Lost Among the Living(46)

She was gleeful about the money, of course, but there was something else she wouldn’t tell me. She’d give me her suspicious, narrow-eyed looks and dismiss me early: “We’re finished, Manders. Go away.” I was no longer allowed to go through her correspondence, and once I even caught her using that most hated instrument, the telephone.

“You can tell me, you know,” I said to her, exasperated at last. “I’m quite capable of being rational.”

“In good time,” Dottie said. “Things are delicate at the moment, and I must handle them myself.”

I couldn’t help it. “Is she pretty, at least?”

She pressed her lips together, but she considered the question. “Men put far too much importance on beauty,” she said at last.

“Oh, no.” I groaned. “Please tell me that money isn’t the only factor you’re considering. Tell me she’s kind. He deserves someone kind.”

“Then you should have married him yourself,” Dottie snapped back. “It would have been perfect. You had every opportunity.”

I stood and put the cover over my typewriter, since she had dismissed me for the day. “I’m already married,” I said.

“Manders,” she said, in a tone that warned me I was going to hate whatever came next. “You are capable of thinking clearly from time to time, but in this matter a more sentimental idiot I have never known. If the War Office never gave you a death certificate, you should have pressed them to give you one. A sensible girl needs a widow’s pension and the freedom to marry another husband, or she may as well walk into the Thames.”

“Thank you for the insight,” I said coldly, “but I’m afraid I’m not capable of avarice when it comes to my husband’s disappearance.”

“That makes you poor, not morally superior,” Dottie replied, “as I’d have told you from the first if you’d asked me.”

I left without saying much further, but I wondered—was that what Dottie wanted? For me to ask her advice? I dismissed the idea as preposterous. I was her paid companion and favorite outlet for her disappointments, nothing more.

I wrote Colonel Mabry, care of his hotel in the village, and made my request for Alex’s records. I received a brief reply stating that he would do what he could for me, though he feared I would be disappointed in the results. It seemed he thought a lady had no use for a war record. I thanked him and asked him to write me when he had an update.

That night, when I finally slept, I dreamed again, vivid and wild. I was in the woods, in the cold, the frost cracking beneath my feet. My hands and toes ached; my lips would not move. Through the trees, splitting the black, cold air, came a whistle: high, faint yet disturbingly shrill. She’s calling him, a voice in my mind said. She’s calling him. It’s time to run.

I turned, though I did not know which direction to take. Still, I tried to move, my legs pushing slowly as the whistle died off far behind me. Something would come now, something would move through the trees, large and vicious—her dog, her protector. Princer. I tried and tried to run.

But the footsteps that approached behind me were human.

Look at me, Jo, said Alex.

I put my hands to my ears to block him out, kept my gaze forward. Still I could hear his footsteps, his voice.

Martin was wrong. Alex’s voice sliced the frigid air. There was blood in the cockpit. Blood and brains. Turn around, Jo, and look at me.

I could not shake him. I tried to run harder, but my motions slowed as if I stood in quicksand. I tried to sob, but only a dry sound came from my throat. And somewhere off in the woods, the trees shook. Something large was coming.

Look at me, Jo, Alex said again and again as the thing came closer. Look at me. Look at me—

I jerked awake, gasping for air, my hands over my ears as I lay in bed. I was cold, horribly cold, my fingers and toes numb as they had been in the dream. A clock chimed downstairs, the sound distant and dreary. Far off outside the window a dog was barking in a deep, throaty voice that echoed through the trees.

Gripping my twisted blankets in fingers that could not feel, I turned to my side and drew my knees up. My hair was damp and chill. I’m tired of this, I thought dully. I’m so tired of the fear, of the pain.

Forget.

Where is your Mother?

I blinked as my eyes discerned something in the darkness. Alex’s camera case stood in the middle of the bedroom floor, shrouded in shadow, its lid open. When I had gone to sleep, it had been in its place against the wall next to the wardrobe, closed.

I stared at it for a long time, my eyes aching and dry.

Come back to me, Alex.

He never would. He would haunt me for the rest of my life, tearing me apart by day and stalking after me, bloody and broken, in my dreams.

Come home.

Dawn light began to tinge the room, and I sat up, swinging my stiff legs out of the bed. I needed to move. Anything would be preferable to this.

I dressed quickly, then closed the camera case—the surface of the leather was chilled—and picked it up. I picked up the tripod in my other hand.

In for a penny, in for a pound.

I left the house and walked into the woods.





CHAPTER NINETEEN



Thirty minutes later, I stood on a tree-lined lane to the east of Wych Elm House, adjusting the camera on the tripod. There was frost on the ground and the wind bit my skin, but the sting of the cold had helped dissipate the nightmare and settle my mind.