“We can’t quit. We need to find—”
“I have no intention of quitting. Now that you’re back and safe, we’ll be interviewing Maggie to see what she knows. Maybe she’ll talk now that Foster has been detained.” The inflection in Joel’s voice was clear. She was to leave it to him.
“At least there’s no more danger.” Ivy’s observation was met with a dark glower.
“You heard what Foster said. Foster Hill House has been siphoning women to Chicago for decades. God only knows who else is out there. Foster is only a small part of a much bigger circle.”
Ivy crossed the room to the window, next to the chair where Joel sat. She rubbed her arms as she stared through the glass at the front walk. Her breath was shaky and she let it out, the trauma from the last twenty-four hours settling in her muscles. She startled when Joel’s hands rested on her shoulders. His body was behind her, his grip firm but making her skin tingle beneath its warmth.
“You knew I’d come for you, didn’t you?” he said.
Ivy turned, and Joel dropped his hands. “With God’s providence, I saved myself.”
She didn’t mean for it to hurt him, but hurt flashed across Joel’s face anyway. “I wish,” she started, “I wish things had been different. I wish your letter hadn’t been lost in the mail. I wish I hadn’t created inaccurate conclusions about why you left.” Ivy toyed with her sleeve. “I wish . . .” She paused, then met Joel’s eyes. “I wish you had saved Andrew.”
“I wish I’d saved him too,” Joel whispered. “I tried, Ivy.”
“I know you did.”
“It killed me not to be there with you, that night at Andrew’s grave.” Joel rested his palm gently over her bruised cheek. “I knew you were there, alone, waiting for me, and I didn’t come. I failed you. I failed Andrew.”
She couldn’t speak. The emotion lodged in Ivy’s throat defied her desire to say something, anything, to relieve Joel of the pain of responsibility for the events of that day and the night of Andrew’s funeral.
Joel dropped his hand, and the absence of warmth from his fingers on her face was stark. “I miss Andrew as much as you do. I have had to think about that day over and over and ask the Lord to still the questions of what I could have done differently to save Andrew and to be there for you. And now, I’m home and I watched you bury yourself alongside a dead woman you don’t even know. You live in her death. You have risked your life for a woman’s child, and that woman never earned your allegiance, nor has she betrayed it. Didn’t you hear your father? When will you learn to live again, Ivy? To see the people around you who love you instead of dwelling in grief and death?”
His question hung between them, unanswered but poignant. It begged her to forgive, to trust. It pleaded with her to release him from the guilt of that day and from the loss of that night. Joel’s hand lifted again, hesitated, then reached out to swipe at her cheek. He pulled it away and on his fingertip glistened her tear.
For the first time since Andrew’s death, Ivy allowed herself to feel something other than betrayal and determination. For the first time, Ivy wept.
Chapter 42
Kaine
Kaine fell to the floor, as if dropping would provide her cover from a flying bullet. The sound of the gunshot ricocheted in the room. Mr. Mason aimed the pistol at her.
“What do you want from me?” she gasped as she rolled onto her back, unwilling to stand for fear any significant movement would cause him to fire again, this time directly at her.
The vast foyer seemed cavernous as Mr. Mason took a few steps toward her.
“I wanted you to go away.” His hands were shaking, and the gun wobbled. Kaine bent her knee and planted her foot on the wood floor. He lowered the gun toward her leg, and Kaine stopped. “I knew I needed to come here today. You’ve involved Grant, and Joy now . . . it’s Pandora’s box. You should have gone away.”
“You’re crazy,” she whispered.
“I tried to steer you away. I’ve tried to steer people away from the history of this place for decades.” Mr. Mason raised his eyes and gave the vaulted ceiling a cursory once-over. He dropped his gaze back to Kaine. “When Maggie robbed the museum in ’63, I knew then—one day a Prescott would show up at Foster Hill House. It’s karma. But I wanted to stop it.”
“What are you talking about? Maggie, Joy’s grandmother?” Kaine raised her other knee. Slowly. So he wouldn’t notice.
Mr. Mason removed one hand from the gun to scratch his nose. “Funny old lady, she was. Eighty-three years old and robbing the museum. She took Ivy Thorpe’s quilt, a few pictures, but she didn’t find Ivy’s death journal. No, she didn’t. And I knew all along it was her, though no one else figured it out. Who would suspect a doddering old woman of trying to keep mementos for herself?”
Kaine had to agree, but then she hadn’t expected this of Mr. Mason either. And, if Maggie was anything like her granddaughter Joy, she could totally picture it.
Mr. Mason stared beyond Kaine toward the window where dust particles danced in the light. It was as if his mind had taken him elsewhere, distracting him. Kaine braced her palm against the floor. The only thing left to do now was shove upward and jump to her feet. But how could she keep the fidgety old man from popping off a random shot? In the distance, Kaine heard the police siren. Grant had succeeded in his 911 call. But where was he now? She had to keep Mr. Mason chatting and pray Grant didn’t get shot barreling through the door.
“Why would Maggie steal my great-great-grandmother’s quilt?”
Mr. Mason turned in surprise. “Because she was a sentimental old fool who thought it should stay in the family. She wanted to spite the Fosters, to spite me. And what do you mean your ‘great-great-grandmother’? It was Ivy Thorpe’s quilt.”
“She is my great-great-grandmother,” Kaine insisted. The man was crazy.
“No, no.” Mr. Mason’s smile was almost sad, as if he pitied Kaine. “Your great-great-grandmother was not Ivy Thorpe.”
Kaine pictured the family tree. How Ivy had a child listed before her marriage. If what Mr. Mason said was true, then Ivy hadn’t been assaulted and borne a child? But whose child was it, and how had it become a part of the census under Joe Coldham and Ivy’s home?
“Then who was my great-great-grandmother?”
Mr. Mason squatted, his elderly knees cracking, and he circled the barrel of his pistol in the air. “You haven’t figured that out yet? It seems obvious to me. Your great-great-grandmother was the infamous Gabriella. The dead woman found at the bottom of Foster Hill. Her baby was the one Ivy Thorpe and Joel Cunningham, the detective, tried so hard to save.”