She braced herself, her whole body shaking, remembering the ropes around her wrists, the weight of her mother’s body.
“Do you know about Beth?” she asked.
“Yes, Kate,” he said, the smile completely gone. The moment rocked her. The horror of Beth’s death hit her again, seeing the grief in her father’s eyes.
“Murdered,” she said. “Just like Mom.”
“Who did it?” her father asked. “Her husband? I want to kill him, Kate. If he gets caught and winds up here, I will.”
“Your mind goes straight to that?” she asked. “That’s not how most people think.”
“It’s how fathers think,” he said.
She took that in and imagined how he must feel, trapped in here, unable to be with the family, to have protected any of them—to have put them in such danger. She had loved him so much. She wondered how he had lived through the last twenty-three years, knowing what he’d done to his daughters, to his wife.
“Tell me—do they think it’s Pete?” he asked.
“No one has been arrested.”
“I know, but you two were so close, and you have the best instincts. I don’t believe you don’t know—whether it’s been proven or not, you know in your gut. No one knew Beth better than you.”
“Actually, I think you knew her better.”
Her father sat back. She’d shocked him. “That’s not true,” he said.
“We weren’t close anymore. We haven’t been since the day Mom died.”
“Don’t say that.”
“It changed everything between us. We were never the same after that,” Kate said. She delivered the words like blows. She saw the pain in his face and didn’t care that she was being cruel.
“She talked about you every time she came here,” he said. “She told me about your job, all the famous people you flew, the places you visited. You always brought her presents. She told me about dinners you two had and what a great aunt you are to Samantha. How you and Lulu are still best friends. No, Katy, you’re wrong in what you’re telling me. She adored you as much as ever.”
Kate looked down. She hadn’t said that she and Beth didn’t love each other deeply. In fact, she thought they’d loved each other even more as time went on. But they’d been blocked by the trauma, a force field created by the violence of that day, impermeable to words. Each of them occupied her own dark solitude; feelings could break through, but language couldn’t.
“I don’t know if it was Pete,” Kate said, thinking of what Lulu had said.
“Then who?”
“Who is Jed Hilliard?”
“Jed?” her father asked, looking confused. “The kid who was here?”
“Kid?” Kate asked.
“Well, to me. Thirty, thirty-one, something like that last time I saw him. The artist.”
“Yes, an artist.”
“Why? What does he have to do with Beth?”
“She met him here.”
“Yes, but they barely knew each other. He’s a good artist; he has a fine eye. I told him if I still had the gallery, I’d give him a show.”
“Is that why you introduced them? So she could exhibit his work?”
Her father paused. His gaze sharpened, a terrifying look entered his eyes, and for the first time she saw the deep change in him—not just age, but the darkness of life in prison.
“No. Definitely not. But I was proud of her,” he said. “I was being a big shot, letting him know I used to be someone, that my daughter was a star in the art world. Are you saying he killed her?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t even know his name until this week. Where is he?”
“He’s not from Connecticut. He got arrested here, a pot conviction; that’s why they sent him to Ainsworth. When he was released, the plan was for him to go back to Warwick, Rhode Island. That’s where he lived before, where his family lives. He had to return there; that would have been his parole arrangement.”
“Warwick’s not far from New London. Where did he get caught?”
“The shoreline somewhere.” Her father nodded slowly. “Maybe New London, I’m thinking. Maybe it was. But still, Beth lived in Black Hall—that’s a world away from drugs and the back streets.”
“She volunteered in New London; didn’t she tell you?”
“She sure did. I was proud of her.”
“And Jed wound up at her soup kitchen. They became friends,” Kate said, watching for his reaction.
“She appreciated talent, and he was a master of the line,” he said, frowning slightly. “He had a touch of Matisse in him.”
“I’ve seen his work,” she said.
“You did? What did you think?”
“I think he caused her problems,” Kate said.
“What problems? What did he do?”
“Worked at getting close to her. Complicated her life,” Kate said.
“He wasn’t a user, Kate. I know a little about people in here, after all that time, and I didn’t get that from him at all. Beth had good sense, and if she liked him, it was because he is a decent person. And I’m sure she saw his talent. Like I did. In fact . . .” He stopped himself.
“In fact what?” she asked.
“Well, he missed nature in here. It ripped him apart. He was always sketching rivers, hills, trees. When he was getting out, I told him he should draw the gardens at the Ledges.”
The Ledges was an abandoned estate a few miles north of Mathilda’s house, also on the Connecticut River. Years ago, a nonprofit group had restored and operated it as a state park. There was a sunken garden full of lavender and old roses. Concerts and plays had been held in an amphitheater beside the rock ledge sloping into Long Island Sound. Many Sunday nights, her family had gone there to picnic and fly kites and listen to Mozart or bluegrass, see performances of Gilbert and Sullivan and once a production of Henry V. But there were financial misdeeds on the part of the nonprofit’s board, and the Ledges went untended. Kate didn’t tell her father that the mansion had fallen into ruin, the gardens now overtaken by weeds and tall grass.
“Jed was never violent,” her father said, a ravaged tone in his voice. “He was peaceful. I worried about him in here. He wasn’t tough enough. I can’t believe he would have . . . that he could have attacked anyone. He was always one of the ones who needed to go home, who didn’t belong in this place. But I swear to God, if he fucking hurt her . . .”
“How did you find out she died?” Kate asked.
“Scotty Breen told me,” he said, using Scotty’s maiden name. “She called. It was the worst day of my life. The second worst.”
“Those two days are connected,” she said.
“I don’t dare ask you to forgive me,” he said. “I don’t even want you to. I don’t deserve it.”
Kate knew she should get the words out. This was her chance. Everyone always said forgiveness is not forgetting, that the act is as full of grace for the forgiver as the forgiven. This would not hurt her. She gazed at the old man across from her. She knew that she would never see him again, and she also knew she could never absolve him.