Catching the Wind(93)

“You’re not climbing anything,” Lucas said as he stepped out of the rented BMW. He hurried around the car to open her door.

She stood up beside him. “My head feels fine now.”

“Thanks to the ibuprofen.”

Quenby lifted her fingers to her lips, glancing toward one of the trees. “Listen.”

Someone giggled, up under the cover of leaves, and Lucas stepped toward the hedge. “It sounds like a monkey.”

“Hello,” Quenby called out.

A boy somersaulted over the lowest branch like an acrobat and dangled off it from his knees, his head hanging precariously close to the ground. Quenby held her breath as he flipped like the wakeboarder back in Florida. Thankfully, he landed on his feet as well.

“Bravo,” Quenby said with a clap, stepping toward the tree.

He held out his hand to shake hers. “I’m Elias.”

“I’m Quenby, and this is Lucas.”

The boy didn’t acknowledge Lucas.

“Do you live in Adler House?” Quenby asked.

He studied her face as if he was trying to decipher her words.

The curtain of leaves parted again, and a girl with blonde pigtails stuck her head out between them. “He doesn’t know much English.”

Quenby smiled at her. “We’re looking for the woman who owns Adler House.”

“Ms. Hannah?”

Her pulse raced. In her interview with Hannah Dayne, the woman had never mentioned that she actually cared for children in her house. “Yes, is she here?”

“She’s always here.” The girl dropped to the ground and shook her hand like Elias had done. “I’m Maya, from Syria.”

“It’s very nice to meet you, Maya. How long have you been in England?”

“A year and four days. Ms. Hannah said I could stay here as long as I’d like.”

Quenby pointed back toward Lucas. “My friend and I are trying to find a girl who was lost a long time ago.”

The girl said something to Elias in another language. Then he jumped up and grasped the bottom branch of the tree, weighing it down. He pointed at Quenby and then at the tree. “Come.”

“Wait a minute.” Lucas moved forward. “The doctor said—”

“Technically, you said it, but I’ll be careful.”

“Quenby—” His words faltered. They were so close to finding Brigitte. Nothing, he seemed to realize, was going to stop her from climbing over to the other side.

Lucas reached for the branch. “I’ll go first.”

But Elias scowled at him. “No man allowed.”

Maya apologized. “Some men . . . they hurt him before he left home.”

Quenby couldn’t imagine what both of these children had been through. Nor could she understand what evil drove a person to hurt an innocent child . . . or abandon one. Thankfully, it seemed these children had found safety here.

“Lucas is a good man,” she told Elias. “A kind one.”

She didn’t know if he understood, but she felt Lucas’s hand on her shoulder.

“Be careful, Quenby,” he whispered. “You might start liking me.”

She glanced back at him. “I’m afraid it’s already too late for that.”

She thought he might kiss her right there, but he eyed the tree instead. “I don’t want you to go over that wall alone.”

“I won’t be alone,” she said softly. “Elias and Maya will be with me.”

“But—” he started to protest again.

“If I don’t go now, the children will surely tell Brigitte. And she might run again.”

Lucas glanced at Elias. “Take care of her.”

Elias didn’t stop scowling, but he nodded.

“Do you have your phone?” Lucas asked.

Quenby checked her handbag. “I do.”

“If I don’t hear from you in thirty minutes, I’m phoning the police and an ambulance.”

“Give me forty-five.”

Maya and Elias pressed down on the lowest branch with the strength of their feet. Quenby secured the strap of her handbag over her shoulder and then, with Lucas’s help, pulled herself up onto the branch. She climbed the tree and then over the hedge to the other side.

When her feet touched the ground, she shouted to Lucas that she was fine. Then, turning, she glimpsed the expanse of the park in front of her. It was blooming pink, white, and magenta from a host of magnolia trees.

Maya was on one side of her, Elias on the other, and together they paraded through the color, toward a roof in the distance.

Moments later, when they emerged through the trees, Quenby felt dizzy. Standing before her was a house of buttercream.

“Just a second,” she said, bracing herself against one of the magnolias.

Surely there was more than one house in Yorkshire that used the honey-colored stone, but . . .

Was it possible her mother had visited here when she was a girl? Or even been raised here, as one of the fostered children?

Ivy covered part of the stone front, and the lawn around it was overgrown. The house had been expanded with a wing of a darker-colored stone that bustled toward a garden and greenhouse. It wasn’t derelict by any means, like the abandoned Mill House, but it could use some care.