2. Teddy #3
Teddy remained on the edge of her bed, her shoulders slightly stiffened as she stared at her sister. "I told you that I'm only here to do the required work."
"I heard you," Junie replied softly, before she turned back toward the door. "But this has nothing to do with the schedules. Sleep well."
The door closed with a gentle click after the sisters left, leaving Teddy alone once more in the gathering gloom.
For several minutes, she remained still, her gaze fixed on the paper resting on the dresser.
The silence of her room was no longer a refuge, as her curiosity warred with her stubborn pride.
Finally, she rose from the bed and crossed the floor, her bare feet making no sound on the smooth pine.
She lifted the paper, holding it beneath the amber light of her desk lamp.
The silver-nitrate sheen of the print was faded; its edges curled and water-damaged from decades spent in the dark; yet the image remained remarkably clear.
It was a black-and-white photograph of her mother, Rosalind, standing outside the stone cottage on Seventeen Hollow Road.
Her mother looked young, her dark hair falling in loose curls over her shoulders, her expression bright with a rare energy, laughing with a freedom Teddy had seldom witnessed in her later years.
She was surrounded by three other women, their arms linked in a solid line of shared defense.
Teddy's breath caught as she studied the face of the woman standing on her mother's right.
The woman was young, her posture guarded, but her features were unmistakably familiar.
She possessed the amber eyes that were deep-set and the prominent jawline that was square that Teddy had seen so many times during her childhood. It was Hannah Martin.
She stiffened, gripping the curled edges of the cardboard backing as she stared at the image.
The shock of the recognition sent a sharp tingle through her chest. Hannah had lived right across the driveway for over forty years, a somewhat reclusive neighbor who had shared harvests, attended a few community meetings, and watched the Marchetti sisters grow from a distance, but mostly kept to herself.
But Hannah had never mentioned this photograph, nor had she ever hinted at a personal connection to Rosalind's hidden safe-harbor network.
Teddy's gaze drifted to the bottom of the print, where a small child stood beside Hannah, his tiny fingers curled around the hem of her wool skirt. The toddler had thick curls that were dark and a serious expression, his shoulders squared even at that tender age. There was something very familiar about him. Teddy flipped the photo back over and read the inscription, shocked by the name she read. Not Hannah Martin. Hannah Hillion. This was the same name Dahlia found on a deed shortly after their mother died. And the boy next to Hannah was Kent Hillion. The local veterinarian. The physical resemblance was undeniable. How could she not have seen it before? Although Hannah wasn’t a complete recluse, she had mostly kept to herself, and she didn’t go by the same last name as Kent, so perhaps it wasn’t entirely surprising that Teddy hadn’t realized the connection before.
Teddy set the photograph on the wooden desk, her mind spinning as the pieces of the puzzle began to align in a new, staggering sequence.
Thanks to Junie’s discoveries last fall, they now knew that their mother had helped women in danger.
But the safe-harbor cottage had never been just a temporary sanctuary where desperate strangers spent a night before vanishing into the dark.
At least one of those endangered women had never left the valley.
Hannah had changed her identity, built a solitary life on the neighboring property, keeping her private history a protective secret for decades.
And Kent had grown up in the shadow of that secret, knowing the truth about his mother's flight and the shield Rosalind had constructed to keep them safe. He’d never said a word about it.
Teddy crossed the room and stood near the window, her hand resting against the cool glass as she stared out into the dark night.
Across the driveway, beyond the sleeping orchard, the distant yellow lights of the Hillion cottage flickered through the pine trees.
She'd spent the last couple of years believing she was the only one carrying a heavy burden of silence.
But now, looking at the glowing windows of her neighbor's home, she realized that the quiet veterinarian of the town, who had been a bit of a loner in their school days, was bound to her family's legacy by ties she didn’t fully understand.
She tensed her jaw, her high resolve to return to Portland the second the season closed suddenly wavering against the immense weight of this new discovery.
She was no longer just a sister fulfilling a legal requirement or a woman fleeing a failed marriage.
She had a deeply personal reason to stay in the valley.
She had to face the man who'd been keeping her mother's secrets in plain sight.