by Diane Wood
“No,” he interjected, shaking his head. “No more, Nat. No more excuses. I don’t want the world to know what she made us do. It would serve no purpose except to lose you your job and self-respect and taint us both as victims or perverts. The press would have a field day, and the kids would be tainted for years. I want them to have a normal life—some happiness.”
“But—”
“No, Nat,” he said adamantly. “I’ll tell them that she was planning to abduct the children because she was a domineering grandmother, that we fought and I lost my temper and shot her. They can accept that explanation or not, but it has to end here. I know I’ll go to prison for a very long time, even life. But I don’t care. It’s not like I don’t deserve it, and I’ll do it easy knowing that you and the kids are finally safe.”
Now it was Nat’s face wet with tears. “Oh God, George,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I should have done something years ago.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” he assured her. “Her evil controlled us both. I just want you to look out for Jeremy and Sam. I want you to sell up all the properties in my name and put the money in trust for the kids. I’d been converting her properties to my name for years. She might have been a genius at corruption, but she was useless at business. The kids should be well taken care of. Both of their mothers can do well with a bit of help, and they won’t have to struggle financially. And with you as their aunty, I know they’ll be okay. But I don’t ever want them to know about what we did for her…not ever.”
“George, what happened to Mother’s journal?”
“She forced me to give it to her when she took the kids. She destroyed it. I’m so sorry,” he said quietly. “It told how she killed Olivia and your father. She wrote about how she and Vladimir took you and your mother’s body to a forest somewhere to bury. Vlad dug the hole and then Mother threw you in with Olivia’s body, and they caved the earth in around you. But then, for some reason, she changed her mind and decided to keep you. When she’d left you buried long enough, they pulled you out and told you that you would forget everything or she’d put you back in the earth. She bragged about how you’d soiled yourself in terror.”
He paused to glance around the room.
“Please tell me it all,” she insisted. “It’s too late for secrets.”
Nodding, he continued, “According to the journal, after that, every time you rebelled, or referred to Olivia or your previous life, she and Vlad would take you somewhere, dig a hole and bury you alive, before pulling you out.” He hung his head. “She said it was exciting to see whether you’d survived or not. In the end, of course, you became Charlotte Silver’s obedient daughter.”
“And what about Christine Martin, how was she involved?”
“I think she intended giving you the journal. She spoke to me about it, but she wouldn’t let me see it or even tell me what was in it. She just said that it was awful, but that it was stuff you needed to know. I don’t know what happened or why she didn’t take it to you, but then she overdosed.”
“Did she, George? Or was Mother’s hand in that as well?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know, Nat, I really don’t. I suppose Mother could have given her some pure. I warned Chris that Mother was dangerous, but she didn’t seem to care. Chris had a bad drug problem, and if anything it got worse around that time. The only reason Mother let her stay was because, despite the drugs, she still had her young girl looks and she made Mother a lot of money. I was out of it myself that night and I honestly don’t know what happened.”
Suddenly the door of the interview room opened. “I think you’ve both had enough time,” stated the big detective. “We need to get on with the interview. Are you willing to give a recorded statement?” he asked George, indicating the video equipment.
“Yes,” nodded George, looking at Nat. “It’s time. Let’s get it done.”
“Are you sure you don’t want a lawyer?” Nat asked, standing and moving toward the handsome man. “It’s not too late.”
“Yes, it is, Nat,” he answered, moving to embrace her. “It’s over now. And I feel better than I’ve ever felt before. Please don’t worry about me.”
* * *
After they’d taken George away, Russo said, “I need to know what he told you and I’ll need a statement about the family situation. That was our deal…right?”
“Yes, it was,” she admitted. “But you’ll find it very uninteresting. All he spoke about was the children and looking after them. He argued violently with his mother when he found out she intended smuggling them out of the country. Immigration had a warning on the children and his mother’s access to them had been a bone of contention for some time. His mother was very volatile and he assumed the pilot was working for her, that’s why he had the gun. From what he said, the gun went off during a violent argument.”
“He shot her in the head…twice. Did you know that?”
“Like I said, the gun went off when she attacked him. You know what anger and fear can do—you see it all the time. And, you’d know as well as I do that it’s easy to fire off two shots in quick succession in a struggle.”
“Right,” he said, his eyes betraying his disbelief, but also his compassion. “Anyway, that will be up to Mr. Silver to tell us, but we will be denying bail until his court appearance.”
“I doubt he’ll seek bail,” she responded quietly. “But I’ll get him a lawyer for his court appearance.”
They agreed to Nathalie returning to give her statement the next day and told her that her commander would have to be notified of the charges against her brother. Afterward they returned to Norma’s. She was fine, having slept most of the time they were away.
Later, they spoke to the Department of Family & Community Services, who had been brought in by the police to take custody of the children when George was arrested. The children had seen nothing and were aware of nothing and had been returned to their families.
They’d decided to go to Alex’s to shower, sleep and determine on their next course of action. Strangely Nathalie felt nothing at the death of Charlotte Silver—the woman she had believed to be her mother for almost her entire life. There wasn’t happiness or relief or even sadness—just a strange lack of emotion. Her concern was for George, and yet a part of her knew that George was going to be okay—he’d vindicated himself and finally made things right. He’d find his own peace.
The children would be well taken care of. Emotionally they’d be supported by their own loving mothers and she’d do all she could to maintain contact.
Suddenly she was exhausted, but she still needed to contact Josh. There was a strong probability that there would be repercussions from George’s charges and her consequent refusal to make a statement immediately. Depending on Russo’s report to his superiors, the NSW Police Force could view it as obstructive. While she didn’t care, she wanted Josh to know some of the circumstances.
After a fifteen-minute explanation, he told her to take a hot bath and go to bed, checking first that Alex would remain with her.
They showered together and, even as mentally and physically exhausted as they were, brought each other to completion while the steaming water poured over them. To touch and be touched was reassuring and provided both women with a sense of belonging, while their gasping, thrusting climaxes released the mountain of built-up tension and confusion.
Afterward they tumbled into bed and, clinging together, drifted into dreamless sleep.
Epilogue
Detective Russo never lodged a complaint about Nathalie, and she was cleared to return to work with no blemishes on her record.
After agreeing to a pre-sentence psychological assessment, George was eventually charged with manslaughter and received an eight-year sentence, with a six-year non-parole period. The psychologist, hired by George’s barrister, was Dieter, and, though he didn’t mention the sexual abuse, his conclusion to the court was that George had spent a lifetime emotionally intimidated by his mother
and that the threat of losing his children to her caused him to panic and threaten her with the gun. He reported that, in the circumstances, George would have seen no other way to deal with her. George’s barrister claimed that the gun had accidentally discharged when Charlotte had struggled to take it away from him.
Nathalie continued to see Dieter. There were still the occasional sweating, gasping awakenings, but now at least they related to something substantial. Slivers of memory returned intermittently, many of them unpleasant, but each memory provided another piece of the puzzle, which helped fill the gaps in her childhood.
There were no new leads in the murder investigation and no new killings. Reluctantly the task force closed the case and concluded that Jacqueline St. Clare had killed all three women as some sort of revenge for her perceived rejections. They also concluded that Bella Pittolo had killed St. Clare in self-defense when she’d discovered her girlfriend was the killer. A lack of forensic or other evidence and Bella’s suicide precluded any other conclusion. Privately, however, the detectives believed that Bella Pittolo had been involved in the murders with Jacqueline St. Clare. Two embittered women living on the fringe, never quite accepted and often openly rejected—who’d taken their revenge on an uncaring and, as they saw it, hostile lesbian community. In the end the outcome would make little difference to the families of the dead women and with both Bella and Jackie dead there was no further danger.
* * *
Six months after reuniting, Alex and Nathalie took a long holiday. George had awarded Nathalie power of attorney over the children’s trusts, and part of the reason for the trip was to amalgamate Charlotte’s estate in the US with her Australian estate. There were no further journals among Charlotte’s property and it looked as if everything personal had been destroyed prior to her fleeing America. Nor could Nathalie trace any record of her father or mother. They’d visited the address in San Diego that Nathalie had provided during her hypnosis, but disappointingly, the house had changed hands numerous times, and nobody remembered the young mixed-race woman and her two small children who had rented briefly all those years ago.
George wasn’t giving up, though, and was now financing a highly reputable private detection agency to continue the investigation. To him, Olivia Duncan was the mother who’d shown him what a parent should be. She’d made him capable of loving his own children that way, and he wanted Nathalie to know all she could about her parents’ families.
George had done what she couldn’t do, but what she’d wanted to do since childhood. How many times, in her imagination, had she killed Charlotte? Seen all the horror and poison behind the beautiful façade and coldly pulled that trigger.
But Mother had been right, she was weak. She’d let the circumstances have control and she’d followed blindly, fearfully, into an abyss of corruption and destruction that had impacted so many.
Were there other children like her and George? Of course there were. That was where the real money lay. But because, as teenagers, she and George didn’t ever see it—didn’t want to see it—it didn’t exist. How many children had Mother been allowed to destroy because she and George were too scared to fight her—too indoctrinated to tell anyone what she’d done?
Dieter brought her focus back to his rooms, his couch. And his words told her that she had to learn to forgive herself. And she listened—really listened. And her mind absorbed his sentiments, because she longed to believe him. But that part of her that she knew as the inner truth, that kernel right down near her soul, continued to scream denial.
You let it happen. Even after you’d experienced hell and survived, you turned your back and left those unidentified children to fend for themselves. You told yourself that no one would believe you. A child’s word, a teenager’s word against powerful, wealthy adults. And anyway, you’d brought it on yourself, so perhaps those other children had done so too. And you’d continued to help her right into your teens. Then as an adult the cowardice had lingered, and you’d asked yourself why you should attack the viper’s nest now, when the viper had finally stopped biting you?
Justifications, excuses, cowardice, culpability—those were the words that reverberated and simply wouldn’t go away. Yet she couldn’t admit to how those demons haunted her, because then they’d worry endlessly—Dieter and Alex—without understanding that nothing they could do, nothing they could say, would ever erase the truth of those accusations.
She had to find a way to make it right. She couldn’t change what she’d done or failed to do, so she had to spend the rest of her life making reparation. She had to spend it hunting down these evil creatures that tore away the hearts and souls of little children and poisoned their futures—simply to satisfy their own perverse needs. She had to become their destroyer. If necessary, she had to become the children’s avenger.
In the end, though, no matter what she did, or how much therapy she undertook, only she could know what it had been like to be the fortune teller’s daughter. And only Alex could help her forget.
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