The next morning Daisy woke up in the hospital. She looked around, blinking, wondering for a brief moment where she was. A nurse passed by her door and then Daisy had a dim recollection of the events of the previous evening.
That same nurse came into her room just a few minutes later, smiling brightly.
“How are you this morning?” she asked.
“I hurt all over, but I suppose it could be worse,” Daisy said with a grimace. “Do you know how my friend is doing?”
“She was badly beaten, but she’s going to be all right,” the nurse informed her. “When you’re feeling up to it I can take you to her room.”
“I feel up to it now,” Daisy answered quickly.
The nurse smiled kindly. “Try to eat some breakfast first, then we’ll talk about it.” She bustled around Daisy’s bed, adjusting tubes and checking the dials on the machines surrounding her.
While the nurse was tending to Daisy another hospital employee came in bearing a breakfast tray. On it was an unappetizing array of runny scrambled eggs, cold toast, and congealing oatmeal, but Daisy ate it all hungrily. She found that she was starving, plus she wanted to prove to the nurse that she was well enough to visit Jude in her room.
“How’d I do?” Daisy asked as she sipped the bitter orange juice that was on the tray.
The nurse laughed. “You showed me, didn’t you? All right, let’s get you on your feet. If you’re able to stand up, we’ll go see your friend. She’s just up the hall.”
Daisy sat up with the help of the nurse’s strong hands. She got out of bed gingerly, not expecting the pain to be as severe as it was. She winced.
“Take it nice and slow,” the nurse cautioned. “Your body has been through a lot. You’ve suffered several broken ribs, facial fractures, bruises and lacerations, and probably a concussion. We’ll be doing some tests in just a little while. You can’t just get up and run.” The nurse helped her ease into a wheelchair.
Together they made the trip to Jude’s room, which was only three doors down but felt to Daisy like it was ten miles. Everything hurt. Even in the wheelchair, her bones felt like they were rattling around in her body and her head throbbed. She didn’t mention it to the nurse.
And when she got her first look at Jude, hooked up to machines, her face swollen and bruised, and her head heavily bandaged, she knew her pain was nothing compared to Jude’s.
The nurse wheeled Daisy close to Jude’s bed and told Daisy she’d be back in a few minutes to help her get back to her own room.
“You have to get your rest and you have to let Jude rest, too,” she said, then she slipped quietly from the room.
Daisy took one of Jude’s hands in her own, noticing the bruising around the knuckles. “What did he do to you?” she breathed.
She bowed her head over Jude’s hand, realizing suddenly how lucky Jude was to be alive. Tears fell from her eyes, stinging the cuts in her face as they dripped onto the floor. “I’m so sorry, Jude,” she whispered.
She felt the slightest pressure from Jude’s hand. She looked up in surprise.
“Can you hear me, Jude?” she asked.
Almost imperceptibly, Jude nodded. Her eyelids fluttered, as if she were trying to open her eyes and couldn’t, and Daisy squeezed her hand gently.
“Don’t try to open your eyes. The nurse says you’re going to be okay. I’m in the room right down the hall. I’m going to call your parents.” Jude nodded again.
The nurse came back in to escort Daisy back to her room. Once she was settled in her own bed, Daisy reached for her cell phone and scrolled through her contacts. When she found the cell number of the Global Human Rights Journal office manager, she called the woman at home.
The woman was shocked to hear what had happened to Jude and Daisy. Daisy asked her to text her with the phone number of Jude’s parents, as they would be listed as next-of-kin in Jude’s employment files. They hung up and Daisy received the text just a few minutes later.
She dialed Jude’s parents and introduced herself. Her parents were hysterical when they learned what had happened to their daughter and they promised to come to the hospital immediately.
Daisy then called Grover to tell him what had happened. He was shocked when she told him the story and promised to be at the hospital within a half hour.
And true to his word, he burst into her room twenty-five minutes later. “I called Helena and she’s on her way, too,” he explained breathlessly, then stood still, gazing at Daisy for a long moment. He reached out and smoothed her hair.
“I don’t know what I would have done if this had been more serious,” he told her, then he bent down and kissed her on the forehead. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine,” she replied, tears springing to her eyes.
“Then why are you crying?” he asked, blinking back tears of his own.
“I’m just happy, I guess,” she replied with a short laugh.
He grinned his wide, lopsided smile. “How can you be happy at a time like this?” he asked, shaking his head.
“Because you’re here.”
“I’ll always be here for you,” he said quietly, leaning over and kissing her lips gently.
“What’s going on?” a voice asked from the doorway.
Grover moved aside so Helena could see her friend. “Oh, my God!” she cried. “Are you all right? And why was Grover kissing you on the lips?”
Daisy laughed, even though it hurt her ribs. “I’m fine and he kissed me on the lips because I wanted him to.”
Helena let out a squeal. “I’m so happy! I mean, not just because you’re going to be okay, but because you both finally came to your senses!”
Grover and Helena couldn’t stay for long because Daisy’s nurse was only letting visitors come for a few minutes at a time. When Daisy started tiring, the nurse sent Grover and Helena home with the promise that they could come back the following day, if Daisy was still a patient.
Daisy slept for much of that day, then spent one more night in the hospital for observation. Before she left the hospital the next morning, she limped into Jude’s room. Jude’s parents were there and Jude was sitting up in bed, her eyes open this time.
“Daisy,” she said, her eyes welling up with tears. “I can’t believe how stupid I was. I’m so sorry I brought you into this. I should have seen that Mark John was becoming more and more unstable.”
“Jude, stop right there,” Daisy scolded her. “You couldn’t have known what was going to happen. None of us realized what was happening. I’m just glad I was able to get to Mark John’s house before he hurt you any worse.” The silence hung in the air for a moment.
“I want to show you something,” Jude said, shifting in her bed. “Mom, can you grab my pants from the plastic bag in the closet?”
Jude’s mother stood up to retrieve the bag of the clothes and belongings Jude had had with her when she got to the hospital. She pulled a pair of jeans from the bag and handed them to Jude, then she and her husband left the room so Jude and Daisy could talk privately.
Jude reached slowly, painfully, into the back pocket and pulled out a folded stack of papers.
“This is the family tree I found. This is the one I was talking to you about on the phone when Mark John came home.” She shuddered, then recovered herself. “I didn’t get a chance to look at whatever’s stapled to it.” She paused. “Now I know why he didn’t want children,” she added quietly, looking down at her hands.
Daisy unfolded the papers. The family tree was on top, and there was a magazine article stapled to the top paper.
She glanced at the article’s headline before looking at the family tree: “The Murder Gene: Nature vs. Nurture?”
So she and Brian weren’t the only ones who knew about the murder gene. Someone had known enough about it to attach it to the Friole family tree.
She flipped the top page over without reading the article. The family tree was heavily annotated with scribbles.
Daisy set the paper on Jude’s bedside table and ran her fingertip along the branches of the tree. Mark John’s name was at the bottom. Above his name were those of his parents, then grandparents, then great-grandparents, then great-great-grandparents, then at the top of the tree, his great-great-great-grandparents.
And there was the name “Thomas Sheppard/Sheridan/Sweeney,” Mark John’s great-great-great grandfather. The name “Adelaide Sheridan/Sweeney Hightower” was below Thomas’s name and slightly to the left. And down through the generations to Mark John. Beside many of the men’s names were curious notations.
Daisy looked closer at the paper. Beside the name of Mark John’s father was scrawled, “Murder, imprisoned 1968.” Beside Mark John’s great-uncle was written, “Arson, imprisoned 1931.” As Daisy examined the family tree, she realized with growing horror that she was looking at a record of the crimes committed by the members of Mark John’s family—members who very likely shared the murder gene with him. She recalled learning from Adelaide’s story, “The Widower’s Curse,” that Thomas Sheppard’s father had killed someone, too. Who knew how many generations the murder gene went back? She thought briefly about all the parallels between Thomas’s behavior and Mark John’s behavior: the aloofness, the mood swings, the unkindness, the anger, the remorse after hurting a loved one.
Daisy leaned down to kiss Jude lightly on the cheek before she left, then she turned to leave. But a thought struck her as she was walking into the hospital corridor.
“Jude,” she asked, turning to face her friend, “you mentioned you found something else at Mark John’s house. What was it?”
“Walt’s wallet.”
“And one more thing--I’m not trying to upset you, only make sense of things. Were you and Mark John romantically involved before Fiona was killed?”
Jude nodded.
Somehow both answers were the ones Daisy had expected.
Grover was working at a party that afternoon and had been unable to find someone to work in his place. He had wanted to cancel the party, but Daisy insisted that he keep his commitment. Brian drove Daisy home from the hospital. On the way back to her apartment she told Brian all about the family tree and the other members of Mark John’s family who had committed violent crimes.
“He’s confessed to killing Fiona,” Brian told her.
“How did he do it?” Daisy asked. “I thought he was at work that night.”
“Apparently he took the service elevator, the one with no video feed, and went out the back of the building. He went home, killed Fiona, and went back to the office the same way he had left. Then he took the front elevators and exited the building through the front entrance much later.”
He sighed. “I thought it would feel better knowing who killed my sister, but somehow it doesn’t feel better at all. To think she died at the hands of her own husband…” His voice drifted off.
Daisy was quiet for a moment, then asked, “Why did he kill her? I mean, he didn’t just kill her out of the blue, did he?”
Brian’s eyes wore a faraway look. “Simple. She cheated on him. He couldn’t take the embarrassment. And then he killed Walt, too, because Walt was The Other Man.”
“I’m sorry, Brian.”
“And then he has the audacity to start dating another woman almost immediately,” he said bitterly.
“So you knew about that?” Daisy asked.
“Yes. I happened to see them together one day. They were holding hands and I couldn’t believe he had the nerve to be seeing someone so soon after my sister’s death.” His voice caught. “I followed them to your neighborhood, actually. I was going to confront them, but they disappeared before I could say anything.”
Daisy thought it best not to reveal to Brian just yet that Mark John and Jude had been having an affair during Mark John’s marriage to Fiona. Maybe she would never tell him.
Daisy shook her head. “I guess we don’t really need to discuss Trudy’s diary anymore, do we? Now that we know the ending of her story. And its aftermath.”
“A very sad aftermath,” Brian agreed.
“Brian, why were you waiting for me in front of that coffee shop across the street from Global Human Rights the day I found you in the office?”
He gave Daisy a look of shame. “I’m sorry if I alarmed you. I was debating about whether I should approach you and ask you your thoughts about working with Mark John, but I decided against it. When you told me you had the diary, I knew that would be a much better way to talk to you.”
“You never dropped off books to Mark John that day--what were you doing in his office?” Jude asked.
“Looking for...I don’t know, anything that would incriminate him.”
“So why didn’t you talk to me about it for so long? Why did you keep trying to talk to Mark John about it?”
“Because I wanted him to realize I was onto him. But it never happened.” He shook his head. “And besides that, I needed time to think about it. So much had happened, and I wanted to make sure I wasn’t making wild accusations that could ruin Mark John’s life if he weren’t guilty. But I did call in an anonymous tip to the police, advising them to talk to Mark John again about the night of Fiona’s murder.”
“That was you?” Daisy asked. Brian nodded grimly.
“You know, I thought maybe you had killed Fiona to keep her from telling the administration at your school about the cheating, and I thought you killed Walt for actually reporting you,” she said.
This time the look Brian gave her was one of red-faced embarrassment.
“Helping those kids cheat was probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever done,” he said. “I loved Fiona. I may have disagreed about her choices in partners, but she was my sister. I never would have raised a hand to her. The same goes for Walt. He did exactly what he should have done. I miss them both terribly.”
“I also thought Melody might have killed both Fiona and Walt,” Daisy said.
“She’s been catatonic since finding out about the affair. She left her kids with her mother and has been under psychiatric care since then. She couldn’t have killed them. But I didn’t feel comfortable telling you about her breakdown.”
He pulled up to the curb next to Daisy’s apartment. He offered to help her upstairs, but she insisted on doing it herself. She watched Brian drive away, then she made her way slowly up the three flights of stairs to the third floor. She opened the door and the first thing she saw on the foyer table was a huge bouquet of white daisies.
She looked at the card that accompanied them.
For my Daisy. With love, Grover.
She smiled. She was feeling better already.
And when he knocked on her door that night bearing gifts of a teddy bear and a box of her favorite chocolates, she kissed him tenderly, with the knowledge that although she wasn’t going to forget Dean, she was ready to move on.