“I walked through the house after we transported the body here. I didn’t see anything. No child. It is likely that it’s safe and tucked away with the girl’s family and her death is random and unrelated. She may not even be from these parts. To go out now would be like searching for a ghost we aren’t even sure exists.”
At those words, Ivy’s actions were swift. Swiping her wool coat from the hall tree and shrugging it on, she snatched a lantern off its cast-iron arm where it hung on the wall. The cold air that hit her face when she opened the door was the exclamation mark on the reality that a baby left abandoned could not survive another night.
Ivy’s shoes crunched in the snow as she hiked down the road toward Foster Hill. An owl swooped overhead, the girth of its wingspan draping over the path ahead of her. She squinted her eyes as she lifted the lantern so the light spread into the woods on either side of the road. The uneasy gnaw of reality ate at her calm. A young woman had just been found murdered, and Ivy was very much alone in the dead of night. Unreasonable? Completely. But Gabriella had been dead well over a full day and night. The likelihood was the killer had already fled. If not . . . Ivy stifled her fear as the image of a baby shivering and crying in the cold urged her forward. Someone had to be proactive and assume the worst, and evidently that responsibility fell to her. It didn’t appear the men of the law shared her sense of urgency or the sacredness of fighting for the baby’s life.
She prayed the sheriff was right, that the baby was secured with its extended family somewhere. But she wasn’t going to bed that night beneath covers and quilts if there was any possibility Gabriella’s infant was in such desperate need. Maybe the sheriff didn’t understand what it was like to have that desperation tighten every muscle in your body, shorten your breath, and incite your cries for hope. But Joel did. Ivy blinked and cleared her vision that suddenly teared. He knew it, and was ignoring it. Again.
She paused at the base of Foster Hill, by the skeletal tree that had been Gabriella’s momentary burial place. In the moonlight that reflected off patches of snow and dark shadows of earth, Foster Hill House gave the appearance of evil. Even the lantern light was a dim glow. The rickety fence that bordered the abandoned house tilted, its rotting slats wobbling in the wind. Windows reflected black, like eyes staring down upon her.
Prayer wasn’t something that came naturally to her anymore, but Ivy breathed one anyway. For the baby, for herself.
If it’s here, help me find it. Then let her flee home to the safety of a locked door where she would triumphantly embrace the rescued child and glare at the stunned faces of the sheriff and Joel.
Ivy passed by the fence and an iron lamppost. Her shoes were quiet against the wooden steps that rose by four to the porch bordering the front of the house. The front door loomed in front of her, with stained glass intact and brass knob tarnished to a dull black.
She turned it and met little resistance. That must be what happens when houses stand empty for years. Locks erode and barriers vanish as it becomes an empty tomb. Ivy perched in the doorway, ears straining to hear the tiny whimper of an infant, a sniffle, a cough. Sheriff Dunst may have been here earlier, but he hadn’t been focused on finding a baby. She braced her hand on the splintered doorframe as she let the lantern light wash across the vast entryway. A staircase climbed to the second level, doors gaped on both the east and west walls, beckoning her to search the rooms beyond. An old chandelier hung precariously from the ceiling, which she hoped didn’t come crashing down on her.
Rumors long abounded surrounding this place. Lights seen flickering in its rooms in the dead of night, piano music filtering through the air only to cease abruptly. Ivy tiptoed to the first room on the right. There was no solace that the lantern light revealed the very piano she’d just been considering. With a sweep of her gaze around the room, Ivy approached the piano, its warped keys a pathetic reminder of the damage of the passage of time. A piano cover draped over the top in a shroud of white lace grayed by spider webs and dust. Sheet music was propped up.
“Beethoven.” Ivy breathed the name as her fingers traced Opus 27, the Moonlight Sonata. A vague memory returned to her. Andrew, years before, whispering in strict confidence to her and to Joel that on one of his nighttime escapades, he heard Beethoven’s haunting melody floating across the wind from Foster Hill House. They’d teased him mercilessly for his superstition, while being equally as intrigued. But after three nights of repeated sneaking off to the tree line to listen, the music wasn’t heard again.
Ivy drew her hand back as she stared down at the keys. Odd. There was no dust on them. Their ivory, though chipped, was clean. As if played recently.
She shivered. Now she was imagining things. Memories of Andrew were never a good thing. She lost herself in them, in the days before he’d drowned beneath the pond’s crust of ice, and with them lost her sense of reality.
Ivy retreated to the foyer and paused. If only there were a sound. She’d give anything to hear the baby’s wail. But Foster Hill House was still in the horrible darkness. She drew a deep breath and adjusted her grip on the lantern. Bedrooms would be up the stairs. If Gabriella had abandoned her baby, Foster Hill House would provide shelter and a bedroom might provide blankets—if there were any left over from the Fosters, whose abrupt move decades before left the house half-furnished but never lived in again.
The steep staircase to the second floor drew Ivy up its steps. Ribbons of spider webs and dust hung between the rails of the banister. Her hand pushed away a thick layer of time’s collection as she ran her fingers along the old walnut wood.
A bat swooped from the mouth of the unknown second floor, its wings millimeters from Ivy’s head. She ducked with a stifled shriek. Her lantern hit the wall, and the glass chimney protecting the flame shattered. The scent of kerosene filled Ivy’s nostrils, and she squinted into the darkness that wrapped its chilling arms around her body. The lantern flame had surrendered, plunging her into faint, pale light. Only moonlight from the foyer windows below lit her steps now.
Turn back. Go home.
Ivy could hear the voice of warning in her mind. Maybe Sheriff Dunst was correct. What could be found in the dark? And there wasn’t evidence to tie Foster Hill House to Gabriella anyway. She hesitated. No. She was here now. The danger was more than likely passed, and if there was even a slim chance a baby was here . . .
Ivy took another step, her foot sending an echo through the house.