Red Lily (In the Garden 3)

“She still cares, I feel that. She just gets confused. Harper, I can’t remember.”

She lowered the cup, and emotion swam into her eyes. “Not like I could the other times it happened. I could see, at least a part of me could. I don’t know how to explain. But this time, it’s mixed up, and I can’t see. Not all of it. Why was she going into the ballroom? What did she do there?”

He wanted to tell her to relax, not to think. But how could she? Instead he came back, sat by her. “You went to the carriage house. You must have. The door was open, and I could see where you’d walked back to the kitchen. The floor was wet.”

“That’s where she went that night, the night she died here. She had to have died here that night. Nothing else makes sense. We saw her that time, you and me. Standing out on the terrace, wet and muddy. She had a rope.”

“There could’ve been rope in the carriage house. Probably was.”

“Why would she need a rope to get the baby? To tie up the nursemaid?”

“I don’t think that’s why she wanted rope.”

“She had that sickle thing, too.” Bright and gleaming, she remembered. Sharp. “Maybe she was going to kill anyone who tried to stop her. But the rope. What would she do with rope besides tie somebody up?”

Her eyes widened and she set the cup down with a rattle when she read the look in his eyes.

“Oh my God. To kill herself? To hang herself, is that what you’re thinking? But why? Why would she come all the way out here? Why would she drag herself through the rain, and hang herself in the ballroom?”

“The nursery was on the third floor back then.”

What little color had come back into her cheeks drained again. “The nursery.”

No, she thought as the image played in her mind, she might never be truly warm again.

ON HER DAYS off, Hayley was used to the hours flying by. The time was so crowded with chores—shopping, laundry, organizing what had gotten disorganized during workdays, caring for Lily and the myriad tasks that turned up—she barely remembered what it was like to have what those who didn’t have full-time jobs and a toddler called free time.

Who knew she liked it that way?

Finding herself with time on her hands left her feeling broody and restless. But when the boss ordered you to take the day off, there was no arguing. At least not when the boss was Rosalind Harper.

She’d been banished to Stella’s house for the day without even Lily as a distraction. She’d been told to rest, and she’d tried. Really she had. But her usual delight in reading didn’t satisfy her; the stack of DVDs Stella had handed her didn’t entertain, and the quiet, empty house kept her counting the minutes rather than lulling her into a nap.

She passed some of the time roaming the rooms, rooms she’d helped paint. Stella and Logan had turned it into a home, mixing Stella’s flair for detail and style with Logan’s sense of space. And the boys, of course, she thought as she paused outside of the room Gavin and Luke shared with its bunk beds and shelves loaded with comic books and trucks. It was a home created with children in mind, lots of light and color, the big yard that bumped right up to kiss the woods. Even with the elegance of gardens—and how could the landscaping be anything but beautiful here—it was a yard where kids and a dog could romp around.

She picked up Parker—the dog had been her only company through the day—and nuzzled him as she walked back downstairs.

Would she be as clever as Stella with a home and family? As loving and smart and sane?

She’d never planned it this way. Stella was the one for plans. She’d just cruised along, happy enough with her job at the bookstore, helping her father tend the little house they shared. Now and again she’d thought about taking a few extra classes in business—to prepare for the vague dream of opening her own bookstore. One day.

She’d thought about falling in love—one day. Most girls did, she imagined. But she hadn’t been in any hurry for it, for the big love, and what followed. Permanency, home, kids. The whole minivan, soccer-mom routine had been distant as the moon in her head. Years off. Light-years off.

But things had happened that had pushed her in directions she’d never expected to go. So here she was, not yet twenty-six, pregnant with her second child, working in a field she’d known next to nothing about two years before.

And so stupidly in love she was all but breathing valentines.

Just to ice that cake, a cryptic and certainly psychopathic spirit had decided to borrow her body from time to time.

When Parker wiggled, she set him down, then followed him into the kitchen where he parked himself by the back door and stared holes through it.

“Okay, okay, out you go. Guess I’m not the most sparkling company today.”

She let him out, and he pranced across the yard, into the woods as if he had an appointment to keep.

She wandered out herself. It was a pretty day. The rain had freshened things, cooled the air a little. She could take a walk, do some weeding. Or she could stretch out on the patio chaise and see if being outdoors was more conducive to napping.

Without much hope, she cocked the chair back, thought about going back in for a book. And was asleep in minutes.