Page 13 of The Gallagher Place
Marlowe imagined what the Gallagher girl might have looked like, sketching her in her mind. A great-aunt to the Gallagher brothers would have been born in the 1800s and covered head to toe in drab, modest clothing. She would have weary eyes threaded with red veins and mirrored with tears. Long unkempt tresses of strawberry-blond hair. Thin, baleful lips.
Down the hall, the heavy mahogany doors of the study swung open, and Nate and Frank emerged. Nate was frowning, but Marlowe’s father wore a look of utter calm, as if he had just woken up from a restorative nap.
Frank grinned at the trio in front of the hearth.
“Better get more logs, Nate,” Frank said. “Keep it roaring for us.”
Neither of the men offered an explanation about what they had been discussing, and Henry didn’t seem to be curious. He probably already knew. Marlowe was left to her own imagination, as usual.
SEVEN
The fire in the living room had burned down to smoldering embers by the time the side door flew open and Stephanie and Constance herded the kids inside. Their cheeks were flushed from their ice-skating excursion, and their voices tumbled over each other in fits of laughter and whining. Stephanie peeled off Kat’s coat and sent her bounding after Dolly, then floated into the kitchen with the ease of someone who had staked her claim long ago. She was now the one who started to pull materials out to assemble dinner—another of the ceaseless attempts at currying favor with her mother-in-law, who Stephanie once joked had ice in her veins. Constance trotted in with a market bag in one arm. Glory followed, Frankie on her hip, and settled down in a chair near Marlowe to bounce her grandson on her lap. Both the wives got to work chopping vegetables and murmuring instructions, while the girls were occupied at the table with their crayons. It amazed Marlowe how normal they were all acting.
From the moment Henry brought Constance to the Gray House for a weekend, Marlowe had found her winsome and pleasant enough. Stephanie, however, had gotten under Marlowe’s skin early. She was pretty sure Stephanie had taken an instant dislike toher as well. It had taken years for their chilly relationship to thaw. There was one time, about a month before Nate and Stephanie’s wedding, when Marlowe ran into her at Grand Central Station. They were both taking the 6:02 Metro-North upstate and had arrived at the station with time to kill.
“Should we grab something to eat?” Stephanie had asked haltingly. She didn’t know how to talk to Marlowe when Nate wasn’t around to lead the conversation.
Marlowe suggested the oyster bar. She adored its sleek chairs and elegant old New York feel.
Stephanie relaxed once they were seated, and considered the sparkling arches above them. “So pretty.”
“It’s one of my favorite places,” Marlowe said. “I’ve been meeting Frank here for years.”
“That’s sweet,” Stephanie said. “It must be nice to be his only daughter.”
Marlowe bristled at the implication she was spoiled, and then ran through possible conversation topics—their respective jobs, Stephanie’s soon-to-be husband, Dutchess County—but Marlowe was bored of all that.
“So, do you really think you and Nate will go through with the wedding?” Marlowe raised her dark eyebrows in a moment of rare bluntness.
To her delight, Stephanie laughed. “Sometimes I think of calling it off, especially when your parents get involved with the planning.”
“They are merciless,” Marlowe said. “But it’s the first wedding in the family.”
Stephanie rolled her eyes. “They act like it’s the first weddingever.”
For once, they talked as friends and not soon-to-be in-laws.
“Oh God, I feel like I’ll never live up to your mother.” Stephanie took a long sip of her drink, a pink concoction with a lethal amount of gin. “I’ll never be as smart or as competent or run such a perfect household.”
“Trust me, I’ve long since come to terms with that.” Marlowe flashed a sly grin over her martini. The evening began to feel like one shared between friends gossiping and commiserating about the eccentric cast of characters in their lives.
The two of them were well and truly drunk by the time they got on the train, giggling together like schoolgirls. But when they pulled into the station and saw Nate there, waiting, everything instantly transformed to the way it had been before. Marlowe was reminded that Stephanie would always be Nate’s wife before her friend.
Stephanie’s eyes flicked up from the pot of boiling potatoes and met Marlowe’s. She shot her a quick, impersonal smile and Marlowe returned the favor. She wished she could tell Nora about her sister-in-law. Better yet, Marlowe wished Nora were here to trade knowing glances. She would have hated Stephanie. People like Nora didn’t suffer phoniness or groveling.
Marlowe considered what her best friend’s response would have been to Harmon Gallagher. She would have given Marlowe the confidence she sought to walk into Frank’s office and ask him what the hell was going on. Why was Nora’s name being brought up by the detectives?
A man had been killed in the darkness, only a mile from the house, in the field that Marlowe could navigate with her eyes closed, near the river with a current she could feel in her bones. There was no gate around the land, no moat. Anyone could drive up the road or hide out in the barn. Break a window or open thedoors to Marlowe’s basement room; she rarely locked them. Or someone could wait in the woods until one of them went on a walk. It would be easy. Ithadbeen easy for Harmon to be caught, alone and vulnerable, the sounds of the fight stifled by the babbling river, his shouts drowned out by the coyotes. Marlowe was on edge, and so was her family, but they were hiding it. They were whispering their concerns behind closed doors. Why?
Everyone rushed into the kitchen at the sound of Glory clanging the antique dinner bell that hung above the counter, and took their seats at the table. Stephanie set down a golden-brown roast chicken, potatoes, and one of Constance’s salads, to which Constance had added too many bitter greens for Marlowe’s liking. Kat and Dolly chattered the whole time about their day at the rink and how they wanted to be figure skaters.
“Oh, Marlowe had this outfit, remember?” Frank smiled at Marlowe. “The velvet skirt and jacket you used to wear at Bryant Park.”
“I want a skirt!” Kat practically bounced out of her seat.
“Put it in your letter to Santa,” Stephanie said.
Nate smiled. He was spoiling Kat, but Marlowe doubted she would turn out rotten. Nate bragged to anyone who would listen that at eight years old, his daughter was already classified as an advanced child and whizzed through the chapter books she checked out of the library. He would hold fast to high standards, and Kat would spend her life determined to never fall short.
