She gives me a nod of grave understanding, and I wonder what kind of lesson I am teaching her today. Nothing good, I’m pretty sure.
As I drive off, my anger subsides and the adrenaline flood in my body finds a lower level. With Drew and Vivian disappearing in my rearview mirror, I am aware of a kind of relief. Gray talks about how before an operation there’s a terrible tension that fades once the first shot is fired. All the wondering about how things will go down and if he’ll survive evaporates, and he becomes pure action. Today I finally know what he means.
Gray is waiting at home when we get there. He jumps up from the couch as we walk in the door. Victory runs to him, and he picks her up and hugs her hard. She giggles in a way that makes my heart clench, a kind of sweet, girly little noise that is uniquely hers.
“How’s my girl?” he asks.
“Mommy’s mad at Grandma and Grandpa,” she tells him seriously.
“That’s all right. Sometimes we get angry with the people we love,” he says, depositing her on the floor and looking at my face. His eyes tell me that he’s already talked to Drew and Vivian.
“Hey, guess what? Esperanza’s waiting for you upstairs. She’s got a surprise for you.”
Victory doesn’t need to be told twice. I watch as she runs off. I hear her little shoes pounding up the stairs.
We stand looking at each other for a minute. I can’t read his expression.
“Why did you kill Simon Briggs?” I ask after I don’t know how long. The room is darkening as the sun fades from the sky. I can hear the lapping of the waves against the shore. I hear Victory laughing upstairs. There are black beans cooking in the kitchen.
He frowns and opens his mouth to deny it. I put up a hand. “I followed you. I saw you shoot him.”
He turns his head to the side and releases a long, slow breath.
“Because I couldn’t figure out who he was working for,” he says finally. “I found out where he was staying. I offered him a payoff in exchange for the name of his employer and for him to go back to whoever it was and say he couldn’t find you or that you were dead or whatever. When I gave him the money, he lied to me, said he was working for the police. So I killed him. I figured that it would send a message to whoever had hired him.” He finished with a shrug.
“How do you know he lied?”
“I know,” he says.
“Is he alive, Gray? Marlowe. Is he?”
He doesn’t answer, just fixes me with a stare. I can tell he wants to reach for me but there’s a high, hard wall between us.
“Is he alive?” I ask again.
Finally, “I don’t know, Annie. I just don’t know.”
I let the words move through me. Strange as it is, it feels good to hear him admit it, this thing I have known all along. I somehow feel stronger, saner, for knowing that my instincts haven’t failed me completely.
“What happened to Dr. Brown? Who was he?”
“He’s someone my father knows. He was a clinical psychiatrist who dealt with military and paramilitary posttraumatic stress patients. We thought he could help you.”
I don’t tell him what Detective Harrison has told me. I’m not sure why. Probably because I figure he’ll have an explanation for whatever I say. I don’t know whom to believe. Harrison isn’t exactly unimpeachable himself.
“What happened to him?”
“I don’t know, Annie. That’s the truth.”
That’s the truth. It’s a funny phrase. If you need to say it, it’s probably because every other thing out of your mouth has been a lie.
I see her then. She’s standing out on the deck, her hands pressed up against the window. She’s every bit as real as I am, which doesn’t mean much. I see her for what she is finally, just a girl who’s been lied to and betrayed by everyone she loves, someone who’s forever looking for a rescue that’s just not coming.
If there was ever any question about what I needed to do for her, it had been answered. Between Ray Harrison’s revelations and Vivian’s confessions, it’s all very clear. I understand Ophelia after all these years, why she has been afraid, so eager to flee the life that Annie Powers made. It has all been a façade, flimsy and insubstantial, waiting for one good wind