Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
M argot drove back to her childhood home with her heart in her throat. This deep in a February winter, it was hard to believe that spring would ever come, that April flowers would ever bloom again. It was hard to believe she would ever feel anything but brokenhearted and frozen to the bone. When she parked outside her mother’s place, she found that Vic Rondell’s sports car remained, meaning he was still inside, watching over her mother. But what was he up to? Why was he so curious about her mother? Was he after her money? Didn’t he know she didn’t have much of anything?
Unless, of course, there was money that Margot didn’t know about.
Maybe he was after the house? Perhaps he wanted to steal the house out from under her, flip it, and sell it to the uber wealthy at an insane price. That seemed likely for a man of his caliber. To him, Lillian was just another sick woman he could take advantage of.
But Margot had no plans to let him.
The television was still flickering. She got out and steeled herself against both her mother’s rage and Vic’s slippery behavior.
But what if her mother had forgotten about today’s incident? What if going forward, every single day with Lillian meant Lillian saying something cruel and promptly forgetting about it?
What if Vic wasn’t actually up to anything? What if he was just a kind man who wanted to help an older woman out?
Margot took three deep breaths and went inside, stomping her boots. “Hello?” But the television was too loud for her to be heard. She removed her boots and crept down the hall. Her mother was strewn across the sofa, fast asleep, as the same tiny blond woman from The Cooking Channel made a pie. Her mother was still wearing her makeup and fancier dress. Where was Vic Rondell?
The hair on the back of Margot’s neck stood on end. She and her sick mother were alone in a house with a strange man. What had she been thinking? She should have asked Noah to come back with her.
She’d gotten too comfortable. Was she about to pay the price?
Gently, Margot sat at the edge of the sofa and shook her mother awake. Lillian groaned and whispered, “Frank, I don’t want to go to bed yet.”
At the mention of her father’s name, Margot stiffened and pulled her hand back.
Her father had been dead for twenty years this April. Yet in her mother’s mind, Frank was often still alive and well. In her mother’s mind, Margot was often the reason her lover had died.
But what did Margot think? Not two hours ago, she’d outlined the story to Avery for the first time in years. A part of the story had triggered something in her. Was it a memory?
Her father had been talking to someone in the parking lot.
Her father had been distracted.
Who had he been talking to? What secrets did her father have? Did they matter?
Did Lillian know?
What had she written in her diary about that fateful day?
Margot felt as though she were in the midst of a harrowing nightmare. Slowly, she got to her feet and tiptoed to her father’s study. She’d forgotten Vic Rondell; she’d forgotten the siblings who never called; she’d even, momentarily, forgotten Avery and Noah.
But when she opened the study door, she found, to her tremendous surprise, Vic Rondell already seated at the desk. He’d removed his coat and his shoes, and he was humming to himself, fully immersed in her mother’s diaries.
The scene didn’t make sense at first. Why did he care about my mother’s diaries? What was he doing?
But it did clear one thing up. Vic Rondell had been the one using her father’s study lately, not her mother. But why?
Vic hadn’t heard her come in. Margot stood, swirling with anxiety in the doorway. She didn't want to frighten him because she knew that frightened people were the most dangerous of all. She did not know this man! But she couldn’t close the door again. He would hear.
For what felt like five minutes, she hovered there, watching as Vic flipped through the diaries. As he read, he made notes to himself in his own separate journal. Margot would have given anything to read what he was writing.
Was it possible that he was writing a book about her mother? Was he studying her?
Margot couldn’t take it anymore. She cleared her throat.
But Vic Rondell was a cool customer. As though he already knew she was there, he raised a finger and said, “One minute, please.” He then finished what he was writing and closed both his journal and her mother’s. Slowly, he turned the chair around and smiled at her. He echoed charm.
“What are you doing?” Margot demanded.
Vic folded his hands over his thighs. “It’s good that you made it back. I was worried about you.”
“Answer my question,” she stammered.
Vic got up and slipped his journal into the pocket of his suit jacket.
“What were you writing? Why are you reading my mother’s journals?”
Vic sighed and stretched his arms over his head. “Your mother is a fascinating woman, Margot. Maybe you don’t recognize that. You’re too close to the material.”
“Are you writing something about her? Are you using her?” Margot demanded.
Vic tutted. “Nothing like that, darling. I would never humiliate your mother publicly.”
“But you’d do it privately?”
Vic slipped past her and grabbed his coat. “Your mother and I go way, way back,” he said.
“I don’t understand,” Margot said.
“I suppose you wouldn’t,” he said sadly.
Margot searched his face. “I’m going to call the police.”
“Why would you do that? I’ve done nothing wrong. I’m a friend of your mother’s. Nantucketers can attest to the fact that I’ve spent a great deal of time with her over the past few months. Meanwhile, where were you?”
The words stung. Margot pulled her hair. “I don’t trust you.”
“You shouldn’t trust anyone, Margot Earnheart. Least of all the people you know the best,” Vic said. He jangled his keys and headed for the door. “Take care of yourself, won’t you? I’ll pick Lillian up for another round of cards in a few days.”
“You will not,” she said.
“Lillian does better when I’m around,” he said.
Margot flared her nostrils. “She’s a confused woman. She doesn’t know anything.”
Vic chuckled softly. He flicked his keys around. “You know, Margot, you and I have a lot in common. Far more than you know.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Vic winked. “That lady in there ruined both of our lives.”
Margot couldn’t take it. She wanted to storm up to him and bang his chest with her fists, demanding answers. “You need to tell me what’s going on now,” she rasped.
“Maybe I’ll tell you soon. Or maybe the old lady will if she ever catches on.”
With that, Vic stepped out of the foyer and fled. Before Margot reached the front door, he had the car engine on, and he was bucking out into the wild wind and snow. Margot’s tears froze to her cheeks.
What the heck?
Margot hurried back to the study to find the journal Vic had been reading. It was dated 1981—five years before Margot’s birth. Because Vic had pressed hard at the pages with the flat of his hand, it didn’t take Margot long to find the passages that had most interested him.
She read a series of very brief and cryptic entries that were initially difficult to understand.
August 14, 1981
It isn’t that I believed we would always be faithful to each other. I just didn’t imagine this.
August 15, 1981
Frank moved out today. Daniel, Henry, and Melissa helped me bake a batch of cookies, and we sat on the back porch watching the sun burn into the ocean.
I hope I never see him again.
What was this about? Margot’s mind raced. Had her father been unfaithful to her mother? Had her mother kicked her father out—or, worse, had her father left of his own accord?
Lillian Earnheart was not an easy woman. Margot knew that better than most.
She kept reading and discovered more and more entries from Lillian and Frank’s time apart. Margot’s palms were sweaty with fear and sorrow.
It had taken nearly a year for Frank to move back into the house. It looked as though Lillian had spent nearly the entirety of that year begging him to.
But why, exactly, had Frank left? And why was Vic so curious about this time of Lillian’s life?
It didn’t make any sense.
It was nearly midnight when Margot got up the nerve and the compassion to return to the sofa and wake up her mother. Gently, she guided her mother upstairs, where Margot sat at the edge of her mother’s bed and waited as she got undressed, washed her face, and brushed her teeth. Lillian slipped under the sheets and fell asleep almost immediately, abandoning Margot in her world of darkness and confusion.
You think it’s my fault that Dad’s dead , she thought. But what are you hiding from me, Mom?