“It made me realize, sweetie, that there are times when sympathy doesn’t really do the trick. You need empathy. You need someone who really has walked a mile in your shoes.”
You’re right, Henry, but how do I find someone else who has killed someone? Killed the husband she loved? And if I did, would it help? Really? And who could Katy find? What child has been through what she’s been through?
Katy was alive. That’s what she kept telling herself. Katy was alive. Holly had spent hours trying to explain to her what had happened: how Jack was sick, how he’d done bad things, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t loved her.
It was so confusing, all of it. Holly couldn’t understand, so how could Katy? She asked so many questions, all of which Holly did her best to answer honestly without terrifying her. What she could never tell Katy was that Jack had tried to kill her. The look of fear and incomprehension and pain in Katy’s eyes when she’d told her Jack was responsible for Henry’s death was terrible enough. She couldn’t go further, tear Katy’s world apart any more than it had been torn already. Henry dead; the man she’d thought was her father dead.
And in the midst of it all, learning from Holly that Jack had lied and that Billy Madison was her father. Which of course meant that Holly, her mother, had lied to her too. The Explorer wasn’t an explorer. The world Katy had lived in her whole life had been blown to smithereens.
“When you feel so tired but you can’t sleep. Stuck in reverse . . .”
Katy was alive: that’s all that mattered. She had time, years and years, to try and cope with the awful things life had thrown at her. Holly would take her to Boston, get her counseling. She’d do everything she could to help Katy through this.
But right now she couldn’t move further than a walk to Henry’s house. Exhaustion overwhelmed her. She couldn’t sleep more than an hour at a time; she couldn’t eat, either.
I killed Jack. I killed another human being. I know I had to but that doesn’t change the fact that I killed someone.
Jack.
Why didn’t you tell me about your past to begin with? Why did you murder Henry instead of leaving, taking off by yourself? And why, really why, did you take Katy?
Everything he said on that island was burned into her soul and yet none of it made sense. Did he love her? Had he ever loved her? If he loved Katy so much how could he possibly want to take her with him to oblivion?
Answer me, Jack.
People tiptoed around her. She didn’t blame them. What could they possibly say? Friends of Henry dropped by to pay their respects. And left as quickly as possible. A few mothers from Katy’s kindergarten came too, maybe to offer support, but it felt more as though they were there to gawp, driven by a gossipy desire to see a cause célèbre. But they never mentioned Jack. No one wanted to, no one could bring themselves to say his name.
Even the police had treated her with kid gloves. They knew Jack Dane had murdered Henry, they established that Jack had bought a knife at Walmart, they found the knife on the ocean floor, ten feet out. Billy and Holly’s stories were identical; they knew, too, from Katy’s short stay in the hospital, that she’d been given a sleeping pill and had had water in her lungs. Plus, of course, they’d delved further into Jack’s past, read all about the killing of the twins. So they weren’t going to make Holly go to jail or to trial. It was a clear case of a mother defending her child’s life, a child who was in the hands of a self-confessed murderer, one who had already killed two children.
Billy was the only one who dared mention Jack’s name. He’d come over a few times, sat down with her in the kitchen, had a cup of coffee. Katy stayed in the living room watching television, but he was good about not trying to push his way into her life. “She needs to get used to me,” he said. “I think she still believes Jack is her father. It will take time.”
“I know I should take her to see someone, a child psychologist.”
“It’s only been a few days since—”
“I know. I can’t do anything right now. I’m so tired, Billy.”
“I bet you are. And you’ll do the right thing with Katy. She’ll be fine, I know she will.”
“I’m not sure. I’m not sure about anything. I need to see someone.”
“It would be a good idea, Holl. Listen, maybe we can all go together. But then the shrink would need to see a shrink. Way too much crazy information. Major overload.”
She almost smiled.
“Why didn’t you tell me about the gun?”
“I don’t know. Honestly. I don’t know.”
“Thank God you had it.”
“Because of Henry. He gave it to me in case I ran over a deer on the road and had to put it out of its misery. He taught me how to use it.”
“Thank God.”
“I wouldn’t have been able to—if he were any further away, I would have missed the second time too.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No. I didn’t.”
He never stayed long, but she was relieved to see him when he came. He hadn’t killed someone he loved, but he’d been there with her; he’d been at her side from the moment they’d found Henry until the end. He knew.
He knew and he didn’t throw any of it back in her face; he never reminded her how stupid she’d been not to listen to him.
“When you love someone, but it goes to waste, Could it be worse?”
“Stop it!” Holly shouted, covering her ears as if the music were blaring from a speaker system on the porch. “Leave me alone!”
He was haunting her. In her dreams, in reality, all the time. Jack was always with her; fragments of conversations they’d had coming back to her, memories of the sex they’d shared, his body melting into hers; images of him alive and laughing, images of him dead, floating on the sea. And that song. That song.
Holly got up. The smell of Henry’s pipe had been embedded in the chair; she breathed it in, trying to capture him.
Were you in pain, Henry? God, please, no. Please let it not have been painful. I love you so much. I’m so sorry. So, so sorry.
When she walked back home, she saw a car traveling down the road toward her.
Oh no, not a reporter. I can’t take it.
The first couple of days had been a zoo. This wasn’t just a local story, it was big news. Huge news, especially in England. The house phone only stopped ringing when she unplugged it. Hordes of reporters tore up and down the Birch Point Road and camped outside her house. She and Katy had had to hide inside until Billy got rid of them all. It was a private road, they were trespassing on private property. He set up a gate at the beginning of Birch Point, a gate with a lock, and made keys for all the residents. He also paid for a security guard to man it. They were no longer prisoners in their own houses, only on the Point. Billy had worked on that, too. He’d had neighbors do their food and essential shopping for them in town.
But whose car was this and what was it doing here? And why was it turning into her driveway?
It pulled in, stopped and a woman got out. She was tall, with silver hair; an older woman. Holly felt herself relax. This wasn’t a journalist, probably a friend of someone on the Point who had gotten lost.
“Hello, can I help you?” she said as she walked up to her.
“I’m looking for Holly Barrett.” The woman shut the car door. She was wearing black linen trousers, a white blouse, a black linen jacket.
“I’m Holly Barrett,” she said, fear punching her in the stomach. The woman spoke in an English accent.
“My name is Eliza McCormack.” She put her hand up to shade her eyes from the sun. “I’d like to speak to you about Thomas Grainger.”
Holly couldn’t move, couldn’t respond.
“I was Thomas’s lawyer. I’d like to speak to you for a few minutes. I won’t take up much of your time.”
“I don’t know. I’m not . . . I’m not—”
“I know this must be hard for you, but I’d appreciate it hugely if you could just give me a fe
w minutes of your time. Please?”
“All right.”
Holly walked up to the door, opened it, and Eliza McCormack followed her inside.
“Thank you very much,” she said as they went into the living room. “And what a lovely house you have. People these days spend so much money and time trying to put their stamp on a house. I think it’s nicer if you let the house put its stamp on you.”
“Thank you.” Everything about this woman made her nervous.
“Do you mind if I sit down?”
“No. Please. Go ahead.”
“I don’t mind.”
Those last words floating across the water just before she pulled the trigger.
Eliza McCormack sat in the armchair Henry had sat in when he’d come over the last time she’d seen him alive.
“Would you like some coffee or something?”
“No, no, thank you. I’m fine.”
Holly sat down on the sofa across from her. Eliza McCormack looked so chic and pulled together, Holly felt suddenly embarrassed by the fact that she wasn’t wearing shoes, had on an old pair of shorts and a T-shirt.
“I should tell you. I came over from London to identify Thomas’s body. I couldn’t come immediately because of a case.”
“What?”
Identify his body? They knew it was Jack. Why . . .
“The authorities needed someone from England, you see. Someone who knew him in his original identity. And of course his parents weren’t about to—”
“His parents?” Holly’s hands flew up in the air. “What do you mean, his parents? His parents are dead.”
“Is that what he told you?”
“Yes. Yes, I don’t—”
“I see. But haven’t you looked him up, read the cuttings? But of course not—you’d know if you had. His parents disowned him. Completely. It was dreadful, but, given those two, not unexpected. I’m surprised though. Don’t you want to know?”
“Know what?” She could feel herself shriveling under this woman’s intense stare.
“All about Thomas. His history.”
“No.” She shook her head. “No.”
“Why not, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Could you please stop saying that?”
“Saying what?” Her eyebrows arched.
“That word—‘mind.’ ”
“I’m sorry, of course I will.”
“It was a private thing between Jack and me. I can’t explain.”
“No need to. This must be so distressing for you.”
Holly nodded.
“And I know you haven’t given any interviews. But I want to assure you that what we say here is strictly between us. I have no interest except a personal one.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’d like to know what happened at the end. I understand it may be painful for you.” Eliza McCormack frowned. “And I don’t want to cause you any pain. But I knew Thomas—Jack—well. He was . . .” She paused. “Special. Intelligent. Thoughtful. He used to say to me he could never have a ‘normal’ life again, but I made him believe he could.
“So you see, I feel responsible for what happened to him. Because I made a tragic mistake. I told him that everything is redeemable, that he could go ahead and live his life and, yes, marry this woman he’d fallen in love with. He had paid his debt to society. He had a right to a life. And I was instrumental in getting him here to America. He’d been hounded, hunted to the ground three times after getting out of jail. He couldn’t possibly live in England.
“It wasn’t easy to get him here, but his life was in jeopardy. Tabloids in the UK offer money to people who spot the so-called ‘villain’; and under the Human Rights Act, Thomas could not legally be denied the right to live freely and safe from torture or inhumane treatment. He was given anonymity in perpetuity and as his was such a serious case, he was granted permanent relocation to another jurisdiction.
“Getting him here to the States, where he wanted to be, well, that was slightly tricky. But speaking hypothetically, of course, the UK government is nothing if not keen to allow the USA to remove its citizens or guests from our sovereign land for the purposes of extraordinary rendition or extradition to the States for criminal proceedings, and with a little help from people with whom I have a fair amount of clout, it may have been possible to come to an agreement with your government to take this endangered, so-called child-killer off our soil in return for, shall we say, the disappearance of some paperwork and perhaps the handing over of a high-priority terror suspect.
“These things can be done on an informal basis. I’m not saying they were, of course, but hypothetically, it’s possible.”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“I’m sorry.” She smiled. “It’s the lawyer in me. We never stop, unfortunately. Anyway, all of that isn’t relevant. What is relevant is my own misjudgment, my mistaken belief that he could put down roots here. I told him, as soon as I received that first telephone call, I told him to get out, to leave. I only wish he’d listened to me. But he loved you too much.”
“He loved Katy, my daughter. That’s what he told me. At the end. He said he couldn’t die without Katy. He wanted her to die with him. He was drowning her when I, when I . . .”
“Is that right?”
“What?”
“I mean, was he actually drowning her when you shot him?”
The question was fired like a bullet straight to her heart.
“Yes. Yes. He had her head underneath the water. He had his hand on her head. I could see. He was drowning her. He told me not to get within ten feet of him or he’d stab her. But he was drowning her. She had water in her lungs when we took her to the hospital afterward.” The words were flying out of her mouth, she needed desperately to speak them. “He was going to kill Katy because he didn’t want her to grow up, or because he loved her too much to die without her. I don’t know. I didn’t understand then and I don’t understand now, but I couldn’t, I couldn’t let him—”
“Did he say anything?”
“What?”
“At the end. Did he say anything?”
“He said, ‘I want you to know something, Holly. I don’t mind.’ ”
She leaned further forward. “So he knew what you were about to do. He wanted you to shoot him.”
“No, no, he said the gun was stupid. I don’t think he believed I’d use it. I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“Holly?”
Neither of them had heard the front door open. Billy was on the threshold of the living room, but the armchair was hiding Eliza McCormack from his sight.
“Holl—what’s going on? Whose car is that outside?”
“It’s my car.” She stood up, turned to face him. “My name is Eliza McCormack. I came to speak to Holly about Thomas—about Jack Dane. And you’re the man who rang me to begin with, aren’t you?” She stepped forward toward Billy as he approached them. “I recognize that voice.”
“Hello.” He looked doubtful as she extended her hand to shake, but he shook it. “I’m Billy Madison and yes, I called you. What’s going on here? Holly, you look really upset. What’s going on?”
“I was just asking Holly a few questions about what happened.” She returned to the armchair, sat down.
“Why?” Billy remained standing.
“Because I need to know.”
“I don’t think you have the right to upset her. She’s been through enough.”
“I don’t mean to upset her, really I don’t. I only wanted to learn what actually happened. You can never trust newspaper reports. At least not in England.” The wry way she said it reminded Holly of Jack.
“He didn’t think I’d use the gun. I’d never even told him I had one.”
“But wouldn’t he be fairly sure you’d use it when your daughter’s life was at stake?”
“What is this, a cross-examination?” Billy came and stood beside Holly, put his hand on her shoulder.
“Perhaps your grandfather might have told him?”
“What’s your point, Ms. McCormack? Who cares if he knew she could shoot a gun or not? He was about to kill our daughter.”
“Of course.” She stared up at Billy with her sharp, light blue eyes. “But I know Thomas. I knew him. He was very intelligent. I suspect he knew Holly had a gun and that she knew how to shoot it and that he wanted her to come to that island and shoot him, kill him.”
“Why?” Billy asked.
“To put him out of his misery.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Billy’s voice had risen. “What misery? That’s absurd. The miserable person was Holly. She’d just seen her grandfather with his chest ripped apart. She’d just found out her husband had murdered two innocent children. And that he’d taken her daughter, our daughter, to an island. And had a knife. How dare you talk to her about Jack’s, or whatever the fuck his name was, misery?”
“I’m sorry for the loss of your grandfather.” Her gaze went back to Holly. “Honestly, I am. But Thomas must have felt cornered, trapped. To do what he did to him. From the age of eleven that boy was trapped. He made a terrible mistake and he paid for it, and he wanted to redeem himself. He told me that he had finally found himself here. That the love of you and Katy was redeeming him. Threatened with the loss of that, well, he did something horribly wrong. But I do not believe he was going to kill Katy. He wanted you to think he was so you would kill him. Why else would he say that, Holly? ‘I want you to know something. I don’t mind?’ He wanted you to know it was all right to kill him. He wanted you to put him out of his misery.”
“Like a deer,” Holly whispered.
“She’s nuts.” Billy squeezed Holly’s shoulder. “Don’t listen to her. She’s nuts. She wasn’t there. She doesn’t know. I saw him too, you know, Ms. McCormack. I saw him start to drown Katy. He was definitely going to kill her. That’s the most far-out, implausible theory I’ve ever heard. What? You think Jack knew we’d find him? Knew we’d get to the island and confront him? Bullshit. He left his car at the bus stop. If he’d wanted us to find him he would have left it at the marina. If he wanted to die so much and be put out of his misery he could have bought a fucking gun in Walmart and blown his head off. He didn’t have to take Katy with him.”
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