Chapter 23
Eleanor leaned toward Hannah, curling her lips so that Hannah could see all of her terribly perfect teeth, teeth that seemed far too bright for her age. She whispered, “There is so much you can’t understand about a place you moved to just a handful of weeks ago. Don’t you think so?”
Hannah felt a shiver down her spine. “I could already write plenty about this place.”
“But you won’t,” Eleanor said.
“Did you invite me here to threaten me, Eleanor? Because I thought you were a classier woman than that,” Hannah declared, flaring her nostrils.
She had a sudden, strangely delirious desire to call her daughter and make sure she was all right.
But Hannah reminded herself that Minnie had been in contact, and she was with Viggo.
She was with some girl named Bethany. Bethany seemed like a nice-girl name.
Hannah hadn’t had the time to research more about her.
She had to trust Minnie. She had to know that Minnie would always do what was right for herself, especially now that she was sixteen. They’d been through so much together. They were moving forward.
Eleanor got up to mix more martinis. It was clear that the woman knew how to drink despite her age.
She stirred happily, dropping olives into each glass.
“Back in the eighties, we at the Legacy Club overheard a terrible argument between a married couple. The things this man said to his wife genuinely chilled us to the bone. At first, we thought we’d forgive him.
Sometimes people lose their cool—men in particular.
Men have not been raised to be as polite and kind as women.
I’m sure, given your story with your husband, you understand that.
But we kept tabs on the situation. More and more, we learned of his abuse.
We learned about the young mother of three who was screaming loudly enough to wake her neighbors.
We learned about a young boy who was going to school with a black eye. ”
“Why not go to the police?” Hannah asked, although she already knew who Eleanor was speaking about. This was the story of Julien, his mother, Nora, and his dead father, Larry. This was the integral story of Julien, of why Julien was the way he was.
“The police? Do you really think they have any power on Nantucket?” Eleanor asked. “I mean, you’ve explored the newspapers from the past, haven’t you? You’ve seen how little the Legacy Club was ever written about. Why do you think that is?”
Hannah grew increasingly uneasy. In a quiet voice, she filled in the blanks. “You have control over the newspaper. You have control over the police station. I understand that.”
“But can you possibly understand?” Eleanor sipped her martini and squinted at Hannah, as though she couldn’t really figure her out, not fully, no matter how hard she tried. “Ours is a far different setup than anywhere else in the United States, as I understand it.”
“You think you’re so special, do you?” This was something Hannah couldn’t stand.
“Why, yes, darling. That’s the entire point,” Eleanor said.
Hannah tried to build confidence. She had so much more to say. “I know the story you’re referring to. It’s Julien’s. He told me himself. And he told me you were at his father’s wake.”
Eleanor’s eyes were sparkling. “I see. He was trying to warn you.”
Hannah had vaguely considered this—that Julien had told her the story of Eleanor as a way to tell Hannah to back off from her investigation.
It didn’t matter how Julien had known about the investigation.
Maybe he’d noticed the letters on the kitchen table and put it together.
Maybe Hannah had let something slip. But hearing it in Eleanor’s voice made it true.
“But I learned something else.” Hannah tried to regain her composure.
“Is that so?” Eleanor asked, intrigued. Maybe she didn’t know everything.
The fact of it was, in the lead-up to meeting Eleanor, Hannah had been busy today.
She’d been trying to figure out why on earth Thomas Bard had been killed—what heinous crime he’d committed to pit the Legacy Club against him.
And eventually, after nearly four hours of reading court documents and scanning newspaper articles and reading interview transcripts from over the years, she’d figured it out.
Thomas Bard had tried to put Eleanor Pike on trial for the death of Larry Mansfield.
In the forty-plus years since Larry’s death, he’d done it more than once, it looked like, leading up to the most recent city council meeting, during which Larry had told everyone it was high time to end the Legacy Club’s reign.
Of course, he hadn’t said it in so many words.
He hadn’t named the Legacy Club, for one.
But Hannah had discovered the transcripts from that meeting. She’d dug deeper than anyone ever had.
“I know why you killed Thomas Bard,” she said. “Maybe I don’t know how you did it. But I get it, now. He was a threat to you.”
Eleanor blinked, as though she’d expected something enormous and was disappointed.
“Don’t you think it’s good what we did to Julien’s father?” Eleanor asked. “Are you telling me that that heinous man, who beat his wife and children, should have kept on as he was?”
Hannah’s cheeks were inflamed. “I don’t think anyone should take matters like this into their own hands.”
Eleanor smirked. “What about your journalistic endeavors? Aren’t they similar in nature?”
“I didn’t kill anyone,” Hannah said.
“Not that you know of,” Eleanor said. “But there are always ramifications.”
“There are ramifications for everything, yes,” Hannah offered.
“Yes. There would have been ramifications, had we let Larry carry on,” Eleanor said, her fingers tented on her thigh. “It’s possible that he could have killed those two little girls and his son, Julien. It’s possible his wife would have been buried young.”
Hannah didn’t want to get into this. In her mind, what the Legacy Club had done was wrong, entirely wrong, the sort of thing that you couldn’t come back from.
It was hard for her to imagine the specifics, if they had cronies they sent after the men who’d wronged them, or if they (somehow, given their age) managed to take out the men themselves.
Hannah’s pulse quickened. There was something overly sinister about the way Eleanor was looking at her, as though she were a few steps ahead in this game. Again, Hannah tried to answer the big question at hand. Why had Eleanor invited her here? Was this an elaborate game of cat and mouse?
And then, Eleanor raised her glass and said, “What if it were your daughter?”
Hannah felt smacked over the head, but she told herself to keep her cool. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“What if your daughter were in danger? What if you had to do something, something maybe violent, in order to keep your daughter safe? Would you do it?” Eleanor asked.
Hannah knocked her head back and cleared out the rest of her martini glass. She told herself that it was time to go, that now that Eleanor was bringing Minnie into the equation, she couldn’t hang around.
“I don’t think we need to talk about that,” Hannah said.
“And why not? Isn’t it relevant?” Eleanor asked.
Hannah snorted. “I don’t see how it’s relevant.”
“No. I suppose you wouldn’t,” Eleanor said.
But her strange and knowing and alienating tone stopped Hannah’s heart. Something glinted in her eyes. She wanted to say something. She was dangling something over Hannah’s head.
“Tell me, Hannah,” Eleanor said gently. “Do you know where your daughter is?”
Hannah frowned. “Of course I do. She’s with friends. She’s probably still with Viggo.”
Eleanor shook her head every so slightly. “Oh no, darling. Like I told you before. I make it my business to know who is on the island and what everyone is up to. Your daughter left the island earlier this afternoon, in fact.” Eleanor snapped her fingers. “Do you want to know who took her away?”
Icy panic shot through Hannah. She had half a mind to throw her martini over Eleanor’s face. But she remained frozen, gasping, while Eleanor delivered her horrible smile of victory.