If the bad men returned, Izzy told her, they must hide.
Jimmy stirred when she rang the bell a second time. The door was, of course, locked. Olivia wouldn’t leave it open for strangers.
She’d worn slacks for the drive, and the trousers served her well as she carried her kids around the side of the house, past a shed and garden. The back door was also locked, but that didn’t deter her. Olivia had said to contact her if she needed anything, and right now, Izzy was desperate for a place to spend the night.
Did the woman hide a key outside her house like the Farrow family had done?
She searched under the rug, at the base of a birdfeeder, beneath a long row of brittle, potted plants. Finally, she found a key under a terra-cotta pot, about halfway down the row, and she proceeded into the house with her children.
The refrigerator was half full, a dirty plate and cup in the sink, cold water in the kettle. Izzy hoped Olivia would return before dark, so she wouldn’t surprise the woman.
Izzy settled the children inside an upstairs bedroom with Greta tucked into a bed, Jimmy in a blanketed drawer that she’d placed on the floor. Then she checked the locks twice to make sure the house was secure.
As the children slept, Izzy wandered through the rooms. A few years ago, she would have been devastated at the thought of Simon walking these floors before her, sharing Olivia’s bed while pretending to be married to Izzy, but she’d been so burned by his deceit, her heart hollowed out by lies, that not even a spark of jealousy kindled there.
She’d had little time in Elms to dwell on his deception, but here in the quiet, with the air smelling like lemon oil and pine, the resentment over what he’d stolen plagued her. If the professor knew about Simon’s dealings in Cleveland, he had never shared the specifics, perhaps not wanting to burden her. Izzy’s dad was convinced that horse racing was the problem with its volatile mingling of legal and corrupt. Lucrative one day, disastrous the next.
Simon’s so-called friends were hardly law-abiding, and now, he’d managed to buy more trouble with Louie. Or had Simon sent Louie to find her in Elms? He certainly had no desire to parent. Was he planning to extort money from the professor, refusing to bring Greta home until his father paid a ransom? Simon knew Dr. Farrow would pay whatever he asked for Greta’s safe return.
Izzy needed to warn Olivia about Simon’s scheming. Perhaps they could help each other.
At the end of the hall, Izzy stepped into a large bedroom filled with books. The floor seemed to tilt when she realized it was Olivia’s room. And an unwelcome blaze flared in the places she thought hollow. Pressing palms against her ears, Izzy tried to stop the thoughts of Olivia and Simon together, but the scenes wound like a film through her head.
She had to get out of here.
Racing up a staircase, she closed her eyes when she reached the top, blowing out the flames inside. Then she slowly scanned the circular room. Olivia’s office space.
A stack of dog-eared papers waited beside her typewriter and an empty teacup. Along the window ledge were a row of glass jars, each one filled with seeds that looked like peppercorns and neatly labeled:Moonflowers. Below the jars, a wall panel had been opened to expose a narrow space, empty but room enough to store Olivia’s work.
Izzy reached for the manuscript. What would Via Belle write if Simon had left her too?
As she settled on the sofa, the penciled margin notes distracted Izzy at first until the story swept her away. Laurel, the young heroine, had been fooled by a magnetic but corrupt politician with sandy hair and a winsome smile. A man no one would suspect of pilfering money. Like the hero-villain in that awful movie,Black Dragons.
Izzy read the manuscript until Jimmy’s cries spiraled up between floors. Then she found fresh milk for all of them in Olivia’s refrigerator. Bowls of bean soup for her and Greta, and a shared slice of peach pie. After changing Jimmy’s diaper, she decided to retrieve the rest of their luggage in the morning.
With her son content in his makeshift crib, she tucked Greta into the bed, but instead of falling back asleep, Greta clung to her arm. So Izzycarried her and her pillowcase of treasure up the stairs, singing quietly as they snuggled together on the sofa. Singing until her sweet daughter finally slept.
A tug on the desk lamp chain illuminated the office, sprinkling light across the shelved books and jars of moonflower seeds. Izzy reached for the manuscript again, and her curiosity turned into fascination as the heroine in the following pages began to doubt herself and her memories. Laurel couldn’t understand why she heard things that Jude didn’t hear. A knock on the front door. Footsteps in the hall. The splash of water in the lake near their home. Jude accused Laurel of going mad and Izzy understood. Often when Simon returned, she’d thought her mind was failing too.
The more Laurel tried to please the man on Olivia’s pages, even when he teased and taunted her, the deeper she fell into a dark hole.
In the glow of lamplight, the manuscript clutched in her hands, Izzy felt a whole lot less alone. Olivia had been equally confused; Izzy had no doubt of it now. Only someone who’d experienced the smoke and mirrors could write about the madness.
Chapter after chapter, Izzy kept reading, enthralled. Justice was served at the end but not in a way she would have imagined. Laurel lured Jude down to the lake and offered him a fine wine mixed with water from a jar of moonflower seeds. Once he was comatose, Laurel pushed him out in a rickety old rowboat to drown.
Izzy glanced up at the collection of jars. Could a man really die from moonflowers?
Surely Olivia had done her research. She knew about these things.
A pencil had crossed through portions of Olivia’s chapter on the lake, the note saying that Jude needed to injure Laurel first to justify her actions.
Didn’t the editor understand that Jude had already injured her? Even if the wounds weren’t flesh and blood, they were fresh in her head.
At the end of the book, Laurel found love again, but Izzy didn’t care one bit about the romance as long as Jude was gone.
Long past midnight she finished reading, her eyes heavy as she turned off the lamp. She slipped the papers inside the wall panel for safekeeping, then popped it closed. Olivia would know exactly where to find her manuscript when she returned.
While she should probably carry Greta downstairs so they could both sleep on the second floor, she didn’t want to wake her daughter and she could hear Jimmy’s cries just fine up here. So Izzy kissed Greta’s cheek and moved her to a cushion on the floor. Then she closed her eyes, grateful her children were safe for the night.
