“We need to go, Kaine. They need your statement.” Grant’s hand at her elbow urged her forward.
“I know.” Kaine grimaced. Memories of previous statements she’d given in San Diego washed over her. “I’ve done this before.” With her husband’s murder. By a man furious that Kaine had helped his abused wife to leave him. What was one more statement? One that would summarize a hundred years’ worth of terror and the lives of women whose horrors were finally going to be brought into the light.
Chapter 45
Jvy
The baby’s mouth opened wide in a yawn. Her red lips puckered and kissed the air a few times. Hallie turned her face into Ivy’s chest and nestled her cheek above her breast, sleep claiming her.
“She’s so tiny.” Hallie’s fingers curled around Ivy’s index finger. Her thick white-blond hair was so like her mother’s.
“I apologize,” Mr. Casey said. Joel stood in front of his old director’s desk, his arms crossed over his chest. The man ran his hand over his sideburns and down his cheek. “I had no idea. No idea.”
“Perhaps in the future, Mr. Casey, you’ll be more cooperative in an investigation.” Joel’s admonition was met with silence from the director.
“What’s to be done with Hallie?” Ivy had never considered herself maternal, but her protective nature encircled the baby as if loving and shielding her could redeem Gabriella from the grave itself. Hallie was a part of her. A part of the horrible Foster family too. But it was Gabriella’s faith, her hope, her courage that should live on in Hallie.
Ivy’s memory journal was nothing compared with a breathing legacy.
“We’re more than happy to care for her here.” Mr. Casey rounded his desk. “We will give the child the best of care. Perhaps we can place her with a family.”
Ivy gave Joel a look. A family? If what Maggie said was true, they had a small possibility, but still a possibility that Hallie’s extended family might look for her should they learn of her existence. Foster was being shipped away to a larger city to stand trial on several charges. What might be printed in the papers about Foster Hill House could expose Hallie to the world from which Maggie had rescued her. They needed to keep Hallie disconnected from Foster Hill House. For now, and in the future.
“I will be checking in on Hallie’s care,” Joel stated. Mr. Casey nodded nervously. How the tables had turned.
Mr. Casey rang a bell on his desk, and a nursemaid entered. Ivy regretfully relinquished the baby girl into the nursemaid’s arms. She watched them leave the room, Hallie’s little head resting in the crook of the woman’s arm.
“Ivy?” Joel waited at the door.
“Yes.” Ivy held herself back from chasing after the nursemaid. It wasn’t her place, regardless of what she’d been through, or what she and Joel had been through. Hallie wasn’t her child, even if she found herself invested in her life more than she had been invested in anyone’s death.
She tugged at her jacket that was tailored to her waist and followed Joel from the orphanage. As they walked down the path, Ivy placed her hand around his offered elbow. They’d spoken little since the day Foster had been captured. Ivy’s bruises were healing slowly. Maggie seemed to have found a place of permanence with Widow Bairns. Her life would continue, blessed because of Gabriella’s sacrifice.
“Maggie said Gabriella wrote often on the pages of Great Expectations and hid them. I wonder where? I saw her book that night I was attacked, but if she ripped pages out, like the one we found beneath the bed . . . where are the others?”
Joel gave her a sideways look as they walked. “Foster said he burned the book after he threw you down the stairs.”
“Oh.” Of course he had. Foster destroyed everything that was Gabriella. Everything but Hallie. “I wish I could have read all of what she wrote.”
“I suppose her words are lost forever.”
Ivy nodded. She watched a squirrel scamper across the dirt road. A robin swooped overhead. Her eyes alighted on a small patch of buttercups. Spring was here. Warmth was in the air. Something sparked inside Ivy. She wanted to hope again. Like Gabriella.
Chapter 46
Kaine
Kaine tapped End on her iPhone after calling Leah on their way back to Joy’s house from the police station. It was good to be able to tell her sister that everything was fine, and this time truly mean it. Joy flew at her when they entered the house, and Kaine welcomed Joy’s embrace. Megan threw her arms around her as well. Kaine couldn’t help the bubble of laughter that escaped. She was never much of a hugger and yet she felt so at home here.
“Oh, honey, I’m so glad you’re safe!” Joy pulled back. “Did they take that man into custody?”
Grant nodded and dropped onto Joy’s sofa. “For a man who stirred up so much trouble, he was a mess and ready to give himself up by the time the police arrived.”
“I think everything caught up to him,” Kaine said, leaning back against the wall. “The years of trying to cover up the Foster family history. Then when I showed up, it consumed him.”
“What I still don’t get—” Grant frowned, then straightened on the sofa and rested his elbows on his knees—“is how Foster could be so involved in the museum during the time Maggie broke into it. I mean, didn’t he say he was in Vietnam when it happened? His timeline doesn’t match up.”
“Vietnam?” Joy was repositioning Megan’s ponytail. “He wasn’t in Vietnam. He’s been curator of that museum since he graduated from college in ’61. Rumor has it he dodged the draft, and like I said, my grandmother Maggie wasn’t afraid to make known she was going to protect Ivy and her family.”
“Another Mr. Mason cover-up.” Kaine raised her brows knowingly in Grant’s direction. “He was trying to throw us off the trail, one that would lead back to him.”
“Makes sense, I guess,” Grant said.
Olive got up from where she lay on the floor and hobbled over to Grant. Sophie followed. Kaine smiled at the two dogs, so comfortable with each other. Sort of like her and Grant.
“Hmm . . . I question one major detail,” he added.
“What’s that, Grant?” Joy planted a kiss on Megan’s cheek. Megan hurried away down the hall toward her bedroom.
“If Foster was part of a prostitution ring, how come it didn’t hit the papers and make more of a splash? Wouldn’t it have been all over Oakwood?”
Kaine shrugged. “This is what I fought all the time in San Diego and why human trafficking is so prevalent still today. It’s next to impossible to bring down an entire network. You catch the little guys mostly, and Foster was a little guy. If it made the papers wherever he was tried, maybe the story did get linked back to Oakwood. Who knows? Not to mention, Ivy and Maggie certainly weren’t going to offer any explanations. And remember, the courthouse burned down—the records were probably all lost years ago. So, what to us has become mysterious, maybe wasn’t so much back in the early 1900s.”