All three of us turned at the sound of the door opening. Lily Cavanaugh stood in the doorway. Her face was as blank as a wiped-off whiteboard. Her eyes were sunk into deep grayish circles. They widened as she took in the sight of Stuart and Corina on the couch together. Then her body sagged against the doorframe, her eyes rolling up until only a crescent of white showed. Stuart raced across the room, fast enough to grab her by the shoulders, an instant before she would have hit the floor.
Chapter Seventeen
“Get a nurse!” I said as Stuart eased Drue’s mom onto the couch. I heard feet pounding away—Corina’s, I hoped.
“Can you get her some water?” Stuart asked. I was starting out the door when Mrs. Cavanaugh’s eyes fluttered open. She looked at Stuart, then at me, and her lips started to tremble.
“My baby,” she whispered. I knelt down beside her and took her hand.
“Mrs. Cavanaugh, I’m so sorry,” I said. I could feel her fine bones, frail beneath her skin. “Let’s get you back to your room.”
When she nodded, Stuart and I helped her to her feet and into the room down the hall. When we settled her on the bed, she looked at Stuart from out of her haunted eyes and pulled herself upright. “I want you out of here,” she said, her patrician voice sounding like a whip’s crack. “Out of this room, out of this hospital. I never want to see you again.”
Stuart’s eyes widened, but he didn’t respond. He backed out of the room, shutting the door gently behind him. Mrs. Cavanaugh collapsed back against her pillows, looking old and unwell.
I looked around for water. The bedside table and the windowsill that ran along the side of the room were crammed with white flowers: delphinium and roses, snapdragons and lilies. I wondered if any of them had been meant for Drue’s wedding bouquet.
I finally located a pitcher amid the greenery and blooms and poured a cupful of water. Mrs. Cavanaugh took a sip, grasping the cup with both hands. I settled myself on the edge of the bed. Up close, I could see her hair, with strands of gold and honey and butterscotch, and the tiny scars at her ears and underneath her chin. I remembered how once, in high school, she’d gone to the hospital for a few days. Drue told me that she was getting her face lifted and her saddlebags sucked, and that she was also having some work done down south. “Face, ass, and cooch,” Drue had gleefully announced. You’re lying, I told her, and she’d smirked and said, “It’s called vaginal rejuvenation. Look it up.” At the party, Lily Cavanaugh looked chic, hair and skin and teeth all displaying the sheen of good health and the best products and care money could buy, like she could have been anywhere from forty-five to seventy. Now she looked every year of her age and more.
Mrs. Cavanaugh took another gulp of water and set the cup down. The door opened, and Darshini stood there, holding another plastic water pitcher. Nick was behind her.
“The doctor is coming,” he said.
“Daphne,” Mrs. Cavanaugh whispered, and grabbed for my hand.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, feeling helpless. Looking at Darshi, I mouthed, Mr. Cavanaugh? Darshi shook her head.
“That Stuart,” she whispered, so quietly that I could hardly make out the words. “I knew what he was.” She shook her head again. “But Drue wanted…” Her hand drifted up from her chest, where it had been resting, and wavered, describing a circle in the air. “A big wedding. Press. All of it. She kept telling me it would all pay off in the end.” Her chest rose as she inhaled. “And her father…” A tear slid out of the corner of one eye and inched its way down her cheek, magnifying age spots and tiny wrinkles as it rolled toward her chin. “He got mad at me for spending so much, but he was the one who wanted it to look like a million-dollar wedding. Even though he didn’t have a million dollars.” She gave a dry, coughing sound that it took me a minute to recognize as laughter. “Drue wanted to save him,” she said. “So he’d love her.”
I said, “I don’t understand.”
Mrs. Cavanaugh sighed and slumped against her pillow. “All her life, all she wanted was for her father to love her. But he was busy. Distracted. With work. With all of his women.” Her lips thinned over her teeth. “That’s why we had to leave the place where my family’s spent summers for six generations. My favorite place in the world, and he had to ruin it.” Her hands tightened on the blanket. “The year Drue was five, he got two different au pairs pregnant. Had to pay for two different abortions.” She closed her eyes, sagging back into the pillows. “I should have left him,” she said. “Part of me wanted to. But I wanted Drue and Trip to have a father, even a poor excuse for one. And I knew he’d never leave. My money,” she replied, to the question I hadn’t asked. “Before he lost it all.”
“Well, the good news is that the police are talking to someone,” Darshi said, her voice bluff and hearty, too loud in the close, stuffy room. “At least we’ll know the truth about what happened to Drue.”
Mrs. Cavanaugh opened her eyes. In a not terribly curious voice, she asked, “Who?”
“A woman named Emma Vincent,” Darshi said. “She was on the catering crew.”
I saw Lily Cavanaugh flinch. “Oh, God,” she murmured, and croaked out a choked-sounding laugh as she shut her eyes again. “These cops. My goodness. Emma didn’t do it.”
I blinked. “You know her?”
Lily Cavanaugh gave a brief nod.
“And you don’t think she did it?”
Opening her eyes, she gave me the saddest smile. “Emma had no reason to hurt Drue.”
“One of the guys at the party heard Emma talking to Mr. Cavanaugh the night Drue was killed. She was talking about how she was done waiting; how she’d waited long enough.”
Mrs. Cavanaugh nodded, looking unsurprised. Another tear slid down her cheek, but she didn’t speak.
“Did Drue know…” How was I going to ask this? “Did Drue know that her father and Emma Vincent were together?”
Lily Cavanaugh gave me a curious look before she shook her head. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, honey, no. Emma wasn’t Robert’s girlfriend.” She closed her eyes as a nurse came bustling into the room, frowning as she saw the three of us. “Emma was Robert’s daughter.”
Chapter Eighteen
According to the Internet, there were two Vincents who lived nearby on the Cape: one an E. Vincent, in an apartment in Hyannis; the other a B. Vincent, in a ranch-style house about a mile away from the ocean in Brewster. Nick had offered to stay with us, and Darshi and I had been happy to have him along, navigating and filling us in on Cape Cod geography and socioeconomics. Or at least, I’d been happy about his company, and Darshi had been willing to tolerate it. We had banged on the door of E. Vincent’s apartment, gotten no answer, and moved along.
“The E. Vincent was Emma, so the B. has to be her mom.” I was googling to confirm that the B. Vincent’s house we’d found matched the one that TMZ had described as the place where Emma had grown up with her single mother.
“This must be it,” Darshi said. She’d turned onto a side street, where three vans from three different TV stations, each with a satellite dish on its roof, were parked along the curb. A knot of men and women, casually dressed in shorts or jeans or sundresses, leaned against the center van’s sun-warmed sides, talking or drinking coffee or looking at their phones, while a young woman with wavy blond hair, wearing a snug teal dress with an incongruous pair of running shoes, was using her phone in selfie mode to inspect her makeup. I could feel their stares as we walked up the redbrick path. “Friends of the family?” one of them called. We kept quiet. Darshi knocked on the door. A moment later, a short, gray-haired woman peeked through the window.
I gave what I hoped was a reassuring wave and a friendly smile. “We’re not reporters!” I called. The woman stared at us, then cracked the door open. She wore a zipped-up hoodie and jeans. Her hair was short and gray, cut in a no-nonsense feathered style. A pair of terriers with oversized ears jumped and yapped at her small, bare feet. A basset hound stood behind them, stately as an ocean liner, regarding
us with dolorous, red-rimmed eyes as its ears trailed along the floor.
“Mrs. Vincent?” I said, talking fast before she could shut the door. “My name is Daphne Berg. I’m a friend of Drue Cavanaugh’s, the woman who died in Truro last night. These are my friends Darshini and Nick. We were hoping to speak with you.”
Mrs. Vincent did not seem to have heard me. She was looking past me, over my shoulder, her gaze focused on Nick. As I watched, she raised her hands to her face. Her lips began to tremble, and her eyes filled with tears.
“You’re Christina’s boy, aren’t you?” she asked, her voice low.
Beside me, I heard Nick sigh, and remembered what he’d said about going by his middle name. People here remember what happened. And they talk.
He gave a curt nod. I decided to try to get the conversation back on track. “We’re sorry to bother you. We’re just hoping to talk to your daughter.”
“Oh,” the woman breathed, pressing her hands to her chest. She was still looking at Nick, as if I hadn’t even spoken. “Oh, look at you!”
Darshi and I exchanged a glance. When Darshi widened her eyes, as if to ask What’s going on here?, I gave a small I have no idea shrug.
“Come in,” she said, and swung the door open. The dogs had gone quiet. All three of them were looking up at Nick just as raptly as their owner. Mrs. Vincent’s voice was breathless. “I knew this day would come, but I guess there’s no getting ready for a thing like this. Come in,” she repeated. The three of us crowded into her small foyer, where a mirror hung on the wall above a vase of dried seagrass. I thought she’d launch right into a defense of her daughter’s innocence, that she’d offer an alibi, or excuses, or some rationale: Emma couldn’t possibly have killed her own half sister. Instead, she seemed oblivious to the matter of her daughter’s arrest. She only had eyes for Nick. Her hands fluttered at her chest before she reached up, smoothing Nick’s eyebrows with her thumb, first the left one, then the right.
“I’m sorry,” Nick said, staring down at the woman. “Have we met?”
She smiled. “A long time ago. You wouldn’t remember. But you…” The woman swallowed and pressed her hand to her heart. “I don’t even know how to say it.” She breathed in deeply, then, looking Nick in the eye, said, “You’re my Emma’s half brother.”
“What?”
“Robert Cavanaugh is my daughter’s father. And he’s your father, too.”
* * *
Mrs. Vincent—“Call me Barb,” she said—led us into a small, sunny living room, where a satin-covered couch and love seat were arranged in front of a fireplace on top of the freshly vacuumed floor. Darshi and I had taken the couch. Nick sat alone on the love seat. His hands dangled, his mouth hung slightly open, and his eyes were wide in his pallid face. He looked, as my nana might have said, like he’d been hit by a bus.
“Have you heard from your daughter?” Darshi asked.
Barbara Vincent nodded. “Emma’s still at the police station, but I’m sure she’ll be home soon.” At Darshi’s look, she said, “There’s no way Emma could have killed Drue last night. Emma came home at about two in the morning and spent the night in her bedroom down the hall. She got up to go at just past six this morning. She stays here when she’s catering in Truro or P-town. Saves her about half an hour of driving time.”
“Do you think just your word will be enough?” asked Darshi.
“It’s not just me. She filled up her car on her way home last night, so the fellow at the Cumberland Farms saw her, and then she got a cruller at the Hole in One on her way in, so Maisie saw her there.”
I looked around at the sunny little room. Birch logs sat in the pristine fireplace. Above them stood a mantel lined with pictures of Barbara and her daughter. In the shot closest to me, I could see that Emma had an oval face, light-brown hair, and dark-brown brows that formed peaks in the center, just like Nick’s did. Just like Drue’s had.
“How about Mr. Cavanaugh? Have you heard from him?” I asked.
Barbara nodded. “He came here from the hospital, and he’s gone to the airport.” Straightening in her seat, she said, “He flew in some big-shot lawyer from New York to help Emma.”
“How kind of him,” Darshini said, her voice a little arch. If Barbara noticed her tone, she didn’t react. She only had eyes for Nick. Meanwhile, the subject of her attention was staring off into the distance, looking blank; a GPS system set on “rerouting” after its driver had suddenly veered off course. I wanted to sit next to him, to take his hand. I couldn’t imagine how it would feel, to have never known who your father had been, and to learn his identity after the death of one half sister you never knew and the arrest of another.
“Nick?” I said. “Do you want some water? Or some tea or something?”
“Tea!” said Mrs. Vincent, and sprang to her feet. I followed her into her kitchen, a narrow galley with dark wood cabinets and white Formica countertops that smelled of rosemary and dish soap. Copper pots and pans hung in neat rows from hooks on the wall. A large wooden cutting board rested next to the stove, with a bowl of oranges and lemons beside it. Kitchen needs updating, a real estate agent would probably have said, but even if it lacked fashionable granite counters or stainless-steel appliances, the kitchen was a pleasant room; sunny, thanks to the big window over the sink, and cozy, with a table for two at one end. Wooden letters spelling EAT hung over the pantry, and a painted plaque reading “Bless us with good food, the gift of gab, and hearty laughter. May the love and joy we share be with us ever after” hung on the wall beside the table.
“Emma made that for me, in art class in sixth grade.” Mrs. Vincent filled a teakettle, put it on the stove, and gathered mugs, teabags, a sugar dish, and a cow-shaped pitcher from the cupboards. Her movements were quick and assured as she dropped tea bags into four mugs and poured milk from a plastic quart container into a hole on the ceramic cow’s back. “She made these, too.” She showed me a pair of mugs with rainbows painted on them in a child’s unsteady hand, and one that read I LOVE YOU, MOM, with “love” rendered as a giant heart.
“They’re very nice.”
This earned me a smile. “Em’s a good girl. She’s at CCCS—Cape Cod Community College—now. Still figuring out what she wants to be when she grows up.” When the kettle whistled, Barbara poured boiling water into the mugs and arranged them on a blue and white tray. “I just can’t believe it,” she murmured as she carried the tray into the living room. “Christina’s boy. After all these years.” She took a seat and handed the mugs out, saving Nick’s for last.
“You knew my mom?” Nick asked.
Barbara Vincent nodded. “I’ll tell you the whole thing. Or at least, the parts that I know.” She sat down, smiling faintly, and said, “This was almost twenty-seven years ago. I was working at the Red Inn, in P-town. Robert came in for dinner one night. He’d been set to fly to Boston, then back to New York, but there was a storm. All the planes were grounded, and the chop was so bad the ferries weren’t going out, either. So instead of going back home, he came in and sat at the bar, so he’d be close to the airport in case the fog cleared and the planes started flying again.” Her face softened as she remembered. “I brought him oysters and beer. We got to talking. And that was that.” She lifted her mug to her mouth, wiped her fingertips along one dry, freckled cheek, and shifted in her armchair. I tried to picture her gray hair longer, dark blond or light brown, pulled back in a ponytail. I erased the wrinkles and put some color in her cheeks, and painted her lips pink. Instead of the blocky body underneath the sweatshirt and the high-waisted jeans, I imagined a petite, curvy figure, shown off to advantage in a white cotton blouse with a black apron pulled tight around her waist, tied in a bow in the back. I imagined her laughing, blue eyes sparkling, her head tipped back and her throat flushed.
“I knew he was married,” Barbara said. She was looking down, with one thumb tracing the rim of her mug. “I didn’t have any excuses. He didn’t wear a ring, but that first night, he drove me h
ome, and I saw a booster seat in the back of his car. So I knew. But I was only nineteen, and the farthest I’d ever been off the Cape was a school trip to Washington.” She sipped, and set her cup carefully down. “When you’re nineteen and an older man, a handsome, powerful, rich man, tells you that you’re the prettiest thing he’s ever seen, and that his wife doesn’t understand him and that they’re getting a divorce, you want to believe it.” She sighed. “You want to believe that you’re special enough to catch the attention of a man like that.” Her mouth quirked. “When I got pregnant, he told me it was my choice, and that if I wanted to keep the baby, I could. He swore he’d be divorced by the time she was born, and that we’d be together.” She turned to address Nick. “It wasn’t until I saw you and your mom in the Stop & Shop that I finally figured out how he was playing with me.”
At the words “you and your mom,” Nick gulped. Barbara reached across the coffee table, took his hand, and squeezed it.
“People on the Outer Cape knew Christina. Knew her family, I should say. When your mother, God rest her soul, showed up in Truro pregnant, with no husband, no boyfriend, people talked. But I didn’t realize that Robert had been…” She paused for another sip of tea. “…had been her boyfriend, too, until one day, when Emma was a baby, I went to do my marketing. You must’ve been two or three, and Em was only six months old, but I could see.” She stretched toward Nick, extending her arm, and, with one thumb, gently touched his eyebrow again. “Just like Emma’s. Your hands are even the same shape!” Barbara’s face was soft and sorrowful, lost in memory. “By then, I had a pretty good idea that there wasn’t ever going to be a divorce. And then, when I saw you, I knew for sure. I was just another one of his girls.”
Nick was looking pale and holding himself very still. “And you’re sure Mr. Cavanaugh—you’re sure he’s my father?”
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