Chapter Nineteen
Iarrive at the hospital in the early evening after ordering a car to London, adding the cost to the PETER PAYBACK note in my phone.
Even if I failed in my mission here, I can’t let myself go home poorer for it.
It will be hard enough to put myself back together after I eventually shatter into a million pieces.
Because that’s how I feel—like there are fissures running through every part of me, and sooner or later, I’ll fall apart in a catastrophic shower of glass.
I’ve been a mess all day. I can’t eat. Can’t stop crying. I even vomited at one point, overwhelmed by the swirl of emotions in my body. I’m a failure. A fraud. I’m trying to do good, and instead I hurt the people I care about most.
Like Isla.
Like Connor.
Leaving Wickham is the only way to salvage this whole horrible situation.
Connor was right; if I stay and he exposes me, Peter could get in serious trouble.
There may be no love lost between us, but that doesn’t mean I want to see him put in jail or charged with a crime.
Even if I think he deserves it a little bit, Whitney certainly doesn’t.
Keeping my head down, I enter the hospital and head straight for the elevator, finding Isla’s floor like a carrier pigeon flying to its coop.
I wish I had a better message to bring her, but I’ll have to tell her I failed.
Still, I need to see her one last time before I leave.
She has to know how badly I fucked everything up, if only so she’ll understand how hard I’ve been trying to get it right.
Not that she can hear me, but I need to get it out.
Will purging my mistakes make me feel better? Probably not.
But I’m doing it anyway.
I find her room and slip inside before coming to a complete stop.
Peter Vale is sitting at his younger daughter’s bedside, watching her immobile body like the force of his concentration alone could wake her up at any moment.
He glances in my direction and stands, his expression thunderous as he approaches.
“What are you doing here?” His harsh voice has me on the verge of tears, but I refuse to fall apart in front of this cruel man.
“I came to see her.”
“Why? Have you discovered something? You should’ve called me.
Our time is limited. Tomorrow is our last chance to file a formal injunction and stop the charges.
How are you going to help us save Isla?” Peter is breathing hard, and there’s a wild look in his eyes.
Like he knows his entire world is going to come crumbling down around him if his daughter is arrested for killing her best friend.
“I don’t know, okay?” I’m yelling, and I don’t even care.
He’s pushed me too far, though I was already on the brink of despair before I got here.
“I don’t know what to do anymore. All I’ve done is figure out who didn’t do it.
It wasn’t Priya or Abigail or Julian or Connor.
It definitely wasn’t Sophia or any of the Harringtons. ”
Peter pounces on this information like a cat does a mouse. “You say it wasn’t Julian, but what about Max? I haven’t been able to stop thinking about what you told me.”
I throw up my hands, moving past him toward the windows, trying to put a little distance between us.
Peter’s intensity is stifling, a fire taking up all the oxygen in the room.
“He definitely hates you, but that doesn’t explain how Emily ended up dead.
Even if Mr. Ashworth wanted to get to you through Isla, I’d expect some sort of white-collar kidnapping scheme, or maybe he’d send Whitney some deepfakes of you with another woman.
You know, to retaliate for your super funny joke at the last reunion,” I explain with a roll of my eyes.
“The reunion.” Peter scrubs a hand along his jaw, lost in thought. “Right.”
He joins me at the window and stands there silently, staring out at the bleak cityscape like he can’t bear to look at me.
I study his profile, noting the way his once-sharp jaw is starting to soften around the edges.
The version of Peter I’m most familiar with is the one in the picture of the four of us under the tree.
All this time, I’ve been visualizing a ghost when I think of him.
That man doesn’t exist anymore. Hasn’t for fifteen years.
Now the man beside me is a different kind of specter. Haunted, rather than haunting.
“You didn’t happen to hear anything else about the reunion, did you?” he finally asks.
“You spreading rumors about a man’s loyal wife having an affair kind of stole the spotlight that night.” My sarcasm is on full display, because I am so over this entire thing. The back-and-forth and the secrets and lies. It’s exhausting.
Peter whirls to face me, clearly frustrated. “You think you’re so clever, Belinda, but not everything is as simple as you make it out to be. Max Ashworth’s histrionics served a higher purpose that night.”
“So what, stroking your ego is a higher purpose now?” My voice drips with disgust. “Sometimes I wonder what Mom ever saw in you …”
Peter storms toward me, and I flinch, fear streaking through my blood.
I’m afraid of this man, my father, for the first time in my life.
I scramble to the other side of Isla’s bed, using it as a shield.
He stays on his side of the bed, but his expression is enraged.
We glare at each other, and I refuse to be the one who looks away first. Until my phone buzzes with a text notification.
The first one I’ve received all day. It’s a message from Sophia.
Watson:Statue is George Canterbury. Died in 2008. Mom wouldn’t say more, just that Peter Vale led the fundraising for the memorial.
George. The name tickles the inside of my brain, like a feather dragged against the soft skin of a palm. Then all at once, it’s like someone flips that feather around and jabs me with the pointy end.
George and Daphne, 1994.
The photo in the library at the Pembrokes’ house. Whitney’s friend Daphne was a Canterbury before she was a Pembroke.
I glance up from my phone to find Peter staring lovingly at Isla, all the ire of a moment before replaced with worry and fear. “Does the name George Canterbury mean something to you?”
The effect is immediate. Peter drops his head, and his shoulders start to shake. Is he laughing at me and my incompetence?
But then he makes a weird noise in his throat before quietly saying, “George Canterbury. I should have known it would come back to him eventually. Why are you asking?” He presses his fingers to his forehead and starts rubbing at his temple, his sharp features in shadow.
“Isla was making notes in the back of her yearbook, about the llamas from 1998. Canterbury was one of the names on her list, and it took me until just now to figure out who he was.” Sophia’s timing couldn’t have been more perfect.
“The statue in the alumni garden, and … he knew Mom, right? There’s a photo of your class, and his arm is around her shoulders. ”
Peter lets out a ragged sigh, his head still bent.
When he finally looks up at me, I see he wasn’t laughing at all.
His eyes are red and filled with tears, and he looks at least twenty years older.
It’s not just the softened jaw. Now I see what I missed before: bruise-colored circles under his eyes, salt-and-pepper stubble on his hollow cheeks.
“Maybe this is my punishment.” He gestures toward Isla.
“Maybe when you keep a secret for such a long time, the universe decides to keep one from you in return.”
I’m confused. Is he all right? “What are you talking about? Should I get … a doctor or something?”
“No. A doctor won’t fix this. Sit down.”
I fall into a nearby chair, apprehension making me shiver.
I scoot closer to the bed and take Isla’s hand, imagining her giving mine a comforting squeeze.
As if to say, we’re in this together no matter what.
But of course, Isla can’t squeeze my hand.
The machines that surround her bed continue to beep their steady, unchanging rhythms. I want to scream in frustration, but I restrain myself.
On the other side of the bed, Peter drags another chair close to Isla. He sits, resting his elbows on the edge of the bed and clasping his fingers together loosely. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it looks like he’s preparing to pray.
“George was in my class at Wickham—mine and your mother’s.
He was popular. An athlete, a scholar. Bit of a ladies’ man, though he never dated anyone seriously.
Your mother … She had the biggest crush on him.
Got all moony-eyed and flustered whenever he was around.
I used to tease her about it. But oh, I was jealous.
” Peter stares into the distance, shaking his head.
Peter, jealous? I can’t imagine it.
“Some of us stayed in touch after graduation,” Peter continues.
“Me, Jonathan, and William; Samantha, of course, though she was at the University of the Arts London and I was at Oxford. George took to the wind a bit. I heard he took a gap year, deferred his university acceptance. I didn’t give him much thought, if I’m being honest. But … your mother did.”
My mind is racing. What is he trying to tell me, and what does it all mean?
He’s talking like this is a deathbed confession, and the morbidness of it makes me want to crawl out of my skin.
Because Peter is still here, and Isla … Isla hasn’t woken up yet.
With every day that passes, the possibility that she never will looms larger and larger on the horizon.