“I went to the funeral because it intrigued me,” Hannah continued. “Thomas Bard, city councilman. Dead of mysterious circumstances? And they still won’t tell us how!”
“Are you really so morbid? Do you want to know?” Eleanor asked.
“I think it’s our right to know,” Hannah said. “It’s our right to know how and why people like the Legacy Club think they can take away lives, just like that.” She snapped her fingers, making a major play in their chess game, one that could destroy her.
Eleanor didn’t flinch. She seemed accustomed to being called out like this.
“Tell me,” Hannah said, before Eleanor could answer. “Tell me that I’m the one you’ll ‘disappear’ next. Tell me how you’re planning to do it.” She leaned forward, propping her chin up with her fist. “Enlighten me before you do. But keep in mind! My daughter only has me. Her father is gone.”
Eleanor smiled. “We know everything about your husband. We know everything about your affair with Julien, too.”
Hannah rolled her eyes. “Of course you do.” She was beginning to like this woman despite herself. She felt that she was interviewing one of the more fascinating subjects of her career. Miraculously, that subject was a seventy-something woman who lived alone on Nantucket Island. Who would have thought?
23
Eleanor leaned toward Hannah, curling her lips so that Hannah could see all of her terribly perfect teeth, teeth that seemed far too bright for her age. She whispered, “There is so much you can’t understand about a place you moved to just a handful of weeks ago. Don’t you think so?”
Hannah felt a shiver down her spine. “I could already write plenty about this place.”
“But you won’t,” Eleanor said.
“Did you invite me here to threaten me, Eleanor? Because I thought you were a classier woman than that,” Hannah declared, flaring her nostrils. She had a sudden, strangely delirious desire to call her daughter and make sure she was all right. But Hannah reminded herself that Minnie had been in contact, and she was with Viggo. She was with some girl named Bethany. Bethany seemed like a nice-girl name. Hannah hadn’t had the time to research more about her.
She had to trust Minnie. She had to know that Minnie would always do what was right for herself, especially now that she was sixteen. They’d been through so much together. They were moving forward.
Eleanor got up to mix more martinis. It was clear that the woman knew how to drink despite her age. She stirred happily, dropping olives into each glass. “Back in the eighties, we at the Legacy Club overheard a terrible argument between a married couple. The things this man said to his wife genuinely chilled us to the bone. At first, we thought we’d forgive him. Sometimes people lose their cool—men in particular. Men have not been raised to be as polite and kind as women. I’m sure, given your story with your husband, you understand that. But we kept tabs on the situation. More and more, we learned of his abuse. We learned about the young mother of three who was screaming loudly enough to wake her neighbors. We learned about a young boy who was going to school with a black eye.”
“Why not go to the police?” Hannah asked, although she already knew who Eleanor was speaking about. This was the story of Julien, his mother, Nora, and his dead father, Larry. This was the integral story of Julien, of why Julien was the way he was.
“The police? Do you really think they have any power on Nantucket?” Eleanor asked. “I mean, you’ve explored the newspapers from the past, haven’t you? You’ve seen how little the Legacy Club was ever written about. Why do you think that is?”
Hannah grew increasingly uneasy. In a quiet voice, she filled in the blanks. “You have control over the newspaper. You have control over the police station. I understand that.”
“But can you possibly understand?” Eleanor sipped her martini and squinted at Hannah, as though she couldn’t really figure her out, not fully, no matter how hard she tried. “Ours is a far different setup than anywhere else in the United States, as I understand it.”
“You think you’re so special, do you?” This was something Hannah couldn’t stand.
“Why, yes, darling. That’s the entire point,” Eleanor said.
Hannah tried to build confidence. She had so much more to say. “I know the story you’re referring to. It’s Julien’s. He told me himself. And he told me you were at his father’s wake.”
Eleanor’s eyes were sparkling. “I see. He was trying to warn you.”
Hannah had vaguely considered this—that Julien had told her the story of Eleanor as a way to tell Hannah to back off from her investigation. It didn’t matter how Julien had known about the investigation. Maybe he’d noticed the letters on the kitchen table and put it together. Maybe Hannah had let something slip. But hearing it in Eleanor’s voice made it true.
“But I learned something else.” Hannah tried to regain her composure.
“Is that so?” Eleanor asked, intrigued. Maybe she didn’t know everything.
The fact of it was, in the lead-up to meeting Eleanor, Hannah had been busy today. She’d been trying to figure out why on earth Thomas Bard had been killed—what heinous crime he’d committed to pit the Legacy Club against him. And eventually, after nearly four hours of reading court documents and scanning newspaper articles and reading interview transcripts from over the years, she’d figured it out. Thomas Bard had tried to put Eleanor Pike on trial for the death of Larry Mansfield. In the forty-plus years since Larry’s death, he’d done it more than once, it looked like, leading up to the most recent city council meeting, during which Larry had told everyone it was high time to end the Legacy Club’s reign. Of course, he hadn’t said it in so many words. He hadn’t named the Legacy Club, for one. But Hannah had discovered the transcripts from that meeting. She’d dug deeper than anyone ever had.
“I know why you killed Thomas Bard,” she said. “Maybe I don’t know how you did it. But I get it, now. He was a threat to you.”
Eleanor blinked, as though she’d expected something enormous and was disappointed.
“Don’t you think it’s good what we did to Julien’s father?” Eleanor asked. “Are you telling me that that heinous man, who beat his wife and children, should have kept on as he was?”
Hannah’s cheeks were inflamed. “I don’t think anyone should take matters like this into their own hands.”
