The Truths We Make (House of Poe #1)

28. Sunken Fields

Sunken Fields

Saturday, Present

“ W here have you been?” Oliver screeches at me before I even make it to the car.

“Is Roger still here?” I ask, instead of answering him.

He glowers at the name. “No. He decided it was in everyone’s best interest that he left.”

I have the distinct impression that Oliver decided, but I don’t prod.

“Good,” I punctuate. “Get in.”

I’m done playing follower. Done letting the Poe family walk all over me, cracking my spine, and leaving me to lie in mud. I can no longer be smart, compassionate, or even curious. All I have left is to be angry.

Oliver’s cheek twitches with the command. Unhappy with the pull on his leash. But he does as I say anyway, grumpily climbing into the passenger seat of the car I borrowed from Alexander, leaving his driver to make his way back, alone. If my emotions were any less eclipsed, it might make me smile.

I start the trek back into the suburbs toward Dellbrook, unsure of what I’ll do once I’m there. I try to formulate what I need to say to Oliver, but the ease of language doesn’t come with righteousness like the old books proclaim. I shed away the poetry and purple prose in lieu of direct confrontation.

“Did you do it?” I ask .

Oliver stays looking out the window, fingers drumming on the door frame. He doesn’t catch on to my meaning, or more than likely he doesn’t want to. I repeat it.

“Oliver. Did. You. Do. It?” I say a little louder.

Finally, he turns his head to look at me, unfazed. “Did I do what? If you’re going to be on a tirade, at least be clear in it.”

The thread my sanity is hanging onto snaps.

“Did you kill Paxton? Did you kill your own brother?” I scream. He freezes, becoming an iceberg floating in calm waters. A wolf poised as a lamb.

“Did I…” He can’t even finish the words.

I keep driving, terrified to look over and yet unable to stop. He’s stricken, eyes glued to mine, hand already turning purple from crushing the door handle. His neck and cheeks are slack, even while the rest of him is coiled, ready to spring, making me feel like prey. My nerves dance like wildlings while I wait for the suspense in time to drop.

“How can you even ask me that?” Oliver says, tone flat and concealed.

“Paxton left…” I don’t even get it out before his whole-body folds, losing its fight with gravity entirely.

“Paxton?” he asks, strangled.

His question isn’t furious or guilty or calculating. Instead, it is the embodiment of despair. He knows what I’m going to tell him, that there was a clue. He watched me pocket it at the apartment. Saw the book I’d found. He may not know the entirety of what happened, but he knows enough to tie strings to my conclusion.

“You’re saying that Paxton is framing me?” he asks sincerely.

But that isn’t what I’m saying. I realize the pain in Oliver’s eyes and remind myself of who he is. He didn’t do this. Oliver could be a lot of things, but someone who would kill his own brother, someone he loves, wasn’t one of them.

Still, that left a clue that didn’t make sense. Paxton wouldn’t frame Oliver as much as Oliver wouldn’t kill Paxton.

“I… I don’t know what I’m saying. The clue clearly points to you. Here,” I fish out the note from my pocket and hand it over to him to read.

I watch as he takes it in, nose scrunching in concentration, and then his head tilts back in understanding. He pulls out his phone, blowing up a picture from a letter I have yet to see.

“I can’t read that. I’m driving,” I say .

He sighs and reads it out loud, “ The flush of anger'd shame, O'erflows thy calmer glances, And o'er black brows drops down, A sudden-curved frown. I wasn’t sure what it meant, I found half the words in the letter and the other half in the clues— shame, calmer, drops, and today I found frown . I hadn’t heard the quote before, but after looking it up and seeing your clue, I know where we need to go. ”

“It’s from Tennyson. A poem entitled Madeline ,” I mumble, dreading what this means. “What does my clue have to do with yours?”

Indignation fills Oliver’s words. “The quote he pulled was originally written about Madeline, Roderick’s sister. He’s pointing us to the same place.”

We find the matriarch of Poe in the Nest. She’s stretched along a bookshelf, returning a tome to its home. Our presence doesn’t alarm her nor cause her to rush her delicate handling of the matter at hand. She doesn’t find it odd we’re here, I think. But she should. She knows what we’ve been whispering about. Or maybe she’s delusional enough to think you obeyed her, that Oliver and I are reconciling instead of solving. It wouldn’t be out of Madeline’s narcissistic bravado.

I’m so focused on the curve of her wrist as she pushes the book into place, imagining something so pristine being marred by something as dirty as this, that I miss Alexander in the wingback chair, until he speaks.

“Oliver. Eve. Good to see you running around again. I bet you both miss this old house more than you thought!”

His cheeks are flushed from the fireplace and the deep burgundy glass sitting next to him. He has one book laid open on the table while his own notebook and pen are poised in his lap. I can make up tiny sketches of what look to be the lines of a woman, no doubt inspired by the one we’re here to see.

Oliver and I both looked at each other in silent conversation, knowing it was never the house we missed. The soft click of Madeline’s heels touching wood breaks our hold and we remember why we’re here.

“Madeline,” Oliver starts. “I think we need to talk.”

His words give nothing away, sounding as dull and formal as every other conversation I’ve heard held between mother and son. Her breath releases, eyes closed, before she moves to Alexander. She stands behind him, lightly brushing his shoulders .

“Perhaps later. We are in the middle of our afternoon drinks,” she says, not looking at either of us.

Oliver’s voice breaks character to reveal a glimpse of the monster he hides. “No, Mother. We should talk now . It’s about Paxton.”

It’s very rare I hear him call her mother, and the name makes Madeline’s neck snap back in surprise. If she didn’t know something was wrong before, she knows now, all pretenses laid to waste.

“My love, can I meet you in the theater to finish our afternoon? It appears I am being summoned to speak,” she asks Alexander.

Her words sound lovely, more tender than they are for any other. They’re a grueling reminder of the woman she can be, that she chose not to be, for her children, making the furor of my accusations hard to hold in.

Alexander nods, pulling her hand to his lips and kissing it softly. He stands to leave, stopping only between Oliver and me.

“Whatever it is, go easy on her,” he whispers, then leans over louder to me. “Please come find me before you leave. Both of you. I’d like to say our goodbyes if I cannot persuade you to stay.”

I nod, only because of the love I have for who he was and who he could have been if not for his devotion. Did you know? My heart breaks at the thought. He’s barely out of the room before Oliver turns on Madeline like a viper that’s been disturbed.

“You did it,” he accuses, stepping closer.

Madeline, for all her faults, is nothing but grace. She rounds on the chair Alexander vacated and sits, poised and proper. As if this is a meeting she’s called. As if she isn’t being accused of murder.

“Oliver. Eve. Sit. We’re nothing if we are not civil,” her words as cold and dominating as ever, the master in a ring of lions.

The southern grip of my mother tells me to follow. To be respectable. But the wild, tormented heart that beats in my chest tells me to howl. To spit in her face. To meet violence with violence. With my curiosity satiated enough to take a back seat, all that’s left is retribution.

But Oliver’s cooler head prevails as he sits. He must be allowing reason to take hold of emotion, letting it remind him we don’t have enough to make anyone believe us. We have no course of action, no punishment to dole. The years of dealing with Madeline must be replaying in his mind, showing him how to make things just so.

Emily’s words shock through the murk of my intensity. Those with a family name and money don’t abide by average rule. Only the powerful can punish the powerful. I follow Oliver’s lead, not Madeline’s words, and sit.

“There. Now, what am I being accused of?” Madeline asks, taking a sip of her wine.

“Paxton. You killed him,” I say, no longer able to stay silent.

Madeline scoffs, head tossed to the side. “Hardly.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Oliver grills, indignant.

“It means, son , that I cannot take sole credit in your allegation,” Madeline says.

“But you did have something to do with it?” I ask, unable to believe that she would confess so easily.

“Darling, we all had something to do with it.” Her laugh is brittle, cracking with disbelief.

Oliver moves to the edge of his seat, menacing in the strength of his control.

“Madeline, you need to start making sense. Now.” His threat is clear, fists curling into the crushed red velvet of his chair.

Madeline finally sees the danger in the room, her defenses falling enough to see the true age of her under the careful illusion she’s used to hiding. She may not be breaking, but she knows she holds a losing hand.

“My, how the love between you boys grew. You’d be willing to watch your mother, the woman who gave you life, suffer on his behalf. Because of a few silly letters. It’s my fault, I know. Forcing you to make promises to each other. To keep them,” she sighs, knowing the house of control she’s built is crumbling around her.

“I didn’t take Paxton’s life. That’s what you’re asking, isn’t it? I merely picked up a phone call that told me it had already been done. That my son,” she chokes on the word before composing herself again, “that my son had chosen this. Had taken his life in his own hands. And that I wasn’t allowed to know any more than that. That I wasn’t allowed to recover the body. All I could have from him was the leavings of his trust, the power of his belongings outside of his business, and a letter. That that is what Paxton wanted.”

She spits each syllable, furious at telling us what she knows. Appalled that it even exists in the first place.

“I… I don’t understand,” I say, unable to believe it, too .

“No. There’s more you’re not telling us. Who called? What happened to him? It had to be a murder! How could he do this? He wouldn’t do this. I don’t believe you,” Oliver says thickly.

The fight in him is waning, deflation making his arms sag on his knees and his head hangs in his hands. They pull and thread through his curls on instinct and even though I’m lost in what’s happening, I want to do the same. To bring him whatever comfort I have left.

“Does it matter how he died? Will it quell the tide of grief and guilt that the two of you have been harboring? I tried to save you, but neither of you would let me. You can call this a murder all you’d like, but it isn’t one that can be wrapped up tightly into who drew the final breath from his body. It’s a killing of the soul that led us all here. There’s no smoking gun, no hanging rope, no plugged-in hair dryer to point to. Paxton died by the knives we named words and distance. By the bloodletting of expectations. He died wanting us all to ponder why , giving me exactly what I’d wanted. What I’d asked for.”

“And what’s that?” Oliver asks, repulsed.

“To feel more like Edgar. And he won. He did it. So, I’ve mourned him as the son I made instead of the one I bore. I’ve given him in death what I couldn’t in life and all I can hope, all any of us can hope, is that it’ll be enough to live with in our next days. Because fire has molted our bones and survived the River Styx. Regret cannot take us. That is the gift of being Poe. Death does not break us against its rocks, it only forms us into mountains.”

She clasps to the words, more a desperate plea than a vote of confidence. Truths she makes because without them, how would she survive? Silent tears roll down my face. I’m unsure where to go from here. What to do now that the mystery is solved and yet there is no solution? Paxton took his own life . The words scorch the forests of my thoughts barren.

Oliver stands, unsteady and disheveled, but Oliver all the same.

“The only thing being Poe gave us, Mother , is despair.”

And he leaves the room, taking all the remains of my heart with him.