Return to Summerhouse (The Summerhouse 2)

Since Zoë had told her about what happened to Tyler, Faith had not been the same. She was restless now. There were only two days left, then what would happen? Would the three women disappear in a puff of smoke? And if they did, would they end up back in Madame Zoya’s sunroom? Would Faith and Zoë be given second chances at their lives?

Turning, Faith left the walled garden and headed for the tower. Yesterday she’d confronted Zoë about her and Russell being in there.

“Keep your shirt on,” Zoë said. “We didn’t hurt anything.”

“It’s a matter of privacy,” Faith said. “And where did you get a key?”

“Russell said he borrowed it.”

“Stole it, more likely,” Faith said. “I want that key.” She had an idea that Russell had had a duplicate made from Beth’s key, and he’d probably done it while she was in London. She didn’t blame him. The tower would be an excellent place to paint when it rained. And a place to escape the girls who made eyes at him every minute of the day.

The truth was that Faith wanted to use the tower as her own private sanctuary, a place where she could go to be alone. It seemed that soon she was going to be faced with a great many decisions in her life and, this time, she wanted to do what was right for her. Not for Ty, Eddie, her murderous mother, or even for Eddie’s battle-axe of a mother. Faith needed to figure out what was right for her.

As she went through the quiet forest, she stopped once because she thought she saw a shadow move. She waited, but saw no one, then went on to the tower quickly. Beth had told her about wolves in the forest and she didn’t want to meet one of them.

In the days since Beth had shown her the plants in the tower, Faith had asked every question she could think of about them and the recipes, the “receipts” that Beth had written out for her. Beth had shown Faith how to cut the bark of the shrubs to get the sap out, then how to use it to make the ingredient in the face cream, the shampoo, and the soap. They were simple recipes with one, single, extraordinary ingredient.

Since working with the balsam plants, Faith felt as though they’d become her friends. She felt honored to be near something so old as they were, plants that had had so much written about them. Even in the ancient world it was said that they grew in only one place on earth: Jericho. She would spend hours in the tower looking at the plants, inhaling their divine fragrance, and wondering what catastrophic events had caused the plant to become extinct.

Faith went to the stone where she knew Beth kept seeds hidden. She’d said that her ancestors had done everything they could to get the plant to grow in their gardens but it wouldn’t. It had taken years to find out that it liked the dryness inside the tower, the heat reflected off the stones, and the small amount of water poured onto its roots.

Faith had written down every word that Beth told her about the plants themselves and her family’s history with them, then Faith had memorized it all. She knew that since the plant was extinct in her time, that meant the Hawthorne women’s preservation of it had not survived. One lightning strike to the glass roof, one flood, and the plants would die, Faith thought. If it was at all possible, she was going to preserve the precious plants. She had spent hours sewing tiny tubes that would hold the seeds. On the last day she planned to tie them in the hair of the three women.

When she left the tower it was nearly nightfall and the woods were growing dark. As she walked quickly down the path, Faith looked from right to left, remembering the shadow she’d seen on the way in. She was almost to the gate when she stopped. Hadn’t that shadow been where she’d seen the poisonous mushrooms? When Eddie was alive and they’d spent their days reading about herbs, he’d made jokes about that brilliant red mushroom. In the sixties and seventies, the hippies made psychedelic drugs from it.

She was musing on this when it occurred to her that wanting to get high was not just a modern desire. She overcame her fears of whatever was lurking in the woods, turned off the trail, and went into the darkening forest to look for the mushrooms. She’d knocked down all of them she’d seen but she could have missed some.

Within minutes, she saw that she’d missed several of them and that someone had taken the trouble to hide them under leaves. There was one freshly broken stem in the earth, showing that within the last hour or so, someone had broken off one of the poisonous mushrooms.

Annoyed, Faith stood up and destroyed the rest of them, but it looked as though someone were using them. For what? A trip?

Her head came up as she looked back toward the trail. People did things on drug trips that they didn’t usually do in life. Sometimes it was silly; sometimes it was violent.

“Tristan,” Faith said out loud. In the last weeks Amy had lost weight, had pretty much given up sleep, as she tried to figure out who hated Tristan enough to kill him. What if no one hated him? What if someone on a drug trip went berserk and stabbed him?

For a full minute, Faith’s mind’s eye could see the inside of the orangery. Tristan’s big bed had been moved in there that morning. Amy had posted guards at the entrances to the walled garden, but their instructions were to allow no strangers in. She’d even shown them how to search people to make sure they carried no knives.

Zoë had laughed at Amy for her paranoia, but now Faith seemed able to see it all. It wouldn’t be an enemy who killed Tristan, it was someone he knew, someone who thought it was fun to eat a bit of a poisonous mushroom and feel like he was flying or…

Faith didn’t take time to think any more. She’

d left her big knife on top of the cabinet nearest Tristan’s bed. She grabbed her skirt up to her knees and took off running as fast as she could. As she ran, cursing her out-of-shape body, she wanted to hit herself for not listening to Amy, not paying attention to her. Faith had been so wrapped up in her own problems that she’d left Amy alone. She and Zoë might as well not have come to the eighteenth century for all that they’d helped Amy.

When Faith could see the walled garden, she ran even faster. Her lungs were about to burst, but she didn’t slow down. When she was still a hundred yards from the gate, she saw William saunter outside the wall.

Faith didn’t know how else to get his attention but to scream at the top of her lungs.

William turned and started toward her. Faith didn’t slow down but dropped her skirt and waved at William to go back. “Tristan!” she yelled, then tripped on her skirt and fell flat on her face. As she was trying to get up, she looked up at William and saw that he understood.

With all the energy he had, he hobbled back between the gates on his canes and out of sight. Faith got off the ground and started running again.

There were three people in the walled garden when she ran through. They were all trusted employees and were resting from having moved furniture for Tristan into the orangery. He’s not here, Faith thought. Tristan isn’t here yet. She was relieved, but she didn’t slow down. The people in the garden stopped to look at her as she sped past them and into the orangery.

What she saw inside made her halt in terror. She could see the bottom half of Tristan lying on the bed. In front of him was the young woman who brought Faith herbs twice a day. William’s frail body was behind her, his thin arms around her shoulders. When he heard Faith enter, he turned the girl. Faith’s largest knife was dangling from the fingertips of her right hand, and her eyes had the wild look of someone who had just taken a hallucinogenic.

Behind them Tristan, eyes open, was lying on the bed in absolute stillness.

Faith put her hand to her mouth. “He—”