Dark Truth (3 page)

How does a woman go on when she discovers the man she married is a serial rapist and murderer of the very young women he’s been entrusted with teaching?

The same way that the man’s daughter goes on,
Nina reminded herself.
Except that I never hesitated to leave, to simply walk away. Olivia apparently felt compelled to stay, though God knows why.

Nina got out of the car and stood on the walk, and studied the house that now, at dusk, was deep in the shadows of the tall trees that dwarfed it. When she’d steadied her nerves, she walked up the brick path, slipped the key into the lock, and opened the door.

The air inside still wore a trace of Youth Dew, Olivia’s favorite fragrance. On the table inside the door was a basket of flowers. The card stuck in the plastic holder was addressed to Kyle. Nina closed the door behind her and went into the living room. The furniture was pretty much the same, though the sofa wore a slipcover she didn’t recognize and there was a new chair near the fireplace to replace the one her father had always sat in to read at night. The nights when he was home, that is. Nina seemed to recall there were many nights when he’d arrive long after she’d gone to bed. She knew just how many such nights there had been. She never permitted herself to sleep until she heard his car pull into the driveway, his footfall on the steps.

Nina went into the kitchen and turned on the light. A cup and saucer had been rinsed and placed on the counter, the cup upside down. There was nothing else out of place.

She went from room to room, trying to remember what it had been like to live in this house. She knew she’d eaten meals in that kitchen, but couldn’t remember one time she’d sat at that table. There had been holidays, of course there had been, but she had no clear recollection of any of them. She walked to the spot where they used to set up the Christmas tree. She knew it had gone here, in the corner of the living room, but she couldn’t bring up a picture of it in her mind. There’d been dinners in the dining room, but she couldn’t recall what the china had looked like or what she had eaten. It was as if she’d existed there as a ghost-child, rather than a girl struggling through her teens with all the afflictions young girls struggled with, and many unique to her own situation. Mostly, Nina remembered struggling alone.

She went up the steps to the second floor and passed the room her father had shared with Olivia, and pretended not to remember how she’d heard her stepmother’s sobs the night Stephen Madden had been arrested. Olivia had died in that room, Kyle had told her when he’d called her on Sunday evening. It occurred to Nina that Olivia had died in that room long before last weekend.

She went straight to her bedroom and pushed open the door. The furniture hadn’t changed, though the bedspread and curtains were different and the walls were now pale yellow. Nina had a vague recollection of Olivia mentioning in a letter or card years ago that she’d redecorated the room, so that when Nina came to visit, perhaps the memories wouldn’t seem as bad.

Nina’d thought at the time that Olivia was a fool to stay in that house, and an even bigger fool to think that a coat of paint on the walls and a new look to the bed and the windows could do anything to take away the memories Nina had of living in that house.

But now, standing in the quiet room, seeing how carefully Olivia had tried to preserve a place for Nina here, she found herself wishing she’d made the trip back, just once. Her heart pinched her from within, and she felt sympathy for Olivia flood through her for the first time.

“Sorry, Olivia. I should have been kinder to you. I’m sorry . . .”

She turned to leave the room, and noticed the table next to the bed. A half dozen roses, now dried and fragile, had been placed in a pretty dark blue vase. Had Olivia kept fresh flowers in this room, in the hope that Nina might in fact come back to see her after all these years?

Nina would never know.

Filled with a sorrow she’d never anticipated, she went down the steps and out the front door. Locking it behind her with shaking hands, she fled the house at 117 Oak Drive as if she were being pursued by demons.

In a way, she was.

F
our

“Nina?” Kyle’s voice sounded as if it came from outside the house.

“Down here,” she called from the foot of the basement stairs.

A minute later, he was bounding down the steps.

“You’re here early,” he said. “I thought I’d have to come over to the Cloisters and drag you, kicking and screaming, to get you here.”

“Why waste time?” She shrugged. “Besides, I told you I’d give you a hand.”

She turned and pointed to a stack of boxes that lined the back wall.

“I poked into those already. I think those must be your mother’s. Some of them have old household items—curtains, bed linens, pots, baking pans, that sort of thing—that must have fallen from favor over the years and were packed up and stored down here. There are a few boxes of clothing that belonged to her as well.” She turned and pointed to the boxes she’d placed near the steps. “Those boxes contain some of my father’s old papers, some books, his doctoral thesis, some files. They can all go to the trash. Those three boxes on the bottom hold some of his old clothes. They can get tossed out or sent to a thrift store, I don’t care which.”

“You’ve been busy.” Kyle sat on the bottom step.

“I’m determined.” She smiled. “Do you have any suggestions on who I should call to pick up this stuff?”

“I have a list of thrift stores that pick up, but I left it in the car. I can get it for you.” He started to rise, and she gestured for him to sit back down. “No hurry. I can get it before I leave today.”

“Thanks for separating Mom’s stuff from Stephen’s. I wasn’t really looking forward to going through her things just yet.” He paused, then added hastily, “But I don’t have a problem with it. I know you’ll want to be making arrangements to sell everything as quickly as possible so you can get back to New York.”

“Well, I wanted to talk to you about that. Let’s go upstairs. I picked up some cold drinks on the way over this morning, and I could use one now.”

“Sure.” Kyle stood and waited for Nina to pass him, then followed her up the steps. When they reached the top, he switched off the basement light and closed the door.

“I can arrange to have someone come and pick up all the stuff in the basement,” he told her. “That won’t be a problem. And if you’d like, I can have the furniture appraised and sold for you, and send you a check. I know you have an important job and you’re probably itching to get back to it. This has to be depressing for you, but I do appreciate your coming. Mom would have been so happy that you were here.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to say,
She would have been happier if I’d come while she was still alive.

Instead, she told him, “Your mother was a good person, Kyle. She had a hard time of it. I wouldn’t have wished that . . .” She searched for a word. “ . . . that
situation
on anyone. Why she chose to stay in this house, and in this town, I’ll never understand.”

“Simple.” He shrugged. “She had nowhere else to go. She could live here for free—that was in his will—and she had a few friends. And of course, she had Father Timothy.”

“Father Whelan?”

“Yes, sorry. We knew him as Father Tim. He and my mother have been friends forever. Since even before . . .” He appeared embarrassed.

“Before my father ruined all our lives. You can say it, Kyle. It isn’t as if it’s a secret, especially between you and me.” She opened the refrigerator door. “Pepsi or Diet Pepsi?”

“Diet, thanks.”

She took out two cans and searched the cupboards for glasses, then finding two, filled them with ice and poured the drinks. Handing one glass to Kyle, she said, “There’s something we need to talk about.”

“Shoot.”

“I called my dad’s attorney this morning. I asked him how I could go about putting the house in your name.”

“I don’t understand. Why would you do that?”

“Because I think it rightfully belongs to you.”

“Nina, your father bought this house before he even met my mother.”

“It’s
her
house, Kyle. She’s the one who lived in it all these years, she’s paid the taxes and planted the flowers and trimmed the hedges. It was hers. Now it’s yours.”

“Nina, I don’t think you should make any hasty decisions. I mean, it’s very generous of you, but you really need to think this through.”

“I have thought it through. I thought about it all night last night. I know it’s the right thing to do, Kyle.”

“I don’t know what to say.” He was clearly stunned. “Nina, that’s incredibly generous of you, but I can’t let you give away your inheritance like that.”

“It’s already done. Or will be, as soon as Mr. Wexler completes the paperwork and I sign it. Which I will do in the morning. And as far as my inheritance is concerned, let’s just say I’ve already gotten everything from my father that I’m going to get.”

“I wish I could think of something to say,” Kyle told her. “I mean, about your father.”

“There’s nothing you or anyone could say. He was what he was. Whatever that might have been. He ruined all our lives. You seem to have risen above it all, and I can see why you’d have wanted a career in law enforcement. I’ve managed to make a life for myself in spite of him. Your mother was the real victim here. I wish I’d been mature enough to realize that before now. No one should be asked to carry the burdens she was forced to bear. I wish I’d . . .”

“Don’t, Nina. Don’t second guess yourself.”

“It’s difficult not to, when I go upstairs into my old room and find that she still kept flowers in there, apparently in the hopes that I’d come to visit. Or when I realize that all the years I’d brushed her off as my father’s wife and nothing more than that, she’d really tried to be there for me, and would have been if I’d let her.” She blew out a long breath. “I was very immature and self-centered to have treated her the way I did, to not have seen how she had tried to help me through that time.”

“You were very young, and you had your own burdens to bear.”

“That doesn’t excuse the way—”

He held up one hand, and said, “She was all right with it, Nina. I think she understood how difficult it had been for you, with your mother dying and you having to move here immediately after. She knew how hard that was. She knew that you had a lot to deal with. I think you’re right, she wanted to help you, but she understood why you didn’t let her.” His smile was sad. “It happens that way sometimes. She didn’t hold it against you.”

“Well, it was my loss, not hers.”

“I think maybe you both lost a little something.”

“In any event, the house and everything in it is yours—will be yours—and you can sell it or move into it or do whatever you like with it.”

“I don’t feel right about this.”

“I’m sorry, but I feel very right about it.” She patted his right hand and he covered hers with his left.

“We’ll split it.”

“Uh-uh.” She shook her head.

“I’ll send you the money for the furniture, then . . .”

“You’re not following me, Kyle. I want nada. Zero. Zilch. It’s yours.” She squeezed his hands, then extracted her own. “You said you and Marcie were separating. Live here if you like. Or sell it and buy something else. Or sell it and put the money in trust for your kids. Start or add to their college funds. Whatever makes you happy.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Then don’t say anything. Particularly, don’t argue with me anymore. There is absolutely nothing you can say that will change my mind.”

“How ’bout if I tell you how much the houses in this neighborhood are selling for, would that do it?”

“Sorry, no. I don’t care.”

“You must be doing very well if you can afford to brush off that much money. Even half would be several hundred thousand dollars.”

“Tempting, but no. Frankly, I wouldn’t feel right about taking any money from this house. It never felt like mine. It still doesn’t. I have no attachment to it whatsoever. Those were not happy years for me, the years I lived here. I’d just as soon walk away, Kyle. I’m hoping you understand.”

“I guess I do. I was just thinking it’s a lot of money to just give away.”

“I don’t feel as if I’m giving anything away. I don’t feel entitled to it in the first place. You’re Olivia’s heir. The house was hers. Let’s just look at it that way, and talk about something else.”

He was just about to say something when the doorbell rang.

“I’ve no idea who that could be.” Kyle shook his head and went to answer it. “Unless it’s the mailman . . .”

Nina remained in the kitchen, and was rinsing her glass in the sink, looking out the window and thinking how Olivia had done such a lovely job in the backyard. She heard footsteps behind her and turned to tell Kyle how much she admired his mother’s green thumb, when she realized Kyle was not alone.

“Father Whelan,” she said, surprised to see the priest.

“Nina, good to see you again.” He extended both hands in greeting and took both of her hands in his. “I was hoping to get a few minutes with you yesterday, but you disappeared on us. Welcome home.”

Not my home,
she bit back the words.
Never my home.

“Thank you, Father.” She smiled at the tall, good-looking priest, whose white hair only made him appear more distinguished than he had as a young man.

“I don’t think I’ve seen you since we buried your father,” he was saying.

“That’s probably correct.” She nodded. “I haven’t been back to Stone River until now.”

“Olivia missed you, she was very fond of you.” He squeezed her hands before letting them go.

“We were just having that discussion, Father,” Kyle told the priest. “Nina knows that Mom understood why she didn’t come back.”

“Good, good.” Father Whelan’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t beat yourself up over it. I can see in your eyes that you have. Olivia was the last person in the world who’d have wanted to make you feel guilty. She sensed that you had to live your life away from here. Just let it go. You made your peace with her by coming now.”

“Thank you, Father.”

“How long will you be staying with us? I imagine you’ll want to settle things here, with the house.”

“Kyle’s taking care of all that,” Nina replied, not bothering to go into detail about the arrangements she’d already made to pass the house into her stepbrother’s name.

“Good. That’s good of you, Kyle.” The priest turned back to Nina. “There is something I need to talk to you about, though, Nina. Would you rather we chatted alone?”

“Hey, I can go upstairs and get started on . . .” Kyle began to back toward the doorway.

“Not at all.” Nina shook her head. “I can’t think of anything we couldn’t discuss in front of Kyle. Please, Father, have a seat here at the table. Could I get you something to drink?”

“Nothing for me, thanks, Nina.” Father Whelan pulled out a chair and sat in it. “Nina, as you know, I was Olivia’s friend. We’d been friends for many years, since Kyle started kindergarten at the parish school.”

“That’s about thirty-five years, in case you’re trying to figure that out, Nina.” Kyle smiled and took the seat across from the priest. “I’m five years older than you.”

“I remembered.” She turned to Father Whelan with curiosity. “What was it you wanted to tell me?”

“As you know, I spent a great deal of time with Olivia the past few years, even more so these past months when we knew her time was short. Her cancer had been in remission for so long, we’d assumed it was gone forever. Then, sadly, it very suddenly came back with a vengeance. There was no stopping it this time.” He patted her hand. “But I’m sure you know all this.”

“Kyle told me.” She nodded, still waiting for him to get to the point.

“A week or so ago, she told me she’d remembered something she’d been meaning to take care of and just hadn’t gotten around to it. It seems that after your father’s death, the prison gathered his belongings and mailed them to Olivia. She said there wasn’t much in the box, some clothes, his watch, his wedding ring, some photographs. She wanted to make sure the box was given to you.”

“I don’t want it, thank you, Father. I’m not interested in any of his belongings. You can toss it, if you don’t mind.”

“You may do that, if it suits you. But I’ll honor my promise, Nina. The box is in the trunk of my car. You may do with it what you will, but I suggest you take a look inside.” His face flushed with color. “I admit to having glanced at the contents as I taped it up the other day. I was thinking I’d have to mail it to you in New York. There’s a letter in there from your father to Olivia, and one to you. Neither appears to have been opened.”

“And they won’t be opened now,” she assured him.

“That’s up to you, I suppose. But maybe before you toss them aside you’ll give it some serious thought. It’s the last you’ll ever know of your father, Nina. Perhaps there was something he wanted you to know, possibly about the . . . the things he’d been accused of.”

“He wasn’t merely accused, Father. He’d been convicted.”

“That conviction was, if I recall correctly, on appeal. For what it’s worth, Olivia was adamant that Stephen was not guilty. She was convinced he’d not committed any of those crimes. She was positive he had not.”

“Where was the evidence, then?” Nina asked flatly. “She didn’t testify at his trial, and there was nothing produced by the defense to cast doubt on his guilt. He admitted having had affairs with all of the victims. He admitted having had sex with them on the nights they were killed. Are we supposed to believe that someone else came into these girls’ bedrooms, raped and murdered them, after he left? That really stretches the imagination, doesn’t it? Does that sound logical to you?”

“All I can tell you is that Olivia believed in his innocence. She didn’t believe he killed anyone.”

“Maybe she had to believe in him, Father. She was married to him. Surely it would have been easier for her to have believed he was innocent than to admit she’d married a serial killer.”

“Perhaps. In any event, whatever your father did—or did not do—he was in fact still your father. Whatever lies unresolved between you may be aided somehow by his last words to you. I understand your predicament, Nina, and I sympathize. But keep in mind that if you throw away his last attempt to communicate with you, you can never bring it back.”