Chapter 44: The Shower

The smell of gasoline hit Elena before she saw the can. It wasn't the fresh, sharp scent of a spill; it was the heavy, cloying odor of a room that had been soaked hours ago, waiting for a spark.

Mrs. Gable stood in the doorway, the weak beam of the flashlight illuminating her face from below. She looked like a specter, her gray hair wild, her eyes dark pits.

"I thought Vane took you," Elena whispered, her hand tightening on the newspaper clipping.

"Mr. Vane doesn't take me anywhere I don't want to go," Mrs. Gable said. Her voice was calm, conversational, as if she were discussing the silver polish. "He offered me a retirement package. A nice condo in Florida. But I told him I prefer the cold."

She stepped into the room. The gas can sloshed.

"Mrs. Gable," Julian said, his voice trembling. "What are you doing?"

"Cleaning," she said. "It's what I do, Julian. I clean up the messes."

"You knew," Elena said. "You knew about the artist. Jack Miller."

"Of course I knew. Jack painted the mural in the nursery. Constance loved him. She loved his talent. She thought if she surrounded herself with beauty, she could forget the ugliness of her marriage."

"So Vane killed him," Elena said. "To get the baby."

"Mr. Vane is a practical man," Mrs. Gable said. "He saw an opportunity. Jack was poor. Constance was desperate. And the baby... the baby was perfect."

"He stole me," Julian whispered.

"He saved you," Gable corrected. "Jack was unstable. A fire waiting to happen. Vane just... accelerated the timeline."

She unscrewed the cap of the gas can.

"And now you're all here. Together. Just like he wanted."

"He sent you," Beatrice said, her voice tight with pain. "He sent you to finish us."

"Mr. Vane thinks I'm on a plane to Boca," Gable said. She poured a line of gasoline across the threshold, sealing them in. "He doesn't know I have my own loyalty."

"Loyalty to whom?" Elena asked. "To Constance?"

"To the house," Gable said. "The Hawthorne name must be protected. Even from the Hawthornes."

She pulled a lighter from her apron pocket. It was an old Zippo, heavy brass.

"Mrs. Gable, don't," Julian pleaded. "You raised me. You baked me cookies. You told me stories."

"I told you the stories you needed to hear," she said, her eyes softening for a fraction of a second. "I loved you, Julian. I really did. But you're broken now. You know too much."

She flicked the lighter.

"Wait!" Elena shouted. "The ledger! I have the ledger!"

Gable paused. "Mr. Vane has the ledger. I saw him take it."

"Not that one," Elena lied. "The other one. The one Constance kept. The one she hid in the nursery."

Gable hesitated. "Constance didn't keep a ledger."

"She kept a diary," Elena said. "And she wrote about you. She wrote about what you did in 1986."

"I didn't do anything," Gable said, her hand shaking.

"You opened the window," Elena said. "The night the baby died. You left it open."

Gable’s face went slack. The lighter flame wavered.

"It was hot," she whispered. "It was so hot."

"It was a murder," Elena said. "And if you burn us, that diary survives. It's in a safe deposit box. If I die, it goes to the police."

It was a bluff. A desperate, flimsy bluff. But Gable was old, and tired, and carrying forty years of guilt.

"Constance wrote about me?" she asked.

"She said you were the only one she trusted," Elena said. "She said you were the only one who loved the first baby."

Gable looked at the gasoline. She looked at Julian.

"I did," she whispered. "He was so small."

She closed the lighter.

"Get out," she said.

Elena didn't wait. She grabbed Julian’s arm. Beatrice stumbled after them. They stepped over the line of gasoline, past the housekeeper who stood like a statue in the dark.

"Go," Gable said. "Before I change my mind."

They ran up the stairs, bursting out into the alley behind the newspaper office. The night air was freezing, but it felt like freedom.

"My car," Beatrice gasped. "It's around the corner."

They piled into the SUV. Beatrice fumbled with the keys, her hands shaking so hard she dropped them.

Elena snatched them up. "I'll drive."

She started the engine. As they pulled away, she looked back.

The basement windows of the newspaper office glowed orange.

Gable hadn't changed her mind. She had just changed the target.

She was burning the archives. Burning the proof of Jack Miller. Burning the last record of the man who died to make a prince.

"She's destroying it," Julian said, watching the smoke rise.

"Not all of it," Elena said. She pulled the newspaper clipping from her pocket. The photo of Jack Miller. The headline.

"We have this," she said. "And we have you."

She looked at him in the rearview mirror. He was pale, shivering, stripped of his identity and his history. But he was alive.

"We need to go to the cemetery," she said. "We need to find out if Jack Miller is really in that grave."

"And if he isn't?" Beatrice asked.

"Then we find out where Vane really put the bodies," Elena said. "Because I don't think he buries his mistakes. I think he keeps them."

She turned the car toward the old town cemetery.

But as they passed the town square, the digital billboard flashed a news alert.

*Hawthorne Estate Lawyer Arrested. Arson Suspected.*

Vane was in custody.

But the text below the headline made Elena slam on the brakes.

*Bail set at $10 million. Posted by anonymous donor.*

He was out.

And he wasn't going to wait for a trial.