Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Present Day
R ose’s newfound obsession with Natalie snuck into her nightmares. She found herself in a burning room with Natalie as Natalie tried to tell her something in a language Rose didn’t understand. “What is it?” Rose begged her in her dreams. But Natalie couldn’t say anything before she collapsed on the ground.
What does she want me to know? Rose woke up thinking.
It wasn’t that Rose believed in ghosts. But something about the Grayson Estate and Natalie’s story haunted her. She had to get to the bottom of it.
The fact that Sean was back in her life felt proof of that, too.
Rose was in her kitchen nook with a mug of coffee and a scone. It wasn’t yet seven, but her head thrummed with questions. For whatever reason, she wanted to look up Natalie’s obituary again. She hadn’t seen it since June 1993. She hadn’t seen it since before she’d decided to believe in everything Oren was, everything he stood for.
I fell in love with him, and he ensnared me. Was Natalie ensnared, too?
But the Nantucket newspaper didn’t have anything that far back online. It was pre-internet. Another time.
Rose went for a seven-mile run, showered, and then drove downtown to the Nantucket Records Office. She’d never actually been there before, but she’d read online it was a haven for every bit of paperwork Nantucketers had left behind: marriage certificates and moving addresses, proof of death and birth. She parked and went into the chilly basement to find the man in charge of the collection bent over his desk, wearing a thick pair of reading glasses. He started when he heard her behind him.
“I’m sorry to startle you!” Rose smiled.
Jeremy removed his glasses and waved his hand. “It’s no trouble. I get so immersed in the past down here. I was several decades away.”
Rose remembered, now, that Jeremy was the husband of Alana Copperfield, which meant he was the brother-in-law of her friend, the woodworker Charlie. Rose reminded him of this connection, and Jeremy beamed.
“Charlie and I have bonded like crazy this summer,” he said. “My daughter just went up to Manhattan to ‘seek her fortune on Broadway,’” he explained with air quotes, “and I haven’t really known what to do with myself. But Charlie and I discovered tennis, and we’re getting better and better.”
It was hard for Rose to imagine Charlie on a tennis court rather than in his woodworking studio. It seemed so active for a man so ponderous and artistic.
“What can I help you with?” Jeremy asked.
Rose raised her chin. She couldn’t beat around the bush. Not with something like this.
“I want to look at someone’s death certificate,” she said, grateful her voice didn’t shake. “Is that possible?”
“Did this person die in Nantucket?” Jeremy asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you know the approximate death date?”
“June 16, 1993.”
Jeremy hopped to it, routing around the aisles of file cabinets, guiding Rose on a scavenger hunt. June 1993 was near the wall. Rose reminded herself to breathe.
“Her name was Natalie Grayson,” Rose said. “Quinne was her maiden name.”
Jeremy gave her a look, which meant he knew exactly who that was. He’d probably been in high school at the time of the fire. It must have been right before the major car accident that had caused him to lose his football scholarship to Notre Dame. He has a past, too.
Jeremy flipped through the death certificates from June 1993. Rose waited with bated breath. She could imagine how devastating it would be to hold the certificate in her hands—proof of the terrible thing that she’d allowed herself to ignore for the entirety of her marriage.
I’m sorry, Natalie.
Jeremy flipped through them a second and a third time, then looked Rose in the eye. “Are you sure you got the date right?”
Rose was taken aback. “It couldn’t have been any other date.”
Jeremy let his arms hang. “It’s not here.”
Rose gaped at him. How was this possible? Maybe somebody stole the death certificate, she thought.
“Do you have newspapers from that week?” she asked.
“We have every newspaper published in the past one hundred and fifty years,” Jeremy announced proudly, guiding her to another section of the chilly basement. “You’re sure it was June 1993?” he asked. There was an edge of doubt to his voice.
“Yes. No question,” Rose said firmly.
It didn’t take long for Jeremy to find the obituary for Natalie Quinne Grayson. It was just as Rose remembered it, with that same photograph from so long ago.
Rose thought, She was so beautiful. I didn’t realize it back then. I was twenty-one, and Natalie seemed so much older than me. At twenty-six! She was still a baby.
How foolish I was!
It was my foolishness that led Oren to me.
“But why isn’t the death certificate here?” Rose asked after a long pause.
Jeremy’s expression was difficult to read. He leaned back, his lips twisting. “She was married to Oren Grayson?”
Rose nodded. She searched his eyes for some sign that Jeremy knew she, too, had been married to Oren Grayson. But everyone knew that. Didn’t they?
“Oren Grayson has more money than God,” Jeremy said.
Rose’s heart stopped beating. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that anything can be printed on the paper,” Jeremy said. “You can fake an obituary easily. You just have to throw money in the right direction.”
Rose was speechless. It’s impossible.
“You don’t understand,” she said. “I married Oren shortly thereafter. Natalie died in that fire. It completely affected our marriage. It affected my life.”
Jeremy raised his hands. “I don’t know. All I know is, there’s no death certificate.”
“But doesn’t that just mean it was lost? Or stolen?”
Jeremy looked doubtful.
“Give me a minute,” Rose said. “I have a phone call to make.”
Rose hurried upstairs to call Officer Sean Slagle. He sounded surprised when he answered the phone. Rose remembered when he’d urged her to call him all those years ago. Now’s the time.
Rose didn’t want to explain everything over the phone. Sean said he’d be at the records office in ten minutes but appeared in seven. His cheeks were pink. He was nervous.
Sean was just as flabbergasted about the lost death certificate as Jeremy and Rose. He asked numerous questions about how the certificates were stored and whether it was possible that it had been misplaced. But Jeremy said no.
That was when Jeremy had the idea to look through hospital records. He had a friend up at the Nantucket Hospital who was willing to dip into the files they had on-hand.
The three of them waited in the sun outside the records office as Jeremy’s friend went through hospital records from thirty-one years ago. It was clear to all of them that Natalie would have been brought to the hospital after her rescue from the fire. That was how things went.
But the friend called back within the hour to say, “No. We don’t have anything here for a Natalie Quinne or a Natalie Grayson.”
Sean’s face was deathly pale.
“But you must have seen those certificates when you were looking into her death?” Rose suggested. “Back in ’93? When you were going after Oren?”
Sean shook his head. “No. The Waldens and the Graysons kept everything from us. The entire investigation was like moving through a jungle at night.”
Jeremy, Sean, and Rose stood in the sun. Confusion marred their faces. Eventually, one of Jeremy’s employees came out to ask his advice about something—an email to a higher-up, and he said goodbye and, “Keep me in the loop.”
This left only Rose and Sean. They gaped at each other.
“Jeremy thinks Oren paid someone at the paper off,” Rose burst. “He thinks the obituary was a fake.”
“That’s insane.”
There was electricity in Sean’s eyes. It was proof that he wanted to chase this story to the ends of the earth.
“Let’s go back to the Grayson Estate,” he urged. “It’s like you said. Maybe that diary was just the tip of the iceberg.”
Rose drove Sean back out to the estate that afternoon with the windows cracked and her hair flowing out behind her. Rose fought her instinct to touch Sean’s hand, there where he had it stretched out across his thigh. She told herself her emotions and hormones were all over the place. It was a result of the investigation.
Back at the Grayson Estate, the construction workers were taking a break outside and discussing the specifics regarding the ballroom rooftop and the “ insane task” it was to ensure it was stable—that it could continue to have any kind of life. They stopped talking when they realized Rose and Sean were approaching. A few workers popped up, adjusted their hard hats, and said hello.
“Don’t worry,” Rose said. “I’ll stay out of your hair.” She chewed her lower lip, then added, “I’m not terribly precious about that old ballroom rooftop. If you say it has to go, it has to go.”
With that, she breezed through the front entrance of the Grayson Estate with her heart throbbing in her throat. Sean was hot on her heels. She could feel his eyes through her back.
To clarify, Rose paused on the staircase, hand spread across the railing. “I don’t want them to think I’m precious about this place. I wanted to retain as much of its glory as I could. But I don’t want to cling to old ideas. I don’t want to uphold anything dangerous.”
Overtly, she was talking about the roof and the mansion and its numerous rooms and numerous antiques and artwork. But she could see it in Sean’s eyes. He knew she was talking about Oren, too. About her memories. About the man she’d once loved—who’d poisoned her, the way a worm poisons an apple.
They returned to Natalie’s room and went through the rest of the desk, dresser, closet, and the drawers beneath the ornate bed. There were more diaries, but most of them were from Natalie’s girlhood, the time before she’d met Oren. One of them spoke of Natalie’s fiancé at the time she’d met Oren. It was clear from Natalie’s writing that she’d been head-over-heels for Howard. She’d been bright-eyed, youthful. She’d never thought to dream she’d die in a house fire one day.
There were photographs, too.
The photographs were particularly harrowing—especially for Rose. In them, Natalie and Oren were sensationally beautiful, arm in arm or kissing on a beach or sitting in a convertible with sunglasses on. Natalie showed a sillier side, sticking out her tongue to Oren, who looked moody, his eyes glinting.
Sean touched Rose’s back and breathed, “Are you all right?”
Rose realized she hadn’t said anything in more than an hour. She’d been immersed in Natalie and Oren’s life pre-Rose.
Rose picked up the photographs of Oren in the convertible, Oren at the baseball field, and Oren at the racetrack. Her eyes stung with tears. “He looks just like he did when I met him,” she said.
Sean bowed his head.
I wonder if he’s still jealous? Rose wondered, then cursed herself for thinking it. How could he be jealous of a wanted murderer? How could he be jealous of the heinous man who’d destroyed Rose’s life?
But of course, Oren had been and probably still was the sort of man who always got the girl he wanted. Sean wasn’t that kind of guy.
Not until now, Rose thought, then scrubbed it out immediately.
“I guess it’s no surprise you fell in love with him,” Sean said, as though he read her mind. “Look at him.”
Sean sounded sorrowful.
Rose stuttered and closed the album where they’d discovered the photos in the first place. “You have to understand. He had so much power over me.”
Sean nodded. He held her gaze. It was as though he was waiting for Rose to say something else, to explain herself even more.
But Rose didn’t want to tell Sean about the baby. She didn’t want to tell anyone about the baby.
Even the Salt Sisters didn’t know.