The Caretakers Read online

  “Whatever Margot chooses to do will be fine with me,” she says. Both faces are studying her, and Tessa squirms beneath their scrutiny. “I plan to leave tonight.”

  Margot stiffens noticeably and her features go blank. Jackson Smith straightens as well.

  “Tonight?” he repeats. “Ms. Shepherd . . . Tessa? May I call you Tessa?”

  She nods and avoids her sister’s gaze.

  “I hope you’ll forgive the presumption, but I think it would be best if you could stay for at least another day. I don’t have the paperwork at hand, but trust me when I say that Jane’s estate is a bit more . . . complicated than you might expect.”

  “What does that mean? Complicated how?” Tessa asks. She glances at her sister, but Margot stands stiffly with her arms crossed. Tessa has been shut out again.

  “My office is on the town square,” Jackson Smith says, which isn’t an answer. He pulls a business card from his wallet and offers it to her. “Come by in the morning, any time you like. I’ll explain everything.”

  Tessa sighs and accepts the card. The low-level headache she’s been fighting all day makes a stunning reappearance and suddenly she’s exhausted. Exhausted and sad.

  One more night. One more night surrounded by memories and past mistakes.

  “Fine,” Tessa says, giving in. “Tomorrow morning, first thing.”

  “And after that?” a tiny voice in her head whispers, but there’s no answer for that either.

  11

  Sleep is the easy way out. Sometimes the only way.

  But Tessa’s body doesn’t allow her more than a few hours. She awakens suddenly, frightened for no perceivable reason. Then her heart rate slows as she remembers where she is and why.

  Margot is here somewhere too, sheltering her own hurt beneath the same roof. The knowledge pulls at Tessa, magnetic in its insistence.

  She rises from the bed, leaving the sheets as tangled as her mind, and pads down the hallway toward the kitchen. She’s not searching for her sister. Margot’s icy reception has made it clear she doesn’t want Tessa’s company, but she notices a lamp burning in the living room as she passes.

  The two aren’t identical twins. Though they resemble one another, the physical features that they share—their mother’s eyes, their father’s straight, sharp nose—are no more or less than any pair of sisters might.

  They do, however, share a connection born of proximity. An unavoidable closeness, having formed side by side in the same womb. At least, they did once.

  Before the accident.

  Before Tessa’s carelessness split them apart.

  There’s a fresh cup of tea waiting on the counter, steam still wafting upward. Tessa lifts it, letting the heat seep into her hands. The aroma of lemon and chamomile fills her.

  It’s possible, of course, that Margot made the cup for herself and left it forgotten in the kitchen, and now Tessa is adding tea theft to her growing list of transgressions, but she doesn’t believe that’s true.

  Margot made tea for her, somehow knowing she’d be up soon. Sometimes, broken things retain the shape of their missing half, ragged and unmistakable along their edges. The cup was left for her.

  Tea isn’t forgiveness, and Tessa doesn’t mistake it for such, but it warms her anyway.

  She returns to the living room and finds her sister curled beneath a throw, her own cup cooling on the coffee table in front of her. A photo album lies open across her lap.

  Tessa hesitates, but Margot doesn’t immediately ask her to leave, so she walks slowly into the room.

  “Mind if I join you?” she asks.

  “It’s a free country.” Margot doesn’t look up from the album and turns another thick page. The riotous curls Margot despaired of as a girl, no matter how many times Tessa said she’d trade her in a heartbeat, fall like a curtain between them, hiding her sister’s face.

  Tessa sits on the opposite end of the sofa and nurses her tea. Thoughts swirl, but every subject she touches on is out of bounds.

  She and Ben will work it out, she tells herself. They have to. It will be easier once I’m gone.

  Whether that’s true or not, it’s the best she’s got, and Tessa clings to that.

  “Do you remember this place?” Margot asks, gesturing to a crooked shot of Jane. It’s an opening, and Tessa leans in to take a closer look. There’s an old house in the background, looking abandoned and forlorn. She struggles to recall the circumstances of the photo.

  “Was that after Granddad’s funeral?” Margot asks.

  Tessa shrugs and shakes her head. It’s been a long time.

  “It was,” Margot insists. “We stopped here on the drive home, remember? Some historic site Mom wanted to see.”

  “Maybe,” Tessa says. “Look at her face. God, it must have been rough, losing both her parents and Dad, all within a few years. She’s not much older there than we are now.”

  “Life comes at you hard sometimes,” Margot says, shifting away from Tessa. And with those words, they slip back into dangerous territory.

  Tessa flashes onto the many phone calls from her mother, updates on how Margot was progressing through her recovery. The surgeries, the grueling physical therapy.

  The intense desire to be by her sister’s side while Margot was fighting to walk again feels like it was only yesterday. Along with the knowledge that she was the last person Margot wanted to see.

  Instead, Tessa threw herself into film school. She turned down invitations to parties and avoided making friends, drunk on the guilt of her twin battling her way back onto her feet, while she was blithely walking to class.

  She cried when Jane called to tell her Margot had taken her first steps, twenty-one months and eight days after that terrible night.

  She cried again, two years later, when Jane haltingly told Tessa that Margot and Ben were engaged to be married.

  “He’s been by her side the whole time,” Jane said, partly as an explanation, part apology. “I didn’t want to bring it up before. I know how much you cared about him, but someone has to tell you.”

  “That’s wonderful, Mom,” Tessa had said through tears she tried to hide. “I’m happy for them.”

  But was she?

  Before Tessa left town, on that last and final day, she’d gone to see Ben. Their meeting was short.

  NYU wasn’t a complete shock. Tessa had planned for many months to attend for the upcoming fall semester with the understanding that she and Ben would continue their relationship long distance, at least until he could join her.

  Margot’s accident had changed everything. There was no more talk of Tessa leaving.

  But then, things changed again. Tessa removed the promise ring Ben had given her on her sixteenth birthday, the one she’d worn every day since, and laid it gently in his hand.

  She would never forget the hurt on his face.

  A clean break. As if such a thing exists.

  She didn’t have the strength to explain why. If he believed she was a monster for abandoning Margot, for abandoning him, there was nothing she could do about that.

  “Please, Ben,” she asked quietly. “Please, just be there for my sister while I can’t.”

  Her voice cracked and she left before he could protest any more.

  It was the right thing to do, the only thing to do, and Tessa didn’t regret it . . . but engaged? The news was a shock, to say the least.

  The joining in her mind of two separate, damaged bundles of nerve endings that she carried with her everywhere sparked and sizzled as they fused, leaving a new connection. Strong, but tender to the touch.

  She forced her mouth to form the words. Margot. And. Ben. Margot and Ben.

  Once the pain faded, Tessa was overcome with . . . wonderment.

  She was happy for them. She was.

  And now she’s selfishly put it all at risk. She glances toward her sister’s face, bathed in lamplight as Margot studies the photo album in her lap.

  “Margot, I—”

&nb
sp; “It wasn’t her,” Margot says before Tessa has a chance to finish the thought.

  Tessa stops and stares at her sister, confused, as Margot closes the album and leans to place it on the coffee table.

  “Valerie Winters,” she explains when she sees Tessa’s face. “It wasn’t her in the shed on the Barlow property. It was Oliver Barlow’s father.”

  “What?” Tessa struggles to understand.

  “The news broke while you were sleeping. They haven’t released the cause of death.”

  Tessa remembers the small man who couldn’t stop crying when his son was released from prison. The way he’d slumped, silent and bereft, during his wife’s funeral. “But that means . . .” She trails off, glancing at her sister.

  “That means Valerie’s body is still out there. Somewhere. And so is Oliver Barlow,” Margot finishes for her. “It means this isn’t over yet.”

  12

  KITTY

  “This isn’t over yet! Come back here this instant!”

  Kitty moans softly in her sleep, eyes squeezed tight as her limbs move restlessly beneath the sheets.

  The voice, one part dream, two parts memory, holds her tightly in its clutches.

  Helena Cooke is angry. Again.

  Not that she doesn’t have cause to be. That cause, as usual, comes careening around the corner into the kitchen. Cora.

  The cup Deirdre is raising to her mouth stalls, splashing orange juice on the front of her dress.

  Deirdre is closest to Cora in age. Raised in one another’s pockets, they formed a friendship that flies in the face of the difference in their stations. But a stranger would be hard-pressed to determine which child is the daughter of the house and which the daughter of the housekeeper, as Cora is generally filthy.

  Today, the stink precedes her entrance into the kitchen. Saoirse Donnelly, or Mam, as the children call her, is the housekeeper and closest thing to a mother the Cooke children have known since the death of their own. She wrinkles her nose in Cora’s direction.

  “Ach, just look at you, you grimy thing.” She slaps Cora’s hand as she reaches for a biscuit in the center of the table. “What have you done now?” The words are delivered in a cloud of frustration but lined with care.

  Cora shrugs, stuffing her mouth full of biscuit she swiped from Peter’s breakfast plate instead.

  Sharp, quick footsteps follow overhead, then down the staircase. Mam waves her arms and ushers all of them from the room.

  “Not you,” she says, grabbing Cora by the collar as she tries to sneak past. “May as well face up to whatever this is now rather than later. Sit down. Ach, just look at you, child. You weren’t half so dirty when you were off to bed, lass. How is it possible to get filthier in your sleep?”

  With the housekeeper’s hand on her shoulder, Cora drops mutinously back into her chair. Mrs. Donnelly tucks in a stray strand of hair just before Helena bursts into the room.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Cooke,” Mam says in a pleasant tone the lady of the house ignores.

  “You!” Helena comes to an abrupt stop at the sight of Cora. She’s in her robe, her pale hair loose and hanging around her shoulders. Her eyes, lovely and wide when her husband is around, narrow to slits.

  Cora drops her head, not from shame, but to hide the smile creeping onto her face. She’s unsuccessful, and the sight of her smirk enrages her stepmother.

  “You little wretch,” Helena snarls, her pretty mouth spitting the words.

  From just outside the door that leads into the garden, the others have stopped to listen. Deirdre takes hold of Peter as he attempts to barge back into the kitchen and leap to his sister’s defense, and the door swings slightly wider. With her head still bowed, Cora glances up and spots their faces filling the doorway. She winks, then holds a finger to her lips as Deirdre wraps her arms around Peter. Deirdre hugs the boy tightly, willing him to be silent and stay clear of Helena’s furor as she pulls them all back and out of sight again. The second Mrs. Cooke won’t hesitate to turn her anger on whichever child blunders into her path, even little Peter.

  Children in general don’t fit with Helena’s vision of an ideal life, especially three undisciplined stepchildren. Cora takes a particular sort of pleasure in shattering Helena’s expectations. But Cora’s campaign of terror against her stepmother has perhaps gone too far this time.

  “Mrs. Cooke, would you like a cup of tea?” Mam asks soothingly.

  “Tea?” Helena shrieks, pulling her gaze from Cora to glare at the housekeeper. “No, I do not want tea! There are . . . There are . . .”

  She makes an unladylike noise deep in her throat, and her face twists as she forces the words past her lips.

  “There are toads in my closet! Toads in my dresser drawers. There are toads covering my bedroom floor and all my things! Hundreds of them, and this horrid, hateful child put them there!”

  “Cora,” Mam says on an exhale of breath. “Is this true?” Her voice is heavy with disappointment, knowing already how pointless the question is.

  “It was a joke,” Cora says, feigning an innocence that neither woman believes. “Toads are harmless.”

  Helena nearly chokes on her indignation. “Harmless? Harmless? Their disgusting bodies are crawling through my shoes! In my bed! They’re wriggling in my undergarments!”

  From their hiding place behind the door, the other children can hear Cora’s snort of laughter.

  “Cora Eugenia Cooke.” Mam’s voice is strong now, incensed. “You should be ashamed of yourself! You march up there this instant and clear those toads out of Mrs. Cooke’s room, child.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t but me. Don’t you dare. You will catch every last one of those creatures and put them right back in the pond where you got them. Immediately!”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Cora’s reply is subdued. Saoirse Donnelly rarely raises her voice, but when she does, none of them dare contradict her.

  Helena sputters, “I hardly think the fate of the toads is the most pressing issue, Mrs. Donnelly. What about my things? What about my underwear?”

  “Cora, once those toads are back where they belong, you will come straight back here. You’re going to spend your day washing, ironing, and folding your new mother’s clothing and bedding.”

  “But—Ow!”

  Mam has a way of gripping an ear that makes you think it might pull right off your head.

  “Every stitch! Right after you bathe yourself, and I don’t want to hear another word spoken from your lips. Toads, bath, laundry, in that order. Now, go!”

  Cora is on her feet, running from the room before it occurs to Helena that, with all the efficiency of a drill sergeant, Mrs. Donnelly has dealt with the problem and sent the offender scurrying off to do her bidding.

  Helena is left with a still-seething anger and no outlet at hand.

  “Your father will hear about this, you mark my words!” Helena shrieks after the girl, stomping her foot like a petulant child.

  “Aye,” Mam agrees, though her tone is markedly calmer than that of her mistress. “Mr. Cooke will be livid over such disrespect.”

  This brings Helena’s attention back to her as Mam sets a cup and saucer on the table and pours. “Have some tea, Mrs. Cooke, won’t you?”

  “I told you I don’t want—”

  “I’d wager a shopping trip to the city might be in order, if he’s in a mood. A nice apology for his daughter’s behavior.”

  Helena’s head tilts, and some of the anger banks in her eyes. “The girl still needs a strap taken to her backside. The devil is in that one.”

  As harsh as the words are, they’ve lost their earlier edge.

  “Aye, Cora’s a handful. Always has been, but she’ll settle down. You wait and see. Poor child. Without a mother since she was just a wee lass. She’s having trouble adjusting, that’s all.”

  Helena stiffens, but Mam continues before she can launch a rebuttal.

  “Your own babes won’t ever have to face such hards
hip, God willing. Being motherless takes such a toll on a child.”

  Helena sputters into her teacup. “My own?” she says.

  “Well, I just assumed. Forgive me if I’ve overstepped, Mrs. Cooke. It’s just you being so young . . .”

  Helena’s brows draw together, but Mam goes on, pulling the conversation farther from Cora and the toads, inch by inch.

  “My own mam was a midwife back in Ireland, you see, and sometimes I forget such matters aren’t considered polite conversation, being raised as I was surrounded by women’s business. My apologies.”

  But Helena is studying Mam intently. “And did your mother pass on what she knew, Mrs. Donnelly? About . . . women’s business?”

  “Oh aye. I was at her side from the time I was a lass. No older than Cora, in fact.”

  There’s a pause, then Helena speaks again.

  “Mrs. Donnelly, may I ask you a question in confidence?”

  “A question about babes and birthing? Of course. My mam taught me the importance of discretion.”

  Deirdre squirms in discomfort. They’re old enough to know this isn’t conversation meant for children’s ears, but that won’t stop the girls from discussing and dissecting every stolen word among themselves over the coming days. For now, though, everyone remains still and quiet for fear of drawing attention to themselves.

  “Not about birth. Not exactly.” Helena hesitates. “The opposite, in fact.”

  “I see,” Mam says, sounding remarkably unperturbed. “Well, I suppose that depends on your present state, Mrs. Cooke. Are you currently . . . expecting?”

  The words are free of judgment, but Helena recoils in alarm. “No! Thank heavens, I’m not. And I’d like to make sure it stays that way.” Her gaze travels upward, perhaps envisioning another child with Cora’s temperament. “Can you help me, Mrs. Donnelly?”

  Understanding brings a more genuine relaxation to Mam’s shoulders.

  “There are steps that can be taken,” she says, patting Helena’s hand reassuringly.