The Vanishing (10 page)

I crunched my way through the snow toward the stable, my breath hanging in the air like mist. It was colder than it had been the day before, and I could feel the icy tingle of chill on my cheeks.

My stomach did a quick flip when I saw Drew in the field with a horse. He saw me, waved, and began walking toward me.

“And how are we this fine morning?” he said, grinning.

“We are a touch the worse for wear,” I conceded. “No cognac after dinner tonight, definitely.”

“Tonight again, we’re to have a formal dinner? That’s unusual, two nights in a row. You’ve brought change with you, Julia, so you have.”

“Adrian’s back,” I told him.

He nodded. “Ah, that’s the reason for it, then.”

We stood there for a moment, neither of us saying anything. Finally, he broke away and glanced back toward the stable. “I’ve got spiced tea brewing. May I offer you some?”

I thought of my dream about Jeremy the night before, and I knew I shouldn’t go into that stable with him. Everything in me was telling me to turn and go back to the house. But instead I heard myself saying: “That would be lovely.”

We walked together toward the stable and Drew pulled open the wooden door, revealing a structure that was not so much a horse barn as it was an annex of the house itself, just as opulent, in its own rustic way. Six empty stalls lined one side of the stable;
each, I noticed, was paneled with dark, gleaming wood and lined with sweet-smelling hay. The stalls had running water, shutters that could be opened to the outdoors, and large troughs. Bridles, saddles, and other horse accoutrements adorned the walls and sat on shelves.

“May I take your jacket?” Drew asked as he peeled off his hat, gloves, and parka, revealing a cream-colored fisherman’s knit sweater and the broadest shoulders I had seen in a long time. Didn’t I notice them the night before? I unzipped my parka and handed it to him, and he hung both jackets on wrought-iron hooks.

On the other wall, I noticed two bigger stalls. One contained an ornate black carriage that might have been transported there from the 1800s—it was like something I imagined Sherlock Holmes’s wealthiest clients traveling in, an enclosed vehicle with windows and a door, and a spot for the driver to sit up on the top. In the other stall sat a magnificent sleigh, also black, also ornately carved with red accents. I imagined myself sitting on its red leather seat, covered by a thick blanket, dashing through the snow.

“Where are the rest of horses?” I asked Drew as we walked down the length of the stable. “I only saw Sebastian out there with you.”

“In the fields. They love it outside, even in this chilly weather. True northern horses, they are.”

At the opposite end of the building, I saw a stone fireplace, where a small fire crackled. A leather sofa strewn with woolen pillows woven in reds, oranges, and blacks stood in front of the fireplace. Armchairs and ottomans flanked the sofa, with crocheted afghans lying here and there. I noticed a teakettle hanging on a steel rod over the fire. I could have curled up in one of those armchairs and never left.

But, as wonderful as it was, it felt wrong, somehow. This was a stable, and it should be run-down… shouldn’t it? Somewhere deep in my mind, I saw fading wood and dilapidated stalls, dust
covering hanging farm implements. I could even smell the decay. And then the image dissipated, as quickly as it had come.

Drew smiled, pouring tea into two mugs and offering one to me. “It’s humble, but it’s home.”

I took a sip of the cinnamony tea and it warmed me, through and through. “You live out here? I thought you were in the main house.”

“I am. But sometimes I prefer staying out here. There’s just something about it that appeals to me.”

“Just you and the horses?” I smiled at him.

“And the dogs,” he said, his eyes traveling to the far side of the room, where I saw three massive dog beds and blankets, various toys and bones, and three sets of ceramic dishes. One of the dogs, the red one, curled up on her bed, wrapping her tail around her nose and settling in. But she was not at rest. Her brown eyes were trained on me.

“Would you like a tour?” he offered. “I’ve newly renovated it, and I’m quite proud of the way it turned out.”

I followed him through the door, completely unprepared for the sight that awaited me there. I can only describe it as Northwoods chic. We entered into a living room that shared a wall with the main stable, and I saw the fireplace served both rooms. A mirror image of sofas and armchairs surrounded this side of the fireplace, along with a flat-screen television hanging on one wall. Photos and brightly colored, whimsical paintings of animals that inhabited this part of the country—bears, moose, loons, otters, and others—were hung here and there.

Drew led me down a short hallway. “Kitchen,” he said, and I poked my head in to see an Aga stove humming along, stainless steel pots and pans hanging above it, and an old, scrubbed table, which I could immediately tell was worn by years of meals with family and friends.

“Den,” said Drew, pointing to an archway, through which I
spied bookshelves, a ceiling lined with heavy wooden beams, and more leather furniture accented with thick woolen pillows in those same reds, oranges, and blacks.

“Guest room,” he chirped, opening a door and revealing a heavy, dark bedroom set, obviously antique, the dresser lined with a pinkish marble top. A red-and-white floral bedspread lay over the bed, along with several pillows in various hues.

“It’s so lovely,” I murmured, staring at the bedroom set and wondering how many hundreds of years old it was.

“Guest bath is here,” he said, opening another door, where I saw a claw-foot tub, a glass shower, and light pinewood paneling on the walls.

“And the master suite,” he said, revealing a huge room with a king-sized bed, its headboard and footboard made out of logs, and a woolen blanket, striped with red, yellow, and green, draped over it. A fireplace, where coals still smoldered, was flanked by the now-ubiquitous leather armchairs and ottomans and another flat-screen television. Sunshine streamed through a wall of windows, where I saw the river burbling past, along with several horses in a distant field. Across the room there was another door, which was ajar. I presumed this was the master bath.

“Let’s take our tea and sit by the fire, shall we?” he said, leading me back down the hallway toward the living room, where I settled into one of the armchairs.

“You said you renovated these rooms recently?” I asked him, looking around at the fresh paint and gleaming tongue-in-groove wood paneling. “I ask because, well, the main house is so ancient and this all seems rather new.”

He nodded, sipping his tea. “I did indeed. Just this past year. It had always had rooms—the stable hands of the past lived in here—but they were very run-down.”

“I remember,” I said, the words escaping my lips before I even knew what I was saying.

Drew stared at me. “You remember?”

I shook my head. “I don’t have any idea why I said that,” I told him. “What I meant was I can imagine. This isn’t how a stable should look.”

The look on his face dropped, just a bit. And for a moment I got the distinct impression that whatever I had said had disappointed or confused him. He stood to pour himself another cup of tea, and when he turned back around toward me, the smile was back on his face.

“Now, I spend a lot of time out here,” he went on, as though I hadn’t said anything. “It’s the strangest thing, but I began to feel the presence of my ancestors very strongly in the main house.” He shuddered and turned his gaze to the fire. “It was as though the house itself… the portraits…” I could tell he was caught up in the memory of it. He shook his head and turned toward me.

“But that’s silly. You must think I’m completely daft.”

“Not a bit,” I said, thinking he, too, might have had a rather otherworldly experience in the house. I wondered whether to bring up what had happened to me, but I decided against it. “The house has a way of spooking you, doesn’t it?”

“Sometimes it does. So many memories hanging in the air.”

“I can see what drew you to come here, though, and I can see why you stayed. And frankly, although the house is breathtakingly beautiful, there’s also a coldness to it, a formality. This place you’ve created here is comfortable and warm and cozy.”

He smiled. “And it’s more in keeping with its surroundings, isn’t it, with the Northwoods decor. I wanted this place to reflect the local culture, not rebel against it, as the main house has done.”

“Exactly,” I said, sipping my tea and noticing for the first time a portrait above the fireplace. I stood up to look at it more closely. Andrew McCullough, dressed in a kilt, with a woman and two small children, and dogs that looked to be malamutes curled up by their feet.

“Your great-great-grandfather?” I asked him.

“Yes,” he said, coughing slightly. “And his family.”

I detected a tone of melancholy in his voice, and wondered if he was thinking about a family of his own. All of a sudden I realized I didn’t know if he had ever been married, or had any children for that matter. There was much about Drew that was still a mystery.

“And what about you, Julia?” he said, interrupting my thoughts and changing the subject. “What brought you to Havenwood? I know you’re meant to be a companion to Mrs. S., but why did you decide to give up your life to come here?”

I had been dreading those questions. I wasn’t interested in telling Drew my history, even though he had been relatively honest with me about his. So I chose my words carefully.

“My husband died a few months ago,” I began.

“Oh, Julia, I’m so sorry.”

I shook my head. “Thank you. Anyway, I was sort of at loose ends. He died, the bills were piling up, I discovered”—I hesitated—“discrepancies in our finances. I basically went from having everything to nothing in the blink of an eye.”

He leaned over and put a hand on mine. I felt an itch in the back of my throat and hoped I wasn’t about to start weeping. That was all I would need.

“And that’s when Adrian showed up at my doorstep. I don’t know how he found me, but he did. He made the offer for me to come to Havenwood, and with nothing to lose, I accepted. I was here the next day.”

“And now?”

“Now? When I first got here, it was overwhelming, to tell you the truth. I’d seen pictures of the estate but I didn’t imagine it to be so—”

“Daunting?”

“Exactly.” I nodded, then shuddered. “Mrs. Sinclair has her schedule—her quiet time in the morning and all of that—and initially I wasn’t quite sure what to do with myself during that time.” I cast an eye out the window toward the house, which stood looming
like a specter across the snowy lawn. I didn’t see any signs of life.

“But then I got to know Mrs. Sinclair a bit better. And you,” I added shyly. “Yesterday was so much fun. I’m feeling more at home, like I really do belong here. It feels like…”

“Like what?”

“Like I’ve been here longer than just a couple of days. I can’t explain it, but things seem both familiar and strange.”

“You’re always welcome here in the stables,” Drew offered. “I’ve usually got the fire going, and a pot of tea on the stove. And something stronger in the pantry if you’re in need of it. Stop by anytime, even if I’m not here. You’ll need to get out of the house, from time to time. Believe me. It does have a way of making you feel that everything in the universe is contained within those brick walls. You need to breathe the fresh air every now and then to remind yourself that the outside world exists.”

I exhaled. He really was impossibly kind.

Suddenly, I remembered what I was doing there. I had been so caught up in listening to Drew that I had almost forgotten. “Oh, my goodness!” I said. “I came down here to tell you that Adrian is hoping you can take the dogs and track those footprints, to see where they came from.”

He nodded. “I was planning to do that this morning, just as I saw you, actually.”

“Would you mind terribly if I went with you?” I asked.

“Wouldn’t mind a bit.” He smiled and unfolded himself from his chair, crossing the room to the wall where he had hung our jackets. “But only if you bundle up.”

We crunched together through the snow. As we neared the front door of Havenwood, the dogs took off running down the length of the patio and disappeared around the side of the house.

“Girls!” Drew called to them. “Come!” We waited for a moment, expecting them to bound back around the corner, but they didn’t reappear.

He raised his eyebrows. “The girls don’t so much obey commands as take them under advisement.” He chuckled, starting off in the direction they had gone. “I wonder what they’re after.”

“An animal, maybe?” I offered, following him. We rounded the corner of the house and there they were, snouts to the ground in front of one of the bay windows, sniffing and scratching at the snow. Nearing them, Drew and I saw what had captured the dogs’ attention. Footprints. And not the ones we had seen the night before. These were fresh, and in front of the drawing room window.

“Were you walking around out here earlier?” he asked me.

I shook my head. “I wasn’t.”

“Well, then it looks like our visitor was back,” he said, furrowing his brow. “I wonder what this is about, then.”

We walked around the house to the kitchen door, following the footprints all the way. Drew pointed to the trail, which snaked its way across the lawn, toward the forest beyond. I clearly saw what I couldn’t in the darkness the night before—a person had
come from the stand of trees, walked up to the house, and had gone back again. There was no doubt.

I remembered how trapped I had felt in my house in Chicago after the news broke of Jeremy’s death—the media, his victims, and even curious gawkers were always lurking at my windows, trying to get a look at the grieving widow. And this was feeling all too familiar. I was beginning to believe that we hadn’t attracted a curious villager when we were in town the day before. A chill shot through me when I thought of my house burning to the ground.

Was I endangering Havenwood and everyone in it just by being here?

“Are there tourists in the area this time of year?” I asked, grasping for any other explanation. “People who might be curious about the house? It is such an oddity, after all, this enormous estate in the middle of the wilderness.”

He shook his head. “Not generally,” he said. “The house isn’t exactly in the guidebooks. People would have to know it’s here, or stumble across it while hiking on the trails or canoeing on the river. And they don’t do any of that in late November. This is our downtime. It’s too cold for the summer sports but there’s not enough snow for the cross-country skiers and snowmobilers.”

He squinted at the trail of prints. “But then again, it’s easy walking right now. Whoever it was didn’t have to use snowshoes. Later on in the season, he never could have walked in the forest without them. He’d be up to his waist in snow. But now, all he’d need is a good pair of boots, and you certainly don’t come to this area without those.”

“So it’s not out of the realm of possibility,” I said, satisfied with that explanation and liking the innocence of it. I could imagine myself on a hike in the wilderness, stumbling across this massive estate, and simply having to come closer to get a better look.

“Come on,” he said, setting off along the trail of footprints. “Let’s see where this leads us.”

He whistled for the dogs, and they came bounding from where they had been, one on either side of Drew and me, and one behind us. I was beginning to really like having their protection.

We walked in silence for a while, going deeper and deeper into the forest. The enormous pine trees reminded me of photos I’d seen of the giant redwoods in California. They towered above our heads and seemed to close in around us, partially blocking out the sun. I noticed the chill becoming more intense, the dogs’ breath hanging in the air around them in tufts.

“These trees must be hundreds of years old,” I said, my voice seeming to shatter the very stillness into tiny pieces.

“Red pines,” he said. “The estate is one of the only areas around where there has never been any logging. It’s quite wonderful, don’t you think, to be able to see this forest just as it was, hundreds of years ago?”

I craned my neck to look upward, so mesmerized by the trees that I almost forgot we had another, darker purpose for being out there.

We followed the footprints through the forest until they led us to a clearing, where a lake appeared, seemingly from out of the blue. It wasn’t yet frozen over but the water looked ice-cold, a slight mist rising from its surface and dissipating into the air.

“Look at this,” Drew said, pointing down to the lakeshore. At first I didn’t see what he was pointing to… and then I did. The remnants of a campfire, the snow around it fully packed down. Somebody had made camp here.

“It looks like our visitor spent the night,” Drew said, kicking snow at the campfire ashes to make sure they were out. “And look here.” He moved closer to the lakeshore and bent down.

I saw what he was pointing to. Tracks, as though somebody had pulled a boat—a canoe, likely—out of the water and onto shore.

Drew stood up and looked me in the face. “This wasn’t some curious villager following us home, Julia. Whatever could this be about?”

In that moment, it became as clear to me as the water before us, lapping at the snowy shore.

I sat down on a nearby log and put my head in my hands. “Drew,” I said, wishing I didn’t have to say the words. “I think I know exactly what this is about. And it has nothing to do with Havenwood, and nothing to do with Mrs. Sinclair or Adrian, and nothing to do with you. It has to do with me.”

“You?”

“Whoever this is, he’s looking for me.”

Drew squinted at me. “And, from your expression, I’m guessing he’s not looking for you to deliver the Publishers Clearing House grand prize.”

I managed a smile. “Not that, no. I’m afraid my being here is putting all of you, and Havenwood, in danger. I’m going to have to leave. Today.”

The problem was I had no place to go.