Chapter Thirteen
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Gage
“ Y ou look like shit,” Pop says as I trudge into the office, Baby shuffling impatiently at my feet, trying to get around me and out of the cold. She’s part Husky, don’t know what her problem is. I’m irritable and probably should’ve went home and slept for a couple of hours, but we talk to JodiAnne’s psychiatrist today and I don’t want to miss it.
“Late night,” I say, sinking onto a chair in front of the desk and sipping my coffee, sending up a prayer of thanks caffeine exists.
“You and Sierra, finally? She looks like she’d be a real hellcat in bed.”
No doubt, but sometimes a man wants slow and sweet. “Not Sierra.”
“Zarah Maddox? I guess I’ll stop asking about Sierra then.”
“Yeah. We went to dinner and a movie last night. I’ve been thinking about what Max said, what he wanted me to do.”
“Speaking of that...” Pop reaches behind him and pulls a piece of paper out of the fax machine.
My request to be added to Ash’s visitation list was approved. He’s willing to talk to me, and I can call or email for an appointment.
I wonder if he knows who I am or why I want to talk to him. I doubt a prisoner in the state pen would turn down a visit from a stranger off the street, but Ash Black could have his own reasons why he would talk to me.
“You’re going to see him? For what?” Pop asks, assessing me.
“Not sure,” I admit. “I can’t pin anything down. Max didn’t think this was over. What? What isn’t over?”
“And you think going to see Black will help?”
I gulp my coffee. “I don’t know. At this point, anything is worth a shot.”
“Then look at this.” Pop throws me today’s paper. The King’s Crossing Chronicle is turned to the obits and Pop circled an entry in light blue ink.
Marci Grayson, 25, passed away Wednesday in her home. Her service will be held at the Holy Trinity Lutheran Church on Saturday, November 20 th at 2 PM. Donations to the Minnesota Mental Health Awareness Association are encouraged in lieu of gifts.
“So what?” I ask, throwing the paper back at him.
“So Miss Grayson was a patient at Quiet Meadows.”
“So were hundreds of other people.”
“You don’t think it’s a weird coincidence?” Pop tosses the paper over his shoulder. It misses the table and lands on the floor. He doesn’t pick it up.
“No. Do you?”
Pop has a nose for this kind of thing, and I hike an ankle to my knee and consider the implications, or lack thereof. Two young girls who used to be patients at Quiet Meadows pass away. Seems like a stretch to connect them.
“I guess not.”
“Talking to her family wouldn’t hurt, I suppose.”
“We have an appointment in forty-five minutes.”
This irritates me. Not that I care how Pop thinks we should spend our time, but there’s no proof anything strange is going on. “Zane said the doctors at the facility all checked out. There wasn’t anything happening except for what they were doing to Zarah.”
“That they found.”
“Fair enough.”
I’m not going to argue. Pop has a feeling, but I think he’s turning the sanatorium into a bigger deal than it needs to be. I’m more interested in Ash Black. A man in prison isn’t completely powerless, and behind his bars, I’m sure he’s still pulling plenty of strings. I’ll be talking to him sooner than later.
I still have to clean out Max’s apartment, and Mom called pressing me for a real RSVP.
Since when am I so busy? What happened to my quiet, peaceful life?
A brown-eyed little girl barreled into it, that’s what.
I let Baby outside to pee, and resentfully, she settles on her cushion to nap. I don’t know how long we’re going to be, and she’s staying here rather than waiting in the truck. Some people spill all their dirt, relieved someone’s listening, and others clam up, preferring to keep their skeletons hidden in their walk-in closets. We could be at the Grayson’s for hours or we could be there five minutes.
The Graysons live on the other side of King’s Crossing, opposite the Donnellys. They have new money. The Graysons have old money and live in an enormous house, a huge man-made pond dug into their backyard. The house is even bigger and fancier than Zarah’s, more befitting of a drama on the BBC, and I half expect a maid to come out and curtsy at my truck.
“Nice place,” Pop says.
In the circular driveway, I park off to the side and kill the engine. “Would you really want to live here?” I ask, my eyebrows raised. Zarah’s house is nice, too, but it’s too big for me. I agree people need their own space, but I wouldn’t want to feel like I’m living in a museum. Impersonal. Lonely.
“If you and Zarah hook up, you will,” Pop says.
Scowling, I say, “I don’t think she’s like that.”
He laughs. “She was born rich. They’re all like that.”
“Come on.” There’s no point in arguing about Zarah’s and my living arrangements. I’m barely dating her.
We slam out of the truck.
“I thought you wanted me to start seeing her,” I say, irritated, unable to let it go.
“I didn’t want you to think you weren’t good enough.” Pop pushes the doorbell.
“That wasn’t all of it.”
A woman wearing a plain black dress opens the door, saving him, and he blows out a sigh. “Yes?” she asks, her eyes narrowed in suspicion.
“We have an appointment to see Mrs. Grayson.” Pop flashes her a smile.
Her face smooths. “Of course. The family is going through a very difficult time. I’m sure you understand.”
“Of course,” Pop echoes, and I can’t tell if he’s being facetious or not.
We follow the maid into a library that’s similar, actually, to the Donnelly’s, down to the books and fireplace, and Mrs. Grayson is sitting on a sofa, flipping through a photo album.
“Thank you, Rosie,” she says, and the maid retreats, closing the doors behind her.
“Thank you for seeing us, Mrs. Grayson,” Pop says, extending his hand.
She shakes it but quickly lets go. Not out of distaste. Disinterest. “I’m not sure what this is about. Marci’s death was an accident. We explained that to a detective already.”
“The police were here?” I ask, surprised.
“Marci fell down a flight of stairs and broke her neck. We called nine-one-one, and a detective took our statements. Very cut and dried is what he said.”
“She used to be a client at Quiet Meadows,” I say, casually stepping to the window that looks out over the pond and backyard.
“Yes. She had debilitating depression and was participating in an inpatient program. We thought it best. She was supervised twenty-four hours a day. Suicide watch.”
“I’m sorry. What kind of care did you set up for her after Quiet Meadows closed?”
Mrs. Grayson blinks. “She wasn’t a patient there when that happened. I don’t want to say she was cured, but she’d made significant progress and we signed her out two weeks before the facility was shut down.”
I shoot Pop a look.
“Was she receiving any treatment at the time of her death?” Pop asks.
“Yes, of course. She was seeing a psychiatrist and taking antidepressants under her supervision.”
“Do you mind sharing which psychiatrist?” I ask casually, hands in my pockets. People get strange about revealing things like that. If I sound like it’s important, Mrs. Grayson could withhold the information out of fear or plain stubbornness. We aren’t cops and talking to us is strictly voluntary.
“Jerricka Solis. She has an office downtown, and Marci went twice a week. When we decided Marci was well enough to come home, it wasn’t a decision we made lightly. We knew she still needed therapy, and Dr. Solis reached out and offered to see Marci as a patient. She came highly recommended, and we felt she was a good fit. Marci liked her.”
JodiAnne Donnelly’s therapist.
“Do you mind if we look at Marci’s room?” Pop asks.
Mrs. Grayson deliberates, tapping her fingers on the photo album still in her lap, sets it aside, and then stands. “I suppose not, but I don’t know why you would need to. Marci had some issues, but depression runs on my side of the family and wasn’t the cause of her death. Not like it could have been. My mother committed suicide, and I’ve made my own attempts.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” I pause. “But Marci was well enough to leave.”
“Treating depression is like playing a game of Russian roulette. What could cure you could just as well make what you have ten times worse. Some drugs have terrible side effects. The doctors at Quiet Meadows happened upon a drug combination and dosage Marci responded to. That’s the best anyone can hope for. She was talking about going to school before she tripped. She finally felt good enough to try.”
That sounds along the same lines as what Polly Donnelly said about JodiAnne’s treatments, only, it seems, Marci was far luckier.
We follow Mrs. Grayson up a wide set of stairs. She walks slowly, gripping the handrail until her knuckles turn white, as if she’s coddling a case of arthritis in her knees or a bad hip, or she could be reliving her daughter’s death. I wonder who found Marci lying at the bottom of the stairs.
Marci’s room is tidy. Her queen bed is made, the carpet freshly vacuumed—I can see the tracks in the piling. A desk sits under a window that shows us the same view of the pond, and a dresser and bookshelves fill the rest of the room. There’s not a speck of dust anywhere.
The bedroom doesn’t feel lived in. There’s no clutter, no memorabilia. No posters or art hanging on the walls. No ticket stubs or plastic dance club bracelets. No cat sleeping on the bed or clothes in a heap on the floor. It’s empty of presence, of spirit, just like every room in this house, I bet.
There’s a diary laying on the desk, and using a pen, I flip it open. The last entry dries my throat.
Someone is after me, I know it. Someone wants me dead. I can feel them watching me. I don’t want to go anywhere, but Mom forces me to see Dr. Jerricka and I have to do what she says. I’m scared to leave my room but I’m more afraid Mom will send me to another facility like QM if I don’t behave. Dr. Pederson pretended he wanted to help but all he did was give me drugs I didn’t want. They made me feel like I was going crazy and did weird things to my memory. Shit. My appointment with Dr. Jerricka is soon. I need to go. Please, please, please God, don’t let anything happen to me.
That’s the last thing she wrote.
Pop reads over my shoulder, and he stiffens.
“Do you read your daughter’s diary, Mrs. Grayson?” I ask.
“No. Don’t be ridiculous. All of Marci’s doctors warned us against that kind of thing, and because of my own history, I know how important it is to have something you can keep to yourself. It’s imperative to recovery.”
“I understand. Did the detective who spoke to you read her diary? Perhaps make a copy?”
Mrs. Grayson frowns. “No. There was no need for that.”
“Who was home the day she fell?”
“Harold, my husband, was at work—he’s an attorney in his family’s firm—and I was at a ladies auxiliary meeting. Marci didn’t want to go, and I gave her permission to stay here alone. I trust our staff and they’ve been with us for years. Sonia, the woman who answered the door, found her.”
I open my mouth to ask another question, but Mrs. Grayson clutches her cardigan closed and says, “I think you should go. Harold often comes home for lunch, and he wouldn’t appreciate finding you here. We’re trying to move on the best we can. Marci was a good girl, but there’s no denying she made life challenging at times. A parent can never stop worrying about their child.”
“Thank you for your time, Mrs. Grayson. We’re sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you.”
We follow her down the stairs, and she navigates the stairway just as carefully as she went up.
She ducks into the library, and the woman wearing the black dress mysteriously appears and shows us out.
I step onto the wide stone porch with more questions than answers.
“Maybe JodiAnne wasn’t so paranoid after all,” Pop finally says halfway to our office.
“But why? Who would be after two young girls?”
“Not sure. What do they have in common? They were close in age. Came from rich families, had mental health issues.”
“That’s not enough for murder,” I say, and Pop knows I’m right. Life isn’t like books and movies. Sometimes things happen. Like losing your footing and falling down a long set of stairs or your heart giving out. Marci’s diary entry exhibited a paranoia that could have been created by the antidepressants she was prescribed and JodiAnne had a whole bucketful of problems that could have given her the same sense of paranoia—with or without drugs.
“Maybe you’re right. It looks black on white on the outside. On the inside, it sounds fishier than hell but I’ve still got nothing.” Pop blows out a sigh.
“You tried. That’s the best you can do. We’ll talk to JodiAnne’s shrink and we can tell Polly Donnelly her daughter’s death was a terrible byproduct of her treatment. Just like Dr. Krout said it was.”
Pop doesn’t say anything and I ask, “What else is on tap?”
He shifts in the seat and adjusts his ball cap. He wants to keep chewing on Marci’s death but says, “A family on the south side can’t find their daughter. They think she ran off to get married. Next on the list is a fiancée who wants to make sure her potential husband is on the up and up.”
I hate cases like that. If you don’t trust the person you’re going to marry, you have no business getting married.
Pop scowls. He wants cases with more substance, too. I get that, but PIs are like fancy water. You got the kind that has the flavoring and the antioxidants. A little caffeine to perk you up. Then you have the plainer stuff, good tasting water but not so expensive, and last there’s the swill that tastes like fountain water. A public fountain at that. We aren’t designer water, and unless we get lucky and elevate our rep, those are the kinds of jobs we’re always going to be destined to work.
“We’ll freeze our asses off, but we can track down the girl easy enough.” It’ll be a lot of legwork, but it will keep my mind off Zarah and when I’ll see her again.
“Yeah. Ever think about getting out of the game?” he asks.
I turn into our office parking lot. It’s time for lunch, and Baby needs some chow. “No. Is this because of Zarah?”
I’ve never known my father to sound so defeated. I agree the good jobs may be sparse right now, but we’ll stay afloat. We always have.
“Nah. Well, kind of. I guess I thought we’d be doing better after all these years.”
I laugh. “We do okay. Tracking down kids is important, especially if no one else cares. But you’re right. Rotten fiancés I can do without. I’ll bug Ross. Maybe he can throw some meat our way.”
Begging cops on the KCPD for work isn’t something I’m proud of, but I hate seeing Pop down. He thought we had something with JodiAnne. Pop should’ve been the cop, not me.
He shrugs.
“Maybe it’s time for a vacation.” I slam the door shut and use my fob to lock the doors and set the alarm.
“Now there’s an idea. We’ll wrap up what we got and go somewhere warm.”
“Perfect.”
After a lunch of sub sandwiches I pick up at the questionable deli three doors down, I call Zarah, but I get her voicemail. I think about finding Stella’s number or lowering myself and calling Zane to see if she’s okay, but she’s been okay without me for the past year, and just because all of a sudden I’m around doesn’t mean she needs me. Zarah has a life. She could be napping or talking to her shrink. Maybe she and Stella went out to lunch. I’d be hurt though, if she made a trip into the city and didn’t tell me.
I scoff. If a woman started acting and feeling how I am, I’d peg her as needy and cut her loose ASAP.
Without leaving a message, I disconnect.
Dr. Solis, JodiAnne’s and Marci’s psychiatrist, cancels through her receptionist and reschedules leaving Pop and me free for the rest of the afternoon.
I put in a call to my old partner on the police force. He says he envies me the freedom to do my own thing. When we graduated from the academy, he was already married to his high school sweetheart and had a little one on the way. There were aspects of the job he disagreed with too, but he needed the steady paycheck and couldn’t afford to hate the office politics enough to quit. I didn’t need long to realize the KCPD wasn’t a good fit, but Ross and I did enough time cruising the streets we got to know each other pretty well. We stayed friends after I tossed my badge onto my chief’s desk and went into business with Pop. It’s been thirteen, fourteen years now, and I have zero regrets. At least, not about that.
“Burglary came in last night. Lots of jewelry. Reward if you can find the bastards,” Ross says, his car’s scanner buzzing in the background.
Ross is a dick now, bigger than me, I tease him sometimes, and the KCPD’s budget doesn’t allow for plainclothes detectives to have partners. Whenever I call, Ross is always snooping around on his own. Sounds dangerous to be without built-in back up, but Vance Huxley is a year in the ground and the new mayor has been trying to clean up his shit ever since. First thing she promised to do was throw away the garbage, and she put all her budget and manpower into internal affairs investigations of the King’s Crossing Police Department.
She’s not winning any popularity contests, but she’s cutting through the crud okay. While the Blacks ran the KCPD, there wasn’t much hiding, but Ross said there was a lot of scrambling after Huxley’s suicide made the news. It will be interesting to see how many cops wiggle out from under IA investigations because they were quick enough to shred paper and wipe hard drives.
I write down all the deets Ross rattles off and a couple of other crimes the cops couldn’t care less about. Pop will be happy though, the higher-end stuff. The jewelry thing could set us up real good—the reward’s five figures. Fund our vacation. I should swallow my pride more often.
He invites me out for a beer, and I accept. We haven’t met up to bullshit in a few months, and I don’t want him to think all I’m doing is using him for potential cases. He’s a good guy, and maybe he can give me some advice on Zarah. He’s managed to keep his wife happy all this time, and I’m not above saying I could use a married guy’s opinion.
I email Polly Donnelly, let her know the shrink canceled. JodiAnne’s funeral is in a couple of days, about the same time as Marci Grayson’s, come to think of it. There’s no reason not to bury her, and Polly will disappointed but she can’t hold off any longer. She was hoping to wrap this up before the funeral, but if Dr. Solis cancels on us again, it won’t happen. I think about mentioning Marci Grayson, but besides them sharing a therapist and time at Quiet Meadows, there’s no connection, so there’s no point. No use getting Polly riled up over nothing.
Pop and I do some legwork on the girl, giving me a change of scenery I desperately need and giving Baby a chance to sniff around.
We make a little headway, and we have a list of names to look up in the morning. People she could be hiding with or may know where she is. By the sounds of it though, she didn’t run off to get married. She wanted to get away from her overbearing parents who were telling her what to do every five seconds. It doesn’t matter to me as long as we can get a location on her and report back to collect our fee. We’re not getting paid to haul her ass home—we can rattle off an address and that will be the end of that.
I leave Pop in the office looking over street cameras the night of the jewelry theft. We have all the fancy gadgets the police do: access to street cams, no problem running a license plate. We have authorization to search missing persons databases, and we can search IAFIS, the FBI’s fingerprint database, if we need to. A lot of what we do is running around questioning snitches, picking through lies (and garbage), and hunting people down online because they’re too stupid to stop using their credit cards.
Being a PI is pretty fucking glamorous. It’s grunt work but pays well, and I’d rather have the freedom to beat the shit out of someone than having to walk because I have a badge on my hip and I’m supposed to be protecting people, not the other way around. Sometimes a guy just won’t talk without a fist to the face, and cops doing whatever the fuck they wanted because Black had their backs, that kind of police work is going to be long gone when the mayor’s through with them. They’ll be lucky if they can take a shit without a hall pass.
Baby’s anxious to get home and eat, but an empty evening presses on me. I used to like having the nights to myself after having people in my face all day or listening to Pop quiz me on my sex life, but meeting Zarah reminded me that sometimes it’s nice to have someone waiting for you to walk through the door.
Finding her on the floor this morning freaked me out, and I better get used to crap like that if I want to see where this goes. She’s got more baggage than traveling royalty, and it’s going to be my job to tiptoe through it all. I sound like I mind, but I don’t. When I first decided I wanted to be a cop, I had this na?ve idea I would be helping people, making a difference. All I did was slap parking tickets on cars and tell homeless people bunking down on my beat to move along. I wasn’t pulling cats out of trees or buying lemonade from little kids while keeping their neighborhoods safe.
Maybe that’s my fault for thinking so pie-in-the-sky, but I’d never had a run-in with the cops to know any differently. I wasn’t a punk who got beat up in an alley by an asshole wearing a badge who needed to vent his pent-up rage. I had a pretty idealistic view of what police officers did, mostly because Pop kept me out of any real trouble.
Even twenty years ago Clayton Black kept half the police force in his pocket, and it just got worse when Ash took over parts of his business. I never did like the vibe or the reality of being a beat cop, expected to kiss ass to climb the ranks, and I think my true calling should have been social work. Being a PI works too and holding a light so Zarah can see through the muck of what Ash did to her won’t be a hardship. The road is long though, and my real fear is we’ll reach the end of the path and she’ll look at me and say, “Thanks, but no thanks,” and I’ll have put in all that time for nothing.
That’s true of any relationship, but if Zarah decides she doesn’t want me after she’s off her meds and can build a real life for herself, it’s gonna hurt, big-time.
I know we’re wrong for each other, but I can’t change who I am any more than she can change who she is, and it’s a risk I’m going to have to take if I want her in my life in any real meaningful way.
Baby noses me, and absently, I rub her fur. “I know.”
I coast into the parking lot, and a moving truck from a furniture store I’ve never shopped at is taking up a hell of a lot of space. The truck’s headlights are off, but the dome light’s illuminating two men laughing at something on a large tablet. The guy sitting behind the wheel spots me and grins. They’re waiting for someone, but if they think I’ll have information on anyone living here, they’ll be sorely mistaken. I barely know my neighbors. I park and climb out of my truck.
The guy who’s excited to see me jumps out of his. “You Davenport?” he yells.
“Yeah?”
“Got a delivery for ya.”
No, he doesn’t. “I didn’t order anything.”
“Not my problem. We’ve been waiting for two hours, boss’s orders. We just wanna go home.”
“What is it?” I ask, walking closer.
The driver pokes his head into the truck and pops out holding a clipboard. “A table or some shit.”
I direct him to the door closest to my unit. They’re going to have to carry whatever it is up a flight of stairs, but they should be used to that.
Baby’s excited, trotting around the movers’ legs, yipping. Nothing happens to me, and on the unheard of occasion it does, it’s cause for a full-out celebration.
I kick Baby’s cushion out of the way and the men move a black and silver table into the space where it was meant to go. It looks like something out of a ’50s diner, a drop-down leaf on one side.
They go back to the truck and haul up four matching chairs.
“Where did this come from?” Maybe Pop got it into his head that now that I’m seeing Zarah, I needed a table in case she ever spent time here. A little late for that.
The driver shoves an envelope at me, and they slam out of my apartment, put out I wasn’t home and had to wait.
I open the card, and Zarah’s elegant script says, I hope you like it. Maybe invite me for dinner sometime? xo – Zarah
Studying the table, I admit it’s me, and it fits into the color scheme of the kitchen just fine. I like it, and it surprises me she bothered to look at my apartment and put her own tastes aside to buy something that would suit me. Or maybe I’m reading too much into it, and she’s into all things retro.
Baby lays under the table, tickled pink with the new arrangement.
“Brat.”
I send Zarah a quick text. Thanks for the table. You can come over any time you want.
She never did return my call, but I’d been too caught up in looking for that girl to notice. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
Her message appears two seconds after I press Send. You’re welcome. What about tomorrow?
Sure. What time?
About six?
Sounds good. Do you need a ride? I don’t mind running out to get her, but I’ll be filling my tank a lot more than usual if this keeps up.
No. Douglas can drive me into the city. Ummm…
She stops typing, and I wait for what she wants to say next. It’s going to be something about sex since that seems to be an issue whenever we’re together alone. I don’t blame her, Zane and Stella probably warning her if she and I grew close it would eventually put us on that path, but she and Max have already been intimate. I don’t resemble my brother in any way, but I’m hardly scary. She was able to push through what Ash did to her and have a relationship with him. Dating me shouldn’t be that different.
Finally, she types, You said I could bring clothes. Did you mean it? Can I spend the night?
It’s not a big deal, and I don’t mind sleeping on the couch if it means I can wake up and look at her beautiful face over coffee. Yes to both. See you tomorrow.
She sends me a couple of blowing heart emojis, and I set my phone on my new table. I feel a little better about spending the evening alone because tomorrow I won’t have to.
I nuke a bowl of macaroni and cheese and grab Max’s lockbox off my desk and carry it downstairs. I guess I can start working in the kitchen. That’s not so bad—I’ll be closer to the coffeemaker.
While I eat, I page through Max’s diary. It still seems an invasion of his privacy, though he left it to me and obviously wanted me to read it.
The entries before he meets Zane and Stella don’t interest me. Notes about his articles, some women he met at the bars. I catch a lonely vibe from a few of the pages, and I’m in agreement there. It’s no wonder he fell for Zarah so hard. She has a way of squirming under your defenses and all of a sudden you’re addicted.
There’s a short entry about his ex-girlfriend who told him the FBI had possession of the black box. I don’t know why he looked into the case at all. I would have to start his journal from the beginning if I wanted that kind of information, and it’s not that important. He did, and that’s all that matters. He started an avalanche, and the snow is still suffocating the poor bastards who are unfortunate enough to be in the way.
Zarah’s name catches my eye on one of the pages, and I stop eating to read it:
I had some unsupervised time with Zarah on the rooftop tonight—Zane rarely allows it. She’s so hesitant, so lovely, it’s all I can do not to crush her to me and devour her. Under the stars, she let me kiss her, her lips soft and sweet, just like she is. I’ve only known her for a handful of days, but I want to marry her. I don’t know if she’ll have a man like me, even if my father is a senator and we’re upper-class in our own right.
I didn’t know Max considered himself upper-class, but I bet it helped him feel like an equal hanging around the Maddoxes. He might not have eschewed wealth and privilege, often accepting Mom’s invitations and expensive gifts, but he hadn’t jumped in like he could have. He hadn’t driven a fancy car or lived in an area of the city that reflected a desire to be included in those social circles. Rourke and Mom would have paid for him to live somewhere better, just like Mom has offered several times to buy me a condo closer to the heart of the city. It’d be nice not to have a rent payment, but she’d use Rourke’s money and I always turn her down. I don’t have anything against Rourke, but he’s not my father and I don’t want her spending his money on me. Max wouldn’t have had a hangup like that, and maybe if he hadn’t died, he would have used his father’s bank accounts and connections to stay in Zarah’s league. I know how easy it is to feel not good enough.
That’s what Pop was getting at, at the Grayson’s.
George Michael was right. Sometimes the clothes don’t make the man. My Macy’s jeans and shirts don’t mean I’m not good enough. It’s my integrity and how I’ll care about Zarah’s wellbeing that counts. Perhaps, after some of the richest men in King’s Crossing abusing her, Zarah will see that for herself.
Max wanted to marry her. I wonder if he proposed. I wonder if in her haze of drugs and confusion, she said yes. I’ll have to read more of his journal to find out.
He ends the entry:
I want to kill Ash for what he did, but the devil inside me thanks him, too. Without him selling her, without him locking her away in Quiet Meadows to shut her up, without the drugs, she never would have had a reason to look at me twice. I thank Ash Black with all my heart because he gave me Zarah, and that makes me despicable.
There’s an ink dot next to the word, but nothing else is written there.
Max had a dark side, thanking Fate for what the Blacks did to the entire Maddox family, because let’s be real. The whole thing started when Clayton killed Lark and Kagan to cover up an email sent in error.
What Max gained didn’t last.
My brother isn’t thanking Ashton Black now.
If Zarah and I end up together, neither will I.