The Sauvignon Secret

Chapter 24

I called Eli the second I got back to my car after thanking Elinor and Alice for their time. Jasmine was babysitting Hope. She had no reason to suspect I knew anything about who she really was, and I sure as hell didn’t want to alarm her or tip my hand. But right now she was the last person I wanted to be looking after my three-year-old niece.

Eli’s phone went to voice mail and I left a terse message to call me. I thought about calling Dominique, but she was probably with Jasmine and Hope. What could I say that wouldn’t raise a red flag, especially if Jasmine was standing right there next to her?

I drove back to Atoka as fast as I dared, but it was Friday and the summer rush-hour exodus from the steamy city had started early. The first thing I intended to do was to find Hope and bring her home, if Eli hadn’t already picked her up.

After that, I didn’t have a plan. Especially since I still had no proof of anything, just a lot of speculation based on what Elinor had said. Jasmine had flown to Paris and, if I guessed correctly, she’d probably managed to track down Vivian Kalman. Within the next nine months, Vivian, Mel, and Paul all died. Vivian and Mel of heart attacks; Paul, an apparent suicide.

Maybe Vivian had given up the names of the other members of the Mandrake Society and Jasmine had visited the rest of her aunt’s former colleagues. At a minimum, she might have gotten that compromising photo of Maggie and Charles from Vivian, who had taken it. Plus she found Stephen’s yearbook photo in Maggie’s diary. Jasmine could have mailed the pictures to the others as the warning shot across the bow that the secrets and lies surrounding those two deaths had returned to haunt them all, and Charles had automatically assumed Theo was the one who had sent them.

But why would Jasmine do it? Why would she want revenge for the death of an aunt she never knew? Could she have committed murder that was passed off as a natural death—more than once— and gotten away with it? And how did Theo fit in? He was dead now, too, though his death seemed unrelated to any of this—a drug deal gone bad in San Francisco.

It was just before four when I turned off Atoka Road and flew past the stone pillars at the vineyard entrance on Sycamore Lane. My head throbbed with a tension headache and my jaw ached from clenching it. I drove straight to the Ruins.

Dominique was there, giving orders to half a dozen people setting up folding chairs, laying out tablecloths and place settings, and generally getting ready for tonight’s sell-out event. Jasmine and Hope were nowhere in sight.

My cousin saw me heading toward her. “Thank God you’re here. I could use a hand. We haven’t given ourselves enough rope and I’m about to hang myself.”

“Where’s Hope?” I asked.

“Pardon?”

“Hope. Where is she? Is she still with Jasmine?”

Dominique waved a distracted hand. “I don’t know. I think so.”

“Where’s Jasmine?”

“She might have gone back to the house to look for Eli. Juliette called and said she’d finished the floral centerpieces so Jasmine was going to head over to the Thiessmans’ to pick them up.”

Charles. The only remaining member of the Mandrake Society. Jasmine had ingratiated herself with Juliette, gaining easy and unquestioned access to their home and grounds. She’d done it in spite of Charles’s famously reclusive reputation—how clever. No one would ever suspect her if he were to have, say, an unexpected heart attack like a couple of his ex-colleagues had done. Who would possibly connect the dots between Charles, Vivian, Paul, and Mel— since Charles himself had done such a stellar job of erasing any information that could link them all to one another?

And what about Theo?

“Can you cover for me?” I said. “I’ll be back.”

She looked puzzled. “Where are you going?”

“To the house,” I said. “Then to the Thiessmans’, if that’s where Hope is.”

“Lucie, what’s going on?”

“Nothing. I just, um, would feel better if Hope was with Eli or me. I’d never forgive myself if something happened to her because Jasmine got distracted or too busy.”

“She’s very capable,” Dominique said. “Or I wouldn’t have hired her.”

“Oh, I know that,” I said. “Believe me, I know. I’ll be back.”

She pulled her phone out of her pocket and waved it. “Why don’t I just call her? Find out what she’s doing, where they are.”

“No, that’s okay. I don’t want to make a big deal out of it. You know, make it seem like I don’t trust her.”

“You don’t trust her,” she said. “That’s obvious. She happens to be really good with kids. Actually, she’s good with everyone. I don’t understand why you’re acting so negative about her.”

“I guess I’m just an overly protective aunt. Humor me this time, okay? I’ll find them myself.”

Dominique shrugged, annoyance flashing across her face. “I could use a little help here, you know. It is your vineyard.”

“I know that. I’ll be back as soon as I can. And there’s nobody more capable in the world than you are. I’ve seen you handle bigger events with your eyes closed.”

I started toward my car.

“You’re just saying that because you know you’re leaving me between a rock and the deep blue sea,” she called after me.

“I would never do that and I promise not to be gone long,” I yelled back. “See you soon.”

I got in the Mini and earned another disgusted look as I drove by. As long as Dominique didn’t call Jasmine and warn her I was planning to show up, I could still get Hope away from her before she realized I knew anything. Then I’d go to Bobby Noland.

But Jasmine hadn’t dropped Hope off at the house, because Eli was nowhere to be found. I shouted his name up the spiral staircase and listened to my voice echo back.

“Lucie?” Pépé called. It sounded like he was in his bedroom. “Qu’est-ce que tu fais? What’s going on?”

He came to the railing in the upstairs hall and looked down.

“What happened?” he asked. “You look dreadful.”

If I was going to tell anyone, my grandfather was the only one I trusted right now. I waited until he came down the stairs.

“Jasmine Nouri is Maggie Hilliard’s niece,” I said. “She tracked down Stephen Falcone’s sister, Elinor.”

He went pale. “How do you know that?”

“Because I just visited Elinor Falcone in Washington and she told me. Jasmine was on her way to Paris to look up Vivian Kalman when she stopped in Washington. Maggie left a diary and Jasmine found it.”

“ Mon Dieu. What do you think she’s doing here?”

“In the last six months since Jasmine visited Elinor,” I said, “everyone in the Mandrake Society has died. Except Charles. And Jasmine is over at the Thiessmans’ right now. With Hope.”

“Let’s go,” he said. “I’ll call Juliette.”

“No. Don’t do that. First we have to get Hope out of there. There’ll still be time.”

“How can you be so sure?” he said.

“I’m not,” I said. “I’m just praying there is. Come on, let’s go.”

“Wait a minute.”

My grandfather crossed the foyer to the library, which had once been Leland’s office. He reached up and slid his hand along the top of the doorjamb. My heart started pounding in my chest. The key to my father’s gun cabinet was up there; I’d never moved it from where he always kept it.

“My God, Pépé, you can’t bring a gun. What are you thinking?”

Despite my father’s legendary prowess as a hunter and a collection that could outfit a small militia, I avoided guns at all costs. Leland taught me to shoot when I was a teenager—he insisted since he kept weapons in the house—but I was way out of practice.

Pépé found the key and turned to face me. “If what you say is true, this young woman is capable of murder. I don’t want to show up unprepared.”

“Look, we’re going to get Hope out of there and then call Bobby, okay? Leave the gun here. Please.”

But he was already unlocking the door to the big glass cabinet and sliding open the drawer where Leland kept his small arms. I heard the click of a clip being loaded and then Pépé showed up in the doorway. My grandfather was a crack shot, just like Leland.

“I took the forty-five. Don’t worry. I probably won’t even need to draw it, but I like to be safe.”

“You don’t have a permit to carry concealed in Virginia.”

“I have my permis de chasser from last year’s chasse,” he said. “It’s in my wallet.”

“Your hunting permit is only good for last year’s chasse. In France,” I said. “And you didn’t hunt with a forty-five, so it’s not even for the right gun.”

“Obviously,” he said. “But a permit will be the least of my problems if I end up using this, n’est-ce pas? Let’s go.”

On the drive over to Mon Abri, my grandfather grilled me about my visit with Elinor.

“Jasmine had a photograph of Stephen because it was in Maggie’s diary?” he asked. “Do you think Vivian gave her the other picture of Maggie and Charles?”

“I guess so. Even Charles figured out that Vivian, who was the group photographer, took that shot. So it stands to reason Vivian still had it, don’t you think?”

He nodded, looking thoughtful. “What makes you think Jasmine killed Vivian?”

“I’m not sure she did. But I think it’s too much of a coincidence that all of them died within months of each other—beginning from the time Jasmine went to Paris. Who else could have done it?”

“Slow down or you’ll miss the turn for Mon Abri,” he said. “You almost passed the driveway.”

I hit the brakes and put on my turn signal. “Sorry. My mind is in a million places. Here we go.”

Pépé patted his suit jacket in the spot where the .45 sat on his hip.

“Yes,” he said. “Here we go.”

We drove up the long, shaded drive and pulled up to the front entrance.

“That’s Charles’s BMW,” Pépé said as we got out of the car. “And Juliette’s Lexus. Wait here a minute.”

He disappeared around the side of the house. In a few minutes he returned. “There’s another car. A Honda.”

“That must be Jasmine’s,” I said. “What took you so long?”

“Just looking around. It’s quiet. Everyone must be inside.”

We climbed the stairs and Pépé rang the doorbell. The Westminster chime echoed inside the house.

“Luc? Lucie? What are you doing here?” Juliette opened the door, elegant in an electric blue jersey dress, a single strand of pearls, perfect makeup, hair upswept and regal.

“We were running errands in Middleburg so we stopped by to pick up Hope,” I said. “Jasmine’s babysitting her and Dominique said she came over here to get the flowers for tonight.”

Juliette frowned. “Couldn’t Jasmine have dropped her off at your home when she returned with the centerpieces?”

“Yes, of course,” I said. “But it’s nearly time for Hope’s bath and her dinner. Eli called to say he was delayed. I told him we’d get her.”

“Really?” Her frown deepened. “Eli called Jasmine a moment ago to say he’d be waiting for them both when she got back to the Ruins.”

“Oh, gosh,” I said. “We probably got our wires crossed. I’ve been gone all afternoon. As long as we’re here, we’ll bring her home with us. Could we come in?”

“It’s not terribly convenient. Charles is having supper,” she said. “He won’t be at your dinner tonight. He’s made other plans. I’ll be there on my own.”

“We need to have a word with Charles, Juliette.” Pépé’s voice was gentle. “It’s important.”

“Couldn’t it wait?” Juliette fingered her pearls. “He’s not in the best frame of mind tonight. Why don’t you let Jasmine bring the child home and I’ll see you both later? It’ll be nice to spend some time with you, Luc.”

“There’s something Charles needs to know about Jasmine,” Pépé said. “And you may as well hear it, too, though I know it will be distressing.” He took her arm and stepped inside. “Please. Let’s go see him.”

“What about Jasmine?” she asked as we walked through the foyer. “I know about Charles’s … girlfriends, if you’re worried about that. I’m sure he’s already tried to make a pass at her. Don’t give it another thought. I’m used to it.”

It was the first time I’d heard Juliette speak openly about Charles’s infidelities. After what Pépé had said about how discreet and private she was about her marriage, the casual comment, as if she were discussing a routine household matter, surprised me.

Charles sat alone at the head of the table, eating a salad and drinking a glass of wine, in their dark, elegant dining room. The curtains had been drawn against the late-afternoon sun, making the lighting seem thick and cobwebby. Later I would remember that it had seemed as though we were all moving, talking, and thinking in slow motion or as though we were underwater.

Charles looked up as we entered the room, anger flashing in his dark eyes. He hadn’t forgiven us for last evening’s blowup at the Inn.

“We need to talk to you, Charles,” Pépé said. “I’m sorry, but Juliette should know about this, too. It has to do with the matter we were discussing yesterday.”

“Where is Jasmine?” I asked.

Juliette tugged on her pearls again. “What’s this about? She’s in the kitchen. What about Jasmine?”

I kept my voice low. “Jasmine Nouri is Maggie Hilliard’s niece, Charles. Maggie left a diary, which Jasmine read. I’m pretty sure she tracked down Vivian Kalman in Paris, as well.”

I left out Elinor on purpose, hoping he wouldn’t ask how I’d found this out. We didn’t have much time anyway.

Charles set down his fork on the edge of his plate and stared at it wordlessly. Finally he looked up. “Well, I’ll be goddamned. All this time I thought it was Theo.”

Though he sounded calm, his face gave him away. I knew as sure as if he’d said it what he was thinking: He’d let a beautiful girl insert herself into his life with the ease of the serpent slithering into the Garden of Eden and he’d missed it because he’d been too busy looking for a ghost in California. His worst fear had blossomed right here in his home.

“The little bitch,” he said, an afterthought. “Every bit as devious as Maggie was.”

Juliette’s voice rose, a little bubble of hysteria. “What is going on? What are you talking about?”

“Charles will explain it to you later.” I tried to reassure her. “Everything is going to be all right. But the most important thing right now is getting Hope away from Jasmine with as little drama as possible. Then I think we’d better call the sheriff’s department. Everyone else in the Mandrake Society is dead but you, Charles. Why do you think Jasmine is here?”

“I didn’t kill any of those people. Someone else did.” Jasmine Nouri stood in the doorway to the kitchen, holding Hope in her arms. “I figured it was you, Charles. It was, wasn’t it?”

She brushed a strand of hair off the face of my sweet, pink-cheeked niece who was chewing on her favorite toy pony. The gesture sent such a sharp pang of fear for Hope’s safety through me that I gasped.

“Hope,” I said, my voice cracking. “Come here, pumpkin. Beppy and I are going to take you home.”

“Aunt Woozy.”

Hope squirmed in Jasmine’s arms but she held tight to the child. I heard her murmur, “In a minute, sweetie. We have to finish something first.”

“No one’s going anywhere.” Juliette’s eyes were hard. Something had changed in her and I’d missed it. All of a sudden she was in command, the feigned innocence and sweetness gone.

She exchanged looks with Jasmine, a coded understanding that passed between them. Jasmine nodded, but I thought she looked scared. Before anyone could speak or move, Juliette strode over to the sideboard and reached inside a large urn. When she turned around, she was holding a revolver.

“My God,” Charles said. “Where’d you get that?”

She ignored him.

“Why did you have to come here now?” Her voice was full of sadness. It took a moment before I realized she was speaking to my grandfather. “I would have come to you.”

“Juliette!” Charles’s voice cracked like a whip. “Have you lost your mind? Give me that gun.”

“No,” she said. “I can’t do that.”

“Qu’est-ce que tu fais, ma chère?” Pépé asked. “Put the gun down, please. You don’t want to hurt anyone.”

Juliette closed her eyes like she was blinking back tears. “Luc, don’t. Please don’t make this any more difficult than you already have.”

She turned to Charles. “I know, Charles. I know everything. Jasmine told me. The only remaining mystery is what happened that night at the beach forty years ago. You’re the only one who knows because you were driving the car.”

“No,” he said. “No.”

“You were,” Jasmine said. “Vivian said you were. Maggie left the cottage on foot and you went after her. Somehow you persuaded her to get in your car. Then what?”

Charles’s voice turned low and dangerous. “Viv told me when I saw her that someone had stirred up the past, brought it all back again. She let me believe it was Theo.”

“You went to see Vivian when we were in Paris in February,” Juliette said. “That’s when you killed her.”

“She died,” Charles said, “of a heart attack.”

“I wonder if she really did,” Jasmine said. “The Préfecture de Police may want to investigate.”

“What happened at the beach?” Juliette moved closer to Charles, the gun now trained on him. “What did you do?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Pépé slowly lower his hands by his side. Juliette hadn’t noticed, nor, it seemed, had Jasmine.

Charles picked up his napkin and wiped his mouth as though he had all the time in the world. “All right,” he said like he was placating a child. “I’ll tell you.”

“Good.” His wife gave him a heavy-lidded look. “We’re all dying to know.”

Hope squirmed again and Jasmine shushed her. “It’s okay, angel. Just a few more minutes.”

“I want Aunt Woozy.”

“Soon,” she said. “Get on with it, Charles. You heard what Juliette said.”

He pushed his chair back, flashing a scornful look at the two of them as he crossed one leg over the other.

“What do all of you know? Nothing. You weren’t there.”

“If you don’t start talking, I’ll shoot you in the knee,” Juliette said. “Maybe that will jog your memory.”

Charles glared at her. “Don’t be such a drama queen, darling. It doesn’t suit you. You probably couldn’t hit the broad side of the barn, anyway.”

Juliette moved her finger over the trigger. “Would you like to find out?”

“All right.” He held up a hand. “Point that thing somewhere else before you hurt someone. I said, do it.”

She lowered her arm, a contemptuous look on her face. But Charles had won that small round.

“It was an accident,” he said. “It just happened. A dark night with no moon, heavy clouds. Pitch-black. We’d all been drinking. Maggie wanted to talk about Stephen and there was a huge fight among all of them. She left, said she was going for a walk on the beach, so I went after her. She could hardly walk a straight line. I found her, persuaded her to get in the car. I figured we’d get away from the cottage, find a motel for the night, and work it out. Theo had already taken off in a fit of rage. God, he could be so complicated sometimes.”

He shrugged. “To be honest, the next thing I remember was the car hitting the water. Obviously I drove off the bridge. In my condition …”

No one said a word. In another room, a clock chimed five.

“Somehow I got out. Got my door open and made it to the surface. Neither of us was wearing a seat belt. I figured Maggie got out, too; she was a good swimmer. But when I couldn’t find her—I kept shouting her name but it was so goddamned dark—I started diving. Six, seven times, ten, I don’t know. I knew it was too late.” Another shrug, but I noticed that he avoided looking at Jasmine. “So I walked back to the cottage and told the others. Everyone was scared out of their minds. I told them we all needed to stick to the same story or we’d hang together. Maggie took my car and drove it off the bridge. The cops knew she didn’t have a license and she was drunk. They couldn’t prove anything different, no evidence to the contrary. We were four witnesses who could all alibi each other.”

“In return you covered up Stephen’s death and protected their careers.”

“They were brilliant scientists,” he said. “Their country needed them, all that they could offer. Science is research and sometimes things go wrong. It happens.”

“ ‘Things go wrong’?” Juliette said. “My God, Charles. You’re inhuman.”

The tension in the room escalated with an almost audible click as she raised her arm again.

“Juliette,” I said, “please put the gun down. There’s a child—”

She gave me a scornful look. “That time has passed, Chantal.”

Pépé caught my eye. Don’t correct her.

“Before you shoot me, I have a question for Jasmine,” Charles said in a conversational tone. “Did Vivian give you the photo of Maggie and me? Then you mailed it to all of us, along with the photo of Stephen Falcone, didn’t you?”

She nodded. “I wanted you all to know that somebody still remembered. But I never thought you’d kill the others.” Her voice rose. “Except maybe for Paul. I think he must have been the one Maggie called Chicken Little in her diary. The timid one. He hanged himself rather than face what was coming.”

“What a bastard you are, Charles.” Juliette’s voice was cold. “I’ve never told you that, but you always have been. You let that innocent girl die, and you covered up the death of a disabled man who had no idea what he got into. Then you hunted down your former colleagues and killed them to finally silence everyone who knew what happened, to save your own skin.”

She aimed the gun.

“No!” I shouted. “Don’t!”

Jasmine’s hand cradled Hope’s head and as she turned my niece’s face so she couldn’t see what was happening.

“You will suffer,” Juliette screamed at Charles. “Just like that poor boy suffered.”

“You’re out of your mind. What are you talking about?” He threw up his hands like a shield, knocking his wedding ring against his wineglass.

I flinched at the sharp little clink as Juliette’s words jackhammered inside my head. Just like that poor boy suffered.

Stephen died of anthrax poisoning.

I stared at Charles’s wineglass and his dinner plate. He’d been eating a salad whose contents had probably come from Juliette’s garden and drinking a bottle of his own wine. A clever scientist, Noah had said, could change a harmless pesticide like Bt into something that had the genetic makeup of anthrax. Spray it over crops and who would know … until someone ate the deadly meal or drank the poisoned cup. Even then, the reaction wasn’t instantaneous.

Juliette had poisoned Charles. She didn’t need the gun.

“Which is it, Juliette, the wine or the salad? Or both?” I asked. “Where did you get anthrax-laced Bt?”

Charles turned pale. “My God, Juliette, what did you do? Are you insane?” He, too, stared at the remnants of his meal. “It couldn’t be the wine … but the salad—”

“You have no one to blame but yourself,” she said in a cool voice. “Because my gardener was so busy ferrying your little concubines home at night, he didn’t have time to tend to his duties. So I did my own spraying. With a new pesticide.”

“Christ Almighty, you brought Theo here? Right into my own home?” Charles’s voice rose to a screech. “When? How? He’s dead.”

“So you heard,” she said. “A pity the way it happened, a shoot-out during a drug deal. And no, he never came here, Charles. I wouldn’t be that stupid.”

“Then how—?” He stared at Jasmine. “You. You got it for her. Theo gave it to you.”

Jasmine shrugged. “Does it really matter where it came from?”

“Juliette,” Pépé interrupted. “He needs to go to the hospital. You can’t let him die like this.”

“Sorry, but he’s not going anywhere,” she said. “If he tries to leave, I’ll shoot him. One way or another, he’ll die.”

“Don’t be an ass, Juliette.” For the first time Charles sounded scared. “You won’t get away with this unless you kill everyone in this room.”

Juliette turned to Pépé and me. “Your timing is really appalling, you know? No one ever would have suspected the real cause of death, even when they did an autopsy. There are hardly any cases in the United States of death by ingesting anthrax, so it probably would have been attributed to something else. A sad but tragic natural death. Why do you want to save him when you know what he has done? Go away and leave us alone. He ought to die … he deserves to die.”

“No,” I said. “No one deserves to die this way. Not even for what he did.”

“Luc,” Juliette’s voice beseeched him. “We could be together finally, after he’s gone. Begin again, the two of us.”

“No,” he said, “we couldn’t.”

“Please …” Her eyes filled with tears.

“Put the gun down, Juliette.” Pépé raised his arm and pointed Leland’s .45 at her as she gasped. “You know I’m an excellent marksman. If I have to pull the trigger, you’ll lose that hand. You’ll never get your shot off in time.”

“You won’t,” she said. “You wouldn’t. You’d never hurt me.”

“I would if you go through with this.”

It will be a long time before I forget the anguished look that passed between the two of them. Then Juliette took a deep breath, almost a sigh, and squared her shoulders.

“Ah, Luc, my darling, then you must forgive me.” She smiled at him and suddenly I saw a shadow of the young, beautiful girl she’d been in that beguiling portrait in Charles’s study.

I knew, then, that Pépé had been there when she sat for that painting. The teasing, provocative look had been meant for him. I caught a glimpse of Charles’s face. He knew, too.

Juliette aimed the gun, but her hand shook as though the weapon had become too heavy to hold.

“Don’t,” Pépé said.

Jasmine whirled around with Hope and ran into the kitchen. Hope started to wail.

“May you rot in hell, Charles.”

Juliette steadied the revolver, this time with both hands. My grandfather flinched, but he kept the .45 trained on her as she tilted her head almost flirtatiously at him.

“Adieu, mon amour,” she said.

“No!” Pépé sounded panicked and I glanced at him in surprise.

Juliette took a step toward Pépé, and for a wrenching moment I thought she was going to shoot him before she killed Charles.

“Pépé, look out!”

“Je t’aime, Luc.” With one fluid movement Juliette brought the gun to her heart and fired.

She moaned and dropped to the ground like a rag doll, the gun bouncing off the carpet with a dull thud and skidding under the table.

My grandfather was at her side instantly, murmuring her name, pleading with her to respond. He looked up.

“Lucie, call 911. Now! Vite!”

I nodded. “Yes, of course. There’s only a little blood … is she still alive?”

He bent his head so his ear was next to her mouth. “Barely.”

In the kitchen, Hope’s jagged crying had become hysterical as Jasmine frantically tried to calm her down.

“What about me, goddammit?” Charles asked. “I’m dying, too.”

Pépé said, with some contempt, “Don’t worry, Charles. We won’t forget you. I can see how moved you are that your wife just shot herself.”

“Don’t talk to me about how I should feel.” Charles was equally contemptuous. “You of all people. She married me after you exiled her to Washington and left for Belgium. She never stopped loving you. Don’t think I didn’t know it all these years. You’re as responsible as I am for this.”

My grandfather’s face went pale but his voice stayed firm. “Lucie—an ambulance. Call now.”

I started to dial as a door slammed in the kitchen. “Jasmine’s leaving and she has Hope.”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “They won’t go far. I took the liberty of disabling her car when we got here—just in case.”

I threw Pépé the phone. “Here. You give them directions. I’m going after Hope.”

In the kitchen, my niece’s cries grew louder as she called my name. A weight rolled off my chest.

“She’s here. She’s still here. Jasmine took off by herself.”

“Go stay with her,” my grandfather said. “Don’t let her see this.”

I nodded and pushed open the kitchen door. The last thing I saw before I left the room was the tableau of my grandfather cradling Juliette’s head in his arms, an expression of unspeakable grief on his face, as her husband watched them both with the cold dispassion of a spectator. Charles must have felt my stare because he looked over at me one last time, with eyes as empty and vacant as dead planets.

I shut the door and went to comfort Hope.