Red Lily

“She keeps waiting for him. I think she must see him in every child who comes to Harper House.”
    “A kind of hell isn’t it?” Stella asked. “For madness.”
    She’d never forget it, Hayley thought. Never. “The nurse, she saved the baby.”
    “I haven’t been able to trace her,” Mitch put in. “They had more than one nursemaid during his babyhood, but the timing of this points to a girl named Alice Jameson—which also jibes with Mary Havers’s letter to Lucille. Alice left the Harper employ in February of 1893, and I haven’t found anything more on her.”
    “They sent her away.” Stella closed her eyes. “That’s what they’d have done. Paid her maybe, or just as likely threatened her.”
    “Both would be my guess,” Logan said.
    “I’ll push on it, do what I can to find her,” Mitch promised, and Roz turned to smile at him.
    “I’d appreciate it. I wouldn’t be here without her, nor would my sons.”
    “It wasn’t what she wanted us to know,” Hayley said quietly. “Or not all of it. She doesn’t know where she is. Where she’s buried. What they did with her. She won’t be able to leave, to rest, to pass over, whatever it is, until we find her.”
    “How?” Stella spread her hands.
    “I have an idea on that.” Roz scanned faces. “One I think’s going to hit this group about fifty-fifty.”
    “What’s the point?” Harper objected. “So Hayley can see her try to hang a baby again?”

    “So she, or one of us, can see what happened next. Hopefully. And by we, I mean myself, Hayley, and Stella.”
    For the first time since they’d started upstairs, Harper released Hayley’s hand. He shoved off the couch. “That’s a damn stupid idea.”
    “Don’t take that tone with me, Harper.”
    “It’s the only tone I’ve got when my mother goes crazy. Did you see what just happened up there? The way Hayley walked from the ballroom to the old nursery? The way she talked as if she was watching it happen, and like she was part of what was happening?”
    “I saw perfectly well. That’s why we have to go back.”
    “I’ve got to side with Harper on this, Roz.” Logan gave an apologetic shrug. “I don’t see sitting down here while three women go up there alone. I don’t give a rat’s ass if it’s sexist.”
    “I expected as much. Mitch?” Her eyebrows winged up when he sat, frowning at her. “Well, you’re about to surprise me again.”
    “You can’t seriously agree with her on this?” Harper whirled around to his stepfather.
    “The hell of it, Harper, is that I am. I don’t like it, but I see where she’s going, and why. And before you take my head off, consider this: They’ll do it later, at some point when none of us is around.”
    “What happened to staying together?”
    “It’s a man who used her, abused her, stole her child, cast her off. She’s been poking at me and Stella again. She won’t trust you. Maybe we can convince her to trust us.”
    “And maybe she’ll toss you off the third floor terrace.”
    “Harper.” Roz crossed to him, her smile as thin as a blade. “Anybody gets tossed out of this house, it’s going to be her. That’s a stone promise. My sympathy for her is at an end. You still have it.” She looked over at Hayley. “Andthat’s fine, probably an advantage. But mine is over. What she would have done if not for intervention is unforgivable to me. I will have her out of this house. Can you go back?” she asked Hayley.
    “Yes, I can. I want it done. I don’t think I’ll ever have another easy moment until it is.”
    “You’re asking me to risk you.”
    “No.” Hayley rose to go to Harper. “To believe in me.”
    “Y OU KNOW HOW , in the movies, the stupid, usually scantily clad blonde, goes down in the basement alone when she hears a noise, especially if there’s a slasher-type killer running around?”
    Roz laughed at Hayley as they stood on the third floor landing. “We’re not stupid.”
    “And none of us are blond,” Stella added. “Ready?”
    They clasped hands and started down the hall.
    “The problem with this,” Hayley began in a voice that sounded tinny to her ears, “is that if she doesn’t know what happened to her after, how will we?”
    “One step at a time.” Roz gave Hayley’s hand a squeeze. “How are you feeling?”
    “My heart’s beating a mile a minute. Roz, when this is over, can we open this room again? Make it, I don’t know, a playroom maybe. Something with light and