cried with him.
We waited for the firefighters to remove Marcy’s remains, but with the effort now designated as recovery rather than rescue, and her body considered part of a crime scene, the police told us it would be hours before that happened.
I put my arms around Aunt Iris. She had borne the burden of Marcy for years, and in some ways, her burden had finally been lifted. Now Zack’s father was bearing the brunt of the pain. My eyes met Zack’s. I ached for him and Dave.
We left Aunt Iris’s car where she had parked it earlier, in the employee lot on the estate. She told the sheriff she had
“sensed” the gate’s entry code, but I thought it just as likely that Marcy had divulged it at some point. McManus’s deputy drove us home, then stayed and drank some stale instant coffee. Later I found out he had been told not to question us.
I was grateful to the sheriff; while I could have insisted on having a lawyer present, there was no controlling what Aunt Iris might say with or without legal advice. She wandered from room to room, and I held my breath, hoping she would not talk to the grandfather clock or smash a mirror. She didn’t, and the young deputy never ventured out of our kitchen.
At three a.m., Sheriff McManus arrived, accompanied by a fire investigator and Zack. Earlier Zack had called his uncle, who had made the drive from Philadelphia and was now with Dave.
In a quiet discussion on the porch, I told them that Marcy had admitted to killing Mick, my mother, and Uncle Will, and that the police should look for forensic evidence of the third murder beneath the gazebo. I assumed she had killed Uncle Will while he was fishing on the estate and that Uncle Will’s equipment might be found nearby. I then asked what I needed to know most: If it “happened” that Aunt Iris had
“suspicions” about Marcy’s crimes, would she face charges? The sheriff said his unprofessional opinion was that mental incompetency would get her off the hook but that I needed to phone her attorney and have her present when he questioned her. He also advised me of my rights.
Returning to the kitchen, I suggested to Aunt Iris that she go up to her room and rest. She was exhausted and didn’t fight me on it. Then the four of us sat down to piece together the story of that evening.
At 7:15, Zack had driven Erika to an appointment with McManus and the fire investigator, having convinced her that if she didn’t come clean, he would go to the authorities himself. When Zack had stood guard outside the house Friday and discovered the obsessive Elliot Gill watching the upstairs windows, he didn’t know what to think, except that the facts of the arson game had to be revealed immediately so that the police could figure things out before another tragedy occurred.
Returning home from his and Erika’s meeting with authorities, Zack found that his father was still at a business dinner, but, unknown to Zack, Marcy had come home and read my note. Audrey, ever watchful for evil acts, had observed and happily reported to Marcy that I had stolen Zack’s boat and headed up-creek. Marcy must have guessed where I was going and realized I was giving her a golden opportunity to get rid of me.
She instructed Audrey not to tell Zack that I had come for him. Later the note I had written was found in Marcy’s purse.
It was Zack’s theory that Marcy had planned to give the note to the police and tell them about my previous assault.
Erika’s three friends had unwittingly provided Marcy with cover for another murder. It wasn’t clear when Marcy’s final plan for me came together. As the fire investigator pointed out, quantities of accelerants are readily available in country houses, and Marcy was familiar with her childhood home.
Audrey did not tell Zack about the note, but, fortunately for me, she couldn’t resist telling him about the stolen boat.
Setting out in his father’s cruiser, Zack had spotted the anchored rowboat, then the ladder that I’d left against the bank. Following my route, he had found Iris semiconscious in the garden. At that point he called 911 on his cell.
When Zack entered the house, he still didn’t understand what was happening. While aware that his stepmother visited Iris occasionally, he had not known the nature of their relationship and had no idea why Marcy would hurt Iris or Will. But when he heard her counting in her strange game of hide-and-seek, he knew Marcy was dangerous. He feared it was his own text messages that had been accessed, that it was Marcy who had used Erika’s game as a convenient cover for Uncle Will’s murder.
That was as much as we could get through that night — or that morning, I should say. The sheriff told us all to get some sleep. He planned to get his own shut-eye in his car, which he had parked across the top of Aunt Iris’s driveway, protecting us from curious intruders. Zack needed to get home to Dave. On his way out, he stopped for just a moment, his fingers brushing the tips of mine.
I went to check on Aunt Iris. Her room was dark, but she was up, sitting on the edge of her bed. “I can’t sleep.”
I turned on a soft lamp and sat on a chair close to her bed.
“They made me promise I wouldn’t tell her,” Aunt Iris said.
Her eyes were wide open, but when I looked in them, I didn’t think she was seeing the present.
“You mean the Fairfaxes.”
“They broke their promise, the one they made to me when I gave them Marcy. So I broke mine. After they had the boy — after they decided Marcy didn’t matter anymore — I told her she was mine.”
I could imagine how it had happened. Whether Marcy was emotionally abandoned by her parents or whether she was simply a spoiled child with a bad case of sibling jealousy, all Iris could see was her own child suffering.
And what had Uncle Will seen? The outcome that he had feared all along, knowing Iris’s unstable mind and a mother’s strong feelings for her child.
“William argued with me when I was pregnant, said the Fairfaxes lived too close.”
I wondered silently why the Fairfaxes weren’t wary of the O’Neill reputation; perhaps the gossip was a more recent phenomenon, or perhaps the Fairfaxes didn’t mix enough with the locals to hear it.
“I thought he meant it would be too painful for me. I didn’t know it would hurt other people.”
I said nothing, unable to respond in a way that would comfort her. I didn’t remember Joanna or the pain her death had caused me as a toddler. The only mother that I remembered loved me still, and I loved her. But Uncle Will’s death cut deep.
“I didn’t tell Marcy who her father was, not while he was alive.”
“Did Audrey know?”
She shook her head no. “Marcy was born here at the house. Since Mick wouldn’t admit she was his child, he couldn’t tell me what to do with her, couldn’t tell the Fairfaxes not to take her. Marcy and Mick never got along. He was hard on her.”
“Maybe he was afraid for her.”
“Of her,” Aunt Iris corrected. “He was afraid of her the way he was afraid of me.”
More afraid, I thought, seeing a selfishness and greed in Marcy that wasn’t in Aunt Iris. I wondered at what point Uncle Will had bought the book Psychosis and the Criminal Mind.
I suspected that it was to understand Marcy rather than Iris.
“When Mick died, a part of me knew that Marcy had done it. Joanna didn’t suspect at first — didn’t know my relationship to Marcy or Mick — she simply wanted to help Audrey. I tried to stop her, but she wouldn’t listen to me. So I told Marcy that Joanna was reading Mick’s psychic signs and she should get out of Wisteria for a while. I never expected she’d kill Joanna. I couldn’t allow myself to think that Marcy would kill someone as sweet and loving as Joanna.”
I swallowed hard.
Iris sat on the edge of her bed, rocking back and forth, hands clasped tightly in her lap. “What could I do? What could I do? I couldn’t bear to lose my daughter, too. And reporting Marcy wasn’t going to bring back Joanna. ‘She won’t do it again,’ I thought. ‘There’s no reason for her to.’”
“But there was,” I interjected. “She’d kill as long as she needed to, to save her own skin.”
