Chapter 2
TWO
Nate made the call.
Seated in the armchair by the fire, Marlowe watched her brother pace back and forth across the red-patterned rug in the living room.
“A male, hard to say the age,” Nate said. “Yes, on our property, just off Bean River Road … We didn’t get too close … Yes, that’s right. Fisher.”
Nate’s wife, Stephanie, sat on the bottom step of the old staircase, elbows propped on her long legs, her rich blond hair pulled back in a ponytail with a pink hair tie. She glanced at Marlowe.
“Who opened the tent?” she asked.
“Henry did,” Marlowe said.
A barely audible hum slid through Stephanie’s lips, which Marlowe clocked as mild dissension.
Stephanie had an easy elegance and never neglected a chance to pass judgment.
She appeared to relish this even more in the company of Marlowe, who was still bundled in her shabby barn coat.
Stephanie adjusted her chic oversized cashmere turtleneck over her leggings.
Despite childbirth and the long years since her college athletic career, she still maintained her figure.
“And what did you say the guy looked like?”
“I don’t know. He was wearing a hunting jacket,” Marlowe said. “But he was a mess. I mean, it was hard to really tell anything about him.”
“So you didn’t recognize him?”
“No,” said Marlowe, turning back to the fire to politely signal that she was done with the exchange.
Stephanie stood up. “I think I’ll put on some tea,” she said, betraying the age-old instinct: Tragedy strikes; a wife fills the kettle.
Marlowe watched her cross the room and pass through the arched entryway to the kitchen.
Huddled around the kitchen island, Henry was whispering the story to his wife, Constance, who held the baby, Frankie, against her shoulder as she listened.
She drew in a long, uneven breath as the weight of Henry’s words settled unhappily on her face.
Nate’s daughters, Kat and Dolly, were fighting over a blueberry scone, blissfully ignorant of the discovery that had left the rest of the family somber and mired in their own quiet suspicions.
Marlowe held her hands to the flame and then pulled the heat into her chest. Every time she blinked, she saw the man’s bloodied head contrasted with the stark whites of his eyes, the scruff along his jaw matted with crimson.
Nate cleared his throat and pushed the phone closer to his ear. He was listening intently.
“It did look violent,” he said at last. “Yes, it did.”
Nate hung up and declared that the police were on their way. Marlowe lifted her head to meet his gaze.
“He couldn’t have been dead long,” Marlowe whispered.
Nate stared blankly, as if he hadn’t heard her.
The crunch of car wheels on gravel jolted him out of the trance, and then Nate was bolting for the side door that opened onto the driveway.
Frank and Glory were back. Marlowe followed closely behind but only watched from the window as Nate murmured something to their father.
Frank had shrunk in recent years, his shoulders dipping forward in a hunch, and his skin was dry and deeply wrinkled.
Where Nate’s dark hair was thick and healthy, gleaming beneath the cold sun, Frank’s white tufts of thin hair added to his appearance of frailty.
Marlowe watched as her father’s eyes widened and he reached a pale hand toward Glory’s arm. A moment later, Nate and Frank took off at a slow, steady pace in the direction of the barn.
The kitchen door swung open, and Glory entered, decked out in a spotless beige barn jacket and a plaid scarf. Her white-streaked hair was piled atop her head and secured with a black clip. “Nate took Frank out to see it,” she said, her mouth set in a thin line.
Marlowe nodded. “We called the police. They’re on their way.”
Glory paused, looking Marlowe over in her disheveled state. “You’ve had a shock. Maybe you should go lie down.”
Laughter, inappropriate as it was, bubbled in Marlowe’s throat.
“I’m not tired,” Marlowe said. “I want to be here when the police arrive.”
“Darling, it looks like you didn’t get much sleep last night. I’ll come and get you if you’re needed.”
Her mother was every inch the pragmatist, and when she was faced with strife, she put the dead weight to bed first so things could get done.
Marlowe convinced herself that she wasn’t following an order by turning on her heels and padding down to the basement, but she felt like a child. Marlowe was never considered a useful member of the family. Quiet, artistic maybe, occasionally sarcastic, but never useful.
She shut herself in her bathroom and shrugged off her coat, letting it fall to the tile floor.
It was then that she noticed her trembling hands.
She yanked open her medicine cabinet, looking for the familiar label, not finding it, and then slamming it shut.
The house cleaner who came once a week sometimes moved things around.
Glory too. Marlowe could never be sure who the culprit was.
Marlowe had meant to rest for only a moment, but when she sat down on her bed fully clothed, the soft pull of sleep overtook her. She awoke thirty minutes later to the low hum of a car in the driveway and the sound of a murmured conversation just outside her window.
Sitting up, she rubbed her eyes and listened for another minute before heading back upstairs.
In the kitchen, Glory was at one end of the massive wooden table custom-made from repurposed barn doors, her hands wrapped around a mug.
Stephanie was beside her, absently swirling tea in her cup, while Constance leaned against the counter, her arms crossed, her eyes darting toward the window every so often.
A singsongy melody drifted in from the den; the children had been placed in front of a television program.
Their silence gave Marlowe the sense that the three women had been talking about her.
Glory glanced up as Marlowe entered. “The police are here,” she said softly. “Henry took them out to join Frank and Nate in the field.”
“Did you speak to them yet?”
“The police? No, Henry met them outside,” Glory said. “Feeling better?”
“Yes, I’m fine.”
Marlowe surveyed the straight line of Glory’s back. She was over sixty but still moved as well as she had twenty years ago. It had to do with her childhood on a farm. There was something in her that was as all-enduring as dirt.
On the other hand, Marlowe’s father had been waning for years.
She had concerns about his walking all the way out to where they’d found the body.
He had heart trouble and lung trouble and sugar trouble.
He hated growing old and helpless. He despised needing help to get up and down stairs, and he resented being unable to walk wherever he wanted on his own land.
It must be strange, Marlowe mused, for Glory to know for certain she was going to outlive her husband, likely by many years.
Marlowe pushed the thought aside and then quickly grabbed her coat as she headed for the door.
“Where are you going?” Glory asked.
Marlowe shut the door behind her. She didn’t have to explain to her mother why she had a right to go wherever her brothers went. For the second time that day, Marlowe crossed the street and walked through the old Gallagher property.
Marlowe’s breath shortened as she trudged over the Rise and down into the gully, faster than she’d gone before.
There was no massive crowd, no white tent that Marlowe had expected.
For now, there were just two policemen cordoning off the area with stakes and yellow tape.
One of them was taking photos, not of the tent but of the ground and the landscape.
Another was talking to Nate and Frank and taking notes.
No one had approached the tent yet; it seemed they were waiting for the experts.
Marlowe drew to a stop beside Henry, where he stood scanning the tent and the police officers. Pale light pooled in uneven patches along the banks of the river. The water levels were low, but she could still hear the faint trickling.
“Detectives are on their way,” Henry said.
“Do they know who it is?” Marlowe asked.
“Dad recognized him,” Henry said. “He’s a Gallagher cousin.”
Marlowe’s brows shot up. The Gallagher brothers had owned the barn and fields across the street from the Gray House when the Fishers first bought it.
All three Gallaghers had been single and childless.
It was part of their tragedy. When they passed, Frank purchased the land, extending his own property to its current size.
Marlowe was a teenager at the time, but she had never heard of any other Gallaghers.
“Or a great-nephew.” Henry shoved his hands deeper into his coat pockets and shook his head. “Cousin once removed. Something like that. He came to talk to Dad a few years ago about buying some of the land back.”
Marlowe had never heard Frank talk of anyone approaching him about the Gallagher land.
She glanced over at her father, who appeared to be watching the water move.
The skin of his face had taken on a purplish hue.
It was a miracle he had been able to walk all the way out here. Crises gave people strength.
“Did you know about this?” Marlowe asked.
“What, about the land?”
“That a Gallagher had come back wanting to buy some of it.”
“Dad must have mentioned it to me when it happened, but there wasn’t much of a conversation. He’d never sell.”
Henry seemed to be avoiding Marlowe’s gaze.
“Did Dad give him permission to hunt here?”
“Doubt it.” A cautious smile, of all things, came to Henry’s lips. “Think about it, Marlowe. Does that seem like something Dad would do?”
No, their father wouldn’t have liked anyone pestering him about selling his land. And he certainly wouldn’t have rewarded that with a hunting lease.
“Even if he had permission, it’s odd to be hunting the morning after Thanksgiving,” Marlowe said.
Henry shrugged. “Some people find it relaxing.”
Marlowe had never fired a rifle herself, and she didn’t have any desire to do so.
Over the years, she’d seen plenty of trophy antlers displayed in various establishments around Dutchess County.
The elegantly curved tines reaching out, the blackness of the tips revealing the number of years the animal had lived in the wild.
She didn’t care how big its antlers were or how majestic they appeared tacked up on the wall; a deer was still a deer.