by Mia Sheridan
Girl.
She ducked around the man who’d given her life against her mama’s will on a dirty cellar floor and walked slowly down the stairs.
Outside, the breeze was cold upon her skin. She looked beyond to the sugarcane fields, heads bobbing in the distance and her heart sank lower. Lower.
If the world were different, maybe she wouldn’t feel this clawing devastation inside, this vast and unending hopelessness. If the world were different, she’d start walking, and she’d keep walking. Beyond the high stone wall that contained Windisle, beyond New Orleans maybe. She’d go somewhere where she’d be free to make her own choices and live her own life. But that wouldn’t happen.
My time away from you has made things abundantly clear . . . When I return home, I will marry Astrid. Surely you can see that anything else is impossible. You must accept your place in the world, Angelina.
Her place in the world—this godforsaken world that would never change—was as ash.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The upstairs bedroom was spacious and luxurious, Jonah’s feet sinking into the thick carpet as he approached the bed where the man lay dying. Chandler Knowles.
Jonah removed the helmet he wore, the one he’d kept on when the housekeeper had answered the front door. When he’d called, he’d let her know he was coming and was surprised to find himself ushered inside immediately, the woman murmuring that Mr. Knowles was expecting him.
Mr. Knowles’s glossy eyes moved over Jonah’s damaged face, and despite being sickly and bedridden, he managed to cringe harshly. Jonah told himself the reaction did not matter. He no longer cared whether this man respected him or not. Didn’t care if he looked at him in horror.
“I wondered how bad it was,” Mr. Knowles said, his voice crackly and raw. He cleared his throat, motioning to the water pitcher on the bedside table where various pill bottles also sat.
Jonah poured a glass of water and handed it to him, and Mr. Knowles raised his head slightly to slurp in a few sips of the liquid.
“Now you know,” Jonah said, replacing the glass on the nightstand. Of course the bastard could have known a lot sooner had he ever visited him, even in the hospital after it first happened. But there’d been radio silence from his firm. Not a word. Not even a fruit basket. What would the card have said anyway? “Hey, sorry your face blew up. Enjoy this lovely banana.”
“I found Amanda Kershaw’s phone,” Jonah said. “I went through it.”
There was a chair near the bed and Jonah pulled it up, sitting down as Knowles digested that information.
“You want to know the truth, I imagine.” The old man let out a wet-sounding cough. “And as for me, I suppose it’s natural for a man to want to clear his conscience when he knows he’s about to meet his maker.”
“I don’t particularly care what your reasons are, but yeah, I deserve the truth.”
Mr. Knowles grunted, a small sound that seemed to carry agreement. “Tell me what you know so I can save what little breath I have left.”
“I went to the warehouse. The club, whatever it is.”
“Ah. Yes, well. I thought they should have shut it down after all that mess.” He sighed. “They didn’t listen to me obviously. Suppose there’s some extra turn-on in the risk of getting caught.”
“What is it exactly? Who were the girls? The men?”
“The girls are drug addicts and runaways who are only too happy to score a hit or two.” He paused. “Did you know that people will do anything for drugs? Anything. Women will give up their own children for a hit. Anything. They steal a person’s soul.”
As if the man lying in front of Jonah knew anything about having a soul. The low-level nausea Jonah felt increased.
“The members are gentlemen who work stressful jobs and long hours and want to let off some steam by participating in activities that their wives would be less than thrilled to know about. Applegate started it many years ago. He hand-chose the members, and it simply provided a very enjoyable extracurricular night now and again.”
Jonah watched the man, digesting the information, feeling sickened. “So basically a group of old pervs preys on the weakness and vulnerability of young girls who’ve taken the wrong path.”
Chandler Knowles laughed and for a moment, he seemed younger before his face collapsed in another grimace and he coughed, patting his chest. “So judgmental. Hence the need for privacy. Exclusivity.”
“Murray Ridgley was a member?”
Mr. Knowles made a distasteful sound. “I never liked that kid. Beady-eyed rat. I told them they should deny his application, but his father was a big to-do in the banking system. Some of the members had loans through him . . .” He waved his hand as if it was enough for Jonah to get the gist. Which, of course, it was. Jesus.
They’d known him. He’d been one of them, part of their sick little club. They’d accepted him because his father was valuable.
“They didn’t listen to me, though,” Mr. Knowles went on, his words broken up in a way that told Jonah, talking so much was taxing him. Just get through this, old man, Jonah thought. And somehow I will too.
He already felt sick, disturbed, overwhelmed. But he forced himself slightly outside his own mind so he could absorb the information, without absorbing the ramifications, and how it all related to him. Not yet. That was for later. He’d been a lawyer. He could compartmentalize with the best of them.
Mr. Knowles glowered. “And then it all went wrong. It was a rule that no one fraternize with any of those girls outside the club. But the little rat didn’t listen. He took them home. He got too rough, choked not just one girl but two.” He waved his gnarled hand. “Just runaways, junkies, but still, we had to cover it up.”
Just runaways, junkies. Jonah’s skin prickled. A tide was rising inside of him, and he tried desperately to hold it back.
“Murray was counseled, tossed out. But he waited for one of the girls to leave, offered her a ride. He didn’t have to be a club member to reap the benefits, see?” One of the girls. Amanda Kershaw. “But she sobered up, got away from him before he could do her any real harm, and that’s when the shit really hit the fan.”
Jonah remained speechless. He felt unable to form words. Mr. Knowles let out another loose cough and then settled back on the pillows. “One of the club members was a former prosecutor. We sent him in to talk to her. She threatened to expose us all, said she had proof, but we were able to talk her down, promise her things. Whores all like things, don’t they? She complied. Agreed to appear unstable on the stand.”
Jonah’s insides felt hollowed out. A setup. It’d all been a setup. “And then the firm stepped in to represent Murray Ridgley. You had to or he’d expose you too.”
Something that looked like ire came into Mr. Knowles’s eyes. “If they had listened to me, and denied that little rat’s application in the first place, none of this would have happened. None of it was my fault. I only stepped in to help after the fact.”
And yet, isn’t this a confession where you’re supposed to take responsibility for your sins? Jonah wondered. Isn’t this an attempt to wipe your soul as clean as possible, you sick bastard?
Mr. Knowles sighed, looking off behind Jonah as though staring into the past. “We told him we’d get him off if he cooperated. Told him we had an ace in the hole, a fiery young buck who was sharp as a tack in the courtroom and would make it all look legitimate.”
Me. Jonah’s chest constricted painfully. He’d been used. Lied to. He’d been a pawn and he’d played straight into their hands. God, he’d thought he was so smart, when all he’d been was an idiotic patsy. Blinded by self-importance and ego. He wanted to laugh, to cry, to scream, but he did none of those things. He’d done a fine job making Amanda Kershaw appear unstable, of convincing the jury, but she’d played right along. All of these years he’d carried that guilt, and she’d known exactly what she was doing.
“What happened afterward?” His voice sounded dull, dead.
Somethin
g that looked like guilt came into Knowles’s eyes. But quite frankly, he didn’t care. Knowles’s gaze flitted to Jonah’s ruined face and then away.
“He always was a loose cannon. We should have remembered that. See, our mistake was that we operated as though we were dealing with someone sane. Ridgley was not sane.”
So Murray Ridgley had held some kind of grudge toward Amanda Kershaw, the woman who’d gotten away from him, and he’d shown up that day to exact revenge. And Jonah had walked right into it.
“Where did my brother come into all of this?”
For a moment Mr. Knowles looked confused, but then his lips thinned. “Your brother worked in the neighborhoods where we found some of the girls for our club. He heard rumors, started asking some questions. Amanda told us he had called her and we told her not to talk to him.” Mr. Knowles shrugged. “Nothing came of it.”
Of course nothing came of it. Amanda had been shot, his brother had been shot, and Murray Ridgley had blown himself to bits. What a stroke of luck that must have been for all those high-status club members. And they still partied on as if lives hadn’t been destroyed that day. As if the innocent simply hadn’t existed.
It was merely collateral damage that Jonah’s face had been scarred beyond recognition, his life ruined. Jonah stood on unstable legs. “Is there anything else?”
“I’ll call you a liar if you say I told you any of this. If I’m not dead by then.”
Mr. Knowles peered at him from beneath bushy white brows. He suddenly seemed small, shrunken, lying there in his deathbed. But Jonah felt small and shrunken too, hollowed out.
He thought of the evidence he had, the blurry photos that could be of anyone, from the phone of a woman who had no credibility. Thanks in part to him. God, it might be funny if it wasn’t so fucking sad.
“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry for what happened to you.”
Jonah regarded the dying man. “It’s worth nothing.” He turned and he left, striding past the housekeeper who raced to show him out the door. He opened it himself as she stuttered a goodbye, her eyes widening on his scarred face before he donned his helmet and walked out into the night.
**********
“Myrtle,” Jonah’s voice boomed through the quiet halls of Windisle. “Myrtle!”
“For Pete’s sake. I’m right here. What’s all the fuss?” Myrtle asked, rushing into the kitchen where Jonah stood yelling for her. Half her hair was in braids, but the other half stood out in a massive puffball on the side of her head. She’d obviously been interrupted mid-braiding session.
“Where did you put the stuff the police gave you after the investigation? My stuff and Justin’s? He had a briefcase that day. A brown one.”
Myrtle looked startled for a moment, her eyes bugging out even more than usual beneath her thick lenses, and then worry transformed her features.
“I . . . I put all that stuff in a box. It’s in the upstairs closet. Wait—”
Jonah tore out of the kitchen, taking the stairs two at a time and throwing the closet door open. He tossed out the coats obstructing his view and pulled out several boxes containing Christmas decorations or some such nonsense, before finding the one he was looking for.
Justin’s briefcase sat at the top and Jonah lifted it carefully, grief washing through him. He ran a hand over the soft, worn leather. There were large splotches of something rusty on it. Blood. His brother’s blood. Jonah swallowed back his anguish and opened the clasp.
There was a stack of papers inside, something pertaining to a case Justin had been working on, nothing of interest to Jonah. Underneath the papers was a yellow legal pad with doodles and small notes on it. He’d scrawled on this thing in court, Jonah remembered. He’d watched him a time or two, wondering what he was writing. Notes to himself it seemed. Random thoughts and small drawings.
Jonah’s eyes moved to a spot near the bottom of the page. In small, concise writing, his brother had written: Amanda Kershaw. No evidence. Next to that was a list of names, some he recognized from the courthouse, including Judge Rowland’s. Men his brother suspected were part of the club?
In smaller writing under that was the name of the law firm Jonah had worked at with several question marks next to it.
And then underlined twice the words that pierced Jonah’s already broken heart: Don’t trust Jonah.
He dropped the pad, leaving it where it was along with the rest of the mess he’d made in the hall. He walked woodenly toward his room.
“What is it?” Myrtle asked, her voice full of motherly concern. But he didn’t answer. Couldn’t. His brother had come to him that day because he’d known something more sinister was happening behind the scenes—or that it was likely—but instead of trusting him, he’d attempted to appeal to some sense of moral righteousness, and then he’d let it go. He had just let it go, and allowed Jonah to go on his merry, ignorant way. He hadn’t even given Jonah the chance to do something that might have altered the outcome.
I just have a feeling . . . you’re choosing a path here, Jonah.
A feeling. Jonah laughed, though the sound was empty. No, he had had far more than that. Far more. He’d been gathering evidence. And then he’d withheld it. Don’t trust Jonah.
Jonah closed the door in Myrtle’s face, her prattling voice muffled as the wood separated them. Jonah stood alone in the empty room for a moment, his chest buzzing with grief, with the enormity of what he’d discovered. Why, why, why?
He fell to his knees, holding his head in his hands as he cried.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“Where are you, Jonah?” Clara murmured to herself, replacing her phone in her pocket after calling him yet again, and once more receiving no answer. What the heck was going on?
At first, the fact that he wasn’t returning her calls had made her feel insecure—was he ghosting her? But now, after two days of utter silence from him, she was beginning to worry.
What if something had happened when he’d been patrolling with the Brass Angels? What if he was hurt? Would Myrtle know how to get hold of her? She told herself that was silly, but it was difficult to convince herself he was just busy, when she knew he was nothing of the sort.
The opening night performance was in three weeks, so they’d been rehearsing constantly, but now it was her day off, and she was dying to see Jonah.
She’d spent the earlier hours of the day cleaning, doing much-needed laundry, and making a visit to Mr. Baptiste, where she bought a basket full of squash and even a small pumpkin to sit beside the plant outside her door. But now, the sun had set and she paced her apartment, too antsy to sit still.
Deciding she had to get out or go stir crazy, Clara called an Uber and decided to pass some time while she waited for Jonah to respond to her umpteenth message by attempting to get the answer to a question that had been burning in her mind since just after she’d spoken to Jonah about Angelina being unable to read.
Twenty minutes later, she was dropped off in front of the shop she’d gone to what now felt like a million years before, the shop belonging to Fabienne.
Clara suspected she didn’t have much talent for fortune telling, but she did seem to be an expert of sorts on charms and curses and the rules pertaining to such things. It was worth a shot, and it would move her worried mind from Jonah for at least a few minutes.
If he still hadn’t called her after this, she’d head to Windisle and seek him out like she’d done before. She had hoped they were past that.
When Clara entered the shop, Fabienne was sitting on the couch she’d sat on the last time Clara had come by, but this time, the baby she’d heard from the background was sleeping in her arms. Fabienne’s eyebrows arched. “I don’t give refunds.”
Clara shut the door, turning toward her. “What?” She shook her head. “I don’t want a refund. Actually,” she brought her credit card from her purse and held it out to Fabienne. “I’d like another . . . reading.”
“A reading?”
“Yes. Like l
ast time.”
“Hmm.”
Fabienne looked away when a man came from the back, shirtless, dreadlocks hanging down his back. His sleepy eyes moved toward Clara and then back to Fabienne. “He asleep?” He nodded toward the baby.
“Yeah.” Fabienne stood, walking the short distance to the man and handing the swaddled baby to him. His full lips tipped as he looked down at the baby and then turned, disappearing into the back room. Clara heard him climbing the stairs beyond.
Fabienne turned back to her. “Two for one.”
“What?”
Fabienne nodded to the chair across from the couch. “I had a two-for-one special going the day you came in. This reading is on the house.”
Clara took the offered chair as Fabienne sat across from her. “That’s nice of you, thank you. I have a question about, um, the afterlife.”
Fabienne leaned back, regarding Clara. “Okay.”
Clara tilted her head, considering the best way to ask the question. “Say someone died believing something that was false. When they passed over, would the truth somehow become clear?”
“You do know I’ve never been dead, right?”
Clara laughed. “I figured. It seemed like you knew a lot on the subject, and maybe you’d be willing to make an educated guess.”
Fabienne toyed with the edge of the couch, running her fingers along the nailheads as if making sure they were all accounted for. “My mama used to say that when a person passed over, all veils were lifted.”
“So . . . they might be able to see the full picture in the afterlife, when they were unable to in this one.”
Fabienne shrugged. “That’s what my mama and my grandmama believed.” She leaned forward. “See, the afterlife is about forgiveness, and you cannot forgive a person if you cannot see the truth cast in every light.”
In every light. Something whispered at the edges of Clara’s mind but drifted away, too thin to grasp.