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“But it was clear that the Graysons weren’t cooperating with the cops,” Howard said. “I became obsessed. I rented a little cabin and asked question after question of Nantucket locals. But I soon grew tired of their stories. They never gave me any more details than I already had. So I pooled together the rest of my money and bought the old Grayson Estate. It was the only way to see the life Natalie had lived. It was the only way to get to the bottom of it.”
Howard’s chin quivered. He looked on the brink of sobbing.
“I picked up the keys from the real estate agency and returned to my cabin. I wanted to mentally prepare, you know? I knew I was about to enter Natalie’s tomb,” Howard said. “I sat down with a beer and a notebook. I wanted to write all my thoughts down. I wanted to make sense of myself. But that’s when the phone rang.” Howard closed his eyes. “It was Penelope.”
Rose and Sean exchanged confused glances. Who was Penelope?
“Penelope was a girl I’d been seeing before I ran away to Nantucket,” Howard explained. “Somehow, she’d gotten my number. She wanted to know how I was. She was worried about me. Her voice brought me back to earth in an instant.” Howard snapped his fingers. “I looked in the mirror and saw this man with scraggly hair and a bushy beard staring back at me. I realized the Orens of the world would always win, no matter what. Whichmeant I had to start playing by their rules if I wanted to get ahead.
“Everything happened quickly for me after that. I showered, shaved, packed up, and went home to Penelope. We were married within three months, got pregnant, and after that, I got the job that changed my life forever. The job that eventually brought me here.”
He said it proudly, as though he’d gone to battle and come back victorious.
“What made you finally sell the old place?” Rose asked.
Howard shifted his gaze back to her. It was as though he’d forgotten she was there. “It’s true that I held on to the property much longer than I should have. My wife didn’t even know I still had it. But now? The memory of Natalie feels a thousand miles away. It feels like somebody else’s life.”
This time, Howard picked up the photograph and handed it back to Rose without looking at it. It was as though he’d convinced himself not to care about Natalie all over again.
“I hope you can prove what you’re trying to prove,” Howard said, dismissing them. “Natalie didn’t deserve what happened to her. Oren was a sociopath. I truly believe that.”
Howard pressed a button on his desk that called his secretary in. She smiled and said, “I’ll walk you out.”
It was a swift way of getting them out the door.
Rose and Sean were wordless after they left the office. Rather than return to the car immediately, they walked block after block. An exhilarating and fresh wind came through the tall buildings and blasted through their coats.It was a reminder that autumn was just around the corner.
“Terrible guy,” Sean said finally. It was the first thing either of them had said in more than forty minutes.
Rose burst into laughter and nodded. “Terrible.”
“But he seems sure Natalie is dead,” Sean said. “I was sort of hoping, you know, that her lack of death certificate meant that, well…” Sean wet his lips. “It sounds stupid.”
“Meant she wasn’t dead?” Rose offered. “I’ve been hoping that, too.”
“But she would have reached out to Howard. Right?” Sean asked.
Rose raised her shoulders. “Maybe she wanted to get rid of all the men in her life and start over.”
But even as she said it, her heart thudded with sorrow. It was tremendously unlikely that Natalie had gotten out of this alive.
“You want to get a cup of coffee?” Sean asked. He stopped short in front of a diner, one that reminded Rose of the diner they’d gone to back in Nantucket.
“I’m starving,” Rose admitted. “Mind if I get something to eat?”
They sat at a red booth and ordered fried fish sandwiches with mayonnaise, crispy lettuce, and red onion, plus onion rings to share. Rose sipped her Diet Coke and studied the interior, which was just black-and-white photographs of celebrities who’d eaten at the diner, plus several of the Rat Pack during a forgotten time. Rose had never been here even though it wasn’t so far from where she’d once lived with Oren.
“This must be painful for you,” Sean said suddenly, breaking her reverie.
Rose turned to meet Sean’s gaze. She knew he wastalking about Oren’s abuse. She knew, too, that he was too much of a gentleman to ask if it had happened to her, too.
“I realized I don’t blame myself anymore,” Rose said suddenly, surprising herself.
Sean cocked his head.
“I used to blame myself for all of it,” Rose breathed. “I blamed myself for falling for him. I blamed myself for giving up my life goals to follow his. I blamed myself for signing a prenup that destroyed my chances of a second life after he left me. And I blamed myself for ‘making’ him cheat. No matter where I looked in my story, I felt guilt.”
Sean shook his head sadly.
