forty-three.
By the time he entered the room, a bag of takeout in his hand, she was sitting in the chair at the desk, holding Peaches’s gun and pointing it directly at his face.
“Shut the door, please.” Her voice was smooth and cold and hid the fear that floated like ice in her veins. For an instant, his shocked eyes were Wynn’s, and she nearly wavered. “Now.”
A full second before he could speak. “Marsden? What’s—?”
She dropped the gun until it was aimed at his crotch. “I said shut the door.”
He pushed the door shut with his foot and dropped his lunch onto the bed. The bag, stained with grease, had come from the Finneys’ café; the smells of chicken and balsamic vinegar and bread rose in the air. “Does your mother know you’re here?”
“Considering where I have this gun pointed, you sure you want to bring up my mother right now? I really preferred her as a housekeeper.”
His hands slowly lifted. “What do you want?”
“I’m going to ask you some questions, and you’re going to answer them. That’s all I want from you. Just simple yeses or nos.” I’m going to shake you like a Magic 8 Ball, Brom.
“Questions?” Confusion pulled his features tight.
“You and Nina are working together to steal from the guests here. She gives you access to the bank information the boardinghouse collects from them and you then access their accounts through your own work.” Bluff, bluff, bluff. “And don’t bother denying it—I found your notebooks. The one here and the ones at your house.”
Brom’s eyes went narrow and knowing, his mouth clenched at the corners. Wynn’s face, Marsden couldn’t help thinking, how it would look once she saw too much, knew everything.
“It’s true,” he finally said.
“Unless you want Hadley coming around to talk to you, then I need to know one more thing.”
He said nothing, only waited.
“You were there the night my father died. At Decks. You knew he won four grand. You followed him home.” More bluffing. She prayed her poker face was as good as her father’s had been. “You robbed him, didn’t you?”
Being suddenly asked about Grant Eldridge, a long-faded memory from the long-ago past, disoriented Brom, left him fumbling.
“He was my friend,” he managed. “For a long time. Of course I didn’t. Rob him, I mean.”
“But you knew he had that money.”
“I did. But I didn’t take it from him.”
“Don’t lie. And don’t forget where I have my gun pointed.” She heard her voice break, took a deep breath. “A friend told me to shoot to maim because it’s more painful. That in the end, they still have to cut it off.”
Brom swallowed so loudly she heard the click of it in his throat. “I . . . followed him for a bit. After he left his friends outside of Decks. Because, yeah, I was thinking about stealing it from him—it was so much money, and he was going home to Shine, and—I just couldn’t do it in the end, all right? Believe me or not, but I didn’t touch him. Last I saw, he was walking down the highway toward home. And I let him go. He was my friend, so I let him go.”
That night came to life in her mind, what she could remember of it, how she’d imagined it as she struggled through the article in the local paper. She saw the Indigo, a wild, foaming curlicue. The sky, sooty with clouds, shot through with white lightning like veins on the back of a grizzled hand. The air would smell like something burning on the stove, hot and humid and brimming with electricity.
Marsden stared at Brom and noted the way he met her gaze, took in how she’d always be connected to him through Wynn. She felt her heart ache for her own father, the mystery of his mind. And knew she couldn’t force a truth that didn’t exist.
“And now you’re sleeping with his wife, after chasing her for years,” she said. “What kind of friend does that?”
Contempt scrawled itself across Brom’s features in a fast-moving wave. It wiped away his fear.
“I’ve always been Shine’s second choice—first with Grant and then with this damn boardinghouse,” he snapped. Her question had broken open some kind of floodgate, she saw. “She’d rather have had him and all his failures than me. Even our own kid—she knew Wynn was mine, but still she wouldn’t leave this place. Do you know how infuriating that is? She chose any paying guy over being with me. And here, in this town full of people who are never going to stop wondering if she really understands them when they talk to her. She’s lucky I’m better than all of them.”
His rage had her flinching, left her as cold as the Indigo in deep winter. Only the thinnest of lines separated the mess of what this man felt for her mother, the way both love and hate existed in his heart for her. What existed for her father, too.
“Still, she’s kept me strung along for years, and now she’s finally chosen me.” Brom’s eyes glittered, the pulse at his temple pounded, and Marsden tightened her grip on the gun. “Thinking I’m her way out, me and my money, now that she’s realizing she won’t stay young forever. Well, I’m just returning the favor while I can—my turn to string her along. I’ll break her heart later, just when she thinks I’ll never say no.”
“You’re pathetic.”
“And your mother’s a whore.”
“She still chose my father over you, however weak or stupid he was. He’s dead, and you’re still nothing more than a last resort.”
He made a forward motion, kind of a half leap, and Marsden’s arms twitched, letting the gun jerk wildly for one single second before she steadied it. “Don’t think I won’t use this. The covert’s my backyard, remember? Dead bodies mean nothing to me.”
Brom fell back on his heels, suddenly beaten, his confession the draining of some pent-up poison from an old wound. “Are you done yet?” he muttered.
She tried to picture her father this defeated, how he must have been the instant he’d decided he would greet the terrible pull of the river, and instead she saw only the man who’d once smiled his way through drinking pretend tea with her.
Marsden lowered the gun. “I have one of your notebooks—show up here again and I’ll pass it around for all the dinner guests to see. And stay away from my mother.”
“Wynn. She’s my kid. What about her?”
“Eight years, and you’ve never said a word. You really want to start being a dad now?”
His silence, woven through with resentment, was answer enough. Then he nodded, and Marsden got up. She dropped the gun back into Peaches’s purse, pulled the strap back onto her shoulder, and left the room.
She found Nina less than a minute later, perched on the same love seat in the lobby where Shine and Brom had pretended to be people they weren’t. She only had paperwork on the table in front of her, though, and for one giddy, delirious second, Marsden wondered if she should bring over a slice of raspberry crumble from the kitchen before breaking the news.
Nina glanced up as she sat down beside her. Her expression was cautiously triumphant, a gloat barely held in check.
It slid away like butter off a hot pan as Marsden spoke.
“I know you’re helping Brom steal from the guests here,” she said in a low whisper. From across the room, there was the ringing of the boardinghouse phone before one of the staff picked it up; from the kitchen she heard the muffled clatter of ceramic and water being run into the sink. “For a thirty-percent cut. I don’t think even you could keep the boardinghouse going once word spreads about you being a thief. Don’t you agree?”
Nina’s rose-tipped nails—dug deep into her palms, like blades into fruit—went even deeper with each passing second, each uttered word. Her eyes tried to burn holes into Marsden’s, invisible fingers gouging invisible holes. “Perhaps.”
“Here’s our new deal now: I’ll keep quiet about it, and you give me back all the money you stole. The debts my family still owes you from taking us in are now paid off. And you won’t ask me to work as one of your girls again—if it’s all the same to you, I’ll just keep working in the kitchen, and back to full wages.”
A slow hiss from between her teeth, like that of a spent grenade. “Fine.” Nina bit out the word as though she’d been close to choking on it. “Are you done yet?”
Exactly what Brom had asked her. She hadn’t been done then but she was now, and she nodded. Without another word, Nina went back to her paperwork, and Marsden stood up, headed for the front entrance of the boardinghouse, and walked out.