It began to slide back almost at once.

Waiting only until it was open just far enough, Anahera slipped through, then told Jemima to close it.

Four huge black dogs boiled out of the trees at that moment, snarling and barking and heading straight for her Jeep.

64

“Jesus, Jemima.”

“Drive,” the other woman ordered. “They’ll go for the people at the gate. Matthew assured me they know not to cross that barrier.”

Anahera wasn’t so certain of that, but she kept on driving as, behind her, the gate slid shut again. Barely in time. One of the dogs slammed into it, its jaws wide open. No wonder Jemima was keeping her kids indoors.

Parking her Jeep right by the front door of the glass and timber guesthouse, Anahera opened her own door with care. She couldn’t hear the dogs, but she still moved as fast as humanly possible to grab the drinks and cakes. Jemima was waiting for her in the doorway, sea green eyes jaggedly brilliant in a face as pale as porcelain.

“Here, I’ll take those,” she said with a graciousness that seemed habitual.

“Those dogs, Jem.” Anahera shut the door behind herself, then took the drinks from Jemima. “I can see they’re doing a good job, but they’re vicious.”

“Matthew’s going to pick them up tomorrow,” Jemima told her, leading them into a large living area made warm and snug by the crackling fire in the hearth.

Her face changed as she entered, her expression brighter and happier. “Sweethearts, look what my friend Anahera’s brought! Treats!”

The two children jumped up from where they were playing with Lego bricks on the floor. Fidgeting, their small faces aglow, they nonetheless remembered to say, “Thank you!” to Anahera before they reached out to pick a cupcake each from the box their mother held open.

“I’m going to put your drinks here,” Jemima told the children, placing the hot chocolates on a coffee table by the play area. “You both know you have to sit at this table to eat and drink.”

Two happy nods, faces already smooshed with pink and purple frosting.

Putting the extra cakes on the dining table to the far right of the ­open-­plan space, Anahera following suit with their coffees, Jemima smiled at her children and it was incredible, the fierce power with which she held back her sadness and grief in their presence. “If I leave these cakes near them, they won’t be able to resist, and their little tummies can only hold so much.”

Anahera took off her anorak and hung it on the back of the chair before taking a seat across from Jemima. “They’re sweet kids.” Well raised rather than polite robots too scared to step a foot out of line. Currently, they were giggling as they painted mustaches onto each other’s upper lips with the frosting from their cupcakes.

Jemima’s face crumpled for a second before she slapped the cheerful mask back on. “I don’t know what this will do to them,” she said in a low tone that wouldn’t reach Jasper and Chloe. “To grow up being known as the children of a serial killer?” Her anguish was a raw wound. “Daniel’s coming back into the country tomorrow to deal with some urgent business matters. He said he’ll fly us out of here. At least I can take my babies away from the center of it all.”

“Good. You don’t need to have that ugliness on your doorstep.” Those vultures wouldn’t be leaving anytime soon. “It’s good of Daniel to offer to fly you out.” The news choppers did the occasional flyover here, but they tended to concentrate on the activity at the Baker house and the crime scene in the bush behind ­it—­Vincent’s private burial plot. If Daniel timed it right, he could be in the air and away before anyone realized he wasn’t alone in the chopper.

“Vincent never had a nice thing to say about Daniel, but he doesn’t want anything from us. When the police came and said we couldn’t stay in the house, I didn’t know what to do, but Daniel and Keira were there minutes later.”

Anahera figured Daniel must’ve been tipped off by a police ­contact—­and she also figured she knew the name of that police contact. “Daniel’s not a bad guy.” Arrogant, yes, but when it mattered, he stepped up.

Jemima squeezed her takeout cup, denting it. “My family wanted to fly in the instant they heard, but I told them to stay away. They came anyway, are waiting in Christchurch.” She swallowed. “I had to get things straight in my head first. I couldn’t deal with my father telling me what to do while my sisters organized my life.”

Anahera sat back and let Jemima talk, and she learned that Vincent had chosen the most ­soft-­spoken and submissive of four sisters, the woman least likely to question his actions.

“I went along with everything,” Jemima whispered. “The nights when he just disappeared, the days when he’d shut the door to his basement workroom and ignore me and the children, the way he’d be so cold to me when we were alone and so warm and affectionate when we were out in ­public—­I pretended that was the real Vincent. Because that was the Vincent who courted me. Who married me.”

Anahera nodded. “I understand.”

The other woman’s expression fractured, her lips quivering. “You’re the only person who can say that and that I know actually does understand. Thank you for sharing your secret with me. I won’t tell anyone.”

It was such a stark thing to say, stripped of all pretense. “And whatever you tell me,” Anahera replied, “it stays between us. No matter what.”

“You’re with that cop.”

“I’m my own person.” She also understood the ugly truth that ­long-­term abuse had an insidious impact on the psyche; no one who hadn’t walked in Jemima’s shoes had the right to judge her. “My father beat my mother for most of their life together. And she stayed. She even stuck up for him against people who called him a bully. She told them he was a wonderful husband and father.”

Jemima stared at Anahera. “Did she ever get away?”

“Five years before she died. The first time he punched me.” Anahera could still feel her head snapping back with violent force, her body flying back. “I got into the middle of a fight between them and he went for me. I never knew before that day why he’d never once touched me even in the worst of his rages. Because that was my mother’s bright line.” The one thing Haeata would not forgive.

Jemima frantically wiped away the tears rolling down her face, shooting a quick look toward the children to make sure they hadn’t seen. “I was getting to that point,” she whispered. “He’d started to ignore the children more and more except when he needed to bring them out for a photo op.

“They’d run to him for hugs ­and…” She stared at nothing for long minutes. “Vincent never yelled, but he’d be so cold, like our babies were stray animals who had nothing to do with him.” Her fingers clenched again around the takeout cup. “At night, in the darkness, I lie awake and I wonder if I would have left him if he’d carried on that way. Or if I would’ve stayed while my children suffered.”

Glancing at the two ­frosting-­smudged kids currently sitting with their elbows braced on top of the coffee table while they drank their hot chocolates, Anahera said, “As far as I can see, they’re happy and ­well-­adjusted. Whatever Vincent withheld, you gave them in spades.”