Chapter 21

Over the next few days as I recuperated in hospital, several things were revealed to me by the police. Most importantly, Hugh had officially admitted to killing his mother and Brenda.

“How did he poison Annabel?” I asked.

“He ground up the wolfsbane and put it in her favorite body lotion and her lip balm.” My mind snapped back to the day of Annabel’s death. I had given her lip balm because her lips were so dry. I had inadvertently killed Annabel. I blurted this out to the officer.

“The medical examiner, Dr. Thomas, determined that the dosage in the body lotion was more than enough to kill her. The dosage in the lip balm was much lower. In other words, she would have died from the wolfsbane even if there had been no poison in the lip balm. So don’t lead yourself down the road of believing you killed her. You did not.”

I wouldn’t have been able to bear the guilt if I had been responsible for Annabel’s death, so the officer’s assurances that I didn’t kill her were a salve on my frayed nerves.

“How did Hugh know about wolfsbane?” I asked. “Why didn’t the police find any information on his computer?”

“He got his information the old-fashioned way—at the library. He went and looked up the information he needed in a book.”

“But he was so keen to have an autopsy performed on Annabel,” I said.

“He was just trying to deflect suspicion away from himself,” the officer replied. “He figured it wouldn’t be discovered and that Annabel’s cause of death would simply be heart failure. And if it was discovered, he thought he wouldn’t get caught. Typical bloke with a big ego.”

“He did all of this because he hated his mother?”

“Apparently he did hate his mother, but he and his wife Cadi were also experiencing serious financial problems. He thought he was safe with one-third of his mother’s estate, especially if it turned into a center for horse breeding. But when he suspected there might be another will that left the estate to someone else, he panicked. He had already been dealing drugs to make extra money—he took over where Andreas left off, as you know—but that wasn’t enough.”

“Brenda wouldn’t tell me that she was getting her drugs from Hugh,” I said in a quiet voice.

“I can explain that, too,” the officer replied. “Apparently she knew her mother was responsible for the death of Andreas Tucker. She didn’t want her mother to lash out at Hugh, too. There’s been way too much death in this family.”

I was dumbfounded. Brenda had known her mother was guilty of killing Andreas?

It would be a very long time before I could make sense of everything I had learned.

One day Cadi came to see me. She called first to ask permission, as she had promised to do, and I consented to a short visit. She showed me a letter Sian had found when she was cleaning out Annabel’s desk. Cadi handed it to me and stood at a distance while I read it.

My darling boys,

You will never know the suffering I have endured because I haven’t been able to take care of you the way a mother should. Your father threatened to kill you all, and me, if I revealed the extent of his brutality, so I stood by, meek and useless, as he continued his despicable behavior. I figured it was better for you to be hurt than dead.

I want you to know that I did everything I could to protect you, though I’m sure there were other things I was too timid to do. I took blows and beatings meant for you in exchange for leniency by him toward you three, but it was never enough.

In the end, it was I who watched him die in the throes of an alcohol-fueled stupor. He demanded help through the fog of his drunkenness, and I ignored his pleas. I killed him by my inaction. I have never regretted letting him die before my eyes because I knew his death spelled the end of the horror you faced as children. My only regret is that I didn’t do it sooner. You can never know how much love I have for all of you and how I have suffered from my own shortcomings.

Love,

Mum

So Hugh had killed his mother without the knowledge of how much she suffered for him and without knowing that she was the one who, in the end, allowed her husband to die an agonizing death, all for Hugh and his brothers. I thanked Cadi for showing me the letter and she left. There was nothing more I could say to her. It had all been so senseless.

By the time I left hospital the doctors were concerned that I had sunk deep into a depression for which I would require further treatment. Rhisiart and Sian had given me permission to live in the coach house for as long as I needed, and Sylvie and Seamus had to return to their lives in Scotland. I hated to see them go, but it was time. They had done all they could for me and I had to face the future without them.

But I didn’t have to face the future alone. Griff stayed with me in the coach house until I had healed physically, then he stayed on until my mind began to heal, too. He had quit his job at the castle stables and had found work at another stable near the village.

I knew the best thing for me was to get a new job. If I could get back to work, to give myself something to do every day, then I knew I would begin to feel better. I visited Maisie whenever I could, but often my mood prevented me from going to see her. She had plenty of her own troubles—she didn’t need me showing up in a melancholy, self-blaming mood at the prison where she was being held until her trial.

I still had a hard time believing Maisie had killed Andreas, but I couldn’t condemn her for it. She had only done what I imagined I might do under similar circumstances—protect her daughter at all costs. Maisie and I talked about it when I visited her the first time, after I had had a chance to sort out my thoughts. She cried when I told her how I felt, relieved that I understood how she could kill Andreas because of the anguish and harm he was causing Brenda.

Though I appreciated being able to stay on the castle property rent-free, I didn’t want to stay there any longer than I had to. The day came when I knew I had to move out of the coach house and into a flat of my own. Griff begged me to come live with him in his cottage in the village, but I knew I needed to be able to survive on my own before I could think about living with him.

So I let a flat in the village over the dress shop Annabel had loved to frequent. It seemed right that I shared that connection with her even after she had died and I had moved away from the castle.

But there was another connection, too. As the months passed and I got better, Griff and I continued to grow closer. I was still looking for a job, but nothing had opened up and I was trying to find other jobs that I might be able to do, including working part-time at the dress shop. But Griff had another idea. Rhisiart and Sian, who both continued to live in the castle, remained hell-bent on their scheme to convert the castle and its surrounding property into a racehorse breeding center. They decided to sell all of Annabel’s horses and replace them with younger racing horses and valuable studs. When Griff got wind of their plan, he used all his savings and I chipped in much of mine to buy the horses. In exchange for doing some extra work around the stables where he worked, he was allowed to board Annabel’s horses there.

His plan was to buy a farm and raise horses. There could be no more perfect job for him, and when he asked me to share his life and his dream with him, I was over the moon. We were married in a tiny ceremony in the village hall, with only a few others present. We honeymooned on a farm where Griff had agreed to do some menial chores each day for a week in exchange for a small room over the stables that we referred to as our “honeymoon suite.” It was perfect—not a traditional honeymoon, but nothing about myself or my life had been traditional since I left Scotland. And it suited me perfectly.