For Rye Gavin Gardiner (best book club books for discussion TXT) 📖

killer, that you’d bring justice to her before I left, but I was just as blind as you. I should have opened my eyes so much sooner. Once they were open, you see – once I’d began my work – your sickening sense of protective duty for me still kept you from seeing what was right in front of you. But none of that matters now.’ She picked up the empty glass. ‘All that matters is the book.’ She stared vacantly into the Dexlatine’s syrupy residue. ‘It’s all about the book.’

‘What book? I don’t know what—’

‘SILENCE,’ she blasted, flinging the tumbler against the wall. Broken glass tinkled against the sideboard. ‘Enough of the lies. You say you don’t believe I’m capable of criminality, but you know I am.’ His face whitened. ‘Yes, Detective,’ she snarled. ‘I remember everything. I killed that little boy in cold blood. I was carted off to that institution, abandoned, forgotten. With your help, my father tried to have me deleted, erased. Well, he failed. You all failed.’ She leant over Hector, pressing the closed blades of the scissors against his throat.

‘Wha-what are you…talking about?’

‘NOAH, GODDAMN IT,’ she screamed.

His head slumped. ‘Blame me,’ said Hector. ‘Not Quentin. Not his daughter.’

Renata laughed. ‘You’re as blind as my father.’

‘Thomas…where is he? What have you done?’ She opened the scissors and pressed the tip of a single blade into his neck. Blood crawled from the steel. ‘Renata, please. This isn’t you.’

‘Yes, it is,’ she whispered. ‘Finally, it is.’

‘I’m begging you, think about this.’

She pressed harder.

‘I’m sorry it had to be this way, Detective.’

‘Don’t do this…please.’

She raised her elbow and prepared to thrust.

‘Rennie, no!’

She paused. ‘What did you call me?’

‘Rennie, forgive me, forgive your mother. We never wanted to lie to you. I’m so sorry. Please, Rennie, just—’

‘DON’T CALL ME THAT,’ she thundered.

Tears ran down Hector’s cheeks. ‘I loved her, Rennie. I loved her more than anything. I just wanted to protect her.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Her grip on the scissors tightened.

‘Your mother, Rennie. Thomas, he blamed her. When she wouldn’t fall pregnant, he blamed her. My sweet Sylvia…I loved her, but she chose that bastard. I couldn’t stand by and let him…let him hurt her.’ The tears glistened in his eyes. His frozen body quivered under its paralysis. ‘She loved me, too. She was torn. She came to me once he started hurting her. He got his son eventually, Noah could only have been his, but before that…I just wanted to stop the bruises, Rennie. I just wanted to—’

‘What are you trying to say?!’

‘We spent time together, Sylvia and I,’ he said through tears and sweat. ‘She fell pregnant…we fell pregnant. I begged her to come away with me, away from him, but she was scared. She thought he’d come after us. Besides, marriage meant more in those days. She was torn with guilt and did what she thought she had to. We did what we—’

‘LIES. More damned LIES.’

‘Rennie, please! You’re my little girl!’

‘NO.’ She flung the coffee table over. ‘NO MORE LIES.’

‘Yes, Rennie. No more lies.’ He stopped struggling against his paralysis. ‘I tried so hard to protect you. I even convinced Chief Inspector Blyth to let me take your statement when Sandie went missing to save you the trauma of police visits. He helped your father, too. He understood why I’d want to save you the stress. I did it for you, Rennie. I did everything for—’

‘SHUT UP.’ She lunged, returning the scissors to his throat. His jaundiced eyes fell deliberately to the pocket watch on the arm of the chair. She followed his gaze, looked back at him, then hesitantly reached for the timepiece.

Its silver had corroded to a sickly yellow, not unlike the whites of its owner’s eyes. She turned it around in her hands to inspect the crude racing car etched into its rear, then back around to the Superior Motor Timekeeper – Swiss Made branding on the front of its cover. Hector’s paralysed, tear-soaked face nodded as best it could, coaxing along her inspection. She snatched the toothpick from his waistcoat pocket and, as she’d seen him do so many times before, jabbed it into where the broken spring release button should have been. The cover swung open. Under the glass, placed on top of hands frozen with time, was a faded sepia photograph of two young lovers, their smiling embrace framed by a Ferris wheel in the background. Hector O’Connell and Sylvia Wakefield gazed through lost decades at their daughter.

‘We failed you,’ he sobbed. ‘Your mother and I both failed you. I’m so sorry.’ She stared at the photograph. Every cell of her being contracted with shock and confusion and anger at yet another lie revealed to her. She dropped the pocket watch and, trembling with rage, rose the blades above her head. ‘I love you, Rennie,’ he whispered, then closed his eyes. ‘We’ll both always love you.’

She threw the blades across the room. They struck the lifeless grandfather clock, coaxing from it a solitary tick. ‘You want to know the truth, old man?’ She brought her leaking eye within inches of his face. ‘Rye did murder my mother.’

Hector’s eyes opened.

‘He killed her to get me back here. It was just the first part of his plan to push me back into madness, all so he could sit and take notes. Inspiration for a damned book, that’s all it was for. Nothing more.’

The man’s face turned red. ‘That…can’t be.’

She grabbed his head between her hands, his eyes reaching for her – for the truth. ‘Your beloved Sylvia,’ she whispered, ‘Rye killed her.’

He roared.

She stepped behind the armchair and pushed Hector into the kitchen on the chair’s casters. He wrestled against the unseen bonds of the Dexlatine as she opened the larder and shoved the chair