Page 142 of All These Beautiful Strangers
“I told her what happened that night, because she wanted to know,” Margot said. “And that was supposed to be the end of it. But then she hired an investigator. He showed up one day asking questions.”
Margot shook her head at the memory, as if it still grated on her nerves.
“Where is she?” I asked. “Where did you put her?”
Margot looked at me and gave me a sad little smile. “I want to be very clear, Charlie, so that you understand me,” she said. “I’ve worked very hard to get to where I am. And I won’t ever let anyone take that away from me. Not Jake. Not your mother. And not you.
“You’re smart, Charlie, so really think this through,” she said. She held up a finger.
“First, there’s Jake,” she said. “You can’t make a case about Grace without talking about what happened to Jake. And there are witnesses for that night—people who will say it was your father who did it and who blackmailed us into staying quiet. I could never lift Jake by myself; I couldn’t have acted alone. But your father could have, and we’ll all say he did, because why should we all take the blame when it can so conveniently be shouldered by one?”
She held up another finger.
“And then there’s Grace,” she said. “I suppose you think you have evidence. But all you really have is a pair of suitcases that could have easily been planted in my basement by you or Alistair—both of whom have very conveniently been up to my house recently. If I’m not mistaken, you’ve touched those suitcases. Your DNA is probably all over that basement.”
Margot clucked her tongue.
I couldn’t believe the lies she was spinning, how easily she manipulated the facts until the story played in her favor. In the end, that’s what it would all come down to: the best story. It didn’t matter what the truth was; all that mattered was what people would believe. And what if they believed her?
“It’s amazing to me how much credit men always get,” Margot said. “Even for things they have no part in. I never lifted a finger to point people in Alistair’s direction, and yet look how viciously they went after him. You wouldn’t want to see the damage I could do to your father if I actually tried.”
“One day,” I said, “all of your lies are going to catch up to you.”
Margot shook her head. “That’s what you still don’t understand, Charlie. That’s the thing about the truth: nobody wants to tell it. Not even you. Nobody tells the whole truth and comes away unscathed.”
I opened my mouth to say something, to level at her some threat, but nothing came out. Because as much as I didn’t want to believe what she was saying, I knew that she was right.
It was just like what Ren had told me that night that I became an initiate of the A’s: secrets bound us to one another. It was a bond that could make us, just as surely as it was a bond that could destroy us all.
Forty
Grace Calloway
August 4, 2007
9:25 p.m.
I finished my sprint across the lake, my breaths racking my body, my heart exploding in my chest. I turned over onto my back in the water, taking a deep breath through my nose and exhaling slowly, puffing out my cheeks, to steady my breathing. That sweet sense of exhaustion settled over me, my muscles tingly and weak—so weak I could barely hold myself up. I let the water buoy me, my ears slipping below the waterline so I could hear the hum and echo of the lake.
My mind drifted, as languid now as the muscles I had worked past their breaking point. I thought about the photographs of me and Peter and the girls that I’d hidden underneath the floorboards of my bedroom, and the five hundred thousand dollars in cash I’d packed in my suitcase, along with the forged passports that Peter had secured for me and the girls.
Tonight, I’d take the girls and we’d drive down to Teterboro, where I’d arranged to charter a private jet to Mexico City. I had used my new identity when making the arrangements and had paid extra for a pilot who would be discreet. From there, the girls and I would fly on to Léon, where we’d board a bus to take us the remaining hour and a half southeast to San Miguel de Allende, a Spanish colonial town in central Mexico nestled in the Bajío mountains—the last place anyone would think to look for us. We’d stay in a hotel until I could find a small house on the outskirts of the city to rent.
I hadn’t told anyone where we were going or what I knew about Jake’s death—not Hank or my mother or Claire. I didn’t want to put them in the same sort of danger I’d landed myself and the girls in. Once we made it to San Miguel, I would find a way to send them word that we were safe.
I’d already packed my suitcases and loaded them into my SUV. In half an hour, I would wake the girls and pack their things. We’d touch down in Mexico before Alistair woke up tomorrow, before anyone would notice that we were gone or think to look for us.
I was still trying to figure out the best way to handle Charlotte. Seraphina would go easily, too groggy with sleep to ask questions. She’d doze in her car seat on the drive down, and I’d carry her from the car to the plane, her warm body clinging to mine. But Charlotte would be alert and inquisitive as soon as I woke her, and I knew she wouldn’t go anywhere without Alistair. I knew how stubbornly she loved her father, how blindly, how resolutely.
Every Friday evening, she’d insist on staying up late to wait for Alistair to drive in from the city. We’d sit on the couch in the front living room watching Nick at Nite, the girls growing bleary eyed and yawning. But as soon as Alistair’s headlights turned down the drive and reflected off the television screen, Charlotte would snap awake and shake her sister, and they’d race out onto the front step in their nightgowns and bare feet to greet him.
But last night, much to their disappointment, I’d sent the girls to bed at their normal bedtime. Seraphina sulked but Charlotte raged.
“You can’t tell somebody when to go to sleep,” Charlotte said. “That’s like telling someone when to breathe. You can’t actually make me.”
It was such an articulate argument for a seven-year-old. How had enforcing bedtime become a larger discussion on Charlotte’s autonomy over her own body? She was surely Alistair’s child, through and through.
“Bed,” I said, too exhausted to get into it. “Now.”
