Chapter Sixty-Three Marni
Chapter Sixty-Three
Marni
The flood of questions and worries refused to stop. Stella wouldn’t answer my texts. Hanna warned me about what happened after
she gave me the good news about Jeremy returning home. A bright spot in an otherwise dismal, draining few days.
I’d tried meditation and yoga. Deep breathing. Polished off a pint of cookie dough ice cream. Wrote in my journal. Nothing
a prosecutor could use against me, of course. Just general thoughts but none of it brought my job back or erased the scarlet
A branded on my chest for cheating on my best friend while her husband cheated with me. My reputation took a pummeling around
town, but prison remained my biggest concern. Being threatened with it or confined in it.
The evidence on Patrick’s body pointing to me hadn’t vanished. It sat in a police locker somewhere, a blaring reminder of
its existence. Every day I waited for a knock on the door. For police cars to crowd my driveway.
The sound of the doorbell startled me out of my self-indulgent internal whining. The chime sounded innocent. Light and carefree. Nothing like a death rattle or the harbinger of bad news that it was.
My legs shook as I stood. I debated packing a bag but doubted prison operated like a hotel with check-in and a self-chosen
wardrobe. I tried to breathe through the panic. Inhaling. Counting. I failed at all of it.
The noise rang out two more times before I finally circled my couch and reached the door. A quick look through the peephole
showed a surprisingly friendly—usually—face. I opened and said his name at the same time. “Cam?”
“They found another body.”
No preamble. A verbal shot but not the one I expected. “What are you—”
“A woman.” Cam put a hand on my arm and guided me back from the door. Closed it behind us. The hint of concern in his voice
and note of caution in his eyes suggested he was trying to be careful while he blurted out the soul-crushing news. “Likely
Victoria.”
My legs picked that moment to stop functioning. The room shifted. Cam stepped in and hauled me up before my knees hit the
plush carpet I loved. The one the color of storm clouds.
By the time my brain rebooted, I was sitting on my couch with Cam brooding beside me.
“I’m going to need you to hold it together,” he said.
That was the Cam I knew. Gruff and practical. Never in the mood for emotional outbursts or shows of affection. He referred
to both as New Age nonsense.
I tried to focus and failed miserably. I could see Victoria on that last day, all put together and regal. Beautiful in her light blue suit. Only she could wear the pastel-bordering color in the fickle weather of early March and look like perfection.
I swallowed enough times to choke out the necessary words. “What happened?”
“The divers found the body about an hour ago in Xavier’s pond. Clearly an adult.”
Denials begged for attention. Wishful thinking took over. “Maybe it’s not—”
“Let’s be serious here. If the professionals found anyone in that water it was always going to be either Noah or Victoria.”
Victoria’s face flashed in my head. The way she threw her hair back when she laughed, letting control abandon her for a precious
second. How she loved to sneak out of meetings and get coffee. A skim vanilla latte. That was her drink. I hadn’t had one
since she disappeared.
A sad, lonely part of me had always known she was dead. She wasn’t the type to slink off in silence. She would have gone out
screaming. If alive, demanded money and support from Xavier. Rightly lectured him on his responsibilities as she searched
for her kids.
She was bold. A woman who’d grown into her social status and donned it like the finest jewels. My friend and my biggest regret.
I wept over her on and off for years. I’d remember a good time, then be slapped with guilt over my betrayal.
How did I let a man come between us?
I’d also mourned that man, Patrick, in private, for months at night, alone in the bed we once shared as we quietly picked apart the stitches holding his family together. I’d compartmentalized my life back then and we all paid the price for my shitty behavior.
“Anything I should worry about with this body?” Cam asked.
The question shook me out of my conflicted memories. “You think I killed Victoria?”
“I don’t think you killed any Tanner. That wasn’t my question.”
“There’s nothing.” But someone planted my bracelet on Patrick. I thought I’d grabbed it that day and didn’t realize I’d run
out without the bracelet until it was far too late to fix the issue.
“My former colleagues say it will take longer to formally identify her remains. Patrick’s implant made him easier.”
Pain rushed through me. It spilled out and over, covering every inch and every thought. The need to curl up and cry and never
leave my house again bombarded me. I had so much to answer for . . . So much to hide.
“What do you think happened? Victoria did kill Patrick, right? How does Aubrey fit in?” I doubted I’d be able to hear the
answer. My mind was too cluttered with what ifs and wish I had thoughts. Patrick’s still body. All that blood.
Cam exhaled as he relaxed back into the couch cushions. “I know what you know. You said she threatened to incriminate you.”
Cam had stepped in and purposely skewed the timeline to hide my presence at the house. I’d played along. It was time to ask
for clarity. “And after you told me to leave the house?”
A simple question I’d circled around and asked for years only to be met with some form of you should be grateful I handled your mess. And I was, so I shut up, but not today. Not when the missing pieces painted a bigger picture that could save me from prison.
Instead of grumbling or outright leaving, Cam sat there. It took almost a minute for him to continue. “I got the call about
the fire at the bookstore and thought Victoria might have gone and burned it down. By the time I got back to the house Patrick’s
body was gone. I looked where you told me but there wasn’t anything there. I still don’t understand what happened to the family
but instinct kicked in. I called for help. Pretended I went to the house to tell the family about the fire and found the blood.
Acted like I stumbled over the house crime scene.”
He became complicit in blaming Patrick as a potential killer when he knew from me that couldn’t be true. All to keep me out
of it. “You protected me.”
Cam stood up but didn’t go anywhere. The move seemed born out of a need to move and not a desire to bolt. “The security footage
had been wiped. Back then it only covered the gate and the outside of the house and wasn’t transmitted off-site. Xavier could
watch it, then erase it both at his house and at the one he bought for Patrick.”
“Why?” That meant Xavier saw my car in the driveway that day. Unless Hanna and Stella knew how to dodge the cameras, he knew
they were there as well. Unless he was in the hidden passageways inside the house, which it didn’t sound like he was, he had
information but not enough to bury us. He probably couldn’t tell which one of us did what, if anything. Maybe that’s why he
didn’t tell the police.
One piece didn’t make sense. He could have blamed all of us and destroyed Hanna but didn’t. Why? Instead, fifteen years later, he set up an elaborate meeting about the division of his assets. It’s like he wanted to continue his game and keep us all off-balance.
“He insisted Aubrey killed her father. Killed all of them,” Cam said.
Aubrey was Xavier’s target. That will reading he arranged for was a way to unmask her or at least drive her into the light.
He dropped hints with the distributions, likely for her.
Cam shook his head. “He wasn’t clear about why he blamed Aubrey or why she’d do something so deranged. It could be that it
was safer to blame Aubrey than the woman he handpicked for Patrick.”
Victoria. Always underestimated by the Tanner men. She’d grown up without anything and craved everything. She worked for Xavier
but not directly. She did bookkeeping. Xavier met her one day and likely thought she’d be submissive and suitable for Patrick.
Grateful and easy to control. He didn’t count on her determination or her love of the life the money bought her.
“Sounds like Xavier hedged as he got older. He sent Aubrey away and watched, waited for her to blink. She never did.” Cam
let out a harsh laugh. “It turned out the one thing he was consistent about, in addition to his ability to make money, was
his inability to read women.”
“You’re including Hanna on that list.” I got it. I’d failed at reading her, too. She was both tougher and more vulnerable
than I ever expected her to be. She fought for Jeremy with debilitating panic running only inches behind her, ready to trip
her up.
“He set her up to fail.” Cam sounded stunned by the idea.
“Thought he’d be able to swoop in and save the boy, even though he didn’t really want to be responsible for the kid.
He wanted someone else to handle the tough stuff, but he tried to trick himself into thinking he could mold Jeremy into the man Patrick should have been. ”
The resounding drumbeat of disappointment. Xavier praised Patrick in public while he ridiculed him in private. The hot and
cold taps of fatherly love stole so much from Patrick.
“That’s the thing about Xavier. The whole Tanner family, really.” Cam sounded tired. Worn out and empty. “When he needed me
it was an onslaught of attention. By the time he was done needing me, he’d collected just enough intel to bury me. Xavier’s
version of instilling loyalty, I guess.”
But there was more. I could hear it in the words Cam didn’t say. “Did Xavier die still demanding something from you?”
“Yes.” Cam didn’t blink. “I’ve been doing it. And it’s almost over.”