The Caretakers by Eliza Maxwell

Author:Eliza Maxwell [Maxwell, Eliza]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781542044578
Published: 2020-04-13T16:00:00+00:00

28

TESSA

“My sister is lying.”

Tessa stares at the plump, grandmotherly woman seated in front of her. They should be discussing recipes and sewing patterns, not the annihilation of a family.

“Kitty, what are you saying?” Tessa asks carefully.

The old woman shakes her head, and her voice drops to a low whisper. “She’s lying,” she says. “Not only the things she said, but the things she didn’t. Mam used to tell us that a lie of omission is still a lie.”

She says the words as much to herself as to Tessa and Margot, as if her sister is a series of puzzle pieces she can’t quite fit together.

“I think we should go,” Margot says.

Tessa is on the verge of agreement, but Kitty isn’t done.

“There’s something important you need to understand. Lawrence Pynchon . . . he tutored all of us. All but Aiden, who was done with school by then. He was a charming man. Handsome. Sophisticated in a way we’d never seen. Fifteen sounds so young, doesn’t it? A child still, but those are the years when a girl’s heart first tests its wings, searching for a chance to fly.”

Kitty trails off, lost in another time. Another place. The silence stretches long enough that Tessa looks again to Margot, who’s studying Kitty intently.

“Are you saying . . . Deirdre . . . ?” Margot asks.

Kitty comes back from wherever she’s wandered and meets their searching faces.

“Dee was in love with him,” she says sadly. “She was in love for the first, maybe the only, time in her life. Something happened in those days before it all went terribly wrong. Something happened, and if I could just clear away the fog, I think I could see it. It’s there, hiding right beneath the surface. If only . . .”

Tessa frowns. “Kitty, if that’s true, if Deirdre was really in love with a man who turned out to be a murderer, then these memories must be even more painful than we could have imagined. We—” She stops and glances at Margot. “I have no business dragging this up. I don’t want to cause either of you more pain.”

Kitty gives her a small, sad smile. “It’s not that simple,” she says. “If that’s all it was, I’d never speak of it again. But there’s something else you need to know.”

She leans forward, a new urgency coursing through her. “Lawrence Pynchon was killed in prison, before he had a chance to go to trial. He was attacked. Beaten by the other inmates. He never regained consciousness.”

Tessa shakes her head, struggling to understand.

“Without a trial, it was never proven once and for all that he was the killer. Without a trial, there were whispers. Gossip. Terrible things said behind cupped hands that couldn’t be washed away by the truth.”

“But surely,” Tessa says. “If there was enough evidence to arrest the man . . .” But Tessa trails off. She thinks suddenly of Oliver. Of the evidence planted by Winters’s men. She shakes her head. Oliver was guilty, she tells herself.

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