Page 42 of Everything You Hate
“That’s not an answer, Gus.”
“It’s the one I’ve got.” No defensiveness in it. No evasion. He says it like he’s telling me his own birthday. Then he’s off into a story about a lighthouse keeper’s daughter and the moment is gone.
By the time the light through the front window has gone amber, I have thirty pages of notes and a headache and the unwelcome certainty that Malcolm Merrick has been lying to me since the day I stepped off the ferry. Not shading. Not spinning. Lying, with documents he chose not to give me and names he chose not to mention.
I’m packing up when Gus reaches under the counter.
The box is cardboard, battered, reinforced with duct tape along the seams and covered in enough dust to suggest it hasn’t moved in years. He slides it across without ceremony.
“Might be something in there you’d find interesting,” he says. “Or might be nothing. Hard to say.”
I lift the lid. Inside, wrapped in a square of oilcloth that smells of motor oil and time, is a small leather-bound journal, the cover cracked, the spine soft from handling. Stamped on the front in faded gold:
E.M.
My hands go still.
“Gus.” My voice comes out in a squeak, and I turn toward him. “Is this?—”
But he’s already disappeared into the back room and shut the door, putting a period on the conversation.
The Tidewater is quiet when I get back. Lobby lights dimmed. The night manager nods from behind the desk. My key card works on the first try.
My room is exactly as I left it. Bed made. Windows closed. Curtains drawn.
The notebook I left open on the desk is closed. The pen is capped and set beside it, aligned with the edge of the desk. The pages are squared, corners meeting at right angles.
I didn’t close it. I never close it. I leave it open to the page I’m working on because that’s how I work.
Housekeeping. They came in, straightened up, closed the notebook.
I pick it up. The spine falls open to Mimi’s interview.He doesn’t kiss women unless he means it.The words sit there in my handwriting with nothing underneath them. No follow-up. No analysis.
I set the notebook down and square it against the edge of the desk. Whoever closed it squared it too.
I check the door. The lock is intact. The security chain is still fastened from the inside.
The balcony, then. I slide the glass door open and step out into cold, salt-damp air. Wet railing. No footprints on the tile. No sign of anything.
But the notebook was closed.
I lock the balcony door and sit on the edge of the bed with Evangeline’s journal in my lap.
Malcolm’s archive has holes. Big ones. The kind a man with his resources doesn’t leave by accident.
I open the journal and start reading.
Chapter Nine
Evangeline
8 September 1892
I am to be married.
Father told me at breakfast, between the post and his second cup, in the manner of a man relaying a decision about the roof. Charles Fairchild. The spring, most likely, or the early summer if his mother’s health continues poorly. There were terms, which he did not explain, and there was a settlement, which he mentioned twice. He seemed pleased. He asked whether I had any objection and had already turned back to his correspondence before the question finished leaving him.
I said it was a good match.
