Chapter 13 - Marjorie’s Last Lie
By sunrise, I hated everyone.
Victor.
Dale.
Marjorie.
Price.
Myself.
Mostly myself.
Because I had spent years staying away.
It had been easy to blame Marjorie for the distance between Dad and me.
But she hadn’t forced me to stop calling.
She hadn’t forced me to answer Dad’s messages three days late.
I had chosen silence because silence was easier than fighting.
And while I was gone, she had become the loudest voice in his life.
At 7:30 a.m., Holt brought Marjorie into an interview room at the county federal office.
I watched through the glass.
Dad sat beside me.
He looked twenty years older.
“Did she try to save me?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“She contacted Price.”
“Yes.”
“So maybe she found out what Dale was doing.”
“Maybe.”
Dad nodded slowly.
People want simple villains.
Simple heroes.
Real families rarely give you either.
Holt began questioning Marjorie.
At first she denied everything.
Then Holt placed Price’s messages in front of her.
Marjorie broke.
Not dramatically.
She simply stopped fighting.
“I found the second insurance policy in June,” she said.
Dad whispered beside me.
“June.”
Marjorie continued.
“I thought Robert had bought it.”
Holt asked, “Then?”
“I found emails between Dale and Victor.”
“What did they say?”
“That Robert’s health needed to ‘decline convincingly.’”
My father looked away.
Holt leaned forward.
“You understood that to mean poisoning?”
“I didn’t know.”
“You gave him unmarked pills.”
Marjorie began crying.
“Dale told me they were sleep aids.”
“Did you believe him?”
Silence.
“Mrs. Reed.”
“No.”
Dad closed his eyes.
She whispered,
“I knew they were stronger.”
“Yet you gave them to your husband.”
“I was scared.”
“Of whom?”
“Victor.”
“Why?”
Marjorie looked toward the mirror.
She couldn’t see us.
But somehow it felt like she was looking directly at Dad.
“Because he knew about Ellen.”
Dad leaned forward.
Holt asked, “What did he know?”
“Everything.”
“And what did you know?”
Marjorie shook her head.
“I knew Victor followed Ellen the night she died.”
My father made a sound I never want to hear again.
Half breath.
Half sob.
Marjorie kept talking.
“He came to my apartment afterward. His shirt was wet. His hands were shaking.”
“Did he say what happened?”
“He said she wouldn’t listen.”
Dad stood.
“I’m done.”
I caught his arm.
“Dad.”
“I can’t hear this.”
“You need to.”
“No.”
His eyes filled.
“I married a woman who knew.”
That was the part that destroyed him.
Not the money.
Not the pills.
Not even the insurance.
She knew.
Marjorie had known for twenty-one years that Victor Hale might have been involved in my mother’s death.
And she married my father anyway.
Inside the interview room, Holt asked the question I already knew the answer to.
“Why did you stay silent?”
Marjorie stared at the table.
“Because Victor paid me.”
Dad stopped breathing.
She continued.
“At first.”
Holt waited.
“And later?”
Marjorie whispered,
“Later, I married Robert.”
I felt my father’s arm go limp in my hand.
May you like
Then Marjorie added one sentence that somehow made everything worse.
“And when Victor came back last year, he told me it was time to finish what Ellen started.”
