That really made much more sense. She would have left him a note.
He sat back in his chair and thought back to the night she died. He’d followed her home, tried to get her to talk to him, but she’d refused. He’d even gone to the door, but her mother had shooed him away. But he couldn’t leave, not after Hope had seen what he’d done. He corrected himself, what Faith made him do. He would have never been unfaithful to Hope if Faith hadn’t seduced him.
He leaned forward once again and found the link he’d been looking for. A couple of years ago he’d hacked into the Coroner’s computer system because there was some missing information on a death certificate and he hadn’t reviewed the paperwork until the night before the funeral. Now, he cruised the data, picking up tidbits of information about the deceased members of the community the papers left out.
He searched the system and finally found the report. Scanning the form he hurried down to the comments section.
Subject was a Caucasian woman, sixteen years of age. Cause of death: asphyxiation from hanging. Subject was found by her mother hanging from a heavy duty electric cord…
An electric cord? A vision suddenly flashed into his mind. Faith had come out of the house and walked over to the gardening shed. He nearly came out of his hiding place, thinking it was Hope. But, he realized quickly that it was Faith. He could always tell them apart, even when they were little and looked much more similar. Faith went into the shed and came out with an extension cord.
He hadn’t thought anything of it at the time. He’d always assumed Hope had used a rope. But Faith got a cord! Faith carried it into the house! Faith murdered Hope!
He stood up and started to pace around the room. What could he do? Who would believe him now? It had been twenty years and Faith, well, Faith was a Foley. No one would believe him.
He didn’t care if anyone believed him. He needed to avenge Hope.
Chapter Forty-two
Mary, Bradley and Ian sat at the kitchen table with a white board in front of them. They had outlined the timeline of Hope’s death and the other victims. They also listed all of the pertinent facts they had found in the police reports.
Mary sat back in her chair, took a bite of a gingersnap and shook her head. “I know I’m missing something,” she said. “But I can’t see it. Not yet.”
“It’ll come to you,” Ian said. “You have to stop thinking about it.”
Bradley got up, walked into the kitchen and pulled another Diet Pepsi out. “I have one question for both of you,” he said. “Why? Why would Hope pretend to commit suicide? If the whole thing was a deception gone wrong, what was her point?”
He brought his soda back to the table and sat down next to them.
“Most teens who have tried to commit suicide say they felt they were trying to escape from a situation that seemed impossible to deal with,” Mary said. “They don’t really want to die, but at that moment, they don’t see that they have other choices.”
“There are always choices,” Ian said.
“Sure, that’s easy for you to say,” Mary replied. “But when you’re in the midst of it, the future can look pretty terrifying. They’re not thinking of their choices or what they’d be missing.”
“Aye, and there’s the point,” Ian said. “Instead of playing through and seeing the outcome, we’re trying to cheat the game. All we end up doing is cheating ourselves and our families.”
“You sound like this is hitting pretty close to home, Ian,” Mary said. “Are you okay?”
He sighed and finally turned and faced both of them.
“My father died when I was thirteen,” Ian said. “It was an accident, a horrible accident, and my mother took it very hard. She didn’t talk to me…she didn’t talk to anyone; she would just sit in his study and cry. I lost both my father and my mother. I was alone with my grief and I really didn’t know how to handle it. One afternoon I decided that it would be better to be with my father than my mother, and I grabbed my hunting rifle and went on a walk on the estate.”
“Oh, Ian,” Mary cried.
He sat back against his chair and put his hands behind his head. “I can remember the day like it was yesterday,” he recalled. “The sun was shining, reflecting in the brook that runs through the woods. The birds were singing. The sky was bright blue. And I was determined to die. I walked to the spot my father and I used when we would hunt. It was a quiet glen, hidden away and peaceful. I got out the gun, loaded it and sat down on a large log.”
“And then my father came striding out of the woods behind me,” he said with a sad smile. “He asked me what in blue blazes I thought I was doing and I told him, through my tears, that I wanted to be with him. I didn’t want to be alone any longer. I couldn’t take the pain.”
He took a deep breath. “My father sat down on the log next to me, as he’d done hundreds of times, except this time he was a ghost. He asked me if I knew what it felt like to die and, of course, I said no.”
Ian stopped and chuckled. “I can remember his words so clearly,” he said, lowering his voice a bit deeper and thickening his accent a bit, “Then why in the world would you give up something you know and take a chance with the unknown. What if you don’t like it? What if it’s worse? What have you then? A big waste of your life, that’s what you have.”
“But I’d have none of it,” Ian said. “But I’m so unhappy, I told him. Mother doesn’t love me anymore because she misses you. The lads at school think I’m daft because I can see ghosts. I really don’t fit in here in this world.”
“What did your father say to that?” Bradley asked.
“He put his arm around me. It was a strange feeling, like electricity, but milder. He asked me about the ghosts I’d seen and if all of them were happy and satisfied. I shook my head and told him that no, they were mostly sad and had issues. Then he cuffed me gently on my head and asked me why in the world I thought my problems would go away in death, if the ghosts I dealt with still had all of their problems.”
“I guess he had you there,” Mary said. “I’d never thought of that.”
“I put the rifle down and turned to him,” he continued. “Then what am I supposed to do? I asked him. And he told me that I was supposed to be brave, but know there were going to be times when I felt afraid. I was supposed to love, but know there were times when my heart was going to be broken. I was supposed to look to the future, but know there were times when I would need to reflect upon the past. And when things get too hard to bear, I was just supposed to take tiny steps and look for the little daily miracles that showed me God cares about me and loves me.”
Mary wiped a tear from her eye. “That was profound.”
Ian smiled. “Aye, he had a way with words,” he said. “So, I unloaded the rifle and walked home, with the sun on my back, the birds singing and the sky as blue as a robin’s egg. And when I got home, I was greeted by the local constabulary. It seems my mother had gone into my father’s study and loaded his hunting rifle and taken her own life.”
“Oh, Ian, how could you go on after that?” Mary asked.
“I really didn’t think I could,” he said. “It was like this was a great joke God was playing on me. But I thought about what my father had said and I took tiny, really tiny, steps for a while. Getting out of bed was sometimes all I could accomplish in a day. But, it was a step. I didn’t look too far into the future, because I couldn’t handle it yet. And finally, I could look back on all my tiny steps and realized I had moved forward. I had survived and I could begin to see the little miracles.”
“I don’t know if I could have been as strong as you were,” Bradley said. “Especially when it seemed that God had forgotten you.”
“Ah, and there’s the irony of it. I finally recognized that the very first little miracle God sent me was that very day my mother took her life,” he said. “Because I was out in the woods, speaking with my father, I wasn’t home when she died. I didn’t have to find her or see what happened. I was able to remember her as she had been.”
“Do you really get little miracles every day?” Bradley asked.
Ian smiled and nodded. “Oh, aye, you just have to remember to look for them,” he said. “They’re often little things, but they’re there.”
Suddenly Mary sat up straight in her chair. “The little things,” she repeated. “Ian, you’re exactly right.”
She grabbed the white board and jotted down a list of facts they had gathered over the past few days.
“What is it?” Ian asked.
“I want to work it through in my mind for a bit longer, but Bradley, can you run a background check on Faith Foley for us?” she asked. “I want to know where she went after Hope’s death, what her grades were like and anything else you can find.”
“I’ll do it first thing in the morning,” Bradley said.
“And Ian, you and I are going back to the nursing home in the morning,” Mary said. “I have a feeling that Gloria didn’t tell us all she knew.”
“Okay, you get to be Sherlock this time,” Ian said with a wink.
“The game’s afoot!” Mary replied.
Chapter Forty-three
The old pickup rattled down the street lined with expensive condos whose yards backed into the golf course and the park. Anyone that took the time to look at it would assume a delivery was being made. But most of the residents were too busy inside their homes on the cool spring evening to even take note of it. Nick parked a few doors away from Faith’s condo, out of the glow of a street light and walked up the rain slicked sidewalk.
Knocking on the door, he tapped his foot impatiently while he waited for her to answer it. He had pictured this meeting many times in his mind. In earlier versions, Faith would tell him that she wanted him and had always been jealous of Hope. She would throw her arms around him and beg him to take her. But this afternoon’s rendition had a different twist. Faith had been begging him not to go to the authorities. Begging him not to tell anyone about the cord. She had dropped to her knees, pleading, telling him that she would do anything…anything if he would just keep her out of jail. And then the daydream got even more interesting.
The click of a deadbolt being pulled back snapped Nick back from his fantasy into reality. The door opened and Faith was standing in front of him, even more desirable than he had remembered. He took a deep breath, reminding himself that he had the upper hand. Remembering the lines he used in his daydream.
“It’s been a long time, Faith,” he said.
In his fantasy his voice had been deep and smooth, but somehow it came out breathless and squeaky.
“I’m sorry, do I know you?” Faith asked.
Nick was nonplussed for a moment. That wasn’t the right line.
“Don’t play games with me,” he said. “I know you know who I am.”
She shook her head. “Sorry, no.”
“I’m Nick, dammit, Nick Kazakos.”
She stared at him for a little bit longer. “From?”
“From high school,” he said. “We were together in high school. I liked your sister, Hope, and you tried to seduce me.”
“Really? I tried to seduce you?” she asked, with a quick laugh. “Was I drunk?”
This was not at all the way he had imagined it.
“Listen, I saw you with the cord that night your sister died,” he blurted out. “I saw you take the extension cord from the gardener’s shed and bring it back to the house.”
Faith leaned against the doorjamb and smiled. “Well, why didn’t you say something twenty years ago?” she asked.
“Because I thought Hope’s death was a suicide,” he said, his voice becoming frantic. “But I know the truth now.”
She calmly folded her arms over her chest. “Do you?” she asked. “The truth? And what would the truth be?”
“You killed Hope,” he stammered, spittle collecting on the corners of his mouth. “You did it. They covered it up, your parents. But you did it.”
She smiled at him. “Why don’t you come in Nick,” she suggested, moving away from the door and motioning him into the room. “It seems we have a lot to discuss.”
Chapter Forty-four
Mary opened the door to Clarissa’s room and looked around in the dim morning light. Mike was sitting in the corner of the room, in an easy chair, and Clarissa was sound asleep in her bed, her blankets askew and her pillow on the floor.
“Rough night?” Mary asked Mike as she picked up the pillow and placed it on the end of the bed.
“Yeah, she was a little restless, but no nightmares,” he said. “I think being with your mom did her a world of good.”
“I agree, I’m so glad they all came yesterday,” she said. “I think my brothers wore her out.”
Nodding, Mike got up and stood next to Mary; both of them looked down at the sleeping child. “They made her laugh,” he said. “She needed to be silly. She hasn’t had nearly enough silly in her life.”
Mary glanced around the room. “Did Henry or Becca…”
Mike shook his head, interrupting her. “No, they’ve really moved on,” he said. “You’re her mother now, Mary.”
Mary took a deep breath. “It’s a little overwhelming,” she said. “What if I mess up?”
“Well, I can pretty much guarantee that you’ll mess up, say things you regret later, be unreasonable occasionally and even be cranky,” Mike said. “That’s all part of being a human parent. But the most important ingredient in the mix is unconditional love. Once you have that, you’re golden.”
Mary ran her hand tenderly over Clarissa’s forehead. “Okay, I guess I’m golden,” she whispered.
“Mom?” Clarissa mumbled, her eyes still closed.
Mary looked up at Mike, unsure.
“It’s for you,” he said, stepping back away from the bed.
Hesitantly, Mary leaned over the bed and kissed Clarissa on her cheek. “Good morning, sweetheart,” she said.
Clarissa opened her eyes, took a moment to focus and smiled. “Good morning, mom.”
“How are you feeling today?” Mary asked.
Stretching slowly, Clarissa seemed to be taking inventory. “I think I’m good,” she said, thoughtfully.
“Good enough to go to school?” Mary asked.
Nodding, Clarissa sat up and pushed the covers away. “Yes, because today is gym and art,” she said, “my two favorite classes.”
“Well, then, I suppose you should go,” Mary replied. “What would you like to wear?”