Free A Cry In the Night by Mary Higgins Clark Page B

the foyer, bent down and opened her arms. Beth and Tina, their eyes shining from the long sleep, ran to her.
    â€œMommy, we were looking for you,” Beth said accusingly.
    â€œMe like it here,” Tina chirped in.
    â€œAnd we have a present,” Beth said.
    â€œA present? What have you got, love?”
    â€œMe too,” Tina cried. “Thank you, Mommy.”
    â€œIt was on our pillows,” Beth explained.
    Jenny gasped and stared. Each little girl was holding a small round cake of pine soap.
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    She dressed the children in new red corduroy overalls and striped tee shirts. “No school,” Beth said positively.
    â€œNo school,” Jenny agreed happily. Quickly she puton slacks and a sweater and they went downstairs. The cleaning woman had just arrived. She had a scrawny frame with incongruously powerful arms and shoulders. Her small eyes set in a puffy face were guarded. She looked as though she rarely smiled. Her hair, too tightly braided, seemed to be pulling up the skin around her hairline, robbing her of expression.
    Jenny held out her hand. “You must be Elsa. I’m . . .” She started to say “Jenny” and remembered Erich’s annoyance at her too friendly greeting to Joe. “I’m Mrs. Krueger.” She introduced the girls.
    Elsa nodded. “I do my best.”
    â€œI can see that,” Jenny said. “The house looks lovely.”
    â€œYou tell Mr. Krueger that stain on the dining-room paper was not my fault. Maybe he had paint on his hand.”
    â€œI didn’t notice a stain last night.”
    â€œI show you.”
    There was a smudge on the dining-room paper near the window. Jenny studied it. “For heaven sake, you almost need a microscope to see it.”
    Elsa went into the parlor to begin cleaning and Jenny and the girls breakfasted in the kitchen. When they were finished she got out their coloring books and crayons. “Tell you what,” she proposed, “let me have a cup of coffee in peace and then we’ll go out for a walk.”
    She wanted to think. Only Erich could have put those cakes of soap on the girls’ pillows. Of course it was perfectly natural that he’d look in on them this morning and there was nothing wrong with the fact that he obviously liked the smell of pine. Shrugging, she finished her coffee and dressed the children in snowsuits.
    The day was cold but there was no wind. Erich had told her that winter in Minnesota could range fromsevere to vicious. “We’re breaking you in easy this year,” he’d said. “It’s just middlin bad.”
    At the doorway she hesitated. Erich might want to show them around the stables and barns and introduce her to the help. “Let’s go this way,” she suggested.
    She led Tina and Beth around the back of the house and toward the open fields on the east side of the property. They walked on the crunching snow until the house was almost out of sight. Then as they strolled toward the country road that marked the east boundary of the farm, Jenny noticed a fenced-off area and realized they had come upon the family cemetery. A half-dozen granite monuments were visible through the white pickets.
    â€œWhat’s that, Mommy?” Beth asked.
    She opened the gate and they went inside the enclosure. She walked from one to the other of the tombstones, reading the inscriptions. Erich Fritz Krueger, 1843-1913, and Gretchen Krueger, 18471915. They must have been Erich’s great-grandparents. Two little girls: Marthea, 1875-1877, and Amanda, 1878-1890. Erich’s grandparents, Erich Lars and Olga Krueger, both born in 1880. She died in 1941, he in 1948. A baby boy, Erich Hans, who lived eight months in 1911. So much pain, Jenny thought, so much grief. Two little girls lost in one generation, a baby boy in the next one. How do people bear that kind of hurt? At the next monument, Erich