Chapter 37 #2
“It was different.” Nate shook his head. “I guess they were only a year apart, but she always seemed much older than him. Or rather, I guess Henry seemed so young.”
Henry was almost fifteen when Nora died. How long had it been going on? Marlowe shivered. It was difficult to imagine Nora with Henry. Nora knew how young he was, how he was the baby of the group.
“I think when she set her sights on him, he didn’t stand a chance,” Nate continued with his weary tone. “She probably didn’t have to try very hard.”
“You make her sound like some seductress.”
“And when you thought it was me, weren’t you ready to paint me as the seducer? The older college guy. Are you telling me it wasn’t the same with her and Henry?”
“They were closer in age.”
“Never mind their ages—she did it for a reason. She wanted power. She wanted control. She had that with Henry.”
“How long?” Marlowe asked.
Nate stared down at her quizzically. “I always wondered if you knew or suspected. Or if you didn’t want to know.”
“I didn’t know,” Marlowe said. “And if I ever started to wonder, it was always you and her.”
Nate shook his head. “I never would have done that.”
Marlowe believed him. He would have seen it as a betrayal of his sister. Nate had a code, and he stuck to it.
“I think they started sleeping together the winter before she disappeared, during my freshman year of college.” Nate crossed his arms and turned back to the river.
“Henry didn’t tell me until the beginning of May, and only because he was terrified.
I was visiting a friend that week, and he called me during his school lunch from a pay phone in Manhattan because he was scared to call from the apartment.
He was crying. I’ve never been more furious in my life.
He was fourteen and she had just told him she was pregnant the weekend before.
Can you imagine how overwhelmed he was?”
“Probably just as overwhelmed as Nora finding out she was pregnant.” Wrapped up in the thoughts that occupied her young mind, Marlowe had been blind to it all.
“I don’t know if she was.” Nate shrugged.
“I’ve thought about it over and over, and part of me thinks she made it up.
To get money or a promise from Henry. He thought he was going to have to marry her.
He asked me if it was possible to do that at his age.
” Nate broke off, as if remembering the absurd phone conversation and getting a renewed burst of frustration.
Marlowe opened her mouth to defend Nora, but no words came out.
“She just wanted to be a part of our family,” Marlowe said. “I always thought she was.”
“You were a good friend to her.” Nate’s voice twisted with fury. “Better than she deserved.”
Marlowe glanced down at the wall. “She’s dead, Nate.”
“I know I shouldn’t still be angry at her,” Nate said. “But I am.”
“What did you do?” Marlowe asked.
“I told Henry to stay calm and not tell anyone, I was going to help him. And then I told Dad,” Nate said.
“I took the train into the city and went to his office and told him everything I knew. And he just sat there and listened. He told me not to do a single thing. Not to change my plans, and not to say a word. He told me he would take care of it. And that’s what I did.
“It sounds so bad now, after what happened, but I swear, I didn’t think it would go this way. You know Dad. I thought he would find a rational solution. And I think he really could have, if things hadn’t gone wrong.”
If Marlowe hadn’t thought the same thing, she would have chided her brother for being so delusional. If anyone could come up with a reasonable, airtight plan, it would be their father. So why hadn’t he?
“You could have talked to her,” Marlowe said. “She might have listened to you.”
“I thought maybe I should, but I was young too, and I was scared for Henry,” Nate said. “I didn’t have any experience with a girl until I was a senior in high school. And I felt I had already failed by not telling him what he needed to know.”
Nate paused, running over those strange twists of logic. He and Henry had been riddled with anxiety, Nora had been hoarding secrets, and the whole time, Marlowe had thought it was the start of another summer, just like all the ones that had come before.
“When she didn’t come back that night, I thought maybe she had been driven away by someone, off to a clinic or something.
” Nate shrugged. “I found out later that Enzo had tried talking to her the week before, and it went badly. That must have been when he touched her bracelet. He confronted her again in June. It got physical, and she fell, hit her head. There was nothing he could do.”
With sudden clarity, Marlowe recalled a conversation with Enzo when an injured bear had been roaming the woods. He’d said it himself: Animals backed into a corner fight with everything they have. There must have been a major struggle. Nate was being generous to call it a fall.
“Did he hide her in the loft?” Marlowe asked. “I remember you climbed up there.”
“It was dark and I was panicked. Henry was too. We were both out of our minds. That’s why Enzo took him away—to calm him down.
“It was hours later, after we had searched and the Millers had called the police, when Enzo told me I could never say a word about it. He told me there had been an accident, but he’d taken care of it. And that Nora was gone.”
Both Marlowe and Nate instinctively glanced at the wall.
“Dad repeated the details later, vaguely, but he never told where she was,” Nate said.
“Enzo must have moved the body out here just before dawn. When we were all in the house, and we thought he was resting in the basement. He must have worked like a madman, pulling the stones off and then replacing them.”
It was a strange thing to consider, how hard Enzo must have labored.
“Henry never knew anything,” Nate said. “I’m sure he suspected, but he never knew anything concrete. I made sure of that. He believed what happened between them was unrelated to her disappearance.”
“Because Enzo told him some nonsense about a stranger in the woods,” Marlowe said. “So Henry could believe whatever gave him comfort.”
“Doesn’t he deserve that?” Nate asked. “He didn’t do anything wrong. You two are the only innocent ones here. Don’t think I don’t know that.”
Marlowe didn’t feel innocent. She felt stupid and angry and hurt and ruined. But not innocent.
“Why now?” Marlowe asked. “Why tell me all this now?”
Nate looked at her as if the answer was obvious. He nodded at the tarp. “You know where the body is. You could turn that in, and we’ll all be guilty. I figured you should at least know the truth before you decide.”
“You could move it.”
Nate scoffed. “I’m not touching it. And if anyone asks, I’ll say I knew nothing about it.”
“And if they run DNA tests on it? And she was pregnant?” Marlowe didn’t know what could be recovered from a body in this condition. “Won’t they be able to see who the father was?”
Nate shook his head. “Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t think she was ever pregnant. I think she was playing a dangerous game.”
“You just tell yourself that to make it a little less painful.”
Nate was telling the version of the story that made sense to him. He was giving the details that painted Henry as a victim and Nora as greedy and manipulative and grasping. She may have wanted to control Henry, and she may have made rash decisions, but that didn’t make her a criminal.
“I don’t think I ever realized how hard it must have been for her to leave the Gray House after the weekend was over,” Marlowe said.
“She loved it,” Nate said. “Too much, I think.”
“I wish I had realized.”
“We’re all selfish when we’re young.” Nate stood up and looked back at the stones where Nora lay, to indicate who he thought had been the most selfish of all.
He moved to the stones Marlowe had tossed on the ground and picked one up, grunting as he bent his knees. He placed it on the tarp.
“I’m putting them back for now, and then I’m never speaking of this again,” he said. “She’s not going anywhere. Not if it’s up to me, anyway.”
Marlowe watched as he continued picking up the stones, so much slower than he had when he was young.
Then, as if by instinct, she began working at his side.