Page 84 of The Gallagher Place
“Your father didn’t want to believe me,” Enzo said. “He wanted to check the body, but I swore to him she was dead. I had never seen him like that. So lost and distraught. I promised him I would take care of it. I promised Glory.” That would have been the vow Enzo stuck by. Frank was his employer, but Glory ruled their domain. And she’d come to him for help.
“I went back to the basement as fast as I could,” Enzo said. “That was when I heard your yell.” Tears fell from his eyes. “Marlowe, it broke my heart. I have never—I could never forgive myself for what I hid from you.”
“Don’t Catholics believe God forgives everything?” Marlowe whispered.
“Only when you truly repent.” Enzo turned his head to look out the window. There was only blackness scattered with the falling snow. “I do not know if I ever have. I did not do the right thing, did I? Or, rather, to me, the right thing was to protect Henry. And your parents. And you, in a way.”
“By hiding the truth from me?” Marlowe gasped. “By making me live with this, by making me wonder for years what happened to her?”
“Do you think you could have stayed here after that?” Enzo’s voice turned hard and brittle, his tears gone. “I would have gone to jail, and your mother would have too. Do you think Nate could have returned to college after that? Would you and Henry have just gone back to school like nothing happened? Your father would have been disgraced. He would have had to go into hiding. And theGray House—you would all have had to leave, or this town would have burned it down while you slept.
“I could only have repented that night. I could have turned myself in and taken the blame. You could have said it was crazy Enzo, and no one else. But I didn’t, and after that night, it was too late. Besides, it was not all my fault, was it?”
Marlowe leaned against the back of her chair. She felt tears streaming down her cheeks.
She wanted to argue with Enzo, but she couldn’t. Every word he spoke was true. As soon as Nora was dead, the path was set. He made his promise, and he would uphold it for the rest of his days. He would protect the Fishers, and they would protect him.
“Henry came to fetch me, and he was so scared,” Enzo said. “And when I went upstairs, you were terrified. You wouldn’t stop moving about, opening and slamming doors, as if she was hiding in the closet. Your father couldn’t take his eyes off you.”
Marlowe struggled to remember the actions of her mother and father that night, but she had been consumed by her own panic. At least now there was an explanation as to why her father seemed so slow to call the Millers, only to embark on a wild search in the dark and then, finally, call the police. He had been buying Glory and Enzo time. For Glory to wash her hands, hide her clothes somewhere they’d never be found, even with a search team.
“Nate knew something was off. He looked at me once, and he knew. So I did not worry about Nate. I took Henry first. I took him back toward the orchard, and I told him to stay calm. He asked about the man in the woods then. The man I had seen trespassing. I let him believe it was the stranger. I let him convince himself of that.”
“Who was he? The man in the woods?”
Enzo looked up, as if surprised that Marlowe would care about the false story he’d fed to Henry. “Just a strange man camping out.I assumed he was some kind of vagrant. I don’t really know. Henry told the police about this stranger, but they never believed him,” Enzo said. “I told him not to push it, or they would think he was hiding something.”
For a man who had not planned this, and who was supposedly riddled with guilt, Enzo had navigated the situation with remarkable skill. He had given Henry a bone to distract him but made sure Henry kept quiet over it. He had left Nate in the dark but made sure Nate knew enough to keep his mouth shut. Marlowe wondered again what he had gotten up to back in Italy, France, and England, and why the Gray House seemed to be the only place he could never leave behind.
“After searching with Henry, when we all went back to the house, I walked away again,” Enzo said. “There were so many people, it was easy. I got a tarp from the gardening shed, and I went back to the barn and dragged the bin across the fields, to the wall. It was grueling, but the wheels made it somewhat bearable. It was the wall in the end. It seemed fitting. She had built it, after all. I still do not know how I pulled those stones away. I only know it hurt. Every second was painful. I rebuilt the pile as the sun was starting to rise. I prayed for her. It might make no difference, but as I moved the rocks, I prayed over and over.”
“And then what?” Marlowe asked.
“I took the bin back to the barn and hosed it clean,” Enzo said. “But what did I know? I could not wipe everything clean, right?”
He did well enough. Hosing it off in the barn had kept any scent or strands of hairthere, not by the wall. The Flats were too far for anyone to go looking there on the first morning, and then the summer rains would have washed away all traces of her.
“I thought it was over when they brought in the hounds,” Enzo said. “I had done my best. I would live with whatever unfolded. But the dogs stopped at the barn.”
“They’re not as good as people think,” Marlowe murmured. “And the bin would have prevented a trail of scent.”
Animal-resistant. Just as Glory had bragged.
“What happened to the bin?” Marlowe asked. Could it really have been simply returned to the roadside? Had she walked by Nora’s mockery of a coffin every day for years?
“Glory handled it,” Enzo said. “I do not know when or how, but she got rid of it. She kept that to herself to be safe, I suppose. In case I told, I would not have been able to tell everything.”
As if Enzo ever would have betrayed them. Glory wasn’t the type to trust others, though. She would have wanted to take care of the most damning evidence on her own.
Enzo slumped his shoulders then, exhausted from telling his story.
All the details had been inside of him. He remembered every moment of that night. Marlowe thought of the faraway look Enzo had whenever the detectives showed up. All his old phrases from bygone times. She finally saw just how wily Enzo had been when it came time to face the detectives, and even Henry. Enzo had played it well, emphasizing what people might expect from an aging man, knowing Henry would comfort him, and that Henry would unwittingly add to the facade of infirmity in his dotage, because that was Henry’s way. He had the biggest heart of all of them. Nora had seen that.
With a jolt of recognition, Marlowe understood why Enzo was finally dropping the act. He had won. He’d passed his final test with the detectives, babbling random phrases for hours, as if his mind were full of holes and fragmented half memories. He’d done his part, fulfilled his obligations. Now what happened next was up to Marlowe.
Marlowe stared down at him. “You know I can’t forgive you.”
“Of course.” Enzo gave her an odd smile. “You can kill me if you like. You can take that pillow and hold it over my face, and Iwill not object. I will be glad, really, after all this. You deserve that revenge.”
