“Really.” There’s a note of sarcasm in my voice, but I’m a little surprised by her admission. Not that I ever believed in that stuff, but sometimes Greta did seem truly clairvoyant. After all, she predicted a happy ending for me and Nick when it seemed impossible.
“Yes. It is true.”
“Well.” I shrug. “It looks like your prediction about me and Nick came true after all.”
“Yes. It did. Of course, I had to help it along.”
“Help it along?”
She hesitates as her watery blue eyes stare into mine. “Rosalie, I want you to know that I never had children. And I always thought of you like a daughter. I wanted you to be happy.”
“Yes…”
“Nick would have left you,” she says. “That girl, Christina… she was a vixen. She set her sights on him—she wanted him. And no offense, my dear, but you were not doing much to hold on to him. You were delivering him to her on a silver platter! She told me how she thought Nick would be better off without you.”
My mouth falls open. I didn’t know about any of this. I had always assumed it was a fling—not that I asked for many details.
“So you see,” she says, “I had to do what I did.”
I pull my hand away from hers. “What did you do?”
“I saved your marriage!”
“Greta…” I feel a cramping sensation in my lower abdomen. “What did you do?”
Greta’s blue eyes are wide. “She deserved it. Look at what she did. Fooling around with a married man. I’m disappointed in Nick too, but I understand what he was going through. She had no excuse. Terrible person.”
My stomach turns. “Greta, you didn’t…”
“She barely felt a thing.” Greta strokes her long white hair. “I got the key from where Nick keeps them downstairs, and I let myself into her room during the night. I did it while she was sleeping. She only woke up for a minute, and it was too late by then. Nothing anyone could do.”
All these years, I had been scared Nick was the one who killed Christina Marsh. I should have known he would never do something like that.
But I never dreamed Greta could have done it either.
“I’ve done it before.” She says it casually, like she’s talking about going roller skating instead of committing a murder. “There was a woman at the carnival who wanted my Bernie. And then she just… disappeared. That’s what the police decided anyway.”
I clasp a hand over my mouth. “Oh God…”
“I was trying to get rid of the other one for you too,” she says. “Quinn. When she was downstairs, I looked through her bag, found out her real name. Then I said all the scary stuff about how she was in horrible danger. Left a few threatening messages for her in the Bible in the drawer. Got her on the run. Of course, it turned out she was in horrible danger.”
“Greta…”
“Rosalie.” She reaches for my hand again, but I yank it away. “Are you feeling poorly? You look so pale. It’s not the baby, is it?”
“No, I…” But that cramp hits me again. Still, I’ve got an entire month to go. I’m not in labor. I’m just having a panic attack that a woman is dead because of me. “Greta, how could you do something like that?”
She blinks at me. “I did it for you, Rosalie.” Her eyes darken. “If I hadn’t, you would have none of this! He would have left you. No restaurant, no baby. Christina wanted him. You did not meet that woman. She thought I was on her side so she confided in me.”
“She… did?”
“You do not know how she spoke about you. Nick’s invalid wife. Frigid—won’t even touch him. He deserves better. That’s what she used to say.”
Those Tarot cards were right all those years ago about my future. Death. Because Nick and I got married, a woman is dead. But he wasn’t the one who killed her. It was Greta.
Greta reaches deep into the pocket of her long black wool coat. She pulls out a rectangular sign with the familiar words “DO NOT DISTURB” stenciled on it. She holds it out to me.
“I took this off the door of Room 201,” she says. “It’s time to open the room up again to guests. Let the past be the past.”
I take the sign from her, but it drops from my fingers and flutters to the ground, the letters of “DO NOT DISTURB” staring up at me, looming before my eyes. I lean forward as my head spins. I get that cramping sensation one more time. I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Greta killed a woman. I can’t just pretend I didn’t hear this. I have to call the police. I have to tell them what I know.