Chapter 6.

6.

Within an hour, the catering staff was stacking chairs and clearing all the tables. They shook out all three hundred artfully folded linen napkins; they collected all the silverware and sorted the utensils into plastic trays. Dinner plates, salad plates, and bread plates were stacked onto dish dollies; tablecloths were swept into bins to be laundered and pressed. Guests were encouraged to take home a centerpiece so the flowers wouldn’t go to waste, and the subtext of the invitation was clear: please depart as quickly as possible, so our family can grieve in private.

“A terrible accident” was the term used by guests who approached me to express their condolences. I suppose it was the most polite thing to say: let’s all pretend Aidan entered a bomb shelter to clean a vintage handgun at the precise moment he was supposed to be speaking his vows. But as soon as these guests turned their backs to me, I could see them congregating and comparing notes. It was an open secret that Aidan had been in therapy for years, that he’d always been aloof and a bit of a loner. He had an “artist’s temperament.” The subjects of his paintings always looked so troubled. And of course he’d just lost a dear friend to a drug overdose. Clearly he’d been suffering and internalizing a great deal of pain. And it was so easy to overlook all the warning signs.…

Luxury buses shuttled the hotel guests back into town, and by four-thirty the cottages were emptying out. Still dressed in my tuxedo, I grabbed a bench on Main Street and watched the guests dragging their rolling bags out to their vehicles. Whenever possible, they avoided making eye contact. No one really knew what to say. It was one of those awful situations where words were simply inadequate.

One of the few people who did try to speak with me was Armando Castado. He sat beside me on the bench and gave me a business card with his personal phone number, and he encouraged me to use it. “Anytime you need someone to listen, I hope you’ll reach out to me. I’ll be waiting for your call, Frank.”

I had no intention of ever discussing this incident with anyone—especially not Armando Castado—but I appreciated the gesture. “Thank you.”

“Margaret will get through this,” he promised. “With your love and support, your daughter is going to be fine.”

I wasn’t so sure of that. I hadn’t seen Maggie since I’d left everyone at the Globe, but I’d heard she was somewhere inside the lodge, grieving in private with Aidan’s parents, and I couldn’t bring myself to join them.

Immediately after the gunshot, Hugo cautioned all of us to stay upstairs while he went down the spiral stairs to investigate. He said it was safer if he went alone. Errol and Gerry were happy to oblige, but I followed Hugo, anyway. To this day, I wish I hadn’t; I’ll never unsee what we found in the basement. Aidan lay sprawled on the floor and most of his head was dripping down the wall. And yet somehow the rest of his body was still alive. He was still moving . I reached for my phone to call 911, but Hugo smacked the device out of my hand. “Don’t be stupid.”

I went to retrieve it and he shoved me against the wall, then chopped my lower back with the sharp edge of his hand. I felt like I’d been tasered. I would have collapsed if Hugo wasn’t right behind me, twisting my arm and pinning me to the wall and forcing me to endure the horrible wheezing gasps of Aidan’s last breaths. Hugo calmly whispered it would only be another minute, and it felt like the longest minute of my life. To this day, I’ll sometimes hear a random stranger clearing their throat in a bar or restaurant, and suddenly I’ll be back in the basement, my face pressed to the cool cinder-block wall, immobilized and unable to help.

When at last the breathing finally stopped, Hugo released me and I fell to the floor. He announced that it was safe for Errol and Gerry to come downstairs, but neither man moved in a hurry. I suppose they already knew what they were going to see, and they only came halfway into the shelter, sparing themselves the worst of it. Errol didn’t show any kind of remorse. He looked like a man encountering a nuisance, like he’d arrived to discover his basement was flooded. He simply turned to his attorney and asked, “Now what?”

Gerry thought for a moment, then proceeded to outline a plan: “Hugo will have to dial 911 so there’s an official record of the call. And after yesterday’s episode, I think the police will be surprised to hear from us so soon. But this time, fortunately, we have a much simpler story: Aidan was late for the wedding, the four of us came looking for him, and we found him like this. We have no idea why. We’re all still in shock.” Gerry looked from Errol to Hugo to me. “Can we agree that’s what happened?”

Errol nodded and Hugo said, “Of course,” and I asked, “What’s the alternative?”

“I don’t follow, Frank.”

“I’m asking what happens if I don’t agree. Will the police show up and find my body next to Aidan’s? Or do I just go missing like Dawn Taggart? When does this end?”

Gerry ignored my questions. He seemed to dismiss them as pointless. “Right now, there are three hundred people waiting for us at the Globe. I’ll go there now and explain there’s been a terrible accident. I’ll break the news to Margaret and to Catherine, if she’s lucid enough to hear it. After Hugo calls the police, we’ll start encouraging guests to be on their way. Meanwhile, you two men need to reach an understanding. You’ve got ten minutes to get your shit together.”

We followed them upstairs out of the cellar. Hugo and Gerry were already leaving the studio, but I paused to linger over Aidan’s paintings and Errol stayed with me. In the moment, I could think of no better way to honor Aidan’s life than to stop and appreciate his artwork. All the black-and-white faces of regular people, all the nurses and teachers and line cooks and bus drivers. With their wrinkles and blemishes and imperfections, they didn’t look anything like the wedding guests at Osprey Cove, and I wondered if maybe that was the point.

“I don’t know how you can live with yourself,” I told Errol. “Your son was a good man. And incredibly talented. And now he’s dead. Because of you.”

He shrugged, casual, making it clear that none of my words had landed. “The truth’s a little more complicated, Frank. Would you like to know it, or do you just want to judge me without having all the facts?”

I couldn’t believe he was going to try to defend his actions, and yet that’s exactly what he proceeded to do: “About fifteen years ago, I had a chance to invest in a little start-up called Atavus Genetics. The company didn’t survive; it was crushed by 23andMe because it was basically the same idea: you spit in a cup and mailed it to their lab, and they sent back all the secrets of your DNA. The CEO gave me a bunch of sample kits to share with my friends, and on a whim I decided to test my son. Back then he was maybe ten years old, and I was curious to see what he’d inherited from me. And it turns out the answer was zero. Which might have surprised a lot of other people, but not me. The truth was, I always suspected it. The boy didn’t look anything like me. And our personalities were totally different. He was always so timid, so cautious, so afraid. It was a genuine relief to know he wasn’t mine. I decided to just leave him to Catherine and focus on my work.”

“Did anyone tell Aidan the truth?”

“I don’t know. I certainly didn’t.”

“So you just rejected him but never explained why? Does that seem fair to Aidan?”

“I never stopped supporting him financially. His art didn’t pay the rent on that penthouse apartment, believe me.”

“You owed him more than that. You should have behaved like his father or told him the truth. Instead of leaving him to wonder why you hated him.”

Errol had already stopped listening. “You’re not going to make me feel guilty, Frank. I’m not the one who created this mess. I didn’t bash in Dawn Taggart’s skull. But your daughter is very much involved—so if you have concerns for her well-being, I suggest you follow my lawyer’s advice. Gerry is very good at his job, and he’ll work on your family’s behalf, if you let him.”

I knew he was right; I knew I’d have to stay on Gardner Standard Time a little while longer and agree with their official story. But I also knew that Maggie’s ties to the family had been severed. The wedding was off, and she was now a free woman. She could go anywhere, do anything, leave Osprey Cove and never return.

Which was exactly what I planned to do.