Breath of Dawn, The (14 page)

Quinn waited as Morgan produced the house key, then opened and held the door. Electricity that wasn’t purely static snapped when he touched her arm, extending the cabinet’s skeleton key in his open palm. A lump filled her throat, remembering the last time they’d done this. She’d been so excited, and he’d seemed warm and real and connected.

“He’s waking up, and there’s pain and awkwardness and uncertainty.”

No one could apply uncertainty to Morgan Spencer. He knew exactly what he was doing, all the time. She took the key.

In the kitchen the professor examined the cabinet. “I can’t believe I missed this.”

“It wasn’t up here,” she told him. “It was all the way at the end of the cellar.”

He peered through the glass panes. “I see why it intrigued you.”

“I was planning to sell the medicine bottles, before I knew what they were. Then Morgan bought it intact to keep in the kitchen.” She unlocked the cabinet and opened the creaking doors.

Dr. Jenkins removed an ampule and studied it. “That is LSD.
It was administered on small squares of blotting paper. There’s actually art devoted to the blotting paper design.”

Shaking her head, she reached in to a lower shelf and drew out some larger bottles, one labeled morphine and others that held powders and pills with no labels and looked much older. “This is what I was hoping for. Just old . . . whatever it is.”

Dr. Jenkins said, “I wonder if this cabinet didn’t stand right here once.” He rocked his foot on the popping linoleum. “This room was part of the asylum.”

She blinked. “I hadn’t realized.”

“It was, I believe, an examination room, also possibly a treatment area.”

“And the cellar?” She glanced at the unobstructed door behind the hutch still angled out from her last trip down when Morgan’s panic frightened and touched her.

“Not a dungeon, I think. Most likely storage and equipment.” He turned. “Should we go down?”

“Why?”

“I wouldn’t mind another look.” Something sparkled in his eyes. “It might convince us both our imaginations got carried away.”

Her heart started to thump. “Morgan has Livie.” The child was prancing in the living room, listening to her own hollow footsteps. No way was that baby going down those stairs.

“Go ahead,” Morgan said. “I’ll stay up here with her.”

She cast him a glance. She’d met him in this house. It had been his idea to explore the basement, his arm she’d clung to. They’d laughed; they’d cringed. From that first encounter, hardly a day had passed she didn’t think of him. Silly, naïve fool.

She turned to the professor. “Ready if you are.”

As she opened the door, Morgan said, “You’ll want a light.”

Morgan Spencer, covering the details. From the pantry, she took out the camp lantern and illuminated stairs that now bore countless footprints and few cobwebs. The railing was icy cold, as though the heat of the house had no power over it. She let go and marched down.

At the bottom, she noticed more of a change than she thought she’d accomplished. In the midst of the work it had seemed never
ending, but after being away for a while, her progress showed. The professor joined her. Upstairs, Morgan closed the door, probably to keep Livie from getting curious, but still she shivered.

Dr. Jenkins took the cellar in. “Ah,” he said, his glance falling on a shackled bed.

“Was that restraint necessary?”

“Who knows. Before effective medications, patients could be violent to themselves and others. In a dormitory situation, preventing injury probably came first.”

She couldn’t bear the thought of patients writhing as forces inside fought the shackles holding them down. She turned toward the darkened end of the cellar. “The electroshock apparatus is over there.” She really didn’t want to see it again—too Frankenstein—so she handed him the lantern, then realized if she didn’t follow she’d be standing in the dark. Bracing her shoulders, she walked behind him through the detritus she had not yet organized.

He stopped beside the electrical generator with cords reaching to a metal band lying on the narrow pallet. Her insides shrank in as she imagined cries and whimpers. It almost seemed she heard them. “Why is this so horrifying?”

“Because it suggests torture.”

A chill traced the bones of her spine. Morgan had said it wasn’t Auschwitz. He was right. The intention wasn’t to cause but rather relieve suffering. Without consciously willing it, she reached out and touched the pallet. “You say it works?”

“It can.”

She drew a long breath and nodded. But as she turned away, a sense of malevolence choked her. As a child, she’d been told to stand against evil but had equated it with the wrongdoings of worldly people. This was no person, but a force. She breathed, “Jesus.”

The oppression lessened, and even the darkness seemed lighter. She shot a glance at the professor where he stood eyeing the old boiler. Her throat felt raw. Maybe she was getting sick. Or else something evil had stripped her voice.
Jesus, Lord.
“Dr. Jenkins?” The words came clearly.

He turned, seemingly undisturbed, and said, “That boiler’s a period piece.”

She nodded.

“Are you all right?” He tipped his head, concerned.

“Did you feel something creepy?”

He looked around her. “Did you?”

“I . . . um . . . Imagination, I guess.”

He studied her keenly. “Can you describe it?”

“I don’t want to.”

He seemed hesitant to let it go.

She rasped, “What?”

“You haven’t read them yet, but more than a few of the anecdotes involve an evil presence. A ghost, perhaps.”

“I don’t believe in ghosts.”

“Well, the individual who died in the fire . . .” His brow furrowed. “Some claimed she was possessed.”

Quinn clamped her hands to her ears. It wasn’t the professor’s voice she blocked, but the whisper of laughter. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Of course.” He took her elbow. “I’m sorry to have frightened you.”

“It’s not you.” A chill like a deep freeze caused a bone-deep shudder. She half ran to the foot of the stairs and charged up and into the kitchen. When the professor joined her, she closed the door and said, “Help me push this.”

Straining, they shoved the hutch back against the wall. Chest heaving, she moved into the sunlit living room, where Morgan stood with Livie making echoes. Forcing a calm she didn’t feel, she said, “We need to go.”

“Okay. Everything all right?”

No, but she couldn’t say so in front of Livie. Morgan glanced at the professor when she hurried to the door. The walk back was no stroll. She felt a serious need to flee.

Back at the ranch, she saw Rick running the plow. He must have brought Liam home and gotten to work, since there was a good portion of the drive cleared already. She went to the cabin she’d used, stripped the bed and got the towel, put them with Noelle’s things into the bag, and hauled it all to the house. She offered to run the wash, but Noelle said no. Friends could cook but not do her laundry.

Still shaken by whatever had happened in the cellar, she used the snow shovel to finish digging out her truck. She needed distance and a chance to think. Nothing that creepy had ever happened before—except maybe with Markham. At times there’d been a vacancy in his eyes that something else moved behind.

“Quinn?”

She turned.

Morgan joined her at the truck. “Want to tell me what’s wrong?”

“You can’t live there.”

“What are you talking about?” he said. “What happened?”

Eyes shut, she shook her head. He’d think her the crazy one.

He touched her shoulder. “You’ve spooked yourself. The professor said those stories—”

“It’s not the stories.” She stared into his face. “There’s something there. I sort of felt it before. This time—”

He didn’t laugh, didn’t scoff. “Go on.”

“Do you remember your panic attack?”

“I’m not likely to forget.”

“Could it be—” She squeezed the handle of the shovel. “Was it from something down there?”

“No.” His hand cupped the shoulder more firmly. “Not at all.”

She drew a ragged breath. “Are you sure?”

“I had another one yesterday—if you recall.”

So maybe it hadn’t affected him, but still. “I can’t think of you being there with Livie.”

“And you, if you take the offer.”

“No. No way.” Her voice wavered.

He nodded solemnly. “Is that your final answer?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know.” She rested her chin on the foam-padded shovel handle.

He lowered his hand to her elbow. “I’m sorry I upset you. Maybe that contributed to something in the cellar.”

She shook her head. The thing in the cellar was altogether separate. “I’m not upset. Only confused, I guess.”

“My fault.”

She wanted to ask if he really didn’t feel anything for her, but that would be too humiliating. “I have to go.”

“Okay.” He held out a sheet of paper. “Here.”

“What’s this?” She read the heading, a trip itinerary and confirmation number. For a minute she thought he’d planned their foreign wedding, then noticed the destination. Dallas. And the date. “Tomorrow?”

“RaeAnne will meet you at the airport. You’ll stay at her house, get your business done and have a little fun, then fly back on Monday morning.”

She’d all but forgotten Vera’s journal and the pieces of jewelry. She hadn’t agreed to fly anything to RaeAnne, but seeing her, giving her the journal, would be awesome. And it would take her mind off Morgan.

“Out and back in three days,” he said softly. “No hassle.”

“You obviously haven’t flown lately.” Neither had she, but she’d heard. “RaeAnne’s up for it?”

“She’s ecstatic.”

That forced a smile. “Okay. I’ll do it.” She relinquished the shovel and opened her truck door.

“Need a ladder for that thing?”

“Ha-ha.”

He stepped back as she climbed into the truck. Yeah, it was a climb, but she didn’t require a ladder. And for a man who was no more than five eleven or so, he was pretty mouthy about her stature. He stood beside his own vehicle as she started her sluggish engine.

Casting a glance out the window, she said, “Please tell the professor good-bye. And thank Noelle.”

He raised a hand in farewell as she backed into the plowed area. The drive home was not difficult, snow melting on the streets as though it had only been kidding. She pulled into her mushy driveway and parked. Varied emotions held a caucus in her head. Had she imagined the horror in the cellar? Dr. Jenkins felt—or admitted—nothing. The stories had disturbed her, and maybe she had worked herself into a spook—like telling ghost tales in the firelight.

At any rate, she was home, except her house had shrunk. After the massive log walls and soaring ceiling of Noelle and Rick’s, her A-frame seemed an overgrown tent. She climbed the steep stairs, dropped onto her back on the bed, arms splayed, and stared at her
peaked ceiling. In a while she’d get to work, but at that moment she needed to process everything.

Her cell phone rang. Warily, she pulled it out. The same number as the texted threat filled the screen. She hit End, then coded in the carrier and told them she needed a new number. It pained her to think one of three loved ones had given her old number to Hannah. They had to have known she’d give it to Markham. Or maybe they didn’t realize the hold he still had.

She couldn’t believe they would betray her—though, after everything, they might say the same of her. She had, by extension, testified against her own father. She had brought the ceiling crashing down upon the heads of everyone she knew. It was only a matter of time before her own head felt the blow.

T
eeth clenched, Markham hung up. He could send another text, but he was through with threats. It was time for action. Hannah had given him a trail to follow, a fruitful trail—as it turned out—with a solid destination. The rabbit hadn’t hopped very far. For the first time ever, he felt the anticipation of the hunt, though the word sent a liquid feeling to his legs.

Against his will, he recalled days when a shotgun blasting squirrels meant meat in the pot. Not his gun, though. He’d been too sensitive, so they left him to skin and gut. Punishment for compassion. Blood on his hands. Its stench in his nostrils, its shame on his soul, shame he felt to this day. But he’d learned to use a knife.

He wrenched his thoughts back. He was not a violent man. He had intelligence. He had charm. He had sincerity that made men weep. He didn’t need vulgar tools to bend the wills of others. He needed nothing but himself—once he got what belonged to him from Quinn.

Traffic had been snarled by a rollover accident, a semi caught by high winds, and Quinn arrived at the airport certain she’d be
told to forget even trying to board her plane. Instead, the woman processed her respectfully and directed her to security, where she was channeled into a column that had no one in line, given a cursory security scan, and directed to her gate.

After the hellish highway, it felt miraculous. At the gate, she was greeted and escorted onto the plane, where they seated her in a form-fitting recliner in the section she hardly knew existed—first class. She dropped her head back, recalling Morgan’s smile when he’d said no hassle. He was unreal, not simply that he had the means, but also the inclination, to make her trip as seamless as possible. It made her heart hurt.

That feeling dissolved the moment RaeAnne met her with a huge hug. “I just can’t believe you did this. You and Morgan. I can’t believe it.”

“I’m having a hard time myself.”

“When he called to ask if you’d sent the journal, then told me what he intended, I knew he was a man who gets things done.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Car’s right here.” RaeAnne bustled her into her Camry. “Morgan must have emphasized fourteen times to be here when you walked out.”

“Oh?”

“He said he wanted it ‘hassle free.’”

Quinn shifted in her seat.

“You want to tell me what’s up between you?”

“Between us? Nothing.”

RaeAnne cast her a dubious look.

“He’s not normal, you know.”

“Sugar, he makes normal as dull as pancakes without syrup.”

Quinn fiddled with the bag that held Vera’s journal and the jewelry. “You’re getting your things, and that’s what matters.”

“I can’t wait. There must be something worthwhile in the journal, if she hid it in the cellar like that.”

“That’s what I thought. She kept everything, but she squirreled away the things that mattered.”

“The locket alone meant the world to me.” RaeAnne wove into traffic. “But now maybe I’ll understand why.”

“Not a bad-looking man, your dad.”

“I know! Can you believe it? I mean, Mom did some stage work, but he looks like a star.”

Quinn studied the woman beside her, hair the color of the blond lock saved with the photo. “Think he swept her off her feet?”

RaeAnne’s shoulders rose and fell. “I hope it’s in the journal. I really do.”

“The way she kept it secret, there might have been a bad end.”

RaeAnne nodded soberly. “I’ve assumed that my whole life. Anything else will be a blessing.” She merged onto an interstate highway and settled back. “We have an hour on here, this time of day. Want to read it to me?”

“Seriously?”

“I can’t wait until we get home.”

Laughing softly, Quinn pulled the journal out of her bag, more than a little curious herself. Still, she paused a moment, before entering Vera’s private world.

“Go on. Read.”

And so she read.

“The thoughts and dreams of Veronica Greenwald.”

RaeAnne sighed audibly.

“I want to make one thing clear. What goes in here, stays in here.”

Quinn looked up. “Does that mean we shouldn’t read it?”

“It means she kept it to herself long enough.”

Feeling as though she had a duty to both of them, Quinn went on respectfully.

“I have never claimed to take the conventional path. Nor have I wandered through a rose garden. What ways I traveled in this life are my own, for good or ill.”

Quinn turned to RaeAnne. “Sounds like she wrote this later on, as a memoir, not a diary.”

“I hope she’ll tell the truth.”

“She has no reason not to, if no one was meant to see it.”

“True.” RaeAnne nodded. “Go on, please.”

Quinn turned the page.

“My dreams as a girl were like any young lady of my time. Fall in love, raise a family. But then I discovered theater. Oh, what a howl everyone put up, and they were right, as eventually every one of their concerns came to pass. But I’m old now, and I don’t regret the lights, the curtains, the thrill of opening night. I was never the star I wanted to be, but I had my share of accolades. And I had Raymond.”

RaeAnne jerked the car. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay. Now you know your dad’s name. And I’m thinking it was more than a one-night stand.”

RaeAnne’s chin trembled. “Makes me wonder if I knew my mom at all.”

Quinn gave her the silence of her grief.

“I never knew the rest of the family that well. We didn’t spend much time with them. I don’t think Mom really fit, and I doubt anyone changed her mind about anything. I guess I wouldn’t be here if they had.” A tear formed in the corner of her eye.

“Want to read the rest privately?”

RaeAnne sniffed. “I’d like you to go on. You seem part of this somehow.”

Quinn read on, page after page about Vera’s first awkward auditions, people she met, advice she received—good and bad and some meanspirited.

“My hips were big, my bosom small, but I had talent. It was not a career for the weakhearted, but I wanted it. How I wanted it.”

Such a clear voice. Vera came alive on the pages, jumping out to sit with them and share her story in raw detail. Quinn read without pausing, but still they reached RaeAnne’s house without another word about the mysterious Raymond.

RaeAnne showed her to a guest room done in china-blue chintz. “You’d get to meet my husband, John Carter, but he’s traveling for work. Anyway, it’s good. We can have girl time.”

After all the time spent with men lately, that would be a joy.

“While you freshen up, I’ll get us something to eat. The way they starve people on flights these days is a crime.”

“Actually I had a full meal. Morgan sent me first class. In fact it might have been some VIP first class I’ve never even heard of.”

“O-o-oh.” RaeAnne packed three notes into the single syllable.

“It’s probably the way he travels all the time.”

RaeAnne nodded knowingly.

“It’s not what you think.” She set her overnight bag on the trunk at the foot of the bed. “He wants me to work for him.”

“Doing what?”

“Domestic. Maybe helping with Livie. That’s his little girl.”

“Oh.”

Quinn laughed. “Stop that. He’s not looking for love.” He’d made that so very clear.

“I wonder what his story is.”

Quinn stared out the window, wishing she didn’t. “He hasn’t offered. And I’m not asking.”

“But you would sort of like to know, wouldn’t you?”

She rubbed the back of her neck. “I’m not sure. Sometimes the less you know, the better.” If she’d gotten this connected knowing next to nothing, how dumb would it be to learn more?

“That is almost never true. Take it from me.”

“Once you learn something, you can’t unlearn it.”

“Well.” RaeAnne tucked her purse onto a table in the hall. “Can I get you anything?”

“Something to drink, if you have it.”

“Oh, I have lots. Come see what you like.”

Quinn followed her through a kitchen with navy calico curtains and shiny red-and-white backsplash tiles. There could be no more evidence of their dissimilarity than RaeAnne’s decorating—not that it was awful, only vastly different. She chose a flavored tea from the fridge in the garage off the kitchen that held only drinks and said, “Ready to tackle the journal?”

“Absolutely. I’m all for knowing.”

They laughed. “I guess you don’t need me to read.”

“No, but I kind of like it. You have a theatrical voice yourself.”

“Oh, please.”

“No, really. It’s nice to listen to.”

“All right.” They settled into her china-blue living room. Quinn found her place in Vera’s story.

“I’ll never forget the production of Oklahoma! where I first laid eyes on Raymond.”

She looked across at RaeAnne sitting rigidly. “This is it, I guess.”

RaeAnne pressed a hand to her mouth. “Don’t mind me if I blubber.”

“He sang Curly, and I had only the part of Aunt Eller, but we were love struck from the first rehearsal, even though he was sixteen years younger than I.”

RaeAnne pressed a hand to her chest. “What?”

After double-checking that she’d read it right, Quinn looked up. “That’s not unheard of.”

“It is in my world. Sixteen years? My mother, the cougar!”

It was kind of shocking, but Quinn shrugged. “They fell in love.”

“Sure, but . . . maybe that’s why she never told me. Do you think that’s it?”

“You’re pretty scandalized.”

“All this time I imagined a . . . I don’t know, age-appropriate man. She was thirty-six when she had me. He must have been twenty. Don’t tell me that’s normal.”

“Maybe he made normal as dull as pancakes without syrup.”

RaeAnne laughed, but it was more of a croak. “I don’t think you’d be as cavalier if it was your mother.”

Quinn pictured the wispy woman who’d married a minister. If there had been a dream in her mother beyond that, she’d never heard it. Her father had dreams, though. They’d made him ripe for picking. “Should I go on?”

“I don’t know.” RaeAnne gripped her hands. “I can’t stop thinking my dad’s only twenty years older than I am.”

“Lots of people can say that.”

“But my mom was almost forty.”

“Well, that’s a . . . discrepancy. On the bright side, your dad’s in his sixties.”

“Oh my goodness.” She collapsed back into the couch. “He might still be alive.”

Quinn let that sink in. RaeAnne had obviously not been thinking in those terms. Understandably disquieting. “Do you know the theater where she performed
Oklahoma!
?”

“I have all her playbills. They were tucked neatly in a drawer.”

Go figure. “Then you could find your dad’s name.”

RaeAnne rocked her head back and forth. “This is too much. I’m a church lady. I know there’s a right way and a wrong way of things. It’s bad enough they didn’t marry—now this. What am I supposed to do?”

“You don’t have to do anything. You’d simply know.”

“You’re right. Oh my goodness.” She gripped her head. “I’m so glad you brought it in person. I’d just die if I read all this myself, without John Carter here.”

Quinn smiled. “Not sure what I can do that helps, but I am here.”

The rest of the journal told of a short, sad infatuation. Raymond had risen as Vera’s star waned. He was gone before his daughter arrived. No wonder she never told the tale.

“Well, I guess that settles that,” RaeAnne said. “Why would I want to meet him?”

“On the other hand, it’s been forty years, give or take. He might have regrets of his own.”

RaeAnne shook her head. “I am so in need of chocolate. Let’s bake brownies.”

Quinn laughed. “The cure for anything.” Especially RaeAnne’s concoction, a Ghirardelli mix into which she threw two handfuls of extra chips. They literally melted in their mouths.

After that comfort, they studied the odd pieces of jewelry Quinn had found hidden in the clothes. It was a good assumption the ring had also come from Raymond, so RaeAnne added it to the lot. She
picked up the pin. “Mom loved butterflies. This would have meant a lot, even if it’s only glass.”

“It could be aquamarine.”

“Sort of looks like something a
young
man would pick out.”

Quinn smiled at RaeAnne’s earnest face as she tried to come to terms with all she had learned.

“This has been one amazingly strange day,” RaeAnne summed up.

At least the strange belonged to someone else for a change. And that reminded her. “Did your mom ever mention something scary in her house?”

“Scary like ghosts?”

“I guess.”

“Not that I remember. Why?”

“Seems like the place might have a few.”

“Ghosts are like husbands,” RaeAnne joked. “They show up when they want and make a lot of noise, then disappear when you need them.” She spent the next few hours telling stories of floods and tornadoes and all the mayhem that only struck when John Carter was on the road.

After a whirlwind of laughing too hard and eating too much, Quinn left a dear friend in Dallas.