The rage clouds my vision. I don’t want to sit in this tiny room for another second. I want to storm into that party and tear my father’s face off with my bare hands. I glance at Claudia, needing her presence to steady me. She plasters a look of shock on her face. “Are you sure? What makes you say that?”
“When I started seeing John after Harriet’s death, he made me feel close to her. You both did.” The tenderness in Grace’s gaze makes my dark heart hurt. “I felt that by being with him, by loving him, by lovingyou, I could keep a piece of my sister alive in my heart. I even quit my job at the newspaper because you both needed me. And I was struggling with the stress, too. That was part of it. But mainly, I wanted to be there for you.”
I remember it all so clearly. Grace worked for theEmerald Beach Examinercovering local stories. My parents actually met through her. My mother, Harriet, accompanied Grace to some event she was covering where my father was speaking, and they got to talking during the cocktail hour. Grace used to laugh when she told their friends the story. “Here was the up-and-coming politician in a room with all these influential people – the kind of connections that could make or break his career – and he ignored them all to hide in the coatroom with my sister.”
As a kid, I always loved this story. It gave me a sick, sad hope that beneath my dad’s tempestuous exterior was an actualperson. But now I see the truth behind Grace’s sunny version – that my dad spied a woman who was pliable, naive, and who would fit the wholesome image he wanted to portray. And he pursued her with the full force of his personality until she was powerless to resist him.
And as a cynical, broken teenager, I watched Grace fall for the same shit – his surface charm, lavish holidays, and grand gestures that hid the reality of living with his anger. Through her eyes, my father became the hero once again – the family man looking after her widow’s sister, finding love again in the darkness. All the while, behind the doors of our gilded prison, he was as cold and remote as ever. Never violent, but cruel beyond words.
I swallow back the bile as I think about everything Grace gave up for two men who never appreciated her. “If you’re telling me that you’re leaving him, I’ll help you pack your bags.”
She shakes her head sadly. “That’s not it. I wish that was all it was. The truth is, Noah, for a long time I’ve wondered about Harriet’s death. I stayed with your father long after his grief made him ugly because I wanted the truth. And this week, I found an old laptop hidden at the back of the closet. It’s your mother’s laptop. One she was using to write her romance novel. I don’t think your father knows she hid it there.”
He doesn’t. I remember Mom laughing as she lay on the sofa with an iced tea, the keys clacking beneath her fingers. Writing the romance she didn’t get to have in real life, then shoving the computer under the cushions when my father entered the room. She couldn’t bear the scathing cruelty he’d lob at her if he knew she was writing something sofrivolous, and I couldn’t bear the idea of him taking this joy from her, too. She smiled when she wrote, and her smile was so rare and precious.
“You’re going to publish her novel?” I guess.
“No,omigod.” Grace grabs my wrist. “Harriet was many things, but a skilled wordsmith she was not. Just give me a second to get this out, okay? I boot up the laptop and connect it to the WiFi and I find your mother’s second email account, the one she used to use for things she didn’t want your father to see. There’s an email in the draft folder that she wrote to me but never sent.” She swallows. “She wrote it the day before she died.”
My mouth dries.
“In this letter, Harriet told me that Howard Malloy stormed into the house a couple of days prior, demanding to speak to John. Apparently, Howard was trying to move a large shipment out of the city when it was stolen from under his nose. He seemed to think it was John’s problem. He kept saying ‘if this gets out, you’ll be on the hook just as much as me.’ Your father told him to leave, and he did. But Harriet was worried about what she heard. She wanted me to look into it. She couldn’t think what business Howard and John could possibly have together, and then…”
And then I found her face down in the swimming pool.
Grace’s eyes flutter shut again, and I know she’s thinking the same thing as me, remembering that awful sight. Why can’t I remember my mother alive and happy? Why does my brain fixate on her blue, bloated body? “If only Harriet had sent that email, I’d have looked into this much sooner. Better late than never. It wasn’t hard to get the key to your father’s office while he was out and dig around. I’ve found some pretty horrible things. Your father was accepting large campaign donations from Malloy – way in excess of his other donors. Bribes to make sure Malloy’s company was allowed to continue doing what they were doing. But I think it’s more than that – I think John was in business with Malloy. That’s what Malloy meant when he said ‘you’ll be on the hook just as much as me.’ Plus, John took out a large sum of money right before the Malloys disappeared. You don’t take out that kind of cash unless… unless you plan to do something illegal with it. And there’s more… paperwork from the trial was fabricated. It looks as though your father madecertainthat Howard Malloy could never go to jail. I think he did it to save his own ass, to cover up whatever he and Malloy were working on together. And then Malloy disappears, the only person who knew about John’s involvement… and Harriet started to figure it out and then…”
This tracks with everything my father has already told us, except… except that he saidMalloykilled my mother to get back at him for the treasure going missing. But what Grace is saying…
…is that my father might’ve killed my mother to keep her quiet.
He didn’t know about this unsent email, but she could have said something that tipped him off. Maybe she confronted him about her suspicions, and he… and he…
I’ll kill him.
Claudia’s hand clamps on my shoulder, reminding me that I can’t go postal in the middle of this party, that we’ve got a job right now and that needs to be done before I eviscerate John Marlowe and choke him with his own intestines.
Grace coughs into her hand, her whole body racked with pain. She wipes her mouth on the back of her hand. “Noah, you look ready to murder him. Please, don’t touch him. It’s not your job to take care of this. It’s my job to look after you, to get justice for my sister. I sent everything I found to my old boss at the paper. The article comes out tomorrow. And then… I don’t know what will happen. Your father will know I was the one who did it. He will know what I suspect him of. Things will get ugly, Noah. I’m afraid I’ve blown up your life, but—”
“He’ll pay.” I can’t help the grim smile that tugs at my lips. “You’re going to burn his entire career to dust, everything he’s worked for. And it’s exactly what he deserves.”
As much as I want to feel my father’s life slip through my fingers, what Grace has done is evenmoresatisfying. John Marlowe got involved with a crook and killed his own son, then put my mother through the pain of a sham trial before killing her to cover up his crimes. He made me believe she abandoned me, that I was so unloveable that she’d rather die than carry on without Felix. And all to save his precious reputation, to keep his illicit activities out of the press.
And now, the tough-on-organized-crime senator will reap what he’s fucking sown.
He’s done for. He’s hung himself by his own noose.
Only when he’s reached absolute rock bottom, when he’s died a thousand deaths in the media for the evil he’s done, will I kill him for real.
“Veritas liberabit vos,” Claws whispers, reverting back to her father’s Latin lessons. “The truth will set you free.”
“I needed you to know,” Grace whispers, her hand curling around my arm. Her skin feels too hot. It’s sheened in sweat despite the cool air in the club. “I wanted you to hear it from me. Your father will fight back with everything he has, and I couldn’t stand it if you thought I wanted to hurt you after everything you’ve been through.”
I gather her in my arms. She’s skin and bones, a shadow of the bubbly, vivacious Grace I remember. “I’d never believe that. You’ve been more of a parent to me in four years than he ever was.”
“Are you safe?” Claudia asks Grace. “You shouldn’t be anywhere near him when this story breaks. Come to Malloy Manor.”
“That’s sweet, but I have a plan. I need to go home with him tonight, or he’ll suspect something is up,” Grace says. “But you know how heavily he sleeps, Noah. I’ll be long gone by the time he wakes up. Old newspaper friends in New York are helping to hide me. I’ve got it all worked out. I’ll call you as soon as I can.”
