Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
Present Day
H oward Reynold’s office was located in Midtown, Manhattan, in an art deco building that reminded Rose of the one she’d been married in just a few blocks away. Memories always linger just beneath the surface. They’re always apt to bite you. Rose and Sean parked in an underground lot a block away and approached the building with their hands in their pockets and their chins raised to take in the mighty view. Around them, the city was alive in ways she’d forgotten it could be. People of every race and creed and fashion and knowledge whizzed past, some talking exuberantly into their phones, others crying, others hurrying to the bus or the subway. Some of them ate sandwiches like their lives depended on them. Some of them paused to take photographs.
It was incredible to Rose that she’d spent any portion of her life in Manhattan. It seemed so foreign to her.
Sean had made an appointment with Howard for three o’clock. The secretary asked them to wait in the lobby and explained Howard was running late. She said it as though Howard was the most important man on the entire island. His time was precious, and Rose and Sean were stones in his shoes.
“Does he know why we’re coming?” Rose asked Sean now, wringing her hands and watching for any movement from the closed door.
“He knows you’re the one who bought the house from him,” Sean said. “I think that intrigued him enough to take the meeting.”
Rose’s heart swelled. Every instinct she had told her to jump up and run to the elevator. Stop digging into Oren’s business. You know what he’ll do to you. It won’t be pretty.
Suddenly, the secretary bolted to her feet, fixed her jacket, and announced, “Mr. Reynolds will see you now.” She even opened the door to let them in.
Howard’s office was decorated with Japanese minimalism in mind. Rose imagined that Howard had spent time in Japan and decided to bring back their aesthetic principles with the hope that some of their other sensibilities would rub off on him. That was the way of the wealthy. They wanted to simplify everything. They wanted to throw money at every problem.
Howard stood to shake their hands. He wore a cologne Rose recognized from her years with Oren, something that evoked money and the idea of multiple vacation homes. He was still handsome, but there was something overly slick about it.
Natalie’s first love.
“Congratulations on your purchase of that dump,” Howard said, smiling in a way that showed too many teeth. “What’s your vision for the place?”
Rose’s voice shook. “I’m thinking a hotel or a bed-and-breakfast.”
“Right. Like Nantucket needs more of those.” Howard’s voice sparkled with sarcasm.
“On the contrary, more and more tourists come every summer. I think another bed-and-breakfast is just the ticket. And it’s been a shame to watch that plot of land go to waste over the years,” Sean affirmed, sticking up for Rose. He wasn’t wearing his police officer uniform and had opted for a pair of slacks and a dark green sweater. He looked good. Understated.
Howard’s eyes flickered as though he wanted to roll them. He folded his hands across his desk and looked at Rose. “How can I help you today?” He said it distractedly.
Rose filled her lungs, then took the plunge. “We want to know why you let the old place sit like that for so many years. Why buy a half-destroyed property and do nothing with it?”
“It happens all the time,” Howard insisted. “My wife says I have too many irons in the fire. I had to take some out.”
“But this particular place,” Sean pressed. “It once belonged to Oren Grayson. Are you familiar with that name?”
“Only in as much as I bought the place from him,” Howard lied.
His face was like a stone. It was time to bring out the big guns.
Rose reached for her purse and pulled out the old photograph of Howard and Natalie. “We know that isn’t true,” she breathed, placing it on the desk between them.
Howard’s bushy eyebrows shot up his forehead. The color drained from his cheeks. Slowly, he dropped his hand to take the photograph and raise it closer to his face. He looked captivated.
“Where did you get this?” he breathed.
All the air was taken out of the room. It was difficult to breathe.
“We’re trying to get to the bottom of an investigation abandoned many years ago,” Sean said after a pause.
“Natalie,” Howard whispered.
Rose nodded. “We don’t think it was an accident.”
“Of course, it wasn’t an accident,” Howard shot. “Oren Grayson wasn’t the kind of guy who had accidents. ”
Rose thought of the miscarriage in Paris. An accident Oren couldn’t avoid. But she wouldn’t bring that up with Howard. She didn’t even plan to tell him she was Oren’s second wife.
Howard fixed his face and set the photograph down in front of him.
“We know why we think it wasn’t an accident,” Sean said. “But why don’t you think it was?”
Howard snorted. It seemed difficult for him to keep still. “You should have seen the way Oren sauntered up to Natalie at the bar the night we met him. He had this air about him. Like he owned the world, but he was the kind of guy who got whatever he wanted from birth. He never had to work for anything in his life. Natalie ranted about him all night after he left. But I knew in the pit of my stomach that something was wrong. And not long after that, Natalie left me for him.”
Howard chewed the inside of his cheek and turned to gaze out the window. It was as though he wanted to remind himself of all he’d earned. All he’d fought for.
“I kept tabs on Natalie after they got married,” Howard said. “I felt like I owed it to her. She’d been hypnotized by Oren’s wealth, his multiple homes, and all the adventures he could take her on. But I knew there would be a crash landing. I just didn’t imagine it would end like that.”
Rose’s heart throbbed. She thought she might throw up.
“When I found out Natalie died in the fire, I went insane,” Howard sputtered. “I got in my car and drove to Nantucket immediately to see the old place. I couldn’t believe how massive it was. It looked haunted. Terrifying. I went into town after that and heard whispers from the islanders. They all assumed Oren had killed Natalie. They didn’t know my background; they couldn’t have known I loved Natalie, so they told me everything. They told me that they’d once seen Oren smack her upside the head in public. They told me that if you drove back to the mansion at a certain time of night, you could hear the married couple fighting. I was mystified. Why had Natalie left me for this outright evil man?”
In her chair now, Rose felt Sean’s eyes settle on her. Does he know Oren was cruel to me, too? She wondered. She felt Howard was giving up pieces of her past through the retelling of Natalie’s story.
“I wanted to stay and go to the funeral,” Howard said. “I wanted to pay my respects to her family, whom I hadn’t spoken to since Natalie left me. But when I inquired about the funeral, I learned there would be a private memorial service. ” Howard used air quotes. “Why private? It didn’t make any sense. I started my own investigation after that. I went to the police and pretended to be someone else. I gave a false name.”
Sean twitched in his chair. Did he remember Howard now?
“But it was clear that the Graysons weren’t cooperating with the cops,” Howard said. “I became obsessed. I rented a little cabin and asked question after question of Nantucket locals. But I soon grew tired of their stories. They never gave me any more details than I already had. So I pooled together the rest of my money and bought the old Grayson Estate. It was the only way to see the life Natalie had lived. It was the only way to get to the bottom of it.”
Howard’s chin quivered. He looked on the brink of sobbing.
“I picked up the keys from the real estate agency and returned to my cabin. I wanted to mentally prepare, you know? I knew I was about to enter Natalie’s tomb,” Howard said. “I sat down with a beer and a notebook. I wanted to write all my thoughts down. I wanted to make sense of myself. But that’s when the phone rang.” Howard closed his eyes. “It was Penelope.”
Rose and Sean exchanged confused glances. Who was Penelope?
“Penelope was a girl I’d been seeing before I ran away to Nantucket,” Howard explained. “Somehow, she’d gotten my number. She wanted to know how I was. She was worried about me. Her voice brought me back to earth in an instant.” Howard snapped his fingers. “I looked in the mirror and saw this man with scraggly hair and a bushy beard staring back at me. I realized the Orens of the world would always win, no matter what. Which meant I had to start playing by their rules if I wanted to get ahead.
“Everything happened quickly for me after that. I showered, shaved, packed up, and went home to Penelope. We were married within three months, got pregnant, and after that, I got the job that changed my life forever. The job that eventually brought me here.”
He said it proudly, as though he’d gone to battle and come back victorious.
“What made you finally sell the old place?” Rose asked.
Howard shifted his gaze back to her. It was as though he’d forgotten she was there. “It’s true that I held on to the property much longer than I should have. My wife didn’t even know I still had it. But now? The memory of Natalie feels a thousand miles away. It feels like somebody else’s life.”
This time, Howard picked up the photograph and handed it back to Rose without looking at it. It was as though he’d convinced himself not to care about Natalie all over again.
“I hope you can prove what you’re trying to prove,” Howard said, dismissing them. “Natalie didn’t deserve what happened to her. Oren was a sociopath. I truly believe that.”
Howard pressed a button on his desk that called his secretary in. She smiled and said, “I’ll walk you out.”
It was a swift way of getting them out the door.
Rose and Sean were wordless after they left the office. Rather than return to the car immediately, they walked block after block. An exhilarating and fresh wind came through the tall buildings and blasted through their coats. It was a reminder that autumn was just around the corner.
“Terrible guy,” Sean said finally. It was the first thing either of them had said in more than forty minutes.
Rose burst into laughter and nodded. “Terrible.”
“But he seems sure Natalie is dead,” Sean said. “I was sort of hoping, you know, that her lack of death certificate meant that, well…” Sean wet his lips. “It sounds stupid.”
“Meant she wasn’t dead?” Rose offered. “I’ve been hoping that, too.”
“But she would have reached out to Howard. Right?” Sean asked.
Rose raised her shoulders. “Maybe she wanted to get rid of all the men in her life and start over.”
But even as she said it, her heart thudded with sorrow. It was tremendously unlikely that Natalie had gotten out of this alive.
“You want to get a cup of coffee?” Sean asked. He stopped short in front of a diner, one that reminded Rose of the diner they’d gone to back in Nantucket.
“I’m starving,” Rose admitted. “Mind if I get something to eat?”
They sat at a red booth and ordered fried fish sandwiches with mayonnaise, crispy lettuce, and red onion, plus onion rings to share. Rose sipped her Diet Coke and studied the interior, which was just black-and-white photographs of celebrities who’d eaten at the diner, plus several of the Rat Pack during a forgotten time. Rose had never been here even though it wasn’t so far from where she’d once lived with Oren.
“This must be painful for you,” Sean said suddenly, breaking her reverie.
Rose turned to meet Sean’s gaze. She knew he was talking about Oren’s abuse. She knew, too, that he was too much of a gentleman to ask if it had happened to her, too.
“I realized I don’t blame myself anymore,” Rose said suddenly, surprising herself.
Sean cocked his head.
“I used to blame myself for all of it,” Rose breathed. “I blamed myself for falling for him. I blamed myself for giving up my life goals to follow his. I blamed myself for signing a prenup that destroyed my chances of a second life after he left me. And I blamed myself for ‘making’ him cheat. No matter where I looked in my story, I felt guilt.”
Sean shook his head sadly.
“Maybe that guilt won’t ever fully go away,” Rose said. “But Howard’s right. Oren was a kind of sociopath. I would have done anything he asked me to. He manipulated me. It happens to millions of girls across the world every day. And I’m just so grateful I got out.”
Sean reached across the table and took her hand. Rose didn’t flinch away.
“I want to avenge Natalie for what happened to her,” Rose whispered. “It could have been me.”
“We’ll find a way,” Sean said. “I promise.”