“You have no idea of what you speak.”
“Don’t I?” She laughed, no humor in the sound. “Everything was as clear as the peal of a spring bell when I realized who you were. Who the man in thejournalwas. Abigail Winstead knew you well.”
Gabriel snatched the book from the table. “She knew me well? She knewnothing.” He threw the book so hard against the wall he heard the spine break. “She knew how to terrify little boys. She knew nothing aboutme.”
Marietta swallowed and looked down. Gabriel heard an odd sound, then realized it was his own harsh breathing.
“Did you murder those women, Gabriel?”
“Right now I wish I had! But why would Igivethem that power over me? Iruinedthem. I made themlivewith it.”
He had shocked her, it was written all over her face. Right now he didn’t care. He stood abruptly and tossed her pistol on the table, crushing a nut beneath. “Leave, if that is what you wish. Little rich girl gone poor and tattered. I’ll get your brother out of prison and thennothing.”
He didn’t know how he got from the room.
Marietta wiped an angry tear as he slammed the door. The door hit so hard it clicked from its lock. She gripped the butt of the pistol tightly, dragging it across the exposed wood and spoiled papers. The heart of the crushed shell trailed beneath it.
The journal lay in the corner, crooked and awkward. Helpless. Malicious. Waiting like a predator feigning injury. The hapless prey sniffing near it only to be captured between crushing jaws.
Cruel. Terrible.
She pushed back from the table and stumbled to it, staring at it for a moment before picking it up between her thumb and forefinger. She dropped it into her bag.
The kitchen was silent. Eerie. She stood still. For once she had no plan. No course of action. Nothing to drive toward.
A noise, a muted voice, cut through the silence, and another joined it. The voices were far off, arguing, muffled by the nearly closed door.
Marietta found herself in front of the door. The one that led to the rest of the house, not the one that led away. She stared at the knotty wood. Her hand touched the oak—strange, as if the hand didn’t belong to her. The hand pushed.
The voices led her through the hall and around the stairs to the small holding room to the west of the door. Four voices. Alcroft had joined the dysfunctional group, while she and Gabriel had been in the kitchen.
“…Worley is still out there,” Alcroft was saying.
“It’s not Worley,” the butler said. She still didn’t know his name.
“But Father—” Jeremy pleaded.
“He’s right.” Gabriel’s voice was dark, eerily calm after his angry exit. “Worley worshipped those women.”
“All the more reason to bring him to the magistrate,” Alcroft said. “Something is off there.”
“I agree with John,” Jeremy was quick to add.
Silence.
“It’s true, then.” Jeremy’s voice was tight, anguished. “You think I did it.”
“Of course not.” But Gabriel’s voice was too dismissive.
Marietta felt something choke her. Like what she would have felt had a hot air balloon lifted from within her stomach.
“You’re lying.”
“Jeremy—”
“You are angry with Marietta for believing it was you, but how do you explain that you thought it was me, Gabriel? I am your flesh and blood. Your brother. And you think I am the killer, don’t you?”
“I don’t—”
