She was in the midst of explaining why the ceilings were low and the windows small. ‘You must understand, there was no such thing as central heating in those days. My great-great-grandparents were fortunate enough to have their coal delivered weekly, but for those who couldn’t afford it winters without proper insulation would have been unbearable.’
Gertrude caught sight of Noelle and came to an abrupt halt, clutching the polished banister. The moment seemed frozen in time, like the vintage photographs on the wall: her mother-in-law’s pale, astonished face, the diamond pin on her lapel flashing sepia in the muted glow from the fanlight. Then she recovered her composure, stepping down onto the hooked runner.
‘Please feel free to wander about the grounds before you go. There’s a lovely garden out back,’ she called to the departing tourists. When they turned to thank her, she mustered a gracious smile, and gave her patented reply. ‘Believe me, the pleasure was all mine. History is such an important part of our lives. Where would we be without it?’
When they were alone except for the girl in the mobcap, Gertrude at last turned to acknowledge Noelle. ‘My goodness, this is a surprise,’ she exclaimed, forcing a smile and bringing her hands together in a noiseless little clap. ‘You’re looking well, dear.’
Noelle bit back the urge to retort that if she was, it was no thanks to her or her son. Every muscle in her body felt spring-loaded, ready to catapult her forward, arm extended to slap that stiff little smile off her mother-in-law’s face. Instead she rose to her feet with as much dignity as possible.
‘Hello, Gertrude. How have you been?’
‘Oh, well, you know.’ Gertrude shrugged as if to indicate that she suffered from the usual aches and pains.
‘And Cole?’
‘Fine, just fine.’ Gertrude absently fingered her pin, which was in the shape of a flower basket. Noelle was once more reminded of the roses on Corinne’s grave. ‘His knees have been giving him some trouble lately, but the doctor says it’s nothing more than a touch of arthritis. And your grandmother, how is she doing these days?’ Her expression was one of bright, fixed interest.
‘Never better,’ Noelle lied.
‘Well, that’s just wonderful to hear. Please give her my best. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to dash.’ Gertrude made a move to step past her, but Noelle was quick to block her path.
‘I was hoping we could talk.’
Color rose in Gertrude’s cheeks, and her eyes—pale blue, like Robert’s—widened in alarm. Her smile had the look of something hastily patted into place. ‘I’m afraid this isn’t a good time. The next tour starts in an hour, and I have some errands to run before then.’ She cut a wide birth around Noelle and headed for the door.
‘No problem. I’ll just tag along.’ Noelle fell into step with her.
Gertrude waited until they were outside, discreetly out of earshot, before replying, ‘Please understand, dear, it’s nothing personal. But someone might see us and … well, it would give the wrong impression.’
‘What? That I’m a concerned mother looking for answers?’ An acid note crept into Noelle’s voice. ‘Heaven forbid.’
They were walking along the brick path bordered in snapdragons and delphiniums that nodded in the stiff breeze that had given Windy Ridge its name. Yesterday’s rain had left the surrounding grass damp, and Gertrude seemed unaware of the dark stain seeping up from the soles of her pink pumps as she set out across the lawn in the direction of her Cadillac, parked in one of the slots reserved for staff. As she stepped onto the pavement, the measured click of her heels reminded Noelle of a line from a nursery rhyme, ‘Hickory dickory dock, the mouse ran up the clock…’
She caught up with her mother-in-law as she was unlocking her car door. When Gertrude turned to face her, Noelle was surprised by the look of genuine sympathy she wore.
‘Whatever you might think, dear, I bear you no ill will,’ she said gently. ‘An aunt of mine had a—well, to put it delicately, she was a tippler. But she wasn’t a bad person. Any more than you’re a bad mother. If only you could think of this as being what’s best for—’
Something in Noelle’s expression caused her to halt in mid-sentence, a look of mild panic flitting across her face. Yet Noelle wasn’t aware of anything other than feeling suddenly cold, as if a tap had been cranked open inside her, releasing freezing water into her veins.
‘What’s best for Emma? Come on, Gertrude, you don’t honestly believe all that horseshit Robert’s been dishing out.’ Even her voice was different, harsh and controlled.
Gertrude’s mouth tightened. ‘He was right about one thing: You
have
changed. And not for the better.’ She jerked around, reaching for the door handle.
This time Noelle didn’t try to stop her. She simply walked around to the passenger side and calmly got in. Her mother-in-law froze with one foot inside the car and her rear end poised to drop into the driver’s seat. She plopped down with an astonished cry.
‘Why, of all the—’ Her mouth snapped shut, then fell open again, like a fish gasping at the bottom of a boat. ‘This is private property, and you’re—you’re
trespassing.’
‘I’ll be out of your hair as soon as you give me some answers.’ Noelle spoke evenly, but her heart was pounding in great dull thuds. ‘Let’s start with what you know about Corinne Lundquist.’
‘Corinne?’
Gertrude gasped, bringing a hand to her chest. ‘What on earth has that poor girl got to do with any of this? Why, you were just a baby when she died.’ At the same time, Noelle noticed, she hadn’t needed any reminding of who Corinne was.
‘She was my mother’s best friend, for one thing.’
‘Well, then, your mother must have told you it was nothing more than a senseless tragedy.’ Gertrude kept her voice light, but her hands, tightly clutching the boxy white purse in her lap, told a different story.
‘I didn’t ask how she died. But since you brought it up, why don’t you tell me what you remember about it.’
Gertrude’s face went slack, and Noelle could see that her coral lipstick had crept up into the little pleats around her mouth. She suddenly looked old, as old as Nana. ‘It was a suicide, that’s all I know.’
‘Are you absolutely certain of that?’
Gertrude shot her a peculiar look but gave no sign that she was guilty of anything other than leaving flowers on a dead girl’s grave. ‘Well, I hardly see how it could have been an accident.’
‘There are other ways to die.’
‘Are you suggesting—?’
‘I’m not suggesting anything. I’m
asking.
Did Robert have anything to do with her death?’ She refrained from adding,
Or did you?
‘Of course not!’
‘Do you know that for a fact?’
Gertrude put a hand out as if to ward her off, though Noelle hadn’t moved so much as an inch in her direction. In a tremulous voice she answered, ‘You didn’t know her. She was a deeply troubled girl. I believe her parents—her father, at least—were quite religious. It must have been terrible for her … when she learned she was expecting.’
Something clicked in Noelle’s head, like a tumbler falling into place. ‘How did you know Corinne was pregnant?’
An insistent tapping against the glass caused Gertrude to twist around, one eye rolling back to cast a panicked glance out the back window. But it was only a low-hanging branch blowing in the wind.
She slumped back in her seat. A fine mist of sweat had dampened her brow, causing the powder in its crevices to cake. ‘I—I must have heard it somewhere,’ she stammered. ‘At the funeral perhaps?’
‘You weren’t at the funeral. I asked my mother.’ Noelle leaned toward her, close enough to catch the cloying scent of her perfume. ‘What
really
happened, Gertrude? What are you hiding?’
‘Nothing!’ Frantically she struggled to insert the key into the ignition, but it took several attempts before she was able to jam it in. The engine roared to life.
‘Was he really with you the night Corinne died? Or did you lie to protect him?’ Noelle pressed on. ‘I refuse to continue this—this outrageous discussion a moment longer.’ Gertrude leaned across her in a cool brush of silk to wrench open the door. ‘Get out.
Now.’
Noelle ignored her. ‘You
know
something, don’t you? Just like you know what he’s doing to me. All the lies and innuendoes … making it look as if I’m not fit to care for my own child. How can you go along with it? How can you let him do that to Emma?’
Gertrude stared sightlessly ahead, her hands gripping the steering wheel. Her lips were pressed together so hard they were quivering. ‘No. Robert’s a good man. A good
father.
He wouldn’t do anything to hurt Emma.’
‘But he
is
hurting her.’
‘No, he’s protecting her. There’s a difference.’
Noelle tried a different tack. ‘Did you know he was cheating on me?’
Gertrude blinked several times in rapid succession, clearly startled by the revelation. But she quickly recovered. ‘That’s between you and Robert,’ she replied primly.
‘I just thought you should know, that’s all. Your son isn’t the upstanding family man he pretends to be.’
‘Get out,’ Gertrude ordered once more, but this time it came out sounding more like a plea.
‘Just one more thing.’ Noelle had saved her best shot for last. ‘Why the flowers on Corinne’s grave?’
Gertrude jerked around to gape at her.
‘I saw them. White roses, tied with a red ribbon.’ Noelle watched a muscle in her mother-in-law’s face twitch in response. ‘They were for the baby, weren’t they?
Robert’s
baby. Your grandchild.’
Gertrude made a noise deep in her throat, a tiny, strangled squeak like a small animal that had been stepped on. She looked frantically about, as for a means to escape. Then, as if not knowing what else to do, she reached for her seat belt, moving in crabbed jerks as she strapped it over her chest and lap. But the buckle wouldn’t snap into place, her hands were trembling so, and after several attempts she let it fall into her lap with a small cry of dismay.
‘I have to go,’ she whispered. ‘Please.’
‘Was he pressuring her to have an abortion? Is that why she killed herself?’ Noelle forged on mercilessly. ‘Or was he angry enough to save her the trouble?’
Gertrude sagged back against the seat, closing her eyes as if the effort to keep them open was suddenly too much. When she spoke, it was in a strangely hollow voice.
‘Robert
was
upset, but not for the reason you think. It was because—’ she gulped in a shallow breath—’because the baby wasn’t his.’
Noelle sat back, stunned. This wasn’t what she’d expected. But in a way, didn’t it make even more sense? Robert, furious over Corinne’s unfaithfulness, would have lashed out, yes … and perhaps gone even farther. Still, there was something that didn’t quite fit
…
She turned to Gertrude. ‘I don’t understand. If the baby wasn’t your grandchild, then why the roses?’
Her mother-in-law’s arms fell to her sides like dead weights. In a voice equally dead, her lips barely moving, she said, ‘It
was
my grandchild. It was Buck’s baby.’
CHAPTER 15
T
HAT NIGHT THE WEATHER TURNED
uncommonly brisk. Only two weeks into August, and already the summer nights had begun to grow shorter. Cool breezes drifted down from the mountains. For the last four nights in a row a low bayoulike mist had crept in over the lake, making the call of the loons sound lonelier than ever. At the cabin, where Mary sat huddled about the kitchen table with her ex-husband and daughter, she thought for the first time that it was perhaps
too
quiet. The piping of frogs and slap of water against the dock seemed unnaturally close. She thought she heard the dip of an oar as well, but maybe it was only her imagination.
When you’re on edge,
she told herself,
it’s easy to hear ghosts in everything that goes bump in the night.
In another part of her mind, though, she marveled at the cozy tableau they made: she and Charlie and Noelle. How amazing that they could sit like this, sipping hot cocoa, bare toes curled over the rungs of their chairs, as though they’d done so on countless such evenings. Not just three disparate people washed ashore by circumstances, but what she’d always yearned for: a family.
‘At least we know now who the mysterious J is.’ Mary gazed out the blackened window in which her reflection, distorted by the panes, looked strangely spectral. ‘James Buchanan Van Doren, Buck for short. God, why didn’t I think of it? Corinne hated nicknames. She had a real thing about it.’
‘But why only that one mention in her diary?’ Noelle wondered aloud.
‘My guess is, it went something like this.’ Charlie weighed in. ‘In her last entry Corinne mentions getting into a fight with Robert on the way to a party. When he left her stranded, someone took pity on her and gave her a ride home—his brother, we now know. She and Buck struck up a bond. They had something in common, after all. The next thing you know, they’re lovers. She didn’t dare write about it in her diary; someone might have found out.’
‘But someone
did
find out,’ Noelle reminded him.
‘The question is, How could she have been sure the baby was Buck’s, not Robert’s?’ Charlie absently rolled his mug between his palms.
‘Simple,’ Mary told him. ‘She was a virgin until Buck.’ Charlie shot her a quizzical look, and she was quick to add, ‘Don’t you see? It’s the only thing that makes sense. Corinne and I knew
everything
about each other, until I got too caught up with my own life to see past my own nose. When you first told me she was pregnant, I thought it was strange. She’d been seeing Robert for over a year. She’d have
told
me if they were sleeping together. Besides, their relationship was always rocky. I think she was afraid of getting that close.’ She sipped her cocoa thoughtfully. ‘With Buck, it would have been different. He was older, after all. And quite good-looking, as I recall. A nicer version of Robert. If they were serious about each other, Robert would have found out eventually. I think the baby just brought things to a head.’