Mrs. Stewart nodded at that but kept silent. Casually, as though it meant nothing, she reached behind a stack of old magazines and picked up a pistol. It looked heavy enough to use in a weight-lifting class.
Mrs. Stewart tossed it from one hand to the other. “Isn’t this thing awful? It belonged to my late husband. Made him feel like a man. As if anything could do that.”
“You’re saying he wasn’t like Alastair.”
“Like my beautiful son? Not at all.” She took her cell phone out of the pocket of her white linen trousers. “My son is supposed to call me. I’m letting him decide what to do with you.”
“Oh” was all Kate could say. The man they had turned in to the sheriff as a murderer was to decide her fate. “Who did kill the Morris women?”
“Oh. That.” Mrs. Stewart put the big pistol down on the table. “No one ki
lled them. Not really.” She walked to the far side of the room and turned on two lamps. “I hate this place. Always did. Hamish wanted us to spend our honeymoon here. Can you imagine?”
Kate thought that with a good cleaning she’d love to stay there, but decided not to say so. “You’ve lived in Lachlan a long time.”
“Too long, but in my day, children obeyed their parents. My father—now, there was a man! He told me where I was to live, who I was to marry, and I did it.”
“But your husband wasn’t the right man for you?”
“Hamish was a fool. Weak beyond imagining. I hated him. But he did give me Alastair. My beautiful son only made one mistake in his whole life, but I managed to repair the damage—until Jack Wyatt and you and...and that Sara Medlar came along. Did you know that in high school she used to make fun of me? She told Hamish not to marry me. Me! Can you imagine?”
“Tell me about the error Alastair made. I mean, there’s nothing to do while we wait.”
She toyed with the gun for a moment, seeming to try to decide what to do. “My son explained the truth of it all to me. They willed what happened to them. It was as though she—the older one—wanted me to finish it for her. It was like she was done. She’d had enough.”
“I’d really like to hear that story.” Kate’s voice was sincere. “I want to understand.”
Mrs. Stewart checked her phone again and gave a sigh. No calls. Kate wondered if there was a signal and if Mrs. Stewart knew how to tell if there was. Kate didn’t know South Florida well enough to be able to guess how far they were from Lachlan. She’d slept through the drive and couldn’t calculate. “Have you ever told anyone?”
“Of course not.”
“Then the truth must be building inside you.”
The woman sat down in a big padded chair near the window. “Actually, it’s all been a relief. Before all this happened, I thought about the past a great deal. But afterward, with each one, I felt better.”
Each one? Kate thought but didn’t say out loud. “As hard as we searched, we could find out very little.”
“Of course not. It was all taken care of long ago. There were loose ends but we managed to tie them off.”
We? Kate thought. “Would you tell me the truth? While we wait? Please?”
Mrs. Stewart took a moment to decide. “I will tell you what my darling son told me.” She took a breath. “Then me. It was not my fault. My husband... That woman...”
“Yes,” Kate whispered. “I understand.”
Noreen sneered. “No one can understand what was done to me. No one seems to think about me in all this.”
“Alastair does,” Kate said softly.
She smiled. “Yes, he does.” For a moment she closed her eyes. “I guess I should start at the beginning of that night. Start with what my son told me.”
TWENTY-FIVE
5 SEPTEMBER, 1997
CHERYL MORRIS’S SIXTEENTH BIRTHDAY
As he knew she would be, Cheryl was waiting for him beside that old rusty farm thing at the back of her house. For a moment he hid behind a big palm tree and watched her. She was a pretty girl but in a way that drew too much attention. She certainly wasn’t the kind he could be seen in public with.