Лиза Гарднер - Never Tell - A Novel (A D.D. Warren and Flora Dane Novel)

Another: “What happened?”

I just shake my head, stagger to my feet, and take off again. Except I no longer see my target. Maybe there, around that corner. Wait, that coffee shop. That entrance to the subway.

I rattle down the steps as fast as I can, but belowground, on the waiting platform, I encounter a sheer wall of people. Heavy coats, obscuring hats, strangling scarfs.

I look all around, but it doesn’t matter.

I’ve lost him.

Chapter 37 EVIE

WHEN I FIRST ARRIVE AT my mother’s house and discover the media gone, I’m nearly disoriented. Where are the flashing bulbs, the screaming questions? Three days later, the silence is almost disturbing. What did I do to deserve this?

Then I remember the fire trucks in Harvard Square. Of course, a local fire. The media have moved on to bigger news. How kind of them.

I walked home from my meeting with Katarina. Only a mile and a half, and the kind of brisk trek I needed to put my thoughts in order. Still, when I reach the side door of the kitchen, place my hand on the knob, I can see my gloved hand is shaking.

All these years. All these years I considered my parents a great love story. And now this? My father had been cheating on my mom. Worse, she had known about it, and probably taken extreme measures to secure her own future.

Is that how she’s lived in this house all these years? Because coming home that day to my father’s body wasn’t some terrible, shocking tragedy? Just a well-executed plan? That she then conned her own daughter to take the blame for?

I feel like such a fool. I’ve spent most of my life as nothing but a pawn for my mother. I was never strong or clever enough to have helped my father. Then I went on to marry a man who also kept me entirely in the dark.

All these years, I thought I was the one carrying around secrets. Instead, it’s the people I love who’ve never trusted me with the truth. Who’ve manipulated me, over and over again.

I open the door and march right in.

My mother isn’t in the kitchen. The vodka bottle is out, though, a fresh lemon peeled on the cutting board, meaning she couldn’t have gone far. I pull off my gloves, hang up my coat, begin the search.

The sitting room with the impeccably decorated mantel: nothing. The ridiculous parlor with all its silk sofas: not there either.

Then I know.

I walk to my father’s office. My mother is sitting, quiet and still, behind his desk. To judge by the empty state of her martini glass, she’s been there a bit.

And she looks, at this moment, so small, so lost, so alone in the world, I lose my head of steam, just like that.

“This is where I feel him the most,” she says quietly, not looking at me, but clearly knowing I’m in the doorway. “It’s why I could never bring myself to change it. The kitchen was mine. But this room … Sometimes, I swear I can still smell him, his aftershave, the whiff of chalk from his fingers, the shampoo I bought him from Italy because it really did help thicken his hair. He swore only I cared about things like that, yet he smiled every time I got him a new bottle. Silly, all the ways we knew each other. Awful, to still miss him so much after all these years.”

“You had him killed.”

She finally glances up. Her expression is unfathomably sad. Again, not my mother at all. “What are you talking about?”

“Stop lying to me! I spoke to Katarina Ivanova.”

Just like that, she deflates. “I was stupid,” she mutters at last. “Vain and silly and upset. Your father knew that about me. He understood.”

“Understood what? That given a choice between him leaving you and him dead, you wanted him dead?”

“I didn’t want him dead. I loved him! It was her. She was the problem. She needed to go!”

I’m so confused it takes me a moment. Then I get it. The whole if I can’t have him, no one will didn’t necessarily mean my mom had gone after my father, but after Katarina, the other woman. Who, being dead, still wouldn’t have him.

“You hired someone to kill Katarina Ivanova? You tried to take out Dad’s mistress?”

“I didn’t go through with it. I just … had a weak moment. I was angry. Hurt. These things happen.”

“Mom, you hired a hit man to murder a woman, and you call that a weak moment ?”

“You don’t understand! He was my world. My entire world! If he left me … I couldn’t have lived with it. I’m not like you, Evie. I’ve never been like you.”

“What did you do, Mom?” Because I’m still so confused. If she’d tried to kill Katarina, then why was that woman still alive and my father the one who was dead? And where in the hell had my mom found a hired gun? Who in the hell?

“I was upset. I’d read your father’s e-mails and it sounded like he was going to leave me. I became emotional. That woman … she had to go. But I don’t know how to do such things. I don’t even like guns. So I went to a … friend. Explained the situation. He tried to talk me out of it but when he wasn’t looking, I swiped his Rolodex. Discovered what I needed for myself and made the call. Except then your father came home. He’d heard all about my confrontation with Katarina. He assured me he’d never for a moment been tempted to leave our marriage. He loved me and only me. I was the great love of his life. And then … things were good.”

I struggle to grasp what she’s saying. “So Dad plans to leave you, you plan to kill his mistress, but both of you decide you’re perfectly happy together instead?”

“You’ve never known great passion, Evie. It’s the real reason I didn’t like Conrad for you. Oh, he was nice enough. But the way you looked at him … You were playing it safe. Again.”

“Wow, I’m so sorry. My husband didn’t cheat on me and I didn’t try to assassinate the other woman, so clearly we had a boring marriage. I’ll bear that in mind for the future.”

“You don’t have to sound so sarcastic, Evie. I’m merely being honest. Frankly, I’ve never understood where you get all this anxiety from.”

I stare at her empty martini glass and think that’s an ironic statement.

“For a man like your father, with his ability to see what no one else could see …” My mother shrugs. “What are rules for a man whose own intellect exists outside of all preconceived notions? He wasn’t just an extraordinary thinker; he was an extraordinary person. He didn’t accept limits, and he didn’t see how societal norms should apply to him. I loved him for that, just as he loved me. We were made for each other. And you”—she frowns at me slightly—“were our strange, introverted child, who never would’ve even made a friend if I hadn’t forced you.”

“I hated those damn tea parties!”

“Tough love, my dear. Isn’t that what everyone calls it these days?” My mom lifts her martini glass, realizes belatedly that it’s empty.

“Who killed Dad?” I grind out.

“I don’t know. I’d made that silly call. So once your father and I patched things up, I had no choice but to contact the man again and say I’d changed my mind about Katarina. He just laughed at me. Said there was no such thing as a renege clause. Really? All contracts can be voided. It’s just a matter of negotiation. He was rather stubborn on the subject, though, even when I promised him twice the money not to do anything. So that was it. I went back to our … mutual acquaintance, told him what had happened, and made him swear he’d make it right. I assumed that was the end of the matter.”

“Except Katarina Ivanova is very much alive, Mom, and Dad isn’t. Didn’t you think it was strange? Didn’t you wonder at all when you then came home and discovered your own husband shot to death on the kitchen floor!” I’m not asking the questions as much as I’m shouting them. I can’t help myself. All the anger, rage, helplessness.