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“Time for what?” Lucy asked. She’d come a long way from the timid, scared eight-year-old who had first sat at the headmistress’s massive desk. Or the girl who had petulantly attended Sister Rosa’s counseling sessions, pretending disinterest, though all the while curious about what the psychologist who had become a nun thought about her. Sister Rosa had been in her twenties when they’d started with Lucy’s sessions, a woman not much older than Clark had been, and over the years Lucy had learned to trust Sister Rosa with her kind, dark eyes and quick, easy smile, a flash of white against coppery skin.
Now, as Lucy reached for the envelope, the nun placed her hand over the far edge, pinning it against the polished surface of the desk, not yet releasing it. “I want you to know that I’ve prayed a lot, Lucille. For you. When your family asked that you be boarded here, I understood your mother’s plight and the . . . situation that sent you and your sister here. It was agreed that you would be here not only for your education, but your protection as well.”
Where was this going? Lucy eyed the envelope.
“We, here at St. Cecilia’s, have kept our part of the bargain.”
“And?”
“And in so doing, we’ve kept something from you.”
“What?” Lucy asked, a needle of dread pricking deep into her heart.
“These. Sister Rosa and I have discussed this and, again, prayed on it, and because these are legally your property, we are giving them to you.” Her eyes behind the wire-rimmed glasses held hers as she released the packet. “I’m a believer in the theory that ‘forewarned is forearmed. ’”
Lucy picked up the envelope, her skin crawling as she lifted the flap and saw the Barbie and Ken heads atop a bound bundle of white envelopes. She slid the envelopes out.
“Letters?” she whispered, not understanding. She’d been getting mail here every week. “You stole my letters?”
“Kept them,” she said gently. “We were always going to give them to you. It was just a matter of finding the right time.” Her voice was grave. “That was the problem, Lucille. There never was a right time. Nor is there yet, I fear.”
The top letter was legible, her name in block letters written in pencil above the address of the school, a stamped warning—Inmate Mail—catching her eye.
“What are these?” she whispered, her hands trembling. There had to be fifty envelopes, maybe more. All the exact same size.
“Correspondence we thought it best, for your protection, not to show you.”
The return address included numbers and a cellblock, along with Raymond Watkins’s name.
Lucy’s heart turned to ice.
“We can burn them if you like,” Sister Maria said, motioning to the fireplace in the corner.
“No.” Lucy shook her head and stood. She was going to read every word the monster had written. At least once. “As you said, Sister, ‘Forewarned is forearmed.’”
Cascade Mountains, Oregon
Now
Night was again cloaking the mountains.
After their fight, Renee had fallen asleep in her sleeping bag on the floor near the dying fire, and Merlin was curled up next to her. Lucy sat, propped against the couch, staring at the embers, her arms surrounding her jean-clad knees.
It had been hours since she had spoken to Ian on the phone. Since that conversation, she’d turned off the damned burner phone, just so he couldn’t call her again and she wasn’t tempted to answer. The sound of his voice had taken her back to another time and place, to the years of carefree abandon, college in Colorado, her first job teaching in a private school in San Francisco, and meeting Ian at a fundraiser, benefit dinner that she’d been forced to attend. Ian Thompson had been one of the speakers and appeared as uncomfortable as she. They’d talked briefly that night, he’d shown up at her school the next day, and . . . well, the rest was history, whirlwind romance, unplanned pregnancy, eloping to Las Vegas for a quick wedding. Not exactly a fairy tale, but her story. And though she was now divorced, she had a wonderful, if stubborn daughter, whom she loved with all her heart.
Yet here she was, trespassing and hiding out in a stranger’s cabin, wondering if she, as so many people near her thought, was irrational and fearful to the point of paranoia.
Crazy or sane, you need to stay safe, to keep Renee safe. If you look like a mental case to the outside world, what do you care?
The shadows of midnight were creeping in.
Again.
The wind was picking up, howling through the trees.
Again.
Lucy doubted she could sleep.
