Page 31 of The Gallagher Place
“I bet she would have looked just like Jennifer,” Marlowe said.
Damen flinched, and Marlowe felt a jolt of anxiety.
“I’m sorry.” She reached out her hand but stopped it in the middle of the counter. “This is hard for you, I know.”
Damen straightened up and swung his head back toward her. “Tell the detectives everything this time. Tell them everything.”
It was Marlowe’s turn to wince.
“I will. I have.” She refused to suggest that maybe he was the one who had hidden something.
“I’d better go.” Marlowe turned back toward the hall.
Damen followed her to the front door.
She walked down the steps, past the pile of cordwood that reached her shoulder. If the wind blew north that night, she’d be able to smell the smoke from Damen’s fire. Damen stood in the doorway as she pulled away, and Marlowe wondered if he was thinking of another car and another day; she wondered if he cursed the moment her father pulled up to introduce himself to the neighbors, with Marlowe in the back seat.
She hadn’t been gone long enough to complete any errands, so she pulled over before the road curved home. The memory of the bloodhounds was dulled and warped by time and nerves and, possibly, the couple of drinks she had every evening. In this case, how different was she from Damen, really? Images of those chaotic days started rushing in as Marlowe sat on the soft shoulder of the road. The hounds on point. Henry kneeling beside one that the handler said he could pet. Marlowe heard him whispering into the dog’s soft spotted ear:You’ll find her, you’ll find her. The inconsolable tears that began each day at dusk—the moment Marlowe realized her friend would be gone for another night.
SIXTEEN
The afternoon stretched on with Marlowe anticipating a knock at the front door from the detectives. She pictured Damen Miller digging out their card from where he had shoved it in a drawer, dialing their number as her car vanished from sight. He would tell them the Fisher daughter was bothering him—that the family was acting strange. He knew they were hiding something.
Her parents weren’t acting strange at all. They sat down for a quiet dinner. Enzo stayed upstairs. He was sleeping almost fifteen hours a day, like a cat. Marlowe picked at the shepherd’s pie. It was her dad’s favorite. Back when Glory was a young, overwhelmed wife, Enzo had taught her how to cook dishes far more elegant than the simple fare she’d grown up with. Though Glory was wealthy enough that she didn’t need to cook for herself, she wanted to be a talented hostess to impress the New York elite Frank moved with—a social class to which she was determined to seamlessly belong.
Marlowe crumpled the napkin in her lap and then took a quick sip of wine.
“Dad,” Marlowe said. “Did you know you were going to buy the Gallagher property when Leroy died?”
“Marlowe.” Her father’s head jerked back, his fork suspended in the air.
“I just don’t understand Harmon’s threats,” Marlowe said. “Or this so-called feud.”
“There was no feud.” Frank set his fork down and folded his hands together, speaking slowly, as if he were explaining something to a child. “Harmon was disturbed.”
“They all were,” Glory whispered. “But at least Leroy, Tom, and Dave did their best.”
Leroy’s best was a rope wrapped around a rafter. When she was young, Marlowe had thought it was such a horrific avenue. It happened in November of 1995, when the Fishers were in the city. Glory and Frank didn’t believe in watering things down for their children. It was important that Marlowe and her brothers knew the truth of the world.
“He hung himself in the barn,” Frank had said.
Marlowe’s shock was mirrored in Nate’s face. She remembered Henry’s gasp, and repeatedly asking, “Why would Leroy do that? Why was he so sad?”
“Suicide is a weakness of character,” Frank had said. “There are other ways to deal with one’s illnesses.” His pragmatism often teetered on the edge of callousness, and Marlowe had learned long ago that his sense of compassion had limits, especially when it came to matters of personal suffering.
“It’s a shame,” Frank had continued. “Leroy could have gotten help.”
Thinking back, Marlowe could recall Leroy’s sadness. It was palpable. She had seen it with her own eyes, felt it in his silences. Even before his death, he had already been a ghost. She wished she understood where all this sadness started.
Marlowe blinked, pushing away the memory, and the dim light of the dining room came back into focus. The clink of silverware,the scrape of Glory’s chair. Frank reached for his glass and took a long sip, his expression unchanged.
“Nobody planned for it,” he said. “But I let Dave know that I was there to help after Tom also went. He needed the money, but he wasn’t ready to sell.”
It wasn’t long—a mere four months—after Leroy’s suicide that Tom Gallagher swallowed enough pills to join his brother in eternal rest. Once again, Frank and Glory told their children. Frank seemed at a loss for how to explain it. Leroy was always silent and sad, but Tom was so steady. He did the hay in the summer, took the cows out, brought them back in. Climbed up on his tractor, climbed down. He made it through one last winter and, at the brink of spring, gave up.
Marlowe didn’t like thinking of it now. Tom was different from Leroy. Tom had talked to them when they were kids, joked that Marlowe would be taller than her mother, chuckled over their games, and shown them the Bend.
There was no point in pressing Frank any further. It didn’t matter why or when he decided to buy the Gallagher land. It wasn’t a crime to want something. Frank Fisher hadn’t done anything nefarious. He had simply waited them out.
