The End of Her

‘He must actually love you, then.’

‘Of course he loves me,’ Stephanie says firmly. ‘And I love him. And all this crap you’re threatening us with isn’t going to go anywhere. I don’t know why you’re bothering. He didn’t kill his first wife. You must know that.’ Her voice is shaking.

‘You have no idea who you’re dealing with,’ Erica says seriously.

‘Don’t threaten me,’ Stephanie says in a hard voice.

‘I don’t mean me,’ Erica clarifies. ‘I mean your husband.’

Stephanie recoils from her. ‘Look, I know my husband far better than you ever did. Just because you slept together a couple of times doesn’t mean you actually know him at all.’

‘Is that what he told you? That we slept together a couple of times?’

Now Stephanie looks back at her warily, afraid of what she might say next. But she needs to hear it. She knows that Patrick and this woman are going to have very different versions of events, and she wasn’t there. She can never know for sure. ‘What’s your version?’ Stephanie asks dryly.

‘We were in love,’ she says simply.

Stephanie goes cold. The woman is delusional. Fully delusional. ‘That’s not what Patrick says.’

‘That’s what he wants you to believe.’ She looks earnestly at Stephanie. ‘But I was there. I was with him. We were very secretive, because he was married, and Lindsey was my friend. I feel terrible about it now, that I treated her that way. That I’m at least partially responsible – morally responsible – for her death.’

‘That’s bullshit,’ Stephanie says, her heart hammering.

Erica shakes her head. ‘He would come to my apartment at lunchtime almost every day. He told everyone he went home to eat, but Lindsey made his lunch every morning. He’d eat it in my bed, after we made love, before he rushed back to work.’

Stephanie feels ill. ‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Not yet, anyway,’ Erica says.

‘Can you prove it?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe. We didn’t tell anybody, but I had neighbours. Someone might have heard us through the wall. People might have seen him coming and going.’

Stephanie shrinks back into her chair, as if trying to put distance between her and this disturbing news – and the person delivering it.

‘I know how upsetting this must be,’ Erica says. ‘And believe me, I don’t enjoy doing this to you.’

‘Is that right?’ Stephanie says, her voice bitter. ‘Patrick warned me that if I spoke to you, you would tell me lies and try to drive a wedge between us.’

Erica shrugs. ‘He would.’ She looks at the babies in the buggy and says, ‘I was pregnant with his child – did he tell you about that?’

‘Yes.’

‘So ask yourself: if Patrick didn’t kill her deliberately, and it was just a horrible accident, and I was carrying his child, why did I stay away from him all this time?’

Stephanie doesn’t know how to answer. She can’t think straight. Her head is buzzing with tiredness and confusion, and from trying to keep up her guard.

‘I’ll tell you why,’ Erica says. ‘Because I thought he’d killed her on purpose – my friend and her unborn baby daughter.’ She turns her eyes away from the twins, looks out at the street. ‘We talked about being together. I wanted him to leave his wife.’ Erica glances at Stephanie and looks away again. ‘I was very impatient and very selfish when I was twenty-one. I didn’t like myself for stealing Patrick away from Lindsey, but you have to understand how it was – we were in love. I thought Patrick and I were meant to be together, and somehow, in my immaturity, I thought Lindsey would just get over it, move on. I thought she would move on more easily from a broken marriage as a single mother than I would move on from a broken heart.’ She adds, ‘God, I was stupid.’

Stephanie stares at her, appalled, wondering if she’s telling the truth. She can’t know for sure, but she certainly seems believable. Patrick had warned her that Erica could be very convincing.

‘He kept telling me how unhappy he was. We argued, and he agreed things had to change. That was the day before she died.’ Her face takes on a pained expression. ‘But I thought he meant divorce. I never thought he meant murder.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

STEPHANIE STARES AT her, her mouth hanging open. ‘You think he killed her deliberately, to be with you.’ She shakes her head vigorously. ‘You’re crazy. I know my husband, and he’s not capable of what you’re accusing him of!’

‘I think we’re all capable of things we might not want to admit to,’ Erica replies. She pauses and then carries on. ‘I remember it so clearly, as if it were yesterday. Even now, I can’t stand heavy snowstorms.’

Stephanie doesn’t get up and tell Erica to leave. No, she listens. She wants to hear it all, no matter how dreadful her account.

Erica says, ‘Lindsey hated Creemore. She hated the snow. She missed her family in Grand Junction. She was finding it hard, Patrick not being around a lot.’ Erica shrugs. ‘Of course, she didn’t know he was with me; she thought he was at work. They were leaving to visit her family. Patrick didn’t want to go – at least, that’s what he told me, and I believed him, because he didn’t care much for her family and the roads were bad. But I wondered afterwards if he just said that, to make it look more like an accident, as if he hadn’t planned it.

‘I saw Lindsey fairly regularly. I’d drop by when I wasn’t working, see how she was doing, trapped in that tiny apartment. I liked her, and I felt guilty, but that wasn’t all of it. I wanted to hear from her how things were going between her and Patrick. I knew they were fighting a lot, and it made my heart glad, because I thought it was only a matter of time until he left her.’ She looks up. ‘Okay, so that does make me look heartless, but at least I’m telling you the truth.

‘That morning, the day they were supposed to leave – it was a Saturday, and I was at home, asleep. Greg – he was Patrick’s best friend – called me and told me there’d been an accident. By the time I arrived the paramedics were already there, and Lindsey was laid out in the snow, dead. They’d tried to revive her but hadn’t been able to.’

Stephanie listens in dismay; Erica looks so earnest, so troubled. She reminds herself that Patrick had been equally distressed and convincing when he’d told her what happened that day. Either Erica is a very good actor, or she really believes what she’s saying, even though it may not be true.

Erica continues. ‘Patrick was so distraught – but I caught his eye, just for a moment – and there was something in that look, just for a second, between the two of us, something triumphant – and I knew then that he’d done it on purpose. There was absolutely no doubt in my mind.’

There’s a moment of silence. Then Stephanie says, not hiding her astonishment, ‘A look. Your belief that my husband is a cold-blooded murderer is based on a look.’

‘Hear me out,’ Erica says urgently. ‘He was crying, distraught – completely convincing – but I knew. He went away with the sheriff to be questioned and I was terrified. I thought they’d wear him down, that eventually he’d tell them about us, and they would think I was part of it.

‘I went home and hid in my apartment. I kept asking myself how Patrick could have done that to his wife and unborn child. I thought I was to blame, that he’d done it to be with me. I was waiting for the police to come, to question me, and I was going to tell them the truth. That I wanted Patrick to leave her, but that I had no part in her death. But nobody came. I saw on TV that night that they’d declared it an accident. That he’d got away with it. I couldn’t believe it – I was horrified. And then I was relieved, because I wouldn’t have to go to jail. But I felt the most horrible guilt and remorse about Lindsey. I knew she was dead because of me.

‘I didn’t want to see him, I didn’t want to talk to him. I didn’t know how to act around him, knowing what I knew. I was the only one who knew the truth. I was afraid he might call me, but he didn’t. I didn’t want to go near him, but I had to go to the funeral. It would look strange if I didn’t.