The familiar chill settles in my bones. Everyone in Lilydale knows me. Small-town insanity. Well, I will use it to my advantage. “I’m good, thank you. You know I’m writing the article on Paulie?”

The woman leans forward conspiratorially. “We all do. How exciting! The boy has come home.”

“So it would appear,” I say. “There aren’t any residents here who would have known him before he was abducted, are there? Maybe a neighbor or friend? He doesn’t remember much of anything from back then, and I’m trying to flesh out my story.”

The woman taps her chin with a pen. “I think I can do you better than that. We have Rosamund Grant here with us. She used to watch the neighborhood children back in the day. The poor kids, anyhow. They didn’t call them babysitters back then, but I suppose that’s what she was. Maybe she watched Paulie, too?”

I try to keep the excitement off my face. This might be the first uncensored, unbiased lead I’ve had. “I’d love to speak with her. I promise not to say anything upsetting.”

The woman snorts. “You don’t need to worry your pretty head about that. Mrs. Grant is an old battle-ax. She was mean back then, and she’s even crabbier now. I’d be more concerned about you.”

“Yes, Paulie had one just like that. Remember it as plain as the back of my hand. So unusual.”

I let my short sleeve drop. “Did any other kids you took care of have a similar scar?”

“Well, I suppose your beau, Deck,” she says.

I blink rapidly. “Did you used to watch him, too?”

She cackles. She’s the oldest woman I’ve ever spoken to, her back a hump that rises higher than her head as she sits bent nearly double in her wheelchair. Her eyes are bright, though. “That family would sooner die than let me within an inch of their child. Same with all of those Mill Street snoots. But I assisted Dr. Krause when the vaccinations were given. Not a nurse, exactly. Just a helper. I also cleaned the wounds when they got infected.”

“Wait,” I say, my heart pounding. Something is drifting into place, something important, but I’m too close to see it. “Dr. Krause from across the street administered the vaccinations to Paulie and the other kids?”

“None other.”

Skittering apprehension tickles my skin. “So he’d know that Deck had the scar like me and Paulie?”

“Decades ago, I suppose he knew it. No telling if he’d remember. Not everyone has a brain built like mine.” She taps her scalp, visible beneath thin wisps of white hair.

I didn’t bring a notebook. “Is it correct that none of Paulie’s family is still around?”

She squints. “It was just Virginia and Paulie, which means no Aandegs in town since 1944. I don’t blame that poor Virginia for leaving. It wasn’t her choice to get pregnant, and then her boy is snatched from her.”

My mouth drops open. “Virginia Aandeg was raped?”

Her eyes dart up, drilling into mine. “That’s not what we called it back then.”

I’m reeling. “Who raped her?”

Her face grows cagey. “I only know rumors.”

“What do the rumors say?”

“They say Stanley Lily visited many women back in the ’40s, whether they wanted him to or not.” She twists a gold ring on her knotted finger.

Sad Stanley. My brain sparks and spits. Sadistic, Sinister Stanley.

“Not just poor ladies, like Virginia. Rich ladies. Rich like Barbara Schmidt.”

I gasp and jump to my feet.

She cackles. “Maybe your Deck and Paulie Aandeg are half brothers?”

My jaw opens and closes before I find the words. “It can’t be. Deck looks exactly like his father.”

“Does he?” she asks, her grin evil.

Yes, of course he does. “Deck is Ronald’s son.”

She shrugs again. “I may have mixed up names. It was so long ago, and all those Mill Street men liked to plant their seeds far and wide back then. Plant a seed, harvest it, plant a seed, harvest it.”

She’s singing, her eyes growing rheumy. I grab her arm desperately, unwilling to get off topic. “Do you know who took Paulie?”

Her smile creases her face. “If you see pretty trinkets, don’t you take them?”

This woman is old, I remind myself. Her memories are all jumbled. She doesn’t know what she’s saying. I must stick to facts. “Mrs. Grant, do you remember where the Aandeg house was? Before it burned down?”

“South side,” she says, quick and sharp as a paring knife. “A little Baptist church stands where it used to be. The church has been empty for a few years. Guess religion couldn’t find root in that cursed soil.” She cackles again.

“Cursed how?” I ask through tight lips.

“Why don’t you ask the ghost next door?”

My breath freezes. “Excuse me?”

“You’re living next door to Johann and Minna Lily’s original home, didn’t you know? Oh, the house has been rebuilt for Stanley and Mrs. Lily, but the underground is the same. The well out back, too, though you may have to dig a bit to find that.”

Suddenly, I am no longer tethered to my own body. My eyes are sticky, but I can’t seem to blink, my chest tight but I can’t draw a breath. We’re sitting at a card table in the communal room. A nurse appears and tells Mrs. Grant it’s time for her medication. The nearby residents are watching us.

“You’ve been very helpful,” I tell Mrs. Grant, forcing my mouth to shape the words. “I won’t keep you any longer.”

Her eyes grow crafty. “You shouldn’t be working, you know.”

I feel an increasing pressure at my throat. “Excuse me?”

“Not when you’re pregnant like that. Your father-in-law won’t like it. And here’s one final piece of advice, and this one’s free: whatever you do, don’t wander into the basement.”

The spit in my mouth turns to paste. Does she mean the nursing home basement, the one below the Lily house, or my own dirt basement, the one I’ve refused to enter?

Before I can ask, she leans forward, a shadow falling across her ax of a nose. “I’ll give you one hundred dollars for that baby.”

Her cackling hooks my skin as I stumble out of the nursing home.

CHAPTER 41

Have I underestimated the power of this town, been overconfident in my ability to bust free? If Stanley is a serial rapist—and Paulie Aandeg’s father—and the Mill Street families are covering for him, how far would they go? Would they have murdered Virginia Aandeg after they’d shuttled Paulie—the only evidence of Stanley’s crime—out of town, destroying any chance of her turning in her rapist? And if so, if he’s really Paulie, how much danger is Kris Jefferson—walking proof of the bloodline—in?

Or is Rosamund Grant simply a crazy old lady, stirring up a kettle of trouble?

I’m hurrying toward my house, walking as fast as I can without exploding into a run, struggling not to shatter as I go. I don’t look around. I certainly do not want to talk to anyone. So when the shape separates from the tree and glides toward me, I turn my face away.