Page 35 of The Gallagher Place
“I remember homecoming. You spent hours doing her hair,” Henry said.
“And I remember Nora praising me when she looked in the mirror. The way her body relaxed, and how grateful she was to have me with her.”
“You didn’t even go to the dance.”
“I don’t expect you to know what that time is like for a teenage girl,” Marlowe said with some defiance.
“So you don’t think she was more concerned about making a good impression on Sean Hastings?”
“He was just a casual boyfriend. I was her best friend. She came running home to tell me about the dance afterward. Honestly, I think she enjoyed telling me about homecoming more than the dance itself.”
“You really believe that?” His tone was not accusatory; it had an air of genuine curiosity.
“We had different personalities,” Marlowe said. “That didn’t lessen our friendship.”
“You were different; you were never nasty, Mar, but she could be.” Henry frowned. “Cruel, almost.”
Marlowe was puzzled as to why he would bring this up. Nora was gone, but it seemed like he was still harboring a grudge.
“Not to you, never to you,” Henry said. “But she used to tease me.”
“We all teased you, Henry.”
“Not like her.” Henry’s brows drew together, and despite the hint of gray in his hair, Marlowe saw the little boy again, crying over his cereal. “Her words always had a bite to them. She made me feel like she wanted to push me out and replace me. I always thought she was envious. Because I was a Fisher, and she wasn’t.”
“I remember how she teased,” Marlowe said. “But I also remember other things. She listened to you when Nate and I brushed you aside. You used to hug her all the time when you were younger.”
Henry swallowed. The grooves on his forehead were as deep as tire tracks in spring mud. Marlowe couldn’t believe this had once been that chubby-cheeked boy.
“I think you loved her just as much as I did,” Marlowe whispered. “I think you were as heartbroken as me when she was gone. And you thought of all her flaws over and over to get through the pain.”
Marlowe had nearly forgotten that Enzo was in the room with them, struggling over his plate of eggs. He seemed tuned out of their conversation, but even in his old age, he was still alert to the tension between them. Henry adjusted his blanket, and Enzo blinked his watery blue eyes and peered up at the siblings.
“You must take care of each other,” Enzo said. “Out in those woods, collecting stones.”
Marlowe bit her lip as Henry’s shoulders slumped lower. Enzo was parroting phrases of the past, thinking about that last summer they had all been together. Their father had envisioned the stone wall built over on the newly purchased Gallagher property. He wanted it to line the northern edge of the Flats, where the river emerged from the swamp. And Enzo announced that they would be the ones to build it. Nate lit up at the idea and instantly started musing about where they would find the best rocks.
“It is not easy to build a stone wall; it takes much time,” Enzo said.
And it did take a lot of time. Marlowe couldn’t say for certain, but it felt like the whole summer had been dedicated to that stone wall. It was still there, serving no real purpose, but vaguely marking the far side of the Flats.
Marlowe glanced over at Enzo’s pale, shriveled face, wondering if he would talk more about their project. He just blinked a few times, heaved a tremendous sigh, and then slouched back into his pillows. Marlowe watched as Henry reached out and patted Enzo’s hand. She dreaded the day when breathing would become a labor.
Like Marlowe, Enzo was surrounded by a family, old friends, but he was alone in the way that mattered most. He had no partner. No love. The hair on the back of Marlowe’s neck stood up, and she turned toward the window above the bed, the one that faced the road. The Gallagher brothers had each other, but that hadn’t been enough. Not even for Tom. Beneath his cheerful facade, his soul had lived in isolation.
Maybe they hadn’t died of suicide or sickness. They had simply died of loneliness.
NINETEEN
Ariel and Ben arrived after lunch, while Glory and Frank were in town picking up more wreaths for the exterior walls. Marlowe was hunched over her desk, sketching for a client, when Henry came down for her. She wasn’t happy with her preliminary work. The story she was meant to illustrate took place in a woodland where rustic pixies, perched high in the trees, defended their home from invading crows. But her pencil had wandered of its own accord, tracing something far darker—a twisted rope dangling from a barn rafter, a man suspended above the ground. Even after all these years, she could still render Leroy’s bow-legged stance with unsettling precision.
“As I said,” Henry murmured as they ascended the staircase. “Covering their bases.”
Ariel and Ben stood in the living room with their black coats still on. Ariel had a large yellow envelope tucked under her arm.
“We won’t stay long,” Ben said. “We just came to give an update.”
Henry seemed gratified to be one step ahead of the detectives, with his contact in Poughkeepsie.
