Returning home from his and Erika’s meeting with authorities, Zack found that his father was still at a business dinner, but, unknown to Zack, Marcy had come home and read my note. Audrey, ever watchful for evil acts, had observed and happily reported to Marcy that I had stolen Zack’s boat and headed up-creek. Marcy must have guessed where I was going and realized I was giving her a golden opportunity to get rid of me.
She instructed Audrey not to tell Zack that I had come for him. Later the note I had written was found in Marcy’s purse.
It was Zack’s theory that Marcy had planned to give the note to the police and tell them about my previous assault.
Erika’s three friends had unwittingly provided Marcy with cover for another murder. It wasn’t clear when Marcy’s final plan for me came together. As the fire investigator pointed out, quantities of accelerants are readily available in country houses, and Marcy was familiar with her childhood home.
Audrey did not tell Zack about the note, but, fortunately for me, she couldn’t resist telling him about the stolen boat.
Setting out in his father’s cruiser, Zack had spotted the anchored rowboat, then the ladder that I’d left against the bank. Following my route, he had found Iris semiconscious in the garden. At that point he called 911 on his cell.
When Zack entered the house, he still didn’t understand what was happening. While aware that his stepmother visited Iris occasionally, he had not known the nature of their relationship and had no idea why Marcy would hurt Iris or Will. But when he heard her counting in her strange game of hide-and-seek, he knew Marcy was dangerous. He feared it was his own text messages that had been accessed, that it was Marcy who had used Erika’s game as a convenient cover for Uncle Will’s murder.
That was as much as we could get through that night — or that morning, I should say. The sheriff told us all to get some sleep. He planned to get his own shut-eye in his car, which he had parked across the top of Aunt Iris’s driveway, protecting us from curious intruders. Zack needed to get home to Dave. On his way out, he stopped for just a moment, his fingers brushing the tips of mine.
I went to check on Aunt Iris. Her room was dark, but she was up, sitting on the edge of her bed. “I can’t sleep.”
I turned on a soft lamp and sat on a chair close to her bed.
“They made me promise I wouldn’t tell her,” Aunt Iris said.
Her eyes were wide open, but when I looked in them, I didn’t think she was seeing the present.
“You mean the Fairfaxes.”
“They broke their promise, the one they made to me when I gave them Marcy. So I broke mine. After they had the boy — after they decided Marcy didn’t matter anymore — I told her she was mine.”
I could imagine how it had happened. Whether Marcy was emotionally abandoned by her parents or whether she was simply a spoiled child with a bad case of sibling jealousy, all Iris could see was her own child suffering.
And what had Uncle Will seen? The outcome that he had feared all along, knowing Iris’s unstable mind and a mother’s strong feelings for her child.
“William argued with me when I was pregnant, said the Fairfaxes lived too close.”
I wondered silently why the Fairfaxes weren’t wary of the O’Neill reputation; perhaps the gossip was a more recent phenomenon, or perhaps the Fairfaxes didn’t mix enough with the locals to hear it.
“I thought he meant it would be too painful for me. I didn’t know it would hurt other people.”
I said nothing, unable to respond in a way that would comfort her. I didn’t remember Joanna or the pain her death had caused me as a toddler. The only mother that I remembered loved me still, and I loved her. But Uncle Will’s death cut deep.
“I didn’t tell Marcy who her father was, not while he was alive.”
“Did Audrey know?”
She shook her head no. “Marcy was born here at the house. Since Mick wouldn’t admit she was his child, he couldn’t tell me what to do with her, couldn’t tell the Fairfaxes not to take her. Marcy and Mick never got along. He was hard on her.”
“Maybe he was afraid for her.”
“Of her,” Aunt Iris corrected. “He was afraid of her the way he was afraid of me.”
More afraid, I thought, seeing a selfishness and greed in Marcy that wasn’t in Aunt Iris. I wondered at what point Uncle Will had bought the book Psychosis and the Criminal Mind.
I suspected that it was to understand Marcy rather than Iris.
“When Mick died, a part of me knew that Marcy had done it. Joanna didn’t suspect at first — didn’t know my relationship to Marcy or Mick — she simply wanted to help Audrey. I tried to stop her, but she wouldn’t listen to me. So I told Marcy that Joanna was reading Mick’s psychic signs and she should get out of Wisteria for a while. I never expected she’d kill Joanna. I couldn’t allow myself to think that Marcy would kill someone as sweet and loving as Joanna.”
I swallowed hard.
Iris sat on the edge of her bed, rocking back and forth, hands clasped tightly in her lap. “What could I do? What could I do? I couldn’t bear to lose my daughter, too. And reporting Marcy wasn’t going to bring back Joanna. ‘She won’t do it again,’ I thought. ‘There’s no reason for her to.’”
“But there was,” I interjected. “She’d kill as long as she needed to, to save her own skin.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” Aunt Iris said.
I couldn’t say, That’s okay. I forgive you. I couldn’t say that yet.
“I’m sorry,” she repeated plaintively.
“I know you are. Try to get some rest.”
IN THE DAYS that followed, Zack and I had our hands full. His father had lost more than his wife and their future together: With the information that surfaced about Marcy, Dave’s memories of the person he had loved were destroyed. My aunt lost the daughter she had spent thirty-seven years protecting. As for Audrey, as much as I disliked her selfrighteousness, I felt sorry for her. She lost her “project” in life, the little girl she had helped to raise and the woman she cared for in later years. She also lost her belief that she had known everything about her husband. Zack and I spent every waking moment trying to support the people who had lost so much as well as working with authorities.
The sheriff also had his hands full. With additional police support, traces of Uncle Will’s blood were found in the gazebo. They fingerprinted the smooth, painted rocks that had been placed on my bed in imitation of Audrey’s work and found Marcy’s prints. I would never know whether Marcy was trying to scare me away or had started on a plan to murder me.
Erika was charged with second-degree arson and malicious destruction of property, and Carl and his two friends — the guys who had attacked me — with assault.
Although I didn’t like Erika, it was the three guys I found scary. Their excuse for inflicting pain and threatening serious harm was simply that they were “looking out for their own.” Carl’s two companions were in the process of copping deals, offering information that proved Carl responsible for the earlier harassment of Uncle Will. I guess in their and Marcy’s world, it was every man for himself.
By law, the kids who attended the fire and made no effort to stop Erika were also accountable. The sheriff thought they’d end up with probation — a close monitoring of their school and home life — as well as community service. Mom kept reminding me that it was for the best; they needed their parents to pay more attention to what they were into.
Yes, Mom came. And here’s the really weird thing: She arrived in Wisteria the day after the fire. The night of the fire she awoke with a bad feeling, and for a reason she couldn’t really explain, she started packing suitcases. At seven a.m. she tried to call me, but I had turned off my cell. She tried Aunt Iris’s landline next, but by the time I awoke to answer it, she had given up. Not waiting any longer, Mom put the kids and the dog in the car and started for Maryland. Maybe psychic stuff can bypass genetics; maybe it can work heart to heart.