Chapter 36 Isadore
“Wake up, Izzy.”
A man’s voice cut through the fog of her dream, and she tossed her head. Had Louie returned to Elms?
But she wasn’t in Ohio. She was—
“Go away,” she muttered, batting her arms in the darkness. She’d fight him or any man who came for her children.
“Get up, love.”
That voice, the one from her nightmares, jolted her awake. In Catawba, that’s where she’d fled, trying to hide from this man who lorded over her.
She rolled on the sofa, reaching for the girl who slept on the floor. The pillows were still there, she could see them in the moonlight, but—
“Greta!” She leapt up, awake now. Her daughter was gone, replaced by Simon’s shadowed face.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded, her voice panging between anger and fear. He was supposed to be with his horses in Cleveland, hours away.
“Might ask you the same thing.” Words slurred as he tipped back his hip flask for another swig.
She tried to scan the room in the darkness, hoping her daughter had hidden like Izzy instructed. “Where is she?”
“I’ll take you to her.”
She wrapped her arms over her blouse, trying to stop the shaking. “What have you done?”
“She’s in a safe place, all snuggly and warm.”
“I’ll kill you if you hurt her.”
“Izzy, my love,” he mocked. “It’s much too late for threats.”
Had he already hurt Greta? His own daughter.
“Besides,” he said, “you would have killed her anyway. Left her out on the porch, I heard, all alone.”
She loved her children, more than anything, but he was right. His accusation choked her thoughts like a weed, clouding her mind. She never should have left Greta on the porch in Elms or brought her here either.
Think. She had to think or she couldn’t help her kids. “Is Louie with you?”
“No, but he’s looking for you and he’s not happy at all that you skipped town.”
She’d known it wouldn’t take that snake-of-a-man long to realize she and the children were gone, but they’d only left this morning. “What does he want from me?”
A bitter laugh. “Not everything is about you, Izzy.”
“Then leave me alone.”
She pulled the lamp’s chain on the side table, light illuminating the room and the cut above Simon’s eye, a bruise on his cheek that matched Greta’s.
“Who hit you?”
He swore. “Turn off that light.”
Which she did, after searching the floor to make sure Greta wasn’t hiding in the shadows.
Simon glanced out the window. “The others will come soon enough.”
Were his Cleveland friends planning to help him pilfer money from Olivia?
She wrapped her arms across her chest, trying to stop her shiver. “Why are you here?”
“I need to have a talk with my wife,” he said.
“We were never married, Simon.”
He snorted. “I’m looking for Olivia.”
She walked toward him at the window, trying to press away the worry. “Where did you take Greta?”
“I’ll show you when I’m done.”
He dropped his flask by the typewriter and turned on a flashlight as he tore through Olivia’s drawers, spilling papers, slamming doors, searching for money, probably, or something to sell like the manuscript she’d hidden behind the panel.
The publisher would probably pay a hefty ransom for Olivia’s work.
Was he planning to offer Greta for a ransom?
Or did he think, if the professor had no other heirs, he’d still get money from his father’s will?
Which might mean, in his crazed mind, Simon would have to kill both his father and his child.
Or children, if he learned about the youngest heir to the Farrow estate.
Please, she begged of God. Don’t let Jimmy wake.
She had to get Simon away from her baby.
The flashlight beam swung across the office, sweeping past the window jars. She eyed the flask on the desk. The moonflower seeds.
In Olivia’s manuscript, the moonflower water, mixed with wine, had killed the black dragon.
Izzy didn’t much care what Simon did to her, but if he stayed in the house much longer, he’d hear Jimmy’s cry and then he would steal away both her babies.
She had only seconds to deter him. Maybe a minute. No time to soak these seeds in water. She backed toward the window ledge as he dug, wholly out of control, through papers and books. So different than the well-ordered man she’d once known.
She had to find Greta.
And she had to stop Simon before he hurt someone else.
Her hands, remarkably calm, slipped behind her back to twist the lid off a jar.
She held the container for a moment as a new scene played in her head.
The glass lifted high in the darkness, crashing over Simon’s head.
But it would never work. She might stun him with the jar, injure him even. Then she’d have hell to pay.
She had to get him out of the house before the devil could have his way.
“Help me!” Simon growled as she scooped the cool seeds in her hand.
“I don’t know what you’re looking for,” she replied, trying to sound exasperated instead of afraid.
“Cash.” He shone his light into the bottom drawer. “She’s hiding bundles of it.”
Izzy heaped the seeds on the desktop, shifting paper over the mound as she searched with him.
Her hand scraped across a typewriter lever when she reached for Olivia’s glass globe, tearing her skin, but she had no time to tend to a wound.
Instead, she pressed against the screen of paper, crushing the seeds.
When Simon bent under the desk, she reached for his flask, a quick sweep brushing the powder inside before she recapped it.
He sprung up beside her, yanking the flask from her hands. “What are you doing?”
“Searching for your money.”
“Don’t touch my drink.” He took a long sip before spitting something on the floor, a hull probably, and wiped his mouth. “You know where the money is, don’t you?”
“Perhaps.”
Simon shoved her into the desk. “Tell me.”
“Downstairs,” she lied. “Near the front door.”
He took another sip of whiskey. “Tastes weird.”
“How much have you had to drink tonight?”
“None of your business.”
“The more you drink,” she said, “the stranger it will taste.”
“It’s not going to stop me.”
When they reached the first floor, Simon seemed to have forgotten why he was there. His flask almost empty, he fumbled around in the front closet.
It wasn’t too late, she prayed. If the seeds worked like in Olivia’s book, she could overpower him still and find Greta.
“Take me to her,” she demanded, opening the front door. When Simon didn’t move, she called into the night. “Greta!”
“She’s not coming,” he slurred.
“I swear, if you hurt her . . .”
“What’re you gonna do now, Izzy?” Another swig. “You already done enough.”
When he stepped outside, she followed him through the trees. The branches unfolded onto a moonlit lake, one edge hemmed by a garden of glowing blossoms like the flowers in Olivia’s book. The place where Jude drank the poisoned wine.
Her cut from the typewriter stung as she called Greta’s name. Was the moonflower powder toxic to touch? The only danger, she hoped, was by drinking it.
Simon’s pace had slowed, but he didn’t fall. Instead he pointed toward the water’s edge. To a pile of Greta’s colorful blocks. “She was right here.”
“Greta!” she called again, but silence swallowed her plea. Izzy shoved him, fury exploding inside her. How she hated this man. “Did you drown her?”
He grabbed her arm and twisted it behind her back. “Time for you to take a swim, too.”
Her sweet girl, alone with this monster. Why hadn’t Izzy woken up when Simon first found them? And why didn’t Greta scream?
She wrestled against him. “I can’t swim,” she said, but he already knew that.
He pushed her toward a wooden boat, beyond the rim of moonflowers. “You and Greta get to be together.”
That’s not how the story unfolded in Olivia’s manuscript. Jude was in the boat, comatose, not Laurel. But if the seeds didn’t work, if Simon took her life, she prayed Olivia would find the baby before he did.
“I’m not getting in,” she spat, digging her heels into the muddy shore.
His grip loosened on her arm, but he still pushed her forward into the water. Only a little longer, she told herself as she struggled against him. A few more seconds before the poison took hold.
He stumbled again. “What’s wrong with your head, Izzy?”
“Nothing’s wrong with my head.”
“It looks—” A garble of words. “You look funny.”
“Moonflowers,” she said as the poison strengthened its grip.
He wobbled. “Blast them.”
“They see everything, Simon.”
“You look funny, and I—I feel funny,” he said as if she might have compassion on him. “What’s that?”
She scanned the lake. “You’re seeing things.”
“Stop lying to me, ’Livia.”
“I’m not Olivia.” But perhaps, in his mind, the women were the same.
“So thirsty.” He released her and knelt by the water, gulping handfuls before looking up again. “What’d you do?”
“I loved you with all my heart, that’s what I did, and you crushed it into pieces.”
Then she kicked his backside, and he tumbled into the lake.
A beam of light bounced down the path behind her, and Izzy leapt back into the tall grass.
“Simon!” a man yelled.
She crouched in the weeds as four men bumbled their way down from the house, their flashlight focused on the lake. Her hand throbbed, but she had no time to nurse it. Somehow she had to return to the house without the men seeing her. Snatch Jimmy from his bed and hide.
The men shouted when they saw Simon. Swore. Then they yanked him out of the water.
She couldn’t hear the men, but Simon, she heard clearly. Shouting her name.
The flashlight beam swung across the grass. With her heart aching even more than her hand, she rushed back into the trees and up the hill.
Greta . . . she couldn’t think about her daughter right now.
She had to save Jimmy before the men found him too.