That night she flopped back onto her mattress, staring at the ceiling in exhaustion. One more day. Then she could go home and blot this horrible episode from her mind. Maybe someday she could even confess everything to Gray. He would be outraged at first, but perhaps someday they might come to laugh about it.
The following morning, she explored the other bedrooms on the second floor and was able to make quick work of them. Only a few clothes hung in the wardrobe, and the drawers were mostly empty. There was nothing under the beds or hidden beneath the mattresses.
In Gray’s room there was an old, ornately framed photograph on the bedside table. Gray was easy to recognize, but Luke and Caroline looked like they were only five or six years old. The older man must be their father, for he and Gray shared the same confident, chiseled jaw.
She carried the photograph to the window to study it in better light. Their father was the only person seated, and the children stood before Gray, who rested a possessive hand on each of their shoulders. Mr. Delacroix stared boldly at the camera, but Gray watched Caroline, his face glowing with pride. He had once told Annabelle he felt more like a parent than a brother to Caroline and Luke, and that was obvious in this photograph.
She gazed out the window as daydreams carried her away. Gray would be a good father. She could see that in the loving way he looked after his siblings, even though they sometimes frustrated him. He’d surely be a good husband too. Even thinking about him in such a light made her a little breathless.
From up here, the lawns looked manicured and healthy ... all except the raccoon-infested shed where Gray had stayed with his father after the main house burned down. It was almost completely obscured by an overgrowth of shrubs, and she had entirely forgotten about it. It was the only place she hadn’t inspected.
It was surely nothing, but she set the photograph down to go outside for a better look.
Up close, the shed looked even worse than from afar. She had to bat away some shrubbery to peer through the grimy window, but it was covered from the inside. There was a padlock on the door, so she couldn’t get in.
Her mouth went dry. If this was a moldy old shed like Gray said, why would there be a padlock on the door? The beginning of a headache began to pound. There was surely nothing of value inside, for it truly looked like a wreck of a building, but a troubling sense of anxiety gnawed at her. A quick glimpse inside would surely put it to rest.
She found Lester repairing a fence along the back edge of the property and asked him to unlock the shed.
He straightened and wiped his brow. “I ain’t got the key for that one.”
“What’s inside?”
“Never asked.”
Her mouth went dry, and her heartbeat sped up. “Who would have a key?”
“Couldn’t tell you,” he said with a shrug, then returned to repairing the fence rail. It was maddening, but Lester showed no interest or curiosity about the oddity of that shed. He was entirely absorbed in getting that rail perfectly aligned back onto the fence.
Which meant that perhaps she could break into the shed without his notice.
She gathered up her skirts and strode toward the small building,eyeing the lines of the roof and composition of the windows. From the time Annabelle was old enough to walk, she had scrambled up into haylofts and climbed on rooftops to help her father with repairs. She could get into that shed.
The padlock held firm, and the window wouldn’t budge. The only other way in was a narrow transom window over the door. In hot weather, that window probably provided plenty of relief by cracking it open to let the hot air out.
Annabelle scurried to the barn for a ladder and a crowbar. Five minutes later, she’d centered the ladder beneath the transom window, hoisted herself up, and begun prying the window open.
It didn’t take long, for the window opened easily. She found a foothold on the doorknob, hiked up her skirts, then got both feet through the opening. Holding on to the lip of the roof, she paused for a quick prayer.
Please,she whispered.Please let this be nothing.
She wiggled inside, the window frame scraping her spine as she dropped to the ground.
It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the dimness ... but this was no ordinary shed. The hardwood floor gleamed with a coat of varnish, and a bookcase weighed down with books and binders covered one wall. This was a well-used study, cozy and fully stocked, complete with a desk, a typewriter, and shelves full of books.
It hurt to breathe. Maybe this didn’t mean anything. There could be any number of reasons this shed was fully furnished and obviously well used. Maybe Lester or Tabitha had set it up as a private study. It didn’t have to belong to Gray. He could still be innocent.
She wandered to the bookcase, leaning in to study the titles.
Cuba. Navy. Spanish-American War. It was hard to keep reading as the trembling took over. This still could be entirely innocent. Gray was a well-educated man who was entitled tohave political opinions and read whatever he wanted, even if it was critical of the government.
It was too hard to keep standing, so she yanked the desk chair back, collapsing into it. The desk stood before her—a very nice desk with brass knobs and inlaid wood. Searching these drawers was as terrifying as opening Pandora’s box, but it had to be done.
It didn’t take long, for what she found in the top drawer was damning. A folded wall map of Cuba with hand-drawn notes marking the location of American army encampments. Beneath the map was a small leather-bound booklet, the kind men kept in their breast pocket. The first page listed Cuban sympathizers, most of whom had been on the list of names General Molinaro had asked her to look for. The next page listed telegraph exchange codes. More papers and documents filled the other drawers. They were in Spanish and she couldn’t read them, but she would take them all. Someone in the government would know what to make of them.
It was hard to breathe in here. The walls were closing in, and she had to get out and away from this horrible desk. She dragged the chair to the transom window and shoved the papers through to the ground outside. Then she hoisted herself out the same way she’d come in, scrambling outside, where the glare of sunlight was blinding. It felt like she had aged fifty years in the space of five minutes.
She sat on the front step of the raccoon shed as her world crumbled around her.
