38

TABITHA

I sat on the bed, shaking from head to toe. If the things written in this diary were true, then Nina had been murdered. By Connor and Juliet. Who were lovers. And had been together for years.

For the first time, I understood what it felt like to want to kill someone. The betrayal burned like acid. If I had a gun in my hand, and Connor or Juliet walked in that door right now, I would use it. I’d loved him so much. I’d believed in his love for me. How was it possible that—

But, wait. What if this wasn’t true? What if Nina was wrong? What if she was making it up? Stop and think. Assess the evidence. How did I even know this was her journal? There was something off about it. A normal diary would have entries for multiple dates. The entirety of this journal was written on July fourth, the day of Nina’s death. Correction, of her suicide. Before she killed herself, Nina Levitt sat down and wrote out an accusation to hurt the husband she left behind, who, she believed, had been unfaithful to her. She left the journal where it was sure to be found, in order to get him in trouble with the law. That was straight-up revenge. Made up. A lie.

But this Juliet thing … crazy. It couldn’t be real. I didn’t want it to be real.

Though—why would Nina say those things about Juliet, if they weren’t true? The outrage, the sense of betrayal, that came through on the page was as white-hot as her fury at Connor. I believed the emotion. But the accusations seemed too far-fetched to be true.

Read the report, she’d said.

I cast the diary aside and opened the manila envelope. The word “Confidential” was typed on the front, but no sender or addressee was shown. I pulled out a sheaf of papers with a photo paper-clipped to the top.

No.

I rubbed my eyes and looked again. It was still there. The awful truth.

Connor, with Juliet sitting in his lap. They were both much younger in the photo. Connor looked softer around the eyes, with longer hair—much as I remembered him from that summer when we fell in love. And Juliet? She looked so familiar. She wasn’t wearing glasses. Her hair flowed over her shoulders. Suddenly, I remembered. I’d seen her before I ever came to Windswept. She was the woman who’d had dinner with Connor at the Baldwin Grill the night he walked back into my life. They’d spent maybe an hour together, and then she disappeared. What could that mean? Juliet was in New Hampshire with Connor the weekend he and I got back together. The weekend my baby was conceived.

Why was she there?

I put myself back at the ski house that night, and I remembered. The noise outside that Connor went to investigate. Was that Juliet? What about the blackmail photo? Was that her, too? And the Suburban—following me, trying to run me down—was that her? I caught my breath. It had to be. It had to be Juliet behind the wheel of the Suburban. She’d tried to kill me.

Jesus. Now I believe that Nina was telling the truth. Connor claimed he’d come back to the lake looking for me. It hadn’t made any sense at the time. It did now. They were looking for someone to take the fall for a murder that hadn’t been committed yet.

Our whole relationship was a lie. That’s exactly what Nina had said. She and I weren’t that different after all. We both fell for the same beautiful, charming con man.

I hated him. I wanted to rip him apart.

I still loved him. I wanted him to tell me I was wrong about this.

I sank back against the pillows and covered my eyes, with no idea what to do. Was there some way out of this awful scenario? Something that didn’t fit, that suggested my interpretation was wrong? I thought, and I thought, until I found it. It was this: If they’d been planning all along to set me up for Nina’s murder, why did Juliet run me off the road before Nina actually died? That made no sense. She’d need me alive later in order to take the fall for Nina’s murder.

Unless. Maybe they weren’t in on it together. Maybe this was all Juliet. Oh, God, how I wanted to believe that.

I looked at the photo of the two of them again. Connor was looking at the camera. Juliet was looking at Connor, and she was dazzled. Completely gone. Madly in love. You could see it on her face. But him? He was just enjoying the attention.

Maybe he never really loved her.

The report. I skimmed the pages, looking for something, anything, to back up that faint hope. And there it was in black and white. The account given by Juliet’s college roommate of their relationship. The relationship was unhealthy, obsessive, one-sided. “When Connor left school to try to make it in the music industry,” the roommate had said, according to the interview transcript included with the report, “he told Lissa he needed space, that they should just be friends. She flipped out and attempted suicide. She had to be hospitalized. She was really messed up over him.”

There you go. She loved him. He never loved her back.

Right. Keep telling yourself that, Tabitha.

I didn’t know what to believe, so I kept reading. According to the report, Julissa had disappeared from New York about three years before she turned up as Nina’s assistant using the name Juliet Davis.

Okay, question. Why not just use her own name? Was there something about her name that would have stopped Nina from hiring her?

I continued reading. There was evidence that Juliet had been in touch with Connor right before she disappeared. The report included a xerox of a grainy surveillance photo showing the two of them together outside her apartment mere days before she disappeared. They were facing away from the camera.

I studied that photo. It was him. I knew him by heart, even the back of his head, the slant of his shoulders. And there was more. The private detective had gone back through Connor’s Levitt Global personnel file. When Connor applied to the Levitt Global PR department, he was asked how he learned of the job opening. He wrote, “Referred by: Juliet Davis, personal assistant to Nina Levitt.”

Julissa went to work for Nina, then brought Connor into the company. I wondered if she’d introduced the two of them, or had it happened some other way.

And then, this. Buried on page three of the report, a fact that might have seemed minor to someone else leaped out at me. Juliet’s employer before Levitt Global was Protocol Shipping Solutions, the company that owned the Suburban she’d used to run me off the road. Proof positive that it was her.

Juliet and Connor had murdered Nina. Juliet tried to kill me and failed. And now they were setting me up to take the fall for Nina’s murder. Not just trying to set me up. Succeeding in setting me up, since I’d been arrested and charged with the crime.

I had to give this diary to the police. Immediately.

I pulled out my phone. Detective Hagerty had warned me to take precautions against anybody finding out that I was working with them. The line “snitches get stitches” exists for a reason, he’d said. The threat of retaliation is real. I’d listed him not as Hagerty, but as “Hayley from the restaurant,” in case someone at Windswept searched through my contacts. I found his number, but then hesitated, my thumb over the screen. Handing over Nina’s diary would be an irrevocable step. The journal implicated both Connor and Juliet. They could go to prison. They would. Not just her. Him, too. Deep down, I didn’t want it to be true. I didn’t want to lose him. Was I ready to give up hope of his innocence? Did I honestly believe he’d been lying to me all along—not just about Nina, but about his feelings for me? At least, before taking this very final action, I could talk to Gloria. There were so many unanswered questions. Where and when did she find the diary? Why did she keep it hidden, instead of giving it to the police? And why did she turn it over to me? Gloria must have read the journal and known about Nina’s accusations, or else she would have had no reason to give it to me when I’d begged her to tell me what really happened. Did she believe that what Nina had written was true? Did she have evidence that could prove that? There had to be more that Gloria could tell me. At the very least, I should ask her, before turning in my own husband for murder—even if he’d done that to me.

I unlocked the master-bedroom door and stuck my head out, straining to hear if Connor or Juliet had returned. But Windswept was so big that there was no way to tell just by listening. The sound of footsteps, or even voices, would be lost amid the creaks and sighs of an old house and the distant crash of surf on sand. Playing it safe, I wrapped the diary in the towel and shoved it back under the pillow. I put the photo in my pocket and went in search of Gloria.

She was no longer in the kitchen. I wandered the darkened first floor, afraid to turn on lights for fear of attracting attention. The echoing parlors, the glittering, high-ceilinged dining room, the ornate library were all empty and silent except for my own footsteps. Gloria must’ve gone back to her room. I knew she lived in the staff quarters on the third floor, but so did Juliet. I’d never been up there. As I climbed the two sets of steep stairs, I worked on my cover story, just in case I ran into Juliet.

There was a door at the top of the stairs to the third floor, but it was unlocked. I pushed it open and stepped into a space that felt like a different planet from the rest of the house. The first two floors of Windswept boasted ceilings of twelve or thirteen feet, even higher in the ballroom, with elaborate moldings, murals, sconces, chandeliers, exquisite carpeting, expensive wallpaper, paintings, and objets d’art. This floor was cheap and dingy, with grimy, old carpet, faded paint, and ceilings so low that I felt claustrophobic. How the other half lives—and for most of my life, I’d been in that half.

Four doors opened off the narrow, windowless hall. The only way to find Gloria’s room would be trial and error. The first door on the right was not only unlocked, it was ajar. I pushed lightly, and the door opened inward. Lit only by the moonlight that filtered through the single, dormered window, the room was clearly lived-in, though unoccupied at the moment. It was tucked under the eaves of Windswept’s great roof, and the sharply slanted ceiling made it impossible to stand along one side. I flicked on the flashlight from my phone. The cramped space was cluttered with furniture and personal effects, as if it had been lived in for years. There was a narrow bed, a dresser, a wardrobe, and a rickety chair covered with clothing. I recognized a black uniform on top of the pile. I was in the right place, but Gloria was not here.

I was just turning to leave when a framed photograph on the dresser-top caught my eye. I stepped over to the dresser, its battered surface strewn with her things. There was a bottle of Tylenol, several pairs of earrings, a couple of lipsticks, a hairbrush with black hairs clinging to it. And a photo—of Gloria and Juliet, standing in front of a massive Christmas tree in Windswept’s entry foyer. Their arms were around each other’s waists. Juliet looked happier than I’d ever seen her before. Gloria appeared uncomfortable. Yet, there was something about the photo, something I couldn’t put my finger on, that troubled me.

Were the two of them closer than I knew? Then, why would Gloria give me Nina’s diary, which implicated Juliet so unequivocally? Still, I needed to be careful. I didn’t understand this place well enough to know where people’s true loyalties might lie.

As I backed out of Gloria’s room, leaving the door the same amount ajar that I’d found it, my gaze fell on the room next door. Juliet kept a room here, on this floor. She had a place of her own in the city but stayed over frequently when Nina was alive because her job required it. She’d continued the practice since I’d been here, living at Windswept full-time, though now I had to wonder why. She claimed it was necessary in order to inventory Nina’s things for auction, but was there some darker purpose? Keeping an eye on me? On the investigation? Here was a chance to sneak into her room when she was out, to see if I could find evidence that would be of interest to the DA.

I knocked first, just to be sure she hadn’t come back without my knowledge. There was no answer, and the door was locked. I went through my key ring, found a key that fit, and let myself in. This room was the same size as the one next door but felt larger and airier because it lacked the slanted ceiling. It was also sparsely furnished and meticulously kept—bed made, clothes put away, nothing left on the surface of the dresser or the desk. Checking the closet, I found four black pantsuits on hangers, spaced at perfect intervals. I was in the right place. This was Juliet’s room, and she was a neat freak.

I heard a creak in the hallway and froze, listening. After a moment or two, when there was nothing more, I crossed to the small desk and sat down in the chair. My blood pressure had shot up. I felt a pulse beating in my temples as I examined the desk. The two file-cabinet-style drawers to the right of the footwell were locked. I tried a few keys from my key ring, but nothing fit. The middle drawer pulled open easily. It contained a tray filled with paper clips and rubber bands. I lifted the tray out and underneath found a small key, which opened the file drawers. The top drawer held little of interest—Kleenex, pads of paper, more office supplies, a pack of gum. But the bottom one was filled with files in hanging folders. The labels made me catch my breath. “Genealogy.” “Birth and Custody Records.” Those should help prove Juliet’s false identity. There was no time to waste. I could be interrupted at any moment. I pulled out the “Birth and Custody” file and opened it on the desk.

The birth certificate was right on top and gave her name as Julissa Maria Davila, her father as unknown, and her mother as—

Her mother as Gloria Maria Davila Maldonado.

Gloria? My Gloria? The woman who’d just given me a diary saying that Juliet was using a fake name, and that Nina believed she planned to kill her? That same Gloria was Juliet’s mother? It made no sense, and yet it struck me with the force of truth and I realized now what had troubled me about the photograph of the two of them together in front of the Christmas tree. There was a family resemblance between the two women.

Whatever this meant, I knew it was of critical importance, so I pulled out my phone, photographed the birth certificate, and texted it to Hagerty. Next, I examined the photo of the newborn baby in its mother’s arms. This had to be Juliet—Julissa—and her mother, simply by virtue of being in that same file folder. There was no way to tell if the red-faced little baby was Juliet. But was the mother Gloria? I looked more closely at the girl in the photo—for she was a girl. Thin, dark-haired, pretty, and very, very young. A teenager, with an air of sadness despite the baby in her arms. She’d changed so much, but the shape of the eyes and nose gave her away. It was Gloria.

As I looked closer, I noticed something else, so shocking that I gasped out loud. The narrow room, with its slanted ceiling. I’d been in there minutes ago. This photo of baby Julissa had been taken in the room next door. Gloria had given birth while she worked here at Windswept. I remembered something that Nina had written in her diary—something about a baby crying?

Father unknown.

Hands shaking, I photographed the photo itself, then the other documents in the file—adoption papers, a motion for termination of parental rights, a motion for unsealing of adoption records, and more. When I’d finished with that folder, I replaced it and moved on to the next one. I started with the first of five separate folders labeled “Lawsuit.” As I laid down a legal document to take its picture, the title of it stopped me cold. “Julissa M. Davila, Plaintiff, v. Edward M. Levitt, Defendant.” The date stamp on the front of the document showed that it had been filed in court nearly ten years earlier. As I flipped to the next page, the words leaped out at me—“rape,” “acknowledgment of paternity,” “abandonment,” “child support.” Juliet had sued Edward Levitt, alleging that she was Edward’s biological daughter, the product of his rape of his employee, Gloria Maldonado.

Juliet had told Nina this house was hers by right. This was what she’d meant.

Gloria had said, She’s her father’s daughter. And this was what she had meant—that Juliet—Lissa—was Edward Levitt’s offspring.

Just then, I heard footsteps outside the bedroom door. I put the file back, closed the desk drawer, and locked it. As the door to the room began to swing inward, I jumped up and moved away from the desk.

Connor stood in the doorway. His figure in the dim light had an air of menace.

“What are you doing sneaking around up here?” he said, as he advanced toward me.