Ivy gritted her teeth. There was no hope in silencing the overzealous men.
Maggie’s hands twisted in the folds of her calico dress. “Not for the baby, no. Like I said, he thought Gabriella belonged to him.” She focused on Ivy, and Ivy gave her a nod of encouragement. “Gabriella was his possession.”
Ivy saw Maggie’s eyes fill with tears, reminding Ivy of her own terrifying moments at the mercy of Arnold Foster. “Maggie, what happened when you arrived at Foster Hill House?”
Maggie blinked and took a nervous sip of her tea. She swallowed. “He said he would take me south to Chicago once Gabriella was well enough to travel. We were at the house for maybe two weeks. We were told to stay inside and not go out, and at night we could use a candle only if we were upstairs in the bedroom. If he left the house, he locked us in the . . . there’s a secret space.”
“Yes. I know.” Ivy remembered—all too well.
“Why didn’t you run?” Joel sat on the edge of his chair, leaning forward. “If you weren’t always locked away, what made you obey him?”
“How could we run?” Maggie pleaded for understanding. “She . . . Gabriella, she could barely walk. Even then h-he came for her sometimes.” Tears escaped the corners of Maggie’s eyes. “I wasn’t going to leave her alone. She kept me safe from him. I owed her that.”
Ivy nodded. She hurt for Maggie, agonized for Gabriella, but she had to bite her tongue not to scream out the question that plagued her. Where was Gabriella’s baby?
Maggie’s expression grew distant. She fiddled with a button on the sleeve of her brown calico. “Gabriella found a pencil stub and hid it away in a bedroom upstairs. She would write prayers. She would pray out loud. She had a book, Great Expectations, that Foster must have let her have from his library. She would write in it and rip out the pages and hide them. ‘To remember,’ she said. ‘To remember who I am. I belong to the Lord, not to him.’”
“But you finally did run away, didn’t you?” Widow Bairns took Maggie’s hand in hers. The elderly woman reached up and brushed aside the brown hair from the pitiful girl’s face.
Maggie nodded. “I helped her give birth. Gabriella called her little girl Hallie. Screaming little baby. She had to give birth while Foster was playing that piano downstairs to drown out the sound. He always played it, late at night, when he thought no one would pass by the house. One song, over and over again. He said his mama used to play it, and Gabriella said it was the only thing that seemed to calm the crazy in him.”
Ivy glanced at Joel. He gave her a short, meaningful nod. Andrew had heard it once. Even then, while they were innocent children having adventures in the woods, the horrors were taking place in Foster Hill House. They had played in its shadows.
“What happened, Maggie?” Ivy tightened her grip on her teacup. “What happened the night Gabriella died?”
Maggie’s eyes instantly glossed over. She swiped at them, to strike away the tears that came unwanted. “It was awful. Two nights after Hallie was born, Gabriella pulled me aside and said she saw a note Foster had written to his contact saying he was going to pack up his ‘things’ and meet this person. She said that we were Foster’s ‘things’ and she was frightened for Hallie, but also for me. Now that her girl was born, sick or not, Gabriella planned on running that night, to get the baby away from Foster. She made me promise, if anything happened, I’d take Hallie. I’d take her and act as her mama so no one knew where she came from.”
Stunned, Sheriff Dunst fell back against the settee.
“Maggie. You never told me,” Widow Bairns gasped, holding her hand over her mouth.
Maggie wiped more tears from her cheeks. “We ran. But, Hallie started crying, and it woke up Foster. He chased us down that hill. Gabriella . . . she was weak. Oh, Lord have mercy.” Maggie’s voice caught in a sob. She covered her mouth with her hands.
“Shh.” Ivy reached over and rested her hand on Maggie’s knee. She wanted to march down to the jailhouse and slap Foster across the face. Hard. Or worse.
Maggie’s eyes were huge in her face. “Plain and simple, she pushed Hallie into my arms and told me to run and not look back. She told me she would be all right. That the good Lord had much bigger places for her to be, but she wanted Hallie to live. Free of her pa. Free of that legacy. So I ran.”
“And then you left Hallie at the orphanage? Why didn’t you just take her with you and leave Oakwood forever?” Ivy bit her cheek. She couldn’t press Maggie too hard, but hope welled within her at the idea that Gabriella’s baby was well and alive.
“I hadn’t eaten in a few days.” Maggie glanced at the widow for support, then turned her attention back to Ivy. “And, I didn’t think I could make it very far. The orphanage was there, in my path, it seemed. As if God—and Gabriella—led me to it.” A slight smile touched Maggie’s lips. “And then I met the widow here, and she took me in.”
“She was hiding in my garden shed,” Widow Bairns inserted. “Poor child told me most of this, and I had no intention of turning her out.”
“And you had no intention of involving the authorities?” Joel said. Sheriff Dunst must have had a similar frame of mind because he sat on the edge of his seat, skewering the elderly benefactress with a glare.
Widow Bairns scowled protectively and waved her lace-glove-covered hand in the air as if to dismiss them. “Intentions, yes! Gumption, absolutely! But you look into this poor face, Sheriff Dunst, and tell me that bringing in burly males from all over to rain justice down on that empty old house’s owner wouldn’t upset her more.”
“Or save more girls’ lives?” Sheriff Dunst barked.
Widow Bairns’s white eyebrows rose as if speaking to an obstinate child. “All in due time, Sheriff. We thought Foster had moved on to Chicago and the house was empty for now. Maggie needed some time before this—” the widow swept her arm through the air—“this interrogation was to happen!”
Apparently, the widow had no recognition that perhaps Foster hadn’t returned to Chicago, and perhaps he could have been waylaid sooner. Ivy couldn’t hold such naiveté against the old woman. Widow Bairns was a heroine in Ivy’s opinion, whether her choices and methods had been properly vetted or not.
Maggie’s eyes widened in earnest determination to defend her benefactress’s decisions. “I begged her not to say anything yet. I can’t—couldn’t—speak of it.” Tears ran down the girl’s face as she pleaded with the sheriff to understand. “I’m not like Gabriella. I’m not brave,” she ended in a whisper.
Ivy opened her mouth to argue but was surprised when Joel pushed himself off his chair and knelt before the girl. He didn’t touch her or reach out, but his eyes searched her face earnestly until Maggie met them.