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Hanna laughed and lifted her cup in reply. “Thank you. It’s strange, but I don’t think I’m going to complain.”
“Not when the prince looks like that, you won’t. And not whenyoulook like that. I mention him, and you get this dreamy look in your eyes.”
“I don’t.”
“You do. You’re well and truly smit. Smitten. Over the moon. Now, me? I’m the one in someone else’s fairytale. The woman whose family has a murderous past.”
“I am so sorry. If I had known–”
Gillian set her cup down. “Like I said, you have no call to apologize. Family histories have more hiding in them than most people ever know. We form idealized opinions about our parents. Our grandparents. We forget, they’re people as much as we are. Learning this puts quite a few things into perspective about my grandfather. I’m grateful for it, even if it hurts to hear.”
“I only hope good will come of it.”
“It already has. We’re friends, aren’t we? You came to my office looking for answers. We both came away with a friend in the bargain.” Gillian’s smile held genuine warmth. “That’s worth quite a lot. Now, shall we dive back in? I know you had questions about the boy they took in, but I’m keen to know the rest.”
Me, too. More than you realize.Hanna thought of the young woman’s ghost at the end of her bed, begging for help.Janette. You tried to do the right thing, and you lost your life for it.
“I’m really interested to know how this ended,” Hanna said. “Let’s see if we can find out.”
“While we made tea, I thought about it. Family mysteries. Janette’s family may never have learned what happened to her. Her parents have probably passed, but she may have siblings, or even just people looking up the family ancestry and running into the question of where she went.” Gillian handed over a journal for Hanna to look through, then picked up another for herself.
“DNA test kits have a lot of people looking for their family tree. They may have decided Janette ran off, or was killed in the war.” Hanna opened the journal to read.
Gillian frowned. “I feel sorry for her parents, wondering if she’d come home.”
“Me, too.”
“Not to mention poor Stuart’s parents. My grandfather’s entries thin out after he killed Janette, but there’s a note here that says, ‘I have failed to protect another child. He came here in search of safety and now, he will never leave. Marion didn’t bother to present me with a body to examine, and I couldn’t bring myself to ask. She suggested no one would miss him in all the fuss around the evacuations, but I filed death records for him anyway. His parents deserve that much peace. It is all I have to give them.’”
Hanna sighed, heart heavy. “And there’s one mystery solved. His parents must be gone by now. I wonder what happened to the body. It’s too late now to tell them the truth, but maybe they have graves he could be reburied next to.”
Maybe that would allow his spirit to pass on. He doesn’t deserve to be stuck in the house where he was killed, where the young woman who loved him was killed, remembering his fear forever. I won’t leave either of them to that.
“It’s got to be somewhere. Maybe in the rose garden with the rest,” Gillian said, and cast a dubious glance out the window at the roses.
“It said Marion wanted ‘special measures’ taken. That’s not ominous or anything,” Hanna said, then fell back into reading. One passage caught her attention. “Your grandfather seems to have reached some unfortunate realizations at the end, here.”
“That took long enough.”
Hanna read from what she had found, blood cold not from ghosts, but from the weight of the words she spoke. “‘When my beloved Marion lost Patricia, I thought it a terrible tragedy, and Marion strong for bearing up through it. I was a fool in love with a woman beyond my social status, arrogantly believing myself to be different than other men. Smarter, more deserving of the life she had than her husband was. Years later, I realize it was not strength I saw. It was evil.’”
Gillian shook her head. “He really was a fool, if he only saw it then. I’d like to blame love, but there’s only so far that can take you before ‘I murdered a person for you’ ought to clue you in.”
“You’d think. And here’s where he got out: ‘Tomorrow, I leave Greenhill Hall behind. An old friend from my school days has offered me a place in his clinic, which I have gratefully accepted. I do not intend to tell Marion I have gone. By the time I return to the area, if I ever do, I hope she will have forgotten me. Or will have died, though I fear her kind of evil never really dies. My guilt over the children, and Janette, surely never will.’”
You were right, Doctor Turner. Her evil hasn’t died. It remains, tormenting the children you wrote off as “sickened and died”. It has tried to kill me twice. She’s still doing damage, and you ran away. Maybe I’m glad you finally got out. But there are at least two families who deserved you to take responsibility for what you did and tell the truth about Marion Pritchard.
Gillian spoke what Hanna was thinking. “He ghosted her, but he didn’t tell the police what had happened. He just ran away and let Janette Byrne’s family wonder if they would ever see their daughter again. And God bless Stuart Marsh’s parents, who must have wondered every night what illness had taken their son away. He couldn’t even give them the truth.”
Hanna closed the journal. “I don’t know how he lived with those choices.”
“He overcorrected. My father says the man was death on omitted information and partial truths. All the records he made later in life had an excess of information. He never once lied to a patient, or their family, and Heaven love you if you–” Her words trailed off as she read. “What the hell?”
“Did you find something?”
“I hope not.” Gillian leaned forward, book propped between her hands. “Listen to this. ‘Marion entreated me to stay with her last evening. She was sweet, and for a moment, I saw glimpses of the woman my heart still shamefully aches for. I woke in the night to find her gone. In searching the house, I found the door to the cellar open. I wish I had resisted the urge to descend. She stood in the wine cellar and for all the world looked like a rich woman rapturously appreciating the vintages she had collected. But when I approached, I saw the bottles had no wine in them. The one nearest to me seemed to contain’ – oh, bloody hell – ‘seemed to contain teeth. She smiled to me and told me this was how she remembered her dead little ones.’”
Hanna almost dropped the journal she held. “Oh. Oh, no.”
