Page 56 of All Good People Here

Margot, 2019

Margot sat frozen on the couch, her breath trapped in her throat, palms prickling. She stared at her uncle’s profile as he stared at the TV. He was only a few feet away, and yet the distance between them felt like an uncrossable gulf.

Throughout her entire life, Luke had taught Margot to be honest and real. In a town of people who cared far more about appearances than truth, her unguarded and uncontrived uncle had been her salvation. Luke had never hidden who he was—or at least that was what she’d always thought. Apparently she’d been wrong. Apparently, like everyone else in this town, he also wore a mask. After years of maintaining that he didn’t know January or the Jacobs family, here he was in a photograph taken at the girl’s recital.

Margot glanced from her uncle in the photo to her uncle on the couch. “Uncle Luke?”

But her voice sounded weak, and he must not have heard, because he kept his eyes on the TV. She cleared her throat. “Luke?”

He turned his head, eyebrows raised, and Margot could tell by the vague look in his eye that he still didn’t recognize her. Whowas she to him now?she wondered. Was she his late wife or was she a stranger?

“What are you worried about Margot finding out?” she asked.

Luke frowned. “What?”

“You just said you’re worried about Margot because she’s been asking about January. You said you’re scared ‘she’ll find out what really happened.’ What did you mean?” She felt traitorous using his condition to mine for information, but then again, he’d betrayed her first.

Luke’s frown deepened.

“Luke?” she said after a moment. “What were you talking about? What ‘really happened’?”

“Hm?” He blinked hard, shaking his head as if trying to clear away cobwebs. “What’re you talking about?”

Just then, a loud roar came from the TV and they both looked over at it. On the screen, a lion was tearing into some disemboweled animal, its muzzle and mane covered in blood.

“Man, I love this show,” Luke said. “Don’t you?”

But Margot couldn’t speak. Her mind was swirling with conflicting versions of her uncle: Luke at January’s recital, Luke telling Margot he didn’t know the Jacobses, Luke worried she mightfind out what really happened. With a trembling hand, she clicked her laptop shut and tucked it under her arm. She needed to get away from him. When she stood, she realized her body was shaking.

“Be right back,” she said, but Luke either didn’t hear or didn’t care. He continued to watch the TV as Margot walked out of the room.

The moment her bedroom door shut behind her, she locked it, then fell back against it and slid to the floor. What the hell was happening? A minute ago, she’d connected Elliott Wallace to Polly Limon and January, thinking she’d solved the case, and now—what? What exactly did she think her uncle had done? Justbecause Luke had gone to January’s recitals, her rational brain interjected, didn’t mean he’d killed her. But then why lie about it for all these years?

Margot felt as if everything she knew, her entire world, had just been flipped upside down. She grabbed her phone from her back pocket in a knee-jerk instinct to call someone, but after a moment of staring at the screen, she slammed it to the floor, pressing it into the carpet. It was Luke she called in moments like this.

She sat there, her back against the door, her eyes roving blankly around the little office-turned–guest room. After a moment her gaze caught on Luke’s old desk. As a child, that desk had been the only thing in her aunt and uncle’s house that Margot hadn’t been allowed to touch. According to Luke, his work stuff was in there and he didn’t want it getting disorganized. But now that she thought of it, she couldn’t actually remember him ever using it.

She stood, double-checked that the door was locked, then strode quickly to the desk, sinking into the faux leather chair on the opposite side. On the desk’s surface was a computer with a connected keyboard, a glass vase of pens, pencils, and highlighters, and a cheap-looking desk lamp with a flexible neck. Margot pressed the power button on the desktop and began quietly opening desk drawers as she waited for it to boot up. In the shallow tray centered beneath the desk, among a smattering of loose paper clips, sticky notes, and thumbtacks, she spotted a small gold key.

Just as Margot went to pick it up, the computer came to life with a loud chime and she sat up straight, craning her neck to listen for any movement from the other room. What would he do, she wondered, if he caught her snooping around his desk? Yesterday, the question would have made Margot laugh. Now, it made her scared.

She turned her attention to the screen, in the center of which was a box to enter a password. She chewed the inside of her cheek as she thought. Luke had been an accountant, a numbers person,but he also had a sentimental side. She typed in the digits of her aunt’s birthday, but the little box shook in disapproval, so she tried the digits of his, with the same disappointing result. She deleted the numbers, then slowly typed in her own birthday. When she hit enter, the computer chimed happily and her uncle’s desktop came into view. Margot’s chest tightened. For the next hour or so, she searched every file and folder she could find. But the minutes ticked by and she discovered nothing. She decided to move on and check the rest of the desk drawers, but just as she was about to pull another open, she heard it—a thud from somewhere beyond her door.

Margot jerked upright, her hand frozen midair, her eyes on the door to the office. The noise had sounded like a footstep maybe, or a stumble. She stayed still, listening, but she didn’t hear anything else. Quietly, she slid off the chair and walked to the door, holding her breath as she pressed her ear against it. But all she could hear were the sounds of the TV. She was just being paranoid.

Back at her uncle’s desk, Margot continued going through the drawers, but the contents of each subsequent one were more banal than the last. There were records and receipts for all the work Luke had ever done on his car, down to every last oil change. And there was the same for the house—roof repairs and fixes for burst pipes. Among it all was a random assortment of loose papers—an old grocery list, a jury summons from 1999, a stack of letters Margot had sent him after her move from Wakarusa, written in her messy, preadolescent hand.

Finally, Margot made it to the last drawer, the tall one on the bottom right. But when she went to open it, it was stuck. She tugged it again, but it wouldn’t budge. Then she saw the little gold keyhole at the top and remembered the key. She hurriedly opened that first drawer again and plucked the key from inside.

Heart beating fast, Margot tried it in the drawer, where ittwisted easily. But when she pulled it open, her stomach dropped. She didn’t know what she was expecting to find, but inside was nothing more than a filing system. And as she flicked through the folders, her disappointment grew; they were the financial records of Luke’s clients. It made sense, she supposed, to lock them away. She sank back into the enormous chair. She should have been relieved. She didn’twanther uncle to be harboring some guilty secret—of course she didn’t. But she wanted the truth, an explanation to why he’d been in that photo at January’s recital, and these financial documents weren’t it.

But then she noticed something she hadn’t earlier. There seemed to be a discrepancy between the depth of the drawer from the outside and the depth of the files within—a space of about three to four inches. She lurched upright and yanked the drawer all the way open. Then, forcing herself to move carefully, she removed the wire frame that held the files and pressed her hand against the wooden bottom of the drawer. She felt along the entire surface until, in one of the corners, she felt a slight give, then a pop. Her heart leapt into her throat. The wood panel was a false bottom.

But just before she could remove it, she heard another noise. It was the same thud as before, an errant footstep or an elbow against a wall, but this time it sounded as if it had come from outside.

She rushed over to the window and peered through the blinds. It must have been later than she realized because it was dark out now, the only source of light one weak bulb. Margot scanned every inch of her uncle’s small backyard, but no one was there. She craned her neck to listen, but heard nothing except the muffled sounds from the TV. Was it possible that Luke had been the source of the noise, that he was the one wandering around?

She walked to her bedroom door, creaked it open quietly, and slipped through. Tiptoeing down the hall, she paused outside the entrance to the living room and leaned her head around thecorner. But Luke hadn’t moved. He sat on the couch, facing the TV. On the screen now, the female lions were hunting, circling their prey methodically. Margot glanced around the rest of the room and the connected kitchen, but nothing looked out of the ordinary, nothing amiss. And the only sound she could hear was the voice of the documentary’s narrator as he explained that the wildebeest had no chance against the surrounding pride. Margot turned and headed back to her room.

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