Shadows of Ladenbrooke Manor (25 page)

“I was hoping the snow would bring her home.”

“I don’t think she’s coming home,” he said, resigned.

“She’s warm, isn’t she?”

“I don’t know.”

Her gaze wandered back toward the dark window. “I pray to God that she is.”

“I hope God listens to you.”

She flinched. Sometimes she didn’t know if he was trying to be optimistic or if he was condemning her for her past, sentencing her again and again.

Guilty.

She switched on the lights of the Christmas tree, trying to brighten the sitting room, and sat down in the upholstered chair beside him. “We may have started our marriage wrong, Walter, but have we done everything wrong?”

“We did our best.” His chair creaked as he spoke. “Now Libby has to choose how she wants to live her life.”

“But she can’t choose. She doesn’t know what is right and wrong.”

He took a drag on his cigarette. “We all know the difference between right and wrong.”

It always came back to the same worn argument. Walter thought Libby was more capable than what Maggie gave her credit for. Maggie thought Walter’s expectations for her were impossibly high.

A knock on the back door interrupted their quarrel, the sound prickling the hair on her arms.

She shouldn’t allow herself to hope, but she couldn’t stop the surge that rushed through her. The door was unlocked, as it always was. Libby usually just walked in.

She glanced over at Walter in the hue of Christmas lights, and he slowly crushed his cigarette in the ashtray before rising from his chair as if he didn’t want to allow himself to hope either.

The knock came again, harder this time, and Maggie trailed her husband through the kitchen, holding her breath as he opened the door.

On the other side, in the darkness, stood a young woman, her stringy hair wet, her threadbare coat covered with snow.

Maggie’s heart collapsed within her. “Libby?” she whispered.

The woman nodded.

It was Libby and yet she looked nothing like her daughter. Her simple beauty was washed away. And her stomach.
Dear God.

Maggie caught herself on the edge of the counter.

Libby was pregnant.

DECEMBER 1969, WILLOW COTTAGE

A
nger raged through Walter as he stared down at Maggie’s daughter. He’d spent the past fifteen years toiling to provide for her like she was his own, pushing her to succeed even when Maggie thought she would fail. But Libby wasn’t his. Never was and never would be. She’d followed right in her mother’s—and her father’s—footsteps.

After all he’d done for her. After all he’d desired for her future. He had wanted a different life for Libby, and yet she betrayed them.

Libby’s shoulders were hunched, her gaze on the ground. “Something is wrong with me.”

He folded his arms tight over his sweater. “I daresay it is.”

Maggie pressed her fingers into his arm. “Walter . . .”

He waved her hand away. “Whose child is it?”

Her eyes grew wide, her voice cracking when she spoke again. “What child?”

Maggie tugged on his sleeve. “She doesn’t understand.”

“I think that she does.” He didn’t take his eyes off Libby, searching for the truth like he’d done the day she was born, except back then he’d been searching for the truth from her mother. He wouldn’t be played the fool again. “Who’s the father?”

Maggie reached around him, taking Libby’s hand. “Come inside or you’ll freeze.”

“What child?” Libby repeated, staring at him.

“She doesn’t know,” Maggie said, trying to push him out of the way, but he wanted—needed—someone to tell him the truth this time.

“Where have you been?” he demanded.

She looked back up at him, those big, beautiful eyes not as innocent as they’d once been. “With the butterflies.”

“There are no butterflies in December.”

She held up her sketchbook, wet from the snow. Inside were her pictures.

“Did someone hurt you?” Walter asked.

“No—”

His voice trembled. He hated asking these kinds of questions, but if Maggie wouldn’t do it, then he must. “Did someone force you to do something you didn’t want to do?”

“He’d never force me.”

“Who, Libby?” He pressed. “Who wouldn’t force you?”

She began to cry again.

“You have to go back to him,” Walter said.

Maggie gasped. “You don’t mean it.”

He ignored her. “Go back to the baby’s father.”

Libby’s cries grew louder, and Maggie pushed around him. “He doesn’t mean it.”

But he did mean it. A baby should be with its mother and father. No good had come from this pasting together of a family. No matter how strong the glue—nothing could hold them together.

Libby shivered, and Maggie began to cry with her. “This is my fault,” Maggie said.

“Libby is old enough to choose.”

“I should have—” Maggie started as she shook her head, defeated. “I’ve ruined everything.”

Libby tried to step around him, but he wouldn’t budge. “Go back to him, Libby.”

She sobbed, and then turned and ran away.

Stunned, Maggie stared over at him for a moment before following Libby into the night.

Walter fell back against the doorpost, sobbing as well, deep from his gut. He was only forty-one, but he felt like an old man, tired and aching in every joint. No matter how he’d tried to keep everything together, his family had fallen apart.

MAGGIE CHASED LIBBY BACK THROUGH
their garden and into the field beyond. She called out her name, but Libby didn’t listen, just as she hadn’t listened when she told her to stay away from Oliver.

Walter would never forgive her and now Libby—

Her husband hadn’t kicked out Libby. After all these years, it was really Maggie that he was ridding himself of. He had stayed with her out of duty. Obligation.

Walter could leave them if he must, but she would not—could not—allow Libby and the child to go back to whatever squalor she’d been living in.

She found her daughter in a heap in the field, sorrow heaving from her chest.

“I’m going to have a baby,” Libby said, the shock permeating her words.

“The doctor will have to decide.”

Libby shook her head. “No doctors.”

Snow fell on Libby’s face, and Maggie brushed it away. She remembered well hanging over the railing in Clevedon, not caring about the cold or her fear of the water or even her life. Thank God, Walter had found her and offered her a new life.

Tears slid down her cheeks. Walter hadn’t just saved Maggie’s life back on the promenade. He’d saved her daughter’s life as well and now she prayed he would help her save Libby one more time.

She rubbed Libby’s arms. “We have to get you warm.”

“Walter won’t let me back in.”

“Yes, he will.”

“You tried to tell me. About babies. But I didn’t know—”

“I know you didn’t.”

A sob escaped Libby’s throat even as her hands curled over her stomach. “I don’t want a baby.”

“We’ll figure everything out later, darling.”

Libby collapsed onto her, and Maggie wrapped her in her arms. Never before had Libby come to her with any sort of sadness. Any suffering.

Perhaps her daughter had never felt pain like this before.

No matter what anyone said about her emotions, Libby felt things more profoundly than other people. Her ability to deflect sorrow or pain, to see the goodness and beauty in almost everything, was a cocoon of sorts to ward off a mortal wound. Oliver may have been the first one to chip away at the shell of Libby’s cocoon, but Walter, in his anger, cracked it open.

Libby shook as she cried in Maggie’s arms. As they both cried. She’d longed for her daughter to need her, to reach for her when she was in pain. To communicate like other mothers and daughters. But now, as Libby sobbed, she wished she could weave the cocoon back around Libby’s heart again.

She didn’t know how long they sat huddled together in the snow, the pain boring through her soul. Then Walter was there, his hand on her shoulder.

“Come inside,” he said.

Carefully he helped Maggie stand, but Libby wouldn’t let him touch her.

Maggie reached for Libby’s hand, and she slowly led her back to the warmth of their home.

B
rie Reynolds knocked on Heather’s front door, two minutes before nine. Heather never thought to inquire about the estate agent’s maiden name, but the moment she opened the door, Heather realized that she’d invited the woman formerly known as Britney Garnett into her home.

Christopher’s other woman.

Brie looked quite proper, dressed impeccably in a navy skirt with a matching jacket, navy pumps, and what looked like glitter flaked on the rim of her glasses. She kissed both of Heather’s cheeks, explaining that she’d worked in Paris for five years before returning to England and preferred the French way of greeting.

“It’s so nice to see you,” Brie said, stepping back. “I was just talking to my sister-in-law the other day about you—do you remember Edith Reynolds? Her name’s Edith Lane now.”

Heather shook her head, wondering how this woman could be so friendly to her when she’d been sneaking around with Christopher long ago.

“I suppose you wouldn’t remember most people from around here, since your parents sent you away for school.” She smiled as she set her leather bag on the coffee table. “I was wondering whatever happened to you. I heard you’d gone to London after you and Christopher broke up but then poof—” She snapped her fingers. “You were gone. Years later, I heard you went to the United States.”

“I met an American in London,” Heather said. “We eloped—”

“How romantic!”

She didn’t tell her that their marriage lasted only six years.

Brie glanced around the room and then walked toward the back window. “I’ve been wondering what you were planning to do with this cozy space.”

Heather leaned against the stones that framed the fireplace. She didn’t want to work with Britney turned Brie, but she needed a real estate agent and Brie Reynolds was supposed to be the best in the area.

“I want to sell it,” she explained.

“Then let’s get it sold.” Brie pulled out her cell phone and began tapping on her keypad with her manicured nails.

A wave of sadness swept through Heather, her heart clinging to the past in spite of her desire to let it go. But she had traveled here to clean out the rooms and put her parents’ house on the market, not dwell on Christopher or the memories in this cottage. It was time to say good-bye.

She showed Brie the small kitchen and dining area to the left of the sitting room; then Brie followed her up the steps. Brie clicked her tongue as she examined both of the bedrooms and the one bathroom that separated them, opening up closet doors and the bathroom cabinet as she tapped notes into her phone.

When they finished upstairs, Brie peeked into the basement and retreated quickly back up the stairs, into the kitchen. “You still have a bit of work to do before we can put it on the market.”

“I’ll clean out the rest of the boxes.”

Brie slid onto a bar stool by the kitchen counter. “The clutter must go, of course, but there’s more to it.”

Heather flipped on the electric kettle beside the refrigerator before turning back toward her. “What else do I need to do?”