“Your mother died,” Julie said.
“Yes,” Sam said.
“You are sad.”
“Very.”
Julie nodded, still looking away.
“Mommy said the bad man hurt her,” Julie said.
“Yes, someone did.”
“Weird and bad,” Julie said.
“Enough, okay, Julie?” Isabel asked.
“Don’t smoke,” Julie said.
“You tell, and you’re in trouble,” Isabel said.
Julie scooted back out of sight. Sam let the edge of the tablecloth drop. Then she stood up and filled her lungs with smoke until they burned, and she knew that Julie, through whatever circuits her mind worked, was right. “Weird and bad,” Sam said out loud as she exhaled the smoke.
11
Kate followed Pete up the river road, in no danger of being seen. Once he left Bryer Funeral Home, passed the library, and headed north, she knew exactly where he was going. A dump truck from Pawlik Construction, loaded with trap rock, rumbled between her car and Pete’s, belching black exhaust. The countryside was beautiful—rolling hills overlooking the Connecticut River and Sill Cove—the same landscape painted by the Black Hall Colony artists. But development was rampant—lots clear-cut, three-hundred-year-old trees felled, and acres of wildlife habitat destroyed for ugly six-thousand-square-foot houses.
Cloudlands, Mathilda’s property, was high on Sachem Hill. The stately white house had been built in 1745 by Judge Thomas Ludlow in the midst of one hundred acres of forest and meadows sloping down to a tidal inlet. Kate watched Pete drive between the tall stone pillars that marked the beginning of the mile-long private road.
Instead of going in that way, she turned left down an untended dirt trail that belonged to the property and skirted the cove out of sight of the driveway and house. The family used to come here to swim and canoe and have picnics. She parked where the pebble-strewn road dead-ended in a thatch of marsh grass.
At the sound of an engine, she turned around and saw a black Dodge Charger bouncing over the ruts. It stopped behind her Porsche, and she recognized Conor’s unmarked state police vehicle.
“What are you doing?” he asked, getting out.
“I own this place, I told you. My grandmother’s,” she said.
“I know that, but why are you here now? You’re following Pete?”
“You’re followingme?”
“No, him. But you got in the middle. I saw you all at the funeral home.”
“Yes, we were there,” she said.
“What are these steps?” he asked, pointing at the steep stairs carved into the granite ledge, shaded by tall pines, half overgrown by myrtle and poison ivy, green with moss.
“They lead to the house,” she said, looking up. “We used to come down here to swim and canoe and have picnics. They’re a shortcut, and if we hurry, we’ll beat Pete.”
She took the steps two at a time, and although it was a hot day and Conor was wearing a jacket and tie, he kept up without losing his breath. So she went faster. Something drove her to practically run the 473 steps—she and Beth had counted once—to the clearing behind the house.
They stayed in the shadows of what the family called Mathilda’s Forest. The clay tennis court was sprouting weeds, and the deep stone swimming pool was dry. But Harold Maxwell, the gardener, still came once a week, and the blue hydrangeas were as dazzling as ever. Black-eyed Susans, pink and white phlox, and bee balm grew tall along the stone wall circling the house. Kate had refused to allow the big center chimney to be capped—both Beth and Pete had argued that squirrels could get inside, but Kate had prevailed—and a family of endangered chimney swifts wheeled through the blue sky above the roof.
“Why are you following him?” Conor asked.
“Because of what you said last night.”
“You think you’re going to catch him with evidence?” he asked.
