“Try telling that to Marty. Albert set the whole thing up. He’s the one who made it all happen.”
“No, Natalie. He just pointed Simon in the right direction.”
“It doesn’t matter, Alex. Whatever happened, Marty wanted my mother to know. Obviously, he didn’t want to tell anyone while his father was still alive.”
“He came looking for your mother? Is that why he was up in Batchawana Bay?”
“Yes,” she said. “That was the day you saw him up there. I didn’t know anything about it at the time. I had already come to get her out of that house.”
“So I followed him back to Michigan,” I said, “and got into it with his brother at the garage. Michael said he told Marty about that, and about you. He even told him that you lived in Blind River. That’s the last time he heard from him.”
“Yes, that makes sense, because he showed up that night. God, what a horror show that was.”
“Natalie, what did he do?”
“It wasn’t him so much. I mean, all he did was tell me he wanted to see my mother, said he had something important to show her. I didn’t like him being there, but he said it would mean a lot to her. She came to the door and started talking to him. The next thing I know we’ve got the VCR pulled out and he’s showing us this videotape. You can’t imagine, Alex… what I was thinking of while I was watching that. When it was done, I said to him, okay, I’m glad I know this now, but I wish I had seen this tape while Albert was still alive so I could have beat his head in with my hockey stick.”
“God, Natalie. And you had no idea he’s still alive…”
“No, that was my little surprise for the evening. Marty told me that he had looked up Albert DeMarco. He’s living in the States now, out in Las Vegas. He’s got all these real estate deals going on, building houses. He owns part of a casino, too. He’s gotta be what, over seventy now, but he started over with a young wife, two kids in high school-you know, buying himself a new life. Marty said he was going to send him a copy of the tape, just to let him know that his past wasn’t a total secret.”
“What did you say, Natalie? What did your mother say?”
“You have to remember, Alex, this was the biggest lie she ever told me. But as good as she is at lying, she’s just as good at explaining herself after it all falls apart. She did it for me, she said. To make me feel better. To help me forgive her, all these years later. And you know what? I wanted to believe he was dead. I really did. So one drunken night, two years ago, she calls me up and she tells me the monster is gone. She wants to see me. She wants to be with me again. She wants to be my mother again…”
Natalie stopped to wipe her face with her hands.
“Two years, Alex. Two years I thought he was dead. I was up in Hearst, remember. Way the hell up there. What was I supposed to do, start calling people to make sure he was really dead?”
“Okay, so then what?”
“I just had to get away from her. I went outside for a while, just walked around, freezing my ass off. I almost went down the street to Mrs. DeMarco’s house, like I did when I was twelve years old. But I couldn’t, you know? That was Albert’s house, too. It was like I couldn’t escape him, no matter what I did. He’d always be there haunting me. So eventually, I just went back inside. Marty was gone already. I got in a big fight with my mother, told her I wished she was dead…”
She stopped again.
“And then I called you,” she said. “I called you and I told you it was over between us. I’m sorry, Alex. I just didn’t want you to be a part of it anymore.”
“You should have told me what was going on,” I said. “I would have helped you.”
“I know that.”
“So why didn’t you?”
“It was my problem, Alex. You’ve already been through enough for me. My God, just look at you.”
She reached out and touched the bandages on my neck. “What’s this, anyway?”
“I’ll tell you in a minute,” I said. “Just finish your story.”
“The next day, my mother was up early. She was actually cleaning the house if you can believe it. She acted like there was nothing going on, but I knew better. I finally got it out of her. When she was alone with Marty the night before, they hatched up this plan. They were gonna blackmail Albert.”
“With what? That videotape?”
“That’s what I said. It’s an old man talking about something that might have happened thirty years ago. Albert would just laugh at her. You know what she told me?”
“I’m afraid to ask.”
“She told me that nothing on that videotape was a surprise to her. Albert had told her the whole story a long time ago. A full confession. You know what else? Apparently, Albert paid Simon Grant ten thousand dollars in cash after he killed my father. He was a full accessory, before and after the fact. My mother would be willing to testify to all of this in court.”
“But Simon didn’t say anything about money on that tape. And why would Albert-”
“Alex, did you hear what I just said? This was my mother’s story.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Of course. But you’re telling me she’d actually say all of this under oath?”
“She’d tell it to a lie detector, Alex. She really would, and I’m sure she’d pass.”
“Okay, so what happened next?”
“I told her it would never work. Albert would know it was all a lie. But then it occurred to me that Albert would also know how good a liar she was. That’s when I started getting a headache. Anyway, the plan was that Marty Grant would come out here to his house on the island and call Albert, and tell him he had twenty-four hours to get out here with a hundred thousand dollars. He didn’t want my mother to be here, but he wanted her to stay by the phone so he could call her when Albert got there-you know, in case he needed to hear it from her directly. If he didn’t show up, they’d go to the police in Las Vegas, the Gaming Commission… they’d even send copies of the tape to his wife and kids. It was all a big bluff, of course. The whole thing. I told her they were both crazy. And now…”
She looked out the window.
“They didn’t know who they were messing around with, Alex. They had no idea.”
“So what did you do?” I said. “How did you end up out here?”
“My mother didn’t have Marty’s phone number. She just knew he was going to call her. So I took the tape and I told her to stay put. I came out here to give it back to him, and to tell him to forget the whole thing, to leave my mother alone or else I’d find a way to have him arrested. When I got out here, it wasn’t hard to find his place. It’s such a small island, and Mrs. Larusso downstairs knows everybody. When I got to the house, it was empty. But I knew somebody had been there. I started to get a bad feeling about it. I called back home, but nobody answered. That didn’t make any sense, because I knew my mother…”
She swallowed hard.
“I knew she was waiting by the telephone. But I just figured… I don’t know, maybe that she was drinking again, that she was passed out somewhere. So I left. I caught the next plane out and drove back to Blind River. When I saw what had happened to her…”
“We got there later,” I said. “Michael and I came out to the house.”
“Michael Grant?”
“Yes. When we found your mother, Michael panicked. I remember him saying… what did he say? Something about Marty, no, why did you do this…”
“He thought Marty killed my mother?”
“I don’t know what he was thinking,” I said. “He tried to kill me. He grabbed an old shotgun from your basement, from that stash of guns in the closet.”
“What happened?”
“The barrels exploded. He bled to death.”
She closed her eyes. “God,” she said. “When does it end?”
“Natalie, what did you do after you found your mother? Why did you come back here?”
“I called him, Alex. I knew Marty was able to contact him, so I called information out in Las Vegas. He wasn’t listed, but they had a number for his company. The DeMarco Group. I called and I got this woman on the line and I told her Albert needed to call me right away. I gave her my name, told her he’d know who I was. It didn’t take more
