Chapter 16
Heidi
It had been a week since her anxiety attack in the grocery store parking lot. A week since Brad had found her at the park down by the river, staring across it and into the forest beyond. A week since she’d pocketed the mysterious note and said nothing—to anyone. A week since Vicki had loaded her down with so many chores around the lodge, she hadn’t time to consider anything but laundry, cleaning floors, checking in new guests, and retrieving extra TP on request. In a way, she was grateful. It was a distraction from the whirling what-ifs in her mind.
Heidi hadn’t visited her mother once. She’d refused to open the old photo album. The mysterious note left on her windshield was still stuffed in the pocket of her jeans from that day. Maybe she should’ve called Detective Davidson or Officer Tate. Involved the police somehow. But, in the end, Heidi didn’t want answers. She wanted to forget about it. To move on. Besides, she’d heard once that fingerprints were difficult to pull from paper, so what could the police even do?
Heidi snapped open a bedsheet and let the white cotton fall over the twin bed mattress. The cabin had been cleaned from top to bottom, and all that was left to do was put fresh linens on the bed and fluff pillows cased in red patchwork shams. It was the last cabin to be cleaned since the guests had checked out earlier in the morning. It was Sunday, and Brad and Vicki had gone to church. Heidi opted out. She wasn’t sure her attending church would do anything but exacerbate old, hard feelings rather than bring the hope it espoused. She knew it was somewhat of an excuse, but for now, that niggling nausea of barely controlled worries in her stomach told her she couldn’t afford more.
The sound of crunching gravel and a vehicle’s engine stirred Heidi’s attention. She gave the end of the bedsheet a quick tuck and fold under the mattress before moving to the window of the tiny cabin’s kitchen.
Rhett Crawford and Emma.
Heidi studied the handsome profile of the mechanic. He really was something. Impressive, confident, commanding . . . and outright unlikable. But in a weird way, Heidi admired that about him. His unlikable nature was due to his protective guard over his sister, so it had merit. Heidi eyed him briefly before reaching for the door. If her family had shown an ounce of the loyalty Rhett showed Emma, how different might her life have been? She hesitated. If she’d shown any loyalty to her family . . .
She pushed open the screen door, the squeaking of its hinges drawing Rhett’s attention from the front entrance to the lodge.
“Not churchgoers?” Heidi teased as she made her way across the circular drive. She hoped her smile more than made up for the way her heart picked up speed when Rhett looked her direction. Rüger, the dog, sniffed the ground and the grass by Rhett’s feet.
Heidi focused on Emma, whose sideswept bangs and shoulder-length straight hair framed a face that was the feminine version of her brother’s.
“We go to church.” Emma’s expression matched the sincerity behind her words. “Every Sunday. From eight in the morning till ten.”
Heidi gave Emma a smile that welcomed her as an equal. The younger woman could probably run circles of intelligence around her, and yet some people were determined to treat those with autism as different. She wouldn’t be one of those people.
“Church is over, then?” Heidi gave Rhett a flicker of a smile but addressed Emma. That probably meant Brad and Vicki were on their way home.
“Don’t you go to church?” Emma asked, her gaze direct and honest.
Heidi probably wouldn’t have even squirmed at the question if Rhett hadn’t been standing there, staring at her with an element of disinterest and vague suspicion all at the same time.
“I haven’t been in a while,” Heidi admitted to Emma, an apologetic nod accompanying it. She reached down and scratched Rüger’s brown-and-tan fur that flopped between his eyes as he nudged her leg.
“You should come with us next week.” Emma turned to Rhett. “We can give her a ride?”
Rhett shoved his hands in his pants’ pockets. “If she wants to come, I’m sure Heidi can drive herself.”
His words reminded Heidi of the car accident. She hid the twang of hurt at Rhett’s snub and turned a bright smile on Emma, changing the subject. “How is Ducie?”
Emma returned the smile. “He is good. His leg is healing.”
Heidi couldn’t help but feel relieved. “Wonderful!”
She kept her tone even, her words short. Regardless of how she felt about Rhett, his comment that too much chatter would be overwhelming for Emma had stuck in Heidi’s memory. She wanted Emma to like her. For some reason, she longed for Emma’s approval. Probably because she’d almost taken from the woman the one creature that brought her comfort. Heidi could relate. She almost wished she had a dog for a companion.
Heidi bent to give Rüger a healthy rubdown, relishing the feel of his longer hair, the warmth of his body. Yes, a dog might be just another creature to some, but Heidi could understand why they played such a vital role in people’s lives. They were your friend—unconditionally.
“What brings you to Lane Lodge?” This time Heidi didn’t try to avoid Rhett’s eyes. In fact, she felt her chin tilt up and a tiny smile tease her lips. Almost challenging him to make her feel inferior or stupid.
He did neither. Just gave her a shrug instead. “Emma wanted to see you to ask if you’ll play a game of Risk with her again sometime.”
Warmth spread through Heidi. She reached out to give Emma’s arm the lightest touch, but then drew back, unsure how Emma would respond to physical expression coming from someone other than family. “Thank you.” She captured Emma’s gaze. “I really mean that.”
For a brief second, something passed between her and Emma. An understanding of sorts. A realization that for all their differences, they were also very similar.
Emma’s eyes lit up, and she tugged at the scarf around her neck. “Can you come to my house? Tomorrow? Dad is going to be at work, and Mom was going to stay home, but I’d like you to come instead. Then Mom can go to work.” She turned to Rhett, who looked completely caught off guard. “I’ll be fine if Heidi is there.”
For a man of few words, Rhett appeared to have misplaced the remaining bits of his vocabulary. He stared at Emma. Heidi could only assume it wasn’t her usual behavior to trust someone she didn’t know so quickly. Especially someone as prone to accidents as Heidi was, and the one responsible for turning Emma’s ordered world upside down.
Feeling a bit daring and rather enjoying the idea of stirring the pot, Heidi jumped in before he could formulate an excuse. “I would really enjoy that, Emma. I’ve no plans tomorrow.”
She did actually, but she could catch up on the lodge’s laundry after she got home.
“We’ll see,” Rhett finally said. It was a noncommittal response for Emma, and an obvious no for Heidi. What had seemed a gesture of reconciliation from Rhett to bring Emma here proved to fall short when faced with the reality of Emma’s request coming to fruition.
“Seriously, I’m fine with helping out,” Heidi pressed, not caring how Rhett felt. She owed the Crawfords—owed Emma—that much and more.
“We don’t usually—” Rhett broke off when Emma interrupted, surprise registering in his eyes.
“I’ll ask Mom.” Emma spoke, and it was so.
Rhett worked his jaw back and forth and gave a little nod, his granite expression locked with hers, and Heidi saw the distrust in his eyes. Every particle of Heidi’s being rose to the challenge. Just as she had when she was younger and her parents—Vicki—implied she was incapable or inadequate.
Sometimes the best way to counteract her anxiety was outright, reckless stubbornness.
And if the title of Most Stubborn was at stake here, then Rhett Crawford had a war on his hands.
Heidi couldn’t blame Connie for being reticent about leaving her alone with Emma. The fact of the matter was, they didn’t really know her well, and leaving Emma with someone untrained to help care for her was a bit of a question as to how Emma might react once the familiar and trusted elements were removed. But, Emma had been adamant that Heidi come, Connie had stated on the phone. Adamant that she wanted Heidi there. To play Risk. So, day one had been a test day. Connie hadn’t gone to work as Emma had suggested she could, but instead she worked outside in the yard in case anything was needed. The second day, on invite from Emma because she wanted a repeat, Connie had ventured to work. She had also snuck home three times to make sure things were going well. Heidi couldn’t take offense to it. She wasn’t a mother, but she was sure she’d have done the same thing. The last time home, Connie’s shoulders visibly relaxed. They were fine. Emma was fine.
Heidi shifted in her seat again. It was the third day in a row she had come, but she hadn’t the heart to refuse, nor did she want to. Emma’s company was refreshing. The game of Risk, however, was progressing well—for Emma. The board game was completely covered by her players, and Heidi was on the verge of surrendering Brazil. They hadn’t done much beyond labor over the game, and they had reached a companionable silence. Ducie, with his cast-encased leg, was resting on the floor beside Emma, always eyeing Heidi with suspicion. Not unlike Rhett.
Heidi was growing restless. Sitting for hours playing a board game had been a blessed diversion at the start, yet she’d never been one to sit still for too long. Now that she’d come as well to collect her emotions and quell her anxiety, Heidi couldn’t help but revisit her mother’s letter.
She’d reread it that morning before coming to the Crawfords’.
We lived in a house of ghosts, the letter had said. Unspoken voices. The past and the present colliding with such force, we could only survive by ignoring it.
Please come.
Heidi, you are the reason the voices are never heard.
“Your move.” Emma’s voice split through Heidi’s subconscious.
“Oh!” Heidi hesitated. Jean, the cashier, had implied that Emma knew all sorts of old history about Pleasant Valley. The asylum, for starters. Was it coincidence her mother spoke of madness at the same time someone had seen fit to leave Heidi their creepy calling card? Officer Tate, the night of the break-in, hadn’t seemed to dismiss Heidi’s claim of seeing a woman looking through her window.
Misty Wayfair.
The name scrawled on the back of the antique photograph.
“Emma,” she spoke before thinking it through, “do you know anything about the legend of Misty Wayfair?”
Emma blinked, then pulled on both sides of her infinity scarf, patterned with tiny little yellow dogs on a blue background. “Yes.”
That’s right. Closed-ended questions got a closed answer. Heidi restructured her question for Emma. “Would you tell me what you know about Misty Wayfair?”
Emma leaned back in her chair and draped her hand over the arm to brush the broad forehead of Ducie.
“Misty Wayfair died in 1851. She was the rumored lover of Fergus Coyle, who married Mathilda Kramer the day before Misty died.”
Heidi frowned. “Kramer? As in Kramer Logging?”
Emma nodded, a proud smile touching her lips. “Dad has worked for Kramer Logging since 1985. Rhett was born a year later.”
Emma’s penchant for recalling dates was remarkable.
Heidi leaned forward, her elbow brushing a few infantrymen on the board, which toppled in their home space of Western Australia. “How is Misty Wayfair linked to the old asylum?”
Officer Tate had alluded to the ghost story the night of the break-in, but Heidi wanted Emma’s factual interpretation of this lore, minus any personal superstition.
Emma thought for a moment, her eyes narrowing. She studied Heidi before reciting what she knew. “Some people say when she died, her spirit was trapped in the asylum and never released. Some say she wandered the forest and danced in the streets at night. But”—Emma’s expression grew serious, stern almost, as if people’s misinterpretation of the legend was offensive to her—“Misty Wayfair was always seen before a Coyle died.”
Heidi frowned. Coyle. Fergus Coyle who’d married Mathilda Kramer.
“Who exactly are the Coyles?”
Emma smiled. “People who lived in Pleasant Valley.”
A literal explanation for a generic question. Heidi tried again. “But, what are the Coyles remembered for?”
Emma’s eyes brightened. “For Misty Wayfair.”
It was a circular conversation. Without knowing what she was trying to uncover exactly, Heidi couldn’t ask questions that would help her to understand more.
“Have you ever been to the asylum ruins?” Heidi ventured.
Emma gave her a long look. “No.”
“Oh.” Heidi readjusted her focus to the Risk board. She needed to drop the subject.
“We could go.” Emma’s suggestion sliced through Heidi. It’d been what she was thinking, but also what she was questioning as a good idea. She’d not mentioned anything to Connie about taking Emma from the house.
“Mmm, probably not wise.” Heidi had a challenging time focusing on the game now.
“Rhett told me he’d take me someday,” Emma stated flatly.
Heidi looked up at the young woman whose pretty eyes were directed at her troops on the board. “And he hasn’t?”
“No.”
Wondering why made it clearer to Heidi she should probably avoid it herself. “Maybe I’ll ask your mom when she comes home. If she says it’s all right, we could go tomorrow.”
“You could text my mom now.”
True. She could. Heidi leaned back in her chair. Emma gave her a direct stare and blinked. Waiting.
Yes. She would text Connie. She and Emma both needed a diversion from the board game.
She hadn’t heard back from Connie, but by the time she’d texted her, Emma had already gone outside and was waiting in the passenger seat of Heidi’s car. Connie would respond, and if she said no, Heidi figured she had enough time to turn the car around and head back to the house.
Now, Heidi’s car crossed the bridge over the river, leaving the boundary of city limits—“city” being an exaggeration—and onto a rural road that curved into the thick forest. A few small homes breezed by, set back into the trees, and then it almost seemed they’d entered something like a state park. Habitation dwindled, and the side roads turned to gravel with small, white signs and arrows in black to guide you in the right direction.
“What road is the asylum on?” Heidi peered ahead with squinted eyes, maintaining her speed of thirty miles per hour so she could read the signs.
“Briar Road,” Emma replied. She kneaded her scarf as she looked out the window.
Heidi glanced at the screen on her phone. No text yet. A part of her thought of turning back, but Emma’s focus was so intense and set on the road ahead of them, she could sense the woman’s interest. Emma would be fine.
Maybe she should have maneuvered Ducie into the car, just for security. Heidi gave Emma a sideways glance. Emma’s hands had dropped to her lap and were calm. She was calm. Heidi warred with the niggling sense of not having heard back from Connie and the desire to keep going. Having Emma with her at the asylum might open a world of information. Information that might help Heidi make sense of . . . whatever there was to make sense of.
A sign for Briar Road was on their left. Heidi slowed and turned the vehicle. The tires rolled onto gravel, and Heidi winced at the deep ruts in the road that appeared wide enough for one vehicle. Apparently the asylum wasn’t the tourist destination Jean from the grocery store had seemed to imply. If this was one of the top three must-sees, they needed better road maintenance.
“What was the name of the asylum, way back when?” Heidi tossed the question in Emma’s direction to keep her occupied.
“Valley Heights Asylum. Founded in 1888 by Reginald Kramer.”
“When did it close?”
“In 1927.”
“Do you know why it closed?” Heidi slowed as an opening seemed to loom ahead. Dark and shadowed, with trees grown so tall and so thick that she couldn’t make out a structure.
A nervous twinge bit at Heidi’s stomach. She glanced at Emma. “Are you all right?”
Emma nodded.
Heidi rephrased the question. “Why did the asylum close?”
“It ran out of money.”
Heidi slowed the car as the woods began to give way to a swath of open property. A rectangular building rose from the underbrush and thick overgrowth. Three stories with the eastern side crumbled and diminished to the foundation. Rows of windows, uniform in size, lined the remaining structure, some with glass still in them, but most broken and ragged from time.
An iron fence surrounded the grounds, portions of it bent and sagging inward, ready to collapse to the earth from years of neglect. There was a gap at the front where at one time a gate must have swung. Tall and ornate, Heidi imagined, with a lock perhaps to keep out unwanted visitors and keep in . . .
Well, asylums were their own form of prison after all, weren’t they?
Heidi shifted the car into park and then turned to Emma. “Do you want to come with me?”
Emma had grown quieter. She stared out the passenger window at the asylum.
“Why don’t you stay in the car.” Heidi didn’t want to suggest it for selfish reasons, but now she was full-on second-guessing, since her phone remained dark with no text from Connie. She couldn’t even call her now. No signal was like a bad omen.
Emma shook her head. “No. I’ll come.”
She reached for the door handle and opened the door. Heidi followed suit. Within moments they stood at the asylum’s gaping front entrance, staring up at the dilapidated brick structure.
Heidi entered the grounds silently. Emma followed close behind, her hands buried in her scarf and her eyes wide, taking in every nuance of the place. Beneath their feet, long grasses tangled and twisted. Some flattened by weather and time, others standing and struggling to find sunlight through the thick overgrowth of forest.
Heidi squatted, her hand pushing away the grass to flatten on a cobblestone. She looked up at Emma. “There was a stone walkway here, I’ll bet you anything.”
She stood and craned her neck toward the still-standing portion of the asylum. From here it seemed taller, darker, more Gothic in nature. If she closed her eyes, Heidi could almost imagine the forms of nurses in starched white with triangular caps passing behind the windowpanes. She could recreate the opening of the asylum entrance to a wide hall, with plain wood floors and whitewashed walls. Perhaps to the left, the first room would have been a visiting area, where people would come to see loved ones committed to this place. Or not. Maybe once here, the patient would have been forgotten. Ushered away into seclusion while the world outside carried on as if they no longer existed.
Maybe a person would have stood in the entryway, waiting for an aide to take them to meet with the registrant. To discuss admittance of a loved one, the long-term care options. Perhaps they would sit in a wooden chair with wide arms and a leather cushion. The solemn stillness of the place would be broken by a scream. A wild scream. Splitting the sterile silence with its anguished cry. Wailing . . . Rocking . . .
“Oh my gosh!” Heidi spun, snapping from her trancelike state.
Emma was on her knees behind her, jeans pressed into the grass and on the barely noticeable cobblestone walk. Her arms flailed in a circular motion, her eyes staring up at the third floor, wide and terrified.
“Emma!” Heidi hurried toward her, dropping beside her. Reaching out with her hand to lightly touch Emma’s shoulder.
“No. No, no, no.” Emma twisted away, still fixated on the upper-floor window.
“What happened? What’s wrong?”
The more Heidi asked, the stronger Emma rocked, and every question agitated Emma further. She remembered the rubber ball Rhett had given Emma the night Ducie had been injured. She’d squeezed it. Deep breaths. Eye contact.
Oh, she was going to have a thousand penances to pay now!
Avoiding the regret that twisted at her, Heidi positioned herself in front of Emma, commanding her attention.
“Emma, breathe with me,” she insisted. But even measured breaths refused to calm the young woman. A tear trickled down Emma’s face.
Whatever had happened, whatever she’d seen, had petrified her.
“Emma?” Heidi was almost nose to nose with her, and Emma reared back, a wild look in her eyes. “Please, Emma. Do you want to go? We can go. I’ll take you home.”
“Home.” Emma’s voice warbled through tears.
“Yes. I’ll take you home.” Heidi reached for her, but Emma jerked away and skewered Heidi with a stern look.
“My brother. Get me my brother.”
“Yes. Yes, we’ll get Rhett.” God help her, Rhett would hate her for this.
“Get me home,” Emma insisted. “Away from her.”
Heidi paused, not sure she’d heard her right. “Wait. Away from her?”
Emma shook her head, fresh tears trailing down her pretty face. Eyes turned upward again. She rocked back and forth, on her knees, her breaths coming in tight, short gasps.
“I don’t want to see her again.”
“Who, Emma?” Heidi urged, probably harder than she should.
“Misty Wayfair,” Emma whispered, dropping her gaze to Heidi’s, her lower lip trembling. “This is her home. Didn’t you know?”