Chapter 28 When, Not If #2
Flecks of green blaze through the dirt. Even now, the giant emerald is radiant, desperate to be seen. With the tip of her finger, she brushes the smooth facet, and color bursts through. Suddenly, it feels heavy in her hand. Hot, as if she’s touched something she shouldn’t have.
If he didn’t walk in now, as the necklace dangles from her open hand, would she have put it back?
She will wonder this later. If she had the chance, would she simply reach for a different pot and act as though all is normal and well and she didn’t just find something that swings like a hammer into her heart?
What lengths would she go to, to preserve what’s left of her life?
Put the necklace back. Let its existence swirl like a fury in her mind over dinner.
She’d mull it over at home and have time to decide what to do, and then she’d act.
She’d turn him in. She’d confront him. She’d do something. Of course she would. Wouldn’t she?
But the decision is made for her. There is a loud exhalation of breath, as if this evening is nothing more than an inevitability, a necessary bridge that must be crossed but could never bear the weight. When, not if.
Silently, she turns to him, the necklace still in her hand. All her words are gone, and in their place is a mounting horror, because of course this necklace went missing the moment June was murdered, and yet here it is.
Nico nods as if affirming her thoughts. “Well, it’s not good, but it’s not what you think. Come sit.”
In shock, she leaves the necklace on the potting table, abandoned in a filthy coil. Nico’s office door is closed, and Frankie sits across from him at the desk when she realizes that she’s not afraid, but maybe she should be.
“I didn’t kill her,” he says, and she’s relieved and then angry because it’s what she wants to hear, but at this point, her heart is flying against all logic.
“I didn’t,” he says again. “She’d threatened herself before. Twice. Never did anything, just made me come running.”
“Threatened herself,” Frankie says, lowering her voice, “as in to kill herself?”
He cringes. “She never meant it. Never did anything other than cry when I got there. But she knew I’d do almost anything to fix whatever upset her.
I don’t know when June found out about Ida.
Or how. But the night of the premiere, June told me I’d been playing God with her life.
That’s what she said. That the studio was playing God and she was a puppet.
She felt betrayed. And don’t point it out—I get why.
So, I got a call, right around two a.m. Little after, maybe.
I’d just gotten home, I was tired, but I answered, and she said, He didn’t even show up, and she wasn’t making sense, but then she’s telling me she’s ending it.
So, I did what I always do, and I dropped everything to get to her. ”
A pause, and Frankie notices his hand on his desk, curled into a fist. As if he feels her watching, he sets it in his lap. When he looks up, his eyes shine.
“I parked on Washburn. I was thinking about my car, keeping it safe. It’s what I do when I go there.
But that extra time to get through the tunnel—” He breaks off, then nods, affirming something in his mind.
“This was different. I saw it the second I arrived. I went around the front like I always do, and the porch light was off. The door locked. I had to look for the spare key, in the dark. She meant it. I knew it, then and there. And when I saw the empty pill bottle—she was gone.”
An empty pill bottle. June gone. The meanings hover above Frankie; she can’t make sense of them yet.
“It wasn’t like other times,” Nico repeats.
And then what he’s saying seems to split in two.
Release for Jack, that he’ll know without a doubt that he didn’t do it.
But also the pain that June must have been in, to have done this.
It hits Frankie at once: Jack didn’t do it—June did.
A brutal relief. A cruel absolution. A reality that makes no sense.
“She killed herself?” A tear hits her wrist—she didn’t realize she was crying. She’s known people who’ve ended this way; everyone does since the stock market crash. But June? That June reached this point? June, who had everything, even the love of strangers?
“She had struggles,” Nico says, and his voice catches. “Real struggles. Hard to see when they happen inside a mansion, but they’re real all the same. But I’m the one who could’ve seen it, and I didn’t. I failed her.”
“We,” she starts to say but stops when he holds his hand up.
But he doesn’t stay anything, just studies the ceiling for a moment. She watches his eyes, tracing a crack. Then he takes a deep breath. “She left a note.” He reaches under his desk, turning the dial to his safe, but Frankie already knows which note it is.
Nico, You always said to end strong, and know when to leave. I might not be ending strong, but I know it’s time to leave.
She wasn’t asking for help with Tank. She was saying goodbye.
“I kept it in case Jack or anyone else really got up a creek. I don’t know how I’d explain finding it later, but I wasn’t thinking when I took it.
” He gives a small laugh. “Apparently I don’t make good decisions when I find someone I love like that.
All I knew was I couldn’t let anyone go down for a murder they didn’t commit, so I took it. ”
Frankie is still trying to understand how June got to this point, but more so how she missed that June was there. How all of them missed it.
Though he sets the note on his desk, he doesn’t look at it.
“My car. If I’d parked closer, would she still be here?
It can’t come down to that, can it?” With his thumb, he moves the note to the side as if he can’t bear it so close.
“She probably took enough pills where it wouldn’t have mattered when I got there, but a minute, two, would she still be here? ”
Frankie shakes her head, something finally occurring to her. “No. That’s not right. She was shot. In the chest—”
And then it clicks.
“You shot her.”
Slowly, he meets her eyes. “She was gone. She was gone, and it was my fault for not getting there. The one thing I could do was save her reputation. I couldn’t have people thinking she did this to herself. Not June. Not their June.”
“You shot a pregnant woman.”
But he shakes his head, adamant. “No. No, she wasn’t pregnant. Not anymore.”
“What?”
“You didn’t notice how sick she was the day before the premiere? She had a miscarriage. She held it together, God bless her, but it was rough. She wanted that baby, more than I knew.”
The day of interviews, June looked bad. Ida was there, practically holding her up. “But the wedding was still happening. Even after that, we were still planning—”
“Frankie, the miscarriage had just happened. What was I going to do, put out a release saying, Whoops, our stars changed their minds? No. She can’t go through all that and be the butt of a joke about a flash-in-the-pan engagement. We had time to get out of it, but not before the premiere.”
Not before the premiere. Everything bent to the needs of the studio. Including Jack, sitting in jail as Nico withheld the truth that would’ve absolved him. “People think Jack did it, and you could’ve changed that. You let him sit in jail. You let him think he did this.”
Frustration thickens his words. “He wasn’t supposed to be at the bungalows. I didn’t know he was there till it was all said and done. And what do you mean, think he did this? When did he think he did this?”
“You could’ve cleared up everything in a heartbeat!”
“You want me to ruin her? That’s what you want?”
Now Frankie’s standing, pacing. “It doesn’t matter that he’s out of jail—people will always think he did it. Always. And you know that.”
“Come on, I wasn’t going to let him go down for it. If things went south, I would arrange for the necklace to show up somewhere else.”
She turns to him. “You mean frame someone else.”
“Not necessarily.”
“And the gun?”
“Also somewhere safe. Should I need it.”
Everything is too much. That June felt this was the only way, that Nico felt this was the only way, and that Frankie’s involved in something that makes her feel as if the floor has dropped from beneath her feet. Trying to be steady, she takes a seat. “This is wrong.”
“It was right for her. I did it for her. It broke my heart to do it, but it was the right thing to do for her.”
Never let someone you love get in the way of doing what’s right.
He’s watching her, imploring. “Tell me you understand that.”
And he really wants to know. Her opinion matters. “You let me think this was my fault, because of what I said outside the premiere. That someone heard me—”
“No, no, you thought that all on your own.”
Did she? She no longer remembers. “It worked for you, me thinking that. You paid that reporter—”
“No, Frankie, it worked for the press to think that. That’s why we needed that to happen.
So they’d take their claws out of Jack. But I never wanted you to feel guilt.
I just couldn’t explain it without dragging you in deeper.
But come on, if this were Jack, wouldn’t you have done the same thing?
You go out on a limb for the people you care about. Wouldn’t you do what’s best for him?”
What’s best for him. She thinks of all the times she thought she knew what was best. How she dissuaded him from risk to keep him safe.
Nico must take her silence as understanding. “Exactly. And I’d do it again. Because of me, America’s sweetheart can stay America’s sweetheart. Everything she did to uphold her reputation; it was for her. She wanted to be loved.”
But Frankie’s not sure. “Did she?”
“Thing is, I think you and I are on the same page. I wish she’d never let the studio doctor in the room.
I wish she had no pressure. I wish no one was relying on her.
But that wasn’t how it was. She sacrificed to keep her reputation, to be who people thought she was.
How can I let that be for nothing? She didn’t leave a note for America.
She left it for me, because I’d find it, and I’d understand.
No. I’m not giving her death to the public.
It’s hers.” Off her silence, he adds, “All those flowers, all those grieving fans outside the studio, you think they would’ve shown up for a suicide? ”
Suicide. The word feels like a punch. But Frankie knows he’s right. A nation, already struggling, would be gutted. The dream they needed shattered. And there’d be no sympathy, no empathy, because no one was privy to her struggle. To them, someone with a perfect life did the unthinkable.
“For ten years,” Nico continues, “she worked and didn’t get to live life how she wanted. But people would only remember her last ten minutes. It’s not right, but it’s true: You’re only as good as your worst moment.”
And though it pains her, Frankie realizes it’s true: Turning June into a victim was the right move. It was the fix.