Page 43 of Saltwater Secrets
Renée explained what she meant a little bit later. They were outside the Coleman House, wrapped in blankets, watching a crackling bonfire. It was in the sixties, and the fireworks were long finished, leaving a breath of ash in the air. As they waited in silence, sipping hot cocoa or tea, Hilary kept tabs on Aria, who was slightly somber since Logan had excused himself to the bedroom upstairs. After that horrible coincidence with Jefferson Everett, Logan was sure that he was going to lose funding on his animation project, a project that he’d spent the past several years working on.
Hilary wanted to tell Aria and Logan that it was better not to take money from such monsters, but she knew it wasn’t so simple. In her interior design career, she’d worked with plenty of less-than-kind people, knowing that money was often the answer to making her way to the top. If Logan lost this funding, where would he find the energy to get more?
Renée sniffled and sipped her hot cocoa. Since her outburst of “I was never supposed to tell what happened to Rachel, it was a secret,” she hadn’t managed to say anything else. She’d limped alongside Estelle, letting herself be cared for like the emotionally wounded woman she was. Estelle was quiet, expectant. Sam hadjoined them, having been updated via text messages from Hilary about what had happened on the sailboat and what Renée had said.
Sam had texted back.
SAM: Oh boy. At least the drama isn’t Coleman-related, huh? I hope she’s all right. But what a doozy. She wasn’t supposed to talk about what happened to her dead sister? What the heck?
Where Jefferson had gone off to was anyone’s guess. Hilary hoped she’d never have to see that guy again. She imagined him nursing his wounds at a swanky cocktail bar, perhaps flirting with women half his age in a desperate attempt to feel something.
Renée took a jagged breath. “She died in 1982,” she said finally.
Hilary bowed her head. The photo album was from 1981, which meant that Rachel had died the very next year. It was what she’d suspected, but it was no less heartbreaking.
“My mother was away,” Renée said. “I imagine she was, you know, trying to get back at my father in some way. Trying to claim something of her life, because she blamed him for taking so much of hers. Rachel and I were running around, probably being annoying. I remember asking Dad to play with us, but he refused, yelling at us, telling us how important whatever he was doing was. When Dad screamed, it was game over. Rachel and I both burst into tears and went to the kitchen to make snacks.” Renée’s eyes shimmered. “There was something on a high shelf: crackers or cookies or something. Rachel was always more adventurous than me, and stronger, and she climbed on the counter to get them. It was something she did all the time. I looked away for a second, and the next thing I knew, Rachelscreamed and fell. She hit her head on the fridge and was quiet. I was screaming and screaming until the maid came and called the ambulance. I was in shock and didn’t know what to do. It took my father ages to come out of his study to see what was going on. He must have thought we were just being dramatic girls.”
Renée was crying quietly, her tears reflecting the firelight. “When he came out, he saw Rachel on the stretcher and started yelling at me, asking me what I’d done to her. I couldn’t believe it. But I immediately thought, yes, it was me who killed her. Like, I immediately took that on.” Renée flared her nostrils and covered her face with her hands. “We went to the hospital, where Renée was pronounced dead. I had a kind of black-out, I think, because everything after that is really hazy. I know we had a very small funeral. Just my father, my mother, and I were there. And a pastor, I guess. We buried her in Upstate New York. I was so messy with grief that I didn’t want to talk about anything that happened, because I genuinely thought it was my fault. So when my father took me aside and told me not to talk about Rachel with anyone, I was almost grateful. Imagine that! I was so young. So naive. So broken. My best friend was gone.”
Hilary’s heart swelled with sorrow. Was it possible that Dorothy had allowed this to happen?
But Dorothy had just lost a daughter.Maybe she wasn’t thinking clearly, Hilary thought.
Renée continued. “Something I gleaned later on was that at the time of Rachel’s death, my father was in the middle of hatching an enormous deal with one company or another. His daughter’s death was bad press, press he didn’t want. He projected himself as a family man, on the one side, and a man with many famous mistresses on the other. He didn’t want to court the image of a grief-stricken father. It would destroy his romantic conquests, as well as his business strategy. So, I think,he buried what happened to Rachel as deeply as he could. He didn’t want to deal with it.” Renée sniffed. “I was sent to boarding school shortly thereafter.”
Estelle looked horrified. She reached for Renée’s hand. “You poor darling,” she said. “It was wrong. It was terrible.” She searched the sky above, as though it would give her an answer. “We always thought you and your sister were both at boarding school.”
“It’s what my father wanted everyone to think,” Renée said.
“But we should have asked more questions,” Estelle whispered. “We should have asked about you, about Rachel. We should have dug deeper…”
“It’s no use,” Renée said. “My father always had the image he wanted. It was all for his career, all for the future of his wealth. It’s the wealth that, I suppose, I’m about to inherit. It’s the wealth that might have gone to Rachel, too, if only she hadn’t fallen that day.” Renée’s shoulders shook.
Hilary was mystified. It was incredible that the Wagners had managed to cover up the reality of one of their daughters’ deaths. Probably they’d paid off their maids and gardeners, probably they’d shoved all talk of Rachel to the side. But how had Dorothy managed it? How had she allowed Philip to do it? Had she been frightened of him? Had she been addicted to the money? What was the reason for any of this?
It had left Renée broken and bleak.
And then, Hilary thought of it. “Is that why you think your mother killed your father?”
Again, Hilary had spoken out of turn. It was like she’d grown addicted to this story, unable to control her emotions around it.
Renée tilted her head. Her eyes were enormous and childlike. To Hilary’s surprise, she answered, “I suppose a part of me has always wondered if that’s why he died.”
The air was taut. The only sound was the spitting bonfire. Hilary’s stomach churned at the thought of Rachel’s death, at the idea of that beautiful child taking such an awful tumble. During Aria’s early years, Hilary had read that the number-one leading cause of childhood deaths at home was related to falls, and she’d lived in permanent fear of this, demanding safety from Aria at all times. But Rachel and Renée hadn’t felt any love or care from their father.
Their father hadn’t been featured once in that photo album, like he’d been absent the entire time. Always absent when it mattered the most.
“What you have to understand,” Renée said, her voice breathy, “is that I still loved my father. He had a tremendous power over my mother and me. He had power over Rachel, too. So when it was just Mom and me, it was like we needed him even more. We watched him rise through the ranks of power. We watched him hob-nob with politicians and date actresses and move through the world like a king. I think I was sort of proud of him, as weird as that sounds. So when he died that day in 1998, it was like everything I had understood about the world was no more.”
Renée started crying again. It was as though the tragedies of her life were pressing down upon her. When it was clear she couldn’t speak anymore, Estelle got up and led Renée inside, mothering her in the way Renée so needed.
This left Hilary, Sam, and Aria at the bonfire, at a loss for words.
Nearly ten minutes later, Aria sputtered, “My gosh.”
Sam got up and pulled her hair into a messy bun. “I’m getting wine. Anyone else?”
“Yes,” Hilary said.
