Chapter 7
SEVEN
The fire in the living room had burned down to smoldering embers by the time the side door flew open and Stephanie and Constance herded the kids inside.
Their cheeks were flushed from their ice-skating excursion, and their voices tumbled over each other in fits of laughter and whining.
Stephanie peeled off Kat’s coat and sent her bounding after Dolly, then floated into the kitchen with the ease of someone who had staked her claim long ago.
She was now the one who started to pull materials out to assemble dinner—another of the ceaseless attempts at currying favor with her mother-in-law, who Stephanie once joked had ice in her veins.
Constance trotted in with a market bag in one arm.
Glory followed, Frankie on her hip, and settled down in a chair near Marlowe to bounce her grandson on her lap.
Both the wives got to work chopping vegetables and murmuring instructions, while the girls were occupied at the table with their crayons.
It amazed Marlowe how normal they were all acting.
“Should we grab something to eat?” Stephanie had asked haltingly. She didn’t know how to talk to Marlowe when Nate wasn’t around to lead the conversation.
Marlowe suggested the oyster bar. She adored its sleek chairs and elegant old New York feel.
Stephanie relaxed once they were seated, and considered the sparkling arches above them. “So pretty.”
“It’s one of my favorite places,” Marlowe said. “I’ve been meeting Frank here for years.”
“That’s sweet,” Stephanie said. “It must be nice to be his only daughter.”
Marlowe bristled at the implication she was spoiled, and then ran through possible conversation topics—their respective jobs, Stephanie’s soon-to-be husband, Dutchess County—but Marlowe was bored of all that.
“So, do you really think you and Nate will go through with the wedding?” Marlowe raised her dark eyebrows in a moment of rare bluntness.
To her delight, Stephanie laughed. “Sometimes I think of calling it off, especially when your parents get involved with the planning.”
“They are merciless,” Marlowe said. “But it’s the first wedding in the family.”
Stephanie rolled her eyes. “They act like it’s the first wedding ever.”
For once, they talked as friends and not soon-to-be in-laws.
“Oh God, I feel like I’ll never live up to your mother.” Stephanie took a long sip of her drink, a pink concoction with a lethal amount of gin. “I’ll never be as smart or as competent or run such a perfect household.”
“Trust me, I’ve long since come to terms with that.” Marlowe flashed a sly grin over her martini. The evening began to feel like one shared between friends gossiping and commiserating about the eccentric cast of characters in their lives.
The two of them were well and truly drunk by the time they got on the train, giggling together like schoolgirls.
But when they pulled into the station and saw Nate there, waiting, everything instantly transformed to the way it had been before.
Marlowe was reminded that Stephanie would always be Nate’s wife before her friend.
Stephanie’s eyes flicked up from the pot of boiling potatoes and met Marlowe’s.
She shot her a quick, impersonal smile and Marlowe returned the favor.
She wished she could tell Nora about her sister-in-law.
Better yet, Marlowe wished Nora were here to trade knowing glances.
She would have hated Stephanie. People like Nora didn’t suffer phoniness or groveling.
Marlowe considered what her best friend’s response would have been to Harmon Gallagher. She would have given Marlowe the confidence she sought to walk into Frank’s office and ask him what the hell was going on. Why was Nora’s name being brought up by the detectives?
A man had been killed in the darkness, only a mile from the house, in the field that Marlowe could navigate with her eyes closed, near the river with a current she could feel in her bones.
There was no gate around the land, no moat.
Anyone could drive up the road or hide out in the barn.
Break a window or open the doors to Marlowe’s basement room; she rarely locked them.
Or someone could wait in the woods until one of them went on a walk.
It would be easy. It had been easy for Harmon to be caught, alone and vulnerable, the sounds of the fight stifled by the babbling river, his shouts drowned out by the coyotes.
Marlowe was on edge, and so was her family, but they were hiding it.
They were whispering their concerns behind closed doors. Why?
Everyone rushed into the kitchen at the sound of Glory clanging the antique dinner bell that hung above the counter, and took their seats at the table.
Stephanie set down a golden-brown roast chicken, potatoes, and one of Constance’s salads, to which Constance had added too many bitter greens for Marlowe’s liking.
Kat and Dolly chattered the whole time about their day at the rink and how they wanted to be figure skaters.
“Oh, Marlowe had this outfit, remember?” Frank smiled at Marlowe. “The velvet skirt and jacket you used to wear at Bryant Park.”
“I want a skirt!” Kat practically bounced out of her seat.
“Put it in your letter to Santa,” Stephanie said.
Nate smiled. He was spoiling Kat, but Marlowe doubted she would turn out rotten.
Nate bragged to anyone who would listen that at eight years old, his daughter was already classified as an advanced child and whizzed through the chapter books she checked out of the library.
He would hold fast to high standards, and Kat would spend her life determined to never fall short.
“I beat Kat in every race,” Dolly said. “Except when I wiped out.”
Dolly cackled with her mouth open, revealing her chewed-up chicken.
Children were the center of their own universe, and their unwavering belief consumed everyone else. It was so easy to talk of nothing but them.
Glory speared a potato and held it in front of her. “A bit firm this time, Stephanie,” she said. “And what’s that, rosemary?”
“Rosemary, yes.” Stephanie forced a smile. “And I guess I pulled them out a little early. There’s always a trick when you’re not in your own kitchen.”
“Tastes fine to me, hon,” Nate chimed in with a mouthful. “Lots to be grateful for around this table.”
The stilted exchange caused Enzo to perk up.
“That’s right, Nate,” he said. “Having a wonderful meal with family like this is what gives meaning to life.” Glory immediately softened.
Enzo had a special gift for playing peacekeeper and putting the Fisher matriarch at ease.
Marlowe pushed food around on her plate, eager for the meal and her family’s playacting to end.
There were questions she needed to ask as soon as the children were out of earshot.
After the dishes had been washed and cleared, the kids went off to watch a movie with Stephanie and Constance. Frank and Glory drifted up to their room. Henry helped Enzo up the old staircase to his bedroom and then returned to the kitchen.
Only then was it silent. Nate walked over to the cabinet and pulled out the scotch and three glasses. Marlowe instinctively grabbed a tray of ice cubes out of the freezer and filled each glass halfway.
Each with a scotch in hand, they walked to the living room. Henry sat in the same armchair he’d been in that afternoon, Marlowe in the one Enzo had claimed earlier. Nate dragged a chair over from the table and set it close to the fireplace.
Marlowe took a long drink, savoring the burn in her throat. “What was going on earlier in the study?”
“We’re considering how to deal with this,” Nate said. “It’s nothing to worry about; we just know how people will dig up old rumors.”
“Rumors about what?” Marlowe asked.
“The Gallaghers. Us.” Nate waved his hand. “Harmon might have been more disturbed than we realized. We think he was sending us anonymous threats.”
“What?” Marlowe blinked in surprise and turned to Henry, who didn’t look shocked.
“Stephanie got these messages sent to her work email,” Nate said. “She didn’t think too much of them at the time, but then a few notes came to the house.”
“What did they say?” Marlowe was almost lunging at Nate for an answer.
“You’ll pay for what you’ve done.” Nate frowned as he recited the phrase. For half a second, Marlowe thought he was speaking directly to her, and she recoiled before realizing Nate was quoting Harmon. “He sent one that said, ‘Your house will burn with you and your family in it.’”
“He put that in an email?”
The past twenty-four hours rattled and shifted.
What had looked like bad luck—Harmon being in the wrong place at the wrong time—now turned sour with intention.
He had been out there for a reason. He’d been sitting in the darkness, plotting against Marlowe’s family, and someone had gone out and found him there. Confronted his vitriolic anger.
“He wasn’t exactly a mastermind,” Nate remarked. “We still aren’t one hundred percent sure that it was him, but that’s what we assumed. He was unhappy and reckless, not a real threat. We figured it would all blow over with a little time.”
“I got a letter too,” Henry said. “Vague threats, blackmail.”
Marlowe nearly dropped her glass.
“Blackmailing with what information?” Marlowe jerked her head back and forth between her brothers.
“He was just trying to scare us, Mar.” Nate spoke as if he had it all sorted out and almost found it boring.
If it was an act of superiority, it was a good one.
He had always possessed that talent. “He wanted the land, but Dad wouldn’t sell.
So maybe he figured the threat of arson or vandalism would spook us into leaving.
Mom and Dad got some strange emails too. ”