Chapter 11 The Woman In The Garden
Cade
I watched her walk out of the kitchen until she reached the carpeted stairs. I stayed in the kitchen for a long time after she left, staring at the glass she had used.
Coming back into her orbit was harder than I’d planned. For five years, I had built a version of Sloane Hartford in my head, the heiress who didn't understand why I had to leave. But the woman upstairs wasn't that girl. She was sharper, harder, and she looked at me like I was some kind of virus she was trying to build an immunity to.
I sank into the sofa thinking about what I had done five years ago. I had hurt her on purpose once. I told myself it was protection. I wasn’t sure I believed that anymore, but it was the only way I could get her to stay away for her own good, and while I went after the people who had hurt my sister. I had thought I was protecting her. Now, I’d dragged her right into the middle of something worse.
About half an hour later, I got up to head to my bedroom, but then I saw something downstairs. Or someone.
I was already halfway to the door when the movement in the yard caught my eye. I stopped. I didn't reach for the light switch. I dared not. I stepped to the side of the window, pressing my shoulder against the frame, and looked down.
Someone was standing near the fence of the rose garden, just past the reach of the porch lights.
My heart raced as adrenaline kicked in. I squinted as I tried to make out the image. It was definitely a person. The height and the slight frame suggested it was a woman. She was wearing a dark, heavy jacket with the hood pulled up.
She wasn't moving. She wasn't trying to break in, and she wasn't hiding. She was just standing there, her body angled toward the house. Through the thick night and the dim, yellow glow of the distant gate lamps, I couldn't make out a single feature of her face. She was just a silhouette.
But I watched her for a full minute. She didn't look like she was on some assassination mission, but anyone outside your house at a time like this is definitely suspicious.
I didn't wait to see what she would do next. I turned away from the window, grabbed a flashlight from the shelf and headed for the stairs.
The house was silent as I moved through the hallway. My bare feet made no sound on the hardwood. It would definitely give away that someone was coming downstairs. I took the service stairs, circling down to the mudroom that led to the side gardens.
I got to the foyer and reached the door. I listened. I eased the lock back, the click sounding like a gunshot in my ears, and stepped out into the cold.
The air hit me hard. It was damp and smelled of salt and wet earth. I stayed low, keeping close to the stone wall of the house, moving toward the spot where I had seen her. My eyes adjusted to the darkness, searching for the break in the fog, the shift in the shadows that would tell me she was still there.
I reached the rose garden.
"Who’s there?", I said, my voice barely a whisper, yet sharp enough to carry.
Nothing.
I moved faster now, checking behind the stone benches and the thick hedges, possible hiding places for someone in panic.
Nothing and no one.
I reached the exact spot where she had been standing. As I looked down, I saw the proof that my brain hadn't imagined it. The blades of grass were flattened in distinct patches. Footprints. They were small and narrow. Like the shoes of a young woman.
I looked up from the ground, following the line of sight she had been holding.
From the exact spot she was standing, you couldn't see the main entrance. You couldn't see the library or even the kitchen. It was a direct, unobstructed view of the third-floor balcony.
Sloane’s balcony.
She was staring at Sloane’s window.
I stood there, the cold seeping into my skin, looking up at the darkened windows of her room. Sloane was up there, probably finally asleep, unaware that someone had been standing in the dirt and the fog just to watch her breathe.
This didn’t seem like some one random. A thief would be looking at the locks or the cars. A journalist would be trying to get a photo of us together. This person was different. They were interested in Sloane specifically.
This felt personal. It felt like someone was observing the "New Sloane."
I scanned around one last time. Whoever she was, she was gone.
Then I saw it. It caught the lights emitting from the lampposts. A small, white square of paper was tucked into a crack in the stone wall, held down by a pebble so it wouldn't blow away.
I picked it up. It was a polaroid.
The image was clear despite the dim lighting. It was Sloane. She was sitting at an outdoor cafe, a glass of wine in her hand, her head tilted back in a radiant, carefree laugh. She looked beautiful. She looked like a woman without a care in the world.
In reflex, I flipped it over, and noticed something. The handwriting was jagged, written in a hurry.
She’s much closer to the truth than she looks.
The paper felt hot in my hand. Only one truth was that important to me if the sender was trying to pass a message. The truth about how Lily died.
I looked back at the house. This woman, whoever she was, must have been there. She had seen the night my sister was taken. And she didn't see Sloane as a victim or a bystander. She saw her as a participant.
A wave of nausea hit me. I walked back toward the house, my mind spinning.
I’d spent the last week convincing myself that Sloane was the key to finding the truth because she was the only "clean" one left. But if this woman was right, I wasn't living with an ally. I was living with the person who had smiled while my sister was erased.
The woman was gone, but she’d left exactly what she intended. A seed of doubt that turned the entire house into a cage.
I tucked the photo into my pocket and walked back inside, my movements stiff. I didn't go back to my room. I sat in the dark of the stairs, too weak to carry myself up.
I didn’t want to believe this stranger. I wanted to believe Sloane’s innocence was real.
But as the clock on the wall ticked toward midnight, all I could see was that smile. And for the first time since I’d come back, I wasn't sure who I was more afraid of: the people outside or the woman I just opened the doors of my life to.
I went back inside, locking the door and resetting the perimeter alarms with a trembling hand.
I thought about Lily. I could be keeping my enemy close by living with Sloane. But now, I had to face the reality that someone else was doing the same to us.
I went into my room and sat by the window, watching the moon light as it through the clouds, my heart too heavy to sleep.
I thought about Sloane. I thought about the woman in the garden. My mind settled on the one mystery that they both now have in common.
Could I trust her?