Page 27 of Strict Confidence (Rochester Trilogy 2)
“That reminds me. Marjorie took a call for you. Seemed pretty upset about it. I was tempted to open it and read what it said, but I figure you’ll just tell me.”
Inside there are words written in quotation marks, as if they were being transcribed exactly as they were spoken. “You’re going to ruin her life, the same way you ruined mine.”
My heart thuds in my chest. Blood rushes in my ears. “What the fuck is this?”
Mateo takes the note from me, but I don’t need to see it to know what’s there. There is a name scrawled beneath the words. Zoey Aldridge. She’s the one who left the message. Apparently she hates me. I probably deserve that.
“Christ,” Mateo mutters, tossing the card aside. “She’s crazy.”
“I dodged a bullet.”
Mateo looks thoughtful. “Or what if you didn’t. I thought she went back to LA. What if she didn’t? What if she’s the one who set the fire?”
Alarm runs through my veins. “She uses a private jet. We’ll find out where it is.”
“Either way, this is a crazy fucking message.”
“She’s right though.”
“Don’t go there, man. Don’t let her fuck with your head.”
“You said it yourself. I’m not the obvious kind of bad, remember? I’m the kind you don’t see in the fog until it’s too late. Except it’s not too late for Jane.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Jane Mendoza
After an hour of looking through boxes, I’ve found the little silver top hat and the wheelbarrow. The only red hotels and green houses I found have been melted out of shape. They’re charred black. Somehow the cards for Pennsylvania Railroad, Baltic Avenue, and Marvin Gardens managed to escape relatively unscathed. There’s also a handful of crumpled, fire-tinged hundred-dollar bills.
I collect this into a sad-looking pile the way a raven would make a nest.
We’ll never find enough pieces to make it playable, of course, but I think about framing what’s there. It will be an heirloom for Paige to keep.
Possibly the last physical remnant of her father.
Like the photo I had of my father.
The boxes are stacked in the back patio of the inn, a place with a floor and a roof but no outside walls. A stiff wind would blow everything important away, but we don’t want to bring them inside. Not with the incredibly strong scent of smoke emanating from them.
While I’m working here, Paige plays in the garden. I called the little toy shop where we bought the paints and they delivered a new set. She’s been painting the gnomes that are used liberally throughout. They were a very boring gray stone before. I hope they don’t mind too much that they’re now bright and cheerful with oranges, reds, greens, blues, and pops of pink. It’s really my job to stop her from defacing private property, but she’s had such a rough time lately, and she’s finally showing curiosity and interest, that I figure it’s worth the replacement fee.
I’m pretty sure children aren’t allowed at the Lighthouse Inn, usually.
Pets aren’t allowed either, but that doesn’t stop Kitten from trying to pounce on lizards. So far she’s caught zero of them. She’s definitely made to live in a cushy household like Beau Rochester’s, because she would not survive a day in the wild.
There are piles of boxes, but something dark blue catches my eye.
The diary. I pick it up. Somehow it escapes the fire unscathed, its pages damp from the firefighters who put out the fire. The velvet cover hasn’t even been singed.
I flip open the pages, touching the script.
We went on a picnic today, R, P, and me. It was nice, almost like we are a real family. Outside the house it almost seems like we love each other.
Nestled in the pages are photographs taken with a polaroid camera, the saturated-color square set in a white border, elegant black scrawl in the space beneath. There’s a beautiful blonde woman with ice-blue eyes. She stares at the camera, glamorous and unsmiling. The man beside her wears a suit. He has Beau’s features, sharpened and refined. If Beau is the wild, craggy cliffside at the Coach House, this man is the manicured coast near the inn.
First anniversary, the beautiful handwriting says. There’s no happiness between the two people in this photograph. The next photo shows the same couple in different clothes, just as beautiful, just as pristine, holding a young child. Paige. Her face was cherubic, her eyes blank. She wore a dress so frilly and full of lace that it makes me itch just to see. First birthday, the scrawl says.
I flip through the journal with increasing urgency, feeling her dread rise, her insecurity over her marriage, her distance from her child increase.
R hit me today. Actually hit me. I was too shocked to say anything.
Oh God.
“Jane.”
I stand up in a rush, dumping the diary back into the box, shoving something nondescript and half-burned on top of it. Guilt rises in my throat. I should not be reading that.
