Page 120 of The Unknown

As the dock comes into view, I’m hit with a realization that should have occurred to me the moment I finished Mrs. Semple’s journal. I was too overwhelmed then by revelation after revelation and truth after truth to be thinking clearly. Now that I finally am, I stop walking, my brain spinning to one conclusion.

If Daisy didn’t exist, there’s no way she could have possessed Violet Wright.

Thirty-Five

I find Violet already at the end of the dock, her demeanor completely changed. She stands facing the tar-black water, perfectly still, her face a mask of calm. All traces of tears, of panic, of her earlier hysterics are gone. She is, I realize, an even better actress than she gets credit for.

The key to that, I suspect, is a preternatural sense of observation. Violet can pick up the slightest nuances of someone’s behavior—their tone of voice, their body language, even their footsteps—and adjust her own with ease. It’s served her well in her forty-year career—and during our five days on New Avalon.

And it’s how, when I arrive, she already knows that I’ve figured everything out.

“I called Loretta,” she says. “She’s on her way to get us. So ask your questions now. It’ll be easier that way.”

“Does she know you always intended to kill Ronan?” I say. “Did any of them? Or was that your little secret?”

“I wouldn’t even call it a secret,” Violet says, still watching the lake. “It was just an idea I had. A fantasy. I didn’t think I’d actually go throughwith it. But when I entered that parlor and saw the ice pick sitting there, all I could think about was driving it into Ronan’s heart.”

“Because Elise was your daughter.”

I feel foolish for not putting it together sooner. The moment Violet told me about Elise, I should have known. Especially after seeing that picture in her locket. The pretty blond girl kept hidden away like a secret.

“Yes,” Violet says. “No one but Loretta knew that. Not even my husband.”

“Why didn’t you tell him?”

Violet turns to look at me, her eyes as dark and unsettled as the rolling surface of the lake.

“Why do you think, Marin?”

Because she wasn’t his, of course. Something else I should have realized earlier.

“Who was the father?”

“A director,” Violet says, her brusqueness telling me I won’t get any more than that. Not from her. “I thought I was smarter than that. I wasn’t young and naive, like Elise. I’d been working for more than a decade. I knew an on-set romance, especially with a married director, was doomed from the start. And I was right. The second we wrapped, he went back to his wife and I returned to my husband—with an unexpected souvenir from my time on set.”

“You had Elise in secret,” I say, remembering that one year during Violet’s Oscar nomination streak in which she stopped making movies and disappeared from public view.

“And then I gave her up.” Violet returns her gaze to the water. “I didn’t want to. But it was impossible to keep her, even if I’d pretended she was adopted. As she got older, people would notice our resemblance, ask questions, start snooping. The truth would get out, and both my marriage and my career would be over. I knew there’d be no coming back from that. Men can recover from such scandals, if they suffer any setback at all. But women? We are judged harshly.”

I know she’s right. A bombshell like that would have made headlines around the world. Tawdry ones. The kind someone of Violet’s stature could never, ever live down.

But that’s not my problem.

I feel for her. I really do. Even more, I feel for Elise, the daughter she barely knew who so badly wanted to follow in her footsteps that she fell prey to someone like Ronan. Now she’s dead.

“I never forgot her,” Violet says. “Not ever. And I never stopped missing her. When you have a child, they take a piece of your heart. They carry it with them, no matter where they go or who’s raising them. Your missing piece. I thought mine was gone for good until, one day, she appeared out of the blue. I was in upstate New York, working on a movie. She showed up at my hotel and said, ‘I think you’re my mother.’ I knew it was true because, in that moment, I suddenly felt whole. My life was complete. We were inseparable after that for a year or so. Well, as much as we could be without arousing suspicion. It wasn’t nearly enough to make up for lost time. But at least I got to be a mother to her for a little bit. And when she died, I lost that part of myself again. It’s gone forever. For the rest of my life, I’ll have that void in my heart, and nothing will ever fill it.”

I think of my parents. And Molly. And the pieces of their heart she was carrying when she drowned. My parents have had to live with that emptiness for twenty years.

“So you murdered Ronan,” I say. “Not Daisy. Not a ghost. You, Violet.”

“Because he killed my daughter!” When Violet turns to face me, her eyes are wild, her mouth distorted. This is as real and raw as I’ll ever see her. The true Violet at last exposed. “No, he didn’t physically shove those pills down her throat. But he might as well have, considering the horrible things he did. Exposing her like that? Humiliating her? A man capable of things like that deserves whatever punishment he gets. In my mind, Ronan had it coming.”

“So during the séance, you decided to veer from the script.”

Violet nods. “I got the idea from those last pages of Daisy’s diary. Ifshe killed before, it seemed logical she would do it again. All I had to do was fake being possessed and hope that you believed it.”

Ah, yes, Marin Keane once again playing the part of gullible witness. The truth is, Violet’s performance was so convincing that maybe I would have believed it. After all, there is something supernatural about this island—I have no doubt about that—even if it is relegated to my cottage, where Ruth Hume Semple scratched and thumped away until I found her, set her free, unlocked her secrets.