Chapter 6 - THE MAN WE CALLED GEORGE
Gabriel took the photograph from my hand.
“Why do you think George died?”
Victoria stared at the image.
“Because Elena told me.”
“When?”
“I was seventeen.”
Gabriel’s anger rose again.
“You keep producing memories nobody knew existed.”
“I was a child being used to carry secrets between two terrified women.”
Her voice snapped for the first time.
“I’m sorry I didn’t organize them conveniently for you.”
Gabriel stopped.
Victoria looked shocked by her own outburst.
Then exhausted.
I understood.
We were all reaching the point where truth stopped feeling clean.
“What did Elena say?” I asked.
Victoria breathed slowly.
“That George Mercer died at Pier 17.”
“How?”
“She never said.”
Gabriel looked toward Dominic.
Dominic understood immediately.
“Old harbor records.”
We returned to Greenwich after sunrise.
My shoulder had become a constant burning ache.
Gabriel’s physician met us and threatened to send me to the hospital himself if I refused imaging again.
This time I went.
A dislocation.
A small fracture.
Nothing surgical.
The doctor reduced the shoulder and ordered strict rest.
When I returned to the mansion, Gabriel had converted a downstairs guest suite into a place where I could recover.
It should have embarrassed me.
Instead, I was too tired to argue.
Victoria stood outside the room.
“What?”
She held something.
My white serving glove.
Clean now, except for the faint rust-colored stain that would never completely wash out.
“I thought you might want it.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
I looked at her.
She swallowed.
“Maybe because it’s the thing that finally made Gabriel notice.”
“No. I made Gabriel notice.”
She nodded.
“You’re right.”
That answer surprised me.
She placed the glove on the table.
“I’m sorry.”
Not dramatic.
No tears.
Just two words she clearly hated needing to say.
“For the tray?”
“For all of it.”
“Did you know somebody would hurt me?”
“No.”
“Did you want me gone?”
“Yes.”
The honesty hurt less than another lie.
“Why?”
“Because I spent my entire life building something that felt like mine.”
She glanced toward the hallway Gabriel had disappeared down.
“And then my mother told me a maid in this house could destroy it without even knowing why.”
“So you punished me.”
“Yes.”
“Because you were scared.”
“Yes.”
I looked at the glove.
“That doesn’t make it okay.”
“I know.”
For the first time, I believed she did.
Dominic entered before either of us could say more.
He carried an old port authority file.
“Pier 17.”
Gabriel followed him.
The record concerned a warehouse fire twenty-nine years ago.
One unidentified man presumed dead.
No recovered body.
Victoria frowned.
“Elena said George died.”
Gabriel read the page.
“My father may have told her that.”
Dominic placed another item on the table.
An evidence photograph.
A watch found near the burned warehouse.
Same model as mine.
Same initials.
G.M.
I took out George’s watch.
Two identical watches.
“That’s impossible.”
Gabriel examined them.
“No.”
He opened mine.
Then the photograph.
“Different serial numbers.”
Dominic nodded.
“Mercer Shipping gave engraved watches to senior employees.”
G.M. might not mean George Mercer.
It might mean the company.
Mercer.
“What if Rebecca lied about the watch?” I asked.
Dad, who had joined us, shook his head.
“She told me George gave it to her.”
“She could have believed that.”
Gabriel looked at the photograph George had left.
“The man calling himself George may have worked for Mercer.”
Dominic had already found something else.
“Company payroll had six senior employees issued watches that year.”
He turned the file.
One name had been circled.
Samuel Reed.
Head of security.
Victoria read aloud.
“Reed testified after the Pier 17 fire that George Mercer entered the warehouse and never came out.”
Gabriel’s eyes narrowed.
“And Reed disappeared six months later.”
I felt cold.
“Until yesterday.”
Maybe.
Dad frowned.
“Why pretend to be George?”
“To get close to Nora,” Gabriel said.
“And to find Antonio’s ledger.”
The shape of it became clearer.
The hospital secret and the criminal records weren’t separate mysteries.
They were connected through the people who had survived Antonio.
I remembered being pushed.
“You should’ve left the drawer closed.”
A man’s voice?
I had been in pain.
Terrified.
I had assumed the whisper could have belonged to anyone.
But now I replayed it.
Low.
Rough.
Male.
I sat upright.
Gabriel noticed.
“What?”
“The person who pushed me.”
Everyone went silent.
“I never saw them.”
“We know.”
“But I heard them.”
Victoria stepped closer.
“Was it my voice?”
I shook my head.
“No.”
Her eyes closed briefly.
Relief.
“It was a man.”
Gabriel’s expression sharpened.
“Could it have been the man outside your father’s house?”
“I don’t know.”
Then Dad said something that made all of us turn.
“He smelled like cloves.”
“What?”
“The man who came to see me yesterday. George—or Reed. He was chewing clove gum.”
My stomach dropped.
The staircase.
For one instant before I fell, I had smelled something sweet and sharp.
Cloves.
“It was him.”
Gabriel became frighteningly calm.
“He pushed you.”
“Maybe.”
“No. He did.”
Victoria looked toward the music box.
“Then he knew Nora had found Elena’s compartment.”
“How?”
Gabriel answered.
“Someone told him.”
We all looked toward Evelyn.
The woman who still hadn’t returned.
Dominic entered one final piece of information into the laptop.
Samuel Reed.
Last known alias.
Thomas Vale.
I knew that name.
I stared at the screen.
“No.”
Gabriel turned.
“What?”
My voice barely worked.
“Thomas Vale was my mother’s hospice nurse.”
Dad went white.
Rebecca’s final six months.
A quiet man who came three nights a week.
Brought tea.
Fixed the loose porch rail.
Sat beside my mother when she was afraid.
Samuel Reed had been inside our home.
For months.
“What was he looking for?” Victoria whispered.
Dad’s face changed.
“The coat.”
“What coat?”
He looked toward the garage box we had brought back.
“Rebecca’s red winter coat.”
“She gave it away before she died.”
I remembered.
“No. She told us she donated it.”
Dad shook his head.
“She asked me to take it to Elena DeLuca.”
Gabriel stared.
“My mother?”
“I drove here myself.”
“What happened?”
“Elena took the coat.”
A child-sized object was sewn into its lining, Dad said.
He never knew what.
Gabriel turned toward Dominic.
“My mother’s clothes are still upstairs.”
Twenty minutes later, we stood inside Elena’s untouched bedroom.
Gabriel opened the wardrobe.
There it was.
Rebecca’s red coat.
Inside the lining, beneath a repaired seam, we found a small black ledger.
Gabriel opened it.
Names.
Dates.
Payments.
Judges.
Police.
Politicians.
Then the final page.
One handwritten entry.
GEORGE MERCER — ALIVE.
SAFEHOUSE PROVIDED BY E.D.
Victoria whispered, “Elena hid him.”
My heart pounded.
Beneath the sentence was an address.
Not Connecticut.
Rhode Island.
May you like
And one final note in Elena’s handwriting:
NORA MUST NEVER MEET HIM UNTIL SHE KNOWS WHAT HE DID.
