I look at him and say plainly. “It’s perspective. They were twins. My dad was born ten minutes before my uncle. They both grew up believing that the world owed them everything. So when my dad inherited this mansion and twenty million dollars, imagine how my uncle felt to know that if he ever wanted anything, he would have to rely on my dad’s charity after all his life thinking he was above everyone.”
“Twenty million…” Makhi whistles and sits back in his seat, expression clearing. “Damn. Perspective definitely changes things.”
He was around for the will reading, but he didn’t come to it with me. I knew my uncle would be on the warpath once he learned everything would come to me and not him, so I went with the family attorney. Makhi and Vonn stayed at the house.
“It does,” I agree. “But like I said, they were close when they were younger.”
“They ran wild,” Nance says from the stove. “Both of them. Your uncle wildest of all. Nash’s dad settled down a bit once he got married, but he was never a kind man, least of all to Nash.”
Byrdie frowns. “I can’t believe Nash’s uncle could be wild if he’s a mayor.”
“Before he was the mayor, Marcus Gabriel was an arrogant man who took and took.”
We startle in surprise at Nance’s sharp tone.
She abandons fussing with ingredients she pulled from the refrigerator to rejoin us at the dining table. “There was a maid who worked at the house,” she tells me. “You wouldn’t have remembered her, Nash. Your parents had just married, and your uncle was wild. There was a…situation. Police were called. Things were hushed up. The girl was sent away with money after signing an NDA. She was pregnant.”
Makhi frowns. “I think I heard something about that.”
Nance continues, “There were whispers that she wasn’t the first to wind up like that and that your uncle had a habit of taking liberties with the household staff.”
Byrdie looks horrified.
Vonn draws her against his chest and wraps his arms tighter around her, as if to keep her safe.
Makhi’s lips twist in disgust, then his eyes widen. “The diary. There’s stuff in the diary about the things they both got up to.”
Nance nods. “Likely a lot worse than anything any of us knows. Your uncle stands to lose everything if the contents of that diary get out. Maybe he can claim it’s all lies, but withnames, dates, and places, it would be hard to deny everything. He’d lose the respect of the town and his job. If there are other crimes contained within those pages, I imagine he might even go to jail.”
“My uncle didn’t just want the money when my dad died.” I speak slowly, feeling my way through my thoughts. “He wanted the house so he could search it from top to bottom, and find a diary that he would have known my dad had always kept. This diary could end his career, and he would want to destroy it before anyone found it. That’s why he had Lydia chase away all the maids we hired. And that’s why she spent little to no time cleaning when she had been a decent cleaner before. She was searching all the rooms instead of cleaning them.”
“So we’re going to blackmail the guy, right?” Makhi asks.
“I don’t know that blackmailing the mayor is a good idea,” Byrdie says warily.
“If he wants to continue as mayor of this lovely town, then it would be in his best interest to get off our backs about having killed a guy,” Makhi says.
Nance gets to her feet and wanders back to the stove. “Potato and leek soup.”
I study her for a bit, pondering the other death in this house.
Nance doesn’t know that Vonn killed the gardener. When she asked about him, I told her that he’d quit without notice, and since no one had seen him, and he had a longstanding habit of complaining about having to do everything himself, she didn’t seem surprised.
“What do you want to do with the diary, Nash?” Byrdie asks me. “That book probably contains stuff about your dad hurting you, doesn’t it?”
I nod. “Probably.”
She lifts her chin, determined. “Then, your decision matters more than any of ours. It’s your secrets in that book.”
But not just mine.
I could give justice to everyone else my dad—and my uncle—hurt, but that would mean exposing all of my own hurts.
I’m not sure I can do that.
“I’ll think about it,” I say, pushing my chair back from the table. “Don’t make breakfast for me,” I tell Nance, who looks concerned. I lift the diary. “I’ll be upstairs thinking about what to do with this, and hiding it too. If my uncle learned I’d found it, there’s no telling what he would do to get it back.”
Chapter 20
