“That next summer, I went out to Blind River. First thing I wanted to do was see this big Reynaud estate that DeMarco had told me about. It was just a little farmhouse. Jean Reynaud was telling the truth. His father did make his money milking cows. That fancy suit he had on that night, that hat… those were probably the only nice clothes he owned. I knocked on the door, but nobody was home. I’m not sure what I would have done if Luc Reynaud had been there. I mean, this whole story about him getting rich off the gangsters, it obviously didn’t happen that way. But still, he was the one man who came home alive that night. My father was murdered out on the ice. And DeMarco’s father. They died on the ice and they stayed there all winter until it melted. I don’t know exactly how it happened, but I would have sat old Luc Reynaud down and made him tell me. Then when he was done, I would have told him I had taken away his son, just like he had taken away my father.”
“What if he had nothing to do with it?” Marty said. “What if the gangsters just decided to let him go?”
“I don’t think that could have happened, son. You’ve got to remember who we’re talking about.”
“Pops…” Marty shook his head.
“I ended up going to the next house down the road, and it turns out that was the DeMarcos’ house. I met Albert’s mother, this tiny little woman living all by herself. She was friendly, so I got to talking to her. I asked her some questions about her family. She told me about her husband, and about Luc Reynaud coming back alone that night. For some reason, she didn’t think that was suspicious. Or maybe she did. Hell, maybe she knew exactly what had happened and she just wasn’t gonna say it. Not to me. Anyway, I asked about her son, Albert. Turned out he had just gotten married to Jean Reynaud’s widow. I even got to see their wedding picture. Grace, her name was. What a beauty. All of a sudden it made sense to me. This man had used me. He wanted Jean Reynaud out of the way, and he knew I was the only other man in the world who could hate that family as much as he did. So now I hated all of them. The Reynauds. The DeMarcos. I hated myself, too. It never ends.”
Simon Grant coughed a few times and then he reached over to his son. Marty Grant didn’t move.
“Now that I’ve told you this, Martin… I know I’m getting close to the end of my life. I hope you’ll see what a life of hating can do to a man. I hope you’ll let me take it right to the grave with me, son. Please bury it with me. You gotta promise me one thing, too.”
Marty looked up.
“You can’t tell your brother Michael about this. You know how he is.”
Both men sat there for a long time, not saying a word. Finally, Marty got to his feet and came toward the camera. The last shot was Simon Grant alone in his hospital bed. Then the tape ended.
The football game came back on. I paid no attention to it. Vinnie sat next to me in silence. Natalie stood at the window. In my mind I saw the photograph again. The three men. Luc Reynaud in his gray suit, Jean Reynaud in light linen, holding the hat over his head like a trophy.
Because he had just taken it from his father-his father’s gray hat that went perfectly with his gray suit. It had been on his father’s head, and now it was on his, his young wife taking the photograph to record the moment forever.
“The devil of Blind River…” I said.
“It wasn’t my father,” Natalie said, finally turning around to look at me. “It was my grandfather.”
“The devil’s hat, filled with ice and snow…”
“He wouldn’t do that, Alex. Not my grandfather.”
“It was so long ago,” I said. “There’s no way to know what really happened out on that ice.”
“He wouldn’t sell out his partner like that. Or set up those other men.”
“It doesn’t matter. Just tell me, what does all this have to do with you being here on this island? And Albert…”
“He’s here,” she said. “Somewhere.”
“Why? What does he want?”
“That’s an easy one,” she said. “He came here to kill me.”
Chapter Twenty-One
A lone snowmobile roared by on the street below. The sound got farther and farther away until it was gone.
“This is why Marty Grant came looking for us,” Natalie said. “He wanted my mother to have a copy of this tape, so she’d know the truth. Albert killed her first husband.”
“Natalie…”
“He killed my father, Alex.”
“He didn’t kill anybody,” I said. “Simon Grant did.”
“Try telling that to Marty. Albert set the whole thing up. He’s the one who made it all happen.”
“No, Natalie. He just pointed Simon in the right direction.”
“It doesn’t matter, Alex. Whatever happened, Marty wanted my mother to know. Obviously, he didn’t want to tell anyone while his father was still alive.”
“He came looking for your mother? Is that why he was up in Batchawana Bay?”
“Yes,” she said. “That was the day you saw him up there. I didn’t know anything about it at the time. I had already come to get her out of that house.”
“So I followed him back to Michigan,” I said, “and got into it with his brother at the garage. Michael said he told Marty about that, and about you. He even told him that you lived in Blind River. That’s the last time he heard from him.”
“Yes, that makes sense, because he showed up that night. God, what a horror show that was.”
“Natalie, what did he do?”
“It wasn’t him so much. I mean, all he did was tell me he wanted to see my mother, said he had something important to show her. I didn’t like him being there, but he said it would mean a lot to her. She came to the door and started talking to him. The next thing I know we’ve got the VCR pulled out and he’s showing us this videotape. You can’t imagine, Alex… what I was thinking of while I was watching that. When it was done, I said to him, okay, I’m glad I know this now, but I wish I had seen this tape while Albert was still alive so I could have beat his head in with my hockey stick.”
“God, Natalie. And you had no idea he’s still alive…”
“No, that was my little surprise for the evening. Marty told me that he had looked up Albert DeMarco. He’s living in the States now, out in Las Vegas. He’s got all these real estate deals going on, building houses. He owns part of a casino, too. He’s gotta be what, over seventy now, but he started over with a young wife, two kids in high school-you know, buying himself a new life. Marty said he was going to send him a copy of the tape, just to let him know that his past wasn’t a total secret.”
“What did you say, Natalie? What did your mother say?”
“You have to remember, Alex, this was the biggest lie she ever told me. But as good as she is at lying, she’s just as good at explaining herself after it all falls apart. She did it for me, she said. To make me feel better. To help me forgive her, all these years later. And you know what? I wanted to believe he was dead. I really did. So one drunken night, two years ago, she calls me up and she tells me the monster is gone. She wants to see me. She wants to be with me again. She wants to be my mother again…”
Natalie stopped to wipe her face with her hands.
“Two years, Alex. Two years I thought he was dead. I was up in Hearst, remember. Way the hell up there. What was I supposed to do, start calling people to make sure he was really dead?”
“Okay, so then what?”
“I just had to get away from her. I went outside for a while, just walked around, freezing my ass off. I almost went down the street to Mrs. DeMarco’s house, like I did when I was twelve years old. But I couldn’t, you know? That was Albert’s house, too. It was like I couldn’t escape him, no matter what I did. He’d always be there haunting me. So eventually, I just went back inside. Marty was gone already. I got in a big fight with my mother, told her I wished she was dead…”
She stopped again.
“And then I called you,” she said. “I called you and I told you it was over between us. I’m sorry, Alex. I just didn’t want you to be a part of it anymore.”