Chapter 22

All right. Let’s get some warmth in us.” Connie eased onto a chair opposite Heidi, pushing a hot cup of tea toward her. The kitchen table between them, Heidi had the album, the note, and a blank notepad in front of her. A mug of lukewarm coffee sat nearby, neglected. Heidi wrapped her hands around the fresh cup of tea and let her mind calculate the events that had unfolded since the fright at the asylum ruins.

Rhett hadn’t been able to get a call out from the asylum to the police. So they’d made their way back to town and stopped at the station. They filed a report and were reassured that the police would be sending out officers to look at the vandalism. Maybe they’d find fingerprints or some DNA and match them with a name in their database. But it was all so ambiguous, Heidi wasn’t holding out hope.

Rhett drove her back to the Crawfords’, where Heidi curled up on the couch next to Emma. She’d tried to hide her tremors, but as soon as Rhett left the room, Emma helped Ducie to stand and encouraged the dog to lie down on the floor next to Heidi. Emma had waited with expectation. It didn’t take Heidi long to drop her hand and curl it into the fur of Ducie’s neck. The dog nudged her arm. Sensing. Knowing. Emma settled on the floor beside her dog, just below where Heidi rested. Three comrades. Different struggles. Common hearts.

An hour later, Heidi heard the sound of a vehicle pulling up the Crawford drive. She peeked out the window to see Rhett—he’d returned her car. He still had her keys from when he’d swiped them earlier. It was a simple deed, but thoughtful. Still, she’d had no desire to return to Lane Lodge. To Vicki. To the room where the first blood-red message had appeared on her mirror.

Returning home about the same time, Connie rescued Heidi from just such a thing. She warmed up venison stew for supper and whipped up a batch of biscuits to go on the side. Never having eaten venison, Heidi hesitated. More trauma was not going to help her collect her wits and keep from an all-out panic attack. But, it was good—like beef—and Heidi sensed some awareness flooding through her internalized anxiety with the uplift of protein and her blood sugar.

Connie’s husband, Murphy, came home too, but then he snatched up a plate of food with a grin, gave a quick peck to Connie’s cheek, and escaped out the back door on his way to the workshop. With Rhett, Heidi supposed. Or maybe Rhett had gone back to his place? She assumed he had his own home and didn’t live with his parents.

Nope. She was wrong. He was still here.

A soft, brushed-wool blanket settled over her shoulders, breaking her focus away from what had happened and returning her to the present. Casual, as if it were commonplace to do so, Rhett tucked the blanket around her neck and then pulled out a chair by his mom. Emma followed him and sat in the fourth chair. Heidi looked at each one of them, and they all met her eyes.

“Wh-what are you all doing?” Heidi didn’t understand. The blanket. The three people opposite her. The photo album between them. The sense of . . . family.

Emma tilted her head and gave Heidi a smile. “We’re going to help you.”

It was so simple. So sincere.

Heidi gnawed at the inside of her lip. She glanced at Rhett, who reached for the album while nodding at Connie’s gentle smile.

The older woman reached across the table and took Heidi’s hand. “You’re not alone, honey.”

Heidi swiped away a rebel tear.

Not alone.

Vicki had walked away from this. From her. But the Crawfords had not. They were rallying, and she didn’t deserve it.

She muffled a watery chuckle as even Ducie limped into the room, three-legged, tendering the one Heidi had inadvertently broken. The dog wrestled himself to the floor beside Emma, a groan escaping his jowls.

As they were all laughing at the sight, the back door opened and Murphy entered, his gray hair ruffled, his ginormous shoulders, so much like Rhett’s, lifting the load of an antique trunk. Leather handles on both ends, he hefted it down to the floor.

He smiled, his beard tickling the collar of his flannel shirt. “Figured we may want to rustle through this thing too,” he said and broke the silence as they all stared at him.

A smile broadened across Connie’s face.

Murphy explained, “It’s that trunk we bought at the estate sale. When we picked up that photo album. Haven’t gone through it yet, but who knows? If you’ve a dead girl who looks like you in there”—he nodded toward the photo album—“maybe you got more stuff in here that’ll help it make sense.”

“Great idea!” Emma looked between her father and Heidi.

Rhett leaned back in his chair. Content, it seemed, though Heidi noted he gave her a few glances now and then as if doing some internal assessment to make sure she was truly okay.

She wasn’t.

Not in the least.

Everything about today was foreign. Frightening. And now, enticing.

Heidi was on unfamiliar territory. Where the asylum had turned into a nightmare, the Crawfords were turning into a dream.

Either way, she would have to wake up at some point. And real life had already proven it held very little promise for her.

The trunk’s contents were strewn across the Crawfords’ kitchen floor. Emma sat in the corner, a vintage newspaper open, her finger tracing the lines as she read, her mouth moving silently in forming the words. A few newspaper clippings, yellowed with age, perched on her knee. She was lost in another world, set in 1908 Pleasant Valley.

Rhett was studying the photograph of Heidi’s deceased doppelgänger.

Murphy sat in a chair nearby, his legs stretched out, work boots on, and a cup of coffee balanced in a brawny hand.

Connie lifted another item from the trunk as Heidi pulled the blanket Rhett had given her tighter around her shoulders. She tried to reconcile with today’s events. Events that had sent her anxiety into full-fledged panic mode but now were counteracted by a calming peace. Regardless of cryptic words painted in blood-red on an asylum wall, despite that they matched messages which seemed to be pointed at Heidi, everything felt right.

Everything felt . . . safe.

Heidi chose to allow herself to relish it. For now. She knew it wouldn’t last, but no matter. Tonight she would accept it.

“Interesting!” Connie opened the lid to an antique cigar box, its top embellished with a faded color image of a woman in a ball gown and a man in an evening suit and top hat. An envelope lay inside. Just one. Also faded and weathered-looking with its edges yellowed.

A name was scrawled on the front.

Dorothea Reed.

“That name sounds familiar,” Heidi muttered.

Connie scrunched her lips in thought. “Hmmm, it does to me too.” She flipped the envelope over and slid out its contents. “It’s definitely a personal letter. I wonder why it was saved?”

“What’s it say?” Murphy asked. He sounded like Rhett. Direct, almost commanding, and yet when Heidi gave him a hesitant look, she found warmth in his expression.

“Let me see if I can make it out,” Connie answered. “The handwriting is very thin and cramped.” She examined the page for a moment.

Emma discarded her newspaper and slid across the floor next to her mother. “I can read it,” she stated plainly.

“Go ahead then,” Connie laughed. “I can’t make head nor tails of it.”

Emma took time to carefully smooth the letter’s edges and creases, handling it as a precious gem of history. She cleared her throat, and her voice was even as she read.

“Dear Thea,

You were twelve when we took you in. It was our Christian duty. Looking back, I’m uncertain as to whether it was a wise decision, but as I lie on my deathbed, I find I must give you what little resolution I can. Mr. Mendelsohn will not be kind to you once I am gone. He is a brusque man. While he will not harm you physically, I fear he will become spiteful. You may wish to leave him. Please do not. In exchange for knowing you will care for my husband until he too passes into the hereafter, I will give you what I know of your history before you came to the orphanage.”

“Well, that sounds menacing!” Connie inserted.

Murphy grunted his agreement. “Hope she left that Mendelsohn guy.”

Heidi exchanged glances with Rhett while Emma waited, an impatient look on her face for having been interrupted. She dropped her gaze back to the letter and continued.

“All that is known of your parentage is your mother’s name: P. A. Reed. You were left at the orphanage at four years of age. They told us your mother had traveled from the Pleasant Valley, Wisconsin area, which of course is significantly north of where we are currently. You were left with little belongings. A dress, a nightgown, and a knitted hat. You said few words for the first year and thereafter became a friendly child. That is, unfortunately, all I know. But perhaps a name and a place may be all the tools necessary to assuage any curiosity as to your parentage should you wish to appease it.

I regret that I was naught but a guardian to you. Mothering died when our child did, so many years before you.

I bid you and this world farewell.

Please remember your promise to me to care for my husband.

With some affection,
Margory Mendelsohn”

Silence filled the room. It was a sad letter, Heidi determined. And, somehow, she related to it as the words drew her into the life of this Dorothea Reed, as though the letter were written to her. Of course, she knew her parentage and roots, yet the feeling of being an afterthought, ostracized by way of not belonging, that was something Heidi knew all too well.

“Thea Reed.” Rhett slid the photograph of the dead woman across the table toward Heidi.

She picked it up and gave him a questioning look.

“She’s the photographer,” he added.

“That’s right!” Connie snapped her fingers.

Heidi lifted the picture. “Yes. That’s where I’ve heard the name before.”

“The trunk had T. Reed etched into the leather handle on its far side. Everything in it must belong to this Thea girl. That photo album musta been part of her belongings then.” Murphy sat up and leaned on the table. “Makes sense. It was right next to the trunk at the sale. Fact, I think we bought them all together. The trunk and the album.”

“Who was Dorothea—Thea Reed then?” Heidi ventured.

Emma broke into the conversation as she folded the letter back to its original form. “Dorothea Reed was the photographer apprentice who worked alongside Mr. Amos, the owner of Amos Brothers Photography, a portrait studio in Pleasant Valley. He suffered an attack of the heart in May of 1908, and Dorothea Reed and a Mr. Simeon Coyle assisted in retrieving medical attention for him.”

They all stared at Emma.

She blinked back at them as if reciting historical facts was everyone’s best talent. “It was in that paper,” she said, pointing to the vintage paper she’d left behind in the corner.

Murphy chuckled. “You do beat all, baby girl.”

“Who is Simeon Coyle?” Connie asked Emma, as if somehow the girl would instinctively know.

And apparently she did.

“Simeon Coyle was descended from Reginald Kramer, founder of Kramer Logging. His grandmother Mathilda married Fergus Coyle, and Reginald Kramer disowned all her line afterward. His nephew, Edward Fortune, inherited the logging company, which is why today there are no Kramers there. Only Fortunes.”

“Fortunes who have a fortune!” Murphy groused and took a sip of his coffee.

“I still don’t see how any of this explains the woman in the picture who looks like me.” Heidi’s head was spinning.

Emma slipped the letter back into the envelope. “Maybe because you’re a Coyle.”

A dust particle landing on the tabletop could have been heard in the silence that followed.

Emma, oblivious, set the envelope back in the cigar box and replaced its lid. She returned her attention to them. “There’s a sketch of Mary Coyle in one of the newspaper clippings from the trunk. Her obituary. It’s the same woman as in your picture. She looks like you.”

It was all so obvious to Emma.

Heidi frowned. Her eyes swept up to meet Rhett’s, even as Connie lunged for one of the newspaper clippings Emma had been browsing earlier.

“But,” Heidi protested, “we’re not from around here. My family has no history in Pleasant Valley.”

“Are you sure?” Rhett’s eyes drilled into hers.

“I—” Heidi stopped. Of course she was. She’d been raised in a church in Minnesota. Her father was born and raised in Nebraska. He met her mother at college. Mom was from Wisconsin, only she said she’d been raised in Madison, which was several hours south of here.

Still. Heidi fingered the handle of her teacup. “If I were related to the Coyles . . .” She let her words trail as her hypothesis took her places she wasn’t sure she wanted to go.

“Then Misty Wayfair will come for you,” Emma finished. “Like the curse says she will.”

“Legend has it Misty Wayfair was as ill as the residents in that asylum,” Murphy offered.

Connie laid her hand over her husband’s. “Murph.” Her voice held concern, and a quick glance was sent Heidi’s way.

“It’s all right, really.” Heidi nodded. “I’m not a Coyle. We’ve no connection to Pleasant Valley at all.”

But her eyes locked with those of the dead woman, Mary Coyle, in the photograph. Painted-on eyes or not, Mary’s vapid expression told a different story. And yet it hadn’t been Misty whom Heidi had seen in her bedroom window. It was Mary.

Even a fragment of the idea sent a shiver through Heidi. What were the odds there were two haunting spirits roaming the woods of Pleasant Valley? Both connected by a curse that seemed as though directed straight back to Heidi herself.