Page 75 of The Gallagher Place
MONDAY
DECEMBER 3, 2018
THIRTY-SIX
Marlowe swung her legs out of bed and stumbled toward the bathroom. Her mouth was dry and coated in a sour, sticky film, and her head throbbed.
Coffee, she needed coffee.
But first a shower. She stepped in before the water finished warming. The shock of cold sharpened her senses and distracted her from how sick she felt.
After her shower, she pulled on black jeans and a gray turtleneck, trying to compose herself. It wouldn’t be enough to convince her mother. Then again, maybe Glory would be too worried about Nate and Enzo to consider Marlowe’s fragile state.
A united front. Today, they were supposed to be a united front.
Frank and Glory were in the kitchen, their heads bent over their coffee and newspapers, as if it was any other morning.
“Have you heard from Poughkeepsie?” Marlowe asked.
“Nate left last night, and he stayed at a hotel with Henry and Steph,” Frank said. “Enzo was kept overnight, but they’re letting him go now.”
Her father’s voice was tight with anger. How humiliating that his son was tangled up in this mess, his presence requested at the police station when he could have just been questioned at home.
Marlowe didn’t understand why Nate had agreed to go into the station, when he didn’t have to. Ariel and Ben had said something to encourage him to show up. Nate probably did so out of pride.
The more she thought about it, the more she felt that Ariel and Ben just didn’t like Nate. They demanded that he come in just to scare him. Not because they thought he would confess.
And if Enzo was being released, that meant their evidence didn’t stick—the bracelet, the boots, his testimony. None of it.
Marlowe poured a few drops of milk into her coffee.
“You just missed a ride to town for breakfast,” Glory said. “Constance took the kids to the diner.”
“I’m not hungry.” Marlowe sank into a chair.
“Marlowe, do you realize these detectives are just playing tricks?” Her father’s voice was gentle and soothing now, as if he saw her pain. “They’re picking at us to see if there’s a weak link with something to tell, but there’s nothing. Nothing at all. We don’t know what happened.”
Marlowe stared across the kitchen at her father. When she was a little girl, she thought her father was the most handsome man in the world. It was always jarring when Marlowe turned toward her father, expecting to see the hale and healthy man from her girlhood, and saw instead his wrinkled skin and white hair.
And his hands. It was Frank himself who had told her to look at a man’s hands for signs of his health. He had pointed at a picture of Bill Clinton in a newspaper.
“He’s sick, age has caught up with him,” Frank had said. “He used to have big strong hands, but look at them now. Look how thin and frail. That’s the sign.”
Frank’s hands were now even worse than that. The fingers were thin and gnarled, and it took great effort for Frank to lift them from the table to grip his mug.
Glory pursed her lips and looked at her daughter. “Remember, a united front.”
“I know, I understand,” she said. They would never forgive her if she let on that their only daughter was harboring doubt.
An hour later, Henry’s car pulled into the drive. Marlowe opened the front door and watched as Henry and Enzo got out of the car and walked toward the house at a glacial pace.
The hours spent in an interrogation room had been unkind to him. He was pallid, and his clothes were rumpled.
When they reached the door, Marlowe stepped aside. She didn’t look at Henry; her gaze was fixed on Enzo.
He looked lost. He had been confused over the past few weeks, but he had always known where he was and whom he was with. He had known he was at the Gray House with Henry and Marlowe and Nate. He had been confused only about the year. But now he looked at Marlowe as if he didn’t recognize her.
“I lived in Manchester for a time,” he said. “Only a short time.”
