It was true, we’d come in my car. Mother had taken Varena to the wedding shower, so I’d given her a ride from their place over to the cottage.
After her burst of energy, Varena was slumped in an armchair, staring into space.
“So you stopped here to see Miss Bard…?”
“And when I got out of the car, I thought I heard a noise from behind the big house,” Jack said calmly. “So I thought I’d check it out before I alarmed Lily and Varena.”
“You found Mrs. Osborn.”
“Yes. She was lying between the back of the house and their garage.”
“Did she speak to you?”
“No.”
“She said nothing?”
“No. She didn’t seem to know I’d picked her up.”
“But she spoke when she was lying on the couch?”
“Yes,” I said.
Jack and Detective Brainerd turned simultaneously.
“And what did she say?” the policeman asked.
“She said, ‘The children.’ ”
“And that’s all?”
“That’s all.”
Brainerd looked thoughtful, as well he might.
What had Meredith Osborn meant? Had the last thoughts of the dying woman simply been dwelling on the children she was leaving behind? Or did those words mean more? Were her two children in danger? Or was she thinking of the three girls in the picture?
Whoever had sent the picture to Jack’s friend Roy had started a deadly train of events.
After the ambulance removed Meredith’s body, I stared out the side window of Varena’s cottage, watching the police search the backyard where she had lain bleeding and freezing.
I was full of anger.
The death of Meredith Osborn had not even had the mercy of being fast. Dave LeMay and Binnie Armstrong had had only moments to fear death-and those were dreadful moments, I fully appreciated that, believe me. But lying in your own backyard, unable to summon help, feeling your own end creeping through you… I closed my eyes, felt myself shudder. I knew something about hours of fear, about being certain your death was imminent and unavoidable. I had been spared, finally. Meredith Osborn had not.
Jack put an arm around my shoulder.
“I want to go away,” I whispered.
I couldn’t, and we both knew it.
“Excuse me,” I said at a more conversational volume, hearing my voice’s coldness. “I’m being silly.”
Jack sighed. “I wish I could go away, too.”
“What killed her?”
“Not a gun. Knife wounds, I think.”
I shivered. I hated knives.
“Did we bring this here with us, Jack?” I whispered.
“No,” he said. “This was here before we came. But it won’t be here when I leave.” When Jack got his teeth into something, he didn’t let go, even when he was biting the wrong part.
“Tomorrow,” I told him, quietly. “Tomorrow we’ll talk.”
“Yes.”
I was taking Varena home to spend the night. She couldn’t sleep in this cottage. She was ready, standing staring out the side window at the lit backyard, the figures moving around it. So I tried to walk out the door. But after I’d stepped away from Jack I reached back to grip his wrist. I couldn’t seem to let go. I looked down at my feet, struggling with myself.
“Lily?” Under the questioning tone, his voice was hoarse.
I bit my lip, hard.
“I’m gone,” I said, letting go of him. “I’ll see you in the morning, at eight. At the motel.” I glanced at his face.
He nodded.
“Lock her cottage when the police let you go, OK?”
Varena didn’t seem to hear us. She stood like a statue at that window, her overnight bag on the floor beside her.
“Sure,” he said, still looking intently at me.
“Then I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said and turned my back on him and walked out, beckoning to my sister to follow.
I have done so many hard things, but that was one of the hardest.
It was only nine by the time we got to my parents’ house, but it felt like midnight. I didn’t want to see anyone or talk to anyone, and yet somehow my parents had to be told, had to be talked to. Luckily for me, Varena had regained her balance by the time she saw my mother, and though she cried a little, she managed to relate the horrible death of Meredith Osborn.
“Should I just cancel the wedding?” she asked tearfully.
I knew my mother would talk her out of it. I really couldn’t bear to be with people right now. I went to my room and shut the door firmly. My father came to stand outside in the hall; I knew his footsteps.
“Are you okay, pumpkin?” he called.
“Yes.”
“Do you want to be alone?”
I clenched my fists until even my short fingernails bit into my palms. “Yes, please.”
“OK.” Off he went, God bless him.
I lay on the hard bed, hands clasped across my stomach, and thought.
I could not imagine how I could find out any more information about the three girls who might be Summer Dawn. But I was convinced that Meredith Osborn’s death had come about because she knew which girl was not who she seemed to be. I tried to picture Lou O’Shea or the Reverend O’Shea attacking Meredith in the freezing cold of her backyard, but I just could not. Still less could I imagine mild Dill Kingery stabbing Meredith into silence. Dill’s mother was certainly off-base, but I’d never seen any tendency to violence. Mrs. Kingery just seemed daffy.
I thought of Meredith Osborn taking care of Krista O’Shea and Anna Kingery. What could she have seen-or heard-that would lead her to think she knew that one of the girls had been born with a different identity?
I’d never had a baby, so I didn’t know what happened bureaucratically when you gave birth. Some hospitals, I knew, took little footprints-I’d seen them framed on the walls of the Althaus family when I cleaned for them. And of course there was the birth certificate. And pictures. A lot of hospitals took pictures, for the parents. To me, all babies pretty much looked the same, red and scrunch-faced, or brown and scrunch-faced. That some had hair and some didn’t was the only obvious distinction I could see.
I had learned, also from the much-birthed Carol Althaus, that the fingerprints police or volunteers sometimes took at mall booths were not helpful because often they were of poor quality. I didn’t know if that was true, but it sounded reasonable. I was willing to bet the same reasons would render any existing baby footprints of Summer Dawn unusable.
So fingerprints and footprints were a no go. DNA testing could prove Summer Dawn’s identity, I was sure, but of course you had to know whom to test. I couldn’t see Jack demanding that the three girls undergo DNA testing. Well, I could see him demanding it, but I could also see all three sets of parents turning him down cold.
I stared at the ceiling until I realized my mind was going through the same cycle of thought, over and over, and it was no more productive than it had been the first time I’d gone through it.
I remembered, as I was undressing and pulling on a nightgown, that when Jack had first come to my bed, the next morning I’d made myself a promise: never to ask Jack for anything.
I was having a hard time keeping that promise.
