Fortune

As if in answer to her silent plea, Madeline heard the slam of car doors. She raced to the window in time to see Adam and Pierce drive off.

Finally! Heart in her throat, she flew to the door, into the hall and down the stairs. At the foyer she stopped, forcing herself to appear calm on the off chance someone was about. She made her way to the study, closing and locking the door behind her.

She leaned against the door, letting out a breath she hadn’t even realized she held. She drew another. Across the room hung a small, exquisitely rendered landscape. Behind it, a wall safe.

She stared at the painting, working up her courage. For four months she had used every excuse to be in here when Pierce opened the safe; she had even used an insatiable need for sex, all in an attempt to learn the combination. She had watched, she had listened and counted and prayed.

And she had learned it, number by excruciating number. Or she thought she had.

Dear God, please let me have the right numbers. Don’t let me be wrong.

Madeline crossed to the painting. She swung it away from the wall. Her hands shook. They were clammy, slick with sweat. She spun the wheel to the first number, then the next and next. She grasped the handle and pulled.

It didn’t open.

She almost cried out in disappointment, physically biting back the sound. Without money, she couldn’t go as far as the corner. Without money, there was no way she could get Grace away from here, no way she could hide and protect her.

Stay calm, Madeline. Take a deep breath and try again.

She did.

The safe opened.

Light-headed with fear and relief, she reached inside. She moved aside a black velvet pouch emblazoned with Monarch’s “M” logo, counted out five thousand dollars, enough, she thought, to get her and Grace far from here and settled, until she could find a job.

She stuffed the bills into one of her cardigan’s deep pockets, then moved the pouch back to its original position and started to close the safe door. Her gaze landed on that black velvet bag.

What was in it?

On impulse, she opened the bag and dipped her hand inside—and pulled out a fistful of sparkling, fiery gems. Diamonds, rubies and sapphires. She caught her breath, stunned. By their beauty. By their heat. For even though they were cold against her palm, their fire made them hot.

What were they doing here? she wondered, selecting a particularly large, brilliant stone and holding it up to the light. Why weren’t they in the store’s vault, where they belonged? There they would be both safer and fully insured. It didn’t make sense. Adam and Pierce were nothing if not shrewd businessmen.

Madeline frowned at her own thoughts. She didn’t have time for this; what Pierce and Adam did with the store’s property wasn’t her concern. It never had been. She dropped the stones back into the bag, then shoved the bag back into the safe.

Take them.

The thought raced into her head, and with it a feeling, sharp, overwhelming—that she would need them, that Grace would need them. Madeline shook her head, denying the thought, the feeling. She was overwrought and anxious; she wasn’t thinking clearly. If she took the stones, Pierce and Adam would be that much more determined to find her. They would have that much more to hold against her in a court of law.

She swung the safe shut, made sure it was locked, turned and started out of the study. Halfway across the room she stopped, frozen, blinded by an indistinct but chilling image. She saw snow. And blood spilling across a gleaming floor. She saw the twinkle of gems and the glitter of ice. Her mouth went dry; sweat beaded on her upper lip. She saw dark water sucking someone down, swallowing them whole.

She began to shake. Take the gems. Take them now.

With a cry of pure terror, Madeline spun back to the safe, reopened it and grabbed the pouch. She slammed the safe shut and as quickly as she could, twisted the dial, then eased the painting into place.

She couldn’t turn back now.

Clutching the pouch to her chest, she ran from the library. Hysteria tugged at her; she fought it. She had to stay calm if she was to protect Grace. Today she was taking the first step, but every day after would prove as much of a challenge.

No one was about. Madeline supposed the housekeeper had already left. She made her way up to the nursery. She crossed to Grace’s bed.

“Baby,” she murmured, shaking her daughter gently, “sweetheart, it’s time to get up.”

Grace whimpered and rolled over, crushing her favorite teddy bear to her chest. Madeline shook her again. “Come on, sweetie, we’re going on a trip. Time to wake up.”

Grace yawned. She cracked open her eyes. Her lips curved up. “Hi, Mommy.”

Madeline’s heart turned over. She never got enough of hearing her daughter call her that, never got enough of that sweet, baby voice or the way the little girl looked at her—as if Madeline were the most important, the best, person in the world.

She loved Grace so much it terrified her. She prayed she was doing the right thing.

“I need you to dress, baby. Your clothes are right over there.” She pointed to the rocking chair, where she had laid out her daughter’s garments. She saw that her hand shook. “Can you do that for me?”

Grace nodded and sat up; she stuck her thumb in her mouth—a habit Pierce couldn’t abide—and eyed her mother. “Mommy’s upset.”

“No, honey. Just rushed.”

“Where are we going?”

Madeline hesitated. What could she tell her daughter? That she planned to drive until she could drive no more, her only goal to put as much distance between them and the Monarchs as possible? Hardly. Instead, she tapped Grace on the nose. “It’s going to be so much fun. Just you and me.”

“Not Daddy?”

Madeline shook her head. “He has to work.”

Grace accepted her explanation without question or murmur. The truth was, Grace and Pierce weren’t especially close; he was always busy, and when he did have time for Grace he was critical—she was too loud, too messy, she didn’t pronounce words correctly. He hardly ever hugged or kissed her; he always spoke of her in terms not of love but of value. To the family. To the business.

“Not Grandfather or Grandmother?”

Madeline shook her head. “Nope.”

Grace curved her arms around herself. “Not brother?”

“Not brother,” Madeline answered sharply. Never brother. “We’re going to have such fun, just you and me.”

“Okay.” Yawning again, Grace climbed out of bed. “Clothes over there?”

“That’s right, honey.” Madeline went to the nursery door, stopping when she reached it. “You get dressed. I’ll be right back, then I’ll help with your socks and shoes.”

“Thanks, Mommy.”

Madeline squatted and held out her arms. “I think I need a hug.”

Grace trotted over. She wrapped her chubby little arms around Madeline’s neck and squeezed. Madeline hugged her back, hard.

“I love you, sweetheart. More than anything. I always will.”

“Me, too. More than anything.”

Madeline kissed her, then stood. “I’ll be right back. Get dressed.”

Madeline ducked into the hall, glancing at her watch again as she did. Time was slipping by. Too much time. She had to put as much distance between her and this family as she could, as fast as she could. When Pierce and Adam realized what she had done, they would use their every resource to find her.

She ran to her and Pierce’s bedroom. There, she raced across to the bed and, getting down on her hands and knees, yanked the suitcases out from under. With trembling fingers she unlocked hers, looked it over to make sure nothing had been moved, then tucked the pouch of gems inside. That done, she snapped the case shut, stood and bent for the bags.

Pierce knew.

The thought came to her suddenly, with it an overwhelming feeling of dread. A sense of foreboding. She looked over her shoulder, half expecting to see him standing behind her, the expression in his eyes murderous.

The doorway was empty.

Even so, a shudder moved up her spine. He knew. Dear Jesus, he knew.

But how could he? She shook her head. If he did, he would have disturbed the contents of her suitcase. He would have confronted her.

She had to get a grip, she told herself, hoisting up the bags. She had to keep her wits about her—for Grace’s sake. And her own. If Pierce caught her, she didn’t know what he might do.

He might even kill her.

Madeline took a deep, calming breath. Twenty minutes from now she and Grace would be on the road, and on their way to starting a new life, one free of this unhappy, twisted family. Everything was going according to plan.

After peeking into the hall to make sure no one was about, she returned to the nursery. Grace was dawdling, having gotten distracted in the bathroom.

“Mommy, I brushed my teeth really good. For a long time, every tooth.”

Madeline took another deep breath. Losing her cool with her daughter would not hurry her. “Good girl,” she said with elaborate calm. “Come on now, we have to hurry.”

Grace trotted back into the room. “Why?”

Madeline held out Grace’s jumper. “Why what?”

“Why do we have to hurry?”

“Because we do.” Madeline’s voice rose; she heard the edge of hysteria in it. She fought it back and smiled at her daughter. “I’ll help you dress.”

She did and within minutes Grace was ready to go. Madeline sat her on the rug next to the packed suitcase, handed her her favorite toy, then started filling Grace’s suitcase, throwing in clothes and toiletries and toys, only the essentials and a few of Grace’s favorites.

A knock sounded at the nursery door. Madeline swung toward it, heart thundering. The knock came again.

“Mrs. Monarch? I’m leaving for the market, is there anything special you need?”

The housekeeper. She hadn’t left yet.

As if reading her mind, the woman said, “I got hung up on the phone with the plumber. They’re sending someone by this afternoon. Is there anything you need?”

Madeline struggled to find her voice. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

“Mrs. Monarch? Are you all right?”

Madeline heard the question, the concern in the other woman’s voice. Panic pumped through her; if she didn’t answer, the housekeeper would come into the nursery.

“I…I’m fine, Alice. And no, there’s nothing I need. You…you go on, we’re just fine.”

“All right, Mrs. Monarch. Oh, Mr. Monarch’s office called, looking for him. Apparently, he forgot something and is on his way home.”

Pierce? On his way home?

Madeline struggled to breathe evenly. She thanked the woman, reminded her that she and Grace would be gone to the zoo all afternoon, then waited several moments to make sure the housekeeper had left before she jumped into action.

How long? she wondered, completely panicked. How long until Pierce walked through that door? She turned back to Grace’s suitcase and did a quick inventory. She would just have to leave the rest; they would have to make do. There was no time. No time.

“Mommy!” Grace squealed with delight. “Look!”

Madeline swung around in time to see Grace emptying the pouch of gems into her lap.

With a cry, Madeline leaped across to her daughter. “No! Bad girl!” She snatched the pouch from Grace’s hands. The jewels flew, scattering across the wooden floor.

For one moment, Grace stared blankly at her, as if in shock. Then she burst into tears.

Madeline hardly ever raised her voice with Grace. She could count on one hand the times she had yelled at her.

“I’m sorry, honey. Daddy wanted us to have the pretty stones for our trip. But they’re very special, we mustn’t play with them.” She hugged her daughter. “It’s all right, sweetheart. Come, help me pick them up. Can you do that?”

Still whimpering, Grace nodded and together they retrieved the stones, put them back into the pouch, the pouch into the suitcase, Madeline painfully aware of each passing moment. She snapped the case shut, locked it this time, then did the same to Grace’s. “Come on, sweetie, time to go.”

The nursery door opened. Madeline swung toward it and froze. Not Pierce on his way home, she realized. The other Mr. Monarch. Worse, much worse.

Adam took in the scene before him, realization crossing his features. His face went from passive to enraged. “Going somewhere, Madeline, dear? On some sort of a trip?”

Madeline wetted her lips. “This isn’t what it looks like. It’s—”

“Going on a trip,” Grace chirped up, happily playing with her baby doll. “Daddy can’t come. He has to work.”

“You lying, conniving bitch.” Adam took a step toward her, his expression murderous. “So this is what you’ve been up to. This is why you’ve been such a perfect little wife. So agreeable, so helpful. You’ve been planning to steal my granddaughter.”

Madeline took a step back, heart thundering. “She’s my daughter, Adam. Mine.”

“Pretty stones,” Grace said. “Daddy sent pretty stones for our trip.”

Adam looked at Grace, drawing his eyebrows together in question, then back at Madeline. “You’re not taking her anywhere.”

“You can’t stop me.” Madeline jerked her chin up and stiffened her shoulders. “I have to protect her. I’ve tried to tell you about Griffen, I’ve tried to make you—”

“Griffen’s her brother!” Adam’s face mottled with rage. “He’s my grandson. A Monarch, for Christ’s sake!”

“But he’s unbalanced!” she cried. “He’s dangerous! You have to see it! You have to believe—”

“Believe what?” he demanded. “The delusional ravings of a woman who believes she can see the future? Please.”

“I told you what I walked in on! I didn’t imagine that. He was holding her down, he had his hand—”

“Shut up!” he shouted, nearly purple with rage. “You’re the one who’s unbalanced. You’re the one who needs help.” He advanced on her, flexing his fingers. “Let’s get this straight. I don’t give a fuck if you leave, you crazy bitch, but you’re not taking my granddaughter.”

“I have to protect her. You can’t stop me.”

“I can. And I will. She belongs here, she belongs to Monarch’s.”

“She’s not property!” Madeline cried, putting herself between Adam and Grace. “She doesn’t belong to the family business. For God’s sake, she’s a person!”

He shook his head, calm suddenly, his eyes burning with a fanatical light. “She has the gift, Madeline. You know I can’t let her go. You know I won’t.”

Madeline took a step backward, frightened. “Adam,” she said, trying to reason with him, “be realistic. How do you know she has the gift? She’s just five years old. How can you be so certain—”

Because he was crazy, she realized. Obsessed with Monarch’s. Obsessed with the notion that a “gift” was passed from one generation of Monarch daughters to the next. Twisted by the belief that without Grace, without the one with the gift, Monarch’s would crumble.

Dear God, he was as disturbed as Griffen.

She pushed past him, intent on grabbing Grace and running; he caught her arm and spun her back toward him, his expression contorted with rage and hatred. “You’re not going anywhere, Madeline.”

She yanked free of his grasp. “The hell we’re not. You’ll hear from my lawye—”

Adam struck her. His fist connected with her cheek; stars exploded in her head. With a cry of pain, she stumbled backward. She hit the edge of the dresser, and the Mother Goose lamp crashed to the floor.

“Mommy!”

Adam snatched Grace up and started for the nursery door. She began to howl and kick. “Mommy! I want my mommy!”

Madeline dragged herself to her feet, though her head felt as if it might explode with the movement. “You’re not taking my daughter from me!” She launched herself at Adam’s back, clawing at him, digging her fingernails into the side of his neck.

With a grunt of pain, he loosened his grip on Grace. She dropped to the floor. Adam swung around and struck her again. Madeline flew backward, hitting the side of the bed, falling across it. Even as she struggled to sit up, she saw him advancing on her.

He meant to kill her.

With a cry, she struggled to her feet. He knocked her back again; then fell on top of her, closing his hands around her neck. “You demented bitch. Did you really think you could get away with this? Did you really think you could take our girl away from us?”

Madeline clawed at his hands, trying to free herself. She twisted and turned and kicked; he was too strong. She heard Grace’s hysterical sobbing and her father-in-law’s grunts of exertion. She heard her own silent pleas for help.

Her lungs burned; the edges of her vision dimmed. Above her the beatific face of the stained-glass angel gazed down at her. The angel that guarded the children. The angel that had been unable to guard her child.

Madeline flailed her arms. Her right hand connected with the cut-glass vase on the nightstand by the bed. The leadedglass vase that had been a baby gift from a family friend. The one she kept filled with pink tea roses. She closed her fingers around it and swung. It connected with the side of Adam’s head. He grunted with pain and eased the grip on her neck.

Oxygen rushed into her lungs; they burned and she gasped for air. She swung the vase again. This time when it connected she heard a sickening crack. Blood flew. Grace screamed.

Adam got to his feet. Red spilled down the side of his face and across his white dress shirt. He brought a hand to the side of his head, meeting Madeline’s eyes, his expression disbelieving. Then, as if in slow motion, he fell backward, hitting the floor with a heavy thud. Blood splattered Grace, who was still screaming, one piercing shriek after another, like a burglar alarm gone berserk.

Madeline stumbled to her feet and across to Adam. He lay completely still, face deathly white, blood pooling around his head, matting his dark hair. She had killed him. Dear God, she had killed Adam Monarch.

She reached out to him, intent on checking his pulse, then stopped, realization hitting her with the force of a blow. Her vision, the one from the library earlier and the one from five years before. Blood spilling across a gleaming floor. Madeline brought her hands to her mouth. Glittering ice and freezing water, a body being sucked down.

It wasn’t over.

With a cry, she snatched her hand back. She had to go, now; before someone discovered what she had done. Before Grace was taken away from her.

Madeline scooped up her daughter, grabbed the suitcases and ran.

Part II The Traveling Show

Chapter Three

Lancaster County, Pennsylvania,1983

The countryside gently rolled. It was lush and green and fertile. Nineteenth-century farmhouses nestled amidst those rolling hills; corn silos and windmills dotted the landscape, horse-drawn buggies the roads.

It was picturesque. Quaint and beautiful. Every day tourists flocked to Lancaster County to soak up the atmosphere and to relive—if only for an hour or two—the ways of an earlier century.

Seventeen-year-old Chance McCord had experienced all of living in the nineteenth century that he could stand. Quaint and picturesque made him want to puke. He feared if he spent one more day in this all-for-one, one-for-all, plain-ways hell, he would go completely, fucking out of his mind.

Chance strode across his sparsely furnished bedroom to the open window, stopping before it and gazing out at the evening. He wanted to wear his blue jeans. He wanted to listen to rock’n’roll and watch TV. He wanted to hang out with his friends—hell, or anyone else who thought and felt as he did. Dear God, he even longed for school. The Amish didn’t believe in schooling for children his age. By sixteen, Amish children were fulfilling their duty to the family and community by working on the farm. He had been fulfilling his duty for a year now; damn but he hated cows.

Chance braced his hands on the windowsill and breathed in the mild, evening air. A year ago he wouldn’t have believed it possible to long for the big, rambling high school in north L.A. where he had always thought of himself as a prisoner. He wouldn’t have believed it possible to wish to be sitting in first-period English with old man Waterson droning on about some poet who had died long before the birth of the electric guitar.

Now, Chance knew what it was to be a prisoner.

If he didn’t escape, he would shrivel up and die.

It wasn’t that his aunt Rebecca—his mother’s sister—or her husband, Jacob, were bad people. Quite the contrary, they were good ones—to a fault. They had taken him in when his mother had died and his wealthy father—if Chance could even call him that, he had never even acknowledged his existence—had refused to take him. They had made room for him in this house, though with four children of their own it hadn’t been easy.

And it wasn’t that they hated him, though it often felt like it. They simply had their beliefs, and those beliefs were ironclad. They expected him to believe, and live, as they did.

He couldn’t do that. It wasn’t in him.

Chance began to pace, feeling as he often did, like a caged animal. They had buggied to town today, he, Uncle Jacob and Samuel, his aunt and uncle’s ten-year-old son. There, Chance had seen it. A traveling carnival, complete with a Ferris wheel and a fortune-teller. A traveling show, the kind whose troupe went from town to town, the kind of show Chance didn’t even know existed anymore.

An opportunity, he’d thought. Maybe.

While Jacob had been completing his business, he had looked it over, taking Samuel with him. When Jacob found them, he had been furious, though he hadn’t raised his voice. The things he had said to Chance had hurt, though Chance had hidden it; the things his uncle had left unsaid, the way he had looked at Chance, had cut him to his core.

Later, Chance had heard his aunt and her husband arguing.

Chance crossed to the window, looking toward town. In the distance he could see the faint glow of the carnival’s neon light. Frustration balled in the pit of his gut. Regret with it. He had brought tension to this house, had brought friction—between his aunt and her husband, between the children and their parents, the family and a community that didn’t like or trust outsiders.

He was an outsider here.

He always would be.

Chance rested his forehead against the windowsill, thinking of freedom, thinking of traveling from town to town with no one telling him what he could think or how he should act.

A traveling show. An opportunity. A way out.

His heart began to pound. He didn’t fit in here, he never would. The feeling wasn’t a new one; he had never fit in, had always been an outsider, even with his mother in L.A. But he had big plans, dreams that he intended to make reality.

His mother. As always when he thought of her, her image filled his head. He pictured her pretty face and smile, remembered the faraway look she so often had, recalled her habit of staring into the distance just over his right shoulder. With her image came a tightness to his chest, a pinch, an ache. Chance fisted his fingers against the smooth, cool glass. Connie McCord had longed for so many things, things life had kept beyond her reach, things death had denied her ever obtaining.

They wouldn’t remain beyond his reach. He knew what he wanted, what he needed and deserved. He would grab it with both hands. He would not end up like his mother, always disappointed and unfulfilled, always on the outside looking in.

He would not die without having obtained all that he desired.