Confessions of a Murder Suspect (36 page)

With the exception of my one fractured memory of hearing my mother’s voice breaking in her study, I’d never known her to cry, and I’d certainly never witnessed it. I’d thought she was invincible. I wiped away my own tears with the back of my hand. More tears immediately replaced them.

My father said, “I’m not sure. I
should
feel sure. I
must
feel sure.”

“You’re an optimist, Mal, and I love you for that, but it’s my decision. Please. Forgive me. For everything. Don’t fight me on this.”

My father touched my mother’s cheek and said, “There’s nothing to forgive, darling. Okay.”

Then he opened the drawer of his night table and withdrew a small amber bottle.

Crosby had used his editing program to move closer for this shot. He focused on my mother as she gripped a water glass with both hands. Then he pulled back again so that the camera could capture my father pouring liquid from the bottle into the glass.

I wanted to scream,
Stop. Stop. Stop.

But the story was unstoppable.

My mother said, “Thank you, Malcolm. I love you. I’ve never loved you more.”

He replied, “I’m sorry for anything I’ve done to hurt you, Maudie. I’ve never loved anyone but you.”

My father moaned as my mother drank down the contents of her water glass. Then, as I looked at his face, I saw tears fall from his eyes. And I saw him accept the decision.

He lifted the bottle to his lips and quickly drank the rest of the poison down. The empty bottle rolled out of his hand and across the silk bedding. Then it fell to the floor.

My mother grabbed my father’s arm and cried out, “No!
No
, Malcolm.
What have you done?
”

What
had
they done?

What had they
done
?

83

The scene in my parents’ bedroom
wasn’t over. Nate Crosby’s video rolled on.

On-screen, my mother turned in response to a knock at the door. From her expression, I thought that she might have been expecting the visitor. “Come in, please,” she called out.

I watched as Samantha entered my parents’ bedroom. She was wearing slacks, a white eyelet blouse, a dark blue jacket that my mother had given her, and flat pink shoes.

“Am I disturbing you?” Samantha asked. “Is it too late?”

“No, we’re still awake,” said Maud.

“I wanted to tell you that I double-checked all the documents to make sure that your signatures and the notary stamps were all in the right places,” she said, moving toward the bed. “I dropped the papers off at Philippe’s office before I went out to dinner.”

She paused, seeming to notice something in the looks on their faces.

“Is everything all right?”

“Everything is fine,” said Maud. Her smile was crooked, forced. “What did you have for dinner?”

Samantha smiled. “Pasta
pomodoro
,” she said. “And a little red
vino
.”

Maud reached out to Samantha, drew her in for a hug, and kissed her cheek. Samantha kissed Maud’s cheek, too. As Samantha pulled back, I saw a glint of gold at her throat—the locket.

Samantha had been wearing Maud’s keepsake that night.

On the TV, Samantha said, “Maud, do you need anything before I go to bed?”

Beside me, Harry cried out, “Please, Samantha. Do
something
.”

If only we could go into that scene and tell Samantha what they had done. Maybe there would have been time to save them.

Maud said, “Will you put the trash down the chute, Sammy?”

“Of course,” Samantha said. She picked the bottle up off the floor, put it in the trash basket, and went to the doorway. She turned before she left, waggled her fingers, and said, “Sweet dreams.”

“And you as well, dear. We’re fine. Perfectly fine,” said Maud. She blew Samantha a kiss, and once the door was closed, put her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook as she sobbed.

My father took her in his arms and held her tightly. “It’s okay, darling. It’s all okay now. We’re sparing them the worst.”

Maud nodded. “I wouldn’t have changed a day,” she said at last. Her voice sounded tired. “Well, I wouldn’t have awarded Katherine… the Grande Gongo… with an Asterisk.”

“No, of course not. Please don’t think about that, darling. The other kids… they’re strong. They’ve risen to every challenge we’ve given them. They’ll be fine. And they’ll understand why it had to be this way when they read the papers,” my father said.

My mother said, “Yes. It’s best to let the children find their way… in their own way. Mal? Do you want the last word?”

“No. You have it, sweetheart.”

My mother looked up at her husband, wearing a brave smile that tore at my heart. She said, “Thank you, Malcolm. I’ll love you forever.”

I turned away then. I knew it was where my father nodded and hugged my mother even harder. They were entwined when the seizures started.

I choked out, “Turn it off, Harry.”

Tears were streaming down both of our faces.

“I’m sorry,” said Sergeant Caputo. He reached out and touched my arm. “I’m very sorry for your loss.”

CONFESSION

It probably won’t surprise you
to hear me say that watching Nate Crosby’s illicit video made me cry, longer and harder than I ever have in my life. But it might surprise you to hear me say that I wasn’t crying because seeing my parents’ death was so horrible.

I was crying because it was beautiful.

That was real, normal love—right here in the house of Angels. A man who couldn’t bear the idea of living on this planet without the woman he married and had committed his life to. A woman despairing because she was dying and didn’t have enough time to make everything right for her family. A woman crushed when she saw that the man she loved was taking his own life, too.

Okay, so maybe it wasn’t exactly “normal.” But it was the
most tangible proof I’d ever had that they loved each other so much.

They loved each other. Malcolm and Maud loved each other.

In their deaths, Malcolm and Maud had finally succumbed to their most basic emotions. Love. Fear of death. Fear of life without the one you cherish.

Witnessing their ultimate sacrifice had somehow given me the most valuable lesson of all. Now I knew I couldn’t wait until the brink of death to finally be real and true to myself.

Their own Big Chop was going to save me.

84

I’m not sure I could have
faced preparing a eulogy without seeing that video. As painful as it was, it gave me strength. If Malcolm and Maud truly believed we could do anything in life, even without them, I believed I could deliver this speech.

And I would not be a robot.

The press dogged us when we left the Dakota to attend the service, ran after us on the street, got right in our faces. It didn’t matter to them that we were orphans. It didn’t matter that we had been cleared of killing our parents.

As you might expect by now, the press was at its obnoxious worst. I hated them. They wanted interviews. They
wanted drama. They wanted news. But we weren’t going to give it to them. We kept where we were going secret so the press couldn’t follow us.

Philippe was one of the very few friends invited to the extremely small, very private service at a funeral home on Eighty-third and Columbus. Despite how powerful and influential Malcolm and Maud were—or perhaps because of it—we didn’t really know who their true allies and supporters were, so we decided to keep the invitation list to the very closest and oldest family and friends. I actually think our parents would have been proud of us—for trusting no one.

Philippe took the three of us aside before the service began and, without ceremony, delivered some information that forever rocked our worlds.

“Your mother had pancreatic cancer,” Phil said. “Stage four. She didn’t learn about it until it was too late for treatment. And this kind of cancer… There’s no cure.”

Although his explanations were clear, my mind was foggy. Not because I’d stopped taking the pills, but because I was oversaturated with feelings. I wasn’t sure I was hearing him correctly.

“She was
dying
?” I’d deduced on some deeper level that illness was implied in the video of my parents’ death, but it was stunning to hear the news nonetheless. “I just can’t
believe that, Phil. We would have seen something—medications, trips to the doctor.…”