Chapter Forty-Seven Harriet
Chapter Forty-Seven
Harriet
It’s bright and early when I pull into Gogo’s driveway. I would have preferred to do this somewhere else, but I’m running out of time.
I find them in the kitchen making breakfast. It smells like toast and coffee in here—homey and familiar. It reminds me of childhood mornings when my parents were out of town or too busy to take care of me, and I’d end up staying at Gogo’s for nights on end.
“Harriet!” Gogo says. She’s reading a newspaper at the table while Vicky cooks at the stove. “I was hoping to see you today.”
“Hey, Gogo.” I kiss her cheek, stifling a yawn as I straighten. After my conversation with Matthew, I slept for a grand total of an hour.
I still can’t believe this is happening.
I walk over to the stove. “Hey, Vicky. Are you busy?”
“Just finishing this up,” Vicky says, gesturing to the pan. “Gogo’s breakfast.” She smiles at my grandmother.
Do I really think this woman could have killed someone four weeks ago?
I watch as Vicky plates the eggs. “I was wondering,” I say once she’s done. “Could I talk to you for a sec? Alone?”
“Me?” she says. “Sure.” She puts the frying pan in the sink and the plate in front of my grandmother. “Back shortly,” she says, patting Gogo’s shoulder.
I follow her into the living room. She settles on the couch, but it feels too close. The doorway to the kitchen is right there. I need more distance between this and Gogo.
“Actually, could we talk upstairs?”
“Oh.” Her brow furrows. “Sure.”
“It’s just…Gogo is in the kitchen,” I say quietly. Maybe as a warning.
I want to throw up.
Upstairs, Vicky perches on the edge of the bed, her legs dangling off its side, feet not quite touching the floor. She looks young. Much younger than she is. She pats the empty space next to her: an invitation, like we’re going to have a casual chat.
I can’t sit next to her. Not right now.
Instead, I perch on the arm of a chair in the corner.
“So what’s up?” Vicky asks. I can’t read her expression.
I wipe my sweaty palms against my jeans. “Well, yesterday, Gogo showed me some old photos. From when you lived in New York.” I pause. “And I saw something.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Something?”
“A picture. You and a man. Gogo said he was your fiancé. She said he died the weekend before your wedding.”
Vicky flinches. “Adrian,” she says softly.
“The weird thing was…I recognized him.”
“You recognized him,” she repeats.
“Yes. From an obituary I found in George’s desk drawer. I’ve been looking into all this with Nic Allbright, the brother of—”
“I know who Nic Allbright is,” Vicky interrupts.
“Right. Well, if Sara’s found guilty, she could spend the rest of her life in prison. I don’t want an innocent person’s life ruined by something they didn’t do. Do you?”
Vicky’s eyes have dropped to the bedspread.
“Do you?” I ask again, more forcefully, like my heart isn’t pounding against my ribs.
“Of course not,” she says finally, so soft I almost miss it.
I stand and start pacing across the carpet.
“Good. I didn’t think you would. This is where we stand.
I figured out a few things. First: When you moved up to New York for college, my dad connected you with George.
Sometime later, George introduced you to a man.
Adrian. The two of you fell in love. Got engaged.
Were set to be married. But instead, Adrian died.
In a fire that George was rumored to have set. ”
Vicky’s silent.
“The night of my party, George was overheard arguing with someone in the basement. For a while, I couldn’t figure out who it had been.
Then a caterer told me that he was on his way down there when someone ran into him heading up.
Someone with brown hair. Jeans. A T-shirt.
Less than an hour later, George was dead. ”
Vicky meets my eyes. I swear she’s aged ten years in the last three minutes. “What are you trying to say, Harriet?”
“I’m saying—” The words catch in my throat. “I’m saying that even though we don’t know each other well, you’ve always been someone I admire. And I don’t believe that you could live with yourself if you let Sara spend her life behind bars for something she didn’t do.”
Vicky’s mouth wobbles.
“I want to help you, Vicky, but you have to be honest with me. There are so many things I don’t understand.
Like—why kill George now? Adrian died so long ago!
And at my birthday party of all places? There were tons of people around.
I thought the reason you came back was to help out with Gogo—to see me—but it wasn’t, was it? You came back to kill him.”
“No!” she says sharply. I tense, but then she crumples forward, head in her hands.
“I didn’t—no. I never wanted to see him again!
But then your father asked if I could come help out with Gogo while he was traveling, and I thought…
I thought I could deal. Gogo can’t handle an international flight anymore, and I was desperate to see her.
I thought I could avoid him. But then I learned about the party.
Okay, I thought, one time. I can handle one time.
It shouldn’t have been hard.” Pain contorts her features.
“But that night, I went down to the basement to fetch a bottle of the wine your grandmother likes. He found me down there. I tried to leave, but he wouldn’t let me.
” She pauses. “Your stepfather was not a good guy, Harriet. He was always a pretentious prick, but once he moved to New York, he got so much worse.”
“I know,” I say.
“When your dad put me in touch with George, he was trying to be kind. Thought it would be nice for me to have a hometown connection in the big city. It was before your parents got together, before George’s business started to take off.
He was still…mostly decent. At least at first.” Her mouth twists.
“Once your parents started dating, I saw George less and less. But I was still on the list for the swanky events his company would throw. I went to one thinking… I guess I naively thought I could play middleman, try to broker peace between the three of them, which obviously didn’t work.
Instead, I ended up meeting Adrian. George always invited Adrian’s bosses to those things to schmooze them.
He was trying to convince them to sell their property to him.
We hit it off immediately. It was like a fairy tale, Harriet. I loved that man so much.”
Her mouth trembles.
“Anyway, a few months later, Adrian told me he’d started hearing rumors about George—he wasn’t paying his contractors.
He was cutting corners with safety codes.
Still, I never thought he’d do something so awful as…
” She swallows. “Adrian was the property manager at the warehouse. There’d been break-ins that summer, so the owners had asked him to be on call.
When the alarm started going off, he left our apartment and drove straight there. ”
“I’m so sorry, Vicky,” I say, but she’s lost in the memory.
“I was sleeping when the cops knocked on our door. They said they tried to get him out, but the fire exploded without warning… We were supposed to get married in five days! He was my love. My life. And George destroyed all of it.”
She’s crying now.
“I couldn’t understand it. How the fire had started.
How he had died. I needed answers. And once I started finding them, I was appalled.
Furious. No one would say anything on the record, but everyone knew it wasn’t an accident.
Everyone knew George had paid off certain people to say it was.
I went crazy with rage. I couldn’t stay in that city. ”
“But why now?” I ask again.
A flare of anger lights up her face. “Down in that basement, George tried to pretend like nothing had ever happened. I asked if he remembered Adrian, and he said he had no idea who I was talking about. I tried to stay calm, but all I could think was how unfair it all was. George, with his beautiful house, all his money—some of which he made by killing my fiancé! When I took a pair of plastic kitchen gloves from beneath the sink and then slipped that knife from the block, I didn’t let myself think about what I was doing.
I just wanted—I don’t know. I don’t know!
” Her voice is rising. “Then the rain started, and I found George in the living room. I told him to meet me out on the beach—alone—or I was going to tell everyone what he’d done.
I said I had proof that fire wasn’t accidental—a lie, but he didn’t know that.
He laughed, but some part of him must have believed me, because he came. ”
“And that’s when—” It’s hard to get the words around the thickness building in my throat.
She nods. “That’s when it happened. I was already there when George arrived.
He started yelling at me, telling me I was pathetic—that I needed to move on.
All I wanted was an apology! An acknowledgment of what he’d done.
But when I said that to him, he lost it—red-faced, screaming threats.
Totally out of control. That’s when I put the gloves on.
I was just…I don’t know. I think I could tell things were about to get bad—really, really bad—and I was right.
A second later, he shoved me to my knees.
Said he was going to fucking kill me, and the next thing I knew, his hands were wrapped around my throat. ”
She brushes her fingers against her neck. “I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. The knife was tucked into the waist of my jeans, and I wrenched it out and…and I did it. I stabbed him.”
I’m trying to process everything she’s saying. George, taunting her. George, wrapping his hands around her throat. Squeezing.
Vicky desperate, left with no choice.
All the terrible things George did for the sake of a dollar.
Suddenly, I remember: The night before my dad left for Europe, Vicky was wearing a turtleneck. I remember I thought it was cute.
Her tears are coming fast and hard, streaming down her cheeks. “I killed him, Harriet. Do you know what that does to a person? I can’t eat. Can’t sleep. I feel like I’m losing my mind. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“He was killing you,” I say. “He was strangling you.”
Gogo’s failing health, her memory loss. It might kill her if Vicky ends up in prison.
“I wasn’t thinking clearly. I wanted him off me…”
“It was self-defense.”
She wipes her eyes with the hem of her shirt.
“It doesn’t matter. I brought that knife with me.
You’re right, Harriet. I don’t want an innocent person to go to jail for something…
something…” She inhales. “Something I did. Your ex-boyfriend is a detective on the case, correct? If you call him, I understand.”
“I’m not going to call him, Vicky. Listen. I have a plan.”
I take a seat next to her on the bed and start outlining the plan I came up with last night. As I talk, her head starts shaking, slowly at first, then faster and faster.
“Absolutely not,” she says once I’m done. Her expression is stern. “Harriet, you’re an adult, but I am your elder, and I will not allow you do something so risky. Not for me. Especially not when I’m guilty.”
“Vicky—”
“No,” she says with a shake of her head. “I’m going to the police. Like you said, it was self-defense. They’ll understand.”
“Are you serious?” I cry, rising to my feet.
“Understand it? The police here are corrupt as hell. Did you read the story in the Times? About the casino? The motel fire? They’re in on everything!
The system is broken on this island. You tell them what you did, you’re looking at life behind bars, and I won’t let that happen. Gogo needs you, and so do I.”
Vicky falls quiet. “All right,” she says finally.
She sounds exhausted. “But on one condition. If we’re doing this for Gogo, then I need to be here for Gogo.
I’m going to stay on the island.” She tries to smile.
“Plus, if there’s any sign your plan isn’t working, I’m telling them everything. Got it?”
“I got it,” I say.