Chapter 6 - THE LIE BENEATH THE LOVE
Adrian looked at Claire for several seconds.
“All of it after hello.”
She almost slapped him.
The irony stopped her.
Instead, Claire laughed.
A small, broken sound.
“That's supposed to help?”
“No.”
“At least you know that.”
Dominic stepped away, giving them space.
Claire wished he hadn't.
Anger was easier with an audience.
Without one, she could see the regret in Adrian’s face.
“I approached you because I believed Margaret knew what happened to my father,” he said.
“So I was evidence.”
“For approximately twenty minutes.”
Claire stared at him.
Adrian almost smiled.
She hated that she remembered the exact twenty minutes.
The bookstore.
Coffee across the street.
Her complaining about rent.
Him pretending not to know the difference between a latte and a cappuccino.
“When did that change?” she asked.
“You laughed at my shoes.”
Despite herself, Claire remembered.
“They were ridiculous.”
“They were handmade.”
“They were purple.”
“They were burgundy.”
“They were purple.”
A breath of almost-normal life passed between them.
Then Claire remembered where they were.
“After twenty minutes, what?”
“I wanted to see you again.”
“And my mother?”
“I didn't contact Margaret until six months later.”
Claire frowned.
“She knew who you were?”
“She knew immediately.”
“Why didn't she tell me?”
“Because she realized I wasn't using you anymore.”
“That's convenient.”
“Yes.”
His willingness to accept her anger made it more difficult to hold.
Not impossible.
Just difficult.
Dominic picked up the photograph of Adrian and Julian.
“If you were investigating North Harbor, why make a deal with Julian?”
“Because by then Claire mattered more than the investigation.”
Adrian looked at her.
“I stopped.”
Claire blinked.
“What?”
“I stopped looking into your mother. I stopped looking into Celeste's death. I stopped chasing North Harbor.”
Dominic looked stunned.
“You abandoned the investigation into your father's death?”
“Yes.”
“For Claire?”
“Yes.”
Claire did not know what to do with that.
She had spent years telling herself Adrian loved power more than anything.
That belief had helped her leave.
Now the floor beneath that memory was shifting.
Mason spoke quietly.
“There’s something else.”
Claire turned.
Mason removed his father's old wallet from his pocket.
From behind a photograph, he pulled a small brass key.
“I found this after he died.”
Dominic looked at it.
“What does it open?”
“I never knew.”
Arthur stared.
Then pointed toward the cabinet.
“Not here.”
He looked toward the staircase.
“But Celeste had a private desk in the old members' reading room. We never removed it.”
They went there immediately.
The reading room had not changed much in twenty years.
Dark shelves.
Green lamps.
Leather chairs.
At the far wall stood a narrow mahogany desk.
Dominic tried the brass key.
It fit.
Inside the locked drawer was no stack of incriminating papers.
Only three objects.
A rosary.
A cream-colored envelope with no writing.
And a small cassette tape.
Arthur stared at it.
“We kept dictation machines behind the bar in those days.”
Claire picked up the envelope.
Inside was another photograph.
Margaret, Celeste, Thomas Cross and Peter Keane seated at a table.
Four people whose lives had been ruined or ended by the same secret.
On the back, Celeste had written:
IF ONE OF US FALLS, THE OTHERS FINISH IT.
Dominic sat slowly.
“My mother trusted them.”
Mason touched his father's face in the photograph.
For the first time, Claire felt sympathy for him.
It did not erase what he had done.
But it made him human.
Arthur found an old tape player in a storage cabinet.
The cassette turned.
Static filled the room.
Then Celeste Rainer's voice.
“October fourteenth.”
Dominic closed his eyes.
Claire watched his face.
“North Harbor confirmed six million four hundred thousand transferred through false vendor accounts.”
A man's voice followed.
Thomas Cross.
“My side shows another eleven.”
Margaret spoke next.
“Then Julian isn't working alone.”
The tape crackled.
Peter Keane said, “Someone followed me tonight.”
Then Celeste:
“If anything happens, Margaret takes the watch.”
Claire gripped the chair.
More static.
Thomas said something impossible to hear.
Then one clear sentence from Celeste.
“Dominic cannot know yet. He’ll confront Julian.”
The tape clicked off.
Dominic stared at the machine.
“My mother knew what I was like.”
Adrian gave him a cold look.
“She wasn't wrong.”
Dominic flinched.
Claire almost told Adrian to stop.
Then remembered her face still hurt.
She let the comment remain.
Mason rewound the final seconds.
Nothing more.
The rest of the tape had been erased.
Dominic looked at the date.
“The crash happened the next night.”
Claire touched the rosary.
One bead was cracked.
Her mother had carried an identical rosary in her purse for years.
Suddenly she remembered something.
“Mom started going to church again after Celeste died.”
Adrian looked at her.
“She was afraid.”
Claire nodded.
“And she made me promise never to accept rides from strangers. Never to use the same route home twice.”
Things she had dismissed as a nervous mother's habits now had shape.
Dominic stood.
“We confront Julian.”
“No,” Claire said.
Everyone looked at her.
She wiped the last dried blood from her lip.
“You confronted me with no evidence and decided I was guilty.”
Dominic lowered his eyes.
Claire continued.
“We are not doing the same thing.”
Adrian studied her.
“What do you want?”
“The truth.”
“Which means?”
“We make Julian explain something only the guilty person should know.”
Dominic nodded slowly.
He understood.
He arranged for Julian to come to the Marlowe under the excuse that the missing watch had been recovered.
Julian arrived forty minutes later.
Seventy-one.
Silver-haired.
Elegant.
He looked genuinely disturbed when he saw Dominic's face.
Then he saw Claire.
Something passed through his eyes.
Recognition.
He hid it quickly.
Not quickly enough.
Dominic placed the train ticket on the table.
“Do you know what this is?”
Julian barely looked.
“No.”
Claire watched him.
“My mother bought it the night Celeste died.”
Julian frowned.
“Margaret.”
Claire's pulse jumped.
She had never given him her mother's first name.
Dominic noticed too.
Julian recovered.
“Everyone in the family knew Margaret.”
“You told me you'd never heard of her,” Dominic said.
Julian sighed.
“Eighteen years is a long time.”
Claire placed the photograph on the table.
“Why was my mother supposed to drive Celeste's car?”
Julian's eyes narrowed.
“I don't know what you're talking about.”
Claire waited.
Dominic said nothing.
Neither did Adrian.
Silence did the work.
Finally Julian scoffed.
“This is absurd. Margaret changed cars at the last minute. Nobody could have predicted—”
Claire stopped him.
“No one said she changed cars.”
Julian froze.
May you like
Claire leaned forward.
“So how did you know?”
