‘Yeah. Yes, I can do that,’ I say, though every bone in my body is telling me there’s something not right about this. Edward sounds different.
Robert could have Edward already; he could be forcing him to say this to draw me in. But my Edward wouldn’t do that; he wouldn’t lure me anywhere, even at gunpoint. Besides, Edward wanted to come to me; it was my idea to go back inside.
And just like that, Samantha Belson, the Holbecks’ nanny, comes back to me. I thought she was the blonde at 7 East 88th the day Bobby jumped, but she was here, at The Hydes, with the children. But who were the children? ‘Bobby was a nineteen-year-old man,’ she’d said. ‘He certainly didn’t need a nanny.’
It occurs to me now that Edward was seventeen years old when Bobby died. He certainly didn’t need a nanny either. And, with terrifying ease, a series of thoughts slot themselves into place and a question forms in my mind.
‘Edward?’ I ask.
‘Yes.’
‘Where were you the day Bobby died?’
The line is silent for long enough for my creeping dread to blossom into something worse. ‘I was upstairs,’ he says after a moment.
Inside me, something yawns wide open with panic.
‘Okay,’ I say as neutrally as I can, buying myself a precious moment to order my mind.
‘But I love you, Harry,’ he says simply, and I feel my tears come. Edward was there the day his brother died. Something triggered Bobby to jump, and Lucy knew exactly what. Edward was with Bobby when he committed suicide.
The silence between us is thick and I feel his sadness down the line.
‘I know what you are too,’ he tells me cautiously. ‘But I still love you.’
His words hit me viscerally, knocking the last remaining doubt from my unwilling mind. Edward had a hand in Bobby’s death. He killed Lucy, and then Alison and Gianna, Aliza and Melissa. And now Fiona and who knows who else. As the facts come together, I feel the Edward I know disintegrate.
I’ve had the wrong end of the stick this whole time. Robert’s tape is real, but it’s not Robert’s confession. He fed me the truth, but in the only way I would be able to hear it. If he’d told me outright, I would have thought he was lying, trying to scare me off his son. I would have told Edward. All this time, I’ve been condemning the wrong Holbeck, terrified Edward might find out my own awful secret. But he knows. He knew all along; in me, he found someone as broken as he was.
And suddenly I get an inkling of what the favour Robert Holbeck requires from me might be. He wanted me to know who his son really was, to know whose child I am having and what that might mean. Robert wants me to stop Edward.
I squeeze my eyes tight shut to block out what is happening, but I am instantly barraged by flickering images of the bloated body in the well. Images of Lucy’s hair caught in the wind outside 7 East 88th, of Gianna dancing on that New Year’s Eve, of Alison’s family alone and still waiting after twenty years. These women did nothing to warrant their fates.
And suddenly, with a seismic shift, I feel myself break away from Edward.
I feel him being ripped from me, not by Robert, or by his controlling family, but by the real Edward.
My Edward – my good, kind, funny Edward – never really existed. I created him. Well, Edward Holbeck created him, a copy of the brother he killed.
I feel the loss of the man I knew with aching clarity as warm tears stream down my face. I will never see that man again; he will never hold me again. He was only ever the idea of a man, the ghost of one that I saw reflected in Edward Holbeck.
My eyes glide back to the house ahead, its lights warm and welcoming, but the man in there isn’t who I thought he was. He’s a killer, and not the kind of killer I am. That’s why Edward chose me: my past. He thought perhaps he’d found a kindred spirit. That’s why I’ve survived this long; that’s why he asked me to marry him, why I’m carrying his child. He thinks we are the same.