low.
“I guess I’m lucky she hasn’t ratted me out to the media yet,” Tessa says with a sigh.
He squints and stares straight ahead.
“It’s not luck,” he admits. “I asked her not to.”
Tessa’s not sure what to say to that. Winters didn’t intervene out of concern for Tessa’s well-being.
“Why are you here?” she asks.
“Barlow. What else?” he says.
“Oliver’s not here, Chief, and I don’t think you expected him to be. So why don’t you tell me why you’re really here?”
He continues to stare off into the distance, and Tessa fights the urge to insist he look her in the face. The truth is, she doesn’t want to see the accusation she’s sure to find in his eyes.
“Barlow’s leading us on a wild-goose chase,” he says.
“Us?” The question is out of her mouth before Tessa has a chance to pull it back.
Winters clenches his teeth, and the muscle in his jaw works.
“The state police,” he amends. “He’s playing games. Sending them to places that have nothing to do with Valerie. Once they arrive, he’s long gone.”
Tessa frowns. “What kind of places?”
Winters sighs. “I don’t know. Places that mean something to him.” He looks uncomfortable, and Tessa can sense there’s more he’s not saying.
“Mean something how?”
He shoves his hands in his pockets. “Places he feels like he lost something,” the chief of police finally admits. “He sent us to Albany. To a law office. That’s where his mother was when she died. She was leaving a meeting with a lawyer.”
Tessa stands up straighter.
Nisha Singh. Tessa knows her. She took Oliver’s case pro bono after the family ran out of money. Nisha is intelligent and tireless, a woman Tessa has a great deal of respect for.
“My God, is she okay?”
Winters turns to look at her, confused for a moment.
“Who?”
“Ms. Singh,” Tessa says.
He looks at her like a bug he’d like to stomp beneath his feet. “The lawyer? She’s fine, Shepherd. Doesn’t even work in the building anymore. It wasn’t about her. It was about his mother. He left a note for us in the emergency panel of the elevator where she was standing when the aneurysm burst
.”
Tessa lets out a deep breath. Donna Barlow’s death was heartbreaking for everyone who knew her, and it took a terrible toll on Oliver.
Until the day she died, she stood by his innocence. Tessa is almost glad she’s not here to see what’s become of her son.
“Then it was the trucking company his father was fired from.”
“What?” Tessa exclaims. “When did that happen?”
“Six months ago, about,” Winters says. “Apparently he hit the bottle pretty hard after his wife died. You can’t drive a truck with a DUI on your record. They let him go.”
Six months ago? How did Tessa not know that? But six months ago she’d been hip deep in the last documentary, working long hours. Losing herself in someone else’s story. Just like she always has.
If Oliver reached out, she didn’t take the call. She’d told herself she’d get back to him.
But that was one more lie. She didn’t get back to him. She moved on and left Oliver in the past. A project done. On to the next tragedy, just like Margot said.
“The point is, Barlow’s taking the state police on a sightseeing trip through his past. By the time they show up, he’s long gone. We need to get in front of him. It’s time to stop playing his stupid games. That’s where you come in.”
He turns, pinning her with his hard gaze.
Tessa hesitates. All that’s happened sits heavily between them. “What exactly are you asking?”
“You know his history. You know the moments in his life that stand out to him. You know more about Barlow and what makes him tick than any of the family he has left. I need to find my daughter, Shepherd. I need to bring her home to her mother. And I need him to pay.”
Tessa doesn’t kid herself. This man is not her friend. He’s not her ally. He doesn’t wish her well. He might even wish her harm, if he didn’t have a use for her.
“Okay,” she hears herself say. “I don’t know if it will help, but I’ll do what I can.”
Winters gives her a short nod. He doesn’t owe her any thanks, and doesn’t bother to give any, but Tessa can’t miss the flash of relief in his eyes, however brief.
Tessa explains that Margot is already in Snowden and plans to watch the footage of the Barlow interviews.
The Caretakers Page 18
