“What happened after that?” Tom asked.
“Colin called for an ambulance. Mother was screaming. She dragged me inside the house and locked me in my room. Later she came to tell me father was dead, and I was to blame.” Lucy’s eyes flicked between us, searching for our reaction.
“Your mother shouldn’t have said that, Lucy. It wasn’t your fault.” After eighteen years, my words were a drop of mercy in an ocean of guilt.
“What about the night after the inquest?” Tom asked.
“I don’t remember much. Cars in the drive. People coming and going.”
“Have you spoken with Colin Wardle since the inquest?”
“No.”
As Tom put his questions to her, patiently giving her time to respond, I observed her body language. I thought she was telling the truth.
“Any contact with your mother since you left home?” he asked.
Lucy squirmed in her seat.
Tom tried again. “Did your mother know where you were, Lucy? Did she ever try to contact you in Belfast?”
Lucy shook her head.
“Did you ever try to contact her?”
“I sent her birthday cards every year. She knew where I was.”
“You never heard back?”
“No.” It was barely a whisper.
My heart stirred. Lucy was an adult, living on her own for eighteen years. Today she was a child again, reliving the pain of blame and rejection.
“I’m sorry.” Tom gave Lucy a moment to gather herself.
“I need a tissue,” she said.
As Lucy searched in her backpack, I tapped my watch. I have to go.
He mimed a cell phone. I’ll call you.
“Lucy,” he said, “Would you come with me to police headquarters? It’s only a few minutes’ walk. We’ll take your formal statement—it is necessary. Then I’ll drive you to the inn.”
“And I’ll pick you up on my way home from Ipswich,” I said. “It won’t be later than two o’clock. You can spend the afternoon with us, have supper. You can sleep at the inn tonight if you prefer, and tomorrow we’ll drive over to Hapthorn Lodge.” That was the plan Tom and I had agreed upon when I’d called him that morning.
“I guess.” She put a shaky hand to her forehead.
Returning to the scene of her father’s death and her mother’s rejection wouldn’t be easy for her. But even after eighteen years, Lucy Villiers was our best hope of finding out what had been going on at Hapthorn Lodge.
By the time I arrived at the hospital in Ipswich, Ivor had been moved from Accident & Emergency, a separate building, to the nine-patient critical care unit in the main building. I found him near the nurses’ station, hooked up to machines. He lay so still under the flannel blanket that the only way I knew he was alive was from the rhythmic beeping of the monitors.
“Don’t worry,” said a nursing sister. “We’re keeping him sedated, letting his brain heal while we wait for the test results.” When I teared up, she said, “He’s in good hands, dear. We’re one of the best neurological units in the country.”
I stayed for several hours, alternately sitting by Ivor’s bedside and pacing the wide corridors. In the hospital’s coffee shop, I turned on my phone and found a welcome text from my mother.
I’m so sorry, darling. Ivor is tough. Try not to worry.
My mother’s advice, as always, was sound and practical—even if my ability to follow it was crap. When it came to life’s challenges, we were polar opposites. She was sure things would turn out all right in the end. I was usually pretty sure they wouldn’t.
At eleven thirty a young doctor arrived.
“Mrs. Hamilton, I’m Dr. Chaudhry. I was told you had arrived.” He smiled, revealing perfect white teeth. “The Willows gave us your name as Mr. Tweedy’s emergency contact.” A stethoscope dangled over his crisp white lab coat. After checking Ivor’s vital statistics on the bedside monitors, he took a listen to Ivor’s heart. He looked up. “Everything sounds normal.”
“What can you tell me?” I asked.
“We’re completing our tests, but I see nothing so far to alarm me. I assume you’re familiar with a concussion. Sometimes, when the brain is traumatized, an overwhelming number of neurotransmitters fire simultaneously, overloading the nervous system and throwing it into a state of temporary paralysis. I believe that’s what’s happened. Mr. Tweedy will undergo more imaging today and tomorrow. The greatest risk is a brain bleed.”
“Has he damaged his hip replacements?”
“Our initial tests showed nothing more than severe bruising. That’s hopeful. The next few days will tell us if any revision is called for. At a minimum, his rehabilitation will be delayed.”
All that mattered was Ivor’s recovery, but could he afford a longer stay at The Willows?
After Dr. Chaudhry left, I remained with Ivor for another twenty minutes, listening to the periodic beeping of the monitors and watching the almost imperceptible rise and fall of his chest. Once I saw his lips move, and I thought he might be waking up.
“It’s me, Ivor. It’s Kate.”
There was no response.
Unable to think of anything else to do, I talked to him.
I told him everything that had happened since our last conversation on Tuesday. I told him about Lucy Villiers showing up at Rose Cottage in the middle of the night and the elderly Professor Markham snatching the Domesday translation out of my hands like it was the gold ring from Tolkien’s Middle Earth. I told him about my conversation with Sheila Parker in Dunmow Parva and finding the Anglo-Saxon words on the beams of the pub. I even told him about Tom and Sophie. Then, because he couldn’t tell me not to, I told him I loved him.
My throat tightened. In the five months I’d known Ivor, he’d captured my heart. Not like Tom, obviously. More like … a father.
I mentally flinched. That was my mother’s fear when I’d married Bill, eleven years my senior. Was I still looking for a replacement for the father I’d lost?
“You have to get better, Ivor. I need
