Page 82 of The Gallagher Place
There was something approaching admiration in her brother’s eyes, as if Marlowe had finally stood up for herself. A modicum of power she could hold on to for the rest of her days. A ghastly consolation prize.
The lights were dim in the living room, but Marlowe could hear Constance and Glory putting a meal together in the kitchen. She turned and walked downstairs to the basement without a word. Standing at her open closet door, she stared at the bottle of red wine tucked behind her shoes. She told herself not to do it. Try something else.
Then she opened the bottle and filled the glass by her bed.
Nora was brave. Nora never gave in to people just because they were older. That was why she ended up dead.
She could imagine how it had happened now: In the early hours, as everyone waited for the police to arrive, Enzo had crept back to wherever he’d hidden the body—the barn, of course, but they hadn’t found her in the dark—and carried her to the wall, while Frank assured the Millers the police would find her, and Mike Cameron threw up in a bathroom, and Liam sat silent andterrified. While Marlowe tried to remember every last thing Nora had said and done the day before.
Marlowe cried then. She cried for Nora, and she cried for herself. Nora had been right in front of her, all this time, and Marlowe never knew. Or maybe, like Henry, she never really wanted to know.
Truthfully, Marlowe had not spent all her time thinking about Nora. Unlike Damen and Jennifer Miller, with the immovable yoke of grief atop their shoulders, Marlowe had eventually managed to stare away from the void. At first, it was for only a few hours here and there. Then the hours turned into days. And the days turned into weeks.
She felt more guilty about the relief than she did about Nora’s death itself.
Now was her chance to go to the detectives. She could tell them everything. She could make it right.
But would they believe that she hadn’t known? How had it been possible for her best friend to be sleeping with her little brother right under her nose? The rest of the town already suspected her and her family. Main Street would be ablaze with gossip. Everyone would be disgusted by her. Because of her last name, because of who she was, because of what she had done and what she had failed to do.
She had dug up the body. And now she was part of it.
She would be part of it forever.
THIRTY-NINE
Enzo didn’t come down for dinner. Glory reported that he was sound asleep in his bedroom. Stephanie murmured that she was just happy the unpleasantness was over.
Marlowe quietly ate her soup and sipped her wine. When the meal was over and everyone started to clear their plates, she remained seated by her father. He reached over and patted her hand.
Marlowe looked into his pale watering eyes, and she saw his grief.
“I love you, my Marlowe.” Frank’s voice rumbled with age and exhaustion. “I always will.”
It was a promise and an excuse. He did what he did because he loved his children. And he would not stop loving her, no matter what she did.
How could Marlowe not be touched?
“I know,” Marlowe said.
As the children discussed which movie to watch, she drifted upstairs. Enzo’s slumber was light. He blinked awake as soon as Marlowe dragged the chair across the room to sit beside his bed.
“Henry?” Enzo murmured. But then, his eyes focused. “Marlowe.”
“I went to the stone wall,” Marlowe said. “The cairn.”
Enzo’s sagging mouth gaped open in shock, but then a small moan escaped his lungs. He was relieved. At long last, she knew.
“It killed me to see you walk by it,” Enzo said. “To sit on it. It killed me.”
“Did it?” Marlowe couldn’t keep the wry twist of sarcasm from her words.
“You want to know.” Enzo spoke softly, his head tilted to one side. “You want to know about that night.”
Marlowe didn’t dare to breathe. After days of confusion and non sequiturs, Enzo seemed to be lucid. She considered that, all this time, maybe he wasn’t as confused as he let on. Maybe he had been desperate to tell the truth. He was just waiting for the right moment, and here Marlowe was, presenting it.
“Are these my last rites, Sister Marlowe?” Enzo cackled then. “You know, I was raised Catholic, back home.”
He wasn’t just raised Catholic. Every Sunday, Enzo had left them to make breakfast for themselves, and he had driven to St. Joseph for Mass. Occasionally he would take Henry with him.
