Chapter 20: The Front Steps

They reached Larch Row at eleven the next morning, in a car with the heater on high.

Two police cars stood on the gravel in front of the cottage.

The staff had come out again.

The housekeeper, the cook, the two maids, the gardener and the driver stood in a row at the foot of the front steps, with their hands folded.

Nobody had told them to come.

Hayden got out first and held the door for Lydia.

She stepped onto the gravel in her flat shoes and her travel coat, with the old brass key in her pocket.

"Mrs. VanAlen," the housekeeper said.

"Good morning."

"She is packing," the housekeeper said. "She asked for twenty minutes. The detective gave her ten."

The cottage door opened.

Cissy came out first.

She wore a pale gray dress and a cardigan, and her hair was braided over one shoulder, as neat as a schoolgirl's.

A detective in a tan coat walked half a step behind her with a folder.

A uniformed officer carried one small suitcase.

Cissy was not in handcuffs.

She walked across the gravel at the pace of someone arriving at a church.

The staff watched her go by.

Not one of them said her name.

The cook turned her face away.

The gardener looked at his boots.

The driver, who had once been told to wait in the rain for forty minutes outside the hairdresser's, stared past her at the wall.

Cissy's step slowed.

She had expected something.

She had expected a hand, or a tear, or a good morning.

She got the sound of the wind in the cedar.

The detective cleared his throat.

"Miss Channing. The car is this way."

"One moment."

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Man Who Can't Let Her Go from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.