Could you strike a bargain with God?
Sometime during the night she began to doze. But the throbbing in her shoulder kept her on the edge of wakefulness. She felt herself stirring restlessly, making soft hurting sounds. And then it eased, the pain and the restless tossing. After a while when she opened her eyes, she found herself leaning against Mark, his arm around her, the quilt tucked over her.
Something was teasing her. Something in her sub conscious that kept trying to surface, something desperately important that was eluding her. It was something to do with that last canvas and Erich watching her, his face peering through the window at her.
At seven o’clock Mark said, “I’ll fix some toast and coffee.” Jenny went upstairs and showered, wincing as the stream of water struck the adhesive on her shoulder.
Rooney and Clyde were in the house when she came back down. They sipped coffee together as they watched the national news. The girls’ pictures would be shown on the Today show and on Good Morning America.
Rooney had brought the patches. “Do you want to sew, Jenny?”
“No, I can’t.”
“It helps me. We’re making these for the girls’ beds,” she explained to Mark. “The girls are going to be found.”
“Rooney, please!” Clyde tried to quiet her.
“But they are. You see how nice and bright the colors are. No dark stuff in my quilts. Oh, look, here’s the story.”
They watched as Jane Pauley began the report: “A forgery that rocked the art world yesterday turned out to be only a very small part of a far more dramatic tale.
“Erich Krueger . . .” They watched as Erich’s face came on the screen. The picture was the same as the one on the brochure in the gallery: his bronze-gold, tightly curled hair, his dark blue eyes, the half-smile. They had films of the farm, a shot of the body being carried away.
Now Tina and Beth smiled from the screen. “And this morning those two little girls are still missing,” Jane Pauley said. “As he died, Erich Krueger told his wife that her children are still alive. But police are not certain he can be believed. The last canvas he painted seems to suggest Tina and Beth are dead.”
The entire screen was filled with that last painting. Jenny looked at the limp puppet figures, her own tortured image staring, Erich looking in the window at them, laughing as he held back the curtain.
Mark jumped to turn off the set. “I told Gunderson not to let them take photographs in the cabin.”
Rooney had jumped up too. “You should have showed me that painting!” she screamed. “You should have showed it to me. Don’t you understand. The curtains . . . The blue curtains!”
The curtains! This was what had been gnawing at Jenny’s memory. Rooney spilling the scraps onto the kitchen table, that dark blue material, the faint design visible in the painting.
“Rooney, where did he put them?” They were all shouting the same thing. Where?
Rooney, totally aware of the precious knowledge she held, tugged at Mark, excitedly crying, “Mark, you know. Your dad’s fishing lodge. Erich always used to go there with you. You didn’t have curtains in the guest room. He said it was too bright. I gave him those eight years ago.”
“Mark, could they be there?” Jenny cried.
“It’s possible. Dad and I haven’t been at the lodge in over a year. Erich has a key.”
“Where is the lodge?”
“It’s . . . in the Duluth area. On a small island. It makes sense. It’s just . . .”
“Just what?” She could hear the sound of snow slapping against the windows.
“The lodge doesn’t have central heating.”
Clyde vocalized the fear that was now in all of them. “That place don’t have central heating and you mean those kids may be alone in it now?”
Mark raced for the phone.
Thirty minutes later, the police chief from Hathaway Island returned their call.
“We’ve got ’em.”
Agonized, Jenny listened to Mark’s question. “Are they all right?”
She grabbed the phone to hear the answer.
“Yep, but just barely. Krueger had threatened to punish them if they ever tried to set foot out of the house. But he’d been gone so long and the place was freezing so the older girl decided to take a chance. She managed to unlock the door. They’d just left the house to hunt for Mommy when we found them. They wouldn’t a lasted half an hour in this storm. Wait a minute.”
Jenny heard the phone being moved and then two small voices were saying, “Hello, Mommy.” Mark’s arms held her tightly as she sobbed, “Mouse. Tinker Bell. I love you. I love you.”
39
April broke over Minnesota like a godhead of plenty. The red haze haloed the trees as tiny buds began to form, waiting to burst into bloom. Deer ran from the woods; pheasants strutted on the roads; cattle wandered far into the pastures; the ground softened and snow melted down into the furrows, nourishing the spring crops as they pushed their way to the surface.
Beth and Tina began to ride again, Beth straight and careful, Tina always ready to give her pony a kick and send him racing. Jenny rode on Fire Maid beside Beth; Joe rode close to Tina.
Jenny could not get enough of being with the children: of being able to kiss the soft cheeks, hold the sturdy little hands, hear the prayers, answer the endless questions. Or listen to the frightened confidences. “Daddy scared me so much. He used to put his hands on my face like this. He looked so funny.”
For so long she had wanted to go back to New York, to leave this place. Dr. Philstrom warned her against it. “Those ponies are the best therapy for the children.”
“I cannot spend another night in this house.”
Mark had provided the answer: the schoolhouse on the west end of his property that years before he’d converted for himself. “When Dad moved to Florida I took over the farmhouse and rented this place, but it’s been empty for six months.”
It was charming, with two bedrooms, a roomy kitchen, a quaint parlor, small enough that when Tina cried out in terror-filled dreams, Jenny could be at her side instantly. “I’m here, Tinker Bell. Go back to sleep.”
She told Luke of her plans to turn over Krueger Farm to the Historical Society.
“Be sure, Jenny,” he told her. “It’s worth a fortune and God knows you earned the right to have it.”
“There’s plenty for me without it. And I could never live there again.” She closed her eyes against the memory of the bassinette in the attic, the panel behind the headboard, the owl sculpture, the portrait of Caroline.
Rooney visited frequently, proudly driving the car Clyde had bought her, a contented Rooney who no longer needed to wait home in case Arden chose to return. “You can accept anything, Jenny, if you have to. Not knowing is the worst torture.”
The people of Granite Place came calling. “It’s about time we welcomed you here, Jenny.” Most of them added: “We’re so sorry, Jenny.” They brought cuttings and seeds for her.
Her fingers in the soft, moist earth as she planted her garden.
The sound of the comfortably shabby station wagon in the driveway. The girls running to meet Uncle Mark. The joyful awareness that like the earth she too was ready for a new season, a new beginning.
MARY HIGGINS CLARK is the bestselling author of fifteen novels and two collections of short stories. Beginning with the phenomenally successful Where Are the Children?, her books have sold more than thirty million copies in the United States alone. Born and raised in New York City, she has served as president of Mystery Writers of America. Mary Higgins Clark makes her home in Saddle River, New Jersey, and in Dennis, Massachusetts.
Mary Higgins Clark, A Cry in the Night
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