“I get that, Bea. But what does that have to do with me?” Betsy lowered herself into the chair behind the register, seeming suddenly older than her eighty-plus years. Her face was lined, her eyes red-rimmed with dark shadows beneath them. She must not be sleeping well.
“Chaz and Bradford saw you go into the cave and come out again. What were you doing in there?”
Betsy’s lips pulled into a lazy grin. “Aren’t y’all the little detectives?”
“We know about your old life in California and that you kidnapped your son and ran from the law.”
Betsy’s smile faded. “Oh, do you now? Well, I figured, since Chaz had all those clippings.”
“Did you kill my mother?”
Betsy grunted. “Of course not. She took her own life—there was nothing suspicious about it. But if you’re asking whether I had a role in it, yes, I suppose I did. I didn’t do anything to stop her, and I should’ve. But hindsight is twenty-twenty, I guess.”
“What should you have done?”
Betsy’s laughter was high pitched and unnerving. “Why do you want to know all of this now?”
“Because I have to know the truth.”
“Even if I tell you, I’ll deny it all day long. It’ll be your word against mine.” It sounded like a caution.
“I don’t care. It doesn’t matter if anyone else believes me or not.”
Betsy seemed to consider what she’d said. “Okay, fine. I guess you should know—she was your mother, after all. And I liked her. The fact is, I should’ve put a stop to the rumours that she was crazy. I should’ve owned up to killing Mary Brown first thing, and then none of it would’ve happened. But I didn’t, and things worked out the way they did. And that’s the end of it.”
Beatrice gasped. “You? What?”
“You didn’t know? I thought for sure you’d figured out that part,” Betsy rasped, laughing and then erupted into a hacking cough. “Not as clever as you thought you were, huh?”
“I didn’t think it could be true. I suspected it, but I couldn’t believe it.” Adrenaline surged through Bea’s veins. Her thoughts were clear and steady now. She had put herself in a dangerous situation. She scanned the room for the fastest way out of there.
“It’s true. Your mother said the same thing—she figured it out and no one believed her then, like no one will believe you now. They can’t comprehend that a nice old lady like me could do something so heinous. But people do whatever they have to do to protect their family. Even kill.”
Bea frowned. “You’d kill to protect a brother who impregnated a teenaged girl?”
“I could’ve gone either way on that — I didn’t like what he did. I told him when we got here that he needed to control himself. I didn’t want any trouble. Trouble was the last thing we could afford. But of course, he couldn’t manage to keep it together long enough for us to establish a life for ourselves.”
“Why did you have to run from your husband?”
“He was a dangerous man, a criminal. He robbed banks and jewellery stores. He mixed with the worst kind of thugs, and he was violent to me and Frank. So, when I got the chance, I stole from him and fled the country. I thought he’d be angry, but I didn’t understand how long he’d look for us. This island saved our lives, that’s the truth. No one came looking for us here. He spent decades scouring the earth for a sign of either one of us. And he never did find us.”
“What did you steal?”
“A few things he’d taken from someone else. It doesn’t matter. It paid for this shop and our house, our new life, our identities. The money gave us a chance to start over, and I’d do it all again if I had to. It was worth it. Mary found out that Buck was the father of Ruby’s baby, and she threatened to go to the police, saying it was rape. Of course, I pointed out that sixteen wasn’t considered rape in this state, but she said she knew it’d started earlier, and I couldn’t fault her on that. But the problem was, if she went to the police, they’d look deeper into our past, and I couldn’t afford for them to do that. ’Course, that was before I made good friends down at the station, friends who like to help me avoid too much scrutiny for a bit of back-scratching.”
“Back-scratching?”
“Never mind, honey. You’re too naïve to understand how the world works. But let’s say I was desperate, and I found a way to make sure Mary never went to the police with her sad tale. Ruby was too afraid to go herself after Mary’s death. So, it all worked out.”
Anger stirred in Bea’s gut. “It didn’t work out for Penny’s family.”
“No, you’re right about that. But I was more concerned with protecting my own family at the time. I didn’t think much about how things would progress. I was new to the island, and I didn’t know many people. Of course, now they’re like family to me, so I’d probably handle things differently given the chance to do it over.”
“You let your own brother take the blame for the murder…”
“I figured he owed me, after what he’d done. He could’ve blown our cover and gotten all of us killed, the lout. He never was much of a thinker. I brought him with us to keep him safe and so he could help us in case we needed it, but I should’ve left him behind. He brought nothing with him but trouble.”
Bea strode to the door, then spun on her heel and marched back to where Betsy sat. “You talk about murder as though it’s nothing. No big deal. But you ended someone’s life. You destroyed families—mine and Penny’s. My mother never got over the way people treated her. She discovered the truth, and everyone called her crazy for it.”
