‘I read Those Bones some time ago,’ Grace said as Everly Ledger hung up her coat. ‘I enjoyed it, even if it did make me cry like a baby. I like how you don’t go for the salacious bits, but portray these notorious people like they’re human.’
‘They are human,’ he said gently.
Grace had been nervous about meeting Ledger in real life. After two decades on television, he was known for his calm demeanour and a voice made for storytelling, but he could have been temperamental and gruff away from the camera, and she wasn’t sure she could handle such a strong personality when the purpose of her visit made her feel so fragile. She didn’t know what she expected to get from the author of Burnout, but, whatever it was, it would be more than she got from Taureau.
At first, Ledger refused her request that he should speak with her, but, when she explained via email that she had been to Mont Carmel, he replied with his address and asked her not to come until after six o’clock.
‘I like stories of real people, ordinary people caught up in extraordinary circumstances,’ he explained of his best-known book as he led her into his home, a two-storey Victorian in an old picturesque neighbourhood, and offered her a seat in the living room.
‘Did you meet her? Alice Husbands, I mean.’
‘I did, and at seventy she was as unapologetic about killing her mother as she was when she was seventeen. I can’t say I blame her. Martha Husbands terrorised her entire family and, when you come right down to it, she deserved to die the way she did.’ He tilted his head at her and his eyes twinkled behind his glasses. ‘That usually gives people a good shake, but you didn’t even flinch.’
‘Nothing makes me flinch these days.’
He watched her for a moment, then a smile crooked his mouth. ‘Quite the mess the senator’s gotten himself into, isn’t it?’
Grace rested her hands on her knees and smiled. ‘So we’re getting right to it, are we?’
‘It’s hard to avoid the subject, even if the Taureau family wasn’t the purpose of your visit.’
Indeed, it wasn’t surprising that Ledger brought it up. They could have been sharing a line at the grocery store and a newspaper headline would have sparked his remark.
Less than a week after her return from Mont Carmel the story had broken and it had been splashed over the national news ever since. Dominic Taureau had stepped down from his role in the Senate, citing personal reasons. The same day, the woman claiming to be carrying his child came forward, followed by three others. By the time the spending scandals came to light, he was done.
Grace wondered if it was Taureau who was behind the exposure, or Reeve had gone rogue, or a perfect storm had simply hit.
She watched the news and waited for references to his ‘tumultuous relationship with his son.’ They would usually show two pictures: one of Dominic and his teenaged son smiling alongside the then Prime Minister, and a photo of Taureau and Bette Laurin, hand in hand as they left a concert in Montreal.
If she left the television on, the photos would be shown on an hourly basis. A strange fascination took hold of her. She couldn’t stop thinking about Laurin, and hearing Taureau say, ‘What did I do to her?’
And so she had emailed Ledger.
‘I’m dying to know about Jacques Taureau these days,’ Ledger said. ‘All those stories and the rumours over the years, and now I have someone in my living room who can tell me.’
Grace chewed the inside her cheek and wondered whether she should tell him anything. His expectation was reasonable – she wanted something from him, he should get something in return – but, when you got right down to it, Everly Ledger was still a reporter.
He leaned forward and narrowed her eyes at her. ‘Did he tell you about Shane?’
Grace’s hands and feet went cold, and Ledger chuckled. ‘There. You flinched, and obviously you know about Shane, or Gregory, I suppose.’
‘I never imagined that you knew. There’s nothing about it in the book.’
‘I was paid very well to keep it out of the book,’ he said, then leaned back and folded his hands across his chest. ‘I don’t think I would have put it in anyway. I wasn’t writing an exposé. The story I wanted to tell ended when they took Bette away still covered in blood.’
‘Was it Jacques or Bette who talked to you?’
‘Both. Once they knew I was writing it with or without their cooperation, they agreed to talk separately. I went to Taureau first. I think he wanted to keep me occupied while Bette finished her pregnancy, but she was eager to talk and we did so by phone at first. She, too, liked Those Bones, and so that was my in. She was about eight months along when we finally met – that’s when I was given the contract and a cheque. I donated half to charity, mind you.’
‘You don’t have to explain anything to me,’ Grace said. ‘Though how would you have explained yourself if I didn’t know about Shane?’
‘If you hadn’t gotten that look on your face when I mentioned it, I would have spun some anecdote about old Shane Werner.’ He leaned forward. ‘I’m sorry for my rudeness, I haven’t offered you anything to drink.’
‘I’m fine. I just … well, I really only have one question for you, Mr Ledger, and I don’t know if you can even answer it.’
He wiggled his fingers and shrugged. ‘I can certainly try.’
‘Did she ever say why she did it? I know that there was some testimony from doctors and specialists, but did she ever tell you?’
‘Ah, yes, the belief that she struck out at him because she was too disoriented to know where or even when she was. That’s what she told the police and the doctors, and later me … at first.’ Ledger seemed to struggle with himself, and after a moment of trying to form words on his tongue, he sighed deeply and slumped back. ‘She did it because Jacques was going to leave her soon. He never said so. Bette told me during one interview that they were starting to move in different directions. She only knew two lives: the one before Jacques, where there was only misery; and the one after Jacques, where there was everything she could ever want, even if she wanted it to excess – including his love and devotion. She could have easily attached herself to someone else in his circle with the money, and God knows there were enough of them hanging around, but she did love Jacques and she probably would have stayed with him even if he ended up without two nickels to rub together.
‘Once his grandfather got sick, after his last stay in rehab, his outlook started to change.’ Ledger’s tone was almost soothing, that of a natural storyteller, and every word created a picture in her head. ‘To put it in the simplest terms, he wanted to be a better person. Those last few months before the attack, he still lived as dangerously as possible, but he wasn’t the same. He got high and he got quiet. He didn’t want to go out as much and they fought when she started having huge parties at his house. Bette could see the change coming. The most desperate part of her couldn’t take it. She woke up and just decided to kill him, simple as that. Once she thought she had done it, the panic hit.’
Grace stared at the floor and in her mind she saw the Bette Laurin of the tape, that pitiful creature who had woken up from a walking nightmare and fled.
‘That wasn’t in the book, either.’
He shrugged once more. ‘I thought how much better it would have been to leave it up to the reader to figure out Bette’s motivations. You know, Miss Neely, when you get right down to it, the best thing that ever happened to Bette Laurin was trying to kill Jacques Taureau. In the months that followed, all her demons were finally vanquished.’
‘And he’s the one in prison,’ she murmured, and then straightened up at Ledger’s curious look. ‘He’s a recluse. He spends his time at his home. He only leaves to ride his motorcycle. Everything else comes to him.’
‘That’s not surprising. He was adamant against any attempt to treat his PTSD, and he was too terrified to ever self-medicate again.’ He studied her for a moment. ‘You’re not here on his behalf, are you?’
‘I never said I was.’
‘No, you didn’t, but I just assumed so. He must be something to you if you’re off looking for answers.’ Grace decided not to respond, and Ledger went on. ‘I can offer you a transcript of my meeting with Bette in which she told me this. It’s just a few pages, but it’s all there is. I could also offer you the recording itself.’
A few minutes later, Grace left Ledger’s home with a flash drive containing the transcript and video file in her pocket. Sitting in her car, she tapped the surface of her phone and sent an email.
She’d repressed the urge after returning from Mont Carmel. On the outside, she merely resumed her life. Returning to Taureau-Werner, to her sentry post in front of Caroway’s office, she’d been hit with a barrage from her co-workers: friendly faces danced around, asking questions about the mysterious Taureau, and snide comments came from those so inclined. After a little over a week, the questions stopped. An email came from Reeve, whom she hadn’t seen since he walked her to a waiting car at the airport, simply informing her that the secret cameras had been disabled one night. A padded envelope stuffed with a bra and one sock, left behind at Mont Carmel, had been waiting on her desk one morning.
Meanwhile, Grace couldn’t stop thinking about the tape and couldn’t tune out those words: ‘What did I do to her?’
She’d even relented and gone to visit her mother down south. She had been miserable and hot the entire time, and it had done nothing to take her mind off what had happened.
Taureau had hinged his whole being on what happened that night. He’d given up everything because of it: his son, all of his friends but Simon, his whole life. One could believe that Taureau treated people like objects to be collected and returned when he was done with them, but by now Grace knew better; he reached out for them when the solitude became too much, then turned them away when the living overwhelmed him.
She didn’t know how he could stand to be alone with it. She’d only seen the tape, and she couldn’t stand to be alone with it.
Her stomach rolled as she tucked her phone back into her purse and ran her hand through her hair.
There wasn’t much that made Grace second-guess herself, but she felt like she had done the wrong thing in contacting Ledger.
* * *
Reeve’s appearance at her apartment was very different the second time around. As she served him his tea, it struck her how odd it was between them. They’d engaged in an explosive night a few months ago, but without Taureau in the mix Reeve held no allure for her.
‘Were you telling me the truth about the cameras?’ she asked and poured her coffee.
‘I oversaw their removal myself.’
‘Why?’
‘So he won’t be tempted to watch you any longer.’
Grace settled back on the sofa. ‘He could have fired me, or paid me off.’
Reeve raised a brow as he blew on the surface of his tea. ‘Would you have been bought off?’
‘No.’ She took a drink and gestured towards the flashdrive. ‘So?’
‘Put it in the mail.’
‘If it went lost and ended up God knows where …’ She shook her head and stared down at the small storage device. ‘I’ve been struggling with whether to do anything with it.’
‘Then why are you doing it?’
‘Because even if he hates me for it, it might be the one thing to get him out of Mont Carmel once and for all.’
Reeve drummed his fingers against his thigh. ‘Why is it so important to you that he leave?’
‘Because if he spends every second of his life afraid, what’s the point of living at all?’
He chuckled and set aside his cup, then picked up the drive. ‘That’s exactly what I said once. It didn’t make a damn bit of difference. He really is taking this brooding fairy-tale beast persona a little too far this time, if you ask me.’ He held the drive between his thumb and forefinger. ‘This could be bad.’
‘The last thing he said to me was that he’d go to his grave not knowing why she attacked him that night. The lie gave him no peace, so give him the truth.’
Reeve dropped the drive back onto the table. ‘I don’t think this is a good idea. I think you should just leave it up to him to decide where he wants to go with you and not force him with something like this.’
‘Oh, fuck you, Reeve,’ she spat at him. ‘This has nothing to do with me. Can you imagine turning on the news one day and seeing a report about the lonely billionaire’s body found in his country mansion after he’d been dead for weeks? You were the one who said I might be the catalyst to get him out of there, but why do I have to be passive about it? Why can’t I light a fucking fire under him?’
The stinging forced water from her eyes, and Grace was shocked. After all this time and all this frustration, she’d not once cried, yet here it came in front of a man it would make no difference to.
She dropped her face into her hands and tried to keep the tears in: teeth gritted, eyelids squeezed shut, and shoulders knotted until she ached all over. She breathed heavily through her nose, as if she were a balloon trying to inflate itself after being pricked.
‘He showed me the tape,’ she said with a shake of her head. ‘He showed me that horrible tape. Why not just throw me out? Why not just dismiss me?’
Reeve leaned back and took a deep breath. ‘You’re asking why he took the most drastic measure he possibly could to push you away? You do realise we’re talking about a man who sent me to fuck you when you broke it off with him the first time, right?’
‘Don’t be a smart-ass right now.’ She kept her chin on her chest and rubbed her hands together. ‘Have you seen it?’
‘When it was played in court.’
‘Ah, I’d forgotten that you were there … then. I guess that’s part of why he showed me. I wasn’t there so I could never understand.’
Reeve gave a snort, and when Grace lifted her gaze she found him smiling. ‘He’s very good, isn’t he? He always has been. All he had to do was drop a bomb on you and you make your own fallout. He doesn’t justify anything because he knows you’ll do it for him.’
Grace felt a stab between her shoulder blades, and then a curious numbness crept into her. She never could stomach the suggestion that she was weak, and that’s what Reeve’s criticism of Taureau was: she had somehow fallen for the callous boy Taureau had been before the attack, not the complex creature who had captivated her.
‘You didn’t do anything wrong,’ Reeve went on, more softly. ‘You don’t dwell on things like he does. You let things go and you don’t simmer. That intimidates him. I think –’ He paused, puckered his mouth and frowned, then leaned forward. ‘He had this reputation, but no matter how many people he had in bed there was only ever Bette, so I guess you could say that he’s inexperienced when it comes to women. On a scale of one to drama queen, you’re about a two, while she was off the chart altogether.’
‘I’m not asking for an analysis of the last few months,’ she replied bitterly and looked at the flash drive. ‘I’m asking for one thing, and that’s it.’
Reeve raised his hands in surrender. ‘I’ll take it to him, but don’t get your hopes up and don’t email me with another scheme if it doesn’t work. I’m off duty once I do this. I’m taking another job next month.’
‘Doing what?’
He gave her a filthy look. Her tone must have betrayed her thoughts: where else will you work where you get to fuck unsuspecting women for a living?
‘Politics,’ he said. ‘Apparently my reputation as an unscrupulous bastard has gotten out.’
‘Like how you exposed Dominic Taureau?’
‘Damn shame about that, don’t you think? All those women coming out of the woodwork all at once. Who would have thought?’
‘So you’ll be slinging mud behind the scenes in a more public arena?’
‘And getting paid damn well to do it.’ He drained his cup and stood. ‘On that note, I’ll give you a heads-up that there are changes coming to Taureau-Werner over the next few months, so be prepared.’
He held out his hand and Grace passed over the flash drive, which he pocketed. At the door, Reeve paused, then pushed past her to the bedroom. On his return, he met her startled expression with a grin and held up the copy of Burnout that hadn’t moved from its place on her night table since she first read it.
‘Promise that if this doesn’t do a damn thing, you’ll forget about him? Forget about this and everything that goes with it?’
‘Not possible, but I’ll manage.’ she said, and opened the door. ‘Do you think I’ll be sorry?’
He tapped the book against his chest and regarded her through narrowed eyes. ‘I don’t think you’ll be the one who’s sorry.’