“She threatened me. She threatened our family. She was going to finally go to the police, a lawyer, whoever could help her, and tell them. She was never going to stop. I put my hands on her shoulders and I . . .”
The lake became hushed right then. Every wave of water still. Every possible sound sucked away.
“I pushed her away from me.”
I had never seen him so scared, so out of control.
“I didn’t mean for her to fall . . . I didn’t!” he cried. “She must have slipped. I don’t remember how but suddenly she was there. Under the water. She was so still. So beautiful. And I just . . . I let her go. She floated down the river. Down the falls . . .”
His eyes teared up as he wrenched his hands together. He sobbed once and then caught himself.
“You have to understand,” he said, lunging closer to me. “It was the only way to protect our family. It was the right thing to do. We did the right thing by taking Marlow in, didn’t we? Isn’t that what we all strive for? To do the right thing? To sacrifice for those we love?”
“You’re crazy,” I whispered.
I stood up and stepped away from him. The man I had called my father.
I don’t know you. I don’t know who you are anymore.
“No,” Marlow said firmly. “No. Don’t give him that. Crazy would mean he’s ill. Don’t give him that.”
“Why keep it a secret?” I turned to her abruptly. “When it all came back to you. You remembered it all. Why keep it a secret so long? All this time?”
Her face softened deeply. “You still don’t get it, do you, Isla? I would do anything to protect you.”
“Protect me?”
“It would have ruined you. Everything you had grown to trust, and love, would have crumbled. I couldn’t do that to you.”
“You kept it all in . . . for me . . .”
Why? Why would she do that for me?
“Yes . . . and it would have ruined this family. This family I had once loved so dearly. That once meant everything to me. I did everything to please every single one of you. To make you believe I was part of you all. But no matter what I did, I was still somehow an outsider. Stella, my so-called mother, looked at me every single day with such . . . hatred. Even my real mother didn’t want me.”
She looked so lost and angry, it made me shake my head at her.
“Marlow—”
“When I remembered the truth, when I remembered what he did to my mother, I realized something.”
“What?”
“Nobody wanted Marlow. But everybody wanted you.” There was both pride and ice on the edge of her voice.
“You. You and Moni were the only two people who would never betray me.”
Moni.
I hated her name being brought up. Her sacred name mentioned among these unleashed secrets, a pure brass ring tarnished.
“What are we going to do now?” I asked wearily.
“Nothing,” said Dad.
Marlow’s eyes narrowed up at him with loathing.
He stood. “There is nothing you can do now. There is nothing for any of us to do now.”
She rose up to meet him. “You murdered a woman in front of her child. No one gets away with that.”
Indifference.
It was the indifference on my father’s face that made the hairs on my body stand up. He was so beyond what he had done that he truly believed he deserved to move on. Deserved to get away with the unforgivable.
“There is no trace of her left,” he responded flatly. “If there was, it would have shown up by now. It’s been over twenty years and no one—no one—has ever given a shit about her. Why would they now?” His eyes went wide and distant. “I’m going home to your mother now.”
He walked with heavy steps down the dock, a pathway toward the exit door of a theater he was escaping. The show he refused to acknowledge, refused to be a part of.
I turned my head. I heard her voice. Faint at first.
“Now, my babies . . . pay attention and remember this . . .”
It grew louder as he walked up the stairs. Each stride up the stone steps was a heavy stomp on my heart. A drum beat so deep, disturbing anything I had ever believed.
“You can’t trap a tiger just by catching him . . .”
We watched as he disappeared up into the darkness. The drumming grew faster.
