Chapter 35
The air was lung-freezing cold, the grounds hard as iron around Siren Song in the last week of January. The huge lodge looked down at Elizabeth somewhat balefully, she thought, though she could see it might have an austere charm during the summer. Leaves on the surrounding bushes had been iced by Jack Frost, each vein limned in white. The headstones in the graveyard behind the lodge were cold and gray, brooding under a low, winter sun. Grim, it definitely was, but the women she’d met inside the lodge, her cousins, had greeted her with open arms as if they’d been waiting for her all their lives when she’d walked through the gates.
She stood at the edge of the graveyard beside Catherine and Ravinia, who’d made the trip north with her, though she seemed even more anxious than Elizabeth to get back to California. She was making a life for herself there, bound and determined to be Rex’s assistant and partner in the private investigation business. Rex had come with them too, but was in a rental car outside the front gates, not allowed to enter as he was of the male gender, apparently one of Catherine’s damn near unbreakable rules.
He didn’t like it much, and neither did Elizabeth, but they had listened to Ravinia when she’d outlined the blueprint of what life was like at Siren Song. Both were trying to abide by the strange rules. Now Rex turned his thoughts to the time directly after Nadia fell.
Ravinia grew increasingly uncommunicative since the fight with Nadia on the cliff’s edge. She told them it was because the wolf was probably dead, and though neither Elizabeth nor Rex knew exactly what she was talking about, Chloe cried huge crocodile tears and said, “No, he can’t be. He just can’t be,” which seemed to be something they shared between them. There also seemed to be some kind of telepathic connection between her and Ravinia as Chloe had told Elizabeth that she’d called Ravinia and Rex to the house where Nadia was holding them.
When Nadia’s death, and the killings before it, hit the news, Vivian was beside herself, feeling halfway responsible for bringing Nadia into their Moms Group. She alternately begged Elizabeth to go back to the gym with her and pleaded with her to attend another Sisterhood session. Elizabeth promised to start back up with yoga, but she wasn’t interested in the Sisterhood. Nadia had hidden her true self amongst the other members, and Elizabeth didn’t feel comfortable there, anyway.
Detective Driscoll told Rex about the police investigation into Karl Vandell’s death and the murders of Channing Renfro and Officer Seth Daniels. It appeared that everything Nadia had said to the women of the Sisterhood was an out and out lie. Her adoptive parents revealed she didn’t even like children and didn’t intend to have any. Nadia had merely used the multiple miscarriage story to garner sympathy to find a way into Elizabeth’s life through Vivian. She’d joined the Sisterhood as a means to enter all their lives.
As for Karl . . . Nadia apparently killed him when he’d stopped being a reluctant assistant to her plans. His colleagues told Driscoll that Karl had initially welcomed her sudden interest in joining a women’s group, hoping it would stem her dark spiral down into obsession. He worried that she would become fixated on something to the point of neither eating nor sleeping. These colleagues believed that when he discovered her long-simmering, one-sided love affair with Elizabeth Ellis, she finally turned on him. Ligature marks were found around his wrists and ankles where he’d been bound and had struggled to free himself. It was believed he’d been deceased less than a day when Rex found his body.
But who was Nadia, and how did she have gifts? That question remained unanswered.
Ravinia told Elizabeth once again that she should go to Siren Song and meet her cousins and her mother. With the events of the past few weeks, Elizabeth was inclined to take what Ravinia said as truth, so she called Catherine on Ophelia’s cell phone and reached the woman who claimed to be her biological mother. That had been a weird and stilted conversation, but Elizabeth also remembered Detective Dunbar’s urging to meet them in person and so the trip was arranged.
They left Chloe in the Hofstetters’ care for the trip north and heard from Tara that Chloe and Bibi were getting along swimmingly. Without Lissa’s influence, the two girls had no problems. As far as Elizabeth knew, Chloe hadn’t exhibited any further signs of her gift, so she was hoping that with Nadia gone, the worst of Chloe’s “spells” would abate.
Rex stopped his musings to watch Catherine, Elizabeth, and Ravinia as they walked to the graveyard. It was just as Ravinia had said—long dresses and old-fashioned style; huge wrought-iron gates; an imposing wooden lodge with its blend of time past and modern touches; a long, potholed drive; a bevy of blond women; a wild and roaring ocean across a winding road. Catherine, herself, definitely looked like a woman from a different time.
The first meeting between Elizabeth and her mother had been as awkward as the phone call; Elizabeth wasn’t one to embrace and hug and neither was Catherine. But their mutual desire for space had worked for both of them, and they’d slowly relaxed in each other’s presence.
Many of Elizabeth’s ancestors were buried in the graveyard. Catherine walked her between the graves and pointed out different names, giving her a brief history of their lives. Ravinia didn’t say much as they wandered around. When Catherine was satisfied that Elizabeth was brought up to date, they walked to the back door of the lodge, but there Catherine had hesitated, looking back once more. Elizabeth and Ravinia stopped, too.
“Declan Jr.’s still out there,” Catherine said, turning from the graves toward the west and the ocean.
“You feel him, too?” Ravinia asked, waking up a bit.
Catherine shook her head. “Do you feel him? I just believe we’d know if he was dead.”
“I don’t know what I feel.” Ravinia backed off, turning away.
“You still think Declan Jr. will come after me?” Elizabeth asked Catherine.
“The boys in our family . . . seem to feel the gifts harder, and it becomes more dangerous with age. I don’t like taking chances,” she answered.
That was enough to give Elizabeth the willies and even Ravinia looked at her aunt and scowled as if she didn’t want to hear it, either.
“Come inside,” Catherine said, leading the way into the cavernous kitchen. She put a kettle on the stove and poured some loose brown leaves into a tiny basket and began steeping a pot of tea. Elizabeth expected some of her cousins to join them, but when she looked toward the living room, Catherine said, “I want to talk to you alone, so I asked them to give us some time.”
“You want me to leave, too?” Ravinia asked. She didn’t look happy about it, but sounded as if she would comply.
“No, I want you to hear this, too.” Catherine turned to Elizabeth. “I thought Declan Jr. had followed your scent to California, but it wasn’t Declan who came after you. It was a woman, which was something of a surprise, but now I think I know who she was. Lost Baby Girl.”
“What?” Ravinia had taken a seat at the end of the table. “Lost Baby Girl. What are you talking about?”
“There was a kidnapping a long time ago,” Catherine said in her precise way. “A woman who ran a private adoption agency had a baby stolen from her car. She’d put the baby in the car and then the phone rang inside the house. When she went to answer it, the baby was taken.”
“No cell phone?” Ravinia asked.
“It was twenty-five years ago,” Catherine said drily.
“This woman . . . who left the baby in the car . . . she was trustworthy?” Elizabeth asked tentatively.
“We’d used her many times.” Catherine looked at Elizabeth and then glanced away, and Elizabeth understood this same woman had been instrumental in her own adoption. “She was well-respected around Deception Bay. It happened so fast. No one knew what to think of it.”
“Where’s this story going?” Ravinia asked, but Catherine ignored her and kept talking to Elizabeth.
“Shortly after the Gaineses adopted you, this woman was brokering another adoption. She was only away from her vehicle a short amount of time, but it was enough for someone to steal the child. A baby girl. She was just gone, and no one ever saw her again. At the time, she was dubbed Lost Baby Girl by the press.”
Ravinia demanded, “Why have I never heard of this?”
“Because you don’t listen very well,” Catherine said to her, somewhat sharply.
Ravinia made a leap of consciousness about the same time Elizabeth did.
“Are you saying Lost Baby Girl was Nadia?” Ravinia asked. “She’s from around here?”
“That’s what I believe. The child’s mother was a young woman whose father was considered a shaman in our nearest neighboring community.”
“Those are the Foothillers,” Ravinia said for Elizabeth’s benefit. “I told you about them.”
Elizabeth nodded. Though some of Ravinia’s convoluted tale from the night they’d met had been lost to her, she remembered the Foothillers who lived in the unincorporated town next to Siren Song and were mainly of Native American descent.
Catherine went on, “This young mother had been involved with a man whom we all thought was long dead, but suddenly he was back and . . . creating havoc.”
“Who was he?” Ravinia interrupted. Catherine gazed at her hard and Ravinia lifted her hands in surrender. “I just want to know.”
“He was a very bad man. An evil man. What his relationship with the child’s mother was . . . I don’t know. I don’t know if anyone really knew.” Catherine’s tone suggested it could be nothing good. “He was already gone when the baby was stolen, and he wouldn’t have cared, anyway. The child’s mother wouldn’t admit that she’d put the baby up for adoption. It was rumored the shaman prohibited her from even claiming the child as hers. So, after a short, fruitless search, the whole thing was dropped as if it never happened. The local police did what they could, but the shaman and his daughter would not help them. Both of them died years ago, and the story died with them.”
“What happened to the father?” Elizabeth asked.
“He’s dead,” Catherine answered with such finality that Elizabeth could tell there was far more to that story.
Thinking about it, she asked, “Was he related to . . . us?”
A long moment passed and then Catherine said, “Yes,” adding quietly, “I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anyone before.”
Ravinia’s head snapped around as if pulled by strings. Clearly, this was way out of character for her aunt. Elizabeth waited expectantly.
“About ten years ago, a woman from Deception Bay was dying of breast cancer and she asked to speak to me. Sheriff O’Halloran came to the lodge and wanted to know if I would go to her. I didn’t know who she was, but I went to her at the hospital and she reached for my hand. She had the idea that I could help her. Not save her life, but maybe her soul. I tried to tell her that, whatever she’d heard about us, we weren’t priestesses, but she didn’t care. She wanted to confess, and she wanted to confess to me, so I let her.
Her name was Lena and she and her boyfriend of the time were the ones who’d stolen Lost Baby Girl. They’d used a lawyer in Southern California, much like my adoption broker did, only the lawyer Lena used didn’t require as much in the way of documentation, apparently, and so the deal was done. Much later, Lena learned that the child she’d stolen was the shaman’s granddaughter, and though she wasn’t Native American herself, she wanted to be absolved by this shaman before she died. She didn’t know he’d predeceased her, but when she learned, she then turned to ‘the witches of Siren Song’ for absolution. When she asked me to help her, she didn’t know Lost Baby Girl was related to us through the father. No one did . . . and they still don’t know.”
“Did you give her absolution?” Ravinia asked curiously.
“I said a few words and told her she was forgiven and she relaxed and died several minutes later.” Catherine made a face. “It made me wish I’d done more to help seek out the child, but truthfully, because of her father, I didn’t want to find her.”
“What was wrong with this man?” Elizabeth asked, even though she could tell Catherine didn’t want to talk about him.
“He was my sister Mary’s father, Thomas Durant, and he’d been missing for years, so when he showed up, we didn’t immediately know who he was. Mary even invited him to the house as a guest, like she did with lots of men, and, one thing led to another. It was after that, that I closed the gates. . . .”
“He was my grandfather,” Ravinia said.
Catherine nodded and there was silence for awhile.
Then Ravinia asked carefully, “Please don’t tell me he was my father, too.”
“No.” Catherine was positive on that. “And he’s not yours, either, Elizabeth. I know you have questions about your father, but I don’t really want to talk about him right now. He was a good man, though.”
She accepted that with a nod. Eventually, she would probably get all of her history, but she was willing to wait.
“But you think my mother slept with her father,” Ravinia said.
“She didn’t know who he was, although he knew who she was and didn’t care. I believe he was the main reason your mother lost her mind,” Catherine said to Ravinia. “He came at me a time or two as well. That’s why we had to take care of things.”
“What did you do?” Elizabeth asked.
“Made sure he wouldn’t hurt anyone again,” Catherine said with finality. “He’s dead and his bones are burned now. He won’t come back to haunt us. But he fathered a number of children in his day, and Lost Baby Girl was one of them.”
“Nadia,” Elizabeth said.
Catherine nodded in confirmation.
An hour later, Elizabeth and Ravinia said good-bye to the clan of women and were let through the gate by the eldest cousin at the lodge, Isadora. Rex jumped out of the car at their approach and helped them into their seats.
On the road and away from the lodge, he asked, “How was it?”
“The same,” Ravinia said.
“Interesting,” Elizabeth responded as they turned onto the coast road.
Rex said, “I just got a call from my buddy, Mike Tatum. He says Nadia’s body finally floated into one of the harbors.”
“Good.” Ravinia said. “At least she’s really dead.”
Elizabeth was glad to hear it, too. She hadn’t believed anyone could survive that fall, but when Nadia’s body didn’t turn up, a terrible question had formed in the back of her mind. She still woke up shuddering most nights, remembering how close she’d come to going over the edge. It was a miracle Rex had saved her, and Nadia had tumbled over by herself. The ocean had immediately pulled her body away and it had been missing for over a week.
“She had a bite mark on her hand,” Rex added.
“Chloe,” Elizabeth said.
“And there were canine bites on her body, too.”
Elizabeth looked at him as they turned east off 101 to Highway 26, the road that led through the Coast Range to the Willamette Valley and the Portland airport. “She was bitten by a dog?”
“By a wolf,” Ravinia said, staring out the window pensively.