Page 37 of The Gallagher Place
It was a half-truth, but it was what everyone said, out of respect for Dave.
Ariel’s expression was unchanged. “Right. And then your father bought the land from Caroline Rodine. His cousin.”
Marlowe shrugged. “I guess. If I ever heard her name before this week, I don’t remember.”
“The sale upset some of the Gallaghers,” Ariel said. “Did you know that?”
“No,” Marlowe admitted. “I didn’t hear about any of that.”
Ariel hummed thoughtfully, as if deciding how much more she wanted to say. “They cleared out the house before the sale, took some personal effects and heirlooms. Pete Gallagher—Harmon’s father—ended up with Dave’s journal.”
Marlowe was struck by a sudden flush of heat in her face. She could feel herself beginning to sweat, but it was cooled instantly by a draft coming from a kitchen window.
If she noticed Marlowe’s discomfort, Ariel didn’t show it.
“Seems like he passed it on to Harmon, who kept it in his room.”
A stoic farmer who kept a journal. Marlowe shouldn’t have been surprised.
Ariel pulled a yellow envelope from under her arm and held it out. “Photocopies. Dave’s journal, along with some of Harmon’s threats, since it seems you missed those.”
Marlowe took the envelope, which wasn’t thick enough to contain a whole journal. Clearly, Ariel had edited the entries down to just what she wanted to share.
“Dave noticed your tricks,” Ariel said, offhandedly. “And I think they inspired Harmon. He told his friends he was planning something to spook your family. Spray paint symbols on the barn and house, destroy some property.”
Symbols.
The brand.
Marlowe’s breath hitched. She and Nora had made it up—an infinity symbol intersected by a tree, drawn on the cows with blue paint. Once. Then again. She never told Brierley about that. It hadn’t been relevant—a harmless prank that meant nothing. It was too private to share with a middle-aged man who wouldn’t have understood.
Her fingers twitched; she half expected the feel of dried mud beneath her nails. A ghost sensation, but still real. Her mind scrambled for purchase on the memory. She lifted her gaze to find Ariel watching her. Not in the way of interrogators, but like a woman who understood. Like she already knew. Marlowe had the sudden, sickening feeling that everything was already laid out and neatly recorded in Ariel’s mind. Dates. Names. Secrets.
“So this is the connection?” Marlowe asked. “The reason the case has been reopened?”
Ariel gave a slow nod. “Among other things.”
“So Harmon might have really known something?” Marlowe asked. “His threats weren’t shots in the dark?”
“Take a look.” Ariel spoke casually over her shoulder as she reached for the door. “Call me if anything jogs your memory.”
Then Ariel was gone, leaving Marlowe holding the envelope, her stomach in knots.
TWENTY
Dave Gallagher’s handwriting was manic. His letters were well formed but not always evenly spaced. Sometimes words bunched together, the pen or ink dark against the page. He dated every entry, and as Marlowe flipped through the photocopied pages, she could see that Ariel had included only the last year of his life: the summer and fall of 1996 in the first few pages, and then his final winter. That was her freshman year of high school, just after Tom died, when Dave was left alone on the farm.
Hidden in her basement, Marlowe felt deeply unsettled holding the account of a life unraveling in real time, knowing exactly where it led. The scrawled entries, the growing paranoia—a handful of phrases jumped out to indicate that Dave had been lost in his grief, and his writings were an attempt at comfort, a way to make sense of things no one else could see. But she couldn’t concentrate on them for long. She skipped ahead to when, years later, someone else had been reading those same words as a call to arms.
Harmon’s threats were all typed up on a single page with dates and notes about whom he sent them to. He wasn’t just lashing out indiscriminately; he’d done his research. As Marlowe had figured, he’d emailed Stephanie about Kat and Dolly:Someone will take care of your daughters the same way they took care of Nora Miller.
There was another that Nate had received:That house will burn, with you and your children inside.
Marlowe couldn’t believe Nate hadn’t taken these directly to the police. She would have. So why had Nate hesitated? And how on earth could they tell the detectives Harmon wasn’t the first person to come to mind after discovering that body? Marlowe began to see why her father and Nate needed to discuss the threats before handing them over to the detectives. These emails—they established a motive for the Fishers.
According to the documents Ariel shared with Marlowe, Harmon had mailed three letters to the Gray House concerning the Gallaghers. One in February read:I know what you did to me. —Dave Gallagher. The next one was mailed in March with the same line but signed by Tom Gallagher. The final one had been sent from Leroy the first week of November. The letters lined up with the months of their deaths. Deaths that Harmon seemed to think the Fishers had orchestrated. Harmon had a flair for the dramatic, but his logic was absurd. No one made Leroy reach for the rope. Tom had hoarded those pills himself. And Dave … Marlowe hesitated. She had to admit, Dave was the one that never made sense.
The emails sent to Henry and Frank repeated the same few phrases.
