Page 11

Chapter Ten

Tessa

“Thank you for coming in so quickly, Ms. Blackwell, and Dr. King, it’s good to have you here, too.” Detective Warner offers us seats at the crowded desk at the Major Crimes Unit office.

He then introduces his partner, who I’ve never met before, a wiry brunette with the name “Vause” stitched on her uniform. “This is Detective Angela Vause. She specializes in behavioral analysis and will be assisting us with this case.”

I hide my trembling fingers in a fist as I offer a tremulous smile in return.

“Detective Vause has been going through your mom’s journals and was hoping you might be able to help us fill in some blanks.”

I immediately shake my head. “Um, I’m not sure how much help I’ll be there. I’ve only started reading them.” And they’re leaving me with more questions than answers as it is.

Initially, I wasn’t going to get into those journals until after I’d returned to Boston, but with the Fount job, I couldn’t very well delay things for three months. Still, I stalled until last week after seeing my dad again.

His cruel dismissal of what could be Mom’s tortured, fevered final moments and how defensive he got when I brought up the journals made me wonder if he was desperate to shut this whole idea down.

His behavior also made me question if he would have destroyed the journals had he known about them. It piqued my interest in the entries, and I found myself reading them whenever I had a free moment.

But it’s been hard reading them alone, not to mention scary. I was tempted to call Nathan a few times, but I didn’t want him to think of me as too needy.

Now, after having him drop everything to come here to sit next to me and have his big hand hold mine, one of his fingers gently stroking the rapid pulse in my wrist, I realize that I was wrong about him.

Nathan would have wanted me to call him, and he wouldn’t have hesitated to give me any support I needed.

Vause reaches into the desk and pulls up some leather and hardbound books that look like they’ve been around for decades, then a sheet of paper with clean handwriting on it.

“These are the original journals that Detective Warner made copies of and gave to yourself and Mr. Blackwell. Now, I’ve gone through the journals and narrowed down the ones that are most relevant to this case.”

I nod, and she continues, “They span over a twenty-year period, but her entries start to take a darker turn in the final six years of her life.”

She picks up a shiny, black leather-bound book, which looks to be in a better state than the others. “And in the six months before her death, it’s almost impossible to make sense of her words.”

I feel Nathan’s hand move to my thigh, a solid warmth that grounds me. I don’t realize that I’m nervously tapping my foot until he gives my leg a gentle pat. I force myself to remain still in my seat, putting my hand on top of his.

I need to deal with wherever this investigation leads. It’s the only way to move on.

I told him everything I know about the case on the hour-long drive here and some more things about my parents, noticing that the more I revealed, the calmer he got. Afterwards, he just took hold of my hand and hasn’t let mine go up until now, but he still makes sure to offer me a supportive touch.

“How many journals do you have altogether, Detective?” Nathan’s deep voice interrupts my anxiety. He gives me a quick reassuring smile when I turn to him, then focuses back on the two detectives sitting across the cluttered desk.

I’d been reluctant to have him accompany me, but I’m now glad that I let him because he seems genuinely interested, and unlike me, he has the presence of mind to ask important questions.

“More than a dozen,” Warner replies. “It’s just that a lot of it is either indecipherable or sound like the ramblings of a deranged woman—”

A shrill ringing interrupts Warner, making me flinch. It’s coming from his belt. He quickly kills the ringing, then excuses himself, stepping outside the room to answer the call.

“Forgive my colleague’s language,” a red-faced Vause apologizes. “We are hard-pressed to get it right this time, so it is frustrating that the information isn’t as straightforward as we’d all like it to be.”

I just wish they’d get on with it, so I can leave and put the past behind me once and for all.

Her eyes soften as she looks at me. “This is a sleepy town. The thought that this case could be anything but an accident will attract a lot of unwanted attention, which can damage the case, so we need to tread carefully.”

“Right. So, what do you have so far?” Nathan nudges the woman to get to the point, and I give his hand a grateful squeeze.

Vause pulls a pen from her breast pocket and holds it steady over a notepad.

“Mary never gave any names, but it seemed like right from the beginning and up to the time of her death, there were one or two other men in her life aside from John, and she seemed afraid of at least one of them. If she was murdered, any of them might have been responsible.”

“Okay.” I digest that information. My dad had never tried to hide his mistresses from me, but hearing that Mom may have had affairs as well shocks me.

She always seemed so involved in her hobbies and locked away in her own mind to be running around with another man. She hardly even left the house.

“The first entry she wrote was when she was in high school. And the last was on the day she died. Both are eerily similar, even though they’re twenty years apart.”

“Similar how?” I ask.

“In the style of writing and what she chose to put in upper case. In both, she seemed happy, excited even. The first was to marry someone, and the second was to meet someone.”

Nathan hears my soft gasp of pain and gently squeezes my hand. “I’m here, baby. Breathe.”

Vause looks at us both, but nothing in her expression changes. I know she has made a quick assessment of the relationship between Nathan and me. I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing, or if her assumptions will come back to haunt me later. I force the thought out of my head, telling myself to deal with the here and now.

“Those are the facts we’re working with so far.” She takes a fresh sheet of paper and scribbles on it. “Ms. Blackwell, what can you tell me about your parents’ relationship?”

“What do you want to know about it?”

“Did they fight or argue a lot? Did your dad ever threaten her?”

“Um, no,” I say. “They barely spoke. Each was content to do their own thing. Mom was often engrossed in her cookbooks, and my dad, well, when he wasn’t out with other people, he’d be in the lab. I guess I did the talking and arguing for everyone.”

“Hmm.” Vause flips through a few pages of my mom’s diary. “Lab, you said? I thought he was a farmer?”

“Yes. But there’s a place we—the Blackwells—call the ‘lab’ in the Circle Orchard, the oldest and largest property our family owns.”

One of the two still owned by my dad. The rest have been sold off over the years. To Nathan, it would seem.

My dad didn’t seem to care about losing the other farms as long as the Circle Orchard remained, but recalling the animosity between the two of them at the engagement party, he probably cared more than he let on, but he just needed the money more.

I hesitate revealing a family trade secret, but I decide there’s no sense in hiding anything at this point. The police would eventually find out, anyway.

“Apparently, there is a secret ingredient that one of the Blackwells accidentally discovered decades ago that almost infinitely preserves perishables.”

Vause is scribbling like mad. “Okay. Tell me more about this ingredient.”

“Um…it’s top secret, and it’s called CX3, I think. We—I mean, my dad and his dad before him—believe it could be worth more than gold if successfully refined. Personally, I think it’s a hoax, but they believe it works, but it’s just very ‘unstable.’”

“Unstable in what way?” Nathan has gone still, and even his finger has stopped stroking my skin, but when I glance at him, he gives me a reassuring smile. It doesn’t reach his eyes.

He finds this news upsetting.

“I have no clue,” I tell him truthfully, watching as his eyes burn with something dark. “I assumed that it’s maybe toxic in some way. I don’t know if it’s now been approved, but my dad was obsessed about getting it to a marketable quality at some point.”

Nathan’s rigid posture tells me he knows something that he’s not saying.

He knows my parents for sure, and not just as acquaintances from the same small hometown. They attended high school together, and they seem to have a deeper history of bad blood between them.

Before I can question him about it further, Vause continues, “Thank you, Ms. Blackwell. We will certainly follow that lead. Now, I know that you were away in college during the last year of your mom’s life, but do you have any idea if she was seeing someone else?”

“You think she had an affair?” That her lover killed her ?

“It looks like she did.”

“Why would you think she had an affair?” Nathan’s almost lazy drawl belies the tension I can feel vibrating from him.

Vause looks up at him. “Because, Dr. King, in an uncharacteristic moment of lucidity, she mentions something recognizable. Apart from Tessa’s name, which had come up a few times in several entries, she mentions Lake Orange in a way that makes it sound like she might have been meeting with someone at the lake.”

Nathan drops my hand, choosing to clasp both of his in his lap. This time, when I look up at him, he doesn’t look back.

Suddenly feeling alone, I focus back on the task at hand. “What does that mean?”

“It means that we might have been right to reopen the case. Yes, Mary Blackwell was depressed, possibly schizophrenic, but her journals are not a mad woman’s rambling like her husband claims.”

The detective’s angular face swims before me as hot tears spring to my eyes. I have to agree.

Mary Blackwell wasn’t mad. She was deeply traumatized, and no one could help her. Or rather, she wouldn’t let anyone help her.

“There are enough clues in the writings, but only if you are close enough to her to figure out what she truly meant, which is where you come in, Ms. Blackwell.” Vause notices the tears I’m subtly dabbing at and says in a concerned tone, “Ms. Blackwell? Tessa?”

“I’m good, I’m alright,” I say while choking back a sob.

Vause goes to the sink on the far side of the room, presumably to get some tissues for me, but Nathan hands me a white handkerchief.

I don't want a hanky right now. I want you to hold me and tell me that I’m not alone in this nightmare.

I take it, though, and press it to my nose, inhaling Nathan’s earthy and spicy smell. “Thanks.”

Vause returns with the tissues and places them on the desk. “So, you haven’t quite made it halfway through the entries yet?”

I shake my head.

“I think you should try. I’m certain that you’ll find a lot of clues in there. But just to help you find some motivation to get through it, I’ll tell you something else we’ve found out just by combing through those entries.”

I nod and gesture for her to continue. “Okay.”

“First, we know that she attended high school with John and that they fell in love in their senior year—”

“Wrong.”

We both whip our heads in unison to face Nathan, who is sitting so stiffly, he might have been chiseled out of granite.

“Dr. King?” Vause questions.

Nathan cuts his gaze to her. “They didn’t fall in love in senior year of high school. They didn’t fall in love at all.”

Vause narrows her eyes at him. “We have school records and eyewitness accounts that Mary Archer met John Blackwell in high school,” she challenges.

Nathan’s eyes darken. “Of course they met in high school. I went to high school with them, too, so it figures that we all met there, doesn’t it? I’m saying it wasn’t John Blackwell who Mary was in love with.”

I only stare at Nathan with a chill running down my spine, waiting with bated breath for him to say more. Dreading what he would say next.

Was Mom in love with… Nathan?

Nathan isn’t even looking at me. His eyes are locked on Vause, whose nostrils are flared. Still staring at Nathan, she plunges her hand into the pile of journals, picking one up randomly and flipping through the pages.

“Here,” Vause insists, “this is Mary’s entry from August 20, 1996, the first day of senior year.”

My immediate thought is to sprint out of the room, cover my ears, or let out a loud wail. Anything to stop myself from hearing my mom’s thoughts before I can even prepare myself for them. But before I can think of what to do, Vause is already reading.

“‘I was sure that I was going to hate this school, too. Pretty, pretty sure. But it turned out that Fate had other plans. Because today, I met him. There was a spider in my locker, and I ran right into this solid, warm, citrus-smelling tower of muscle. I saw him and everything in my world stopped. Black simply looked at me for a full minute, then just walked away with a knowing smile. And I know, too. What we’re going to do.’”

Vause pauses. “And this last part is in all caps,” she informs us before continuing to read.” “‘GET MARRIED. RIGHT AFTER HIGH SCHOOL. OR DIE TRYING.’”

I stare, barely seeing anything. Although my heart is breaking, I have to agree with Nathan. It’s hard to imagine Mom was ever this deeply in love with my dad, not after all the years I witnessed them being so cold and callous to one another.

“See?” Vause says, slamming the book shut. “She never mentions him by name, only calls him ‘Black.’ But she does marry John Blackwell immediately after graduation.”

That assumption makes sense. I glance at Nathan, already done with this insane argument and just want to move on. But his jaw is still tight, and his eyes are pools of molten blue fire.

“Mary wasn’t talking about John.”

Vause lets out a rattled sigh. “Dr. King, as much as I—”

“Black wasn’t John Blackwell,” he snaps.

I can’t believe the way Nathan is reacting right now. He has a white-knuckled grip on the chair’s arm, and there’s a slight sheen of sweat on his forehead.

He appears… flustered. More than even I was a few minutes ago.

The only other time I’ve seen him lose his cool was on the night of the engagement party. When my dad was trashing Mom.

“Who was Black, then, Nathan?” I ask, dreading the answer.

He takes his sweet time answering, most likely debating whether to say anything at all.

“Black was my twin brother, Ciaran King.”