Chapter 55 #2
Greater things had happened to the gallery since he had married Beth and taken over as president.
He had acted as press agent, getting articles in several art magazines and major newspapers.
Because of Pete, the Lathrop Gallery had a presence on all the major social media platforms. He tweeted once a day, posted photos on Instagram, and had attracted over five thousand followers on Facebook—an impressive number for a small family-owned gallery. But she had not appreciated him.
She had never let him forget that the money came from her family.
What she’d failed to fully realize was that being born rich was nothing more than blind luck.
It had nothing to do with IQ. He had once—before Sam was born—tried to get her to take the Mensa test, and she had literally laughed. Not that she would have passed.
Last December, when they were decorating the gallery for Christmas, Pete had stood at the foot of the ladder while Beth had balanced the star on top of the tree, and he had felt like giving the ladder a good shake.
God help him, he thought of it now, and given how she’d died, he felt more ashamed than ever about that single impulse.
In that split second, when he had been so angry with her, he would have loved to see her crack her head open on the edge of the desk.
“Fuck,” he said out loud to himself, “fucking bastard.”
But it wasn’t all him—the whole family had put each other through the wringer.
The damn painting. Moonlight. It had gone missing last year, and now it was again.
When he’d seen that empty frame, his heart had literally stopped in his chest. Beth had just stared at him, eyes full of blame, when he’d pointed it out to her.
Of course she’d probably think he took it, and he couldn’t explain to her—or even, after she died, to Reid.
Not without betraying someone he loved more than the world.
“Dad?”
At the sound of Sam’s voice, he got out of his chair.
“Sam, what are you doing here?”
“Everyone’s outside,” she said, gesturing at the front window. “We came to celebrate Mom’s birthday.”
“Kate’s here?”
She nodded. “And Lulu and Scotty. Isabel, Julie, all of us.”
“Are you doing okay?” he asked.
“Well, it’s her birthday. So . . .”
“Yeah. I know.”
She brushed her long hair out of her eyes, and he caught sight of the scars on the inside of her left arm.
Were the cuts fresh, or were they scars from months, a year ago, that were healing?
She’s cutting because of you, Beth had said.
Because of you and Nicola and your baby, because she’s afraid of losing her father.
“You still doing that?” he asked. Pointing at first, then walking over to her, gently holding her wrist. “Please tell me you’re not.”
“Not as much,” she said. “Sometimes, though.”
He traced the scar she had made last year, just before going to camp.
Beth was at the gallery, cataloging new acquisitions.
He went to the bank, but instead of returning straight to work, he drove home—he knew Sam had been upset with him, and he wanted a father-daughter moment, to reassure her as she was getting ready for camp that she was his number one, his oldest, his baby, and always would be.
He walked into the house through the front door, heard rummaging in the closet, saw Sam emerge. She jumped as if he’d caught her doing something wrong—the look on her face was pure guilt.
“What are you doing in there?” he asked.
“Nothing, Dad. Just looking for my boots and rain slicker. It gets a little wet up in Maine, ha ha.”
“You sure?” he asked. “What happened to your wrist?”
She glanced down at it, saw the smudge of blood. “Huh,” she said. “Must have snagged it on a nail or a hook or whatever.”
Later Beth would tell him about Sam’s cutting, but that day he didn’t have a clue.
“Well, did you find your slicker?”
“Yeah,” she said. “It’s in there. I’ll grab it when we drive up. Why are you here, anyway? Why aren’t you at work?”
“I came to talk to you,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because you’re going to camp,” he said.
“And I want us to be okay.” He thought of the day Sam was born, of how thrilled he had been, how he had imagined for her the life he had never had.
That July day he felt pressure in his chest, as if his heart were expanding, wanting to burst out of his skin.
He stepped forward to hug her, but she pulled back.
“Be okay?” she asked with a guttural laugh.
“Sam.”
“Dad,” she had said. “Don’t. Talking will just make it all worse. I have to go; I told Isabel I’d meet her.” And she’d run out the door.
Now, on her mother’s birthday, she stood in Mathilda’s living room, looking at him with sad eyes.
“That scar,” he said, pointing, “looks better.”
“I call it Memory of Moonlight,” she said.
“Maybe it’s better you just forget it.”
“Forgotten Moonlight?” she asked. “Don’t you think that’s impossible, considering what I did?”
“I suppose it would be.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell Mom?”
“Because I wanted to protect you.”
“She would have been mad.”
“You taking the painting off the wall, putting it in the hall closet. Didn’t you think you might trigger her? Make her relive that earlier time? Didn’t you think it would hurt her?”
Sam stared at the small white scar. “I bled on it too. I didn’t mean to do that. I felt horrible. The painting’s so valuable.”
“It was just a tiny smudge on the back of the canvas,” he said.
“And the painting’s value is nothing compared to you, Sam.
You’re who we love, who matters, not some piece of art.
” He swallowed. Had she come in here to confess something else about the painting?
He knew the police had found the canvas rolled up in the gallery basement, the back scrawled with a blood heart. “Honey, did you take it this time too?”
“No, I swear,” she said, shaking her head hard.
“Okay, I believe you. But why did you do it before?”
“Because everything was falling apart,” Sam said in a low voice, not meeting Pete’s eyes. “I wanted you to think someone broke into our house, so you’d pay attention. So you’d stay home. We’re a family.”
She walked toward him then, banged right into his chest and let him hold her while she cried, rock her while she said, “I’m sorry; I’m so sorry I hid the painting. I want her back, Dad. I want you to be together—I want us all to be together.”
“I want that too,” he whispered. More than he had meant anything in his life, he meant that, which was why when Sam tilted her head back and asked her question, it cut him like a knife.
“Dad, you have to tell me. Promise me you’ll tell me the truth. Did you kill her? Did you kill Mom?”