I got to the park early. The sun was low in the summer sky and the horizon was dappled with gold-rimmed clouds. I saw Layla before she saw me. She was wearing a tight red dress that left little to the imagination and she was teetering on stiletto heels as she paced back and forth along the path beside the fountain. My stomach turned as I imagined Vince slowly peeling that dress off of her young, curvaceous body. I looked down at my own outfit, and it no longer felt quite as sexy.
I debated turning around. I wish now that I had. I told myself that it wasn’t too late. I could walk away and spend the rest of my life pretending I’d never heard the name Layla Bosch. But if I did that, she’d think Vince blew her off. I didn’t know what she was holding over my husband, but I couldn’t risk it coming to light, not without knowing what it was. I took a deep breath, held my chin up, and approached Layla, hoping I looked far more confident than I felt.
‘You?’ she said as I approached. She spat the word at me with disgust and a roll of her eyes. I was nothing to her. No one. A mere inconvenience. I suddenly felt foolish standing before her in the outfit I’d spent hours deciding on, the one I thought would intimidate this intruder into my marriage. It was clear that she’d never given me more than a passing thought.
‘Yes. Me,’ I replied, meeting her gaze.
She seemed to ponder my presence for a moment, biting her plump lower lip as if she was making a decision as to how to make the most of the fact that she was stuck with me instead of my husband.
‘This isn’t about you,’ she finally said, dismissively.
‘Like hell it isn’t. This is my marriage, my life, that you’ve weaseled your way into.’
‘Look, I don’t have time for this. What is it that you want?’
‘I want you out of our lives.’
‘And I will be. As soon as Vince does what I asked of him.’
‘It seems you think that you’re in charge here, that you get to call the shots. But you don’t, little girl. Not anymore. You think you can blackmail my husband? What were you going to do? Threaten to tell me all about your dirty little affair? Well I already know, so it’s over, Layla. Give it up.’
‘You think that’s all I had on Vince? That I was going to tell his wife he’d misbehaved?’ A vicious smile spread across her face. ‘You’ve overestimated your worth and underestimated mine. And now you’re both going to pay the price for that.’
I felt sick, but I wasn’t going to back down. Not to this stupid, spoiled girl.
‘What do you want, Layla? Is it money? Because I can promise you Vince isn’t going to give you a dime.’
‘Oh, I think he will. Once he sees this.’ She pulled a few pieces of lined paper out of her purse, waving them before me as if she was wielding a knife.
‘What is this?’ I snatched the papers from her hand and began to skim the handwritten pages.
I felt tears pricking my eyes as I read all the vile things she’d written about my husband, about how he was violent and dangerous, forcing her to sleep with him against her will. I didn’t want to believe it.
‘This isn’t true … it can’t be.’
‘Believe what you want,’ Layla said flippantly, as she flicked her shiny brown hair over her shoulder with a perfectly manicured hand.
Vince wouldn’t really do those things. Would he? That wasn’t the Vince I knew, but I had to admit that I hardly knew him anymore. I didn’t want to think that he’d become the person Layla wrote about, but a small voice in my head reminded me that I couldn’t be sure. After all, I never thought he’d have an affair either.
‘There’s more where that came from too,’ Layla added. ‘You can keep those if you want. Show them to your husband. Let him know that if he doesn’t pay me what they’re worth, I’ll sell my story to the highest bidder.’
‘You can’t do this!’
‘Oh, but I can.’ Layla laughed, a condescending chuckle. I hadn’t shaken her. Not in the least. ‘Let me know what Vince decides,’ she said, turning on her heels and walking away from me.
I don’t know what came over me in that moment, what dark thing possessed me, but I rushed at her, shoving her with both hands.
‘You bitch!’ she shouted, stumbling in her absurd heels.
Layla whipped around, a venomous glint in her eyes, and she pushed me to the ground as if I was nothing. She was right, I had underestimated her. Where did a girl who looked as pampered as Layla learn to be so tough?
Layla towered above me, her shadow blocking the sun. Her hair fell around her face like a curtain as she leaned over me on the ground. I scuttled backwards, pushing myself up onto my hands. I could feel the grit and sand of the walkway digging into my palms.
‘You tell Vince that he won’t be getting rid of me this easily. After all, I’m carrying his baby.’
Layla turned to walk away, laughing viciously to herself, but I couldn’t let her go.
She’d taken so many things that were supposed to be mine, but she couldn’t have this. She couldn’t have the child I was denied.
I was blind with rage. I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t plan to kill her. Not even as I picked up the rock that laid on the ground next to me. Not even as I swung my arm and watched it collide with her head. In truth, I didn’t even remember hitting her. Not until much later. But I did. I killed that girl.
Her body fell to the ground in a broken heap, and I watched as the life drained out of her. Her glowing skin grew pale and the malice in her eyes evaporated into nothing. I know I should have felt something: horror, remorse, guilt, maybe even relief that she was gone. But in that moment, as I watched the last dregs of Layla’s young life slip away, I felt nothing. Absolutely nothing.
I took the rock with me, and tossed it into the Long Island Sound somewhere along my drive home. I was going to do the same with Layla’s diary pages, but something told me to keep them. I took them home and shoved them into a shoe box and hidden away in the back of my closet. But I knew that they were there, their venomous words haunting me.
After Layla’s body was found, Vince was questioned in his office. I wasn’t expecting that to happen. I hadn’t really considered who would be blamed for her death, beyond the fact that I’d hoped it wouldn’t be me.
I remember that I made my favorite lasagna recipe that night. I took comfort in the routine motions of cooking, layering the pasta and the cheese, putting everything in the right order, creating something warm and familiar. I needed it to distract me from the constant worry that the police were going to pound on my door at any moment, and I thought the meal would bring Vince and I together so that we could finally talk.
Over dinner Vince told me about the death of his intern, but he made it seem as though he hardly knew her. Did he not see what he was doing to us? Did he not see how his lies, his secrets, were the very thing that had broken us? Did he even notice that we were broken?
Even after death, Layla was destroying our marriage. I could picture her twisted smile, mocking me, taunting me. She had won. She’d driven a wedge into our marriage, buried a secret between us, that Vince would protect long after she was gone.
But sometimes Vince needs a push in the right direction to do what has to be done. Just like when he needed my guidance getting KitzTech off the ground. Maybe he just needed a little motivation before he was ready to tell me the truth.
That night I sent my first anonymous email to Kate Owens from an untraceable Gmail account to tell her that the dead girl in the park was sleeping with her boss, the CEO of KitzTech. Kate Owens was the perfect person to run the story about Vince. I remembered reading about her fallout with The Minute after her boss had sexually harassed her in the office. I knew she’d latch onto the story of the media mogul preying on his young intern.
After the news of the affair broke, all eyes were on Vince. I thought he would come clean with me after his secret was exposed for all the world to see. After all, he had nothing left to lose. I went to him in tears, finally able to admit that I knew about him
and Layla … even if I had to pretend I read about it in World View. I thought that maybe in that moment Vince would finally confess everything, and we could begin to heal, to come together once again. But to my surprise, he continued to lie.
It came so easily to him too. The lies rolled right off his tongue without a moment’s hesitation.
‘Where were you the night that girl died?’
‘I had to work late and then I spent the night at the apartment.’
I was giving him the opportunity to stop the lies and to give us a chance for a fresh start, but Vince didn’t take it, choosing instead to pile more lies on top of our already strained marriage.
If he’d been honest with me in that moment, I may have told him everything. I might have confessed what I’d done to Layla. But of course that’s not what happened. Instead, we both jealously guarded our own secrets until they became too big to contain.
As the days passed, the lies living between us began to distort my image of Vince. The more he lied, the more I began to believe that maybe the words Layla had written about him were true. I didn’t know this man I was sharing a home with. We were strangers passing each other in the halls. I grew to resent him, to hate him, for what he’d done, for how close he’d come to ruining both of our lives. And I couldn’t help but think about Layla’s baby.
I wondered if Vince knew she was pregnant, if he really had grown obsessed with her after she’d given him the one thing he wanted most in this world, the one thing I could never provide.
I gave Vince so many chances to make things right and confess the truth, but he never did. And every time he chose to tell me a new lie, I gave more information to Kate Owens. I never told her that Layla was pregnant though. I was saving that last bit of information for when I needed it most.
Carrying my own secret wasn’t always easy. I almost broke down and told Vince the truth several times. After Vince moved out, I called him in tears. The guilt of what I’d done, causing him to lose his position at KitzTech, was eating me alive. I was going to tell him everything that day. But when he got to the house, he got into an altercation with a cop who had apparently been loitering around in the woods. I never even knew the officer was there. With all of the commotion, cops traipsing all over the property, and Vince assuming I’d called him to rescue me from an intruder, the moment passed, and I kept my secret to myself.
When the next World View article came out, breaking information about a previous rape allegation, (information that they hadn’t gotten from me), I felt validated. Maybe Vince really was the monster Layla described. Maybe what I’d done in exposing the truth about him wasn’t so bad after all.
I wasn’t trying to frame Vince for Layla’s murder, not really. I just wanted him to feel the same pain he was causing me. I wanted him to feel ashamed for what he did. I wanted him to sweat. I never really thought he would be arrested for Layla’s death because there would be no evidence that he’d killed her since, after all, he hadn’t.
No one ever questioned me. Not even the police when they were in my house. They saw what they wanted to see: the sad, heartbroken wife. The one who couldn’t possibly be as smart as her brilliant husband. That’s the thing about being married to someone as intelligent as Vince – everyone is content to think you’re an idiot by comparison. I didn’t plan to tip them off about the Heatherly, but it was the day after Vince had moved out and I was feeling particularly vulnerable. After Vince left, I was all alone in our big empty house and I had nothing to do except obsess over the thought of Vince with Layla’s baby in his arms. In truth, Vince had never even taken me to the Heatherly before. I’ve never set foot inside that hotel. But when the detectives began to question me, I couldn’t resist offering them that little crumb.
I never dreamed it would be enough to lead to Vince’s arrest. But, of course, I didn’t know about the security records that Vince had already doctored. There were too many secrets between us. The situation spiraled out of my control, and before I knew it Vince was being led away in handcuffs.
I know I’m partially responsible for landing Vince behind bars, but all he had to do was tell the truth and none of this would have happened.
If only Vince had been honest with me. If only he hadn’t given Layla the baby that should have been mine.
I finally make it back home, physically and mentally exhausted, and I check my phone for messages. There’s one new text from Jeff: ‘Issue posting Vince’s bail. It won’t be processed until Monday.’
I picture Vince drowning in that orange jumpsuit. Today was the first time he ever looked small, vulnerable to me, and now he’s facing a weekend in jail for a crime I know he didn’t commit.
When Vince was first arrested I convinced myself that he’d be sent right back home. Surely they couldn’t send him to jail; he was an innocent man. Maybe not in our marriage, but at least in the eyes of the law. When he didn’t come home that night, I told myself he’d be set free soon. There wouldn’t be a trial, what real evidence could they possibly have? I thought I could live with what I’d done, that all I had to do was wait for someone to figure out that Vince was innocent and send him home to me, and then everything could go back to normal.
But seeing Vince in that place today made me realize that I was deluding myself. I just wasn’t ready to face what I knew deep down that I’d have to do. I see now that this has gone too far. I’m beginning to think that the police are never going to figure out that Vince is innocent. They’ve stopped looking, so sure are they that they have the right guy, and they aren’t going to give up until he spends the rest of his life in jail. I have to stop prolonging the inevitable. I need to turn myself in.
I pick up the phone to call Detective Barnes. It’s time she knew the truth. But before I have a chance to dial her number, the phone begins to ring in my hand, a familiar number blazing across the screen.
I listen to the voice on the other end, and in that moment everything changes.
Chapter 51
Vince
DAY 14
Nicole and Marta are friends? How did I not know? And what else is there that I don’t know about my wife? I spent the entirety of last night thinking about how far Nicole and I have grown apart. I feel as though I hardly know this woman that I vowed to spend the rest of my life with. When did I start to lose her? I want to blame Layla, but I know it was before that. I was so wrapped up in my own life, that I left my wife to drift away. But this thing with Marta, it has thrown me for a loop. Is it possible that Nicole knew about the affair all along?
My stomach rumbles. My body is craving nutrition. I’ve barely eaten more than a few bites of food since I’ve been here. I constantly feel nauseous. And this morning was made even worse when I learned that my bail hadn’t been posted. Jeff called to tell me that there was an issue processing the payment. ‘Typical bureaucratic bullshit,’ he’d said. But nothing about this feels typical to me. I pushed the dry eggs around my breakfast plate, unable to stomach a bite.
‘Taylor. Visitor,’ a guard calls.
I wasn’t expecting anyone today. I hope that it’s Jeff coming to tell me that he’s worked some magic, bail was posted after all, and he’s here to take me home.
I shuffle down the hallway and back into the visitation room, sitting impatiently as I wait to see if Jeff will appear.
But it’s not Jeff who’s come to see me.
‘Nicole? I wasn’t expecting you today.’
‘I know, but I think we need to talk.’
‘I think so too. There’s something I have to ask you. It may sound crazy, but I need to know the truth, Nic. Did you—’
‘I’m pregnant.’
Her confession has stunned me into silence. Suddenly it no longer matters what she knew and when. Nicole is pregnant. I’m going to be a father.
‘Are you sure?’ I ask, still feeling dazed.
‘The doctor called last night. Just after I got home from visiting you.’
‘Wow. Nic, this is everything we’
ve always dreamed of.’
I want to reach out to her, to fold her in my arms and cry tears of joy with her. But then I remember where we are. We will not have the celebration we always envisioned we would when we heard this news.
‘There’s something else I need to tell you,’ she says. I watch her squirm nervously in her seat before she straightens her spine, holds up her chin, and tells me the rest, her voice a whisper. ‘Layla was pregnant too.’
‘How … how do you know that?’
Nicole falls silent, but realization dawns on me now. Nicole killed Layla. She knew about my infidelity and she confronted Layla. There is no other explanation. I want to ask her more, I want to beg her to tell me what happened, but I can’t. Not in here where the walls have ears.
Nicole looks at me knowingly. Her eyes searching mine. Even without words, we’re finally coming clean with each other. Between us finally hangs the truths we could never speak.
I know in that moment that I will take the fall for Nicole. We can’t turn her in. Not while she’s carrying the child we long dreamed of. Nicole will be the mother of my child, and I will protect her at any cost.
Chapter 52
Allison
DAY 14
‘Cheers, Barnes!’ Lanner shouts while raising his glass to mine. He clangs our pint glasses together, causing foam to slosh over the side of my glass and drip down my wrist.
‘Cheers.’ I smile and sip my beer.
‘You okay? You don’t sound as excited as I thought you would.’
‘I’m fine, it’s just been an exhausting two weeks.’ I’m not ready to tell Lanner that I’m having second thoughts about Vince Taylor’s guilt. I have no real reason for the change of heart, aside from the look in his eyes when I arrested him. It’s not exactly evidence, yet I can’t help the doubt churning in my head.
Josh puts his hand on my waist. ‘Well, I’m really proud of you.’
The Guilty Husband Page 26