by Sara Shepard
I run my tongue over my teeth. My head is aching. My thoughts have ground to a halt.
Willa looks at Sienna. “This . . . drunken stumbling you heard. When was it?”
Sienna thinks for a moment. “Last winter. I don’t remember the exact date.”
I can feel Willa turn to me. She wants to ask me something, but I hold up a hand. I feel too exhausted to mine this any further. I hate her for exposing my daughter’s duplicity. I also hate that these are things that have gone over my head. I’m supposed to know my girls better than anyone else.
“The night of the benefit,” I say to Sienna, my voice croaking with fear. “I need to know. You really weren’t here? You really didn’t see Greg? You really didn’t . . . ?” I’m not able to complete the sentence. It’s like tossing a bomb into a field and then running away before the blast.
Sienna’s eyes are wide, dark pools. Her lips part. “No way.”
“Okay,” I say, nodding and nodding. “Okay.”
I tilt my face toward the ceiling, staring at the pendant lights over my family’s old island, glowing like the sun. I have so many questions. How Sienna crafted the e-mails and hacked into his e-mail. Why she didn’t just come to me with her suspicions. Did she think I wouldn’t believe her?
Again, my fault. All my fault.
I think about the wording of those e-mails. Greg’s aggression. Lolita’s retreat. She begged him to take her back in the end. Could it really be fiction? How does this tie into who killed Greg? Does it even? Or maybe Sienna’s right, and Greg was having an affair with someone—but not Lolita. And it’s this person who felt cheated on.
Gravity presses down on me. This is too much to take in. I can’t focus on my husband’s killer. I still haven’t wrapped my head around the fact that my husband’s gone. And underneath that layer is how angry I am with him. And underneath that layer is the frustration that Martin had a bad heart and that now I’ve lost two people I loved, and how it doesn’t seem like the universe has dealt me a particularly fair hand.
“I need a second,” I say, rushing out of the room. But as I’m at the door, I hear a sharp, metallic buzz. My eyes dart to Sienna’s phone, which lies faceup on the table. A name flashes on the caller ID: Raina.
Aurora frowns. Sienna grabs her phone and turns it over. The thing keeps buzzing, sending shock waves through the wood, the air, my teeth. Buzz, stop, buzz, stop. Finally, Sienna holds down the button on the side and turns it off.
I feel Willa watching me again, and finally, I meet her gaze. It’s clear she saw the name on the screen, too, and she’s making the same connections I am. Raina. The night Greg was murdered, I remember Sienna’s voice on the phone, her quick assurance that she wasn’t drunk. I remember how she worded the next part, too: I just need to find Raina, and then we’re leaving.
Maybe Raina had tried to impress upon me that she and Sienna had been together when Sienna heard the news—together the whole night, essentially—because she needed to cover her ass, create an alibi. Aldrich is a half mile from my home on Hazel Lane. Someone could easily travel from campus to there and back again in the span of an hour or so.
I walk out of the kitchen, through the back door, and to the middle of the yard. My feet sink in the wet earth. Wind whips around me, stinging my skin. But I can barely feel it. I’m too caught up with the picture taking shape before me. The truth about Greg’s mistress has been in front of me this whole time. Maybe the truth about his murderer has been, too.
20
LAURA
MONDAY, MAY 1, 2017
At 6:00 P.M., Ollie opens the refrigerator and proclaims we have nothing for dinner. “I can cobble something together,” I tell him. “There’s some chicken breasts in the freezer.”
“Nah, that’s okay. We need other things, too. I’ll go out. You look tired.”
I certainly can’t argue that. Before he leaves, Ollie pulls me into a half hug and kisses the top of my head. I try to relish the affection, but all I feel is numb panic. Then I watch him shrug on his coat and head out the front door. After his car is gone, I collapse against the doorframe as though all my bones have broken. Ollie worked from home today, and because I’ve had the day off, too, we’ve been under one another’s noses in this little house for hours. With him gone, it feels like I can finally breathe again. Finally think.
Except ten minutes later, I hear the keys in the lock again. The front door squeaks open.
“That was quick!” I chirp as I clomp down the stairs. “Did you just get takeout?”
But Ollie has no shopping bags in his hands. He’s even left the front door open, a cold wind blowing in stray bits of leaves. When he sees me, he just stares. Except there is something empty about his gaze. It seems like he’s looking through me.
Horror carves through me. “I-Is everything okay?”
“Give me the baby,” Ollie says in a low voice.
I start. Then I press Freddie to my chest, my hand against his back. “W-What? Why?”
“Give me the baby.” He holds out his arms.
Something in his voice makes my stomach drop. I hand over the baby, staring down at my trembling hands. Ollie stands over me, his nostrils silently flaring. My heart hammers.
“I just got a group e-mail from Reardon about the Greg Strasser murder case—I guess they’re looking for any tips they can get,” Ollie says in a low voice. “Some images from a neighbor’s security camera show the cars in the cul-de-sac the evening he was killed.”
He sets his mouth in a wobbly line. My brain goes dark.
“Why, Laura?” Ollie’s gaze is pointed toward the front wall. His hands look huge against our child’s tiny body. “Why is it our license plate in one of the images?”
I open my mouth, but no sound comes out. My body feels hot with shame and terror. I don’t want this to be the way I break the news. I wanted to do it on my terms, not with it forced upon me. But here it is, and here we are, and I have to.
“Because I was there,” I admit.
Ollie’s brown eyes blink rapidly, as if I’ve spit in his face. “You?”
“It’s not what you think!” I cry.
“Then what was it?”
Years from now, I will see this moment as a great divide separating our relationship from what it once was to the muckish mess it becomes. Years from now, I’ll also wonder why I didn’t just say I was suffering from postpartum depression, or that I’d been seized with a bout of mania, or, hell, that I had a split personality and it was the other Laura who did what she did that night. But the truth was also polluting me, stabbing at me, scooping me hollow.
“J-Just a second,” I say. And then I turn up the stairs. Ollie lurches toward me as though afraid I’m going to use this as an opportunity to escape. Is this how he sees me now? As a criminal? “I’m going into the office,” I protest. “I just need to get something.”
The office desk drawer groans as I pull it open. Through tear-streaked vision, I fumble to the very back and find the scrunched-up piece of paper I’ve hidden there. I’d hoped to never read this again.
The afternoon before the Aldrich benefit, I’d received three directives from Greg in my work locker. The first was about the pitfalls of co-sleeping. The second the benefits of a stay-at-home parent. And the third was an unsigned, typewritten missive that read, I want to have more of a role.
Like a goddamn ransom note. It felt like a death sentence.
I’d stood there, paralytic. If I denied Greg contact with Freddie, he would tell Ollie. He would demand a paternity test. When the test came back positive, he would go to the court and ask for fifty-fifty custody. Hell, maybe he could make a case for getting full custody. I didn’t know how family court worked. Maybe judges favored the wealthier parent. Maybe judges favored the parent who didn’t lie. I needed to talk some sense into Greg. We couldn’t keep communicating through these message
s; I needed to confront him and make him stop this.
And so I’d written him that text the morning of the benefit about talking face-to-face. I’d explain to him that he was scaring the shit out of me. He’d understand he was being irrational.
I remember walking into the benefit alone. It might have been the party of the year, but I was too anxious to notice. I barely took my gaze off the door, wanting to know the exact moment Greg entered so that I could immediately corner him. After about thirty minutes of anticipation, my stomach in knots, there was a flurry of activity at the entrance. Kit Manning-Strasser entered wearing a gray dress and perfect makeup. People surrounded her as though she was a celebrity, and Kit smiled and trilled and chirped, but her eyes seemed distracted. I thought of Greg’s e-mails, that thing with Lolita. Little do you know, I’d thought with disdain. That’s only the tip of the iceberg of the secrets he’s been keeping.
Kit made a zigzag across the floor, dazzling donors, speaking privately to an older man in a tux, gulping down a martini. I kept my gaze pinned to the front doors, but Greg never appeared. And then it hit me: He stayed home. I was so stupid. Greg wouldn’t want to come to this after the Lolita bullshit. He wouldn’t want to face the whispers.
I felt like I was drowning in guilt and doom. And so I decided: If Greg wouldn’t come to me, then I would go to him. I knew where he lived. I would leave the benefit and go.
I felt sudden, revived courage. Yes. Yes. It was good to have a plan.
I gave the valet my ticket and was inside my car. My head felt fuzzy, but there was no way I was going to wait an hour or two to sober up. Luckily, the drive wasn’t long: Hazel Lane, the street where Greg lived, was just five minutes from the museum. I rolled slowly around the cul-de-sac, my heart like a gong in my chest. The moon glowed directly over the top point of Greg’s roof. A light shone into an empty front room. Greg’s car was parked in the driveway. A dim light shone in a top window.
Come on, a voice in me goaded. Just do it. Just go and ring the doorbell.
My dress felt heavy around my body. My shoes were suddenly too tight. I thought, too, about the ultimatum I would give Greg . . . and how he might not accept it. Then what? What if, after all this effort, Ollie still found out I’d been here?
I rolled away from the curb, the sobs rocking my chest. I drove blindly, talking to myself, feeling like I was going mad. I found myself taking the ramp for the Liberty Bridge to the suburbs. Traffic was sparse, and with the fog in the air, the bridge took on a ghostly feel. At the traffic light before the tunnel, I suddenly felt a rush of despair so forceful I let out a muffled scream into my fist. This night, this hell, it was never going to end. I couldn’t bear it any longer.
The turn signal indicator made a ticking sound through the cabin. When the light turned green, I veered to the left and pulled onto the shoulder across from the bridge. In the glove compartment, I found the small notebook I always kept there, and a ballpoint pen. What did I write on that scrap of paper? I remembered writing Ollie’s name at the top. The words I’m sorry. The confession spilled from me, but I didn’t bother checking my punctuation or spelling or even if the letter made sense. Yet when I was finished, I felt even worse than I had before. The tears dripped onto my nose and into my mouth. My chest hurt from crying.
I thought long and hard, but I couldn’t think of a way out. Every possibility led to disaster. Every choice was heartbreaking. And I wasn’t sure I was strong enough to weather any of it.
I crossed the street to the bridge’s edge. My thin dress did little to protect me from the whipping wind off the water. At the edge of the bridge, I stared down, down, down. It was so dark, I couldn’t really tell where the water was. Jumping would be so easy. A mess left behind, but a mess everyone would get over.
I raised my chin to the sky then. Felt the wind on my face. It was cold. Slap-like. Cruel. Maybe the water would be warm. Forgiving.
A horn blared over my shoulder. “Excuse me?”
I turned, startled. A battered Volkswagen was on the side of the road, its headlights shimmering through the mist. A guy no older than twenty stuck his head out the window and gawked at me. I stared down at myself. There was no barrier between my body and the Allegheny River.
“Don’t do this,” the kid said in a trembling voice. “Please.”
His car was so old that the muffler grumbled cantankerously. A faint jazz riff tinkled from the radio. The kid got out of the car and left the door hanging open. “Come on,” he said. “It’s going to be okay. Please get off the ledge.”
He was a boy—with blue eyes, blond hair, sharp cheekbones, and wearing an Aldrich University sweatshirt. A student. He had the same coloring as Freddie; my son might even look like this kid when he got older.
Freddie. My child surged back to me. Good Lord, what was I thinking? Shakily, I climbed back over the guardrail, though I misjudged its height, and the metal slashed my calf. “Shit,” I whispered, the pain bright and true.
The boy was now by my side, steadying me. He smelled like clove cigarettes and sour laundry, but his arms were strong. He held me up.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “Can I drive you somewhere?”
My eyes felt fat with tears. Normally, I would have felt embarrassed to cry in front of a stranger, but this person had already seen me in such a terrible moment, it didn’t matter. “I’m okay,” I said. And I did feel okay. Doomed, broken, but I didn’t want to die.
The guy’s hand was firm on my biceps. With the streetlamp glowing against his forehead, he looked like an angel.
“What’s your name?” I asked him.
“Griffin,” he said. “Griffin McCabe.”
“I’m Laura,” I said, feeling stupid.
He nodded. “How about I give you a ride home?”
“No, no, you’ve already done enough. Thank you. Really. Thank you.”
The kid protested. He seemed uncertain and regretful as he walked back to his own car, like he was sure he was going to turn on the news tomorrow and see the story of a woman’s suicide on the screen. I kept waving. All the way home, I repeated his name out loud. Griffin McCabe. Griffin McCabe. When all of this was over, when the dust had settled and my life was whatever it turned out to be, if I ever gained some semblance of peace again, I’d track the kid down at the university and send him a gift card or a case of beer as thanks. Griffin’s been on my mind a lot, actually. When I spoke to Reardon, I offered up his name, saying Reardon should contact him to corroborate my alibi. But Reardon said that wasn’t necessary. He believed me.
I come back downstairs, where Ollie is waiting. “I drove by Greg’s house after the benefit, but I didn’t go in. I would have never done something like that. I swear. Instead, I . . .” I shut my eyes, feeling a fresh onslaught of tears. Then I thrust the letter at him. “Read this. It explains everything. I should have told you a long time ago, but . . .”
I trail off, waving the letter in the air. Ollie doesn’t reach for it. Slowly, his eyes rise to meet mine, and I get a jolt. All traces of confusion and concern are gone. Something sharp and inscrutable has taken their place, and it stops me cold.
“This is about the baby being Greg’s, isn’t it?” Ollie says in a low, defeated voice, glancing at the folded piece of paper in my hand.
My mouth drops open. My soul feels sucked away. “H-How did you . . . ?”
“You really think I had no idea?” Ollie lets out a laugh. “You really think I’m that stupid?”
“Ollie!” His name bursts out of me, a sharp, bright plea. “I-It was a mistake. The letter explains everything. And Greg was threatening me, after the fact!”
“So that makes you innocent in all this?” His voice cracks.
“Of course not! I’m not innocent, I know. But Freddie’s not Greg’s. I mean, he might be—but you’re his father, where it counts.”
“Is that what you tell you
rself to make yourself feel better?” He edges closer. I can smell his minty breath. “I knew the truth from the moment he was born. And all this time, I’ve been trying to hold it together, just focusing on not splintering our family apart, not ruining Freddie’s life, trying to pretend it isn’t real, but it is real, Laura. This is really fucking real, and I can’t believe you.”
Tears stream down my face. This can’t be happening. He can’t have known. “I’m so, so sorry.”
Ollie takes a breath. “And now our car’s on camera in Strasser’s circle the night he was killed. Right now, the cops on the case are running the plate report and talking about you. Us. Did you tell Reardon why you almost jumped from that bridge? Does he know you fucked Strasser?”
“No!” The words Ollie has chosen feel like knives against my skin. “I just said I was overwhelmed! I didn’t tell him anything! I wouldn’t do that to you!”
Ollie stares at me with heartbreak. In his arms, Freddie’s brow furrows like he senses trouble. I stretch my arms out for him, so desperately needing him close. All at once, I’m acutely aware that Ollie’s sadness could tip to rage. There’s a gathering storm inside him. Unbidden, I think of him in the ring at his boxing gym, breaking people’s arms. But that’s different, I tell myself. He’d never do that to me.
“Put Freddie down,” I say slowly. “Please.”
Ollie thinks this over, then sets Freddie down on his play mat just out of my reach. Then he takes two thundering steps toward me, letting out a bullish snort. I hear the slap on my cheek before I feel the sting. The force of it knocks me to my knees, hard. I press my palms against my throbbing skin.
“Ollie!” I cry, my mouth instantly swelling. Hot tears spring to my eyes. Even though I deserve his anger, this is not the man I married—my heart drains.
Ollie stands over me. His fists are still clenched. He could hit me again, I realize. The way Ollie is quivering, so tightly wound with dangerous power, I’m certain that things might quickly twist and go even darker.
