One Little Secret Read online

  ONE LITTLE SECRET

  A Novel

  CATE HOLAHAN

  To Shonah Maldonado, the Bloomfield Police Department, and all the law enforcement officers who bring to work a deep empathy for the people they protect and dedication to helping folks on their worst days.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Some stories develop for me like a dream. It’s as if my subconscious saw the film and spoiled it all for my waking mind. The beginning, major plot points, and ending are all known. The characters seem like people I’ve cried with. I settle down to write feeling like a typist transcribing each vivid scene.

  Other stories start with a sense of something or someone. The characters are hazy, and I see the setting through oil-smeared sunglasses. I know the inciting incident that will set events in motion. But I don’t know my imaginary people well enough to understand all they will feel, nor what they will do to each other. These stories are more painful for me. I enjoy being the sole creator of my imagined world, and relinquishing control to these developing people is anxiety producing and rewrite inducing.

  I am fortunate to be surrounded by wonderful real human beings who help me negotiate with these characters and regain my sense of what I’d like to say, while being honest about the natures of the folks populating my story.

  I would like to thank my husband, Brett, who listens to me talk about fictional people as if I am sharing the secret problems of dear friends I need to help. I don’t know how he puts up with me half the time, but I am deeply grateful for his patience and love. I would also like to thank my daughters, Ellie and Olivia, who have to deal with Mommy being stressed about a rewrite and getting them to tennis on time. I wish I could say I easily switch from penning a murder scene to the school pickup line, but I know I don’t. I am very fortunate to have such loving children who can understand that sometimes Mommy needs a minute.

  I would like to thank my agent Paula Munier, who held my hand many times when I needed it with this story and restored my confidence to continue writing it through various permutations.

  I would like to give a special thanks to the Bloomfield Police Department and especially Detective Shonah Maldonado, who spoke with me at length about her job as a female detective and dealing with domestic violence cases and crimes of sexual abuse. She inspired me to write the detective in this story—my favorite character in this book—and she is a true hero for so many. The dedication and caring that she brings to her work are truly inspiring, and I am thankful that there are women like her protecting all of us.

  I would also like to thank all the other people who believe in me and give needed counsel. You help me believe in myself. Mom, Dad, James, Tara, Grandma Gloria, Grandmother Maddy, Linda H, Galit, Gia, Jen, Julie, Joanne, Karin, Karly, Linda K, Lisa, Madeline, Margot, Mina, Nadine, Saundra, Shana, Shelley, Soroya, Tamiko, Nafiz, Jeff, John, Vic, Garth, Trey, Uncle Paul, Uncle Philip, Aunt Julie, Aunt Elayne, Aunt Sharon, and Aunt Kim.

  I’d like to thank the team at Crooked Lane—Matt, Nike, Sarah, and Jenny—for all your hard work helping to get this book out. I appreciate what you do and know that trying to get a writer to tell the best story she can (and then putting that story in the best possible package) isn’t easy.

  I am also thankful for Westley, my faithful dog who keeps me company when I write. #puglife

  I am forever grateful to my grandfather, Poppy, who inspired me to be a writer in the first place. Sometimes I swear I feel his presence and energy when the writing is going well. And when it’s not, I remember his work ethic and buckle down.

  Last, but never least, thanks to God. In my stories, bad things happen. But there is always a character or two who gives of himself to try to make things better or who learns to appreciate what she has once she sees the bigger picture. I believe God is most present in our efforts to be good to one another, and when we stop thinking about how we feel and refocus on how we can make others feel. I try to remember this in my writing.

  PROLOGUE

  Drowning can happen in two inches of water. All the parenting books she’d consumed during her pregnancies had contained that warning, often on the first page of the bath-time section. Children could die in a kiddie pool. The sink. The toilet. Life began in an amniotic sac, but it could end in the shallows.

  Her life could end in these shallows.

  She clawed at the hands shoving her head beneath the breaking waves. Salt seared her nose. Her eyes burned. Still, she forced herself to scan for a weapon. The dark outline of a rock. The glint of a razor clam. Anything besides the foamy veil shrouding her face.

  Air. God. Air. Watery images filled her brain: murky pictures of her kids’ childhoods. She saw her oldest, Daddy’s clone with those serious eyes, and her rubber band of a baby, pulled thin by puberty, vibrating with energy. The snapshots strung together like images in a spinning zoetrope. She could see her children aging. Growing up without her.

  The water pulled away. She tried to breathe, but a fetid backwash flooded her mouth. Coughing, she pressed her palms to the shifting ground, desperate to push herself upright before the next wave knocked her down. She had to focus. She had to breathe. To fight.

  Her face slammed back into the froth. A whorling silence filled her ears. The pressure to inhale was more intense than anything she’d ever felt, stronger than the need to push during contractions. And, yet, there was a peace, a knowledge that the end would come. It was almost here, if only she’d let go.

  She pressed harder against the sinking sand, digging in with her knees and fingers. Darkness swept through her brain. She had to fight. She had to breathe. She had to … She …

  PART I

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE DAY AFTER

  The room reminded Gabriella of her daughter’s, sans the credit-card-sized photos thumbtacked to the white walls and the irritating poster of a tattooed action star tagged BOYFRIEND GOALS. Like Kayla’s space, it had been carved from the attic and thus suffered from a sharp triangular ceiling. A squat dresser huddled beneath a skylight cut into one of the slanted sides. Under the other diagonal, a single mattress rested on a platform so low it resembled a tatami mat.

  A girl sat atop it, her head lowered over tucked knees, preventing Gabby from seeing more of her than a pair of jean-clad legs pressed to a bulky gray sweatshirt and a curtain of thick black hair. The homeowner, Dina Collette, had warned that her au pair hadn’t wanted to involve the police. But I explained that, in America, women don’t let men get away with such things. Gabby supposed that Dina, a former model whose surname changed every few years, didn’t let men get away with much. But the rules were different for socialites with established wealth. Truth was, men got away with “such things” all the time.

  Gabby’s job was to make this time different. She tapped on the doorjamb, hoping to announce herself without startling the young woman. According to Dina, Mariel Cruz had turned eighteen in December, five months before arriving in the States. Her native language was Tagalog, though Dina claimed Mariel was fluent in English. Gabby prayed that meant the au pair read American newspapers. Though nearly everyone in the Philippines learned English in school, a typical foreign-language curriculum wouldn’t cover the vocabulary for sexual assault.

  She called Mariel’s name from the open doorway. The girl lifted her forehead from her thighs. Even with bloodshot eyes and a reddened nose, she was pretty—her young face punctuated by the full lips that men so often equated with sex, but that Gabby couldn’t see without thinking of her pouty sixteen-year-old. Sitting in her plain room, with her skin scrubbed clean, Mariel appeared even younger than Kayla.

  Gabby’s chest tightened. She reminded herself that the girl before her was technically an adult, even if she could pass for her daughter’s classmate.
Moreover, it was possible that whatever had happened had been consensual and that Dina, disgusted by the idea of some middle-aged neighbor seducing her barely legal au pair, had forced the phone call.

  Gabby pressed her hand against the open door, pushing it back another inch. “My name is Gabby Watkins. I’m a detective with the East Hampton Police Department. May I come in?”

  A sniff served as an affirmative response. Gabby stepped into the room, suddenly thankful for her small stature, which enabled her to slip into the cramped space without dominating it. The lack of seating, aside from the bed, meant that Gabby would need to stand for the interview. Plopping on a mattress beside a possible sexual-assault victim was even worse than lording over one.

  “I understand that something happened to you last night. I’d like to help.”

  Mariel pulled at her sweatshirt, attempting to tuck her knees beneath the image of crossed paddles stitched into the fabric. “Dina said to call the police. She thinks somebody put a drug in my drink. But I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

  The sentences shot out in short gasps, like steam from a rusting heater. Gabby wished that the Collette family had volunteered to go out to breakfast so that she and Mariel could talk in the kitchen. A glass of water would help the young woman calm down and tell her story fluidly. Details emerged only when a conversation was flowing. And in he-said/she-said sexual-assault cases, the details often decided arrests.

  “It’s okay if you can’t recall everything.” Gabby kept her voice soft, aware that even a normal speaking voice might ricochet against the tight walls. “Let’s talk about the party. How did you hear about it?”

  Mariel stretched the sweatshirt over her kneecaps and rounded her back over her thighs. “From Fiona O’Rourke. She’s an au pair, too. She watches a six-year-old in the gray house at the end of the street. She told me that some guys were having a pool party.”

  “A party where?”

  “Pepperidge Lane. I don’t know the house number. Fiona picked me up in a Lyft.”

  Gabby made another mental note. Fiona’s ride-sharing app would have the exact party location.

  “I thought they would be Irish students, like Fiona. But the guys were much older.” Mariel released one of her arms from around her covered legs. She picked up a piece of her own black hair. “A couple were … I don’t know how to say. Puting buhok. Gris? When the hair begins to lose color?”

  “Graying?” Gabby thought of her own hair, pulled back into a matronly ponytail. If she shook it out, she’d find several strands to confirm what Mariel meant, though not so many that anyone would suggest a dye job. Most of Gabby’s fellow forty-year-olds had yet to go full salt-and-pepper. “The guys were in their fifties, you think? Or older?”

  Mariel shuddered. “Late thirties, I think. Maybe forties. When Fiona introduced me to some of the men, I said we should visit a place with younger people. But she wanted to stay.” Mariel gestured to the room around them. “I didn’t want to be here on my one night off.”

  In addition to being tiny, Gabby realized, Mariel’s bedroom was stuffy, despite the air conditioning seeping from floor vents. Heat camped out in attics. Humidity was already curling the baby hairs not pulled tight by Gabby’s ponytail, and she’d been inside only ten minutes.

  “How many people were at the party?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe fifty? There were many girls like Fiona—college students on summer break. I thought I would stay for a time, and then if Fiona didn’t want to leave, I could take a car with one of the other women …”

  Gabby stepped closer to Mariel and lowered her voice to a confidential level. “But something changed your plans.”

  The girl nodded, dropping her chin lower with each bounce until it was nearly hidden behind her knees. “Two of the men started fighting over a girl. This big Black guy was shouting that he would call the cops. He said he’d have people arrested for drinking before they are the right age. I’d had wine.” Mariel’s head snapped up, revealing her wide brown eyes. “I’m allowed in the Philippines, and I only took one glass. I know I shouldn’t have …”

  Gabby offered a shy smile. “I’m not here about underage drinking.”

  Mariel dropped her chin back to the stretched-out sweatshirt. “I was afraid of trouble, so I went to tell Fiona that I needed to leave. She’d gone inside for the bathroom. And …”

  A sob cut off Mariel’s story. The little Gabby could still see of the young woman’s face was flushed and strained. Every instinct urged Gabby to hug the girl, filling the maternal role that belonged to a woman eight thousand miles away. But Gabby kept her feet cemented to the floor. She needed to maintain perspective as she listened to Mariel’s story for the keywords of a crime. Had Mariel said no? Had she been unable to consent? Had she been trapped or forced?

  “So you went into the house to find Fiona, and then what happened?”

  Mariel’s breaths shuddered. “I went into the kitchen and saw a couple men that Fiona had introduced me to. I told them I was searching for her and that a man was outside threatening to phone the police. One of the men ran out to talk to him. Another, I think his name was Mandy, said he’d help me find my friend. He gave me a glass of something, too. It was fruity. I was afraid to drink it and told him I was eighteen, but he said that the police couldn’t enter people’s private homes.”

  A bitter snort sprayed Mariel’s top lip with clear mucus. She wiped it with her sweatshirt sleeve, creating a shimmering line atop her lips that shaved even more years from her young face. “That’s all I remember before waking up.”

  “Where did you wake up?”

  Mariel covered her mouth with her palm. She squeezed her eyes shut, forcing tears out the sides. Gabby tried again, dropping her voice to a near whisper. “Where did you wake up, Mariel?”

  “In this man’s bed.” Mariel’s voice dissolved in sobs. “I wasn’t wearing clothes, and the guy that was helping me find Fiona was beside me. I don’t know what I did. I don’t know if we had sex. Maybe I drank too much and fell asleep and he put me to bed. I told Dina that I didn’t know and I was sorry. When I explained that I couldn’t remember anything, she said I had to talk to the police.”

  Gabby couldn’t stop her hands from curling into fists a second time. Whether or not Mariel had been drugged or fed booze until she blacked out, the man she’d encountered was a predator. He and his friends had lured a bunch of women half their age to a party in hopes of making them drunk and pliable. He’d then identified one of the weaker ones: a newly minted adult, thousands of miles from her family, unfamiliar with alcohol, and abandoned by her friend.

  “I’m sure that you were feeling confused and scared, so I understand if you just got out of there. But can you tell me anything about this man, Mandy? Perhaps what he looked like and if he said anything to you this morning?”

  Mariel wiped her face with the other sweatshirt sleeve. “He had blond-and-brown hair, a mix, and light eyes. Maybe green. I was too embarrassed to look close at his face. I asked him what time it was, and he said seven. He invited me to breakfast. I told him that I needed to take the twins to their tennis lessons. He got a car for me.” Mariel pulled at the hair pasted to her cheeks. “If this man raped me, why would he offer me breakfast and pay for my ride home? It doesn’t make sense. I must have fallen asleep.”

  The girl’s round eyes begged the authority in the room for reassurance. Part of Gabby wanted to provide it, to assure the still-teenager that nothing more horrible had happened than her getting drunk and passing out, that she didn’t need to worry her mother back in the Philippines or go to the hospital for STD screening. But a lie would be worse in the long run. Ignored wounds festered. And a rapist that got away with it would do the same thing to another young girl.

  “The hospital has tests to help us figure out whether or not you were drugged, and if you had intercourse with anyone last night. Doctors can also give you medicine to protect you against diseases, if the sex was unprotected.”
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br />   Mariel’s pleading stare morphed to panic. “I don’t have health insurance here. I earn two hundred a week. I can’t afford to see doctors.”

  The statement grabbed Gabby’s tense insides and twisted. The predator really had picked a prime candidate, choosing a young woman who would be more concerned about the cost of treatment than catching her attacker. “There are victims’ funds that will reimburse you, eventually.”

  Mariel’s eyes filled with fresh tears. “Do the tests hurt?”

  The question made Gabby’s own eyes sting. She tilted her head to the ceiling, forcing her emotions back into her stomach. As she did, her phone began buzzing.

  Gabby removed her cell, intending to decline the call. Jason DeMarco’s name dominated the screen. Detective DeMarco would have been handling Gabby’s rape report had he not been pulled away minutes earlier on a possible assault. Gabby, who’d spent most of the night investigating a DUI that had totaled an SUV and a telephone pole, had been the only other detective on call—fortunately for Mariel, since DeMarco wasn’t known for his sensitivity or tact. Perhaps he’d already resolved his case and was offering relief.

  Gabby pocketed the phone and turned her attention back to Mariel’s pinched face. “The tests are invasive, unfortunately.” She slowed her East Coast speech to the speed of a Texas drawl, aware that she’d come to the part of the interview involving more technical vocabulary. “The doctors will look for fibers, like pieces of hair or carpet, and they will give you an internal physical examination, similar to what happens at a gynecologist. Many people find the tests upsetting to endure after an attack, though they can clear up what happened last night—if you had sexual intercourse with anyone and if there are any sedatives or other strange chemicals in your system.”

  Mariel’s jaw dropped with an unspoken question. A shy knock snapped it closed. Gabby glanced over her shoulder to see Dina in the doorway, a sparkling glass of water in one hand and an aspirin in her outstretched palm. Gabby swallowed her annoyance at the second break in her momentum. For all intents and purposes, Dina was as close to a mom as Mariel had in the country. If the young woman decided to go ahead with the tests, she’d need someone.