Snow Angel Part 14

Nineteen.

New York City.

Misting, cold rain pattered against the black umbrellas surrounding the gravesite. Jane Rhodes clenched hers with a thin-boned hand as she watched them lower her father into the earth. She didn't listen to the intonations of the priest, that one-tone monologue that had kept her father dozing off every Sunday. Instead, she felt driven to really consider Howard Greyson for the first time in years.

She'd never forgiven him for making her give up Elizabeth. There was still a pain in her heart when she thought of her baby girl, though not so sharp now; it didn't steal her breath away like it used to. Now it was just a dull ache that never seemed to go away completely. But as she looked upon the ornate rosewood coffin, with its shiny bra.s.s tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, that he had picked out for himself years ago, she was faintly surprised to feel a fluttering of sadness that he was gone. It was as if a little piece of her had been cut away, and she wondered that it should be so.

Howard Greyson had been a hard man, a determined man. She couldn't remember a time when he had ever been afraid or unsure of himself. He was a man of action, and she supposed that was one of the characteristics she had inherited from him. She had been a whirl of action after Elizabeth was taken.

What he had done to her was wrong. If her mother had been alive, and oh, how many times Jane had wished it so, things would have been so different. But Jane knew that her father had truly wanted what he thought best for her, not what made her happy. Happiness to him was success, both financial and social. His image was everything to him, and she had nearly destroyed all that by showing up pregnant and unwed. He had done what had to be done, in his eyes, to rectify the matter. Giving away her baby and marrying her off to a respectable, up-and-coming lawyer was the only solution, no matter that it had broken her in the process.

She felt the umbrella being taken from her hand and looked up at her husband, Benjamin Rhodes. Jane smiled tenderly at him and once again marveled at the irony. A less ambitious man would be hard to find. He was quite the opposite from everything she'd knowna"open and generous, keenly intelligent but humble and with modest aspirations. But mostly he'd been patient, waiting for her to notice him, waiting for love. Her father had gauged Benjamin by his prestigious family and had not clearly seen the man himself. For that, Jane was intensely thankful.

Her thoughts shifted to the man she would have chosen for herselfa"Elizabeth's father. When she thought of him, through the hazy gla.s.ses of time, she remembered a devilishly handsome young man from the less desirable side of town, but with a blazing desire to change all that. She marveled now how very like her father he was. He had craved power and wealth and acceptance. She saw now that she would have been miserable with him, but the cost of gaining Ben was still sharp. It had been so horrible in the beginning.

She squeezed Ben's hand. It fit outside her own so well as to seem molded for that express purpose. He'd been a stranger when they had married, and she, like a wounded animal, so hurt and frightened and furiously, stubbornly determined not to ever love another living soul again, had viewed him as another enemy. She hadn't let him touch her for the first year. Then, seeing him give up, eat his quiet dinners alone, and pour himself into his work, she'd begun to feel wretched in her neglect, sorry for their stilted conversations, the way he couldn't meet her eyes. Finally, her heart was able to agree with the logic that he wasn't the cause, that he was suffering because of her, that he'd married a shadow-woman, and it wasn't fair at all.

She had tried then. Turned her body, if not her soul, toward him. And for a long time that had been enough. He loved her. From the first moment he saw her in that mocking-white wedding gown that she'd hated, he'd seen only beauty and had fallen in stomach-wrenching love. He'd made her laugha"and sometimes even forgeta"binding him to her and bringing her a few stolen moments of happiness. It was an ebb and flow that still ruled them, though softened with time. Now he was her best friend and only comfort in her life. Besides Elizabeth, they were childless.

She had begun looking for Elizabeth immediately, selling her jewelry and then her mother's heirlooms to hire a private investigator. After her marriage, Ben had helped and that was the one area where she'd let him. She'd been obsessed, almost destroying her health to find her lost daughter. She'd spent every dime Ben made, and he had given it to her with an open hand. On what would have been Elizabeth's tenth birthday, she pulled out every sc.r.a.p of paper she had been able to gather over the years and then collapsed across her dining room table, a living corpse on unburned ashes. They were living like paupers, they had next to no friends, and her father had thought she'd lost her mind. He wouldn't even see her, not that she cared at the time.

In the years of searching they'd had only one real leada"the name of the orphanage in New York where Elizabeth had first been sent. Jane had been frustrated with her private investigator's inability to find Elizabeth there. Then he'd written that Elizabeth had simply disappeared and while he would continue to look, it appeared there was no trace of her to be found. It was her last letter from him, and so many years ago.

But that day, on Elizabeth's tenth birthday, among the blank walls of her stark dining room, she'd decided that she couldn't go on like she was anymore. It was time to rejoin the living. She didn't give up hopea"never that. She didn't stop looking at every dark-haired young girl she crossed paths with in the hope of seeing her face, but she did let go of the heavy burden. She'd gone shopping, took an interest in her clothes and furnishings. She'd made friends, stiff and uncomfortable at first, but with growing success. And most of all, she found herself again. She liked Jane, and Jane was glad to finally be alive once more.

Now, as she watched the cause of all her suffering being buried beneath the wet earth, she was faintly surprised to feel something akin to forgiveness welling up inside her. She didn't understand her father, but she couldn't hate him anymore, and she thought perhaps he had loved her, in his way. The crowd around her started moving away, causing her to realize that the ceremony was over. Looking up into the hazel-green eyes of her husband, she said, "Just a moment alone with him, please."

He kissed the top of her forehead, his hand a comfort on the back of her head as he handed her the umbrella. She watched his straight back, the rain dripping from the brim of his hat as he strode to the carriage. Turning, she walked to the mound of fresh earth, squatted down as close as she could get to his last resting place, her gloved hand brushing lightly across the loose earth, the air smelling of wet dirt and the flowers that surrounded the site. She had brought only a small bouquet of forget-me-nots, nothing compared to the showy blooms from all his rich friends, but they had just seemed right.

Laying them on the brown earth, she murmured, "I'm sorry it was so hard for both of us," the first tears since his death springing to her eyes, her voice tight and tear-clogged. "I'm sorry I wasn't perfect and you weren't perfect a and we messed it up so terribly." She swallowed hard. "I wish a I wish we could have talked before, but," she smiled through her tears, "we're both so stubborn and prideful. It wouldn't have gone well." She laughed a shaky, crying laugh. "So if you can hear me a I'm sorry. And a I forgive you." She sniffed and then stood, brushing off her skirts, trying not to let the held-in sob overtake her. Taking a shaky breath, feeling the control borne by many hardships sustain her, she c.o.c.ked her head to one side and, with a half-smile, finished. "I'll do my best to spend my inheritance on something lavish. Just for you."

Turning, she held her skirts up with her free hand and followed after Ben. He was waiting in the carriage for her with open arms, a tender smile, and a broad chest to lean against.

WHEN THEY RETURNED home from the dinner held in her father's honor, Jane found a box of her father's legal papers on the table in the foyer. She opened it casually and glanced through the doc.u.ments while at the same time taking off one of her gloves with her teeth. A copy of her father's will, which they'd already seen, some deeds and records of his accounts, and then, at the bottom, letters, a stack of string-tied letters addressed to her. She froze, a white glove fluttering to the floor as she saw the return address. It was from the private investigator she'd hired years ago to find information about Elizabetha"Jeremiah Hoglesby. She hadn't heard from him in years. She opened the top one with shaking hands, scanning the clean handwriting, seeing the name Dunning. Margaret and Henry Dunning. Another, smaller folded paper was inside. She looked up at Ben who had just walked in, her face suddenly drained of all color, her mouth pressed into a thin line.

Ben laid his hat on the table and asked urgently, "What is it, Jane? You look as though you've seen a ghost."

She held out the letters with a trembling hand. "You read them. I can't. I don't a how could he have these?"

Ben glanced at the return address. "Are these from the private investigator you hired?"

Jane nodded, looking up at Ben. "He must have kept them from me. What does this mean?"

Ben searched the box for other letters, finding another stack, crisp and neatly refolded in their opened envelopes. He looked through them, reading the addresses. "This doesn't make sense. There are reports sent every year a to you a so many of them. Have you had any reports from him in that time?"

"A few, in the beginning. Ia"I don't understand. They all said the same thing: *Nothing yet. I'll keep trying.' I stopped paying him years ago." She looked up at Ben. "What has my father done?"

Ben gathered the letters in one hand, put the other on the small of Jane's back and led her into the parlor. "Get me the letters you received."

Jane nodded, numb, but with a hole opening inside, a vast hole that could suck her into it and leave a sh.e.l.l of a woman, a babbling fool, the woman she'd been on the brink of becoming before escaping her father's house. She forced her legs to walk to the elegant desk, dug in the top drawer for the slim key she knew so well, as imprinted on her fingertips as her fingerprints, so often had she reached for it. Then she found the strongbox in another, deeper side drawer. Unlocking it, she clasped the few letters, her treasures, so well read they were spiderweb fine, her hands looking white, blue-veined, and thin as she grasped them. She walked over and held them out to Ben, knowing every line by heart.

Ben opened the first letter, the oldest one. He picked up and opened one of Jane's letters, held the two papers side by side, comparing the handwriting. The writing from the letter in Howard's box was small and neat, the kind from an a.n.a.lytical mind. The one from Jane's desk looked vastly different, flowing, long lines, like a woman's. He scanned them both. Jane's letter was terse, stoic, and for the first time, as Ben read it aloud, they both caught the underlying meanness, the slight turn of phrase that said the writer was glad he had no good news. A sentence of hopeful nonsense and then a line that s.n.a.t.c.hed away any hope, an ending with the promise to keep trying. The letters from the real detective were detailed accounts of where he'd gone, everything he'd found, little clues here and there, with a tone of sure knowledge that eventually, with enough time and persistence, Jeremiah Hoglesby would find her.

"G.o.d help me, I can't breathe." Jane sank onto the pink-and-white-striped divan, her hand clutching her chest.

Ben's face was a mask of stark anger.

"How could I have been so stupid? I should have known he would do something like this," Jane gasped.

"No." Ben rose, bringing Jane a gla.s.s of water, the false letter crumpling into a ball of rage in his fist. "I should have known. I didn't watch him closely enough." He looked at his wife. "Jane, I knew what he was capable of. I've seen him in the courtroom. He was the most dreaded judge in the city, showing no mercy." He looked at the floor, the creases in his forehead p.r.o.nounced, then grieved aloud, "I didn't want to see it."

Jane shook her head. "Read the others. Read them all."

Ben let the crumpled paper fall to the floor. "I don't know if I can right now. If he weren't dead a I think I would kill him."

Jane walked over and took the stack of letters. She pulled the next one from the envelope, reading it aloud, her hand shaking so that she could hardly see the words. It was the same tone. He sounded excited, having found the orphanage in New York where Elizabeth had been taken. "I received a similar letter. Remember? I wrote to this orphanage but didn't receive an answer." She laid it on the sofa and unfolded the next one. Jeremiah had spoken to a woman from the orphanage. Yes, Elizabeth was there, had been there for two years; she was four now. He planned to travel there. He was sure he would find her now. Jane's letter around that time said that no one at the orphanage knew of an Elizabeth Greyson, that it was a dead end. It was the last letter she ever received from her investigator.

The next one from Jeremiah read with disappointment. He had arrived, only to find the woman he'd corresponded with gone, the other employees claiming they'd never heard of her. Elizabeth, too, was nonexistenta"any sign or record of her had disappeared. Two more letters and then another lead. The woman had contacted him again, overheard where Elizabeth had been taken. It was an orphanage in Illinois. He should have her soon. Jane broke at that, crying, holding out the stack for Ben to take over.

Ben was shaking too, more angry than Jane had ever seen him. "Read them," she cried out. "Read the rest."

Ben unfolded the next letter. There had been an accident. Jeremiah had been hit by a wagon on the streets of an Illinois town on his way to the school. His legs were broken and then, in another letter, he said he'd contracted food poisoning, which was forcing him to move to a small town nearby. Jane looked at Ben with horror in her eyes. "Do you think my father tried to kill him?"

Ben shook his head, opening the next one. "Nothing is beyond him now. Your father must have been paying him, somehow intercepting our letters and his, and then giving you these fake letters. He was leading us all along, controlling our every move."

"But why?"

Ben looked helplessly at her, his eyes slashes of pain. "I don't know a to keep you apart. He's been controlling our whole lives, Jane."

Jane hung her head, her arms protectively crossed over her stomach in her lap.

Ben slowly unfolded the next letter. Jeremiah apologized profusely, not blaming anyone for the accident, like some guardian angel whose wings were clipped, who was being guided and duped by evil, blissfully ignorant but completely undeterred. It seemed while recuperating he'd met a woman, a widow with four children, and had married. He was living in Illinois now, had enclosed his new address, which Jane had never known about, and was ready to take back up the challenge of finding Elizabeth, even going to the extreme of posing as a custodian to glean inside information. Jane could only shake her head, lips compressed in shock.

The next letter said that Elizabeth had been at the school and she'd recently been adopted. Could Jane come to the school and demand the name of the adoptive parents?

Jane's eyes filled with tears. "I could have gone. She must have been twelve or thirteen then, and I could have gotten her back."

Ben just stared at her, sharing this shock. He looked through the remaining letters. Unable to endure any more, he picked up the last one a the one Jane had already opened but not read. He read it silently, knowing he had to shield her from further betrayal. A deep quiver moved over his body as he read it. He looked up into her shattered eyes, his head tilted to one side, a sheen of tears in his own. "Jane, he says they've found her. He says the letter inside explains everything."

Jane took a quivering breath. "When? Is it too late?"

Ben shook his head. "It's dated only a month ago. From the state of Washington." He opened the small, grubby letter that had been tucked inside the neatly folded one. Ben cleared his throat as he read.

Dear Mr. Hoglesby, We read in a paper here that you are offering a reward of twenty thousand dollars to anyone who can help you find a girl named Elizabeth. My husband Henry and me adopted a girl from the Illinois State Orphanage in spring of 1889. She went by the name of Elizabeth. We were not told her last name, but one time I saw a paper saying the name Elizabeth Greyson.

Ben's voice faltered, but he quickly read on.

If you think this might be the girl you are looking for, telegraph us at the Sweet's Hotel in Seattle, Washington.

He looked up at Jane. "It's signed Margaret Dunning."

Jane clutched the edge of the sofa with one hand and held the other against her mouth. "Could it really be? After all this time?"

"I don't know." He studied the letter then looked up at her. "After everything he's done, I fear this is another trick. What if this," he motioned to the letters with his arms, "what if it's all a grand plan to destroy you? What if he's destroyed Elizabeth already?"

Jane stared open-eyed at him. "Oh, my." She inhaled. "What if he's killed her, leading us on this chase to nothing but a grave?"

Jane sank down from the divan onto the highly polished floor. She stared through blurry eyes at the wood grain, seeing in its patterns an evil face, feeling the malevolence rush over her, as if her father were still alive and here, breathing, watching, in this house with them.

"And I'd just forgiven him," she whispered into the room.

Twenty.

We have to reply immediately to the Dunnings' letter. A telegram. And Jeremiah Hoglesby, we must write and tell him everything." Ben stood, fury and deep resolve in his steps as he helped his wife from the floor. He would not forgive Howard Greyson for this abomination. Not ever.

"If she's alive, we'll find her," Jane said. "We will find her, won't we, Ben." It wasn't a question.

Ben looked hard into his wife's eyes, the wife he'd almost given up hope of ever having whole. And now, years later, as they'd found their quiet way together, he saw it all crumple into the fine sand it really was. They would never have anything as long as this evil ruled over them. It had to be stopped; it had to be resolved. It was his battle now, now more than ever before, and he would see Howard Greyson's sneering eyes fade from their lives and lie with his body, dead to them. He would end it one way or the other, but they would not live another day waiting. His patience was at its end.

"We will find her."

He walked over to the desk, his wife's elegant desk that ill-fitted him but that he had loved because it was one of the first things she had chosen in her determination to pick up the pieces of herself and her life. He sat in the spindly chair, loving the elegant curve of the wood on the back, remembering her excitement when she'd brought it home, his breath catching anew as he remembered the shadows leave her eyes in that moment. His throat clogged as he poised the pen, then he swallowed it and narrowed his eyes, every muscle tense for battle. "To the Dunnings, we'll say a Interested. Stop. Will be on next train to Seattle. Stop a"

Jane stopped him. "We're going ourselves? Together?"

Ben nodded once. "Yes. And if we have to spend every dime your father left you to find her, we will. We won't stop until you see her face."

Jane wept. "G.o.d help us," she wailed toward him, toward heaven.

"Yes. G.o.d help us."

"HAVE YOU EVER seen anything like it?" Jane breathed as they pulled into the Seattle train station. She had been saying that exact phrase over and over as they crossed the country. The trains going west were bulging with men, and it seemed they were all affected with the same sicknessa"gold fever.

"I suppose the closest thing I've seen to this is when Gloria Parkins let us pay her a penny to see her drawers," Ben drawled and then gasped as Jane's sharp little elbow poked him in the ribs.

"I'm sure that didn't hold a candle to the gleam in these fellows' eyes, my dear. I've never seen anything like it. Do you think any of them will really strike it rich?"

Ben shrugged and stood up as the train came to a stop. "The odds are slim. Only a handful really strike it rich during these rushes, but each man here thinks he'll be among that handful, so who knows?" As he eyed his wife he added, "I see that gleam in your eyes, Jane. Don't go getting any ideas. We're getting too old to scale frozen mountains."

Jane moved ahead of him, following a young man dressed in miner's garb, carrying a heavily loaded canvas pack, and clanking his way down the narrow isle, and whispered, "Speak for yourself, Ben Rhodes."

Ben laughed, thinking she was right. She probably could scale a mountain if her daughter was on the other side of it. She was looking younger every day, vitality of purpose filling her face and her body with energy. They should have done this years ago.

As they came to the door, they paused and looked out at the city. Each town they had stopped at had its own distinctive feel, a personality it seemed. Seattle looked intriguing, sophisticated. Not like the last few dusty western towns they had stopped at, most of them looking as if they were thrown up in a day and made from tumbleweed. This town had a look of permanence about it.

"Just smell the air, Ben. It's so clean. Doesn't it smell of pine and the sea?" She took a deep breath, moving down the steps of the train onto the wide platform where they collected their luggage. "I suppose we should find a hotel and get something to eat," she said wistfully.

Ben smiled, reading her well, as he always did. "Yes, we should. We'll look up the Dunnings first thing in the morning. I, for one, would like a bath. I feel as if I haven't had one in days."

Jane smiled. "That's because you haven't." Shaking her head she said, "I'm just so anxious. I won't ever be able to sleep tonight."

With his arm around her lower back, Ben led her to the waiting hackney and whispered in her ear, "I'll do my best to keep you occupied in your sleeplessness."

THE NEXT MORNING brought with it rain and gusty winds. Dressed in long, black coats with their black umbrella raised above their heads, Ben and Jane followed the directions the hotel clerk had given them and picked their way through the side streets to the Sweet's Hotel. Finding the street name they turned, walked up the windswept, narrow lane toward the foretold blue sign.

"Ben, are you positive of our directions? This place looks so a"

"Seedy? Yes, it does. But, it seems we found it, so the directions must be right." Turning, they walked up the wooden-plank steps and through the door. The entry looked to be a parlor room done garishly in reda"a faded and stained red carpet, red draperies, and dark paneling making up the backdrop. The furniture was of red-and-gold damask, with dark mahogany frames, the kind in Jane's Great Aunt Eulalie's house, a place she had hated to visit as a child because it smelled of old people and the lemon oil and vinegar that her aunt used to clean everything. This room reeked of tobacco and something else distasteful that Jane couldn't quite put a name to. Taking a firm grip on her elbow, Ben pulled her further into the room and cleared his throat.

A blonde woman appeared. Her girth was squeezed into a tight, pink chiffon evening gown that swayed dangerously from side to side as she approached. "Yes?" she drawled. "Would you like a room?" She was looking at Ben like she would like to have him for dinner.

Jane cleared her throat, gaining her attention, but only for a moment. "We are Mr. and Mrs. Rhodes from New York City, and we have come to see the Dunnings, Margaret and Henry. They telegrammed us that they were staying here. Are they still here?"

The woman eyed her and then Ben again, pouting her lips. "Sure, they're here." She touched her hair and tilted her head. "Are you friends of Henry's?"

She was looking at Ben again. "Not exactly, Mrsa . ?"

"Oh, Miss Hart. But you can call me Bess."

Jane resisted the urge to grit her teeth. "Miss Hart, are you employed here?"

Irritated eyes shifted momentarily to hers. She shrugged an exposed, plump shoulder and grudgingly answered, "Why yes, would you like me to tell Henry you're here?"

"Please, and his wife. We would like to see them both," Ben said with authority.

Bess motioned to the chairs. "Just make yourselves comfortable, and I'll see if they're up a that is, if they can see you." With an exaggerated sway to her hips, she made her way up the stairs. She would have been disappointed to learn that Ben wasn't appreciating her efforts, as he was busy dusting off one of the chairs.

Jane sat beside him with a humph and said, "Tell me this isn't a brothel, Ben."

Ben raised his eyebrows, looking around. "At one time it may have been, judging from the decor. But it's only a seedy hotel now. I never would have brought you had I thought otherwise."