Last Day

by Luanne Rice

  When she finally stopped, and Pete had wheeled to grab her in a tight hug to keep her arms from flailing, it turned into an embrace, and he was the one sobbing, telling her he didn’t know what to do, that he never would have left her alone in the woods. Meanwhile, his back was on fire. It felt as if she had bitten a chunk out of his shoulder.

  And Nicola was whispering into his ear, “Forgive me; I’m so sorry—I didn’t mean to hurt you.” They had driven back to the house, where she had dressed the nasty wounds, dabbing at them with hydrogen peroxide, covering them with gauze.

  Reason it out, he told himself now, sitting in Mathilda’s house. If you can give the police more of the truth, you’re off the hook. Tell Reid about the fight with Nicola. But it would make her look terrible. Pete didn’t want Reid going after her. What if he thought she was violent? He could become suspicious of Nicola, think that she could have been the one to kill Beth, shift the investigation to her.

  As a child, his passion had been chess. He had grown up in the part of Providence you wouldn’t want to be seen in, and most Saturdays and Sundays he would take the bus to the East Side, where he would wait for a spot outside the Chess Shop on Thayer Street and with total confidence take on all comers.

  He played Brown and RISD students and professors, retired physicists, math prodigies, and a Russian grand master who had coached Boris Spassky, but his greatest teacher was Max Brandt, a homeless man who slept in Prospect Terrace Park and who regularly beat everyone. It just went to show that the educated, the so-called elite, could easily be bested by someone overlooked by society.

  Pete had learned that staying one move ahead was pleasant but nowhere close to the rush of letting the opponent think he was winning and blindsiding him with an attack he didn’t see coming. Max had shown him that over and over.

  Beth’s death wasn’t a game of chess. It was nothing but sorrow for most of the people in her life—including Pete. But dealing with the police, his friends, her sister, Sam, even Nicola, required careful maneuvering. Pete couldn’t expect anyone to understand his point of view. He was alone in this, as he had been in most things.

  Throughout his entire life, he had been told by his mother how brilliant he was. His entire extended family had acknowledged that he was the brain of the family, and many had been resentful. He’d gotten into Saint George’s, one of the best prep schools in the country. If he had wanted, he could have gone to any Ivy, but he hadn’t gone that route.

  Pete was modest about his looks, but he couldn’t help being aware that women who’d been buttoned up their whole lives enjoyed the attention of a handsome bad boy who happened to be brilliant. He had dated several possibilities before Beth: another heiress, a principal in a private equity firm, a top-earning sales rep for a major pharmaceutical company. Beth had had the most potential. And surprise: he had actually loved her. In the early days of their relationship, what was not to love? She’d believed in him, almost as much as his mother had. She had handed him the keys to the gallery, the art world, and the quiet blue blood society of shoreline Connecticut.

  By the time their marriage was in trouble, he’d found Nicola. As a graduate student at Bard, Nicola would be attracted only to the smartest men, and she had chosen Pete.

  Beth had stopped appreciating him the way he deserved. She had at the beginning of their relationship, but it had dwindled away. She had demeaned him and had never let him forget that she owned everything.

  He thought back to their early days, when he had been so full of hope and dreams. He was working for the insurance agency that had underwritten the art stolen from the Lathrop Gallery. Pete researched the case thoroughly. Back then it had been called the Harkness-Woodward Gallery. Once Pete understood the dynamics of how Garth Woodward had hired the Andersons to steal Moonlight and tie up the family in the basement, he decided it was time to meet the daughters.

  He showed up at the gallery for an opening. They were both there, Kate and Beth, but Kate barely gave him a look. Beth did the opposite—drew him in with her warmth and bubbly personality. When he told her where he worked, no doubt stirring up traumatic memories, she didn’t turn away.

  He remembered the sensitivity in her eyes.

  “Are you in your field because you love art?” she asked.

  “It’s my passion,” he lied.

  “Did you know that your company and our gallery have a long-standing connection?”

  “Yes,” he said. “And I am so sorry for the reason that you needed us. For what you and your family went through.”

  “Thank you,” she’d said, her eyes welling. He gazed at her with all the comfort in the world; it was as if they had known each other forever—an instant bond. He wanted to give her the feeling that no one could understand what she had endured more than he could. She soaked it up—he knew what she needed, and he gave it to her. His instincts were perfect when it came to what women needed.

  Greater things had happened to the gallery since he had married Beth and taken over as president. He had acted as press agent, getting articles in several art magazines and major newspapers. Because of Pete, the Lathrop Gallery had a presence on all the major social media platforms. He tweeted once a day, posted photos on Instagram, and had attracted over five thousand followers on Facebook—an impressive number for a small family-owned gallery. But she had not appreciated him.

  She had never let him forget that the money came from her family. What she’d failed to fully realize was that being born rich was nothing more than blind luck. It had nothing to do with IQ. He had once—before Sam was born—tried to get her to take the Mensa test, and she had literally laughed. Not that she would have passed.

  Last December, when they were decorating the gallery for Christmas, Pete had stood at the foot of the ladder while Beth had balanced the star on top of the tree, and he had felt like giving the ladder a good shake. God help him, he thought of it now, and given how she’d died, he felt more ashamed than ever about that single impulse. In that split second, when he had been so angry with her, he would have loved to see her crack her head open on the edge of the desk.

  “Fuck,” he said out loud to himself, “fucking bastard.”

  But it wasn’t all him—the whole family had put each other through the wringer. The damn painting. Moonlight. It had gone missing last year, and now it was again. When he’d seen that empty frame, his heart had literally stopped in his chest. Beth had just stared at him, eyes full of blame, when he’d pointed it out to her. Of course she’d probably think he took it, and he couldn’t explain to her—or even, after she died, to Reid. Not without betraying someone he loved more than the world.

  “Dad?”

  At the sound of Sam’s voice, he got out of his chair.

  “Sam, what are you doing here?”

  “Everyone’s outside,” she said, gesturing at the front window. “We came to celebrate Mom’s birthday.”

  “Kate’s here?”

  She nodded. “And Lulu and Scotty. Isabel, Julie, all of us.”

  “Are you doing okay?” he asked.

  “Well, it’s her birthday. So . . .”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  She brushed her long hair out of her eyes, and he caught sight of the scars on the inside of her left arm. Were the cuts fresh, or were they scars from months, a year ago, that were healing? She’s cutting because of you, Beth had said. Because of you and Nicola and your baby, because she’s afraid of losing her father.

  “You still doing that?” he asked. Pointing at first, then walking over to her, gently holding her wrist. “Please tell me you’re not.”

  “Not as much,” she said. “Sometimes, though.”

  He traced the scar she had made last year, just before going to camp. Beth was at the gallery, cataloging new acquisitions. He went to the bank, but instead of returning straight to work, he drove home—he knew Sam had been upset with him, and he wanted a father-daughter moment, to reassure her as she was getting ready for camp that she was his
number one, his oldest, his baby, and always would be.

  He walked into the house through the front door, heard rummaging in the closet, saw Sam emerge. She jumped as if he’d caught her doing something wrong—the look on her face was pure guilt.

  “What are you doing in there?” he asked.

  “Nothing, Dad. Just looking for my boots and rain slicker. It gets a little wet up in Maine, ha ha.”

  “You sure?” he asked. “What happened to your wrist?”

  She glanced down at it, saw the smudge of blood. “Huh,” she said. “Must have snagged it on a nail or a hook or whatever.”

  Later Beth would tell him about Sam’s cutting, but that day he didn’t have a clue.

  “Well, did you find your slicker?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “It’s in there. I’ll grab it when we drive up. Why are you here, anyway? Why aren’t you at work?”

  “I came to talk to you,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re going to camp,” he said. “And I want us to be okay.” He thought of the day Sam was born, of how thrilled he had been, how he had imagined for her the life he had never had. That July day he felt pressure in his chest, as if his heart were expanding, wanting to burst out of his skin. He stepped forward to hug her, but she pulled back.

  “Be okay?” she asked with a guttural laugh.

  “Sam.”

  “Dad,” she had said. “Don’t. Talking will just make it all worse. I have to go; I told Isabel I’d meet her.” And she’d run out the door.

  Now, on her mother’s birthday, she stood in Mathilda’s living room, looking at him with sad eyes.

  “That scar,” he said, pointing, “looks better.”

  “I call it Memory of Moonlight,” she said.

  “Maybe it’s better you just forget it.”

  “Forgotten Moonlight?” she asked. “Don’t you think that’s impossible, considering what I did?”

  “I suppose it would be.”

  “Why didn’t you ever tell Mom?”

  “Because I wanted to protect you.”

  “She would have been mad.”

  “You taking the painting off the wall, putting it in the hall closet. Didn’t you think you might trigger her? Make her relive that earlier time? Didn’t you think it would hurt her?”

  Sam stared at the small white scar. “I bled on it too. I didn’t mean to do that. I felt horrible. The painting’s so valuable.”

  “It was just a tiny smudge on the back of the canvas,” he said. “And the painting’s value is nothing compared to you, Sam. You’re who we love, who matters, not some piece of art.” He swallowed. Had she come in here to confess something else about the painting? He knew the police had found the canvas rolled up in the gallery basement, the back scrawled with a blood heart. “Honey, did you take it this time too?”

  “No, I swear,” she said, shaking her head hard.

  “Okay, I believe you. But why did you do it before?”

  “Because everything was falling apart,” Sam said in a low voice, not meeting Pete’s eyes. “I wanted you to think someone broke into our house, so you’d pay attention. So you’d stay home. We’re a family.”

  She walked toward him then, banged right into his chest and let him hold her while she cried, rock her while she said, “I’m sorry; I’m so sorry I hid the painting. I want her back, Dad. I want you to be together—I want us all to be together.”

  “I want that too,” he whispered. More than he had meant anything in his life, he meant that, which was why when Sam tilted her head back and asked her question, it cut him like a knife.

  “Dad, you have to tell me. Promise me you’ll tell me the truth. Did you kill her? Did you kill Mom?”

  56

  The sky was white, and snow was intermittent. Scotty’s cheeks stung from the cold, and Kate’s were bright red. She watched Lulu stomping her feet to keep them from freezing. Scotty bundled both Isabel and Julie close to her. Everyone faced the house.

  “She must have gone inside,” Lulu said.

  “To talk to her father?” Scotty asked, giving an exaggerated shiver. “Let’s get her out of there, away from him, and go warm up somewhere.” She hoped it would be someplace with a full bar. Surely drinks all around would be welcome—they could toast Beth for her birthday.

  “I’ll go get Sam,” Isabel said, striding away toward the front door. Julie trailed after her.

  “Girls!” Scotty called.

  “I’m sure it’s fine,” Lulu said, grabbing her arm. “Pete’s not going to do anything, and Sam will be more likely to come with Isabel than a bunch of ancient aunties.”

  Scotty instinctively recoiled from Lulu’s touch. It was something about the pointed look in Lulu’s eyes, as if she were staring into Scotty’s soul, trying to put the puzzle pieces together, or possibly wanting to rewrite her own history, wiping out the parts that Scotty knew. She glanced at Kate, who seemed not to notice the interaction.

  “What’s your problem?” Scotty asked.

  “I was going to ask you the same thing,” Lulu said.

  “You’ve been acting weird toward me,” Scotty said.

  “I was just thinking about how close we all were,” Lulu said. “And then how many secrets we kept from each other.”

  “I’ve gotten over the Jed part of it all,” Kate said. “At least I’m trying to. Whether I like it or not, she had her reasons for not telling me. And so did you two.”

  Scotty watched as Kate reached into the pocket of her jacket, pulled out a folded piece of paper.

  “I made a copy of this,” Kate said. “I don’t know if Beth ever showed you . . . maybe it’s the one thing between her and me that you don’t know about, haven’t seen yet.” She smoothed out the black-and-white image. Scotty’s knees nearly buckled when she realized what it was.

  “A sonogram,” Lulu said.

  “Matthew,” Scotty said, reaching for it.

  “Who was his father? Pete or Jed? Will we ever know?” Kate asked.

  “At this point, I’m not sure it really makes a difference,” Lulu said softly.

  “It does,” Scotty said, her voice harsher than she intended.

  Both friends turned to look at her.

  “Only someone who doesn’t have kids could say it doesn’t,” Scotty said. “Believe me.”

  “The baby’s gone,” Kate said. “No one needs to raise him. But he still has us to love him.”

  “Still,” Scotty said. “The father deserved to know.”

  “And she decided not to tell him,” Lulu said.

  “You were behind her in that,” Scotty said. “In that way, you encouraged her worst self.”

  “Beth didn’t have a worst self,” Kate said. “Don’t say that.”

  Scotty took a step closer to Lulu. “I tried to help her. I really did. I wanted to support her in all she was going through.”

  “What are you talking about?” Kate asked.

  Scotty stared at the sonogram. It reminded her of the joy she’d felt seeing Isabel’s, then Julie’s, sharing the moment with Nick. He had been as thrilled as she was. He had always been there throughout her pregnancies.

  “Why did he have to start running?” she asked.

  “What?” Kate asked.

  “Nick. Turning into a running fool. Jogging away from us.”

  “Come on, Scotty,” Lulu said. “He was just training for the race.”

  Scotty shook the cobwebs from her mind. “Pregnancy is one of the greatest times of a couple’s life. The way Nick used to look at me, hold me. I wanted that for Jed.”

  “Jed—he’s the father?” Kate asked.

  “Mm-hmm,” Scotty said.

  “When did she tell you?” Lulu asked.

  “That last day,” Scotty said. “I’d gone over to help with her garden—she really wasn’t feeling good. It was so hot out, and I didn’t like thinking of her digging in the dirt, weeding, getting overheated.”

  “Wait,” Lulu sai
d. “The last day—of her life? In July?”

  Scotty nodded, picturing the perspiration on Beth’s face, how Scotty had gently wiped it from her brow.

  “You were the last to see her? After Pete left?” Lulu asked.

  “Who said it was after Pete left?” Scotty asked, feeling pressured. “Kate knows. It was before.”

  “Yes,” Kate said to Lulu. “Scotty was over there early in the morning.”

  “Beth liked to garden in the shade, before the sun rose over the trees. But even then—it was scorching. Lulu, you keep talking about support. Well, that’s one way I helped Beth—planting mint and thyme and petunias and lobelia. And encouraging her to tell Jed the good news—that he was the dad.”

  “But she didn’t want to,” Lulu said. A statement, not a question, with implied criticism.

  “No, she didn’t want to,” Scotty said, narrowing her eyes. “And that was wrong.” She felt startled by the vehemence in her own tone.

  “Did you see her go into the house? When Pete was still in there, before he left?” Kate asked.

  Scotty scrunched up her face, not only trying to recall the exact sequence but calibrating how to tell it to Kate and Lulu. She had been so hungover; maybe things would have gone differently if she hadn’t gotten so drunk the night before. She had still had alcohol in her bloodstream when she’d arrived at Beth’s. She really needed to do something about her drinking.

  “Yes,” she said. “I did. I convinced her to leave the rest of the gardening till sunset—it would be so much cooler then. I told her to go inside and lie down in the air-conditioning.” She choked up. This was the part she hated to remember. She wished she could erase it from her mind. “I keep thinking, if I had just stayed. If I hadn’t sent her in there, to him. To Pete. I should have just stayed out there, insisting she tell Jed—I could have driven him to her. She could have had the happiness of telling him he was the father, instead of going into that house, and . . .”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Lulu said. “You couldn’t have known.”

  “When I think of what was done to her,” Scotty said. She pictured Beth’s fractured skull, blood pouring from the caved-in side of her head, and she felt so sick she had to keep herself from throwing up. “You know, my girls hadn’t even had breakfast by the time I got home. I walked in and cut up a pineapple and some ice-cold watermelon, put everything on the table for the girls, for when they woke up. Isabel would stay in bed all day if she could, but that day it was humid; she was up and waiting for me. Julie too.”