CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

My dreams are troubled that night. They are not so frightening as the dreams of the ghostly woman who may or may not be my sister, nor are they so viscerally disturbing as the repressed memories of my childhood that occasionally reveal themselves to me.

They are troubling, nonetheless. In one, I am standing in the forest, but instead of a dimly lit path, I am in a clearing. The woman in front of me is not the ghost of Annie but the image of Minerva Montclair, the young girl murdered by Eliza Carlton in a fit of jealous rage. She dances around a fountain that resembles the statue of the wrathful Moses in the courtyard of the Greenwood estate in Savannah. When she turns, she wears Cecilia Ashford's face and speaks with Olivia Jensen's voice.

"You're just as bad as they are."

Before I can ask what she means by that, I find myself sitting across from Sean O'Connell at the café in Boston. He regards me with the same resigned and vaguely frustrated look he gives me when we actually meet.

"You don't want the answer to this question, Mary ," he says. "You're not strong enough to handle it."

I begin to insist that I do want the answer, but once more the scene changes. This time, I'm in my mother's home the night of her death. When she really dies, I am in the living room waiting for the nurse to tell me that she's passed, but in this dream, I am in the room with her. She is pale and paper-thin, but her eyes are open and they stare at me with the same emotionless gaze she wears when she nearly drowns Annie in front of me.

"You're the same as me, Mary. You just hide it better."

This time, I do speak. "That's not true, Mother. I escaped your influence. I became a good person who is kind to others and strong enough to stand up for the weak. I did this despite your best efforts to stop me."

I open my eyes, and I'm in my bed in the Jensen house. I lay where I am for a while, unsure if I've really woken or if this is the dream switching scenes again. When my phone alarm goes off, I realize that I have, in fact, woken.

I take my time showering this morning. The children were up late last night, and I'm obviously not going to hold them accountable to their schoolwork for a while, so I am in no hurry to wake them for breakfast.

It occurs to me as I head downstairs that I don't ask Catherine what arrangements she's made for Frederick's burial. I still don't understand why she took the children with her. Perhaps she needed emotional support and didn't feel comfortable taking her new lover with her. After overhearing her conversation with Olivia, I believe she has some love for her children, but it's quite easy to imagine that she is both too selfish and too foolish to understand how traumatic planning their father's funeral would be.

In any case, I must find out when the funeral is so I can have the children ready to attend. I will ask her when I see her next.

Sophie is already in the kitchen making coffee and breakfast. I see that she's making enough for me and smile wryly. "We are both creatures of habit, aren't we?"

"Sometimes I think it's all we have," she agrees. "How did you sleep?"

"Not well."

She chuckles mirthlessly. "Me either. This is just terrible business all around. How are the children?"

I sigh. "Not well."

She shakes her head and carries the platter to the dining room. I follow her, and when she sets the food and coffee down, she says, "It's going to be harder on Olivia."

I have come to that realization myself, but I don't want Sophie to know about the argument I overhear last night, so I reply, "Oh? Why do you say that?"

She sips her coffee and sighs. "The two of them didn't get on well. Haven't for years."

"Olivia and Frederick."

Sophie nods. "Yes. It started around three years ago." She frowns. "When that witch Strauss began seeing them."

My eyes widen. I'm ashamed to admit that a small part of me leaps with joy at the chance to prove that Strauss is evil. "Why? What did Strauss do?"

Sophia scoffs. "She's a therapist. They're an evil lot, all of them. Taking advantage of people at their most vulnerable. Strauss saw dollar signs in Frederick, and she latched onto him like a tick so she could suck him dry. She started nice at first. They always do. Showed concern for him and his family. Offered her services to Catherine and the children." She shakes her head. "I warned Catherine not to do it. I told her that Strauss was a parasite, but…" she sighs. "I'm only a cook. What do I know?"

"What did Strauss do?"

"She poisoned Olivia against her father. I don't know what she said or how she did it. I only know that after Olivia started seeing Strauss, her opinion toward her father soured. They used to get on famously. She was a real daddy's girl, she was. Then Strauss arrives, and poof. All of that goes away." She sniffs. "It's so sad. Olivia must feel so guilty that her father died with them fighting all the time."

I think of her announcement the night before, that she was glad it hurt when Frederick died, and I wonder. Still, I have an easier time believing that Strauss is manipulating the family than I do believing that a sixteen-year-old girl sneaked out of the movie theater and shot her father, then sneaked back into the movie theater.

At once, relief floods me. Of course, she didn't. Ethan would have reacted to that. He might not have told me or anyone else that Olivia left the theater, but he would have behaved differently around his sister. There would have been some indication that he wasn't comfortable around her if it was even possible that she could be responsible for her father's murder.

That relief allows me to focus my full ire on Strauss. "What an evil woman."

Sophie scoffs. "You don't know the half of it."

"What don't I know?" I press.

She looks at me shrewdly for a moment. I worry that I've pushed too far and say, "I'm sorry. It's not any of my business. I don't mean to pry."

"No, that's all right," she says. "Actually, I think you should know. Even though I've been here since the children were born, I'm still just the cook. You're the governess. You have more say over them than I do."

I remember how Catherine took them away from me without concern for my feelings on the subject yesterday and privately think that Sophie might have more faith in me than she should. I don't say that out loud, of course.

"You need to protect them," she says, almost fiercely. "You might be the only one who can." She taps her fingers on the table, then says, "Come on. I need to show you something."

She stands abruptly and stalks out of the room. I rush to follow. Sophie is the same height as me, but I have to jog to keep up with her as she heads to the servants' quarters. She glances around nervously to make sure no one is following us, and I feel my heart quivering with excitement. Whatever she's about to show me, I feel it will be the crucial evidence I need to solve this case.

We reach her room, and she says, "Wait here."

She opens the door, and I stand in the hallway, trying to collect myself. What could she have found? Does she have proof that Strauss is responsible for Frederick Jensen's murder?

She comes outside after a few minutes and thrusts a folder into my hands. "Hid it so well I nearly couldn't find it," she says. She meets my eyes and says sternly, "You can't tell anyone what I'm about to tell you."

"Not a soul," I promise.

I feel a slight touch of guilt at that, because if what I hear is the proof I need to bring Frederick's killer to justice, then I will tell Sean and Dubois, but I don't want to quibble over that right now. Surely, Sophie wants justice for Frederick.

She takes a deep breath and glances around once more to make sure no one's listening. Then she says, "What I've just handed you are Mr. Jensen's private therapy notes. I took them from Doctor Strauss's briefcase after one of their home sessions."

My eyes widen. She misunderstands the reason for my shock and says, "I had to! She was threatening to blackmail him!"

"You heard this?"

She nods and says, "I did. I was about to knock on the door to tell him that dinner was ready when I overheard him begging her not to do it."

"Do what?"

"Well, I didn't know at first. He just said, ‘Please don't do this,' and Strauss replied, ‘You have the power to stop me. You know what you need to do.' Then Mr. Jensen says, ‘If you release this information, you'll ruin me.'"

"Oh, goodness!"

"Yes. And she—the evil witch—she says, ‘As I said, you know what you need to do.' Then she walks out of the room. I just manage to flee before she catches me. She stays for dinner, and while she's smiling and making nice to Catherine and the kids like the witch she is, I sneak into her briefcase and steal that file." She grins. "You should have seen the look on her face when it went missing." Her smile fades. "Of course, she took it out on Frederick. She thought he was the one who took the notes. So she poisoned the family against him. Not just Olivia, but Ethan and Catherine." Sophie shakes her head, then grips my wrist fiercely. "Keep them safe from her. Whatever you have to do, protect those children!"

"I will," I promise. "If it's the last thing I do." I put my arm on Sophie's shoulder. "You're a good woman, Sophie. Thank you for sharing this with me."

She brightens and clasps my hand. "You're a good woman too, Mary. I'm glad to know you."

It's been a very long time since I've had a true friend. Sean is an associate, and I could see us becoming friends eventually, but we have a long way to travel before we arrive there. But I feel a kinship with Sophie that I haven't felt with anyone since Annie disappeared. Perhaps fate will see fit to allow us to maintain our relationship after the dust clears from this mystery.

I take the folder to my room while Sophie rushes to the kitchen to clear our uneaten breakfast and make some for Catherine and the children. As I walk, my excitement grows.

Count your days, Eleanor Strauss. Justice has come for you.