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Rose closed her eyes as her thoughts thundered. “I was so naive back then. I’d just left my hometown. I didn’t know anything about the world. And I wanted to believe everything he said. I wanted so desperately to fall in love.”
Sean was quiet for a little while. Empathy echoed from his eyes.
“If he really did something to Natalie,” Rose said, “then I want him to pay for it. I want everyone to know what he did. I don’t care if it turns my name to mud in the process.”
Sean’s eyes hardened. “Why would it turn your name to mud?” he asked. “Like you said, he hasn’t been in your life in years. You’ve built your life from the ground up.”
Rose chuckled sadly, remembering those loose and chaotic years after he’d thrown her to her knees like a piece of trash.
Sean raised another onion ring. His eyes shone. “Let’s put this guy behind bars.”
Rose let out a wild laugh, one that captured the attention of every eye in the diner.
“I’m in,” she said, feeling like a woman in a crime novel. “I hope I’m not thirty-one years too late?”
Rose missed the Salt Sisters' dinner but managed to swing by for post-dinner cocktails. A few Salt Sisters still remained in the glowing orange light of Hilary’s veranda, including Robby and Stella and Ada and Katrina. Hilary urged her to sit and tell them “all about the Grayson Estate.”
Rose didn’t wait long to tell them everything about the diary. She’d taken pictures of the final entry and of a few choice pages throughout the latter part of 1992 and early part of 1993 before Natalie’s death.
Hilary read a passage from December 1992 out loud.
“That’s the thing about marrying a wealthy man,” Hilary began, putting on a slightly different voice. It was proof Hilary came from the acting business. “Everything is a monetary exchange to them. Everything is about goods and services. I didn’t understand it when I first met Oren. He doted on me hand and foot. He made me feel like a queen. I still remember that first morning I woke up at his place in Nantucket, with the sunshine spilling through the window and across the sheets. I thought,This is the happiest I’ve ever been. He will take care of me.But he knew how little money I had in the bank. He knew he could butter me up and reel me in.
“Just once did his brother Zachery warn me. It was Christmastime several years ago, and Zachary had drunk his way through a couple of bottles of one-thousand-dollar wine. He tried to put his arm around me, but I swatted him off. He said,‘If you ever do that to Oren, he’ll hit you back much harder.’That surprised me! I went upstairs to cry and cry. But I told myself Zachary was just teasing me. How silly I was not to hear him.”
The Salt Sisters sat in steady silence, listening to theocean's roar as the sun, like a big egg yolk, dropped into the water.
Rose felt Hilary’s heavy gaze but struggled to look at it. She knew what they were all thinking before they asked.
“Rose, did he…?” Stella whispered.
The words hung in the air.Did he ever beat me?
Rose remembered his rage. The terror that hung in her chest like a tumor. She realized that ever since she’d found the diary, she’d begun to imagine herself as Oren’s wife in that mansion, burning and screaming and falling to her knees. Because Rose had been Oren’s wife, too, it wasn’t hard to imagine.
Too much time had passed. Rose hadn’t answered yet. It felt too complicated.
Hilary took a breath. Rose flinched and looked at her.
“Where in the house did she die?” Hilary asked.
“They always said it was in the kitchen,” Rose said.
“And have you been in the kitchen?” Stella asked.
Rose swallowed. “Not yet.”
The kitchen needed far more refurbishment than the rest of the house. It was charred, and its windows were broken. A few construction workers suggested that a family of rats and squirrels had taken refuge there. Rose was relieved that she couldn’t go in there. She felt sure that the nightmare of Natalie’s final moments remained.
“It’s insane to me that these secrets were locked inside that house for the past thirty-one years,” Ada said.
“Sean said it was difficult to keep the case going. He thinks money changed hands,” Rose said. “Back then, Sean begged me for information. He was sure that Oren had let something slip. I’m sure he saw me, a pretty and naive twenty-one-year-old girl, in that dark WaldenEstate and knew that Oren was after me. But Oren already had me wrapped around his finger.”
Hilary touched Rose’s shoulder tenderly. “You were married to him much longer than Natalie was.”
Rose’s adrenaline spiked.How was that possible?
“He never said anything about doing this?” Stella asked. “He never let anything slip?”
