25. Heath
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Heath
Three days later, I took my wife on a date.
Del stood at the bow, her face turned up to the afternoon sun, her hair streaming behind her in the salt breeze. She was wearing a heavy cream sweater with her coat open to the wind, and she looked so beautiful that my chest ached just watching her.
“You’ve been at that helm twenty minutes and you haven’t looked at the water once,” she called back to me without turning around.
“The water isn’t doing anything.”
“And I am?”
“You’re the only thing on this boat I don’t already know by heart.”
She turned then, grinning, her eyes bright with mischief. “Careful. If you keep talking like that, I might start to think you actually like me.”
“I tolerate you at best.”
“Mmhmm.” She made her way back to where I stood at the helm, picking her steps carefully on the gently rocking deck. “Is that why you keep buying me breakfast in bed and bringing me flowers and looking at me like I’m the only person in the world?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
She wrapped her arms around my waist from behind and rested her chin on my shoulder, watching the water sparkle ahead of us.
I could feel the warmth of her body through my thin linen shirt, could smell the faint floral scent of her shampoo.
Three days ago I had nearly lost her. Now she was here, solid and real and alive, and I still couldn’t quite believe it.
“This is nice,” she said. “This is really, really nice.”
“I thought we could use some peace and quiet. After everything.”
“Mmm.” She pressed a kiss to my neck. “No police stations. No hospital rooms. No reporters trying to get a statement.”
“Just us. Just the ocean.”
“I could get used to this. Being spoiled by my handsome husband on a fancy boat.”
“It’s a yacht, actually.”
“Oh, excuse me.” She laughed. “A fancy yacht. I’m just a middle-class girl from Boston. I don’t know the proper terminology.”
“Well, now you’re a middle-class girl from Boston who owns half a fancy yacht.”
“Half?”
“Community property.” I adjusted the wheel slightly, correcting our course. “What’s mine is yours. Including the Vivienne.”
“You named your boat after your grandmother?”
“My grandfather did. She was the love of his life. He wanted a piece of her with him whenever he went sailing.”
Del was quiet for a moment. “That’s actually really sweet.”
“Don’t sound so surprised. Not everyone in my family is a monster.”
“Just most of them?”
I laughed despite myself. “Just most of them.”
We sailed in comfortable silence for a while, both of us soaking in the thin winter sun and the cold clean air and the simple pleasure of being together without crisis or drama.
The wind was perfect today, steady and strong, pushing us across the bay at a gentle clip.
I had packed a picnic lunch that we ate on deck, trading bites of cheese and bread and the expensive wine that Del couldn’t drink but insisted I enjoy on her behalf.
“When we get to France,” she said, nibbling on a strawberry, “are there boats like this?”
“The Mediterranean has incredible sailing. We could get a place near the water. Wake up to the sound of the sea every morning.”
“That sounds like heaven.”
“We could sail to Italy for weekends. Or Spain. Or Greece. Anywhere we wanted.”
“I’ve never been to Greece.”
“Then we’ll go. We’ll go everywhere you’ve ever wanted to see.” I reached over and took her hand, threading my fingers through hers. “We’ve got the rest of our lives to explore, Del. No more being trapped in Newport with people who want to destroy us.”
“No more charity galas with society snakes.”
“No more tip toeing around my mother’s disapproval.”
“No more Kendall showing up uninvited.”
“Definitely no more Kendall.”
She squeezed my hand and smiled, and I felt my chest ease. We were going to be okay. After everything, after all the pain and fear and betrayal, we were going to be okay.
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
I tried to ignore it. This was supposed to be a day away from everything, a chance for us to just be Del and Heath instead of the Fairchilds who had been all over the local news for the past three days. But the phone kept buzzing, insistent, and finally Del pulled back.
“You should answer that,” she said. “It might be important.”
I pulled out the phone and looked at the screen. Detective Mercer. The lead investigator on Del’s kidnapping case.
“I have to take this.” I handed the wheel to Del. “Keep us pointed east. Try not to crash into anything.”
“I make no promises.”
I stepped to the stern and answered the call.
“Mr. Fairchild.” The detective’s voice had gone tight and fast, completely different from the calm professional tone I had become used to over the past few days. “I need you to come to the station. There’s been a development.”
“What is it?”
“The money trail. Kendall Saladino did not have two hundred thousand dollars, Mr. Fairchild. She has a mortgage and a leased car and eleven credit cards, and I’ve been doing this for twenty-two years and I promise you that woman could not have financed a parking ticket.
” A pause. “So we followed it backward. The accounts were layered through shell companies, but the first transfer went out eleven days before your Preservation Society dinner, and we finally found the source.”
My grip tightened on the phone. “Who?”
A pause. The kind of pause that told me I wasn’t going to like what came next.
“I think you should come in person, Mr. Fairchild. You need to see this for yourself.”
“Tell me now, Detective. I need to know.”
Another pause, longer this time. I could hear him breathing on the other end of the line, could sense his reluctance to deliver whatever news he was holding.
“The money came from a private account at First National Bank of Newport. An account registered to Montana Fairchild.”
The world tilted beneath my feet.
“That’s not possible.”
“I’m sorry, sir. But the records are clear.
Four wire transfers over eleven days, totaling over two hundred thousand dollars, all going to accounts controlled by Kendall Saladino.
The last one is dated the morning of that dinner.
” A pause. “Whatever happened in that ballroom, sir, your mother had already been paying for two weeks.”
I ended the call without saying goodbye. I stood there at the stern of the yacht, the phone hanging loose in my hand, the detective’s words echoing in my head.
Your mother financed the entire operation.
And I knew the exact moment. I had been sitting a hundred feet from it with my hand on Del’s thigh, so pleased with myself, so certain I had finally done one thing right.
I had pushed Kendall off me in front of the whole Preservation Society and told her the only woman I wanted anywhere near me was my wife, and Del had said thank you at the valet stand, and I had thought that was the end of it.
It was not the end of anything. It was the signal. Kendall had walked the length of that ballroom and bent down and put her mouth to my mother’s ear, and my mother had patted her hand twice and looked across a hundred feet of candlelight at Delphine, and smiled, and that was the word given.
Del had told me about that smile afterward, in the dark of a hotel room, half asleep against my chest. I had taken it for one more cruelty in a long catalog of them.
The last of the money had moved that morning, before either of them sat down to dinner.
My mother. My own mother had paid to have my wife kidnapped. Had put our unborn child at risk. Had orchestrated the break-in that had nearly killed us both.
“Heath?” Del’s voice, worried. She had turned from the wheel, watching me with concern. “What’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“We need to go back.”
“Why? What happened?”
“I’ll explain on the way.”
I took the wheel and turned the yacht toward shore, pushing the engine faster than I should have, my mind racing with implications and questions and a fury so hot it burned.
By the time we reached the marina and drove to my mother’s current residence, a luxury rental in one of Newport’s most exclusive neighborhoods, the sun was beginning to set.
The house was a colonial revival, white with black shutters, the kind of place that looked respectable and refined from the outside. I had visited it exactly once since my mother moved in after I threw her out of Fairhaven. Now I was coming back for a very different reason.
“Are you sure about this?” Del asked as we pulled up to the curb. “Confronting her without backup?”
“I called Mercer back. He’s sending officers. They’ll be here in ten minutes.” I looked at my wife, saw the worry in her eyes, and took her hand. “I need to see her face when she realizes it’s over. I need her to know that I know what she did.”
“Then I’m coming with you.”
“Del...”
“I’m coming with you, Heath. She tried to have me killed. I have a right to look her in the eye.”
I couldn’t argue with that. I didn’t want to.
We walked up to the front door and I knocked. Hard. No answer. I knocked again.
“Mother!” I shouted. “Open the door. I know you’re in there.”
Still nothing.
I tried the handle. It turned easily. Unlocked.
We stepped inside and found chaos.
The living room looked like a tornado had passed through it.
Clothes were strewn across furniture. Papers were scattered on every surface.
Drawers had been pulled open and emptied, their contents spilled across the floor.
Through the doorway to the bedroom, I could see suitcases on the bed, half packed with designer clothes and expensive jewelry.
My mother was in the middle of it all, throwing items into a Louis Vuitton travel bag with frantic, jerky movements.
She looked up when we entered, and I saw the moment she realized she had run out of time.
Her face went white, then red, cycling through shock and fury and fear in the space of a heartbeat.
“Heath.” She straightened, smoothing down her hair, trying to compose herself. “This is unexpected. I wasn’t planning on visitors.”
“Running somewhere, Mother?”