Who is Maud Dixon?(90)

And she certainly could have let Greta live—if she’d been willing to give up Maud Dixon’s name. She’d genuinely hoped that Greta would agree to her proposal and let her finish Helen’s manuscript. Killing Greta had been her plan B: unfortunate but necessary.

No, she had no regrets. She had been offered what she most wanted in life. Even if she came by it in the most bizarre, inscrutable way possible. To let it slip away would have been foolish.

She did feel badly about Nick. But that wasn’t her fault. Helen was the one who’d killed him. Besides, when it came down to it, she barely knew him. If their relationship had ended naturally, as most vacation flings eventually do, he would have already faded from memory.

The nasal-voiced man across from Florence cut into her thoughts as he called loudly down the aisle for another Pinot Noir.

Florence pushed off her eye mask and sat up abruptly. Her heart was pounding. The flight attendant scurried up the aisle with a bottle of wine.

Florence shook her head. It was nothing.

She lay back down, but when she closed her eyes she saw Greta looking at her with those startlingly blue eyes. “Foggy…Yes…”

Florence maneuvered her seat back into an upright position. She patted her cheeks lightly. Then she dug out a notebook and a pen from her bag.

She’d decided to leave the first half of Helen’s manuscript as she’d found it. Then, in the middle, the narrative would suddenly switch to Iris’s point of view.

She started writing.

Lillian was wrong: Iris wasn’t weak. She’d been hardened by a lifetime of disappointment, and by underestimating this uglier, scrappier version of fortitude, Lillian had made a crucial mistake. She’d used herself as bait, not realizing that Iris was too famished to be sated by mere proximity to greatness.





50.



The old house on Crestbill Road was cool inside, even though an early May heat wave was pressing on it from all sides. Florence shut the door behind her and took a deep breath. She walked through the silent rooms slowly, seeing them as if for the first time. Because this time they were hers. Everything here was hers.

Florence scooped coffee into the coffeemaker and turned it on. As it spluttered to life, she looked out into the backyard. The compost pile had been entirely dug up. Yellow caution tape flapped in the wind where it had come loose from its stakes. She had been assured by the Cairo Police Department that Helen’s death had effectively closed the investigation into the murder of Jeanette Byrd.

When the coffee was ready, Florence brought a mug back to the living room along with the portable phone and dialed her mother’s number.

Florence knew Vera would be sitting in her small yellow kitchenette, drinking a cup of overly sweet coffee, before heading to work.

“Hello?” Vera trilled into the phone. She always answered unknown numbers, confident that the universe would bring only good things into her life.

“Mom, it’s Florence.”

Silence.

“Listen, I know you’re angry with me, but I need you to do something for me. Can you read me the text message you were talking about before—the one where I said I never wanted to see you again? And tell me when it was sent.”

Vera sighed. “Hang on, I’ve got to search for it.”

When she came back on the line, she said, “It was sent on Sunday, April twenty-first. I remember because I’d just left church when I got it, and I was so excited to see your number pop up. Then I actually read it. ‘Mom, I’m sorry, but this is the last time you’ll ever hear from me.’” Vera’s voice cracked, but she continued. “‘You have done nothing throughout my entire life but belittle me and hold me back. I’m done. I never want to speak to you again. If you try to contact me, I’ll simply change my number.’”

Florence felt the blood rush to her face. Even though she hadn’t written those words, she’d certainly thought them, and hearing them on Vera’s tongue made her feel guiltier than any of the things she’d actually done in the past two weeks.

April twenty-first. That was the day after the car crash. Helen must have been tying up loose ends before assuming the mantle of Florence Darrow.

For all the lip service Helen had paid to momentum and action, she had actually been incredibly careful about every contingency. Florence had appreciated that lesson while plotting Greta’s murder. It was, perhaps, just as important an inheritance as the house and the money.

“Mom,” she said, “I’m so sorry you had to read that, but you have to believe me—I didn’t write that message.”

Vera took a loud sip of coffee. “It came from your phone.”

“I know. It’s a long story.” Florence took a breath. “Let me start at the beginning…”

By the time they hung up forty-five minutes later, Vera knew the whole story—or at least the version of it that Florence had repeated over and over for the authorities: the murder plot against Florence; the desperate act of self-defense.

As with Idrissi and Massey, Florence did not mention that Helen Wilcox was actually Maud Dixon; she wasn’t sure her mother would even know who that was. Nor did she mention the name Greta Frost, whose death was just starting to cause ripples in publishing circles. There was no reason that Florence would have any connection to that.

Vera had lapped it up, desperate for confirmation that Florence hadn’t actually turned her back on her. “I knew you weren’t acting like yourself,” she insisted. “I said as much to Gloria. She agreed. You’re a good girl, Florence. The best.”