CHAPTER 58
SIDNEY BLINKED HER EYES AS SHE HELD THE PHONE TO HER EAR. She looked down at Marshall’s feet as he sat in his wheelchair, still contemplating the chessboard and his next move. She saw thick-soled, black high-top shoes with heavy Velcro straps that provided stability to his wobbly ankles.
“You still there?” Gus asked through the phone.
Sidney tried to bring her breathing under control.
Her eyes darted from Marshall’s ugly orthotic shoes, to the open yearbook next to him, and the love lock on top of it.
She looked at Marshall’s old chess set resting next to their current game board.
One of the pinewood cases was positioned halfway into its storage bag—a sheer material with a cinch string at the mouth, which she knew immediately was made from organza fabric.
She looked at the corner of the compact Lladró chess case, noticed the smooth titanium elbow that covered the pinewood.
She thought back to Livia Cutty’s description of the shape of the weapon that likely caused Julian and Henry’s skull fractures.
Any of the case’s four rounded edges would be a perfect match.
Grace asked me to put my chess set away because it brings back bad memories for her.
In an instant, it came together, and Sidney understood how badly she had gotten it all wrong. Her gaze finally moved to Marshall, who was still staring down at the chess pieces, analyzing his next move.
Without warning, Marshall looked up from the chessboard and made eye contact with her.
Sidney wanted to leave calmly, to point casually to her phone and let him know she needed privacy.
She’d be just a minute in the hallway. She’d done a similar thing hundreds of times.
But during the second in which she hesitated, Sidney saw the hint of recognition in his eyes.
Her face, she realized, told Marshall Sebold everything she didn’t want him to know.
The phone dropped from her hand as Sidney stood quickly, the chair screeching across the hardwood and toppling backward.
She turned toward the door, noticing from the corner of her eye that Marshall, too, was hurrying to stand from his wheelchair.
She managed only two steps before she felt it.
A synapse that radiated through the neurons of her central nervous system, producing a jolt that coursed over her body.
It started in the back of her head, a quick shock that stalled time and made her limbs heavy.
Her legs noodled as she tried to lift them for another step.
The hardwood floor rose up to fill her vision before the world went black.
* * *
The apartment door burst open and Grace ran into the living room. Marshall stood over Sidney’s body, his old Lladró chess case and the nylon bag that had held it for the past ten years, hanging from his clinched right fist.
“No, Marshall,” Grace whispered.
“She knew. She was talking with the detective from Whiteface. Gus. I heard her say his name. She knew everything.”
They both looked down at her body. A syrupy puddle of dark red blood was creeping from underneath her and spreading across Ellie Reiser’s hardwood floor.
“What do we do?” Marshall asked. He looked down at his old chess set hanging from his right hand, the strings of the satchel that held it wrapped tightly around his fist. He looked up at Grace next, as if he were surprised to see it in his hands.
There was blood on the mesh pouch. He held it out for Grace to take.
“Help me, Grace.”
She looked down at the body and the blood; then she looked up into her brother’s eyes.
“You’re going to listen to me very carefully,” Grace said. “And you’re going to do everything I tell you.”
She took the nylon bag that contained the Lladró chess set. It wasn’t the first time Grace Sebold’s brother stood in front of her, covered in blood and asking for guidance.
Gros Piton
March 29, 2007
The blood was a problem.
He’d swung his chess set so aggressively that it split Julian’s scalp, the gash spitting blood in a fast splatter across his face and shirt.
It covered his hands and arms. His aggression was a manifestation of his anger.
Julian acted like she belonged to him, looking at Marshall with pity and sorrow for the life that might have been.
Marshall had an image of the way his life should be, and also the way it likely would proceed from here.
He couldn’t change the past, but he would make sure his future got no worse.
He knew what was coming. He could feel it in his tightening muscles and his defiant neurons.
His fine motor skills were already failing.
His ability to walk would soon leave him.
His speech too. His aptitude for clear thought had succumbed to intermittent bouts of cloudiness.
The combination of his ailments would come together in a perfect storm that would require more help than his parents could offer.
Marshall believed the one who was responsible for his condition should be the one who stood up to assist. Running off with Julian Crist could not happen, the same way Henry Anderson was not allowed to take a bigger role in Grace’s life.
Marshall needed Grace. He needed her now, and he’d rely on her more in the future.
During their last “life management” meeting with his therapist, Marshall’s parents had discussed in-home care.
Basically, a stranger coming into the home at some point in his future to bathe him, change his clothes, and help him get to the toilet.
Marshall was managing these things on his own now, but his therapist preferred presenting future events so Marshall had time to “process” the change that was coming.
She had flipped open a brochure for a full-time facility, where those with traumatic brain injury and other chronic, debilitating conditions eventually “gathered.” The therapist presented it like an opportunity, something to look forward to.
His parents and the therapist had only gotten that far in their discussion of his future because Grace had been gone at medical school and had not been around to protest. Being in New York for residency would be a benefit, as she would be closer to him.
But the idea that she would spend that time with Julian ate at him.
Like Henry Anderson, Julian could not be allowed into Grace’s life.
Marshall knew Julian’s death would be a shock, but Marshall and Grace shared the secret of Henry Anderson. He knew she’d absorb this secret as well. They existed, Marshall and Grace, because of each other. They would endure together. It was the only way.
The spray of blood startled him and froze him.
The blunder made his mind wander. He began to analyze his mistake and look for a solution, even before his current task was complete.
He saw Julian stagger to his feet. Without thinking, he lifted his foot, kicked him forward, and watched him stumble to the edge of the bluff and over the side.
The chance that this would be considered an accident, like the last time, was close to zero, given the blood that covered the granite bluff. It was a terrible error.
He made it back to the base of Gros Piton, breathing heavily.
When he wiped his brow, the back of his hand came back smeared in red.
He could only imagine a picture of himself, speckled in blood and sweat, with his chess set hanging from his shoulder as he ran through the resort.
He waited in the shadows of Gros Piton while the purple glow of the setting sun spilled from the horizon and poured onto the white sand of Sugar Beach.
A tuk-tuk was not an option, so the long trek back to the cottage would be on foot.
His silhouette cut across the corner of the beach, unnoticed by those watching the sunset, as he headed into the foothills of the resort.
He was staying in a two-bedroom villa with his parents, and that, too, was not an option.
Instead, he veered to the right when he made it up the steep incline.
The door was locked when he tried the handle, and he worried that Grace had already left to meet Julian.
He knocked loudly. When Grace answered, he simply handed her the bag that held his chess set.
“I need your help.”