Chapter 6 - THE DRAWING OF THE PARK
Mrs. Gable’s hands shook so badly that the heavy construction paper fluttered like a leaf in the wind as she walked toward the dining table.
Carmine didn't let go of Vanessa. He kept his forearm firmly pressed against her collarbone, pinning her to the plaster wall, but he turned his head toward the nanny.
“What is it, Mrs. Gable? Is Lucy alright?” he asked, his voice tight with a mixture of anger and sudden fatherly panic.
“She’s crying, sir. She keeps saying she saw the ‘bad lady’ in her dream again,” Mrs. Gable whispered, casting a terrified glance at Vanessa. “She’s been having these nightmares for a week, ever since Miss Vanessa moved her things into the master suite. But tonight... tonight she drew this right after she woke up. She said it was a picture of the day Mommy went to sleep in the grass.”
Carmine’s entire body went rigid.
“Bring it here,” he ordered.
I stepped forward and gently took the drawing from the nanny’s trembling hands. I held it up so Carmine could see it clearly under the chandelier light, making sure to keep a safe distance from Vanessa’s kicking feet.
It was drawn in heavy, frantic strokes of Crayola crayon. The chaotic scribbles of a four-year-old trying to process a trauma she barely understood.
There was a large expanse of green on the bottom half of the page—the grass of the botanical gardens. In the center was a stick figure with long brown hair, lying flat on her back. Elena.
But it was the second figure standing over her that made my blood turn to ice.
It was a taller stick figure, colored in with yellow hair. Vanessa.
And in the yellow-haired woman’s hand was a thick, black cylinder, pointed downward at the woman on the grass. Coming out of the bottom of the cylinder was a single, sharp silver line.
A needle.
“What is that?” Carmine breathed, his eyes wide as he stared at the drawing. “What is she holding?”
“She’s a child!” Vanessa screamed, thrashing wildly against Carmine’s grip. Sweat was beading on her forehead, ruining her immaculate makeup. “She has an overactive imagination! She draws monsters and dragons all the time! You’re going to believe a crayon drawing over me?!”
“Lucy was in her stroller when Elena died,” Carmine said, his voice dropping to a terrifying, hollow monotone. He wasn't speaking to Vanessa; he was speaking to himself, piecing together a horror too massive to comprehend. “The police report said Lucy was strapped in, facing her mother when she collapsed. The coroner said it was an aneurysm. A sudden, massive brain bleed.”
“It was!” Vanessa shrieked. “The autopsy proved it! I didn't touch her!”
I stared at the drawing. I looked at the black cylinder in the stick figure's hand. I thought about the four years I had worked in this house. I thought about the strict rules in the kitchen, the specific grocery lists, the terrifying instructions I had been given on my very first day of work.
“Nell,” Elena had said, her kind eyes deeply serious as she handed me a sealed plastic box. “I have a severe, lethal allergy to wasp venom. If I am ever stung, my throat will close in less than ninety seconds. I keep one of these in every room, and two in my purse at all times.”
“EpiPen,” I whispered into the quiet room.
Carmine’s head snapped toward me.
“An EpiPen,” I repeated, stepping closer and pointing to the black cylinder in Lucy’s drawing. “Elena didn't have an aneurysm in the park, Mr. Orsini. She was stung by a wasp. She went into anaphylactic shock. The symptoms of severe anaphylaxis—the lack of oxygen, the bursting blood vessels, the sudden collapse—can mimic a brain bleed if the coroner isn't specifically looking for a sting mark hidden in her hair.”
Carmine slowly turned his head back to look at Vanessa. The look in his eyes wasn't just anger anymore. It was pure, unadulterated murder.
“You were with her,” Carmine whispered, his voice trembling with a grief so profound it seemed to shake the floorboards. “She was stung. She couldn't breathe. She reached for her purse to get her EpiPen.”
“No!” Vanessa sobbed, genuine tears of absolute terror streaming down her face as she felt Carmine’s grip tighten dangerously around her throat. “I didn't hurt her! I swear to God, I didn't hurt her!”
“You didn't have to hurt her,” I said, the realization washing over me with sickening clarity. I looked at the broken silver locket sitting on the table. “You just had to do exactly what you did with the necklace. You just had to stand there and take it.”
“You took her EpiPen,” Carmine said, his voice rising into a roar that echoed off the vaulted ceilings. He slammed her against the wall again, rattling the antique paintings. “You took it out of her hand while she was choking to death on the grass! You stood there and watched my wife suffocate in front of my baby daughter, and you stole her medicine so you could steal her life!”
“IT WAS AN ACCIDENT!” Vanessa screamed, completely breaking under the pressure, her confession tearing out of her throat like a wild animal. “I didn't plan it! We were drinking coffee! The wasp stung her on the neck! She fell over, she was gasping, she dropped her purse! The EpiPen rolled into the grass by my feet!”
She was hyperventilating now, completely hysterical, the terrifying truth pouring out of her.
“I went to pick it up to help her!” Vanessa cried, tears and mascara running down her chin. “I swear I did! But then I looked at her. I looked at her perfect clothes, and her diamond ring, and the baby she got to keep while mine was dead in the ground! And a voice in my head just said... wait. Just wait a minute. So I just stood there. I just watched her eyes roll back. It only took two minutes, Carmine! And then she was gone. And I knew if I stayed, I would have to give you back your perfect life. So I took the pen, and I took her necklace, and I ran away!”
The room was deathly quiet, save for Vanessa’s ragged, ugly sobbing.
Carmine looked at the woman he had been planning to marry. The woman he had kissed, held, and brought into his daughter’s home. He looked at her as if she were a rotting corpse.
Slowly, deliberately, Carmine released his grip on her shoulders and stepped back. He looked completely numb. He reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone again, and dialed 911.
“My name is Carmine Orsini,” he said into the phone, his voice dead and flat. “I need the police at my residence immediately. I have a full confession to the murder of my wife.”
Vanessa didn't wait for him to finish.
Like a cornered rat, she realized her life was entirely over. She lunged away from the wall, scrambling desperately toward the foyer doors to escape. She grabbed her heavy winter coat from the chair where she had draped it, wildly pulling it on to run out into the night.
But as she spun around, the heavy hem of her red designer gown caught on the sharp wooden leg of the grand piano bench.
She tripped violently, crashing hard into the side of the piano.
Her flailing arm slammed into the mahogany dining table. She hit the silver music box—the one she had jammed the letter opener into earlier.
The broken music box flew off the table and smashed into the hardwood floor, shattering into dozens of jagged pieces of wood, gears, and silver plating.
And from the hollow, false bottom of the shattered box, something rolled out across the floor, stopping right at my feet.
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It was a thick, black plastic cylinder with an orange cap. Faded, scratched, and expired three years ago.
An EpiPen.
