The End of Her

‘I’m so sorry,’ Hanna says awkwardly, once she gets inside with Teddy. She stands there with her baby on her hip, as if uncertain what to do, what to say. Stephanie has the tray of food in her hands and turns and takes it into the kitchen. Hanna follows tentatively. She knows he did it in the kitchen; she was here, that awful night, sitting with Stephanie in the living room. Stephanie turns to find Hanna staring, uncertain where to sit.

‘You can put Teddy in the living room with the girls,’ she says. And Hanna pivots as if relieved and goes into the other room. Stephanie starts making coffee. She finds her hands trembling slightly as she measures out the coffee grounds. It’s important what Hanna thinks. She worries now: had she been too obvious when she told Hanna that she was worried about Patrick, that he might harm himself? Had she laid it on a little too thick? Should she have said nothing, allowed it to be more of a surprise? She’s glad, now, that she hadn’t mentioned Patrick’s gun.

She takes a deep breath and tells herself to relax. Hanna isn’t going to suspect the truth. She was here that night, saw how distressed she was. She’s not going to think Stephanie is capable of holding a gun to her husband’s head and blowing his brains out. Hanna is perceptive, and she might suspect that Stephanie is secretly relieved – even glad – that her husband has removed himself from her life this way, but she’s not going to think that Stephanie pulled the trigger herself.

She brings the coffee through to the living room. They sit in silence for a bit, neither one of them knowing how to begin. They talk about the babies to break the ice. Finally Hanna gets up the nerve to ask, ‘What happens now?’

Stephanie exhales. Puts her coffee down. ‘There’s the funeral, tomorrow morning. It’s going to be private. Please don’t feel you need to come.’ She’s going to have him cremated.

‘I’ll come if you want me to,’ Hanna offers.

‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ she says. ‘In fact, I was hoping you’d watch the twins for me.’

‘Sure.’ Hanna is obviously relieved not to have to go to the funeral, and eager to do something useful to help. ‘You know I’m here for you, right?’ she says, putting out a hand and laying it gently on Stephanie’s arm.

Stephanie nods gratefully. She doesn’t need to worry about Hanna. Even though they both know, now, that all of Stephanie’s problems are solved.

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

ERICA DID NOT attend Patrick’s funeral. But the following day she sits in her car outside of the house on Danbury Drive. None of this has gone the way she planned. You can never really predict how things are going to go. There’s always a wild card in the pack somewhere.

She knows Stephanie is home. It’s lunchtime, and the double buggy sits empty on the front porch. She’s inside, probably in the kitchen, feeding the twins. Erica gets out of the car.

She walks purposefully across the street and rings the doorbell. She doesn’t have to wait long before Stephanie answers the door. When she does, Erica can tell that the sight of her on the doorstep is a shock. Stephanie looks awful, besides – her hair is limp, she’s not wearing any make-up, and her clothes are unwashed. She looks exhausted, wrung-out. Erica hopes she’s taking better care of the twins.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Stephanie says.

‘Can I come in?’

Stephanie looks back in dismay at Erica on her doorstep. She never wanted to see her again. ‘Why the hell would I let you in my house?’ she says, her voice strident. ‘You’re nothing but bad news.’ Her heart is beating fast and she moves to close the door in Erica’s face. But Erica is too quick for her and blocks the door with her body.

‘Calm down. I only came to talk,’ Erica says.

Stephanie glares at her, breathing rapidly; she can’t get Erica out of the house without becoming physical, and she doesn’t want to do that. She suspects Erica is much stronger than she is. She silently considers calling 911, but something stops her.

‘So, that’s where it happened?’ Erica says, looking over Stephanie’s shoulder into the kitchen and gesturing with her chin to where the twins sit in their matching high chairs.

Stephanie says nothing as Erica brushes past her and makes her way into the kitchen. She closes the front door behind her and follows.

‘Just like that,’ Erica says, turning around to face her, ‘all your problems are solved.’

‘You’ve got a lot of nerve,’ Stephanie says acidly.

‘I’m just speaking the truth, and you know it,’ Erica responds. ‘You’re rid of your cheating, murdering husband.’

Stephanie averts her eyes. Erica makes her nervous. She has a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.

‘Personally,’ Erica says, ‘I don’t care. Good riddance to Patrick. He got what was coming to him, the bastard. The world is better off without him in it, wouldn’t you agree?’

Stephanie can’t read her. Why is Erica here? ‘What do you want?’

Erica says, ‘I just came to say well done.’

Stephanie feels her stomach drop. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean,’ she smiles a little smile, ‘if you killed him, you have my blessing.’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Stephanie says. ‘He killed himself. I’d told him I was going to divorce him and take the twins and my inheritance with me. I’d already seen a divorce attorney.’

Erica looks back at her through cold eyes. ‘Let’s not kid ourselves,’ she says. ‘Patrick was not the suicidal type.’ She lets the silence lengthen, enjoying herself. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to say anything. Not yet.’ Then she smiles again and says, ‘I’ll let myself out.’

After she goes, closing the front door behind her, Stephanie turns to the kitchen sink and throws up violently until there’s nothing left in her stomach. Then she rinses her mouth, and ignoring the twins, who have begun to fuss and cry in their high chairs, she starts to pace back and forth across the kitchen floor.

Erica knows. Erica knows. Erica knows.

She stops in her tracks. She should have foreseen this. Why didn’t she foresee this? She’d thought Erica was out of their lives – Patrick released, Erica discredited. She had done her worst and failed. Stephanie had been so focused on getting rid of Patrick … The babies are crying loudly, but she continues to ignore them.

Erica wants her money. Erica will try to blackmail her. She will do to her what she did to Patrick. Erica dealt drugs, she sold her own baby for money. Of course Erica will try to make her pay.

Finally Stephanie wears herself out. She slumps in the chair in front of the twins – the chair Patrick was in when she pulled the trigger – and picks up the spoon that she put down when Erica arrived at her door. Emma and Jackie are both red-faced and squalling from being ignored, their distressed faces covered in tears and snot and baby food. She lifts the spoonful of puréed carrots to Emma’s eager, open mouth. But then her eyes go past Emma’s face and fix on the white cupboard behind her. She remembers the blood spattered there. She closes her eyes. The babies clamour.

Then, with a great strength of will, she opens her eyes again and focuses on her babies. She takes some wet wipes from the table and wipes up first Emma’s face, then Jackie’s. She puts on a cheerful expression and uses her singsong voice. She must be a good mother. She must be there for her girls. She will figure something out. ‘There we go! Time for carrots! Yum-yum!’ She spoons the puréed carrots, a lurid orange, into their open mouths. They’ve stopped crying now and both of them have fixed their big round blue eyes on her face. They’re like plump little birds in a nest, mouths open, waiting.

‘Your daddy loved us very much,’ she tells them, in her high-pitched voice. ‘He loved you both so much. People said terrible things about him, but they were all lies. He was a good man. He didn’t do anything bad. It was all made up by an evil witch.’

She spoons the food into the babies’ mouths as they smile and gurgle back at her. She remembers how she’d tried to run down Erica with her car, that night. After Erica left the gift for the twins and Patrick had been so unnerved by it – she knew she had to stop Erica from going to the police in Creemore. That night she’d told Patrick she couldn’t stand the crying any more and was going to the movies for a break, and left him on his own for a while to cope with the twins. She drove to the theatre and bought a ticket, but left again. She told Patrick later that she’d slept through the whole movie. But she drove to Newburgh. She knew where Erica lived – Patrick had told her earlier. She had no plan; she was too stressed and sleep-deprived to come up with one. She was sitting in her car, dithering about whether to press her buzzer and what to say to her, when she saw Erica come out of her building. When Erica started to walk towards the road, Stephanie followed in her car at a distance.