The Happiest Day (16 page)

Seeing the locket,
Rachel had known deep in her heart that Norris was involved in her parents’
deaths but hearing the words was like a blow to her body.  She reached out
blindly for something to support herself and leaned against Norris’ massive oak
wardrobe.  “My mother, too?”

“No.  Just
Thomas.  I thought that your mother would turn to me and we could be a family. 
The man I hired, though, ran into trouble.  He watched the house until he
thought Julia had gone to bed but while he was overtaking Thomas, she came into
the room.  She tried to fight him and he…he killed her, too.  He called me and
told me what he had done.  I drove to your home.  You know the rest.”   

“What happened to
the man who killed my parents?”

“I killed him,”
Norris stated flatly.  He raised his eyes to look at Rachel.  “It was Frederick
Stern.”

“Frederick Stern?”
she asked, her voice breaking.  “You allowed me to become engaged to the man
who murdered my parents?”  She remembered the times that she had let Stern
touch her and bile rose in her throat.

“I would have
never let the marriage happen, I swear.  I just needed time to figure it all
out.  In the end, I took care of him for you, didn’t I?”

“You sick bastard,”
she spat out.  “Took care of him for me?  How could you ever have let him near
me, knowing what he had done to my world?”

“But I rescued you,”
he said in response, looking bewildered.  “Look what I gave you and your
brother.  I gave you everything.”

Rachel sank down
to the floor, still leaning against the wardrobe.  She felt weak and drained of
life.  “Is there anything else you need to tell me, Norris?  Are there any
other secrets?”

There was a long
silence, and then he said, “Geoffrey.  It wasn’t an accident.”

Rachel felt tears
falling silently down her cheeks.  She felt no shock; maybe she had known all
along.  “Why?”

“He found my
journal.”

“What journal?”

“I’ve always kept
a journal.  I don’t know why.”

“Do you journal
everything or just your crimes?” she asked, hatred spewing from her mouth like
black lava.  “You’re so god-damned religious, maybe it was your own personal
confessional.”

He wasn’t
offended.  “Maybe it was.  I kept it locked in my wall safe, so he went looking
for it the first morning we were back from South Carolina.  He told me that he
had always suspected me in the death of his mother.  I don’t know why…why
couldn’t he have just accepted it?”  Norris began sobbing again.  “I took him skeet
shooting.  I told him that he had to let this go; if it came out, the family
would be ruined.”  Norris looked up, a disorientated look on his face.  “I told
him that I had been found innocent and I wouldn’t be tried again.  It wouldn’t
do any good to reveal our secrets—all that would happen would be destroying the
newspaper.  We would lose everything, and for what?  Helen was such an evil
person.  Why couldn’t he just let it go?”

“Because he was
such a good person.”  Rachel stood slowly, her body aching.  “Geoff would have
never been able to live with such a lie.  That’s why you think you’re being
haunted by him, Norris.  You know that you killed him simply for being a good
person.”  She stood there, leaning against the wardrobe, her joints hurting
her.  She suddenly felt unbearable old and battered.  She began to leave the
room but Norris halted her with his words.

“What are you
going to do with this information?”

“Nothing.  I’m
leaving you, but I don’t think you really care about that, do you?  All I ever
was to you was a poor replacement for my mother.”

“I am sorry,
Rachel.  Things just got so out of control.”  He dropped his head in his hands
again.  “All I ever wanted was your mother and you children.  We could be a
family and everything would be as it should.  You were
my
children, not
Thomas’!  You belonged to me.”

She felt an icy
chill wash over as she tried to make sense of his words.  “Why did you say it
like that?”

“What?” he moaned,
squeezing his head.

“Why did you say
that we were your children?”  A trembling started low in her stomach and she
thought again she might be ill.  “Norris, look at me.”

He lifted his head
and she saw the guilt.

“Oh please, no…”
She lifted her shaking hands up to her face.  “Please tell me that it isn’t
so.”

“I only ever
wanted to protect you,” he said, tears rolling down his haggard cheeks.

“Am I your
daughter?” she asked, hating that she needed to know.

He was quiet for
so long, she thought he wouldn’t answer.  Finally, he said, “It’s possible.”

She heard herself
scream agonizingly and Norris flinched.  She ran for the door, barely able to
turn the knob to open it.  Light streamed in and Norris covered his face.  She
turned back one last time and said in a hoarse, broken voice, “You are a
monster, do you know that?  Only an evil person could do what you’ve done.  I
can’t bear to be in the same house as you.  I’ll pack my things and be gone by
this evening.  Laurie will go with me.  Don’t ever try to see us again.”  She
inhaled, trying to calm her racing pulse.  “I hope you burn in hell.”

She spent the
afternoon packing her belongings in her trunk.  She wasn’t quite sure where she
was going.  She knew she could call Peter or Maryanne but she thought that she
might just check into one of the downtown hotels.  She needed to get to Laurie
before he came home.  She felt so lost and shattered.  To think that she had
been living in such a web of lies for so many years sickened her.  The fact
that Norris might even be her father, and that he had known of that possibility
when he married and bedded her, was so repulsive that she couldn’t even think
of it yet.  She pushed it to the farthest recesses of her mind, not sure she
would ever be able to examine it.  She opened her jewelry box and began picking
through those pieces which she thought could bring her money.  She wasn’t sure
how she would support herself so she needed to secure her future for at least
the short term.  The jewelry meant nothing to her beyond a means to survival. 
There was nothing she could take from this house which held any meaning for
her.

  Except for one
piece, she realized.

She wanted her
mother’s locket.  She despised the idea of having to go back into Norris’ room,
but also didn’t want to leave the locket with him.  She took a deep, steadying
breath and headed back down the hallway to Norris’ room.  She knocked only once
and, knowing that he wouldn’t answer, opened the door.

She stopped cold,
her body stiffening in shock at the sight that met her eyes.

Norris was hanging
from one of the massive bedposts, a sheet tied around his neck, his face
twisted in a gruesome mask.  His feet still swayed slightly.  Her mother’s
locket was twisted around his wrist and dangled between his lifeless fingers.

Chapter
16

The entire city
turned out for Norris’ funeral and although people whispered behind their
hands, no hint of scandal was ever uttered.  The kinder of those in their
social circle attributed his suicide to his despair of losing his son.  Rachel sat
in the front pew of the church, Laurie next to her, stoic in his grief.  He was
still mourning Geoff’s death and seemed to have aged into a man in just a
matter of weeks.  Maryanne sat next to him, then Bert, Peter, and Blanche. 
Rachel wished beyond all reason that Peter could sit next to her, where he
belonged, but knew that Blanche would never allow it.

She stared at his
coffin, her eyes dry and her face pale.  Since the moment she had found Norris’
body, her body had felt as cold as ice.  She had spent the past few days
huddled in blankets, shaking uncontrollably.  Dr. Miller had prescribed
sleeping pills for her but they remained unopened.  She didn’t want to hide
from the world; she just wished she could get warm again.

Laurie nudged her
and she stood.  The six of them exited the church and drove to Spring Grove
Cemetery for the internment.  As they filed into the rows of seat set up at
graveside, Peter took the opportunity to squeeze her waist briefly with one
hand.  She looked up at him and he gave her an almost imperceptible nod.  He leaned
down and whispered in her ear, “I love you,” then took his seat next to his
wife.

The graveside
ceremony was blessedly short and the following wake at the house was a macabre
encore of Geoff’s, only a few months earlier.  Rachel realized that Norris was died
the day Geoff did, it just took a few months for his body to follow his spirit.

“Rachel,” a voice
greeted her.

She looked up from
where she sat in a chair.  “Leonard,” she said softly.  “How nice of you to come.”

“I’m so sorry for
your loss.”  He pressed his hand to hers.  “Is there anything I can do for
you?”  He shifted restlessly and Rachel thought that he must be very
uncomfortable at wakes.

“No, but thank you
for offering.”

“The reading of
the will is scheduled for Friday at ten a.m.”

“All right.  The
whole family should be there?”

“Yes.  Norris
changed his will after Geoff died.  I wasn’t sure if you knew that.”

Rachel drew back
in surprise.  “I didn’t know that.  You came out here to see him?”

“Yes, he called
for me.”

“Do you feel…that
he was in his right mind?”

“I do.  He was
depressed, certainly, but he knew exactly what he wanted.  I’m sure of that.”

“I trust you,” she
said and was surprised again by his apparent discomfort.  Was there something
in the will that she wasn’t prepared for?  “Is there something you need to tell
me, Leonard?”

“No, no,” he said
nervously.  “Everything will be fine with the reading, I assure you.”  He
looked over his shoulder and Rachel followed his gaze.  Blanche stood in the
middle of the room, smoking her cigarette, staring at Leonard with a half-smile
on her face.  Leonard blanched and turned back to Rachel.  “Rachel, if there is
ever anything I can do for you…on a personal level as well as professional,
please don’t hesitate to ask me.”

She nodded.  “I
won’t.  Thank you.  We’ll see you on Friday.”

“Yes, yes,” he
said, shifting his feet.  “Rachel, I’m sorry.”  He turned and left the room,
and the house, without a backwards glance.

            Finally, blessedly, the
house was empty and Rachel sat in Norris’ study with her brother, Maryanne and
Bert, and Peter.  Blanche had left.

“Leonard asks that
we all be at his office Friday morning for the reading of the will.  He said
that Norris wrote a new will after Geoff’s death.”

Maryanne, holding
a balled up handkerchief against her mouth, looked up in surprise.  “Why would
he have done that?” she asked in a heavy, grief-laden voice.  She was newly
pregnant, again, and they all worried for her state of health.

Peter stood agitatedly
and stalked over to the fireplace, leaning on the mantle.  “He was planning his
death.  That bastard planned on killing himself all along.”

“Don’t say that!”
Maryanne exploded.  “Daddy would never have done that!”

“Don’t be naïve,
Annie,” Peter bit out.  “Norris was nothing if not a planner.”

“Why would he plan
this?” she cried.  “Why would he want to leave us?”

Rachel met Bert’s
eyes from where she sat at Norris’ desk.  He gave her a concerned look and
asked softly, “Rachel?  What is it?”

She wrapped her
arms around her ice cold body protectively.  “He killed Geoff.”

Peter whirled
around, his face incredulous.  “What…?”

“It was an
accident,” Maryanne said.  “He knew that we didn’t blame him-”

“It wasn’t an
accident,” Rachel said quietly.  “He confessed to me right before he killed
himself that they had argued and he shot him.”

Silence fell over
the room like a death knell.  Rachel bowed her head, unable to meet the eyes of
anyone in the room.  Her life had become so dictated by secrets but this was
one that she couldn’t keep to herself.  She cleared her throat and continued,

“He felt that
Geoff was haunting him.  He just couldn’t live with what he had done.”  She had
no intention of telling them the rest of the story.  She couldn’t break
Maryanne’s heart further by telling her that her father had killed her mother. 
She couldn’t let Laurie know that the man he had admired his whole life was
behind the murder of their parents.  She didn’t want him to know that such a
sick man was really his father.  She couldn’t bear to see the look on Peter’s
face if he were to find out that she had shared a bed with the man who might be
her father.  She would have to take the rest of her secrets to her grave with
her.

“He told you
this?” Maryanne asked hoarsely.

“Yes.”

“What argument could
have been so bad that Daddy would do this?’

“I don’t know,”
Rachel lied.

Laurie walked over
to his sister and knelt in front of her, taking her hands in his.  “Why didn’t
you tell me?  You’ve been dealing with this all alone since Norris died.”

“I wasn’t sure if
I was going to tell anyone.  When Leonard said that Norris had changed his
will, though, I wasn’t sure what it was going to say.  It’s possible that there
could be a confession…I just didn’t want all of you to be blindsided in
Leonard’s office.”

“We’re family,
Rachel,” Peter said.  “You can’t keep things from us.”

“I won’t anymore,”
she said to him.  “I’m sorry, everyone, but I have to go to bed.  I’m
exhausted.”

“Go,” Laurie
ordered.  “We’ll take care of everything.  Sleep as long as you need, Rae.”

“I’ll walk you
up,” Peter said, taking her arm.  Rachel willingly leaned against him and
allowed him to lead her out of the study and up the staircase.  “You’ve been
through too much over these past few months.  I’m worried about you.”

“I just need a
good night’s sleep,” she demurred.  “I’ll be fine.”

He helped her
undress and lifted the nightgown over her head.  He sat her down at her
dressing table and pulled the pins out of her hair then ran the brush through
it.  Rachel felt a heavy lethargy settle over her and she luxuriated in being
taken care of.  Norris had certainly taken care of her, financially and
physically, but never on this personal of a level.  Peter was attending to her
on an emotional level.

He led her to bed
and made sure she was comfortably settled, then he sat on the side of her bed,
stroking her hair silently for many long minutes.  Rachel felt herself drifting
off to sleep.  She prayed that it would be dreamless.  She feared that she
would never be able to get the image of Norris’ hanging body out of her mind.

“I know this isn’t
the right time,” she heard Peter say, his voice sounding far away.  “But it
will be someday, and I wanted you to know that I intend on marrying you.”

She couldn’t lift
her eyes.  Her lips moved slightly, but she was unable to produce any sound.

“You’re my heart,”
he continued.  “I can’t imagine my life without you.  I don’t want to leave you
any more.  I want to share a home with you.  I want to raise our children.  It
won’t be easy, I know, but we’ll make it happen.”  He leaned down and kissed
her cheek.  “Sleep now, darling.  I’ll be here when you wake.”

            He was.  Rachel sensed
the change in their relationship even though she could barely recall his words
as she drifted off to a heavy sleep.  She just knew that he seemed to have made
up his mind about his future and she felt as if the pendulum had finally swung
to her side.

They all met in
Leonard’s office Friday morning and the will held no surprises.  She was left
the majority of his estate which was worth several million dollars, while
Peter, Maryanne, and Laurie split the remaining portion, with a trust set up
for Norris’ grandson, Alan.  There was no confession and no secrets revealed in
the reading.  Leonard informed them that the changes Norris’ requested had been
removing Geoff from the will and adding the request that Rachel continue
running the newspaper while the others were to assist where needed.  They were
all now financial partners in the business.  Leonard still looked extremely
uncomfortable and Rachel felt that there was something he was not revealing to
them.

Rachel shook his
hand as they all stood to leave, asking after his family.  A dull flush worked
its way up his neck and he mumbled, “They’re fine.  Thank you for asking.”

“Leonard, I want
you to know that I intend to keep you on as my personal attorney,” she said,
wondering if that was the reason why he seemed so ill at ease.

“I appreciate
that, but I wouldn’t blame you if you went elsewhere.”

“I have no
intentions to do so.  Do you not want to represent me any longer?”

“It’s not that,
Rachel,” he said, an apologetic note in his voice.  “I just feel as if I have
failed you.”

“In what way?” she
asked, her eyebrows drawing together.  “Leonard, can’t you tell me what is
bothering you?”

Peter had noticed
her discussion with the attorney and joined them.  “Is everything all right?”

Leonard’s face
closed over.  “Everything is fine.  You’ll have to excuse me.  I have another
appointment.”

Rachel was
perturbed.  “All right.  Maybe we can talk later?”

“Of course,” he
answered blandly.  Whatever he had been about to say was not going to be
revealed now.

They left his
office, shielding their eyes against the bright sunshine.  It hit Rachel that
her entire life was different now.  She was only twenty, but widowed and a
multi-millionaire.  More than that, she was the owner of a well-respected and
well-established newspaper.  What a strange journey had brought her to this
point in her life.  Inhaling deeply, she looked at Peter and he smiled at her,
taking her hand in his.

“Are you all
right?”

“I am,” she
answered truthfully.  “I am going to be just fine.”  For the first time since
she was a child, Rachel was excited for her future.