Edgewater (31 page)

“That's enough,” Victor Underhill said. “Let's everyone clear out.”

“Who gave you money?” I asked.

“The senator. And now he's gone. Where will I get the money now?”

“No shit,” Brian said. “You were getting kickbacks from Senator Copeland?”

“Are you saying my husband was paying you for something each month?” Julia asked.

“Don't concern yourself with this,” Victor Underhill said. “This woman is clearly out of her mind.”

“Because of the other car,” Gigi said.

“What other car?” Julia asked.

“Julia, I'm taking care of this,” Underhill said.

“There was another car,” Gigi said.

“That's enough. It's time for you to leave. Security, please escort these people out immediately.”

“Now, wait a minute,” Tim Blum said. “There
was
another car found off the Point. The divers discovered it when they initially
went down. It was pulled up twenty minutes ago. Said it looked like it'd been down there for quite a while.”

“A white Mercedes,” Gigi said.

“It was a Mercedes,” he said. “The color was no longer apparent.”

“I don't understand what's going on,” Julia said.

“She saw the car on her way over,” Victor said. “You heard the officer—they just pulled it up.”

“Your husband,” Gigi told Julia Copeland. “He drove us home one night. There'd been a party, and he insisted.”

“My dad drove you home?” Charlie asked me.

“No,” I said. “I've never been in a car with him in my life.”

“Not Lorrie,” Gigi said.

“Then who?”

Gigi didn't answer. Julia had crossed to Charlie's side and was holding on to his arm. I couldn't tell if it was to comfort him or if she felt she needed his protection.

“It doesn't matter,” I said. I pulled on Gigi again, trying to urge her toward the door.

“Lorrie,” Lennox said. She'd raised a finger the way she did when she was figuring things out. “He thought you were your mom,” she said.

“He was confused,” Charlie broke in.

“He told you he was sorry for the accident,” Lennox went on, to me. I felt Charlie looking at me, but I couldn't look back. Now he knew I'd told Lennox, even though he'd asked me not to tell anyone. My shame deepened. Every feeling I had deepened.

“What about the accident?” Susannah asked.

“I'm not supposed to say,” Gigi said. She looked at Julia Copeland, imploring her with her eyes. “I won't say anything else. Please.”

“Don't you see, Lorrie?” Lennox asked.

I held up a hand as if to stave off her words. I was afraid to hear what she had to say.

“Franklin Charles Copeland Junior,” she said. “
Junior.
The one from your mom's diary.”

“Oh God.”

“Mom had a diary?” Susannah asked. I didn't respond. “Lorrie!” Susannah said. “Mom had a diary?”

“It was in the attic.”

Lennox nodded to herself. “And that other car,” she said. “I think maybe your mom was in it.”

“Yes,” Gigi said. Her voice was a wail. “Yes . . . she was.”

“Was there someone in the second car?” Julia asked Tim Blum.

“There's not much to identify after so many years in the ocean,” the officer said, “but we do have reason to believe there were people in the car.”

“Not my mom,” I said. “She's in London. She moved there with her boyfriend twelve years ago. It was my aunt's birthday. Mom left my sister and me with a babysitter, and she and Nigel and Gigi came to a party here at the Compound. She never came back.”

The words echoed in my head:
She never came back.

“Twelve years,” Blum said. “That sounds about right.”

“No,” Susannah said. “We got cards on our birthdays. Holidays, too.”

Gigi was back on her knees, not begging, just crying.

“Oh my God, it was
you
,” I said. “It was you, this whole time. You knew she was dead, and you gave us those cards and said they were from her.”

Gigi pressed her palms against her eyes. “She was my sister,” she said. “I knew her handwriting as well as my own.”

“But they had little drawings on them. A mom in the middle of two little kids, just like she drew on the notes she left in my lunchbox every day.”

“The first note I wrote, you mentioned that the drawing was missing. From then on, I drew it.”

Brian was shaking his head in wonder. “I don't believe this,” he said.

“I did the best I could!” Gigi wailed. “I did the best I could.”

“Oh my God,” Lennox said. “Oh my God. I'm so sorry, Lorrie.”

Mom had never taken the Eurostar to eat chocolate croissants in Paris.

She'd never strolled through Hyde Park in her Wellington boots, sharing a big umbrella with Nigel.

She'd never had breakfast in Piccadilly Circus or grabbed a bite to eat in a pub. She'd never watched the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace.

She'd never even made it out of town.

“He told me this was for the best,” Gigi cried. “He said he'd take care of me, and he'd take care of the girls. It'd be easier for them if they didn't have to grieve for their mom, and they'd want for nothing.”

“Who?” Julia asked.

“The senator!”

“No. It can't be,” Julia said.

“But, Mom,” Charlie said, “yesterday Dad said—” His voice caught. “Lorrie said he told her that he knew her mother.”

“Julia, I assure you, this has nothing to do with you,” Victor Underhill said.

“I think the authorities need to make that determination,” Tim Blum said. “I'm calling for backup. In the meantime, I'll take these folks in for questioning.”

The voices were coming to me as if through a fog, so far away. I was breathing hard. I couldn't speak. I couldn't catch my breath. From somewhere far away, a deep wail filled the room. Lennox had stepped up to me, and her arms were around me, holding me up, holding me still.

23

TRUER THAN THE TRUTH

IT TOOK THE POLICE A HALF DOZEN INTERVIEWS
with Aunt Gigi to piece it together, what had happened that night.

There'd been a party at the Copeland Compound. The Copelands had had parties before, of course. But Gigi herself had never been invited. This time, she was. Practically all of Idlewild had been. Mom had already made plans to celebrate Gigi's thirtieth birthday at Edgewater with Susannah and me, and she told Gigi she didn't want to go to the party. But since Gigi was the birthday girl, it was her vote that mattered. So Mom agreed to hire a babysitter. She brought her new boyfriend, Nigel, to Idlewild for the first time. He'd be Mom's date to the party.

Maybe Mom had wanted to make the senator jealous because he wouldn't leave his wife for her; maybe she'd wanted
to show him that she'd finally moved on and there were no hard feelings. Likely it was something in between, but we'd never know, because the only person who could tell us had been dead for over a decade.

Gigi hadn't known anything about it at the time, because she hadn't known that Mom and the senator had had any kind of relationship. She hadn't even known they'd ever met before. All she knew was that there was a party at the Compound, on her birthday. A sign that the universe wanted her to have an extra-special celebration. She wore a new dress that she'd bought just for the occasion, and tucked her little poodle, Katie, into her bag, her date for the evening. There were passed hors d'oeuvres, and Katie got to taste duck confit and caviar and even a tiny sip of the specialty cocktail Gigi was drinking—champagne-infused Christmas punch. It was a Christmas-in-July party, and there were lights in the trees and ornaments everywhere. At the end of the party, guests were told they could choose an ornament to take home and put on their own trees on the real holiday.

The only part of the night that hadn't been perfect was that they hadn't had a chance to speak to the senator or his wife. Gigi didn't want to leave without thanking them for a wonderful night—it wasn't polite, she said. But the Copelands were nowhere in sight, and Mom insisted it was time to go.

They'd almost reached the front door when suddenly, like magic, the senator appeared in front of them. Mom didn't have much to say, but Gigi gushed enough for them both about what a spectacular evening it had been, even though she hadn't seen her cake at the dessert buffet. She'd worked so hard on it—three-tiered
with buttercream icing and, no doubt, delicious. But the drinks were amazing, Gigi said. She just loved specialty drinks at a party. She told the senator she'd lost count of how many she'd had.

Nigel had also had a lot to drink, and he slurred his words when the senator asked him if he, too, had enjoyed the party. That was when Franklin Copeland offered to drive them home. He said he could get them home safely because he'd had only two drinks over the course of the night. A claim that Julia Copeland, when she was called in for questioning, would corroborate: The senator had a two-drink rule for himself when it came to social events. He always wanted to maintain control. It was a rule he abided by until the day he died.

Mom said the ride home wasn't necessary—it wasn't far at all, and she had also limited herself to two drinks, and besides, what would they do about her car? The senator said he held his liquor better than my mother did. Gigi had no idea how he knew that, but it didn't matter to her. She brushed Mom off and said they'd love the ride and she'd come back in the morning for Mom's Volvo herself. The senator led them to his white Mercedes, and Gigi got to sit in the front passenger seat. Mom and Nigel were together in the back. They cruised down Break Run. Gigi had rolled her window down and let Katie out of her purse, because even a poodle should get to experience the pure, unadulterated joy of being in a car driven by Senator Franklin Copeland, with the sea breeze ruffling her fur and the ocean roaring in her ears.

But then . . .

But then Katie jumped across the divide, into the backseat.
Gigi twisted around to retrieve her. Katie was on Mom's lap, wagging her tail. Nigel had nodded off, though they'd only been in the car about five minutes. And Mom was sitting there, oblivious to Katie, her eyes lasered in on the rearview mirror.

Maybe it was because it was dark, and the curve in the road near the Point was too hard to see. Maybe it was because Katie jumped back, and when Gigi reached around to get her, she knocked the senator's elbow on the gearshift.

Maybe it was because he was returning Mom's fixed gaze.

There was a smash, metal on metal, harder and louder than anything Gigi even knew was possible. They went through the guardrail and hit the water with the same force, the same sound. Water rushed in, and the car filled up fast. The water was as cold as ice, and Gigi tried to keep her head up, where there was air, but she was sinking down, freezing. The senator grabbed her hand and pushed her through a window. The headlights of the car flickered off, and the ocean was as dark as a cave. Gigi kicked and kicked but couldn't tell if she was moving up or down. Finally her head broke the surface, and she could breathe again. And the senator helped her swim to shore.

He went back under and tried to get Mom and Nigel—and Katie, too. But it was too late. So he sent Gigi home with instructions to stay quiet. Not to tell Susannah or me what had happened to our mom. Not to tell anyone. He had a guy who could fix anything, he said. And his guy would repair the guardrail and arrange for it to look like Mom had moved away with Nigel. He'd get rid of Mom's car and clean out her apartment. He'd explain it all to whoever needed to know these things. He'd take care of everything.

Susannah and I wouldn't have to grieve the death of a parent. The senator told Gigi it'd be easier that way. And he said we'd always be taken care of. He wired the first payment into her account the next day.

Just before sunset on the day after Gigi's thirtieth birthday, she walked Susannah and me over to the Point. She told us to pick puffer flowers and blow wishes into the water. Gigi ran her hand along the rail. She couldn't find the part that was new. It looked the same as it always had.

“I think right then,” Gigi said, sitting on an old, scraped-up wooden chair, at an old, scraped-up wooden table, in a back room of the Idlewild Police Precinct, “that's when I started to believe that the story was true. That this was actually Danielle's plan, to run off with Nigel and leave the girls behind with me. You tell yourself a story for long enough, it becomes truer than the truth itself.”

Tim Blum wrote it all down and filed his report.