Page 112 of Haunted

“Suzannah was dead before that fire ever reached Denning Court,” I say, “and you let the fire do the rest. You let every single one of us grieve her as one more thing it took from us.”

“What happened, Henry? If you told me it was an argument that got out of hand, I would believe you. She was going to tell you about the baby, wasn’t she? And when you worked out that it couldn’t be yours—”

Henry starts toward the lectern and Lance moves half a step and is simply there, between him and me, not touching him. Henry looks at his face and stops.

Four hundred people are frozen on folding chairs. Margaret’s hand is over her mouth. Lydia Drumm has stood up in the front row and nobody is looking at her.

“Do you even know who the father of Suzannah’s child is?” I goad him.

Henry loses what color he had left. He shakes his fist and looks down the row of speakers’ chairs. “This is your fault, Harlow,” he says. “You couldn’t be satisfied with your own wife, so you had to have mine.”

There is a gasp from the audience. Lance and I look at each other. I look back at Henry Drumm, but he’s gone white. There are three people coming up the side of the rows. Both troopers have stepped away from the awning and turned to watch, and between them, taking her time, in no hurry whatsoever, is Detective Van Hoek with two uniformed officers behind her.

“Mr. Drumm,” she says. “I’d like you to come to the station with me, please.”

Henry looks at her. Then at me. Then out at four hundred people on folding chairs—the cameras, the Lieutenant Governor, the Phoenixes, the community he built on the ashes of his own crime.

“This is outrageous,” he says, and there is nothing behind it at all.

Van Hoek takes his arm.

He goes with her. He doesn’t resist. We watch in silence as he is escorted across the open grass of the park he built for his wife, in the middle of a Saturday morning. Nobody in that entire place makes one single sound.

I stand at the lectern in front of four hundred people and three television cameras. I don’t know what to say next. The speech I prepared is useless.

Lance comes down off the stage. He doesn’t come to the lectern. He stands at the front, in the aisle between the chairs, looking up at me, and waits.

I lean into the mic.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “That wasn’t the speech I prepared. But I think Alice Cadwalader would have wanted the truth more than she wanted a ceremony.”

I step down and walk to Lance and take his hand, and behind us, as we go, the silence breaks into noise.

Chapter thirty-nine

Lance

When I wake up the next morning, Jonny is already sitting in the chair next to the window, staring out. He turns and looks at me. “Can we go back to the memorial park this morning?” he asks.

“You sure?”

He nods. “I think with all the things going on last night, I didn’t get a chance to…say what I needed to say to the people who most needed to hear it.”

“I’ll come with you,” I say. “Okay?”

“I know. But I need to do this. And I don’t want to do it on my own. We can wait until you get off work.”

“Not a chance. I’m taking remote work seriously for a while.” I stand up and kiss him on the cheek. He smiles at me.

We dress quietly.

The day after the event, the park is mostly empty. They haven’t taken down the podium and the tent yet. He ignores it and goes to the memorial wall. He stares at the thirty-one names, tracing the brass engravings with the tips of his fingers.

I step back to give him space, but he reaches back for me and takes my hand. I stand behind him, feeling stupid.

The Bishops are grouped together, but he first goes to the one on its own that reads, Suzannah Drumm. He touches it. “Wherever you are right now, I hope you are at peace now, Miss Suzannah.”

I squeeze his shoulder. He turns back to the Bishops. They are arranged in a single line by age: Laurel Bishop at the top, Elliott at the bottom.