Dark Truth

by Mariah Stewart

  “I remember, too. Carlos was so full of himself; he loved it when his big authors came into the office. And your dad was a big author. His books were among the first at Griffin to make the major best-seller lists. He helped put Griffin on the publishing map.” Nina smiled, remembering her first few years as an assistant editor. “We were all so intimidated by your father. He was so tall and handsome and charming. All of the young editors were in awe of him.”

  “What I remember most about that trip was how Carlos shrugged me off onto you. He wanted to talk to Dad, but he always treated me as if I were the biggest pain in his ass. I don’t think Dad ever saw that, though. He had to look hard to see the negative in people he cared about. And he did enjoy working with Carlos.”

  Nina laughed. “He’d called me into his office before you and Josh arrived that day, and told me to take you shopping. ‘Take her to lunch, take her to Saks, take her someplace. Josh and I have work to do.’ We had a great time that day, though, in spite of our most senior editor’s annoyingly chauvinistic attitude toward you.”

  “I know he was shocked after Dad died and I told him I’d only work with you.” Regan stabbed at a piece of apple in her salad. “Though he should have seen that coming. Friendship aside, you’re a terrific editor. Your input into Fallen Angels made a good idea even better. I can’t wait until you read it.”

  “Then give me a copy of what you have, to take back with me. I don’t care if it needs work.”

  “I’ll have to print a copy for you.”

  “No hurry. I’ll be around for a few days.” Nina ate the last of the fish. “The tuna was fabulous. What was in the marinade?”

  “Lime and garlic and a few other goodies. I’ll give you the recipe.” Regan drained her glass. “You said you’d be around for a few days?”

  “My stepmother passed away over the weekend. The service was today.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry. Were you close?”

  “Not at all.” Nina frowned without realizing it. “We’ve had little contact since my father . . .” Nina paused just the slightest bit. “Since my father died years ago.”

  “How old were you when you lost your dad?”

  “I’d just turned twenty.”

  “And your mother?”

  “She died when I was fourteen. Complications from back surgery, if you can believe that. She and my father were divorced when I was five, and I lived with my mom until her death. I’d spent some vacation time with my dad every year, but I never felt I got to know him at all. He married Olivia when I was twelve, so they’d only been married for two years when I came to live with them. It was a very awkward situation.”

  “They had no children together?”

  “No. Olivia had a son, Kyle, from her first marriage. He’s five years older than I.” Nina placed an elbow on the table and rested her chin in her hand. “He was just enough older to always be a stranger to me. He was already in college when I came to live with my father and his mother. Though I have to say, he’s been very nice, very considerate, since I came down for the service.”

  “Well, you’re family, more or less, right? With his mother gone, maybe he sees you as still being his sister. Were he and his mother close?”

  “I think they were.” Nina wished she could tell Regan everything. If there’d ever been a time in her life when she wanted to confide in a friend it was now. But there was no way she was going to tell the whole sordid story. She skipped the ugly parts and went straight to the immediate problem. “Kyle told me this morning that my dad had never added Olivia’s name to the deed to the house, that Dad had left the house to me.”

  “Why do I have the feeling this has not made you happy?”

  “I don’t want the house. I don’t want anything from that house. As far as I’m concerned, Kyle can sell the place, contents and all, and he can keep the money.”

  “That’s very generous of you.” Regan put her glass down, and studied Nina’s face.

  “Not at all. His mother lived there for the past, what, twenty years or so? It was her house, not mine. It rightfully belongs to Kyle.”

  “You can arrange that with the lawyer,” Regan told her.

  “You’re right. I can.” Nina nodded. “And I will. I’ll just stop by tomorrow and go through whatever boxes Kyle wanted me to go through, toss out whatever belonged to my father, and then I’m free to go back home.”

  “I’m sure there are some things in the house you might want. Your father’s books or papers or something, photographs . . .”

  “There’s nothing.” Nina’s jaw set and her eyes narrowed. “There is nothing I want from that house. I’ll drag my dad’s stuff out to the curb so the trashmen can pick it up. Kyle can keep whatever he wants. There’s nothing there I care about.”

  “Well, keep an open mind. You never know what you might find there.” Regan tugged at Nina’s arm. “Come on. Let’s take the boat out for a while, and I’ll tell you about the idea I have for the next book . . .”

  Four hours later, still dressed in the sweatpants and matching sweatshirt she’d borrowed from Regan, Nina made her way back to Stone River in the rented car. She’d planned on stopping at the Cloisters to grab some dinner before heading over to the house. The key Kyle had given her earlier had all but burned a hole in her pocket.

  She had called Kyle’s cell phone and left the message that she’d meet him at the house in the morning, but now was regretting having made the call. As she and Regan had buzzed along the bay that afternoon, she’d found herself dreading more and more going back into that house. Which meant she’d have to face it sooner rather than later. And there was no time like the present.

  Besides, she told herself as she made a left turn onto Oak Drive, she didn’t know how she’d react to being there. She’d rather not have an audience her first time inside.

  She slowed down as she approached house number one seventeen, and eased over to the curb. She sat behind the wheel of the car with the engine running and her heart racing, and stared at the house she’d lived in for fewer than five years. The smallish Tudor with its faux thatch roof and tan stucco exterior sat square in the middle of its lot. The driveway was to the right, and ended at the garage, which was styled to match the house right down to its dark brown beams and shutters. A rosebush twined over the front of the garage and spread onto the side of the house. That would have been Olivia, Nina thought. She’d been fond of roses.

  A flash of memory: after her mother had died and her father had brought her here to live, Nina had been too numb to care about where she put her clothes or whether her room had bookshelves on which to place her books and the other precious things she’d brought with her from home. All she cared about was the fact that her beloved mother was lost to her, and she was forced to live with a man she barely knew, and his wife whom she didn’t know at all. Her father had carried her suitcases up the steps to the room she always stayed in when she visited. He’d said very little to her that day that she remembered, other than, “Put your things away now, Nina, and come downstairs. Olivia’s made dinner . . .”

  The door was open, but in her grief Nina had failed to notice that the room had been freshly painted in her favorite shade of blue and the furniture all painted white, as she’d once said she’d like to do someday. A bowl of freshly cut roses stood on the table next to the bed, and their perfume scented the air. She’d thrown herself on the bed and sobbed until her father, utterly lost about what to do with her, had merely closed the door and gone downstairs. Nina had stayed facedown on the bed for hours. Even now it hurt to remember how alone she’d felt then, how abandoned . . .

  She recalled the priest’s comments earlier in the day, about how Olivia had been abandoned, and Nina felt a pang. She had certainly been as guilty as her father had been on that score, and for the first time, she found herself feeling sorry for her late stepmother. It hadn’t been Olivia’s fault that she’d come into Nina’s life at the worst possible time. It wasn’t her fault that her husb
and had been . . . what he was.

  A perpetually cheating husband, a murdering rapist.

  Nina swallowed hard. If life had dealt her a few bad blows, she could barely begin to imagine how Olivia must have felt. She’d married a man she’d loved—Nina had never doubted that Olivia had loved her husband deeply—given her heart to him, and her life turned out to be a nightmare that most women could not even begin to imagine.

  How does a woman go on when she discovers the man she married is a serial rapist and murderer of the very young women he’s been entrusted with teaching?

  The same way that the man’s daughter goes on, Nina reminded herself. Except that I never hesitated to leave, to simply walk away. Olivia apparently felt compelled to stay, though God knows why.

  Nina got out of the car and stood on the walk, and studied the house that now, at dusk, was deep in the shadows of the tall trees that dwarfed it. When she’d steadied her nerves, she walked up the brick path, slipped the key into the lock, and opened the door.

  The air inside still wore a trace of Youth Dew, Olivia’s favorite fragrance. On the table inside the door was a basket of flowers. The card stuck in the plastic holder was addressed to Kyle. Nina closed the door behind her and went into the living room. The furniture was pretty much the same, though the sofa wore a slipcover she didn’t recognize and there was a new chair near the fireplace to replace the one her father had always sat in to read at night. The nights when he was home, that is. Nina seemed to recall there were many nights when he’d arrive long after she’d gone to bed. She knew just how many such nights there had been. She never permitted herself to sleep until she heard his car pull into the driveway, his footfall on the steps.

  Nina went into the kitchen and turned on the light. A cup and saucer had been rinsed and placed on the counter, the cup upside down. There was nothing else out of place.

  She went from room to room, trying to remember what it had been like to live in this house. She knew she’d eaten meals in that kitchen, but couldn’t remember one time she’d sat at that table. There had been holidays, of course there had been, but she had no clear recollection of any of them. She walked to the spot where they used to set up the Christmas tree. She knew it had gone here, in the corner of the living room, but she couldn’t bring up a picture of it in her mind. There’d been dinners in the dining room, but she couldn’t recall what the china had looked like or what she had eaten. It was as if she’d existed there as a ghost-child, rather than a girl struggling through her teens with all the afflictions young girls struggled with, and many unique to her own situation. Mostly, Nina remembered struggling alone.

  She went up the steps to the second floor and passed the room her father had shared with Olivia, and pretended not to remember how she’d heard her stepmother’s sobs the night Stephen Madden had been arrested. Olivia had died in that room, Kyle had told her when he’d called her on Sunday evening. It occurred to Nina that Olivia had died in that room long before last weekend.

  She went straight to her bedroom and pushed open the door. The furniture hadn’t changed, though the bedspread and curtains were different and the walls were now pale yellow. Nina had a vague recollection of Olivia mentioning in a letter or card years ago that she’d redecorated the room, so that when Nina came to visit, perhaps the memories wouldn’t seem as bad.

  Nina’d thought at the time that Olivia was a fool to stay in that house, and an even bigger fool to think that a coat of paint on the walls and a new look to the bed and the windows could do anything to take away the memories Nina had of living in that house.

  But now, standing in the quiet room, seeing how carefully Olivia had tried to preserve a place for Nina here, she found herself wishing she’d made the trip back, just once. Her heart pinched her from within, and she felt sympathy for Olivia flood through her for the first time.

  “Sorry, Olivia. I should have been kinder to you. I’m sorry . . .”

  She turned to leave the room, and noticed the table next to the bed. A half dozen roses, now dried and fragile, had been placed in a pretty dark blue vase. Had Olivia kept fresh flowers in this room, in the hope that Nina might in fact come back to see her after all these years?

  Nina would never know.

  Filled with a sorrow she’d never anticipated, she went down the steps and out the front door. Locking it behind her with shaking hands, she fled the house at 117 Oak Drive as if she were being pursued by demons.

  In a way, she was.

  Four

  “Nina?” Kyle’s voice sounded as if it came from outside the house.

  “Down here,” she called from the foot of the basement stairs.

  A minute later, he was bounding down the steps.

  “You’re here early,” he said. “I thought I’d have to come over to the Cloisters and drag you, kicking and screaming, to get you here.”

  “Why waste time?” She shrugged. “Besides, I told you I’d give you a hand.”

  She turned and pointed to a stack of boxes that lined the back wall.

  “I poked into those already. I think those must be your mother’s. Some of them have old household items—curtains, bed linens, pots, baking pans, that sort of thing—that must have fallen from favor over the years and were packed up and stored down here. There are a few boxes of clothing that belonged to her as well.” She turned and pointed to the boxes she’d placed near the steps. “Those boxes contain some of my father’s old papers, some books, his doctoral thesis, some files. They can all go to the trash. Those three boxes on the bottom hold some of his old clothes. They can get tossed out or sent to a thrift store, I don’t care which.”

  “You’ve been busy.” Kyle sat on the bottom step.

  “I’m determined.” She smiled. “Do you have any suggestions on who I should call to pick up this stuff?”

  “I have a list of thrift stores that pick up, but I left it in the car. I can get it for you.” He started to rise, and she gestured for him to sit back down. “No hurry. I can get it before I leave today.”

  “Thanks for separating Mom’s stuff from Stephen’s. I wasn’t really looking forward to going through her things just yet.” He paused, then added hastily, “But I don’t have a problem with it. I know you’ll want to be making arrangements to sell everything as quickly as possible so you can get back to New York.”

  “Well, I wanted to talk to you about that. Let’s go upstairs. I picked up some cold drinks on the way over this morning, and I could use one now.”

  “Sure.” Kyle stood and waited for Nina to pass him, then followed her up the steps. When they reached the top, he switched off the basement light and closed the door.

  “I can arrange to have someone come and pick up all the stuff in the basement,” he told her. “That won’t be a problem. And if you’d like, I can have the furniture appraised and sold for you, and send you a check. I know you have an important job and you’re probably itching to get back to it. This has to be depressing for you, but I do appreciate your coming. Mom would have been so happy that you were here.”

  It was on the tip of her tongue to say, She would have been happier if I’d come while she was still alive.

  Instead, she told him, “Your mother was a good person, Kyle. She had a hard time of it. I wouldn’t have wished that . . .” She searched for a word. “ . . . that situation on anyone. Why she chose to stay in this house, and in this town, I’ll never understand.”

  “Simple.” He shrugged. “She had nowhere else to go. She could live here for free—that was in his will—and she had a few friends. And of course, she had Father Timothy.”

  “Father Whelan?”

  “Yes, sorry. We knew him as Father Tim. He and my mother have been friends forever. Since even before . . .” He appeared embarrassed.

  “Before my father ruined all our lives. You can say it, Kyle. It isn’t as if it’s a secret, especially between you and me.” She opened the refrigerator door. “Pepsi or Diet Pepsi?”

  “Diet, t
hanks.”

  She took out two cans and searched the cupboards for glasses, then finding two, filled them with ice and poured the drinks. Handing one glass to Kyle, she said, “There’s something we need to talk about.”

  “Shoot.”

  “I called my dad’s attorney this morning. I asked him how I could go about putting the house in your name.”

  “I don’t understand. Why would you do that?”

  “Because I think it rightfully belongs to you.”

  “Nina, your father bought this house before he even met my mother.”

  “It’s her house, Kyle. She’s the one who lived in it all these years, she’s paid the taxes and planted the flowers and trimmed the hedges. It was hers. Now it’s yours.”

  “Nina, I don’t think you should make any hasty decisions. I mean, it’s very generous of you, but you really need to think this through.”

  “I have thought it through. I thought about it all night last night. I know it’s the right thing to do, Kyle.”

  “I don’t know what to say.” He was clearly stunned. “Nina, that’s incredibly generous of you, but I can’t let you give away your inheritance like that.”

  “It’s already done. Or will be, as soon as Mr. Wexler completes the paperwork and I sign it. Which I will do in the morning. And as far as my inheritance is concerned, let’s just say I’ve already gotten everything from my father that I’m going to get.”

  “I wish I could think of something to say,” Kyle told her. “I mean, about your father.”

  “There’s nothing you or anyone could say. He was what he was. Whatever that might have been. He ruined all our lives. You seem to have risen above it all, and I can see why you’d have wanted a career in law enforcement. I’ve managed to make a life for myself in spite of him. Your mother was the real victim here. I wish I’d been mature enough to realize that before now. No one should be asked to carry the burdens she was forced to bear. I wish I’d . . .”