Page 57 of Mr. North
“They will ,” he counters. “He’s a recluse, Elizabeth. He has a severe anxiety disorder. He hasn’t stepped foot out of his own home in years. He’s emotionally distraught, and you’ve shown up and recognized an opportunity. You want to use him, to manipulate him and steal from him, and we won’t allow that to happen. Right, Thalia?” He spins to look at the woman on the couch, but she doesn’t return his gaze. She’s still staring numbly straight ahead, her eyes glazed over, a million miles away.
“Thalia,” I whisper. “You can’t let him do that to Raph. You know it’s not true.”
She swallows heavily, her throat muscles working. “I don’t know what to do anymore,” she whispers. “I keep…I keep making the wrong call.”
“We talked about this,” Paxton hisses angrily. “You know it’s the best thing for him. And for us , too!”
This seems to grab Thalia’s attention. She winces, her head whipping around. Slowly, she gets up from the couch. “When will it be enough?” she asks. “When will all this end? I can’t bear it any more, Paxton. I can’t fucking do this anymore.”
“Shut your mouth,” he snaps, his voice filled with fury. “Stay the course. Don’t interfere. I have everything under control. No one’s ever going to know—” He stops short, his sentence coming to a screeching halt. I already know what he was going to say, though. It’s all so obvious now.
“No one’s ever going to know Thalia was the one behind the wheel that night and not Raphael,” I finish for him.
Both Paxton and Thalia look at me, their expressions stony, as if I’ve just spoken a secret combination of words that spell inevitable disaster for them both.
“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Paxton says, scoffing. “I don’t know how the hell you’ve come to that conclusion, but no one’s ever going to believe you. Raphael—”
I narrow my eyes at Thalia. “Raphael took the blame for you. He switched out places with you before the police or any one on the street could see anything. Didn’t he?” It all makes so much sense now. This is why he didn’t want to fight a conviction. This is why he allowed the court and police officials to be bribed on his behalf. This is why he told Nate not to look into the cut brake lines. Because if they had investigated the accident any further, it would all have come to light. They would have figured out that Thalia was the one driving, and she would have gone to prison.
“You were drunk, weren’t you? You’d all been drinking at that award ceremony. Everyone except Raph. He was tired, so he didn’t drive. You told him you were fine to drive, but you weren’t. That’s what happened, isn’t it?”
Guilt flashes across Thalia’s face. The emotion is as damning as any confession she could ever make. “You have no idea what would have happened to me if they’d arrested me,” Thalia whispers. “I was already on probation. I had three convictions for possession of an illegal substance. If I were charged with a DUI, they would have slapped all three commuted sentences from those charges onto my DUI sentence, too. I would have gone to jail for over twenty years. Raphael—”
“I said shut up, Thalia!” Paxton slams his fist down onto the kitchen counter, sending a coffee cup crashing into the sink. A lake of black liquid spreads across the counter, slowly dripping onto the floor. “She’s grasping at straws. If you keep talking, you’re damning yourself and the rest of us right along with you!”
Thalia bites down on her bottom lip, considering Paxton’s furious face for a moment. When she looks back at me, I think all hope of her ever telling the truth has vanished in a puff of smoke. Then she begins to sob.
“Raphael told me he could take a couple of years,” she says. “He said…he said it wouldn’t matter. It would go quickly…and…and he would be able to go back to running North Industries as soon as he was free. When they only gave him two years under house arrest, I thought…God,” she says, choking. “I was relieved . The time went by so fast. But then…when it was over, he wouldn’t come out again. He refused to leave the penthouse, and…it was my fault, Beth. I killed Chloe. Raphael’s whole life just stopped , and it was all my fault.”
I flounder, opening my mouth and then closing it again. Paxton covers his face with one hand, sighing heavily. Thalia scrubs away her tears with the back of her hands, but fresh drops immediately fall, wetting her face. “I thought you’d be good for him,” she says. “I managed to convince him to talk to you. Play chess. Nothing more. But I hoped … I wanted him to be happy again.”
“You wanted to replace Chloe ,” Paxton spits. “You thought you could bring in any old gold digger, and she’d be able to take the place of our friend. Let’s not sugarcoat this. You’re a fucking idiot, Thalia.” The venom in his voice is breathtaking. So much anger and fury. So much…pain .
“You were jealous,” I whisper.
Paxton’s face drains of all color. The bright red flush that was burning in his cheeks a moment ago rushes away, leaving behind a sickly ashen hue. “Don’t try and sleuth this out, Elizabeth. The situation is far beyond your understanding. It’s complicated. It’s all far more complicated than you could ever imagine.”
Thalia turns away from us and walks slowly, wearily toward the French doors that lead to the balcony. She picks up a pack of cigarettes and places one in her mouth, lighting it, then stepping out onto the balcony to smoke it. “He was,” she says over her shoulder. “We never talked about it or acknowledged it, but we all knew, Pax.”
Silence reigns over the apartment. The sound of sirens wailing off in the distance floats up, barely audible on the seventeenth floor of Thalia’s building. She draws on her cigarette and exhales, thick plumes of smoke billowing from her mouth. Paxton doesn’t do or say anything. He just stands there, fiddling with his right cufflink, not breathing, not blinking.
“You cut the brake lines, didn’t you?” I say. “You did do it, because you were jealous.”
His nostrils flare. “I’m not going to engage in this madness anymore. I didn’t love Chloe. I didn’t tamper with the car. I had no reason to—”
“I don’t think you loved Chloe,” I say. “I think…I think you were in love with Raph . I think you’re still in love with him now.” It hit me like a bowling ball to the gut a minute ago. It made so much more sense. It seemed like the only explanation to what happened all those years ago. Raph had slept with plenty of women, sure. Chloe was a threat, though. She was something real and tangible that Raphael had valued for a long time. He’d never introduced anyone as his girlfriend before getting back together with Chloe. He’d never confessed that he might be able to fall in love with someone. That he might be able to build a life with someone and have a lasting, special relationship with them. The moment Raphael stopped sleeping around with inconsequential women and dove into something serious, I’m betting it felt like the world was crashing down around Paxton’s ears.
“I’m not fucking gay ,” he sneers, his lip curling up, exposing his teeth. “I’m not into men. Thalia, tell her. We used to have a perfectly healthy sex life. For years. We fucked all over New York City.”
Thalia hasn’t taken another drag from her cigarette. She’s holding it loosely in her fingers, her gaze locked onto the end of the burning cherry. She looks like she’s in shock. I start to walk toward her but Paxton grabs hold of me again, yanking me backward. “Don’t you fucking dare,” he snaps.
“Don’t console my friend? Don’t blame you for what happened? Don’t speak the truth? What shouldn’t I dare do, Paxton?”
“Just leave. Take your fucking restraining order and get the hell out of our lives.”
“I can’t do that. Raphael needs to know—”
“OF COURSE RAPHAEL FUCKING KNOWS!” The veins in Paxton’s neck bulge as he screams. I stagger back, reaching for something to defend myself with, but there’s nothing. “Raphael knew what he was getting into when he sat in the front seat of that car. He knew exactly what he was doing when he paid off the judge to convict him without trial. And he fucking knew how I felt about him. We were in college when I told him how I felt about him. He laughed it off, told me to stop fucking kidding around, but he knew I wasn’t joking. And he knew how I was going to feel when he started dating Chloe. They were so fucking happy. So disgustingly cute with each other, just like they were back in high school. Couldn’t keep their hands off one another, always laughing and teasing. They came over to my place for dinner and they had sex in my goddamn bathroom. They were in there for an hour, and when they came out they were giggling and flushed like teenagers. He knew how something like that would make me feel. He had to. So yeah. I lost my mind a little. I knew we were going out to the award ceremony the next night, so I cut the damn lines.”
