“Do you remember?”
Ivy almost didn’t hear him, his voice was so low. It took a different tone altogether than the one he’d used up until now. This time it was personal. Intimate. She couldn’t answer. Instead, Ivy crossed her arms, her wool coat stretching over her back with the movement. The window was a very good place to focus her attention, along with the gray and damp woods beyond.
“Andrew and his Beethoven?” Joel’s question raised bumps along Ivy’s skin. He had neared her and reached out to touch one of her curls. “Dark like coffee,” he’d always said. Only he didn’t say it now. He was quiet, as if waiting for her to answer. How could she? This was what she’d avoided for years. The memories, the feelings, the pain.
Ivy hugged her arms around herself tighter and pulled away so that the curl slipped from Joel’s hand.
“He loved his music.” Joel wouldn’t stop.
Ivy walked away from him and pressed her forehead against the cloudy, dirty windowpane. It was cool against her skin.
“Yes,” she whispered. Grief was fast to sweep over her. The same grief she witnessed with almost every death since Andrew’s. With every stroke of her pen as she wrote the stories of the ones who’d passed away in Oakwood. Remembering anyone and everyone but Andrew. Their stories must be kept alive, remembered, because she understood what it was like to see a loved one forgotten. No one seemed to remember Andrew. Even her father avoided all reminiscing of him. He had faded into the annals of time, until now. But Ivy didn’t want to remember Andrew with Joel. Never with Joel.
Joel cleared his throat. “Do you remember the time Andrew said he heard Beethoven coming from this house?”
Of course. She’d recalled that memory the night of her attack, though now she couldn’t avoid it. Ivy turned, and Joel’s gaze slammed into her. “We told him he was crazy.”
Joel nodded. “That we did.”
They shared a long look, laden with sorrow and the unspoken words that hung between them since the day Joel abandoned her in her grief.
Joel grimaced. “It wasn’t fair. Andrew heard music in everything, but we should have believed him.”
Ivy brushed past Joel to the piano. She lifted the sheet music from its stand. “It wouldn’t have changed anything. He still would have died.” Ivy leveled a glare on Joel. “You still would have left.”
“Ivy—” Joel’s jaw clenched. He stepped toward her, but she whirled away from him and slapped the music back into place.
“All Andrew’s observation tells us now is that someone has been using this house for well over a decade. Maybe random vagabonds.”
“Random doesn’t fit the fact it’s Beethoven, and the same melody Andrew told us about twelve years ago.” Joel’s voice switched back to a distant professionalism.
Ivy hid a shuddered sigh. Good. They were always a fair team at concocting a balance between her creative thinking and Joel’s logical frame of mind. This was much safer.
“The facts. We need to list them.” Joel traced a path across the floor to stand beside her. Ivy moved to her left to avoid even the feeling of warmth from his body.
“We know Gabriella was here, in Foster Hill House, for some reason. We know she recently had a baby. We know she was strangled,” Ivy began. She brushed a cobweb from the candelabra that sat atop the piano.
Joel nodded. “You were almost strangled.”
Ivy swallowed. The memory was raw. “I was. But he pushed me down the stairs as opposed to stuffing me in a tree.”
“Why didn’t he bury Gabriella? Why try to fit her into the trunk of a dead oak? He had to know someone would find her.”
Ivy nodded and turned toward Joel, capable of controlling her emotions once again. “Maybe he was in a hurry. It was unexpected. He hadn’t planned on killing her?”
Joel curled his lip and shook his head. “We’re assuming it was a he who murdered Gabriella.”
Ivy fiddled with the button at the cuff of her dress sleeve. “Well, it was a he who tried to kill me. I would say the odds are high there’s one person we’re facing rather than two potential killers. In that case, then, he’s male.”
“That’s a safe assumption. What further evidence do we have?”
Ivy knew Joel’s question was rhetorical, that he was thinking out loud. She could see the gears of his mind turning, calculating and compartmentalizing. She was eager to assist.
“The piano.” Ivy glanced toward it. “It’s obvious it has been somewhat cared for—at least the keys kept clean. And the sheet music is the same as what Andrew heard years ago.”
“Someone has a penchant for Beethoven. And Dickens, assuming you’re correct about the book you saw.”
Ivy started for the doorway of the parlor.
“Where are you going?”
She called over her shoulder, “I’m going back upstairs. I did see the book. If whoever attacked me moved it, but didn’t take it from the house, then it’s still here. And if it is, we need to find it. Gabriella may have written about her baby in it, and that is the most critical fact right now. We haven’t explored the attic yet, and we should.” Ivy pulled her skirts up with her hand and began to ascend the stairs.
Joel followed her. “I’m coming with you.”
“I wasn’t holding out hope that you’d let me go alone.” Ivy rolled her eyes at the empty hallway that greeted her at the top of the stairway.
“Why does that offend you?” Joel’s voice was incredulous, but Ivy didn’t look behind her to read his expression.
“Because you’re implying I am helpless,” Ivy mumbled, hiking down the hallway. She reached the door at the end of the hallway and stared up into the dark void of the attic.
“You did almost die here.”
Ivy bit back a yelp but couldn’t hold back a flinch as Joel’s words whispered eerily into her ear, awakening the fear she’d been attempting to suppress.
“Stop it!” Spinning around, she made a move to push him away with her hands.
Joel took hold of her raised forearms and drew them against his chest. His blue eyes speared hers.
“I am not a monster, Ivy Thorpe.”
She stiffened, tugging on her arms. “I never said you were.”
“Can we set the past aside?”
Was he sincere? Frustration boiled inside her, making her bite her lip until she tasted blood. “Set it aside?” Ivy regretted the tremor in her voice. Like an old pair of shoes? That cavalier? Joel’s thumbs stroked her hands as he gripped her wrists. She tugged against his hold again.
“I know we have history, Ivy, but can we move forward instead of holding past regrets so close?”
Ivy tipped her head in disbelief. “Yes. Certainly. We shall toss away the years of silence, the fact you left me alone to tell Andrew goodbye. That you, the poor orphan boy with no family, pretended to be part of us and then left without a backward glance, as if the Thorpes meant nothing to you. That you didn’t save Andrew!”