by Sara Shepard
Am I living in a house with a murderer?
Fear shudders over me. Ollie’s motive is perfect. And he has the strength to overpower someone like Greg. It’s the perfect crime, too, because after all those e-mails breaking in the hack, Kit looks like the obvious suspect. How deeply are the police searching for other people’s motives? Is there any way they could find out about what Greg and I did? I remember, too, how cavalierly Ollie had said, “Oh, they’ll find the murder weapon.”
One thing’s for certain: I can’t stay here any longer.
I snap off the bathroom light and scurry into the living room again. As Freddie pokes at a small, plastic lion toy with noisy buttons, I locate my phone in my bag. My mother’s number is at the top of my contacts list, but my finger hesitates over the screen. What do I tell her? That we’re simply going to take a drive up north for a visit? Or maybe I shouldn’t call at all. Maybe I should just grab Freddie, pack a few things, and call her while I’m on the road.
I hurry upstairs to the baby’s room and start throwing things into a bag. Next, I scuttle into my bedroom. I open my closet and toss the first things I see into a duffel. It doesn’t matter what I bring, really. I can buy new things later.
And then I hear a cough.
I shoot up, the bag’s handles slipping from my fingers. I can just make out Ollie’s silhouette in the dim light of the hall. Fear shoots through me like fire.
“Oh,” I say, my voice too loud in the silence. “W-What are you doing?”
“What are you doing?” It’s not a question. Then I feel his gaze drift to the suitcase. My heart sinks. Once again, I feel foolish for thinking I could trick him.
In a blink, he’s across the room, right next to me. I shrink against the wall as Ollie—well, he doesn’t touch me, exactly. He just stands there . . . threatening to touch me. The energy crackles off him like lightning. There’s an eerie smirk on his face that turns my blood to ice. He’s pressed so close to me that our torsos are mere millimeters apart. For the hundredth time, I don’t recognize the man I married.
“Don’t do it,” he whispers.
“Please,” I eke out. “Please.”
Downstairs, Freddie lets out a squawk. Ollie glances toward the sound and then, mercifully, steps away. I collapse to the ground as though he’s just tried to strangle me. He bends over me, jutting up my chin to force eye contact. “Don’t do it,” he growls, hate in his eyes. “Or you’ll regret it.”
28
LYNN
FRIDAY, MAY 5, 2017
Morning, Lynn!” Amanda chirps as I walk into the office on Friday. “Ready for the weekend?”
I stare at her as though she’s just spoken in Dutch. I want to rip off her perky barrette. I want to pull out her fake nails. But instead, I smirk and say nothing.
“George wants you, Kit, and some of the others in his office in fifteen,” Amanda adds. “That okay?”
I murmur a note of consent, then close myself inside my office. I sink into my couch; my eyeballs feel freeze-dried from lack of sleep. My nerves are jumping from . . . well, from nothing specifically, except the fact that my husband is cheating on me and it’s been four whole days and I still haven’t figured out who the bitch is.
I’ve combed through Patrick’s things. Every pocket of every blazer. Every receipt in his wallet. Every text on his phone. I tried to re-create his schedule, figuring out exactly when he might have seen whoever she is—and when he could have given her that bracelet. Or perhaps he hasn’t yet? Perhaps it’s still hidden somewhere and he’s going to give it to her on an upcoming business trip?
Yesterday, early evening, while I’d been tidying the house and getting the kids ready for soccer practice, I noticed Patrick in the foyer, putting on his coat. “Where are you going?” I knew there was a paranoid wobble to my voice, but I was already teetering over the edge, trying desperately not to explode.
Patrick worked the buttons of his coat, his head down. “I need to do a few things in the office before I head to Detroit next Wednesday. That okay? I figured you didn’t need me for soccer.”
Call a private detective, my brain blared. What if he was meeting her?
I rose to full height. “Maybe I’ll come to Detroit with you.”
He looked up at me in surprise. “You want to come to Michigan?”
“I’ve never been.” I tried to sound flip and airy. “It sounds fun.”
“But what about the kids?”
“You know my parents would love to have them.”
I watched his face. His straight mouth, his darting eyes. But then he shrugged and said, “Sure, if you really want to. I could probably get you on my flight, though I’m not sure about first class.”
That was the final nail in the coffin. The Patrick I know would be like, Lynn, don’t be ridiculous, Detroit is a cesspool and you’ll be horrified at its idea of a five-star hotel. He’d reiterate that there was absolutely no good shopping and the weather was shit and all the people there were ugly. He’d say that we should go somewhere swanky and lovely the following weekend instead; he’d make reservations on the spot.
It was a guilty Patrick who’d given in. He caved because, perhaps deep down, he knew I was suspicious, and he wanted to lead me off the scent. Maybe I should have pushed the issue and asked for something even more extravagant—a new Chanel purse, hell, maybe even a whole new house. If Patrick felt so guilty, he’d probably cave to anything.
But all I want is for him to get rid of her. And that, unfortunately, has no price tag.
I can’t just sit back and let this happen. I’m not going to be a wife who just smiles and pretends. Do I explain that I’ve found the bracelet? Is it possible that I’m misinterpreting this and that the bracelet is for me . . . just for another occasion? Christmas, maybe. My birthday, in four months.
There’s a knock on my door. I shoot up, my head feeling cottony. “Lynn?” Amanda’s voice is muffled. “You ready?”
I heave a sigh. The meeting. I stand and smooth my skirt. Amanda smiles at me as I open the door, and she leads me down the hall into my boss’s office, which is huge and bright and faces a scruffy bar at street level that seems to cater to drunks and people who like to dress in head-to-toe Steelers gear. I sit down on the couch, noticing that a few of the other people on the donations committee are here as well. There’s a knock on the door, and Kit Manning-Strasser hurries in, too.
“Sorry I’m late,” she says, falling into the last available chair.
“It’s fine,” George beams at her, the favorite child. I want to vomit.
There’s something different about Kit today. Her hair is oddly shiny and there are two bright pink spots on her cheeks. Her whole face seems lighter, like someone has tied a string to her forehead and sharply yanked upward. She looks . . . pleased, I realize. What kind of woman is pleased after her husband is found dead? Distaste roils in my gut.
I turn to her, mustering a smile. “How are you doing?” I simper.
“Oh.” Kit’s eyes are cold. “You know. Tough time.”
“The police figure out any leads yet?”
Kit shrugs. “Not really.”
Then she angles her body toward Rory. Her rudeness shocks me. Kit’s never been icy before.
“Okay, let’s start.” George peers at a legal pad, then turns to Roz Pepperdine, who works with the art museum that’s linked to the college. “I hear we’ve made some headway getting the Bonners to donate a few of their works into the permanent collection?”
Roz launches into a talk about oil paintings and sculptures and transport costs, but my gaze is still on Kit. Her whole body is angled away from me. It feels purposeful. She couldn’t know I gave her that Ambien, could she? Maybe I shouldn’t have told Patrick about that in a public place. Maybe someone overheard.
“And what’s the status with the alumni?” George now looks at Iv
an, a slight, young guy in the corner.
Ivan moves his head from side to side. “Well, with some of the hack news, a lot of the alumni are a little less than impressed. Especially the stories that span when they were students here. Like the stuff about admissions fraud. Or the, um, rapes.”
George frowns. “We aren’t sure the rapes happened.”
Kit looks at him sharply. “Did you really just say that?”
George raises his hands in surrender. “They’re only hinted at in the e-mails. Nothing’s concrete.”
“Yes, but a few girls came forward with stories of things happening to them at frats,” Kit blurts incredulously.
“Those posts don’t give specifics,” George says weakly, but then backs off as if he realizes what he’s just said. “Not to minimize things if they did happen . . .”
“Absolutely,” I jump in.
I haven’t completely paid attention to what’s been said—I only agree with Kit to gauge her reaction. But Kit stares stonily ahead as if she hasn’t heard me. Maybe she does know, then. I curl my toes inside my shoes. Shit. Is she going to call me out on it? I can’t get in trouble for this, can I? I mean, so I slipped her an Ambien. I thought it would just loosen her up. I was trying to help.
And then I see it.
It’s Kit’s turn to give an update. As she’s talking, the sleeve of her blazer rides up, revealing a bare wrist and a glitter of diamonds. My heart stops in my chest. That bracelet is the same delicate chain I’d laid eyes on last week. The very same piece of jewelry, I’m almost positive, that lay in that little velvet box tucked in the back of my husband’s trunk.
It can’t be. But then I look again. The glinting diamonds. The delicate chain. It’s identical. My stomach lurches.
I must make a sound, because suddenly, everyone is looking at me. I clutch my stomach as though suddenly ill. “Excuse me,” I say, leaping to my feet.
I run into the bathroom and shut myself in a stall, my breaths coming erratic and fast. It’s the bracelet. The same unique color of gold. The same small, glittering diamonds. Is this her way of saying she’s in charge? But . . . Patrick? Why would he be into Kit? And when did this start? As I once saw in a text window on my daughter’s cell phone: IDEK. I don’t even know.
My scalp feels greasy with sweat. My whole body is throbbing. I suddenly realize, it must have been Patrick who told her about the Ambien. No doubt he’d been watching Kit the night of the benefit, noting how drunk she became, maybe even worrying about her. Maybe they’d even talked about it afterward. Maybe she’d been like, Geez, I feel like someone drugged me. And there I sat at the restaurant, playing into their hands. I feel like a fool.
But wait. Patrick barely saw drunk Kit at the benefit. Oh, maybe he saw her staggering a little, but the really good stuff only happened after he left. All at once, I feel uneasy. I never bought that he had a stomachache. He’d sprinted out of that gala like an Olympian. I’d thought he was running away from me, but maybe he was running to something. Or to do something.
I think of his missing car in the driveway when I got home later that night. I think, too, of someone sneaking in and murdering Kit’s husband during those very same hours. But no. No way. I can’t go down that road.
Because married to a murderer? That’s not who I want to be.
29
WILLA
FRIDAY, MAY 5, 2017
I pick up takeout and drop by my dad’s house, which brings on a barrage of memories in itself, because after my mother passed away, takeout was pretty much our mainstay. It’s hard to remember how we got through those years. Our father must have scheduled Kit and me for regular doctors’ appointments and made sure we had all the paperwork to apply to college, but I find it hard to believe how, exactly, because we were all so frozen with grief. And obviously things fell through the cracks with us. Especially with me.
I’m ready to dig into who Greg might have been having an affair with. For once, my father is home. When I ask if he’d like some pad thai, he smiles wanly and says he isn’t hungry.
I frown. “Are you eating enough, Dad? You look really pale.”
He nods vaguely. “I had a big lunch. Really.”
He pads off to his office. I exchange a look with Kit, who’s unloading plates from the cupboard. The stress is really getting to him. He’s had to fire so many people. Give so many press conferences. And he’s not getting any younger. But my father’s always been stubborn—he works through the flu, through snowstorms, even right after my mother’s accident. It’s like he thinks the school’s future rests solely on his shoulders.
We open the cartons of food and call for the girls to come down. Just as Kit’s spooning some rice onto her plate, her phone pings. She glances at the screen, and something in her expression brightens. “I have to go,” she murmurs.
“Go where?” I ask, suddenly on alert. Kit has barely left the house except to go to work. The news crews are still prowling the circle, and I can tell they make her uneasy.
“Work thing.” Kit hurries out of the room, her feet clonking heavily on the stairs. “I’ll be back.”
“What work thing?” I yell after her. But she doesn’t answer.
Sienna and Aurora wisp into the room like ghosts, glancing at me uneasily. They silently fill their plates with food and are about to retreat back upstairs—I guess they don’t have any weekend plans—but then I clear my throat. “Hang on. I have a couple of questions for you girls.”
Their faces fall. They’re so sick of my questions.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, and it won’t be about anything crazy,” I assure them. “I’m not trying to cause trouble. You know that, right?”
Neither answers that question, probably because all I’ve done is cause trouble. But they dutifully sit, which is a relief. As I’m pouring the girls sparkling water—they asked for diet soda, but I said no freaking way, refraining from a lecture on what soda chemicals do to one’s insides—Kit returns from upstairs. She’s now wearing a soft, fitted linen dress and smells like freshly spritzed perfume. I watch as she studies her phone again and slips on a pair of high-heeled shoes. As she’s heading for the mudroom toward the garage, I scurry after her.
“Kit,” I say in a low voice so the girls can’t hear. “This has nothing to do with that woman at work, does it?”
Kit frowns. “Of course not.”
But she won’t look at me. Is she lying? Does it have anything to do with that woman’s husband? Kit leans in and pecks me on the cheek, something we never do. “I’ll be back soon.”
After the door slams, I trudge back to the kitchen, scoop some takeout onto my plate, and take a few bites. Normally, I’m not a fan of hole-in-the-wall takeout, as everyone knows the food is filled with MSG and other chemicals, and I’d planned to make myself a salad tonight, but after the stunt Kit just pulled, I feel undone and in need of comfort. Should I follow her?
“Aunt Willa?” Sienna gives me a pained look. “I really want to go back upstairs. What did you want to ask us?”
“Oh.” I swallow a mouthful of oily, delicious noodles, trying to bring myself back to the task at hand. Kit will be okay. I have to believe that. “So, um, you mentioned hearing Greg stumbling around that one night, and you also mentioned it was around the time of a snowstorm. I was able to pull up storms from last year—if we look at Greg’s calendar, maybe we can figure out who he was with that night. Can you remember if the storm was in January, February, or March?”
Sienna pops a chicken satay in her mouth and chews thoughtfully. “I want to say January. I don’t think Valentine’s happened yet.”
I glance at the notes Paul gave me today at the farm, feeling a stab of regret when I see Paul’s small, neat, rounded handwriting. I wonder how confused he feels at the way I rejected him. Hell, I’m still confused at myself . . . and, at the same time, totally unsurprised.
; “January tenth,” I read off the list. “Eight inches of snow. Sound right?”
“I don’t know. I guess.”
I click to the chunk of data I’ve exported to my laptop from the hack database. It’s Greg’s data—I wanted to have it accessible at all times in case I’m ever in a spot without a cell signal again. Greg’s calendar is in a subfolder, and I open it and scroll back to last January.
According to his calendar, which is jammed with surgeries, meetings, and business events, he didn’t have anything scheduled for the evening, but there was a quadruple bypass slated for 11:00 A.M. for someone named P. Vitrillo. I sometimes forget that Greg used to pry open people’s chests and work on their hearts. Kind of an ironic line of work for such an unfeeling person.
I look at the girls. “Did Greg often go out after tough surgeries to blow off steam?”
They exchange a glance. “I don’t really know,” Aurora says. “Maybe?”
I stretch out my legs under the table. “If he did, who might he go with?”
“Other doctors?” Sienna suggests. “Friends?” It’s clear she has no idea.
Aurora makes a face. “Greg always whined about the other doctors, though. Said he’d be happy if he were the only doctor on call.” She picks at her nails.
“Someone else from the hospital, then? An administrator? A nurse?”
The girls look at one another and shrug. “We didn’t know much about his life at work.”
I only recall Kit telling me about one nurse on Greg’s staff: that woman who came to the funeral with her baby. Laura . . . something. A thought pings in my mind. Laura Apatrea. Perhaps she knew Greg well?
I hold a finger up for the girls to tell them to bear with me for a moment, then pick up my phone. The first thing I see on the screen is a news alert for a few more posts from some girls who have made references to assaults at Aldrich frat parties. I feel a knot in my stomach, guilty that I’m swiping past these testimonies. Reluctantly, I navigate to the hack site and dig up Laura’s folder.
