We rose, and I gave her a goodbye peck on the cheek.
“Okay if I stick around a little longer?” I asked Nana.
“Of course. Be right back.”
Grateful for a few minutes to clear my head, I practiced how I was going to say what I’d come here to say. By the time Nana returned from seeing Aunt Cissy to the door, I had it all worked out.
“Something to drink, dear?” she asked, but before I could reply, she called out to the cook to bring us two coffees.
“After that,” I said in a low voice, “maybe you could tell her to take off for a while? We need to talk. In private.”
Looking curious, Nana nodded and gestured toward the sitting area, so we resettled there and made small talk until we had our cups and the woman had been sent out on some errand.
“Is everything all right?” Nana asked once we were alone. “You haven’t crashed the new car, have you?”
I was so surprised by the question I actually laughed. “No, of course not.”
“Good. Well, then. What is it? By the look on your face, it’s no small matter.”
I set down my coffee, took a deep breath, and forced myself to begin. I started by saying how, over the past year and a half, I’d learned a lot of important things about myself, including the fact that I was a habitual liar. “I used to lie sometimes even when the truth would’ve done just as well. It’s a habit I got into when I was using, but I’ve been working really hard to change.”
“That’s wonderful, dear. So is this one of those step things?”
“Step things?”
“You know, the twelve steps? Isn’t one of them about making amends or something?”
I sat back, running a hand through my hair. “Yes, but this isn’t a step thing. It’s a… family thing. Specifically, a Granddad thing.” Swallowing hard, I met Nana’s eyes as I continued. “I have a secret I’ve been keeping for most of my life. But if I want to keep healing and growing, I can’t keep this secret any longer. The time has come for me to share it—with you first, but then with others too.”
“I agree. The truth is always best, even when it’s difficult.”
“Exactly.”
“So what is it that you need to confess, dear? I’m sure there’s nothing you could’ve done to your grandfather that would’ve made him love you any less.”
My eyes widened. “No, Nana, it’s not something I did to him. It’s something I saw him do. In June of 1995 when I was six years old.”
Pulse surging, I trained my eyes on the plush Turkish rug and kept going.
“The Thursday of that year’s family reunion, a few hours before it started, you sent Granddad on some errands in town, and he let me ride along. While we were out, we ran into someone who seemed to know him.” I swallowed hard, remembering the scene as if it had happened yesterday. “It was a man, and he was angry. The two of us were just coming out of the florist’s, and Granddad was carrying a big flower arrangement, so his hands were full. I think if they hadn’t been, the guy might even have punched him. He was that mad.”
“Who was it?”
“I didn’t know. I’d never seen him before. But he started yelling at Granddad, right there in the parking lot, saying things like, ‘You’re lying to me!’ and ‘You’re trying to trick me!’ and ‘You’re in cahoots together!’ Granddad told him to calm down, and then he put the flowers in the car, pulled out some money, and handed it to me. We were in that strip mall with the ice cream parlor, and he told me to go get myself whatever I wanted and he’d be there in a minute. So I did. But the guy started yelling again before I even got inside.”
I glanced at Nana, but she was simply sitting there, her hands clasped in her lap as she waited for me to get to the point. She probably thought it had been one of Granddad’s golfing buddies, mad about a game, or a business acquaintance, angry for having been bested in some deal. I continued.
“I sat inside the ice cream parlor and ate my cone—a double scoop—and I was nearly finished with it by the time Granddad finally showed up. I remember thinking he seemed really upset, and he didn’t even want any ice cream for himself. On the drive home, I asked him what that man was so angry about. I don’t remember his answer, but it wasn’t any sort of explanation. I think he just said the guy was confused but not to worry because he was leaving town and wouldn’t bother us anymore. I didn’t think about it again the rest of the day.”
Feeling antsy, I stood and moved over to the wall of windows and looked out at the rolling landscape of the estate. It was so beautiful here, so peaceful, but it had also been a place of tremendous shock and pain.
“The reunion started that evening with dinner, and I was happy to be with the cousins. I think the four of us played for hours. We played all the next day too, running around at the reunion and enjoying the activities. Then on Saturday, we decided to take a hike in the woods next door to our favorite place, the old cabin where we liked to play house.” Two squirrels scampered from a tree and chased each other for a moment before disappearing up another. “But that was the year of the incident. The dead body and the police and everything. It was all so traumatic, such a shock, I could barely process it. And I was only six.”
“Yes, so young,” Nana murmured.
“The aftermath is such a blur. There was a lot of confusion, but I do remember realizing that no one believed us. I was so surprised that I went over to Granddad to tell him an important part so that at least he would know we were telling the truth. Instead, as soon as I said it, he got really mad. He picked me up and carried me into the house and set me down in the office and shut the door. Then he made me promise I would never repeat it again to anyone else, ever. Not my sister, not our parents, not the police. No one. ‘This will be our little secret,’ he told me. ‘You have to take this to the grave, Nicole. Promise me you’ll never tell a soul what you just told me.’ And so I promised. And I kept that promise… until now.”
Turning, I looked at my grandmother’s face, not sure what to expect. Skepticism? Anger? Dismay? But she might as well have been a statue for all the emotion she was exhibiting.
“And what exactly did you promise not to share?” she asked stiffly.
“That the man in the cabin, the one who’d been murdered? He was the same man Granddad had argued with in town two days before.”
That night, when I shared the secret with Maddee, she was furious—not at me but at our grandfather. She ranted around her little apartment for ten minutes, saying things like, “You were only six years old! How dare a grown man ask a little girl to keep a secret like that, especially after what we’d been through?”
I let her rant, taking delight in her reaction. The things she was saying were true, but I’d never let myself think them before, much less utter them aloud. With every exclamation, I could feel little pieces of myself healing inside. I don’t think she had any idea how much her righteous indignation on my behalf was helping me.
“And then there’s Nana!” she cried, returning to the couch and plopping down across from me. “What did she say again when you told her?”
I tilted my head back against the cushion and closed my eyes. “She said, ‘All right, then. I only ask one favor, that you don’t report this to Detective Ortiz until after I’ve had a chance to speak with my lawyer.’ ”
“That was it? No, ‘You poor thing,’ no ‘I’m so sorry he did that to you.’ None of that?”
“Nope. She got up from the couch, told me to take the box of pictures, and walked me to the door. ‘I’ll speak with him in the morning, and then you can do whatever you feel compelled to do. I won’t stop you.’ ”
“ ‘I won’t stop you?’ Who says that?”
I opened my eyes and peered at my sister. “Do you think she thinks…” Unable to say the words, my voice trailed off.
“Thinks what? That Granddad had something to do with…” She couldn’t quite get them out either.
We grew silent for a long moment.
“Th
ere’s no way Granddad killed Taavi Koenig,” I said finally, refuting the fear that had plagued me for years. “No way.”
“Not even in self-defense? You said the man was really mad when y’all saw him in town on Thursday afternoon. What if Granddad arranged to meet at the cabin on Saturday morning so they could talk, and the guy attacked him?”
“Well, first of all, why would he choose to have a conversation there? The place was totally ramshackle even then, not to mention way out in the woods. If Granddad needed to speak with the guy in private, he would’ve just brought him to his office.”
“Maybe he didn’t want anyone to see them together.”
“Oh, right. Like he and Granddad could’ve slipped into the woods unnoticed during a Talbot reunion? Are you kidding? With two hundred and something people milling around on the lawn? No. I don’t buy it.”
“Well, there are other ways to get to the cabin, you know.”
“There are?”
“Sure. There’s a path in from the other side. And another one that comes up from the river. How do you think the body got removed without anyone seeing? They took it out some other way.”
Of course they did. I felt dumb for never having realized that before.
“So what do you think any of this means?” Maddee asked. “Do you have a theory? I know you must’ve thought a lot about it over the years.”
I sat up and leaned forward, elbows on knees, and shook my head. “Um, I spent years specifically not thinking about it. I buried it however I could, using whatever I could.”
Maddee didn’t respond, and when I glanced at her a minute later, I was surprised to see tears running down her cheeks.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, wiping at her face with one sleeve. “So, so sorry he did this to you.”
I wanted to wave it off, to say it was no big deal. Instead, I swallowed back tears of my own and simply reached out, whispered a gruff thanks, and took my sister’s hand.
The next morning, I awoke feeling about a hundred pounds lighter than I had in years. After Maddee and I talked the night before, we’d called Renee and Danielle and told them everything. I guess the truth really does set you free.
My first day on the job went well, even though the equine therapy department was closed on Tuesdays. There was still plenty to get done, and it felt good to work hard. School was so brain-centric and sedentary, I’d forgotten how nice it was just to focus on physical tasks. Better yet, a summer of this much lugging and lifting and walking would totally keep me in shape for volleyball and then some.
Fortunately, my coworkers all seemed real friendly, and I had some nice moments with the horses as I tended to them. One, a chestnut Arabian named Hutch, nickered every time he saw me. I decided I could live with working here.
I never ran into Tattoo Cowboy even once, thank goodness, though I found myself looking around for him now and then. Maybe we really would make it through the summer without much interaction—which was a good thing, I reminded myself sternly.
That theory was blown by noon of the next day, however, as I’d already encountered the guy about ten times. Not only was he even hotter than I remembered—looking especially buff in black hat, black T-shirt, and jeans—he was also apparently the boss. Though I didn’t work directly under him, it seemed to me that he was pretty much in charge of everyone here. People weren’t exactly chummy with him, but they did seem to respect him.
He was friendly enough in return—to everyone except me. First thing that morning, he’d come through and introduced himself to all the newbies as Nate Harrison, but when I responded, “Nicole Talbot, nice to meet you,” he hesitated.
“Nicole Talbot. You’re the intern?”
“Yep. That’s me.”
For some reason, his smile faded. After an awkward moment’s hesitation, he simply moved on to the next person. Odd. Did he have something against interns or equine therapy?
I thought I might find out when I headed over to the therapy area after lunch to observe my first session and then assist with several others. But between the work and all the people who were around, I never had a chance to chat with the therapist one-on-one. As before, she was a woman of few words, though I could tell she really knew what she was doing with the clients. Over the course of the afternoon, we saw a nice variety—a little girl with anxiety issues, a teenager who struggled with anger management, two different veterans with PTSD, and even an older woman with dementia. In almost every case, I was surprised to find that these people never actually rode the horses as part of their therapy. Instead, they worked with them from the ground.
My favorite was the teen boy, who was given a lead rope and told to go get one of the horses and bring it back. He headed out into the field with attitude to spare, his movements aggressive, his demeanor the very opposite of what a horse might respond to. For fifteen minutes the kid tried everything from yelling at the animals to chasing them to standing still and then pouncing as they drew closer. Nothing worked. I thought the therapist might intervene at some point, but instead she just kept watching until he finally seemed to get that no animal was going to respond favorably to that kind of behavior. Not a horse—and not a person either. As the boy finally calmed down, he changed his technique and eventually managed to lure one of the animals over with sweet words and a gentle touch. Success at last. As he clipped the rope to his equine buddy’s halter and easily led him back toward us, the kid was beaming from ear to ear.
At the end of the day, once I’d showered and changed, I headed straight to the police station, where I was to meet up with Maddee and go to the appointment she’d arranged for us. On the way, I found myself growing terribly nervous about the fact that I’d withheld this information for so long. I even wondered if I might be hit with some sort of obstruction charge. I hoped not, considering that I’d only been six years old when it happened.
As it turned out, I needn’t have worried. Once we were settled in with the detective, the first thing she said to us was that she already knew the big news, thanks to a visit from our grandmother and her lawyer.
Maddee and I looked at each other, astounded.
“She told you about what happened?” I asked. “About Taavi Koenig arguing with my grandfather two days before the guy ended up getting murdered?”
“Yes. Your grandmother said she knew I would need to speak with you directly, but that she wanted to tell me about it herself, in person, beforehand.”
“Why?”
Ortiz shrugged. “I think she was worried about how it might come across and wanted to vouch for your grandfather’s character before I drew… certain conclusions.”
Wow. My grandmother was nothing if not surprising. Between the new car and this shocker, the woman had thrown me two massive curveballs in one week. The first one was good of course, but the second one… well, I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know what to think, and from the expression on my sister’s face, neither did she.
Despite having heard it from Nana, Detective Ortiz had me go through the whole story myself several times. The first time through, she just listened, but as we went over it again, and then again, she would stop to ask me questions, weird ones about various details, some of which I could remember, but most of which I could not. By the time I was finished, it almost felt as though I’d relived it all.
After that, Ortiz put away her notes in what I assumed was the case file, though it was lot fatter than it had been the last time I saw it a year and a half ago.
“I’ve been in touch with the Koenigs,” she said, shifting gears, “because this news begets new questions. Unfortunately, neither the victim’s wife nor his kids could shed any light on the encounter between the two men.”
“Big surprise there,” Maddee said, and then she turned to me to explain. “By the time Taavi disappeared, his family had completely divorced themselves from his obsession with the illuminated manuscript. If he told them anything about what he was doing or where he was going, they don’t remember it. T
he more anxious he became, the less they wanted anything to do with it.”
“Well, they’re certainly interested now,” Ortiz said, “and they have been ever since they learned of his fate.”
I nodded, remembering how Maddee had gotten Miss Vida to track down the name and identity of the victim based on the DNA report of the blood found in the cabin. That had all happened when I was living with Maddee the last time, between my accident and rehab.
“In fact,” Ortiz continued, “it sounds like Gabe might be coming here again.”
“Gabe?” I asked.
Maddee nodded “Whenever there’s been a new development in the case, Taavi’s son Gabe has dropped everything and come running.”
“All the way from Cleveland? Why? What does he want?”
“He’s just frustrated at the lack of progress,” Ortiz answered. “I think it helps him to feel more involved if he’s able to see things firsthand. If he does come this time, he’ll probably want to speak with you directly, Nicole, to hear the story of what happened from your point of view. May I put him in touch with you if he does?”
“I don’t know. Is that a good idea?” I looked from her to my sister.
“He’s kind of a hothead, but he’s all right,” Maddee offered. “You can’t help but feel sorry for him. He spent twenty years wondering where his father went and why he never came back. Once he learned that the man’s life ended shortly after he disappeared—and that he was murdered no less, not to mention his body subsequently vanished—he’s been desperate for more answers. You can’t blame him.”
“It’s up to you whether you’d want to meet with Gabe or not,” Ortiz said. “There’s no pressure if you feel uncomfortable with it. And he may not come. You never know.”
“If he shows up, you can give him my number,” I said. “I’ll talk to him if it’ll help him feel better.”
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