Lured into Lies by Melanie Martins
Chapter 18
Dieren, 1 December 2020
Petra Van Gatt
BANG!
A sudden loud noise of an explosion or shotgun wakes me up with a jump. As I crack my eyes open, I look around my bedroom, but everything is quiet between those four walls. I remain in bed, wondering if this was a one time shot, or if there is more to come. For now, I hear nothing else. Silence ensues for a while until another bang startles me. Jeez! Is someone firing a gun or what? I leap off of bed and check from my window if I can find where the noise is coming from. I look outside and see Margaret standing from afar in the middle of the vast fields covered with snow, dressed all in black with boots and a long coat, firing in the air at flying objects that are being thrown automatically by a machine on the ground. What the heck is she doing? I narrow my eyes to check what those objects are, but it’s too far to discern them. I take a pair of jeans, my boots, a sweater and a coat and head outside the bedroom.
At the corridor, I find Clarissa, the lady’s maid, and without wasting any second, I ask, “Hey, um, how can I go outside to where Margaret is?”
“Follow me, please.” Clarissa escorts me to the backyard, and as I step outside, I see a big winter terrace where Yara, Emma, and Alex are quietly taking their breakfast while entertained by watching Margaret from afar pointing her rifle in the air and shooting at the target that flies on her sight.
“What’s going on?” I ask them, wondering why on earth she is doing that.
But only Alex turns to look at me, while Emma and Yara have their eyes pinned on the show. “It seems like Tess decided to send a not-so-nice letter to Mom,” he says, giving me a hand-written note:
Margaret,
If you keep supporting this marriage until the end, don’t be surprised if you find your son arrested pretty soon.
His time will come.
You’ve been warned.
Tess
Gosh! I can’t believe Mom had the audacity to do that! Is she crazy or what? I draw out a breath, imagining how insulted Margaret must’ve felt at those vicious words. “But can she shoot a rifle like that here? Is this legal?” I ask before hearing another bang in the air.
“It’s called clay pigeon shooting,” Alex casually explains as if shooting plates made of clay was a common hobby. “She’s got her license, and this is her estate. So why not?”
“I have to talk to her.”
Before I can leave the terrace, though, Alex grabs my wrist, halting me. “Be careful, you have no protection for your eyes.”
I look up at the new object suddenly exploding in the air, and I swallow hard at the idea that I could be hit by one of those pieces. “I will stand far away.” I step carefully outside in the vast field covered with snow that lies upon me. Then, my eyes on Margaret’s back, I steel myself to walk in her direction, doing my best to avoid getting hurt by one of those flying objects. As I get closer to the thrower machine, I realize it throws plates every minute with such a speed that I wonder how she manages to hit them with meticulous precision. Well, she must have done it all her life, which would explain Alex’s obsession with rifles.
Standing behind her at a fair distance, I remain quietly watching Margaret pointing her rifle in the air and waiting until the automatic thrower unleashes one more plate. I shut my eyes tight to protect myself from the upcoming pieces.
BANG!
A gasp escapes me at the sudden noise, my heart jumping at it. Slowly enough, I reopen my eyes and see Margaret loading her firearm with new cartridges.
“I’m not sure if your mom realizes it or not,” she begins, her tone matching the freezing weather. “But I’m not the type of person who takes threats lightly.”
My heart starts racing as I look at her closing her rifle and pointing it again to the sky. “Um, she’s just angry or disappointed…” I try to find a plausible excuse to calm her down, yet it seems like she’s about to pour all her anger into the next firing. There goes another plate thrown in the air, and I shut my eyes tight, anticipating the noisy sound coming from the shot.
BANG!
I reach my hands above my head out of fear that one of the pieces will hit me.
“If you care about her, I suggest you to give her a word,” she warns. It doesn’t sound like a suggestion though, but rather a command. My heart skips a beat, the fear that something happens to Mom because of her stubbornness petrifying me. Why doesn’t she give up once and for all? Why won’t she let us live in peace? One thing is sure, if I want this fight between my future in laws and her to stop, I’ve got talk to her.
“Alright, I will ask Alex to take me there.”
“No,” she snaps instantly. “Yara will go with you.”
I don’t know why Yara should and not Alex, but for once, I refrain myself from questioning her choice.
* * *
My heartbeat quickens as Mom’s gates and residence emerge on the horizon. Fortunately, I can only hear the car engine and not my loud beats.
“Well, here we are here,” Yara announces, sounding rather annoyed to be here. She stops the car right in front of the gates and adds, “I will wait for you here. If you need anything, just call me.”
“You don’t want to go with me?” I ask, slightly worried to meet with Mom alone.
Yara glances across the gates, pondering my question. Without saying a word, she unfastens her seat belt and leaves the car with me at the same time.
I press the ring bell button at the gates and wait for Mom to answer. After a few moments, I don’t hear anything from the other side, but I do see the gates opening.
“I will wait for you here,” Yara says as I’m about to walk through the driveway, crossing her arms.
I stand still, looking at her with astonishment. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, if something goes wrong, just call me and I’ll come.”
I hesitate for a moment whether to insist or not, but Yara seems dead serious about it so I just nod at her and say, “Alright, I will be fast.”
Reaching the front porch, I find it strange there’s no one at the door yet. After all, Mom or Anika had to have seen me from the intercom at the gates. Nevertheless, I press the doorbell and wait.
After some time, I hear footsteps approaching and the door finally opening. I was expecting Anika to open the door, but as I see Mom standing in front of me, her facial expression devoid of any emotion, I swallow hard, and my body tenses entirely. “Eh…”
“Good morning, Petra,” Mom greets, carrying a formal posture and tone.
“Good morning, Mom,” I repeat, trying to match her tone. “Um, may we speak?”
She steps aside and gestures me to come in. As I step into the entryway, a freezing silence fills the air between us. I glance around the house, remembering the last time I was here and the argument we had.
“This relationship is going to destroy you, my dear…”
A cold chill settles over me, and I remain still, standing in the middle of the hall as I fight against her malicious words haunting me again. The voices in my head disappear at the sound of the door shutting behind me, and I hear Mom saying, “I made some tea. You want some?”
“Yes, please.”
I follow her to the usual sitting room where we used to spend hours having a great time filled with joy and laugher.
The room is as cozy as I remember it thanks to the fireplace bright and burning. I see a teapot, steam leaving its spout, and two cups resting on the low table.
“Where’s Anika?” I ask while Mom is already sitting on the sofa and pouring some tea into each cup.
“It’s her day off today.” She then looks at me, still standing by the door. “Have a seat; I don’t bite.”
Well, who knows… I walk cautiously in her direction and sit in the armchair beside her. “So,” she starts, giving me my cup of tea. “What exactly brought you here?”
“Well, let’s just say Margaret wasn’t too pleased about your note.” I look at Mom, and I’m glad to see I managed to make her smile. “She also asked me to come here and talk to you.”
“Oh, so it’s Margaret sending you?”
“She and I want the same,” I say. “We both just want this to stop.”
Mom snickers, looking away in disdain. “That’s what you came here for?”
I let out a sigh at her bitterness, but instead of entering into a useless argument, I just take her wedding invitation from my purse and give it to her. “I came here to invite you to my wedding.”
I can see the astonishment in her gaze as she takes the envelope with her name written on it. Unsure if I’m serious or not, she keeps looking at the envelope before eventually opening it. With the invitation in her hands, she reads the details but doesn’t say a word.
“Mom, even Dad is coming,” I tell her, maybe in the hopes to persuade her to do the same. “Please, can’t you put the past behind and embrace the future with us?”
She inhales deeply and exhales, her lips sealed in a straight line. Slowly enough, she slides the invitation back into the envelope and leaves it on the low table in front of us. Her gaze holds no disdain, nor does it hold joy when it lands on me. “You have no idea who you are marrying, Petra”
“Alex already told me the truth,” I say as I look at her in the eye. “I know everything.”
“Oh, really?” She crosses her arms around her chest, leaning against the sofa and looks at me with skepticism. “And what did he tell you?”
For the sake of healing us from this whole situation, I tell her the truth. “He told me everything about Jan’s daughter and the car accident that killed her.”
“The car accident that killed her?” Mom repeats, surprised and amused, her brows raising up. “Janette didn’t die from a car accident.”
I skip a breath at her statement. No, I don’t believe her. Alex told me it was from a car accident, and I’m pretty sure Mom is only trying to put me against him and create division. But for the sake of knowing her side of the story, I ask, “So how did she die?”
Mom gives a sip on her tea and simply says, “Your fiancé choked her to death while he was fucking her.”
My heart freezes on the spot at her words, and I can’t prevent my jaw from gaping. I forget to breathe for a moment as I tell myself Mom is just lying again.
She is lying, she is lying…
After a few instants seconds paralyzed, I finally take some deep breaths in and out. “You’re lying,” I snap back. “You and your damn lies.”
“I’m not lying, my dear.” Mom keeps holding her cup of tea between her hands and gives another sip, and she does so with total serenity and calm despite my rising anxiety. “Janette De Vries went to a little Masquerade party in a secluded castle with your friend Yara, and things went south.” To my surprise, her tone is neither loud nor aggressive, just casual, which is deeply disturbing because it rings true. “Your fiancé and your dad buried the body when they realized she was dead. They knew Jan would kill them if he knew the truth.” Damn, this last part about the body and Jan is definitely true; Alex told me exactly the same.
With furrowing brows, I ask, “How come do you know all that?”
“Your dad told me,” she says simply. “I caught him arriving home at seven in the morning, his pants and face covered with mud. He could’ve lied but decided to be honest and tell me the truth.”
I keep silent as I remain processing everything Mom just told me. Shaking my head, I simply cannot believe her. “I don’t believe you… Janette died from a car accident; you have no proof she died at that party.”
“Really?” Mom gets up from her seat and goes to a wooden cabinet standing against the wall. There, she takes a key from her pocket and unlocks it. After taking what she needs from there, she comes back and hands me a piece of a newspaper. “Read this.”
It’s an article from De Telegraaf, the largest newspaper in the country, featuring a big headshot of Janette. To my biggest surprise, she looks exactly like me—long dark wavy hair, skinny figure, and a very young face.
She sits again on the sofa beside me, still holding another file in her hands that she took from the cabinet. “Read it out loud, please.”
A gush of air burst from my lungs in annoyance at Mom’s demand, but, for the sake of avoiding more fights, I go along with it. “Janette De Vries, daughter of the prominent industrialist Jan De Vries, goes missing. Family members say they haven’t seen her for the past forty-eight hours. The…” I can’t read more, this is not something I can stomach.
“Keep going.”
Despite not wanting to, I take a long, deep breath and proceed, “The seventeen-year old was seen for the last time at seven p.m. at the family estate where she was having dinner with her dad, her stepmom Leonor, and her three younger siblings before she went to her room to sleep.” I look up at Mom, and she nods at me to continue. “Authorities believe the young woman escaped the house and ran away during the night to attend a party with her high school friends.” I pause for a beat to catch my breath. “A member of the household staff who prefers to remain anonymous said that Ms. De Vries had very little freedom, and her father never let her go out without bodyguards or some sort of surveillance. It was known among the staff that Ms. De Vries would run away between eleven p.m. and one a.m. and come back before sunrise. ‘It was understandable that at seventeen, Janette wanted to do things like her peers such as going out and have fun. Plus, when you’re the heir to one of the biggest fortunes in the country, you get invited to a lot of private parties,’ the staff member says. ‘She used to give me five hundred euros for me to keep quiet. This time, though, she didn’t come back.’” As I finish reading the article, I look up at Mom and say, “It doesn’t prove Alex killed her at the party.”
“But it does prove she was attending one, so you know I’m not lying,” Mom points out. “You can ask Yara, they both were there.” If that happened twenty years ago, then Yara would be around Janette’s age, maybe a year younger, which makes it quite plausible for them to have been friends. After all, even Alex mentioned they were very close to the De Vries.
“She died in a car accident on the way back then,” I insist. “You have no proof whatsoever of the contrary.”
“I actually do…” My gaze goes to the file she holds in her hands and, as she gives it to me, she says, “After your dad told me what happened, I went to the police and filed a report. This is the copy they gave me.” I open the file and find exactly that: a police report made in the year 2000. “What I didn’t know is that the report itself would end up in the hands of the Van Dierens.” As I read the report, I realize everything Mom told me is written in there—my dad coming home at seven a.m., telling her about the party, Alex choking Janette for too long until she passes out while they were having sex at the party, and the burying of her body. My stomach knots, and I want to throw up at the image of Janette being killed and buried by the man I’m supposed to marry in a few days. “Your fiancé made it clear if I ever tried to go to the police again, he’d take care of me.”
My hands go up to my tired face, and with my palms I start rubbing my eyelids and cheeks, letting the reality sink into me. If Mom is not lying, if Janette truly died while she was with Alex, and he chocked her… I don’t know if I’m strong enough to ever forgive him for lying to me about her death. “What about the police?” I ask. “Did they investigate her death? What did they do?”
“They did nothing, Petra,” Mom answers with some anger in her tone. “They took the money and deleted the report from the system.” She lets out a loud breath, shaking her head in displeasure. “They only pretended to be searching when her disappearance hit the news.”
“I’m sure her family did a private investigation, no?”
“They did, but they never found her body,” Mom says.
“Did dad tell you where it is?”
From a totally restrained expression, there’s finally the trace of a smile settling on her face. “He did.” To my surprise, I find myself mirroring it. “And one day, Jan will know it too.”
“I hope he does. His daughter deserves a proper funeral.” I’m not sure if I was supposed to say that or not, but as I look once more at the picture of Janette—a woman nearly my age who had a strict father just like mine, I feel more connected to her than I probably should. My thumb goes to her cheek, and my heart grows heavy with sadness at the pain and suffering she and her family must have gone through. Tears start pricking my eyes, and I sniffle to prevent them from falling. I shouldn’t care about it, after all, I know nothing about her. But damn, it hurts. It hurts knowing she was seventeen and it hurts even more thinking Alex might have been her first. Did she love him? And what about him? Did he love her? My mouth goes dry, so I drink some tea. Then I give a quick glance around me, wanting to focus on something else, but all I can think of is them. What if Janette had never died though? Would they have ended up together? I have so many questions without answers that it only brings me more despair. My eyes drifting to Mom, I ask, “How many people know where the body is?”
“As far as I know, seven or eight of us,” she replies.
“You, Alex, dad, and?”
“His family and his brother-in-law—Sebastian.”
“So once Jan finds her body…”
“He will find the cause of her death,” she interposes, reading my mind.
“If she died from a car accident, then she should have broken bones or something that would indicate it, right?” Mom lets out a quick chuckle, most likely because she knows I’m still under the illusion Alex told me the truth. But at this point, I don’t know who I should believe. Yes, there is a report from the police based on what Dad told her… but what if she changed the cause of Janette’s death for the sake of revenge? Only finding her body will tell me the truth. “Can you tell me where they buried it?”
“If they know I told you…”
Seeing how tormented her expression has become, I lean forward and hold her hands. It feels odd to do so, but it’s necessary in the moment. Then looking her in the eye, I say, “No one will kill you. I give you my word.”
She cuts eye contact, looking down as she ponders my request. “Your dad told me they buried it in an abandoned farm in Den Bosch.”
“So you don’t know exactly which farm?”
“I’ve never been there, but there aren’t that many that are abandoned in the area.”
“Why didn’t you try to find her?” At least that’s what I’d have done.
“After they threatened me with my life? Petra, are you serious?” Her voice carries some heaviness I wasn’t expecting, and if until now she didn’t speak about Janette’s death to anyone, then I suppose Alex was very convincing.
Which prompts me to ask, “And Dad never took your side?” There’s something new in her expression as she considers my question. “I mean, how did he react when Alex threatened you? Wasn’t he mad at Alex?”
Mom chuckles, shaking her head. “Your dad just downplayed it and took his side as always. He said I was in the wrong, and it was none of my business to go and report the son of his boss.” She pauses, a small smile appearing on her lips. “But I did what I had to. No matter who Alex was, I had a moral obligation to report him.” Her gaze then drops, and it seems like she’s thinking something through. “After that day, your dad never trusted me again. And our relationship became even more distant.”
“Wow,” I utter, although not that surprised. “And, um, was he already cheating on you back then?” I know this is a super personal question, but I know so little about them as a married couple that’s it’s hard to believe they have ever been together in the first place.
“Well, he was hanging out with Alex and going to wild parties all the time, so I believe so.” She pauses for a beat. “But I have zero evidence, only a good instinct.”
Despite hating her and everything she’s done to me, I can’t help but feel some pity for the shitty marriage she had. Having a husband who doesn’t support you or take your side and goes to wild parties with a playboy must be hard to handle. “So why you didn’t divorce him earlier then?”
Mom shrugs her shoulders. “We had our good moments too. And I loved him a lot back then. I admired him, his dedication, his ambition… Each time we’d go to a social gathering, everyone would praise him and say how lucky I was for having him…” Blowing out a breath, Mom dips her head a bit, probably lost in her own thoughts. “I was very emotionally attached to him,” she says with some shyness in her voice. “Which is why I knew you were making a big mistake by starting a relationship with your godfather. You were—and still are—very emotionally attached to him.” There’s a small pause as she gauges my reaction. “I can sense history repeating itself.” She rubs my fingers gently, reminding me that we were still grasping one another.
I refute her statement just as fast. “I think any couple is emotionally attached to each other. This is normal.”
Suddenly, Mom stands up from her seat, smoothes her dress, and after taking my wedding invitation from the low table, she goes and stands in front of the fireplace, burning brightly at the end of the room. “Now that you know everything, I hope you understand why I won’t be able to attend your wedding.” And she throws my invitation in it.