would.
Tears coursing down her cheeks, she rose from her bed. As she’d done on countless other nights, she crept into the hallway and wound her way toward the third-floor tower room. There she pressed the plunger of the antique iron latch. The door creaked open and the cries instantly ceased.
The cries weren’t real. They were just a trick of her mind, giving form to her guilt. There were no babies here, dead or otherwise—only her misguided hope.
Wrapping one arm around her stomach, she stepped into the yellow pool of artificial light burning from the night-light that had made Valentina feel safe. An expectant hush weighted the room as if the walls were listening for the missing four-year-old’s return.
Nothing had changed in this room. For twenty-five years the tic-tac-toe play rug, the child’s bed with its princess-pink canopy, the pile of stuffed animals on the butterfly-stenciled storage chest had remained as they were on the day Valentina had disappeared.
The static landscape her daughter had left behind stared back, ripe with accusation, and a lightning jag of pain, raw and deep, clawed at Rita’s heart. “I’m so sorry, baby, so sorry.”
If she could do it all over again…But no, there was no rewinding time.
As Rita turned to leave, a gray shape formed along her peripheral vision.
A sigh, no more than an exhale, seemed to sough against her ear. Mama.
Breath held, Rita stopped and pressed a hand to her thundering heart. “Valentina?”
The hope, so sharp in her voice, cut through the thick fog of memories. Of course not. What had the doctor called it? Projection? The disappointment of reality resettled heavily on her shoulders.
“No, Rita. It’s me, Holly.”
Rita swiveled toward the doorway where her faithful friend and housekeeper stood, her long gray braid a beacon in the night.
“I thought I heard—” Rita’s hand fluttered like a surrender flag toward the window. “I thought Valentina was…home.”
Holly’s solid arm wrapped around Rita’s waist, supporting her, and gently led her away from the center of her agony.
“You must think me a fool.”
“No, of course not, Rita. It was just the storm. Let me walk you back to your room.”
“I’m okay.” Shoulders stooped, Rita shook off Holly’s helping hands and made her way back into her bedroom alone, fading into the shadows of the house…just another ghost.
Pewter shrouded the October afternoon as Valerie Zea and Mike Murakita—her photog and soundman for the shoot—made their way to Moonhill, New Hampshire. Here and there a red maple leaf or a yellow beech leaf, still clinging stubbornly to a limb, flickered like a tongue of fire.
Valerie had seen photos of the White Mountains blazing with fall color, of the misty lakes like milky beads of moonstone wreathing the endless vistas from high atop the mountains, of the bellowing moose that required warnings to motorists every few miles on the highway. And she’d wanted to see all that rugged beauty, so different from the lush flatness of Central Florida she was accustomed to.
She’d been disappointed enough when she’d read that the Old Man of the Mountain—a nature-made Indian head of stacked boulders perched precariously on the side of a mountain for centuries—had fallen a few years ago and no longer watched over Franconia Notch. Just the name—Franconia Notch—conjured up a grand and magnificent picture. Not that they were anywhere near the White Mountains, since Moonhill was located in the southern part of the state. But the fog was cheating her out of her anticipated sense-stunning experience.
She compared the MapQuest directions she’d gotten online against the road signs popping up out of the low clouds on the narrow road. “Turn here.”
Mike jerked the car onto the country lane. “A little more warning next time.”
“Aye, aye, captain.”
On the right side, a low stone wall framed a cemetery whose granite headstones and statuary poked out of the mist. Not quite on the scale of a mountaintop view, but filled with mystery, suspense and intrigue.
On the left, a Stick-style Victorian with a wraparound porch glared through the murk like some sort of movie set haunted house. Orange fairy lights dripped from the eaves. Giant glow-in-the-dark spiders and webs clung to the decorative trusses. A life-size mummy with arms out-stretched seemed poised to lumber out of the six-foot tall black coffin leaning against the oak by the front walk. On the lawn, strobes blasted on and off at intervals, lighting up red-eyed bats, moaning zombies and shrieking gar-goyles. There were enough special effects there to make a Hollywood techie jealous.
“Talk about overkill,” she said. The overblown drama of the scene would make an interesting segment of its own, though, especially if she could find a Florida angle to it. Maybe the owner’s parents were part of the snowbirds that flocked to the Sunshine State every winter. She made a mental note to look into the possibilities before she pitched the idea to Higgins, her executive producer. He’d appreciate maximizing the bang for his travel-expense buck.
She peered at the web-encrusted mailbox by the entrance for the address. “We’ve got a way to go yet.”
Mike warbled his voice to make it sound spooky, but it came out sounding more like the Count on Sesame Street. “Maybe it’s the local haunted house for Halloween.” He shot her a mischievous grin. At thirty, he still looked like a kid with his boyish face that couldn’t grow a beard, except for a sparse tuft on his chin that looked like a smudge of dirt. “Want some B-roll of that for your segment?”
“Yeah, Higgins would go for that. He’s already ticked off Krista’s doctor wouldn’t let her fly, and he had to send second-choice me to do the job.” The assignment was high priority since it had come down as a special order from Edmund Meadows, the station’s owner. He’d requested a package about the kidnapping of his great-niece twenty-five years ago in hopes of stirring up some new evidence that could lead to finding the missing girl.
“On the plus side. He put you above Bailey.”
Bailey-the-Beautiful who had Higgins wrapped around her long legs. Valerie snorted. There was too much at stake for Higgins to risk needing to mop up after Bailey. “Efficiency won out over looks.”
“Either that or he couldn’t give her up for four whole nights.”
“There is that.”
High on Windemere Drive, Moongate Mansion materialized out of the shifting mist. First the six-foot granite wall and the black iron gate, canted open, daring intruders to trespass. Then the estate itself, a gray nineteenth-century Victorian with an eclectic mix of Italianate and Queen Anne. Each generation of Meadowses, seeking no doubt to stamp their mark, had added to the original two-story, four-room house until it sprawled over 13,000 square feet, looking like some sort of Frankenstein creature.
Valerie couldn’t imagine living in such a dreary place, especially with its constant bruise of painful memories. But she also understood why Rita
