Page 83 of The Gallagher Place
“Tell me,” Marlowe said.
Enzo closed his eyes and leaned back against the three pillows that Henry had most likely fluffed and arranged. He clasped his hands over the quilt that lay atop his stomach.
“I wonder if she loved him, but what does one so young know of love?” Enzo’s accent was a gentle lilt around his words. He always found that strange and soothing cadence when he told stories. “There is one thing I regret.”
“Just one?” Marlowe had to keep reminding herself that this old man, the man who had cared for her and her brothers, had cooked them countless meals and done their laundry, was actually a murderer.
“I knew about it before, and I did not tell anyone. I did not stop it.” Enzo shook his head in remorse. “Not even your parents knew. They were so busy that year, they didn’t come up on weekends much, you remember? But I saw them once, at dawn, you know.” Enzo widened his eyes as if the time of day was the shocking part of the story. “Henry loved to sleep in, the lazy boy, but there he was, in the gray light before sunrise, walking with Nora in the apple orchard. I was up early, and I wouldn’t have seen them, only I slipped out to sit in the garden for a bit. Tucked outside the basement, I could see just a sliver.”
Marlowe knew exactly the spot where he would have been sitting. It was the chair right outside her basement room. The corner of the house blocked most of the orchard, except for the very edge. They wouldn’t have seen him, not if they were up there with each other.
“Nora looked like a child of the morning. She turned to Henry, and she smiled, and she was lovely, the loveliest thing I had ever seen.” Enzo’s tone grew heavy, and his pale eyes were damp. Marlowe didn’t move an inch. She wouldn’t weep for him.
“Henry adored her,” Enzo continued. “I knew that. She was easy to adore, wasn’t she? I always thought, Marlowe is the smart one, and Nora is the charming one. And both of you were beautiful, you know. You may not have realized it at the time, but you really were.” Enzo’s mouth closed, and it seemed to retreat into the sagging skin of his jowls. “I knew it was scandalous, but I suppose I also thought it was romantic. I am European, you know.”
It was a poor attempt at a joke, but Enzo meant it. He had assumed the best in Nora and in Henry, at least that morning.
“When your parents told me what she said to Henry, about being pregnant, I was shocked.” Enzo bowed his head. “And I was ashamed. I was supposed to watch over all of you. And despite whatI saw that morning, I really thought it had gone no further. Henry was so young. Nora as well.”
Marlowe watched him in stunned silence. She couldn’t believe how sharp his memories had suddenly become. All the muttering and disorientation—if he wasn’t outright inventing it, he was certainly exaggerating slightly, letting it be all anyone noticed over the past few days.
Enzo cleared his throat. “I tried to talk with her first—to let her know that we could help her. This was a few days before that awful night; you were painting on the lawn, and she came inside for water, and I saw a chance,” he said.
Marlowe had held tight to the memory of those few days over the years, cherishing their final adventure together, spotting that injured bear, rejoicing in their escape. At least she had been rejoicing. When Marlowe’s back was turned, Nora had been confronted. The bear must have been the least of everyone else’s worries.
“But it did not go well. She became animated within moments, and I tried to calm her down, which only made things worse. When I reached out to steady her, she locked arms with me. That’s when that bracelet broke; the old clasp caught on my hand, nicked me. She picked it up and ran off. When I told your mother how it went, she decided that she’d speak with her instead. She was confident in her abilities. She just wanted to talk—to tell Nora that the adults knew, and we were going to handle it.”
So Nora knew that Henry had gone to his family for help, and she likely assumed Enzo’s confrontation would not be the end of it. Still, she never shared any of this with Marlowe. And now the truth was worse than she could have imagined. The thoughts flooded her all at once, making her chest tighten and her vision narrow: It wasn’t Enzo in his boots at the trash cans. It was her own mother.
“Glory spotted Nora from an upstairs window, then slipped downstairs and through the living room while the rest of you were chattering. It was too loud to hear the side door open and shut. Your mother couldn’t sleep with the noise. So she walked across the lawn to reach her. Nora was mad at Henry for telling his own brother and asking for help.” Enzo shook his head, the corners of his mouth downturned.
“Your mother had a plan. Whatever the situation was, your parents would pay for a procedure, plus a little extra for her troubles. It was the kind thing to do.”
Marlowe closed her eyes, and she saw Nora, standing alone in the dark. She saw her confusion and panic fade into raw fury when Glory approached and offered her money—paying her to go away, when all she wanted was to never have to leave.
“She leapt at Glory,” Enzo said. “Like a bat out of hell. She clawed and scratched, and your mother only meant to get her off so they could calm down and talk like rational beings. I’d seen that fury in her when we spoke. I should have known it wouldn’t end well.” Enzo lifted his head, entreating Marlowe. “Please believe this, if nothing else. Glory only meant to push her away, but Nora fell backward.”
“She must have pushed hard,” Marlowe whispered. “You saw it?”
“No.” Enzo sighed. “Only afterward, when Glory came down to the basement to explain what she’d done with her.”
Marlowe’s eyes widened in horror. Right beneath Marlowe and the others, as they laughed and joked, Glory and Enzo had been whispering about Nora’s body, stuffed into a large trash bin.
“When I was young, if a girl got in trouble like this, you did what had to be done,” Enzo said. “You got married, or the baby was sent to the church orphanage. But your father, he said this was for Henry. So Henry could still be a child. And if Nora really wantedto keep it, your father would never have forced her. He would have helped her do whatever she wanted, but he would have always made sure Henry didn’t end up paying for it. He and Glory would have raised that child themselves, but he would never have let it cost Henry.Henrywas still a child.”
There was no argument against that. If she had become pregnant at fourteen, she would have wanted her parents to save her from bearing the consequences alone. She couldn’t begrudge Henry.
“I stepped outside while Glory changed her clothes. I checked her pulse, but it was no use.” Enzo hunched his shoulders in a small shiver. “She was dead. So I dragged the bin to the Gallagher barn. I put it in a stall, behind a trough.”
Marlowe brought her hand to her mouth. A sharp, churning wave of nausea made her break out in a cold sweat. Glory had once boasted about finding the best animal-resistant trash bins on the market. The lids had an airtight seal, locking in the scent of discarded food, and a latch that snapped closed, making them bear-proof. The highest quality: There would never be so much as a squirrel getting into the trash. Nora’s slight frame would have fit easily into those large bins. It was a hopelessly grisly thought. Marlowe fought to breathe as she was assaulted with the image.
“I kept thinking I would be caught, that you would come looking for her, but I had time.” Enzo furrowed his brow. “You told the detective back then she had been gone ten minutes before you and Nate went outside, but it was so much longer, almost half an hour.”
Brierley had said it over and over: Teenagers are so emotional. So dramatic. And so selfish. They had been wrapped up in their own revelry that night. No one heard footfalls as Glory crept out of the basement and up the back staircase. Marlowe hadn’t been able to admit to anyone, least of all herself, that Nora had been gone for a long time before anyone noticed.
“Your father was devastated. Truly devastated,” Enzo said. “I ran back to the house and slipped in the side door and up the stairs to their bedroom. Glory had already woken him up.”
How had Glory told her husband that she’d killed a girl? However she phrased it, Frank would have understood that Glory always did what had to be done.
