فصل 48

CHAPTER 48

“You killed my mother.”

The truth hit her like a slap of icy water, knocking all the breath out of her.

She felt herself falling into a deep black certainty.

It was as if she had always known—and yet the shock of hearing it, in her own quiet, flat voice, was still absolute.

She found herself gasping for breath, a kind of slow drowning, and then she could not speak any longer, only shake her head—but not in disbelief. It was a kind of desperation for this not to be true.

But it was. And she had known it for longer than she had realized.

Perhaps she had known it since she had come to this house.

She just could not bear for it to be true.

“Maud was going to tell you everything,” he said sadly. “She wrote and told Mother, she said you had a right to know, and that she was going to tell you when you turned eighteen. And I couldn’t let her. I couldn’t let her tell you the truth.” “You killed her. And you killed Maggie.”

“I didn’t mean to. God, I loved her, Hal, once, but she was—” He shook his head, as if trying, even now, to understand. “It was an accident, but she made me so, so angry, Hal, that’s what you have to understand.” Keep them talking, Hal. Questions can make people clam up—make open statements, show them that whatever they are holding inside them, you know already.

“I understand,” she said, though the words were painful in her throat, and hard to say. She swallowed. “You must have had a reason.” “Running away . . .” He said the words slowly, his head down, almost as if he were speaking to himself. “Leaving Trepassen, I could understand that. Mother made her life unbearable, and I was away at school, there wasn’t much I could do. But then she came back, and God, she was so different, so cold, so hard. She came up to the house—it was July or August, I think, and I’d finished school. Mother was out and Maggie came to see me, and she said . . .” He gave a short, choking laugh. “She said, ‘I’m not going to beat around the bush, Ed, you have an obligation to support this child.’ “I mean—can you believe it? The”—he seemed almost to choke with the memory of it—“the sheer effrontery. She ran away, left me wondering where the hell she was, what she’d done, and then she turns up out of the blue, without so much as an apology, demanding money. After all we’d been to each other, after all I’d—” He sank to the bed, his head in his hands.

“Oh God.” The words were out before she could stop herself, and as soon as they were spoken she heard her mother’s voice in her head: Never show them you’re shocked, nothing makes people more defensive than censure. You’re their priest, Hal. This is a confessional, of a sort. Be open—and they will give you the truth.

She put her hands to her mouth, as if preventing herself from saying any more, and then simply stood there, looking down at the top of his head, cold with shock. A small, far-off, practical part of her mind was whispering: If only you had your phone, you could have recorded this. But it was too late. Her phone was far away, up in the attic, with no hope of her reaching it without alarming him. And besides, the truth was more important now. She had to know.

He spoke again, his voice harsh and cracked, his head still bowed as if with the weight of his confession.

“I asked her to go for a walk, I thought if we went out of the house, to somewhere with happy memories . . .” He trailed off, and then shook his head. “We went down to the lake. She always loved the boathouse, but when we got there it was so cold, there was ice on the water, and it was like everything had changed. When I tried to kiss her, she slapped me. She slapped me.” He sounded incredulous. “And I was angry, Hal. I was so angry. I put my hands around her neck, and I kissed her—I kissed her, and when I let go . . .” He stopped. Hal was cold with the horror of it.

She could imagine it so well, the icy slap, slap of the water against the jetty, and poor Maggie’s desperate struggles, her feet kicking against the slippery planks. . . .

And then what? A body . . . slipped through the thin shards of ice into the cold black waters . . . a boat, deliberately holed, to pin it down and cover the bones.

And silence. Silence for more than twenty years.

“Oh my God,” she whispered, her hands to her face. “Oh my God.” He looked up at her, and there were tears in his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” was all he said.

And then he stood, and he reached out, and for a moment, a terrible moment, Hal thought that he was going to kiss her too.

But he did not. And then she realized what he was about to do.