Old Stu thought he saw a second woman following Eden Fox up the hill. He sometimes—quite often actually—gets confused, so I didn’t tell Bird. And if he did see someone, I thought I knew who it was, but Gabriella hasn’t left this place, and Eden Fox is alive.
So who was the dead woman on the beach?
And what else am I wrong about?
I think I’ve made a terrible mistake.
48HARRISON
My life is a series of mistakes stitched together into something resembling success. I know that, even if nobody else does. Other people only see the version of me I let them see.
Ten years ago, when Eden called me to say that Gabriella was missing, I thought calling the police was the right thing to do. Surely most parents would think the same. But that was a mistake too.EverythingI did that day was an error of judgment. A miscalculation. A major fuckup. I think when your life unravels you can normally look back and pinpoint the moment you took a wrong turn. There’s almost always a crossroads withRIGHTclearly signposted for one direction andWRONGwould mean heading the opposite way. But wrong can sometimes feel so damn right; that’s why so many people feel lost.
I was driving to the city when it happened, heading back to work. Things were just as busy for me then as they are now. I should have been able to trust Eden to look after our little girl. Gabriella’s mother was always too distracted to properly care for our child, her head was elsewhere, and I should have done more to make sure she was being properly looked after. There were so many warning signs but I didn’t pay attention. I was still desperately trying to get funding to start thecompany; Thanatos didn’t even have a name back then, I was working crazy hours and I was distracted. But a parent’s number one job is to keep their child safe, and we both failed. They were already at the hospital by the time I got there, and as soon as I saw my broken little girl I cried.
You should be able to trust a mother to take care of her daughter.
She didn’t.
But it wasn’t her fault.
It was mine.
We gave Gabriella the bike for her eighth birthday. It was my idea. Gabby loved it just like I knew she would, spent hours riding up and down the street outside our home, it made her happy. But then she wanted me to take off the training wheels because she’d seen other kids her age without them. I said no. I wanted to keep her safe. I wanted to teach her to ride without them myself, and I didn’t have time that day. If I’d said yes, I wonder if things might not have played out the way they did. If I’d said no to work that day, instead of no to my daughter, maybe our lives would have been different.
Eden was inconsolable. Gabriella’s mother blamed herself, for all of it, but it wasmyfault. Trusting Eden in the first place was my biggest mistake. One I have paid for every day since, and will regret for the rest of my life. I know how long I have left with my regrets, and everything I am doing now is for her: my daughter.
I have locked all the doors and windows at Spyglass, and closed all the curtains and blinds. I want to hide from the world and pretend I haven’t done what I’ve done. So I’m sitting in the dark, in a house I did not want to live in, wondering how it came to this. I have invested everything I have to build Thanatos, to make something of my life, and change the lives of others. And now I fear I might lose it all, everything I have worked so hard for, and the sacrifices I have made along the way will have been for nothing.
All because of one mistake:
A kiss between two people who should have known better.
Jealousy gives birth to monsters, and that is what I have become.
I guess we’re all just a bad roll of the dice from sliding back down to the bottom of the ladder we spent our whole lives trying to climb. And I don’t see a way to pull myself back up this time.
My phone rings, vibrating silently on the bed. I’ve been screening my calls for hours, but when I see the display saysTHE MANOR, I answer immediately. Some primal instinct takes over and I become the man the rest of the world believes I am. The man I used to be.
“Harrison Woolf speaking.”
The voice on the other end of the line sounds small and afraid. Their words are too fast, tripping over themselves; my mind can’t seem to keep up or translate them fast enough.
“What do you mean the police interviewed Gabriella?” I shout into the phone. “They can’t do that and you should never have let them. She’s a child, for god’s sake.” The voice on the other end of the line contradicts me and I am not in the mood. “You and I both know she is only eighteen in years. I said strictly no visitors. That meansnone. I bet Sergeant Carter didn’t even have a warrant and you just let him in? Remind me how much I am paying you to take care of my daughter?”
The voice keeps apologizing.
“I don’t want to hear any more—
“Just have the doctor call me—
“I’ll deal with this matter myself,” I say and hang up, rage rushing through me.
Tweedle fucking Dumb went to The Manor and tried to question my little girl. The police couldn’t do their job ten years ago and they can’t be trusted this time either.
I’m doing this my way from now on.
49
