I stared at her. “Edwin?” I asked. “Have they found him?”
“I don’t know. Not yet.”
Uniformed strangers continued to bustle out of the house periodically and trot away down the lawn, while other people spilled out onto the patio—neighbors, acquaintances from the village, their bright eyes drinking in the scene. Several cast sideways looks at me, but none ventured near enough to speak to me.
Voices rose inside the house, and then a figure came jogging out of the trees. It was Martin Larch. He slowed as he approached the house, and his eyes sought mine.
“They’ve found him. Both boys, actually—little Joel Harris was up there too. He ran off from his grandad and hid with Edwin.” He passed a broad hand over his forehead, and I realized suddenly that he knew them all: Ruth, Vera, Dominic, Michael. Martin Larch had probably known them all since he was a small child himself. “The boys had locked themselves in the tower,” he said. “Michael just got the door open, got them out.”
I brought my hands to my cheeks. “And they’re okay, the boys?”
He straightened his shoulders. “They’re fine. More than can be said for you, I think. Did someone get you a glass of water?”
“I just want to go home,” I said.
Michael appeared from the back of the garden then, leading Edwin and Joel by their hands. A brief surge of strength flooded into my limbs, and I struggled to my feet as they approached, holding my arms out toward Edwin. But Dominic ran from the trees behind them and caught up with them before they reached me. His face was white, but his eyes flashed as he scooped Edwin into his arms. The little boy buried his face into his father’s shoulder. Dominic swept past me as if he didn’t see me, disappearing into the house with his son. I sank down again.
Martin nodded. “I saw your suitcase, and your letter. We’ll get you home as soon as we can. London, isn’t it?” He placed one large hand on my shoulder as I tried to bring my breathing under control. “It’s the shock, miss. I think you’ll feel better when you’re home. I’m sorry about Mrs. Mayes, I really am. They’ll send someone to your home in London tomorrow to take a statement.”
And then Vera emerged from the trees, like an apparitionfrom a nightmare. A police officer supported her on one side and a paramedic on the other. Her mascara ran in streaks down her face, and her mouth was skewed to one side. Her faltering steps brought her steadily closer. A tremor seized my neck muscles, and the more I tried to hold my head still, the more unsteady it became. I had to tell her. I had to claw into Vera’s pain at this awful moment and tell her the truth about the new Summerbourne twins. I wasn’t strong enough to carry the secret away with me unshared.
She stepped up onto the patio.
“Vera,” I said.
She stumbled sideways, the police officer dipping a shoulder to steady her. Her head swung in my direction, her gaze somewhere near my feet.
“The babies,” I said. “I need to tell you something.”
Her expression didn’t alter; I wasn’t sure she could hear me.
“I’m sorry,” I said, a little louder. The words scraped in my throat. “About everything. But the babies—”
Vera raised bloodshot eyes to mine, and for a second her brow lifted as if she was forming a question.Whose? Whose babies are they?I opened my mouth, searching for the right words. Then the paramedic cleared her throat, and suddenly, Vera’s expression tightened.
“No,” she said. It was like ice sliding over my skin.
I swallowed. “They’re not—”
She lurched toward me, her face contorted, and I gripped the chair, pressing myself back into the cushion.
“I said no,” she hissed. Her face loomed over mine. “You have nothing to say to me.”
I stared at her, my chest tight. Her gaze bored into mine; I was unable to look away.
“You don’t belong here,” she said, and her voice droppedfurther as she leaned even closer. “You have nothing to say that I want to hear. Get out of my house.”
The police officer supporting her frowned at me as she and the paramedic helped Vera straighten and shuffle away into the house. A gaggle of neighbors stood transfixed on the lawn, their lips parted, their eyes wide. Martin paused by my chair and lowered his voice so he wouldn’t be overheard.
“Don’t take it personally,” he said. “She’s lashing out. She’ll talk to you in good time, I’m sure.”
I shook my head. I knew now that Vera would never talk to me about this, would never agree to listen. She must have suspected that something was amiss, but that expression on her face told me everything I needed to know. Vera wanted these babies—she needed these babies—and she would do everything in her power to keep them. The truth was unnecessary, irrelevant, when weighed against Vera and her Summerbourne twins.
A while later, Martin told me a taxi had arrived for me, and he carried my suitcase out to the lane where it waited. Two ambulances purred on the driveway with their back doors open, a baby being examined in each. Martin placed his broad hand on the top of my head as I ducked into the taxi’s back seat. The driver was the same man who’d delivered me from King’s Lynn station eleven months earlier, but neither he nor I acknowledged it.
I closed my eyes as we pulled away, but the image of Summerbourne’s honey-colored bricks bathed in swirling blue light haunted my dreams from that night onward.
Ruth was dead. Kiara was taken. Dominic had no idea that Seraphine wasn’t his. Vera had met both Danny and Seraphine, but I suspected a seed of doubt about their identities had been planted in her mind. And as for Alex—down the road in hiscottage, falling in love with a baby that would never be reclaimed but who wasn’t his—what had I done to Alex?
