“She doesn’t listen to me.” Saying it made me feel desperate.
Bailey just shook her head. “Well, right now, I want some dinner. You in?” She threw a couple of bills on the bar, and we went to eat large hunks of meat and drink a bottle of red wine, like real men and real lawyers.
The next morning, with another hangover—I had to stop drinking so much—and earlier than any sane person would rise, I drove to the stables with Mother’s key in my pocket.
Bailey’s unsettling comments about Mother’s enemies had fueled a restless night. The dreams had woken me every hour. While they still showed me with blood on my hands, they kept pausing with that whisper touch on my cheek, as if my dreams were a record that skipped to the beginning every time it hit that mark. Maybe I hadn’t noticed something critical about the image. Maybe it was my fear that the touch had been made by a real human hand—the intersection of the dream world and the real world—that kept waking me.
Even now I could feel it creeping along my cheek like a spider.
Looking for something to distract me, I focused on the bright, sunny morning. An inch of snow had fallen overnight, just enough to make the landscape sparkle. Old stone fences rambled along the road’s edges, competing with manicured hedges and the creep of bramble. Even sleep-deprived and half-frightened, I still appreciated Connecticut’s beauty. The Land Rover easily climbed the long slope of Sunset Hill Road, and just before eight o’clock, I pulled into the graveled drive and found a spot to park.
I figured visiting the stables would net me only a footlocker of riding gear. But Hetty’s mother and mine had been close once; maybe she would know why Constance was in danger.
Why did someone want her dead or locked up? The clock was ticking. Once the judge set a trial date, it would tick even faster.
People bustled around with buckets, tack, shovels, and pitchforks, and walked around large steaming animals. My adolescent riding lessons lurked far enough in the past that I’d almost forgotten the names for all the accoutrements, but the smell of manure started to bring it back. I asked a person with a bucket how to find Loretta, and she pointed me across a gravel drive to a white house with dark blue shutters. Muddy prints from stable boots tracked back and forth along the path. I knocked, heard a call from within and twisted the knob, rubbing the key in my pocket, as if for luck.
The door opened into a spacious country kitchen with an office to one side. Several pans emitting mouthwatering odors simmered on a large gas range. A full coffee pot sat on the counter next to a jug of milk and a sugar jar. Pots and dried herbs hung from a rack over a work table in the center of the room. On the left side of the room, near a comfortable-looking red and white patterned sofa, and a large French country desk, stood a tall, rangy woman in a gray Henley and Levis. Her hair showed streaks of silver, and her well-weathered skin spoke of a life outdoors rather than in the plastic surgeon’s waiting room. Her deep blue eyes were still sharp, and she looked surprised to see me.
“Why, Clara. How nice of you to stop by.”
I readjusted the image I’d carried all these years. We step back into the time frame as if we’d never left, as if nothing had changed while we’d been gone. But everything had changed, including the woman before me.
“Mrs. Gardner?”
Hetty’s mother nodded. “It’s Mrs. Brown now, but call me Loretta. You’re old enough.”
“Your place is beautiful.”
“Would you like coffee?” She strode toward the pot.
“That would be great.” I accepted the filled mug and added cream and sugar. “I ran into Hetty the other night. She seems to be doing well for herself.”
Loretta paused. “How surprising that you came to talk about Hetty. I never got the impression you two were close.” She sat down in her desk chair, a comfortably padded tweed model.
I figured I’d better own up to my purpose. “Actually, I came because Mother asked me to get some of her things. She said all I needed to do was show you the key, and you’d point me in the right direction.” I pulled it from my pocket and set it on the desk.
She stilled. “Really.” I could feel her searching under my skin for the truth. I put up a neutral wall, something I’d learned to do well when Mother dismissed my dreams.
Finally, she relented, but not because she was sure of me. “I’m glad that things are better between you and Constance. She always told me how sad she was about the distance between you, wished she knew how to talk to you.” The statements were questions, testing me.
I laughed. “Talking to me at all might have helped.”
She gave me a funny look. “But she’s told you about the cottage?”
I shrugged to keep myself from yelling “What cottage!” and held my breath, hoping she fell for it. “She doesn’t have a lot of options at the moment.”
“Why didn’t you let yourself in?”
“I didn’t want to tramp around on your property. Besides, Mother’s directions weren’t the clearest.”
“Constance? Imprecise?” She gave the look all mothers have perfected: the one they give when their child tells an outright lie.
I kept the neutrality in place and brazened it out. “As I said, she needs some of her things.”
“In jail?” Her disbelief grew.
I faltered. Mother might only have riding gear here. But she had hidden that key and address, almost as if she was anticipating trouble. Maybe she had hidden something here connected to her past.
