I felt a jolt of alarm, but I clamped down on it. Since Tommy was clearly out of his mind with worry, I had to at least pretend to be levelheaded.
“Gone?” I said. “What do you mean, Bree’s gone?”
“I was at her house five minutes ago,” he said. “Her car isn’t in the garage.”
“She could be in Upper Deeping,” I suggested.
“Or she could be halfway to Heathrow,” Tommy said frantically. “She could’ve booked a seat on the next flight to New Zealand. She packed a bag, Lori!”
I stared at him, nonplussed. “How do you know she packed a bag?”
“I have a key to her place,” he replied. “She forgot to take it back when she returned her ring. When I saw that her car was missing, I let myself into the house and had a look around. She’s not there and her blue carry-on is missing.”
“Duck!” said Bess.
“Yes, sweetie, Mummy sees the duck,” I said absently while I digested Tommy’s unsettling discovery. “Did she leave a note?”
“I couldn’t find one,” he said desperately.
“Did she take her passport?” I asked.
“I don’t know where she keeps her passport!” he exclaimed, flinging his arms wide in exasperation.
“I do,” I said. “Bree showed me where she hid it. She thought her hiding place was a hoot.” I passed Bess to Tommy, saying, “You can move faster with her than I can. Let’s go.”
Bess giggled as Tommy and I clambered hastily down the bridge. She was enjoying our speedy exit much more than we were.
Mr. Windle had withdrawn from his doorstep, but he watched us from his doorway as we dashed past Pussywillows, and he leaned forward to peer at us as we raced past the tearoom. I had a vague impression of startled faces in the tearoom’s front window, but I was too preoccupied to acknowledge them. When Tommy began to veer across the green toward his uncle’s van, I called him back.
“We’ll take the Rover,” I stated firmly. “You’re in no condition to drive.”
I strapped Bess into her car seat in record time, hopped behind the wheel, and left the village at a speed that wouldn’t have shattered any records but would, I hoped, keep Tommy from pounding the dashboard in frustration. He exhibited laudable self-control, though I could almost hear him grind his teeth when I slowed down to negotiate the sharp bend in front of Bree’s house.
I pulled into the driveway, climbed out of the Rover, and started toward the backseat but changed direction when I saw that Tommy was already there. Knowing that I wouldn’t leave Bess in the car on her own for more than five minutes, he carried her to the front door, where I stood waiting for him.
“It’s not locked,” he said impatiently.
He reached across me to turn the doorknob and followed me across the threshold, through the hall, and into the front parlor. The room had changed very little since Bree had inherited the house from her great-grandaunts. To honor their memory, Bree had kept the front parlor almost exactly as they’d left it. If I hadn’t known that Ruth and Louise Pym were dead and buried in St. George’s churchyard, I would have expected to see them look up from their knitting to greet me.
The aspidistra still flourished on its little rosewood stand near the window; the finely crocheted antimacassars still graced the backs of the dainty matching armchairs before the hearth; and the rolltop desk Ruth and Louise had inherited from their father still sat against the back wall, looking as out of place among the more delicate furnishings as it always had.
I crossed to the mantel and fished around in a delftware posset pot, where Bree kept the key to the rolltop desk, just as her great-grandaunts had done. Key in hand, I unlocked the desk, raised the rolltop, pushed Bree’s laptop to one side, and pressed a lever hidden at the back of a pigeonhole. A slender panel to the right of the pigeonhole popped open. I slid my hand into the narrow compartment and breathed a sigh of relief as my fingers touched Bree’s passport.
“Well?” Tommy asked anxiously. “Is it there?”
“Yes.” I took the passport from the compartment and showed it to him. “She hasn’t bolted for New Zealand, Tommy. She’s still in the UK.”
Tommy swayed slightly, but he didn’t drop Bess. If anything, he held her more tightly, as if his strong emotions couldn’t overcome his protective instincts. He would, I thought, make a wonderful father.
“Where is she?” he asked helplessly.
“Her laptop might tell us,” I said, “but let’s take it to my place. Bess needs lunch and you need to be somewhere other than here.” I picked up the laptop, slid the passport back into its hidey-hole, secured the desk, dropped the key in the posset pot, and left the parlor, calling over my shoulder, “Don’t forget to lock the door on your way out.”
After feeding Bess, reading her a story, and settling her in the nursery for her nap, I returned to the living room. I’d left Tommy sitting on the sofa with a roast chicken sandwich and a glass of water on the coffee table and Bree’s laptop on his lap. When I saw Stanley sniffing the untouched sandwich, I shooed him away, picked up the plate, and waved it between Tommy’s face and the laptop’s screen.
“Eat,” I said. “You can’t think clearly on an empty stomach.”
“Yes, I can,” he said.
“Humor me,” I insisted.
I stood over him, arms folded, while he polished off the sandwich in four gargantuan bites, which he washed down—prematurely, in my opinion—with the water. Satisfied, I sat in Bill’s armchair. Despite my shooing, Stanley jumped onto my lap and curled into a purring ball of contentment. He wasn’t a cat who held grudges.
“Was I right about the laptop?” I asked. “Did it tell us where Bree went?”
“I think so.” Tommy closed the laptop and set it on the coffee table. He didn’t appear to be as pleased by the results of his detective work as I’d thought he’d be. “I scrolled through her most recent searches. She was looking for the shortest route to a market town in Derbyshire, a place called Bakewell.”
“Bakewell?” I said, my eyebrows rising. “Where the tarts were invented? Seems like a long way to go to appease a sugar craving.”
“It’s not the dark side of the moon,” said Tommy. “Depending on traffic, Bree could have driven from her house to Bakewell in a little over two hours. And I don’t think she went there to sample the baked goods.”
“Why did she go there?” I asked.
“Bakewell’s a popular tourist spot,” he explained. “Since it’s inside the national park, it’s big on outdoor adventures—hiking, cycling, rock-climbing, caving, water sports, that sort of thing.”
“Bet it can’t beat Finch for kayaking,” I said, knowing full well that it could.
Tommy smiled halfheartedly and went on. “Quite a few shops in Bakewell cater to the adventure trade. They sell outdoor clothing and gear, and rent equipment. Visitors can find pretty much anything they need to enjoy an active holiday.”
“Is that what you think Bree’s doing?” I asked doubtfully. “Enjoying an active holiday in the Peak District?”
“She concentrated on one shop in particular,” Tommy continued. “Bike Well Cycles. It’s an independent cycle shop owned by a couple—Fred and Alice Taylor. The Taylors rent, sell, and repair bicycles, but they also give guided tours of the Peak District.”
“Busy couple,” I commented.
“Their most popular tour includes a visit to Chatsworth House,” said Tommy. “It’s just up the road from Bakewell. Customers cycle there, take a walking tour of the house and gardens, then cycle back. Have you ever been to Chatsworth?”
“No,” I said, “but it’s high on my list of stately homes to visit. I hear it’s magnificent.”
“I went there once with my mum and dad,” said Tommy. “I was about ten at the time, so I didn’t have much say in the matter. I wasn’t keen on the house—too many things for a gangly boy to bump into—but the gardens were spectacular, like a fun fair, only greener.”
I laughed. “Sounds like the kind of gardens a ten-year-old boy would like.”
“They’re not tacky,” Tommy stressed. “Far from it. Even I could see how beautiful they were, but they definitely weren’t boring. There’s a cascade, a maze, a rockery with boulders the size of cars, and a fountain that shoots a jet of water hundreds of feet into the air.” He looked down at the laptop. “I told Bree about Chatsworth’s marvelous gardens. We talked about going to see them together.” He lifted his gaze to meet mine. “I think she decided to go on her own.”
“She wouldn’t,” I protested.
“Why not?” said Tommy. “She could do with a change of scenery, she loves gardens, and she enjoys cycling. Bike Well’s Chatsworth tour would tick all three boxes.”
“I don’t care if it ticks a trillion boxes,” I retorted. “Bree wouldn’t go to Chatsworth without you, not if you talked about going there together.”
“You may not have noticed, Lori,” he said with an air of resignation, “but Bree and I aren’t together anymore.”
“Maybe not officially,” I argued, “maybe not right this minute, but you will be together again, I promise. She’ll come back to you, Tommy. She just needs to figure things out.”
“What is there to figure out?” he asked. “She knows how much I love her, she knows I’d do anything for her, but it doesn’t seem to matter to her.” He bowed his head. “I don’t seem to matter to her.”
He looked so young and so utterly defeated that I could hold my tongue no longer. I ceded the armchair to Stanley, moved to the sofa, and sat facing Tommy, with my leg folded under me.
“Has Bree ever talked to you about her childhood?” I asked.
“No,” he replied. “She told me once that she envied me for having a normal childhood, but when I asked her what she meant, she said she’d rather look forward than back. I sensed that it was a no-go area, so I let it drop.” He frowned. “Why? What does Bree’s childhood have to do with her running away to Chatsworth?”
“Pretty much everything.” I took a deep breath, apologized silently to Bree, and began the difficult task of telling Tommy about his beloved’s abnormal childhood. “Bree wasn’t much older than Bess when her parents’ marriage crashed and burned. They weren’t fit to raise a child, so she was raised by her paternal grandparents until her feckless father turned up, out of the blue, and took over the household.
“Bree’s father was a bully, a thief, a liar, a cheat, a gambler, and a mean drunk. He drove Bree’s grandmother into an early grave and he terrorized Bree’s grandfather. Bree lived in fear of his drunken rages. She tried to shield her grandfather from them, but what could she do? She was just a kid.”
Tommy’s jaw tightened ominously, but he said nothing.
“Bree was eighteen when her grandfather died,” I continued. “She made sure he had a decent burial, then took off to look for her mother. Bree didn’t have much trouble locating her, but the reunion wasn’t a happy one. She couldn’t stay with her mother and she wouldn’t go home to her father, so she ran and she kept on running, driven by anger, guilt, grief, and an unshakable conviction that she was not only unloved but unlovable.”
“Unlovable,” Tommy muttered, shaking his head in disbelief.
“I arrived in New Zealand shortly after Bree’s father finally drank himself to death,” I said. “I managed to track her down about ten days later. When I broke the news to her, she didn’t shed a single tear.”
“Why would she?” Tommy said bitterly.
“I found her in Queenstown, in a garden on the shores of Lake Wakatipu.” I paused as the memories came flooding back. “I told her that a pair of very old ladies in a very small English village had sent me to act as their emissary because they wanted very much to meet her before they met their maker. I brought her to Finch and introduced her to her great-grandaunts, who fell in love with her at first sight. They died the next day.”
Tommy groaned softly.
“When your uncle took Bree under his wing,” I went on, “he became a surrogate father to her—the father she wished she’d had. She hates herself for letting him down because she knows all too well how it feels to be let down. And how could someone who betrayed a man as upstanding as Mr. Barlow be worthy of marrying his nephew?”
“Unloved, unwanted, unworthy,” Tommy murmured. “My poor Bree.” He closed his eyes briefly, then turned to me. “Has she told my uncle about her childhood?”
“What do you think?” I asked.
Tommy sighed. “I think he’s as much in the dark as I was. He’d never have come down so hard on her if he’d known about her father. We both thought Bree was as tough as nails.”
“She is tough,” I said, “and resilient and courageous and astoundingly self-assured—most of the time. But she’s also vulnerable, especially when it comes to father figures. A harsh word from Mr. Barlow carries a lot more weight with her than it would if it came from you or me.”
“I’ve never spoken a harsh word to Bree,” said Tommy.
“Nor had Mr. Barlow, until she broadcast his private business in the tearoom,” I reminded him. “I don’t think he’d ever raised his voice to her before. Your uncle isn’t an ogre, Tommy. He had a right to be upset with her.”
“He also has a right to know why his lecture on privacy ended with his tough-as-nails apprentice bursting into tears,” said Tommy. “I’ll fill him in. He’ll want to kick himself for losing his temper with Bree.”
“He shouldn’t,” I said. “It’s not his fault that she couldn’t bring herself to tell him the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about her past.”
“I suppose she didn’t want him—or me—to feel sorry for her,” said Tommy.
“She didn’t want anyone to feel sorry for her,” I said, “which is why she asked me to keep my mouth shut about her childhood. She enjoyed the pity party Grant and Charles threw for her after her rotten Aussie fiancé dumped her, but she’d hate it if everyone pitied her all the time.”
Tommy raised his prosthetic leg. “No one understands better than I how demoralizing pity can be.”
“Feel free to pity me after Bree finds out what I’ve done,” I said glumly. “She’ll probably clobber me for talking about her behind her back, but with you looking like a sad puppy, and Mr. Barlow smashing his thumb, and Tilly snapping at Henry—”
“Tilly snapped at Henry?” Tommy interrupted incredulously.
“You and your uncle have been driving her nuts!” I exclaimed. “You gave me no choice. I had to tell you about Bree’s past for everyone’s sake, including hers. I imagine the whole sorry story will come out eventually—secrets don’t stay secret for very long in Finch—but until it does, I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t chat about it in the tearoom.”
“I’ll file it under ‘Need to Know,’ ” Tommy promised, “and my uncle is the only one who needs to know.” He smiled wryly. “It could be argued that Bree’s as touchy about her privacy as my uncle is about his. No wonder they get along so well.”
“Birds of a feather,” I said, smiling back at him. “When you get home, apologize to your aunt, talk to your uncle, and above all, be patient with Bree. She’s a clever girl. She’ll figure things out.”
“If a change of scenery helps her to figure things out,” said Tommy, “then I don’t mind her going to Chatsworth without me. She can show me her favorite spots when we go there together.” He picked up the laptop and stood. “I’d better be on my way. I’ll put the laptop back where we found it.”
“What’s your hurry?” I said, patting the sofa. “Stick around. Bess will be up in a few minutes. We can give you a lift home.”
“Thanks, but I’ll walk back to the village,” he said. “I’m so bloody furious with Bree’s dad I could put my fist through a wall. I need to work it off before I speak with Uncle Bill.”
“A brisk walk sounds like a great idea,” I said, jumping to my feet.
I accompanied him to the door and opened it. Before he stepped outside, he bent down to hug me. It was like being hugged by a mountain.
“Thank you, Lori,” he said, straightening. “For the sandwich, for the truth, and for being a good friend.”
“What’s the watchword with Bree?” I asked.
“Patience,” he replied, and he strode down the flagstone path to the lane.
I watched him go, feeling as if I’d had a narrow escape. I had a sneaking suspicion that Bree’s trip to Derbyshire had something to do with Mr. Windle, but I had no intention of telling Tommy about the strange encounter I’d witnessed in the copse. He’d had enough revelations for one day, and I’d given away enough of Bree’s secrets. I’d leave it to her to tell him about her friendship with our new neighbor.
I didn’t want to be clobbered twice.