Chapter 40 Isadore
“Simon didn’t kill her . . .” Isadore whispered, clutching the worn copy of Sparrow Island to her chest as the truth about Greta needled its way through walls she’d thought impenetrable.
“No, he didn’t,” Harper Rayne replied gently like she wasn’t certain how Isadore would respond. It was the best of news on one hand, but in the strangest of ways, it also felt like the worst. At least it did to her mother’s heart.
“We thought—Olivia and I . . .” Isadore leaned against her husband’s shoulder on the sofa and closed her eyes. That terrible night, what she remembered of it, replayed like the Black Dragons movie, permanently etched in her mind when she so wanted to forget.
Her memories, crushed like the seeds, continued to haunt her: Greta on the pillows in Olivia’s tower, the pile of her blocks by the starlit lake, Simon’s cruel taunting, saying their daughter had drowned.
But now this young woman was here at her home, all these years later, with a different story. Someone had found Greta wandering in the woods, she said. They’d taken her to an orphanage, and she’d lived until the age of sixty-four, growing fully into an adult.
But Isadore had been tricked before. Betrayed. She wouldn’t be fooled again.
“I was sure he drowned her.” Isadore spoke the words to herself before focusing back on Harper.
The woman had arrived less than an hour ago with Finn Sterling, the manager of Olivia’s estate.
And she looked quite uncomfortable now, sitting on the sofa beside Isadore, like she wasn’t certain how to tell the rest of this remarkable story.
Finn, on the other hand, had settled into Peter’s wingback chair to pet Clooney, their collie who’d befriended him the moment Isadore and Peter invited the pair inside.
Isadore straightened her back, smoothing out the wrinkles of her baby blue pantsuit like it would help clear her mind. She was no longer Izzy Brooks, the frightened girl who’d run away. That horrific night on the shore of Ashe Lake had changed her for a lifetime.
“Where did you find my book?” Isadore asked.
Harper glanced at Finn before looking back at her. “It’s a long story.”
Peter wove his arthritic fingers through hers like he’d done a thousand times since he’d promised to love and cherish her for a lifetime.
He had courted her for three years before they married, driving every Saturday from Elms to the home she shared with Olivia and Jim.
In the first months, he’d been the intermediary with her parents and the professor, but it slowly became more.
Almost sixty years ago, they wed in secret, and they’d spent the decades restoring every inch of this old house together as they worked to redeem much of what had been lost. Peter was more handsome than any man on the silver screen. The best of fathers to their son.
“I never should have left that night,” she said quietly.
“If you’d stayed, the men would have killed both you and Jim,” Peter reminded her.
He was right, of course—she and Olivia had to rescue the baby—but she should have gone back after the men left. Instead, she and Olivia were both convinced that Simon had taken his daughter’s life.
“I named her Greta,” Isadore told Harper and Finn. “After Greta Garbo. She was the most beautiful girl.”
A tear slipped down Harper’s cheek. “Her caregivers called her Angeline.”
“The professor liked to call her Angel,” Isadore said, wondering at the woman’s tears. “She probably thought it was her name.”
Finn glanced at Harper. “An angel must have been watching over her.”
Isadore looked out the front window, at the thread of Ohio’s great river below. “I should never have believed Simon.”
“Too much happened that night to sort through,” Peter replied, his voice still steady in his eighty-ninth year. She found strength in it.
“I told Greta to hide if another man came for her, but she was so young. I didn’t think she understood.”
“Why was someone looking for her?” Harper asked.
Peter answered. “Simon stole money from his father and Olivia and then promptly lost it in some sort of gambling scheme with the Cleveland mob. His colleagues probably thought kidnapping Greta would encourage Professor Farrow to repay his son’s debts.
And if Olivia hadn’t run away, Simon might have taken her life so he would inherit the estate. ”
They’d never fully know all Simon had done before or after—if he survived—their night at the lake. She’d spent many of her years afraid Simon had lived, worried that he would show up at their door in Cincinnati, but she and Olivia never heard from him again.
When she told Olivia that the Simon Farrow she’d married was neither a widower nor an esteemed professor at Winfield College, the poor woman was appalled. Then God worked in a most mysterious way.
In the months after she and Olivia ran from Haven House, Dr. Farrow and Olivia became fast friends, bonding over their love of writing and their growing faith and probably—though Olivia never discussed it with her—a deep empathy after being deceived by the same man.
That revelation had also bonded Isadore and Olivia for life.
After he retired, the professor moved into the restored carriage house behind their home, right beside the swimming pool, and when he passed away, he left everything to Jim. An inheritance that her son turned into a fortune.
“What happened after Simon lost her?” Finn asked.
So Isadore told them the whole story. Not just of that night, starting back to when she first met Simon.
How she thought she’d loved him. How she’d lied to him about her parents and how Simon had lied to her, their marriage a farce.
Then she told them how she’d escaped to Olivia’s house after the men came for her in Elms and what she’d done with the seeds.
“Louie and his men showed up at Haven House while Simon and I were at the lake,” she continued.
“They pulled him out of the water, and then they shouted for me. I thought Greta had drowned by then, but Olivia saved my baby boy. The men chased us down the driveway, but I’m afraid I don’t remember much more. I was delirious from the poison.”
“The newspapers said Olivia drove to the edge of Philadelphia,” Finn replied, reaching down to pet the persistent collie.
“She did. The men followed us for miles, but in the end, the tank on her sedan surpassed their roadster. Even in the hard months ahead, she was always proud of that. The gas stations were still closed when our tank finally emptied. By that time, I was more alert and knew the Cleveland men would look for us at first light, so we hid the car and ran with Jimmy to the nearest train station.”
“Did Clinton Herring help you?” Finn asked.
“He did, dear man. While he didn’t want all the details from Olivia, he told the police chief in Catawba that she was on an extended trip. The next day, Olivia signed a whole stack of papers for her newly formed trust in case Simon or his friends caught up to us.”
“Then the publisher rewrote the end of Moonflower Lake,” Harper said.
“You found the original?” Isadore asked, impressed that she knew about the changes.
Harper nodded. “In the panel.”
“I hid it there.”
“With good reason, I think,” Harper said. “I read it on our drive over.”
“I hid it initially for Olivia’s sake—I didn’t want Simon to steal it—but then, after the plot inspired me . . .”
“The moonflowers helped you in your crisis.”
She nodded sadly. “If the mobsters left Simon in the lake and someone recognized the setting in Olivia’s book, the police might have dredged the water and found both Simon and Greta.
” A tear trickled down her cheek, one of many that had fallen over her eighty-six years.
She’d wrestled within herself for decades, wanting to find Greta’s body and then not, clinging to the smallest hope that her daughter might have lived.
“Any investigator worth his salt would link their deaths back to Olivia.”
She never would have let Olivia take the fall for what she’d done, but in the late-night hours, when she couldn’t sleep, she’d envisioned herself on a witness stand, trying and failing to answer an onslaught of questions since she couldn’t remember many details from that night.
A judge would surely have locked her up.
“I didn’t know—we didn’t know—what to do. ”
Even now, they might put her in jail.
“But Olivia still released Moonflower Lake,” Harper said.
“She tried to talk Mr. Herring out of publishing it, but stores were already promoting her next novel. With Olivia and I hiding from the mafia, Mr. Herring thought it would make things worse for us if they didn’t release the announced book.
And, frankly, we needed the income by then.
Mr. Herring had a carbon copy of the first draft.
He hired another writer to rework the end. ”
When Harper raised her eyebrows at Finn, he smiled at her. “You were right.”
And Isadore wondered if a relationship might be blooming between them. If so, she wished them many years like she’d had with Peter.
“Olivia and I went back to the lake a few years later,” Isadore continued. “We brought Dr. Farrow with us along with flowers for Olivia’s family and a huge bouquet to leave on the shore for Greta.”
Finn told her and Peter about Haven House and its mission to help women and children who needed a place to stay. How Olivia’s legacy lived on with every person who read her books and slept in the safe place that had once been her home.
“She would be so pleased,” Isadore said.
“I hope so.”
She looked back at Harper. “Do you have a picture of my daughter?”
“I do.” Harper removed a small album from her handbag. In the first sleeve was the photo of a woman, so beautiful, like a movie star from her old magazines with long hair fluttering in the wind, her bare feet covered in sand.
Isadore smoothed her fingers over the plastic. “She’s at the ocean.”
“Redondo Beach,” Harper explained. “She moved to Los Angeles when she was eighteen and eventually found a job near Santa Barbara where she lived for the rest of her life.”
The joy, pure delight of her daughter in California, wiggled itself all the way down to her toes. It was the best place in the world for her girl.
Peter leaned over. “She looks like you, Izzy.”
Harper turned the page to a photo of an adult Greta beside a radiant girl, standing hand in hand by an old wagon wheel. “That was taken at Knott’s Berry Farm.”
“She had a daughter?” Isadore asked slowly.
“Yes.” Harper hovered by her shoulder, looking down at the photograph. “That’s me.”
“You?” Isadore echoed in a haze.
“It is.”
“You’re Greta’s girl?”
When Harper nodded, Isadore glanced at her husband. “Peter—”
“It’s all good, honey.”
“I don’t deserve this.”
He kissed her cheek. “God’s grace.”
Isadore studied the woman beside her. Her tousled chestnut hair, emerald-green eyes that seemed lost in her story. Much like Greta in the photograph.
“Her daughter.” She folded her hands to her chest. “And my grand-girl.”
The smile on Harper’s lips set her eyes ablaze.
“This is marvelous.” Isadore reached for her hand. “Just marvelous.”
“You must meet Jim,” Peter said. “Your uncle. He’s done well for himself.”
“Where does he work?” Finn asked.
“He owns a paper supply chain.”
Harper blinked several times as if trying to process that news. “Delve Paperworks?”
“The very one,” Isadore said, pleased that she knew. “He and Peter partnered with the Elms paper mill until the mill went out of business. Then Jim expanded their company around the world.”
Isadore released Harper’s hand and stood carefully. She’d spent most of her life protecting her family from an enemy that was probably long gone. And she’d cared for Olivia who, after their escape from Haven House, quickly became like an aunt to her and Jim.
Thankfully, she didn’t need to protect them anymore. “Wait here, please.”
“I’ll help,” Peter said, knowing well her intentions.
It didn’t take them long to locate the first cardboard box in the storage room. With Finn’s help, they carried it to the coffee table.
“Open it,” she told their guests.
Finn nodded at Harper, a smile on his lips. Maybe love hadn’t blossomed quite yet, but the way Eli’s grandson looked at her, like he was testing the waters, Isadore suspected it wouldn’t be long before they both dove in.
As Harper removed the lid, Isadore leaned over her shoulder, bubbling with excitement to introduce them to the contents.
“Finn,” Harper breathed as she lifted the first stack, typewritten and bound neatly with rubber bands.
Isadore loved hearing the wonder in her voice. Olivia would be so happy to have someone still eager to read her work.
Harper handed the manuscript reverently to Finn, then removed another stack.
“There are about thirty manuscripts stored around the house,” Isadore said proudly. “All novels except one. She wrote a book of poetry in her later years.”
Harper stared at the mound. “She never stopped writing.”
“I don’t think Olivia went a day without putting something on paper.” Isadore smiled. “My favorite poem is the one about a frightened moonflower that doesn’t yet know her worth.”
Harper hugged a manuscript to her chest. “It’s like she wrote her own ending.”
“I suppose she did. It’s all for her estate now,” Isadore said. “People need to read them.”
Finn looked stunned. “You’ll let us publish these?”
“I’d do just about anything for Olivia, but frankly, I’m eighty-six now and since she’s settled in with her daughter and Graham in another realm, probably click-clacking away on a heavenly typewriter, I want the world here to have her stories.”
“And your story,” Harper said. “You should write about Simon and the moonflowers and—”
Isadore shook her head. “No one is going to want to read about me.”
“They’d read about it, but even more, I think they’d want to watch it,” Finn said slowly, turning to the woman next to him. “It seems your story has finally found you.”
Hope flickered inside Isadore. “You’re a storyteller?”
“She’s a screenwriter,” Finn replied.
“I’m not—”
“Oh, sweetheart.” Isadore reached for her hand again and clung to it. “We have a story to tell.”