Page 8 of One Last Night

I don’t remember how old I am when I catch my mother kissing him and see his hand travel downward to touch her in places that no one but my father should touch her. Five, maybe six. It’s a very old memory.

But despite my tender age, I know the moment I see the kiss that George Terrell is Annie’s father.

CHAPTER FOUR

“How dare you threaten me?”

Julian's voice snaps me out of my memory. I blink and look around, disoriented. I'm no longer standing in the doorway of my room. I'm sitting on the edge of my bed. I'm showered and wearing my nightgown. I've somehow managed to prepare for bed without any conscious realization that I'm doing so.

Well, that’s good. I’ve dissociated in the past and ended up getting myself into very compromising positions. Perhaps my subconscious is choosing to be kind and keep me out of trouble.

“Should we talk aboutyou? You have secrets too. Let’s talk about those. Oh, you don’t want to get into that?”

I hear Julian’s footsteps as he walks past my doorway. A moment later, I hear him on the staircase as he walks to the first floor. I don’t follow him, but I have a feeling I know where he’s going.

My room has a balcony, like most upper-floor rooms in houses like this. Rather than follow him downstairs. I pull on my sweater and walk quietly onto my balcony.

The moon is bright, and the night is clear. It’s a beautiful, soothing night, but the vines below me glow like ghostly fingers in the moonlight.

No, not like fingers. Like a giant, sprawling web.

As I suspect, the back door opens a moment later. I see the light from Julian’s cell phone move beneath the vines as he walks deeper into the vineyard. “Threaten me again. Go on, I dare you. Oh, come on, you’ve been swinging your dick around like you’re King Kong. Let’s see it. Let’s see how low your balls hang.”

I blush a little at the locker room talk, but behind Julian’s bravado, I detect fear. What threats could the person on theother end be making? What secrets could he know that would unnerve Julian Bellamy this much?

“Bullshit. By the time I’m finished with you, you’d be begging to change your name and leave the damned country.”

I don’t hear the rest of his argument. He’s too far away now.

I remain on the balcony. The moonlit sky really is soothing, and though the grapevines still appear sinister, they are below me, and I am safe behind the wrought-iron grating of my balcony, so I would rather enjoy the cool air while I try to make sense of what I’ve heard.

Really, there’s not much to decipher. Someone is threatening the Bellamys, or at least Julian Bellamy. This threat involves exposing a secret that the stranger—and, I suspect, Julian—believes could ruin Julian. Julian is responding by threatening to expose the caller’s own secrets.

But I don’t know what those secrets are or why the stranger made those threats. Was he—or she, I suppose—trying to get something from Julian? Was the caller simply angry with him? Did they feel hurt, somehow, and they’re trying to get restitution?

And what could those secrets be?

I think back to the diary. Marianne Bellamy cheated on her husband and possibly fathered a child with another man. It is a tale as old as time for a woman to bear another man’s child and pretend it’s her husband’s baby, but a wise man once said that a tale that’s boring to one person is the spice of life to another person.

Or perhaps I’m misremembering that quote. In any case, the children definitely don’t look like their father or grandmother. I assumed when I met them that they took after their mother, and Victoria herself said they looked like her, but Julian reacted strangely to that. I put his reaction to simple grief at the time, but could there be an element of shame as well?

I hear footsteps and look back down at the vineyard to see Julian stomping back. I can only see his silhouette in the dim light, but that is enough to see that he’s furious. He mutters under his breath, every third word a curse word.

I return to my room and hear him continuing to curse as he marches up the stairs and passes me on his way back to his room. I manage to deduce that he considers someone—presumably the caller—a “Goddamned son of a bitch,” but no more helpful piece of information drops from his lips.

His door slams, and the house falls silent. I sit on my bed and begin my mystery, but the book holds no interest for me now that I find myself in the middle of an actual mystery. I struggle through the first two chapters before giving up, then set the book down.

I feel a growing sense of irritation at myself. I can’t do this. I can’t keep meddling in other people’s affairs. It’s not my place to snoop in this family’s secrets. I can’t pretend that the children are in danger. Sure, it’s not ideal that Julian and his mother squabble, but there’s been no murder here.

But then, what secrets could Julian's enemy expose? Those secrets could endanger the children. They could be anything from an embarrassing but harmless scandal all the way up to criminal action. Even murder.

I have to know. I have to at least determine this secret for myself. If it’s harmless, I’ll never speak of it. I’ll lock it away and carry it with me to my grave. I’ll leave Julian and Victoria alone and focus on my job teaching the children.

But if it’s not harmless, if the skeletons in the Bellamys’ closet are alive and hunting the living, then I’ll have no choice but to do what I’ve done before and drag that secret kicking and screaming into the light of day.

More footsteps sound outside my door, but they’re far softer than before. They’re not the footsteps of an angry adult manstomping back to his room. They sound much more like the footsteps of a teenager sneaking out of his or her room.

Or back into it.

---