Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Present Day
I t was remarkable how the memories returned—first slowly and then all at once, like a deluge after a leak in the ceiling. Rose sat at the diner in front of her burgers, fries, and onion rings, remembering how Sean all those years ago asked her to the party that weekend and how her heart had already been latched to Oren’s.
Sean raised his eyebrows and took a bite of his onion ring. “This is the kind of thing I would have loved to have back in ’93,” he said, gesturing toward the diary. “Like you said, everyone was sure Oren had set the fire himself. That he’d done it to kill her, but we could never get any traction on the case.”
Rose picked up her burger and took a small bite. Melted cheese and roasted onions took her to another dimension of flavor. She had to stop herself from moaning. I don’t know this guy, she reminded herself. But we have a pretty strange history. And now we’re here. Together .
Is that why he was so eager to find my sculpture?
“You couldn’t get a warrant to search the house?” Rose asked.
“It was deemed an accident, and then it was sealed up,” Sean said. “I think some money changed hands to make sure we couldn’t search the place. I was twenty-four at the time. New on the force. I didn’t have a lot of leeway, and they definitely weren’t telling me everything that went on.”
Rose remembered how big-eyed Sean had looked that day on the boardwalk after he’d asked her out. He’d been so hungry to prove himself as an officer. He’d been so sure that Rose knew something.
Now, Sean wiped his hands on his napkin. “He never said anything about the fire or Natalie?”
Rose traced through the memories readily available to her, closing her eyes. Pain rocketed through her.
“He stopped wanting to talk about her and the fire at all,” she remembered. “He wanted to bury it all in the past.”
“So he could start over with you,” Sean said. His tone was dark.
Rose wondered if he was jealous. But how could he be? This was thirty-one years ago. So deep in the past that it was sepia in her mind.
Sean looked incredulous. “You’re saying much of the house is still intact?”
“There could be a few more diaries where this came from,” Rose affirmed. “But is a diary like this proof of anything?”
“It could be enough to get the case going again,” Sean said.
Rose’s heart pumped. “I want to be clear. I didn’t bring this to you to get revenge.”
Sean continued to look at her.
“I haven’t seen him in years,” Rose said. “He’s nothing to me anymore. Just a ghost.”
“I understand.”
Rose closed her eyes as her thoughts thundered. “I was so naive back then. I’d just left my hometown. I didn’t know anything about the world. And I wanted to believe everything he said. I wanted so desperately to fall in love.”
Sean was quiet for a little while. Empathy echoed from his eyes.
“If he really did something to Natalie,” Rose said, “then I want him to pay for it. I want everyone to know what he did. I don’t care if it turns my name to mud in the process.”
Sean’s eyes hardened. “Why would it turn your name to mud?” he asked. “Like you said, he hasn’t been in your life in years. You’ve built your life from the ground up.”
Rose chuckled sadly, remembering those loose and chaotic years after he’d thrown her to her knees like a piece of trash.
Sean raised another onion ring. His eyes shone. “Let’s put this guy behind bars.”
Rose let out a wild laugh, one that captured the attention of every eye in the diner.
“I’m in,” she said, feeling like a woman in a crime novel. “I hope I’m not thirty-one years too late?”
Rose missed the Salt Sisters' dinner but managed to swing by for post-dinner cocktails. A few Salt Sisters still remained in the glowing orange light of Hilary’s veranda, including Robby and Stella and Ada and Katrina. Hilary urged her to sit and tell them “all about the Grayson Estate.”
Rose didn’t wait long to tell them everything about the diary. She’d taken pictures of the final entry and of a few choice pages throughout the latter part of 1992 and early part of 1993 before Natalie’s death.
Hilary read a passage from December 1992 out loud.
“That’s the thing about marrying a wealthy man,” Hilary began, putting on a slightly different voice. It was proof Hilary came from the acting business. “Everything is a monetary exchange to them. Everything is about goods and services. I didn’t understand it when I first met Oren. He doted on me hand and foot. He made me feel like a queen. I still remember that first morning I woke up at his place in Nantucket, with the sunshine spilling through the window and across the sheets. I thought, This is the happiest I’ve ever been. He will take care of me. But he knew how little money I had in the bank. He knew he could butter me up and reel me in.
“Just once did his brother Zachery warn me. It was Christmastime several years ago, and Zachary had drunk his way through a couple of bottles of one-thousand-dollar wine. He tried to put his arm around me, but I swatted him off. He said, ‘If you ever do that to Oren, he’ll hit you back much harder.’ That surprised me! I went upstairs to cry and cry. But I told myself Zachary was just teasing me. How silly I was not to hear him.”
The Salt Sisters sat in steady silence, listening to the ocean's roar as the sun, like a big egg yolk, dropped into the water.
Rose felt Hilary’s heavy gaze but struggled to look at it. She knew what they were all thinking before they asked.
“Rose, did he…?” Stella whispered.
The words hung in the air. Did he ever beat me?
Rose remembered his rage. The terror that hung in her chest like a tumor. She realized that ever since she’d found the diary, she’d begun to imagine herself as Oren’s wife in that mansion, burning and screaming and falling to her knees. Because Rose had been Oren’s wife, too, it wasn’t hard to imagine.
Too much time had passed. Rose hadn’t answered yet. It felt too complicated.
Hilary took a breath. Rose flinched and looked at her.
“Where in the house did she die?” Hilary asked.
“They always said it was in the kitchen,” Rose said.
“And have you been in the kitchen?” Stella asked.
Rose swallowed. “Not yet.”
The kitchen needed far more refurbishment than the rest of the house. It was charred, and its windows were broken. A few construction workers suggested that a family of rats and squirrels had taken refuge there. Rose was relieved that she couldn’t go in there. She felt sure that the nightmare of Natalie’s final moments remained.
“It’s insane to me that these secrets were locked inside that house for the past thirty-one years,” Ada said.
“Sean said it was difficult to keep the case going. He thinks money changed hands,” Rose said. “Back then, Sean begged me for information. He was sure that Oren had let something slip. I’m sure he saw me, a pretty and naive twenty-one-year-old girl, in that dark Walden Estate and knew that Oren was after me. But Oren already had me wrapped around his finger.”
Hilary touched Rose’s shoulder tenderly. “You were married to him much longer than Natalie was.”
Rose’s adrenaline spiked. How was that possible?
“He never said anything about doing this?” Stella asked. “He never let anything slip?”
“Never.” Rose’s heart pumped.
She considered telling the girls that she wasn’t trying to put this on Oren for reasons of jealousy or revenge.
“Natalie has never been far from my mind,” Rose said instead, her voice wavering. “I feel closer to her than ever. I think I feel I owe her something, especially now. Maybe that’s why I wanted to buy the old house. I wanted to put the pieces together. I wanted to make sense of my life, as well as hers.”
Rose’s eyes filled with tears.
I’m so grateful he let me live, she thought.
She hadn’t considered that yet.
“I could never figure Oren out,” Rose whispered. “Not for one second of our romance. Not for one second of our marriage. Sometimes, I wonder if the devastation of our marriage is the reason I haven’t been able to find love again. Sometimes, I wonder if Oren ruined me.”
The other Salt Sisters exchanged glances. Rose could see it in their eyes. They’d wondered the same thing.
They urged her to say if she needed help.
But what could Rose do but continue to go through Natalie’s things? What could she do but continue to fall down the rabbit hole of her ex-husband’s first wife’s life?