Chapter 37
Marmee closes her eyes, the lines around her temples more pronounced, either from lack of sleep or from the exhaustion of keeping secrets all these years.
“What do you mean?” I ask. “You said my grandfather fell down the stairs.”
“He did. I’m not talking about his death. You need to know about his life,” she says. “He wasn’t a good man.”
For years, I’ve had an image in my mind of the grandfather I never met. Confident. Caring. Flawed, made evident through his excessive drinking, but isn’t everyone allowed a vice? All the other positive attributes still applied. How could Marmee say that man never existed?
“You’ve never said that before.”
“I wanted you to trust that men could be good. Your father was always in and out of your life. You needed to believe that you came from decent people, but the truth is, your grandfather was not.
“I thought he was once. That’s why I married him. When Benny and I first met, I thought he was the most interesting person I’d ever encountered. I was completely enamored. Let all the little red flags go.”
As she talks, I try imagining her story in my mind. Picture the beautiful woman in the portraits I’m used to fawning over, her timeless face decorating the various rooms of this house. Instead, I envision Oliver and me. I made the same mistake with him. Concocting excuses for all his shortcomings.
“His true colors started to show on our honeymoon,” she says.
“And the more time I spent with him, the more his cruelty became harder to ignore.
How he treated the staff, bothered other women.
But I was in no position to divorce him, and by then, I was already pregnant with your father.
So, I stayed quiet. Looked the other way.
If he was getting what he wanted, he never turned his callousness on me.
“Sometimes I think that’s my biggest sin. Knowing what kind of man my husband was and allowing it to continue. It was a selfish choice. Putting my own well-being over that of others.”
“You had a child to protect,” I say, compelled to defend her.
“That I did,” she says. “But it was more than that. I was protecting the image I wanted the world to see. We were the It Couple. Wealthy. Young. Beautiful. I can’t tell you how many women would refer to me as lucky for being the woman he’d chosen.
” She pauses. “Those same women would look at me in panic whenever I caught them sneaking out of our house after one of our late-night parties. I’ll never know if it was because of shame or because of fear.
Your grandfather didn’t always know how to take no for an answer. ”
Repulsion, oily and twisted, roils inside my gut.
“What happened the night he died?”
“Our staff was like a revolving door in those days,” she says. “After your grandfather had had his way with the women, he’d cut them loose. And the men often got angry with his antics and refusal to pay them a decent wage.
“We brought on Mrs. Wilson to nanny for your father. She’d recently graduated nursing school and decided hospital life wasn’t for her.
I thought it was a great fit, having another young woman in the house.
Someone I could relate to. Someone who I could wholly trust with my son when I wasn’t around.
I thought your grandfather would have the decency to leave her alone, considering she wasn’t here for our enjoyment, but for our son.
“We’d had one of our fabulous parties. I had too much to drink. I always found myself drinking more in those days. I think it was to block out the truth of what I was facing. The truth of who your grandfather was.
“Phillip wasn’t yet five. Mrs. Wilson would stay in the house on those nights, taking the room beside his bedroom. It was necessary there was an adult available whenever he might need someone if he woke up in the middle of the night.
“I’d had too much to drink and ended up in my bedroom before the party ended. As usual on those nights, I’d wake up restless. My throat was dry, a hangover already beginning to set in. The party had long ended. I could tell by how quiet the house was.
“And then I heard someone crying. At first, I thought it was Phillip. I rushed into his room, but he was sound asleep. That’s when I realized the sobbing was coming from the room next door.
“Your grandfather was in there, and he was out of control. I caught a whiff of booze as soon as I opened the door. He was halfway undressed, trying to coax Mrs. Wilson onto the bed. She was terrified, backing herself into a corner to try and get away from him. I’d imagined his treatment of others before, but I’d never witnessed it.
Seeing the look on her face, the horror.
And the determination on his. I knew in that moment he was a monster. ”
“Did he attack Mrs. Wilson?”
Marmee shakes her head. “Thank God, I heard her crying before anything else happened. But it didn’t matter.
I was furious. I grabbed the first thing I could find, a vase, and hurled it across the room.
The crash was enough to scare him. He went running down the hallway, but I couldn’t let him go. I started chasing him.
“I caught up to him at the top of the stairs, but by then, he’d already tripped. He lay in the middle of the foyer with a broken neck.”
I close my eyes, trying to blink away the vision in my mind.
The beautiful entrance with its delicate lighting and ornate floor and antique furniture, all that eloquence tarnished by the gruesome scene of a dead body.
My grandfather’s body. In the next second, his image is replaced by the memory of Marlowe outside, as if one ghost from the past has been resurrected to escort another beyond the veil.
“Did you push him?”
“It was an accident. For years, I blamed myself. My rage in that moment was so fierce, I wasn’t stopping to think of repercussions. I wasn’t thinking about your grandfather at all.
“I still can’t forgive myself. Not for how he died, but for not doing anything about his behavior sooner. My husband was a monster who needed to be stopped.”
I’d felt the same way about Oliver, his betrayal against me small in comparison to what he’d done to Danielle. There was blood on his hands, and if I had let him, it could have happened again.
“Did anyone ever know the truth about that night?”
“The police believed he fell,” she says. “Your grandfather’s drinking wasn’t a secret to anyone. There were a dozen people here that very night who could attest to how erratic he was at the party. Mrs. Wilson was the only person who knew everything.”
“Is that the reason you’ve kept her here all these years?”
For the first time in our conversation, she turns stiff, offended by what I’ve said.
“You make it sound like I’m trying to coax her into silence.
It was never like that. She was grateful for what happened.
I’d defended her. Trust me, she didn’t shed any tears over his death.
She told the police the commotion from his fall woke her—the only sober adult in the house—and she found him at the bottom of the stairs.
“Mrs. Wilson and I have a true friendship. An understanding of each other. People are often confused about the power dynamic between us, but I’m more than her employer.
If anything, I depend on her more than she does me.
That statement has certainly become truer in my old age.
It’s rare to find real friendship in your life. One that isn’t conditional.”
Coming into tonight, I’d believed my bond with each of these women was unbreakable.
I’d kept them at a distance, too ashamed by my own actions, afraid one misstep or misspoken word would shatter my version of events concerning Oliver into a million pieces.
Instead, it was those relationships that were shattered.
Marlowe, loyal and sincere as she was, is gone, all thanks to Constance, who has inflicted more pain than I ever knew imaginable.
Ava is the only friend I have left, but can I really trust her to keep my secret?
Is our bond as unbreakable as the one Marmee describes?
“I understand what you did,” she continues, wrangling back the conversation. “You stood up to your monster, something I never had the strength to do.”
“Why didn’t you tell me how you really felt about Oliver?”
“At first, I thought he was brilliant. Over time, I could tell something was off. I had my doubts about the jewelry. Too many pieces were misplaced. And he spent so much time at the house, even when the construction crews weren’t here.
” A sad smile spreads across her face. “But you were so happy. And I wanted to be wrong. I wanted my own jaded history to be coloring what I was feeling instead of seeing him for what he was.”
My throat throbs as I struggle to hold back tears. I’d been torturing myself in the exact same way, creating excuses for his behavior long after the first warning signs made themselves known.
“Did you hear us that night?” I ask. “Is that how you knew something happened?”
“It was the next morning. Something in your eyes had changed. I remember the change in myself, after seeing what happened to your grandfather. There’s regret, but also overwhelming relief.
I was able to piece the rest together. Your engagement being called off.
Your insistence you needed to rebrand the blog and travel to Europe.
I assumed you were trying to get out of town.
It’s precisely what one of the leading ladies in one of our favorite film noirs would have done.
It’s what I would have done, if I didn’t have a young son to care for. ”
“And you didn’t judge me?”
“How could I? If anything, I blamed myself. All these years, I did my best to prepare you, to make you a strong woman. But I also hid things from you. Like the truth about your grandfather. Maybe if I’d been more honest, you never would have let a man like Oliver take advantage of you. I’m sorry, Tippi.”
I hold her hand. “You don’t need to apologize for anything,” I say. “Every good thing I’ve ever had in my life came from you. If any of it goes away, that’s my fault alone.”
“Then you best do what you can to get away with it,” she says. “I can help you.”
I look into my lap. “It’s not that simple. Someone else knows Oliver is dead.”
“What do you mean?”
“Someone at the party. They’ve been blackmailing me all night. That’s what I was trying to tell you earlier. It started with a birthday card. They left other notes in the library and my bedroom.” I wait. “They have a picture of me disposing of the body.”
Alarm glazes over her eyes. Panic. What I did to Oliver isn’t a mere assumption or secret. Someone has proof and is threatening me with it.
“Where did you do it?”
“They poured cement around the crow fountain that weekend. I put him in there.”
She wears a wicked smile, one I’ve never seen before tonight. “Smart girl.”
“I thought because I disposed of everything here, it would be easier to get away with it. No one would search the property, let alone dig up the fountain, unless they already had mountains of evidence. I was wrong. Someone was here that night and took a picture.”
“How on earth would they get access?”
“I don’t know. Mrs. Wilson had mentioned something about the gate being repaired,” I say. “Someone could have entered the grounds undetected.”
“The same night you decided to kill Oliver?”
A nervous thought flips through my mind, the same one I had the night of the break-in.
Could it really be a coincidence? Maybe my earlier assumption about Damien was correct.
If he was working alongside Oliver, he could have been with him at the house that night.
Oliver could have invited him to help steal the jewels, and in return, he witnessed a murder cover-up.
Dread sprouts from my shoulders and neck.
“When I went through Damien’s emails, he was in contact with someone named Doc about the jewels.
Damien is a doctor. He’s been acting suspicious all night, and I’m pretty sure he’s wearing Oliver’s Rolex.
Earlier, I went through his room and found Oliver’s phone.
Both the phone and the watch were stolen from my apartment, so I think he might have been the person behind the burglary, too.
I’m starting to wonder if he only dated Marlowe to get close to me.
I even thought he pushed her.” I pause. “Clearly, I was wrong about that.”
Marmee squeezes my hand in encouragement. “What can we do now?”
“I need to confront him before the police arrive. There must be a reason he hasn’t already contacted them.”
“He’s probably after money.”
“You think it’s that simple?”
“Most things in life are.”
I recall my earlier epiphany about motives. Passion. Pride. Greed. Constance murdered Marlowe in a heated frenzy. I killed Oliver to reclaim my worth, protect anyone else he’d risk hurting. Maybe Damien’s intent is that primitive. Marmee’s estate is worth millions, and he wants a cut of it.
“Paying him off might be the simple solution, but it doesn’t help me long term. I don’t trust him.”
Marmee sighs, her hand gripping and releasing the crown of her cane. “Let’s get through tonight. If he is after money, pay him whatever he wants,” she says. “Tomorrow is a problem for another day.”
And yet, I can’t live forever looking over my shoulder, waiting for Damien to drop his next demand. What options does that leave me? Either acquiesce to his wants the rest of my life, or eliminate the problem. Can I really commit a second murder to cover up the first one? Am I even considering it?
And then there’s Ava. She’s my best friend, but can I really trust her to keep a secret of this magnitude?
“You’ll get through this, Tippi,” she says. “If there’s one thing I did right, it’s raise a strong woman. You’re a fighter. Always have been.”
Her words resonate within the deep crevasse of my soul. We’re both women making the best of our situations. Oliver and Constance are different. They’re killers, concerned only for themselves and their own desires.
Marmee and I are fighters, protecting those that we love.
I embrace her tightly, gratitude glimmering in my eyes. “Thank you for everything.”
“I’m always here, my dear,” she says. “But hurry. You don’t have much time left.”