Chapter 31
Seraphine's studio smelled the same as it had the first time.
Turpentine and linseed oil and the faint earthiness of dried canvas.
Paintings lined the walls in their mismatched frames, full of landscapes and abstracts and the occasional portrait, but Noah's eyes went straight to the one at the far end.
The bridge. The bog. The full landscape with Whiteface Mountain in the distance and the leaning tamarack and the Y-shaped fork of water that had led him to six bodies in the peat.
Seraphine sat on a stool near the counter with her hands in her lap.
She looked thinner than the last time he'd seen her, or maybe it was the light catching the angles of her face.
Her dark hair was down and her eyes were guarded.
He got a sense she had agreed to something she wasn't sure she should have agreed to.
Beside her, in a chair pulled from behind the counter, sat Dr. Claire Whitfield.
Mid-fifties, gray-streaked hair cut short, reading glasses on a chain around her neck.
She had a legal pad on her knee but hadn't written anything on it.
Her presence was the condition. No therapist, no conversation. Noah had accepted without argument.
"Thank you for seeing me," Noah said. He stood a few feet from them, leaning against the edge of a display table. He hadn't sat down. Sitting down would make this feel like an interrogation and that wasn't what this was. "I know this isn't easy."
Seraphine nodded but didn't speak.
"I want to ask you about the sketch you brought to the police when you were sixteen. The one connected to Kara Ellison's disappearance."
"It wasn't connected to Kara Ellison," Seraphine said.
The words landed in the quiet studio like something dropped from a height. Noah didn't move.
"Go on," he said.
Seraphine looked at Dr. Whitfield. The therapist gave a small nod.
"My mother was Jessie Maddox. Tabitha Smith's sister.
She was part of the Three Pillar Community.
I grew up there." She paused. Her fingers found the hem of her shirt and worked it between her thumb and forefinger.
"When I was little, they told me my mother had gone off into the world.
That she'd chosen to leave the community and leave me behind.
That's what they told everyone. And I believed it.
For years I believed it because I didn't know any different. "
"What changed?"
"When I was sixteen, someone came to me.
Someone outside the community. They told me that my mother hadn't left.
That she'd wanted to take me and get out, and that before she could, she disappeared.
" Seraphine's voice was measured but there was a tremor underneath it, the vibration of a structure holding more weight than it was built for.
"This person told me about a place. A bridge over the bog near Bloomingdale.
A place that meant something to my mother.
A place she loved. They believed that's where she might have been taken. Or buried."
"So you drew it."
"I drew it." She looked at the painting on the far wall.
"But I was sixteen. I was a kid inside a community that controlled everything.
I couldn't walk into a police station and say I think my mother was murdered and her body is in Bloomingdale Bog.
Who would have listened to that? A girl from a group that most people already thought was a cult. "
"So you used Kara Ellison."
Seraphine nodded slowly. "Kara had just disappeared.
The whole region was looking for her. I thought if I connected the sketch to her case, the police would search the bog.
And if they searched the bog, they'd find my mother.
" She let go of her shirt hem and pressed both hands flat against her thighs.
"I drew what I was told. A bridge over the bog.
That's all I had. I figured if the police took it seriously, they'd come back to me and I could point them in the right direction. "
"But they didn't come back."
"No. Two officers looked at the drawing from a sixteen-year-old girl connected to Three Pillars and decided it was nothing.
Someone in the department said that I had said it was a vision.
The cops must have run with that." Something bitter crossed her face.
"I never claimed to be psychic. I never said I had visions.
That was someone else. They took what I did and turned it into something else. "
“So what happened after you went to the police?"
Seraphine's eyes dropped. Her fingers returned to her shirt hem. Dr. Whitfield shifted in her chair, the first movement she'd made since the conversation started.
"Seraphine," the therapist said quietly. "You don't have to go there."
"After the elders found out," Seraphine said, her voice dropping, "things changed. For me. Inside the community." She stopped. The tremor in her voice was visible now, not just audible. Her hands were shaking. "I left the day I turned eighteen. I walked out and I never went back."
Noah could see the wall going up. The space between what she could say and what she couldn't was narrowing fast. He changed direction.
"The person who came to you when you were sixteen. Who told you about the bog? Who told you about your mother? Can you give me a name?"
Seraphine looked at Dr. Whitfield. The therapist held her gaze. Something passed between them that Noah couldn't read, some prior conversation, some boundary that had been agreed upon before he arrived.
Seraphine shook her head. "No."
"It could help the investigation."
"I can't remember."
Noah didn't push. He let the silence hold for a moment, then reached into his jacket and pulled out a folder.
He opened it and laid a row of photographs on the counter beside Seraphine.
Six men. Booking photos, license photos, images pulled from files.
Derek Hollis was third from the left. Samuel Bridger was fifth.
Garrett Finch was second. The others were community members from the farm raid.
"Do you recognize any of these men?"
Seraphine looked at the photos. Her eyes moved along the row. She stopped on the third photograph. Her hand came up and her finger touched the edge of it. Derek Hollis.
"That one," she said.
"How do you know him?"
"I was told he was responsible. For what happened to my mother."
"By the same person who told you about the bog?"
She didn't answer. She didn't need to. It was the same question she'd already refused and the answer was the same wall.
"Why didn't you come forward with this before?" Noah asked.
Seraphine looked at him and something in her expression shifted. Not anger exactly, but close to it.
"I did come forward. I was sixteen. I drew a picture and I walked into a police station and I handed it to two officers who looked at me like I was a delusional child from a cult.
They didn't search the bog. They didn't look into my mother.
They filed the sketch and forgot about it.
" She paused. "After that, the community made sure I wouldn't try again.
And by the time I got out and heard that Hollis might be connected, I didn't think anyone would believe me.
Why would they? Nobody believed me the first time. "
"Might be?"
"It's what I was told."
"So you can't be certain?"
"Of course not. I was a child when she went missing."
"But the person who told you. Who was that?"
"A friend of my mother's."
"In the community?"
"No. Outside."
“Do you have a name?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Seraphine, think.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t…”
Dr. Whitfield leaned forward. "I think that's enough for today."
Noah gathered the photographs and slid them back into the folder.
He looked at Seraphine for a moment. She sat on her stool with her hands in her lap and the afternoon light on her face and the painting of the bog on the wall behind her, the place her mother loved, the place that was supposed to have given up its secrets five years ago if anyone had bothered to look.
"Thank you, Seraphine," he said. "I mean that."
She nodded once. He left the studio and the bell above the door chimed behind him and then it was quiet again.