Headlights illuminated the woods around the asylum. A squad car’s red-and-blue lights flashed. The woman gripping Heidi hissed with a worried expression into Heidi’s ear.
“No. No more cops.”
She released Heidi, who scrambled to her feet. The loosened grip also released the gag around Heidi’s throat. Emma’s Ducie scarf fell limp around her neck. She surged toward the woman, pulling her back to the ground with a grunt.
“Let me go!” the woman shouted. She clawed at the earth, dragging herself toward the woods. Trying to escape. To the endless forest beyond and the graves that marked the very ghost Heidi had once considered might exist.
Heidi grappled for the waistline of the woman’s jeans, wrapping her fingers around it and tugging her backward.
A man shouted.
Flashlights flooded the backyard.
“Heidi!” Rhett’s voice broke through her frantic subconscious.
But no. This was her fight. This was her story.
Heidi straddled the woman’s legs, grabbing at her shoulders and forcing the woman to face her. In the darkness, aided by Detective Davidson’s light as he came upon them, Heidi stared into the eyes of the woman who had first peered into her room. A woman who, at first glance, was so like the dead Mary Coyle of the photo album. A woman who was the older version of Heidi.
“Please, Heidi!” the woman cried in desperation. “Let me go. Let me run.”
“Who are you?” Heidi half screamed into her face. She knew she was crying. She knew the truth even before the woman admitted it.
Detective Davidson had his gun drawn.
Officer Tate was behind Heidi, and she could vaguely hear him commanding her to back away.
Rhett stood off to the side. She could almost feel his censure that she’d come here to the asylum alone in search of Emma’s scarf. Censure born from protection. It wouldn’t be safe. Not after the arson fire.
“Who are you?” Heidi gave the woman a shake.
Graying blond hair flopped over the woman’s face. There was fear in her eyes, and an emptiness Heidi couldn’t quite place.
“Let me go!” she wailed again.
Detective Davidson demanded something, but Heidi didn’t register it. She leaned down into her doppelgänger’s face and growled, “Tell me who you are!”
A moment.
A pause.
“I’m your mother, Heidi. Your mother.”
Heidi rolled off the woman whose claims seemed so asinine, they almost had to be true. The police moved in. Rhett helped her to her feet. She stared at her look-alike.
Suddenly everything the dementia-riddled Loretta Lane said made sense. Ghosts in their family. Mistaking Heidi for the daughter who might as well have been dead to them. Worst of all, Heidi now understood why she had always been a misfit in her own family. She was their daily reminder of a daughter they wished to forget.
Thea
Thea watched Rose as she wrung out a cloth after helping Thea clean up. She didn’t feel much better. In fact, she was certain she was worse. Her mind seemed even more cloudy than before. She wondered if she had imagined Effie, the asylum, and the odd story of a ghost.
“Here.” Rose’s gentle voice awakened Thea to the present. She observed the woman’s blue eyes, framed by dark brows, and her black hair swooped in its typical nursing roll on the back of her head. Rose ran the cool cloth down Thea’s neck and ears.
“You’ll feel a bit better now that you’re clean.”
She didn’t. Not really.
Rose moved across the room to a bureau. Thea followed her with her eyes. Simeon had been upset when he’d left. She couldn’t recall exactly why. But Rose wasn’t upset. She was very calm.
Thea watched Rose return, a cup in her hand. Another kind smile.
“Can you sip this? It should help keep you hydrated.”
Thea struggled to sit up in the bed. Rose held the teacup to her lips, and the lukewarm liquid trailed down Thea’s throat, a momentary comfort.
She lay back against her pillows again.
“Where is Simeon?” she asked.
Rose shook her head, and her eyes shadowed. “He didn’t tell me.” She still held the cup as if she intended to ask Thea to sip again. But her voice was distant. Considering. “He always tells me where he’s going.”
Thea nodded. A memory returned to her. Fortune.
“Edward Fortune,” Thea breathed.
Rose tilted her head. “What?”
“He was going to Edward Fortune’s, I believe. My mother. Misty Wayfair.”
Rose stared at her for a long moment. The ticking of a clock filled the silence, and then Rose offered another, smaller smile. “Sip?”
Thea eyed the cup. She’d never been a fan of tea. What had ever made her start drinking it? She recalled the first day she set foot in the Coyle home. Mary. She was dead. Yes. Thea remembered now. She’d taken their picture, sisters, Rose and Mary, and then had tea.
Effie had had tea.
And Thea, at the asylum.
“No, thank you.” Thea tried to put her thoughts into order. “How did your mother die?” she asked Rose abruptly.
Rose’s hand stilled, a little bit of tea sloshing over the side of the cup. “She . . . passed of melancholia.”
“Like Mary?” Thea frowned. She knew this. Her mind was so foggy.
“Yes.” Rose nodded. “It runs in our family.”
Thea struggled to maintain her focus. “Melancholy doesn’t kill. Has no one told you that?” She didn’t mean to sound rude, but she couldn’t formulate anything other than her blunt thought.
“I know,” Rose nodded. She set the teacup on the nightstand.
“Did you . . . give Mary tea?” Thea asked.
Rose studied her for a moment and then nodded. “She liked tea. She liked lots of tea. It made her feel better.”
“And your mother?”
“Yes.” Rose offered a vague smile, her blue eyes looking out the window across the room. “Mother liked tea as well.”
Thea’s breaths came a bit faster now. The intensity of the truth in that moment sent an awareness through her. “Your grandmother . . .”
“No.” Rose shook her head. “She didn’t like tea. But she taught me how to make it. It helps people who are sad, Thea. Like my mother and like Mary. Dr. Ackerman wanted Mary to live at the asylum. It’s a horrible place. My sister didn’t deserve to live there. My mother didn’t deserve to suffer in her regrets. After Father died, she wallowed in her doubts. But she couldn’t help it—she couldn’t have stopped him if she’d tried. So, I gave Mama tea. It saved her. She isn’t sad anymore.”
Thea tried to move her legs. They were heavy, and her arms were hard to lift too. The realization she’d been drinking Rose’s poisoned tea shot through her with the alarming awareness that Rose somehow saw herself as savior. To the ill, to the weak members of her family.
“Your father?” Thea gasped, choking as nausea rose in her throat.
Rose slowly lowered herself onto the chair Simeon had originally sat on. “I was simply trying to stop him. I was a child. We were in the loft, and he was angry. So, so angry. When he went to strike at me, I struck back, and he tripped and fell out the window. And then he was dead.” Rose gave Thea a wide-eyed stare. “My grandmother Mathilda said, ‘Sometimes to protect your family, a person must make grave decisions.’ She told me that she had done so once herself.” Rose’s eyes filled with a fierce loyalty, an obsessive protection. “I only do what’s best for the suffering.”
Thea swallowed the nausea again. The room grew blurry. She closed her eyes as consciousness faded. Fighting against it, Thea opened her mouth, gasping out, “Did you know my mother . . . ?”
Rose’s voice echoed in Thea’s ear, and her gentle hand brushed Thea’s cheek. “I knew only Misty Wayfair’s ghost. But when she came, when I would see her outside, staring up at our home, singing so softly, I knew it was time. She wanted them to come to her. So I helped them. I helped my mother and Mary, and now Effie and you. Effie speaks lies, and she is suffering because of them. I tried to warn you—to frighten you—in the woods that day outside the hospital. You needn’t concern yourself with these things. They’ll only make you unhappy. I just wanted you to be happy, Thea.” Rose reached out and stroked Thea’s hair away from her forehead. “But you’re so brave. Even after I pretended to be Misty’s ghost—to scare you—you still came to the hospital. So brave. But you needed to stop asking questions. They will make you sad. It’s too painful. So, I’m helping you.”
“I don’t want any more tea,” Thea argued weakly, trying to push away Rose’s hand.
But the woman’s soft voice filled the room. “Just a little more, and then everything will be all right.”
Heidi
She watched them lead her mother—Betsy Lane, they had identified her as—down the hall of the police station. The front door burst open, stealing Heidi’s attention from Betsy and transferring it to the pale, wild-eyed expression of Vicki. Brad followed her, and it was his look that collided with Heidi’s. Sheepish, sorry, and filled with a familiar expression of surprise. He hadn’t known.
Rhett’s hand curled around hers. Heidi took it for what it was. A silent warning not to overreact. Not to launch into a tirade against her sister. Heidi didn’t agree. Every particle in her being wanted to cry and seethe at the same time.
“Where is she?” Vicki demanded of Detective Davidson, who came down the hall toward them, his shoes clicking on the linoleum floor.
He gave both Vicki and Heidi a quick glance. “She’s in holding for now. We’ll process her. She’ll need medical attention.”
“She must be off her meds,” Vicki muttered.
Detective Davidson nodded. “More than likely. We’ve got a call in to her probation officer in Minnesota. Why don’t you all come into the front room here? I’m guessing you need to talk.”
He was right. They did.
Heidi refused to release Rhett’s hand, even though he tugged it away, trying to give her family privacy. He followed, and in a few minutes, the four of them were seated around the table.
A loaded silence filled the room after Detective Davidson closed the door.
Brad sniffed.
Rhett kept quiet.
Vicki picked at a fingernail.
Heidi had no intention of leaving the stillness alone. She’d waited too long to understand.
“Why did you never tell me? After everything—especially now. The fire? You blamed me! The message on the mirror? Betsy admitted to it all! To get my attention! What is that about? I’d say trying to burn me alive and then saving me is a bit of an extreme way to do that! What’s wrong with her?” Heidi’s questions exploded like rapid-fire bullets in her sister’s direction.
Vicki raked her hands through her hair and turned tired, sad eyes in her direction.
“She’s my older sister. Your mother. She has schizophrenia. Half the time she doesn’t know what she’s doing. She’s supposed to be in Minnesota the last we heard, in a hospital there. She was sentenced to serve time, but she received an insanity plea.” Vicki’s eyes filled with tears.
“An insanity plea?” Heidi shoved to her feet. “I’m thirty years old! How long has Betsy been locked up?”
Vicki bit her bottom lip and shot a look at Brad. His hand moved to cover hers. She swallowed, drawing in a deep breath. When she met Heidi’s accusing glare, Vicki seemed to lose her last vestige of cold guardedness.
“Betsy got messed up with a really bad crowd out of high school. She ended up—well, her boyfriend ended up dead. Maybe an overdose, but Betsy was pinned for it. For dealing. After she served her time at the institution, she went right back to drugs and went off her medications. So, she was brought up on random theft charges, more dealing, et cetera. She’s been doing time, Heidi. All her life.” Vicki blinked fast, but tears escaped anyway. “Mom and Dad wanted to protect you from her.”
Heidi sagged in her chair. Her chest rose and fell with pent-up emotions that twisted between shock, panic, and outright betrayal. Her sister—no, her aunt—had kept the secret all these years, along with her parents!
She’d released Rhett’s hand when they sat down, but now she wished she hadn’t. Somehow, his perception was on high alert, and Heidi felt Rhett’s hand settle on her knee beneath the table. He gave a comforting squeeze, then lifted his hand.
“Heidi,” Vicki started, then stopped, looking at the ceiling as she rolled her lips against the emotion choking her voice. She dropped her gaze back down and locked it with Heidi’s. “You were a prison baby, Heidi. Betsy went to jail pregnant with you, after her boyfriend—your father—wound up dead. Mom and Dad adopted you, protected you from it all. Maybe we should have told you years ago. I know I should have said something when this all started here, but it’s ingrained in me not to. Mom said, ‘Never tell!’ And when you started having anxiety and panic as a kid, they thought the worst. That maybe you—you were like Betsy.”
“I’m not like her,” Heidi argued, hoarse from suppressed tears. But God knew she could possibly relate in a small way to her mother. Held at arm’s length. Different.
Vicki reached across the table. Heidi ignored the gesture, even though for the first time honesty showed in Vicki’s eyes. Regret and a plea for Heidi to forgive. Heidi didn’t want to, and yet, in a way, she could see the twisted logic. Protect the innocent baby. The one who should never grow up in the shadows cast by Betsy’s own struggles and failures. But they’d abandoned Betsy and, in doing so, abandoned Heidi too.
“So,” Heidi choked out, “you just left my—mother—on her own? In the system? And tried a do-over with me?”
“Please, Heidi! No, it’s not like that!” Vicki begged, holding out her hands further. “Please. Mom and Dad tried. They did. Dad visited Betsy as often as he could. Mom wrote her letters. But Betsy—she knew you existed and we needed to keep you safe. Then Betsy stopped responding. No more letters. And she wouldn’t come to see Dad when he visited her. After a few years, you graduated high school, you went off to college and—never came around anymore. And Betsy was a ghost of a memory.”
“Is that why Mom and Dad moved here? To Mom’s childhood hometown.”
Vicki shrugged. “I guess? There was a pastorate. Mom wanted to get away from the years of memories in Minnesota, but she wanted somewhere familiar.”
“Pleasant Valley.” Heidi could hear the resignation in her voice. She could sense Loretta Lane’s pain more than she wished to admit. Being guarded all those years. No wonder they’d tried to make Heidi tow the line! To stay in control of the offspring of the daughter they’d essentially lost! Coming back to Pleasant Valley must have been a last-ditch effort on Loretta’s part to gain some control over an entire life that had never quite measured up. Like Heidi.
Heidi sucked in a sob that escaped her. She clapped her hand over her mouth. “Mom understood me.”
“More than you know,” Vicki whispered. Tears rolled down her cheeks. “When she really started failing a few months ago, she knew she was losing any last threads of normalcy she may have regained.”
“And that’s when Mom wrote to me.” Awareness flooded Heidi. “She wanted to tell me before she lost her memory.”
Vicki gave a watery nod. “It must be.” And then she added, as though a massive weight she’d carried for years had lifted, “Finally.”
Heidi reached out, hesitant. Vicki clasped her hands across the table and licked at the tears that rolled over her lips.
“We may not have done the right thing, Heidi. But, we did it because we loved you. Because we loved Betsy, and she couldn’t—she couldn’t be your mother. She couldn’t care for herself. Please. Please forgive us.”
Heidi knew forgiveness could not be given in a nod or in words. Nor was she sure it could even come. It would take time to process who she was, what decisions her family had made over the years in spite of her—for her.
She glanced at Rhett. His features were solid. His eyes met hers. In them she saw his confidence.
“Fix your eyes on the target and let the arrow fly.”
“The rest will follow.”
For the first time, Heidi accepted she could not charge ahead, nor could she run away. She had to choose to trust a greater purpose, one she didn’t understand, and maybe didn’t even like. But really, wasn’t that what faith was?