Chapter Thirty-Five
Thirty-Five
I find Violet already at the end of the dock, her demeanor completely changed. She stands facing the tar-black water, perfectly still, her face a mask of calm. All traces of tears, of panic, of her earlier hysterics are gone. She is, I realize, an even better actress than she gets credit for.
The key to that, I suspect, is a preternatural sense of observation.
Violet can pick up the slightest nuances of someone’s behavior—their tone of voice, their body language, even their footsteps—and adjust her own with ease.
It’s served her well in her forty-year career—and during our five days on New Avalon.
And it’s how, when I arrive, she already knows that I’ve figured everything out.
“I called Loretta,” she says. “She’s on her way to get us. So ask your questions now. It’ll be easier that way.”
“Does she know you always intended to kill Ronan?” I say. “Did any of them? Or was that your little secret?”
“I wouldn’t even call it a secret,” Violet says, still watching the lake. “It was just an idea I had. A fantasy. I didn’t think I’d actually go through with it. But when I entered that parlor and saw the ice pick sitting there, all I could think about was driving it into Ronan’s heart.”
“Because Elise was your daughter.”
I feel foolish for not putting it together sooner. The moment Violet told me about Elise, I should have known. Especially after seeing that picture in her locket. The pretty blond girl kept hidden away like a secret.
“Yes,” Violet says. “No one but Loretta knew that. Not even my husband.”
“Why didn’t you tell him?”
Violet turns to look at me, her eyes as dark and unsettled as the rolling surface of the lake.
“Why do you think, Marin?”
Because she wasn’t his, of course. Something else I should have realized earlier.
“Who was the father?”
“A director,” Violet says, her brusqueness telling me I won’t get any more than that.
Not from her. “I thought I was smarter than that. I wasn’t young and naive, like Elise.
I’d been working for more than a decade.
I knew an on-set romance, especially with a married director, was doomed from the start.
And I was right. The second we wrapped, he went back to his wife and I returned to my husband—with an unexpected souvenir from my time on set. ”
“You had Elise in secret,” I say, remembering that one year during Violet’s Oscar nomination streak in which she stopped making movies and disappeared from public view.
“And then I gave her up.” Violet returns her gaze to the water.
“I didn’t want to. But it was impossible to keep her, even if I’d pretended she was adopted.
As she got older, people would notice our resemblance, ask questions, start snooping.
The truth would get out, and both my marriage and my career would be over.
I knew there’d be no coming back from that.
Men can recover from such scandals, if they suffer any setback at all. But women? We are judged harshly.”
I know she’s right. A bombshell like that would have made headlines around the world. Tawdry ones. The kind someone of Violet’s stature could never, ever live down.
But that’s not my problem.
I feel for her. I really do. Even more, I feel for Elise, the daughter she barely knew who so badly wanted to follow in her footsteps that she fell prey to someone like Ronan. Now she’s dead.
“I never forgot her,” Violet says. “Not ever. And I never stopped missing her. When you have a child, they take a piece of your heart. They carry it with them, no matter where they go or who’s raising them.
Your missing piece. I thought mine was gone for good until, one day, she appeared out of the blue.
I was in upstate New York, working on a movie.
She showed up at my hotel and said, ‘I think you’re my mother.
’ I knew it was true because, in that moment, I suddenly felt whole.
My life was complete. We were inseparable after that for a year or so.
Well, as much as we could be without arousing suspicion.
It wasn’t nearly enough to make up for lost time.
But at least I got to be a mother to her for a little bit.
And when she died, I lost that part of myself again.
It’s gone forever. For the rest of my life, I’ll have that void in my heart, and nothing will ever fill it. ”
I think of my parents. And Molly. And the pieces of their heart she was carrying when she drowned. My parents have had to live with that emptiness for twenty years.
“So you murdered Ronan,” I say. “Not Daisy. Not a ghost. You, Violet.”
“Because he killed my daughter!” When Violet turns to face me, her eyes are wild, her mouth distorted.
This is as real and raw as I’ll ever see her.
The true Violet at last exposed. “No, he didn’t physically shove those pills down her throat.
But he might as well have, considering the horrible things he did.
Exposing her like that? Humiliating her?
A man capable of things like that deserves whatever punishment he gets. In my mind, Ronan had it coming.”
“So during the séance, you decided to veer from the script.”
Violet nods. “I got the idea from those last pages of Daisy’s diary. If she killed before, it seemed logical she would do it again. All I had to do was fake being possessed and hope that you believed it.”
Ah, yes, Marin Keane once again playing the part of gullible witness.
The truth is, Violet’s performance was so convincing that maybe I would have believed it.
After all, there is something supernatural about this island—I have no doubt about that—even if it is relegated to my cottage, where Ruth Hume Semple scratched and thumped away until I found her, set her free, unlocked her secrets.
Now that I have, the big question that remains is what to do with that information.
“There’s not going to be a movie, is there?” I say. “Not after this.”
I’d been too preoccupied with other things to give it much thought. Now that I do, I realize no one is going to take over a movie after its writer and director died during preproduction. It might be a different story if cameras had already started rolling. But not a second of footage was shot.
And it never will be.
“There was never going to be a movie,” Violet says. “Loretta had no intention of getting it made. We all knew that before we signed on. That’s why the budget was so small. So it wouldn’t be such a big loss to the studio.”
And Loretta will move on to a different project while Violet, Heather, Julianne, and Susie book new roles, if they haven’t already. But the crew hired to work on this sham movie? They’re all out of a job.
As am I.
That news lands on me like an H-bomb, obliterating all my hopes and dreams. There will be no five weeks on set in North Carolina. Which means no hundred-thousand-dollar paycheck, no SAG card, no screen credit for a name no one has ever heard of.
While I was uncertain about how to use the information in Mrs. Semple’s journal a minute ago, now I know exactly what to do with it.
“I have to tell the police what you did.”
“Go ahead,” Violet says with a shrug. “It’s my word against yours. And we both know who people are going to believe.”
“I know,” I say, because it’s absolutely true. No one is going to trust an unknown actress over Violet fucking Wright. “But I have proof.”
She finally notices the book still clutched to my chest, eyeing the worn leather of its cover.
“Ruth Hume Semple’s journal,” I say, handing it to her. “Covering the exact span of time Daisy wrote about in her diary. You might be interested in what it says.”
Violet opens the book, and I can tell that she’s nervous.
Not even the best actress in the world can hide the way her hands shake.
They positively rattle as she flips to the first page, squinting in the moonlight.
I watch her read, scanning her face for the stunned reaction I know is coming.
When it arrives, it’s more muted than mine.
Just a brief widening of her eyes, a slight drop of her mouth, a single, hushed gasp.
“Interesting,” Violet says, snapping the book shut. “But it proves nothing.”
“It proves that you faked being possessed by Daisy,” I say.
Violet steps to the end of the dock, holding out the journal like it’s something dead and stinking. She gives me a single, sidelong glance before dropping it into the lake.
I run to water’s edge, but it’s too late.
The journal is already out of reach, floating on the oil-black water as a century of dust spreads out around it in a murky cloud.
It soon begins to disintegrate, the water eating away at it, page by page.
Bits of paper peel off and float away. Damp leaves in a stream.
Thirty seconds later, only a chunk of the cover remains, bobbing like driftwood.
“Now it doesn’t,” Violet says.
“You didn’t need to destroy it!” I cry, an ache in my chest because the truth of New Avalon is now gone. Not just Mrs. Semple’s version of events, but Daisy’s final moments, too. Her missing diary pages were tucked into that journal. Now, like Daisy herself, none of it exists.
“I absolutely did,” Violet says.
Her lips curl into a cruel smile as, smug and victorious, she turns back to the lake, noticing a light that appears in the distance. I see it, too, and hear the low hum of an outboard motor.
Loretta.
Returning at last.
Violet watches her approach, oblivious to me reaching into my pocket, pulling something from it, holding it up.
“Not when I still have this,” I say.
Violet deigns to turn my way, instantly spotting the flat square of plastic pinched between my thumb and forefinger. It takes just one look for her to realize what it is—the SD card from Susie’s camcorder—and that I had slipped it out before the camera, like the journal, was consumed by the lake.
Of course I suspected Violet hadn’t been possessed by Daisy, even before I read Mrs. Semple’s journal. Yes, her performance was perfect. Worthy of a third Oscar, in fact. But her previous deceptions had put me on alert, making me assume she had something more planned during the séance.
As for why I went along with it, well, I have my reasons. But make no mistake about this—my performance was just as impressive.
“I thought it might be a good idea to hold on to it,” I say. “Just in case the police want to watch it someday.”
“You’re in that video, too,” Violet says, remaining unfazed.
“Am I?” I say, shoving the SD card back into my pocket. “Or am I sitting just out of frame? Always know where the camera is placed, Violet. You taught me that.”
“They’ll still be able to hear you,” she says. “You spoke, too.”
“I did. But my voice could belong to anyone. You’re Violet Wright. Instantly recognizable. I’m just a nameless, faceless unknown who, thanks to you, will likely remain that way.”
Violet’s eyes narrow. Just enough to let me know she’s paying attention.
And that she’s scared.
“What do you want, Marin?”
A very good question. One I’ve been turning over in my head for decades. All that time, I assumed it was a mix of something material and emotional. Enough money not to have to worry about it. An unflagging sense of self-worth. A perfect balance of mind and body. The love and respect of my parents.
It turns out my desires are more basic than that, more sadly, predictably ego-driven.
Because only now, with the sensation of blood still on my hands and Violet staring at me with that contradictory mix of fear and disdain, do I have the answer I’ve been seeking my entire life.
“I want,” I say, “to be known.”