Laura felt her blood run cold. The last thing she wanted was to relive her childhood. It had been bad enough the first time. She definitely had no desire to talk about the year she’d turned twelve.
“I hope that makes sense to you,” Ruthie said. “She didn’t elaborate. The truth is, I hardly know your mother. I was surprised when she called to ask for my help. She’s always stayed to herself, making it clear she didn’t want to...socialize with any of her neighbors.” Silence. “She really is very upset about this, afraid she was going to die before she speaks with you.”
Her mother had secrets she needed to get off her chest before she died? Laura thought of blanks in her memory, the black holes of time she couldn’t recall. But when she thought of her childhood, she couldn’t have been more grateful for those lost memories. Why open up old wounds?
Even as she thought it, though, she knew there were questions, things she was unclear about, vague shadows of memories that often woke her in the night and made her anxious and afraid. Did she really want to know, though? Weren’t the memories she did have horrible enough?
“Can I tell her that you’re on your way here?” the neighbor asked, almost pleading.
Laura closed her eyes. She could hear the shock and disapproval in the woman’s voice. Ruthie couldn’t imagine a daughter not wanting to see her mother before she died. But then again, Ruthie, in her wildest nightmares, couldn’t imagine a mother like Laura’s.
What was it that her psychiatrist kept telling her? “You aren’t going to get well until you face your past. You’re a strong woman. Put whatever darkness there is behind you so you can move on with your life. Isn’t that what you want?”
Her mother had the key to a past that had been locked away for so long. Just the thought of possibly being able to put those awful years behind her and move on...
“Tell her I’m on my way.” And not to die until I get there, she added silently, because she had a stop she had to make first.
* * *
P.I. EDWIN SHARP hated to fly—especially in a small plane in the middle of a thunderstorm. He stared at the dark clouds around the aircraft, wishing he’d driven. If Rourke Kincaid hadn’t insisted on the urgency of this trip—and paid him triple his usual amount—he would be on solid ground right now.
The small plane found an air pocket and dropped into it, sending his stomach up into his throat. He’d been fighting airsickness since they’d crossed the Rockies. Now the prairie stretched below them in a patchwork of autumn colors. Edwin couldn’t appreciate any of the breath-stealing views.
“You look a little green around the gills,” Pete, his young pilot, said and laughed.
He wouldn’t be laughing if Edwin lost his lunch. He’d chosen this pilot because he was Montana born and bred. “You know the area, then?” he’d inquired when he’d landed at the Missoula, Montana, airport.
“You bet.”
“So you can fly me to Flat Rock?”
Pete had grinned. “I can fly you anywhere you want to go.”
Ahead the clouds parted. Edwin didn’t see a town, but the plane began to descend. “I don’t see the airport.”
The pilot let out a chuckle. “Look closer.”
Closer was what appeared to be a harvested wheat field. “You aren’t going to land there.” But even as he said it, he saw the ragged wind sock and felt the plane hit another air pocket. The ground was coming up fast.
He braced himself as the plane skimmed over the top of the stubble field. The wheels hit the ground hard and the plane bounced up, then settled down on the so-called airstrip. For the moment, Edwin was just glad to be on the ground again.
“What time do you want to fly back?” Pete asked as he taxied the plane to the edge of some old buildings.
“I won’t be flying back. I’ll be renting a car and driving.”
The pilot got a good laugh out of that. “You won’t be renting a car—not in this town.”
“What town? I don’t see anything but a few abandoned buildings.”
“That’s Flat Rock, Montana. What there is of it. Shouldn’t take you long to find out what you need to. We’ll let the storm pass. Why don’t we meet at the café when you’re finished.”
“There’s a café?” He couldn’t help sounding doubtful. The town—if it could really be called that—consisted of a couple of grain elevators and a row of old buildings on each side of a strip of pavement. The buildings he could see appeared to be boarded up.
“If you don’t show up, I’ll just assume you’re planning to hitchhike back to Missoula.”
Edwin waited while Pete secured the plane, and then the two of them walked toward Flat Rock. Even at a glance he could see that there were more empty buildings than occupied ones. He looked around for a large flat rock, wondering how the town had gotten its name.
“What’s that over there?” he asked of a huge, vacant-looking three-story building in the distance. The stone structure had gaping holes where windows used to be and a forlorn look. Probably the tall dead weeds that had grown around it, he thought.
“It used to be a girls’ home.”
“Like an orphanage,” Edwin said.
“More like a home for kids nobody wanted, troubled kids. Folks claim it is haunted now.”
Edwin scoffed at that, but quit when he saw Pete’s expression. “You believe in ghosts?”
“Let’s just say you couldn’t get me in that building after dark.”
He found that amusing, given that Pete seemed to be a daredevil pilot who wasn’t afraid of a thunderstorm or flying within feet of high mountain peaks. But give him an old empty building...
“I’ll see you at the café. Don’t leave without me.” Edwin set out down what he figured was the main drag. As he passed what appeared to be a vacant school building, he saw that someone had spray-painted the words Consolidation of Schools Sucks on the front. He wondered where the children were bused to now. Apparently, another school that wasn’t close since he hadn’t seen hide nor hair of another town from the plane.
He passed more abandoned buildings and cursed his luck. Other than a couple of pickups parked in front of the Longhorn Café, the only other sign of life was a small grocery/gas station at the end of the street.
A woman in her mid-forties stood behind the counter as he pushed open the door. She eyed him over the glasses perched on her nose. “Help you?” She made it sound doubtful.
“I’m trying to get some information on a woman by the name of Caligrace Westfield,” he told the woman.
“Westfield?” she said, one finely drawn-in eyebrow shooting up.
“Do you know the Westfields?” he asked hopefully.
She gave him an impatient look. “The only Westfield around here is the manor.”
“The manor?” He couldn’t believe that he’d hit pay dirt.
“You didn’t see it on the way into town?” she asked incredulously. “Hardly anyone misses that big old eyesore.”
He blinked. “Are you talking about that abandoned girls’ home?”
“Girls’ home?” she scoffed. “Some locals called it that, giving it a fancy name to cover up what a terrible place it was.”
It couldn’t be a coincidence that Caligrace Westfield shared the same name as the girls’ home. “How long has it been closed?” he asked.
“Twenty-five