Chapter Twenty-Three
Jack
‘Your son killed my mother.’ Jack said it over and over again wondering whether, if he said it enough times, someone would laugh and they’d all realise it was a joke. But it didn’t happen that way.
‘Let me get this straight.’ Jack looked at Kent, then Nicole, then back again. ‘You’ve known about this all along, and yet youhiredher and had her work in our house every day for years, knowing the truth.’
‘Jack, I—’
‘No, Dad. Don’t you see how incomprehensible that is to me? Not telling me the truth, I can take. But letting me get close to her!’ He couldn’t look at Nicole now, not anymore. ‘Why would you ever do that?’
Kent
‘I owe both of you an explanation,’ Kent began, eyes begging Jack to give him a chance. ‘When Cynthia was killed, I lost interest in everything apart from the business and the minute details of her death. I hoarded newspaper reports, I read everything over and over again, hoping somewhere along the line I’d find a sort of peace. I wanted to know about him, the boy who’d taken her away from me and changed my life.’ He looked at Nicole now, and her red-rimmed eyes looked up from the tissue she’d pulled apart with her hands. ‘So I searched more and found out everything I could. I found out about Noah.’
Nicole gasped and shot up from her chair. Kent stopped her at the door. ‘Please, Nicole.’ Reluctantly she sat down.
‘I found out about Noah and his mother, Nicole.’ He looked at the woman in question. ‘I discovered they’d struggled as a single parent family until one day Noah Capra ran away from home after an argument.’
Nicole sniffed, stared out the window as she spoke. ‘I remember it. He wouldn’t put out the trashcans at the kerb, and I made a stand, saying he was old enough to pull his weight. God, it was so ridiculous, but we’d been fighting for a long time. He was in trouble at school, struggling with the homework and I didn’t see his unhappiness. I didn’t know how low he felt.’
Jack stayed silent throughout and Kent knew he had to continue. They weren’t leaving this room until he’d said everything, and he knew he wouldn’t breathe properly until this was done.
‘I read about the gang Noah had become involved in,’ said Kent, ‘and I read about how his mother had spent every last cent she had, trying to find him and bring him home.’
Nicole’s tears fell, along with a guttural groan that spoke of the pain she’d been in for so long.
Still Kent pressed on. ‘I found out that after Noah and his friends, or the gang, whatever you’d like to call them, had robbed and killed Cynthia, the boy had written a note confessing everything to his mother.’
Nicole’s sobs filled the room, and Jack’s eyes swam with tears.
‘Noah wrote how sorry he was,’ Kent told Jack. ‘He wrote to his mother to tell her it wasn’t her fault, none of it was, that he couldn’t live with what he’d done. Noah killed himself that summer.’
Jack’s head shot up. He looked first at Kent, then across at Nicole. He rammed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets, pushing away tears.
‘I don’t understand why you had me in your house, your life,’ Nicole said, bewildered, dazed almost. She’d spent the last ten minutes crying, crying for the son she’d lost, crying out with confusion at what Kent was telling her. ‘This all sounds like some kind of sick joke.’
‘It wasn’t like that at all.’
‘Yeah, then what was it like, Dad?’ Jack’s anger was in danger of boiling over. There were two people in this room who needed to know everything, but the story had to start from the beginning.
‘I was grieving for Cynthia, and at first I wanted to find out as much as I could about the person who’d killed her. It was my way of dealing with it, I guess. But then, the more I delved, the more I wanted to know. I wanted answers, damn it. So I found out where Nicole was working, the agency she was with, and I arranged to interview her as a housekeeper. I had no intention of hiring her. I wanted to see the woman who’d borne the son who turned into a killer.’ He heard Nicole gasp, but she didn’t move. ‘And the woman I met that day, the woman I fully intended to tell exactly what I thought of the boy she’d brought into the world, turned out to be more normal than I’d ever expected.’
He pulled a hand through his hair. ‘I hated you, on paper, on the computer screen,’ he directed to Nicole, ‘and I hated what your son had done. I hated that he wasn’t around to pay for it anymore, to be brought to justice. But when you sat there that day, hands clasped in your lap, talking away with a sense of pride for your work, vulnerable and alone just like I was, I saw another side. I saw another victim of the crime, a woman who’d had her entire world pulled out from under her, just like me. And I saw a woman who was no more to blame for what happened than I was.’
‘I don’t understand how you kept all of it quiet,’ said Jack. ‘How could you keep the secret so long?’
‘It was one of those things where it had gone on for so long that it was easier to keep up with the lie than tell the truth. The fact of the matter was I enjoyed Nicole’s company. I’d been lonely, so focused on getting answers that would never have taken away the pain, that I’d shut myself off. I even distanced myself from you, Jack, as much as anyone else. And I’ll never stop regretting that.’
‘All you cared about was your work,’ said Jack, unable to meet his father’s gaze.
‘It must have seemed that way, but deep down it never was, I promise you.’
Jack nodded.
Kent turned to Nicole now. ‘Do you understand why I did what I did?’
Tears in her eyes she looked back at him. ‘Noah wasn’t all bad, you know.’ Kent reached out and touched her shoulder and she covered his hand with her own. ‘He was such a gentle child. When he was eight years old, he brought home a kitten he’d found on the street. The poor thing had been hit by a car or a bike; its foot was all squished and Noah had gone to the nearest store, asked for a box and he’d lined it with his school sweater to wrap the cat in and keep it warm. He was distraught, made me call a vet to take a look at him. We took care of him. Noah made Missing Cat posters he plastered all around the city even though he wasn’t supposed to, leaflets to drop through people’s doors. He told me, “Mom, this cat has a home, it must come from somewhere. And I have to help him find his way back.”
