Chapter Twenty-One
Twenty-One
I understand now why it meant so much to Bertram that I’d believe him about Annie.
He’s used to being surrounded by yes-men who will nod along to whatever he’s saying, whether they care or not.
Unlike them, I don’t want anything from him, except for the one thing I’m bad at giving myself: the truth.
I’ve taken for granted how easily everyone has always believed me in recent years.
The teachers, the fellow yoga students in my Sunday class, my daughter.
Speak with enough confidence and they’ll have no reason to doubt you.
They’ll question themselves before they entertain the idea that you did anything untoward.
But that was before I was wanted for murder.
Here in the curtained house that belongs to my dying brother, I am the most vulnerable I’ve been since the fire—which I do not tell Bertram about. I keep that memory buried deep down as always, hoping it will stay put.
Instead, I tell Bertram about the operation that Mr. X has been running for the past fifteen years, and some of the cases I’ve secretly uncovered without claiming credit.
I tell him that I was hired to prove he stole his winning app software from someone else.
But since it’s so hard to prove plagiarism, I would be better off uncovering his role in the disappearance of his ex-girlfriend, Annie.
Annie, who is still very much missing, and whose digital footprint is nonexistent.
She is brilliant, I’m learning, in the worst kind of way.
I tell him about Waylen’s involvement in my dealings with Mr. X—how he left the life years ago to live in the suburbs, but how he never truly lost his edge.
Bertram doesn’t bat an eye. He listens to everything with the quiet patience of a man who has learned not to react emotionally.
When I’m done speaking, he weighs everything I’ve said carefully. “So, you’re not a writer.”
“No.” I’m breathless, as though I’ve just run a marathon. It occurs to me that I’ve never told anyone what I do. “Technically, I’m an interior decorator.”
“And you don’t take any money for this?” he asks, an eyebrow raised.
“Not one thin dime.”
“Then why do you do it? You and this—Mr. X, was it?”
I didn’t tell him that Mr. X is my brother, or that he’s dying, although both of these things play a huge role in why I’ve just confessed so much to him. I think back on what Mr. X told me, about this mission being his gift to me, a way for me to be redeemed and then retire quietly.
This is the part I hang on to. I’ve never admitted why I do this, not even to myself.
I avert my eyes. Only for a second, but it’s long enough for Bertram to see that he’s hit a nerve.
He reaches out and takes my hands, somehow pulling my gaze back to his. “We’re trying to trust each other, remember?” he says.
“I—I’ve never told anyone what happened. I don’t think I can say the words, but I can show you.”
I lead him upstairs, and he follows without complaining about the darkness, or commenting on how, despite the boxes and old monitors and wires everywhere, there isn’t a speck of dust to be found. My brother is a fastidious housekeeper, even if his methods wouldn’t make sense to anyone else.
There’s a closet just at the top of the stairs. I turn the combination of the fireproof safe on the bottom shelf, sitting on the ground as I tug it open. Bertram sits beside me, crossing his long legs elegantly, like an exotic, deadly cat that would only be found in some untapped jungle.
My brother never told me what he kept in this safe, but I’ve always known. It is the tangible beating heart of this house, the reason he lives in shadows as he does.
I extract a stack of newspaper articles bound together by a single elastic band.
They’re in chronological order—of course they are. Yellowing and tearing at the edges. More than twenty years old.
Silently, I hand them over to Bertram. I am giving him something that I’ve never shared with my own husband, or with my daughter. I realize that I’ve wanted to share it with someone for years, but every time I came close, I ended up pushing it farther to the back of my mind.
“I’ve been trying to convince myself that this doesn’t define me,” I say. “But the more I insist that it doesn’t, the more it does.”
The headline of the top article reads: wallowa mother and father killed in fire.
I don’t read over his shoulder. Why should I, when I already know the story?
The investigation turns to suspected arson.
The couple’s two children—a boy, fourteen, and a girl, twelve—are being looked after by relatives.
Rumors abound as people speculate that the children conspired to collect their inheritance.
Turns out, the parents had a sizable fortune in the bank from a string of wise investments in a little company called Apple.
They chose to live simply, to secure the money for their kids’ future.
How could the kids do it? Did greed mean more than the lives of their parents?
Something was always off about them, the neighbors say when interviewed.
Neighbors who once waved at us, sent their kids to play in our yard, and talked to my dad about lawn care. We went from victims to monsters in a blink. Soon enough, it was like we had never been human.
Then the trials began.
Bertram stares at the headline and then at me. “Is it true?” he asks. “Did you kill your parents for the inheritance?”
It’s an accusation that has haunted me for most of my life. But the way Bertram asks it, as though he’ll accept whatever answer I give him, offers me a chance to explain that hasn’t been given to me before.
You killed them. You’re both monsters. You should be in jail.
You should be in hell. The voices all meld into one, until I can’t remember whose words belonged to whom, not that it matters.
And then my brother, taller than me, crouching down before me with his reassuring, gentle eyes.
“Don’t say anything,” he told me. “Not to anyone.”
So, I didn’t. Neither of us did. And with nowhere to go, the words have been trapped inside me.
“No,” I say, my voice hoarse. It’s as though I’m breathing in the smoke again. “Not exactly.”
Bertram sets the articles down, neatly returning them to their original pile and wrapping the elastic around them. He doesn’t read the remaining headlines. He’s telling me that he’d rather hear it from me.
“We’re trusting each other, remember?”
I nod, trying to work out how I got into this situation.
My instincts have never steered me wrong, but now I don’t know whom I can trust. All evidence leads to Waylen killing Erin Casimir.
I can’t account for his whereabouts. He’s been acting out of character lately, tracking my location and trying to scare me out of my spy work.
He’s told me that he’ll do anything for our family. Would he kill for us?
Not just that, but I believe Bertram is telling the truth about his ex-lover, Annie, being the one to wreak havoc in his life. Maybe Annie killed Skylar. Or was that Waylen, too? I can’t work it out. Too many pieces are missing.
And here before me is Bertram, the man I’ve been trying to put in jail, offering me redemption. Telling me he’ll believe whatever I say.
“I was twelve,” is what comes out. The truth, Margaux.
Of all the things you blurted out, you had to tell him the truth.
But why not? If I’m expecting him to confess his sins, then confessing mine is the least I can do, besides which, I’m desperate.
For the first time, I’m not sure if I can trust my own husband.
Elodie is being watched by the police. I don’t know if Collette is safe.
I can’t afford to hold on to my secrets anymore.
They’ve caught up with me. “My parents both died of smoke inhalation before they could get out. They never even made it to the door. The firefighters found me out on the lawn sitting under the sprinklers.”
Maybe in its own way, telling the truth is still being deceptive.
Nobody in my life knows this story—not my daughter, not my husband, not any of the Westport Elementary parents who are forever trying to out-perfect each other’s lives.
I’ve hidden the little girl I once was from everyone.
I’ve tried to kill her, exorcise her, erase her with tapping and past-life-regression therapies.
But the best I’ve been able to do is lock her away in a tornado shelter underground, where I’m the only one who ever hears her muffled screaming to be let out.
“I refused to talk for weeks,” I say. “Or maybe it was months. It was a sticky summer night when the fire happened. We kept the sprinklers on a timer because the grass kept dying in the heat. And I remember it was snowing when I went to the therapist’s office for the first time.”
I had been paraded through the offices of many child psychologists by that point, each one some brightly painted version of the one before it.
Finally, I was sent to someone who didn’t specialize in children at all, but in PTSD, trauma, and something to do with inmates—my grandmother found that last one especially important to repeat.
“She deals with prisoners, for God’s sake. Surely she can handle a little girl.”