HER PERFECT SECRET a totally gripping psychological thriller

by T. J. Brearton

  Blakely is quiet. I can hear the muffled honk of White Plains traffic. “Fifteen million,” he says.

  I laugh, just a sound that escapes me, almost a bark. “What makes her think we have fifteen million dollars?”

  “It’s just the opening bid. One million for every year spent in prison. But what they’re aiming for is ten. And I’ll get them even lower.”

  “How much lower? Paul’s an architect and I’m a therapist. We’re not the Waltons.” I look around, imagining having to sell the lake house. Well, if so, it’s only the beginning of what I deserve.

  Blakely asks, “What about Paul’s life insurance?”

  I’ve actually thought about it. “He’s got to be missing for longer, or found. But if it kicks in, it’s two-point-five.”

  And if that’s the case, it’s going right to my children.

  “Okay,” Blakely says, sounding relieved. “Then we’ve got something to work with.”

  No, we don’t.

  We talk a little more. He gives me the same advice he’s given me twice already about staying quiet in the press. Looking solemn and remorseful if caught on camera, but not to engage. A judge can be swayed by public opinion, Blakely says, just like a jury.

  “Laura Bishop still has to prove this thing,” Blakely reminds me. “Even if it’s not a new criminal case, she’s got to — well, her lawyers have to — convince a judge that she was wrongfully convicted. She’s got to do it without her son being involved, if it’s true that he’s going to stay on our side. The first thing they’re going to go after, probably, is—”

  “John?”

  He clears his throat; I’ve derailed him. “Yes?”

  “Can we pick this up later?”

  “Sure. Of course.” He asks, “You doing all right?”

  “I’m going to lie down for a little bit.”

  “All right. Listen . . . all right. Take it easy. We can talk again whenever.”

  I thank him and hang up and toss my phone onto the kitchen island. I sip from the glass of red wine there and carry it to the window and look out, watch the lake for a little while.

  The couch feels especially soft when I lie down. For a moment, I think I might weep, but then nothing comes. I’m empty.

  After a while, I drift off to sleep. I dream of the Bishop home and the blood on the kitchen floor.

  Only it’s Michael with his head bashed in. It’s Joni who sits at the table where his mother sat, drinking her wine. And it’s my reflection in the door window, fresh snowflakes coming down behind the glass, hammer in my hand.

  * * *

  Something wakes me.

  The first thing I notice is the light has changed. Evening is coming on. The lake has turned silvery to match the sky.

  I hear a noise. A high-pitched whining. Coming from outside the house.

  I know that sound.

  Moving slowly, quietly, I get up from the couch. I take my phone from the kitchen and walk to the side door. From here, I can see the garage.

  A light is on. Something or someone moves in front of it, casting a long shadow over the gravel driveway. In the next instant, the high-pitched whine resumes.

  Paul’s sander. Someone is working on the boat.

  I get my sweater down off the peg and open the door, drawing the garment around me. I walk to the garage with the sound of the sander going.

  When it stops, I’m standing just two yards away from the open garage bay. Wood dust floats like pollen. The man standing there waves at the dust. His back is to me; he’s hunched over. He runs his hand along the smoothed wood. Then he sets the sander down, brushes his hands together, and straightens up. Finally, he turns around and looks at me.

  “Hi, honey,” Paul says.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

  He’s unshaven. His hair is oily. He looks malnourished, cheek bones stretched against too-thin skin. When he smiles, his teeth are darker. He’s wearing different clothes since the last time I saw him — jeans, a gray T-shirt promoting the Syracuse Orangemen football team — but the boat shoes are the same. Everything is filthy, pants stained and shirt torn. The last thing I notice are his hands, dark with mud. Or dried blood.

  He takes a step toward me, and I take a step back.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  He looks from me to the boat, as if it’s obvious. “Gonna finish it up. It’s overdue.”

  “Work has been calling for you.” I try to keep from trembling. “When they couldn’t get you, they tried me. But by now . . .”

  His eyes narrow. “I plan to go back as soon as I can. Maybe the end of the week. But I figured, as long as I’m here, I should put the final coat of varnish on her.” He nods at the boat. “Just needed to give it a light once-over with the sander first.”

  We stare at Paul’s project for a few moments.

  “It looks good,” I say.

  I can hear a slight wheeze in his breath.

  Still watching the boat, he asks me, “Did Sean wake up?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  “And Jo? Where’s she?” Paul’s head slowly turns. “She still with him?”

  “I don’t know. I think so.”

  “What about her? Are they with her?”

  He means Laura. “I think they went to Long Island. To the Bleekers. It’s possible she’s there.”

  I add, after a considered pause, “She’s suing us.”

  Paul grunts. He shakes his head and kicks at the gravel. “That fucking bitch.”

  At least he’s not pretending anymore.

  After a long silence, he says, “I didn’t ask you to do what you did.”

  “I know, Paul.”

  “If anything, what I did was a cry for help, right?”

  Murdering in cold blood is not a cry for help; it’s a sign of psychosis. But I don’t say this. “We’re all in the grip of some emotion or another at any given time,” I tell him. “You were jealous.”

  “I wasn’t jealous. I was sickened.” Paul’s upper lip tugs into a snarl as he takes another step toward me. “Sickened by everything. Sickened by what we’d become. Those parties and those shallow people. The pursuit of . . . nothing.”

  I stand unmoving, trying not to antagonize. His anger gradually abates, and he gives me a wistful look. “Remember what we were like? When we were young? When we met?”

  “I do.”

  “We were a good team, Em.”

  “I know.”

  His bloodshot eyes linger on me. Then he spreads his arms. He wants a hug.

  I go to him, trying not to give away how terrified I am. It’s just instinct, to keep him calm, make him think everything is okay. But as he takes me in his arms, my gaze falls on a workbench in the garage. The tools hanging on the pegboard. The empty place for the hammer.

  Paul smells like BO and fresh air, mixed. I feel his breath in my hair. “I was in the woods, Em. I’ve been out there, this whole time. Three weeks, right?”

  “Yeah.” The word is muffled against his neck.

  He rubs my back absently. “Helicopters, dogs — I evaded it all. I found a hunting camp and broke in, had some food for a while. I had no idea where I was. And then I found a logging trail that led toward the lake. I knew my way back from there. But I didn’t want to. I wasn’t ready yet. So I stayed right around here. Right on the lake. I raided the neighbors’ place.” Paul laughs, and I can feel it vibrate through his protruding ribs. “I knew they were gone and their security’s shit. But there’s other places; they don’t even lock up. So I just stayed here and there, moving around by night. Took a shower once or twice, stole some clothes. I kept going until I figured the cops gave up looking for me. They had to wind it down sometime, right? They had to figure I was more likely dead.”

  Paul pulls away from me. Out of the hug, he looks in my eyes. “The detective — Starzyk — did he live?”

  I nod. “He had a surgery. Left the hospital about a week later. He doesn’t remember much.”

  “Seems to be
catching,” Paul says distractedly. He looks at the lake house. “I watched the house. I watched everybody coming and going. Lots of cops. But they’ve been gone for three days. Just the ones that come in and check on you.”

  He’s right.

  “So what are you going to do?” I ask.

  He gets a thoughtful look. It’s almost as if he’s considering it for the first time, but of course, that’s not true. He’s had weeks to think about it. “What I did is something that happens,” he says. “At any given moment, there are millions of people feeling murderous impulses. We resist because we’re scared. But I just stopped being scared.”

  He’s talking about pleading insanity? A fit of passion, being out of his mind?

  “And then you protected me. I didn’t even plan for that. You just did it. Because we were a team. We’re still a team, Em.”

  “That sounds a little bit like a threat.”

  He makes a face, like I’m being silly. “No, it’s not a threat. I mean you protected us then, our family, and you can do it again, now. We can get it all back. We can be a family.”

  I search his eyes. If I’m totally honest, yes, there’s some part of me that wants to believe we can make this better. But I realize that’s just attachment. I’ve spent almost half my life with this man. The idea that it was all a lie, well — that’s hard to accept.

  “If we’re a team,” I say, “then you need to admit what you did.”

  “Admit what? What are you talking about?”

  “I’m just saying, admit it to me. If we’re going to get through this, we need complete honesty, from this point forward. Nobody needs to know about Madison and Hunter, because no one saw it, or can prove anything anyway. And without new evidence, nothing can be done about David Bishop.”

  Paul’s face is getting hard to read in the gathering dusk, features blending together. Does he think I’m trying to trap him?

  “As far as anyone knows,” he says, “Michael could have killed the Tremont girl and her hippie boyfriend. And as far as David Bishop goes, you’re the only one who knows anything about that, wouldn’t you say?”

  It’s true. Other than Paul, I’m the one with the most information. I’ve been desperate to stuff it back into the closet ever since Michael showed up, but it didn’t work. It couldn’t work.

  His eyes find me. Just points of light in the semidarkness. “I wanted to get my family back, Em. That’s why I did what I did.”

  I let the statement hang there a moment. “No,” I say next. “I need honesty, Paul. Or you get nothing from me.” I’m trembling from the inside out, but this is it. This is the moment. I look into Paul’s face — he’s feigning ignorance — and let him have it. “You cheated on me. On all of us. But she didn’t want you. She wanted him. So, you killed him.”

  He starts shaking his head emphatically. “She was a mistake. All I ever wanted was you, Em. You and only you.”

  “You’re not going to admit it? That you at least thought about it?”

  “Fine. In the haze of our shitty lives back then, I thought I did. I thought I wanted her.”

  “You wanted her so bad you killed her husband. It’s not because you were sickened. You were enraged with jealousy. Admit it.”

  He stares at me. “Yes, Emily. I killed him because I was fucking jealous.”

  There.

  He said it.

  He scowls at me. “This is what you want? This is what will bring us back together?”

  “Well, we ought to try it,” I say. “We ought to try the truth.”

  “That goes both ways.”

  “Okay. Sure. What have you got?”

  “You were a shitty mother. A neglectful mother. Always off working. Always hosting parties. Our daughter just wanted a mother.”

  My voice goes up. “I know our daughter blames me for her problems. That she feels we loved Sean more than her. He was adventurous and outgoing; she was introverted and shy and resented everything we tried to get her into. I know she was insecure. I know that she felt unsafe. Because of how you and I were, how we fought. But, Jesus Christ, Paul. You tried to burn her. Your own daughter,” I say. “Jesus, Paul. And Madison and Hunter — what did they do? They were just in your way. Just like David had been in your way. Because something is missing in you. I thought maybe it was a crime of passion, something that just overcame you. Once. But it’s not. You’re sick, Paul. You need help.”

  Paul is staring at me, his eyes gone glassy and distant. I know I’ve gone too far. But I can’t stop.

  “Michael played me. I know that. He faked the amnesia. He faked a version of himself living in Arizona at the address of Laura’s old boyfriend, Doug Wiseman. He left me that voicemail, he wrote a message on the boathouse wall. That was all him, trying to throw me off. To throw us off. A little fun and games, as a prelude to Laura’s real revenge, a massive lawsuit. And you know what? We deserved it and worse. But you . . . they were just all in your way. Just something to get rid of. You’re sick, Paul. The very definition.”

  Paul’s face twists with contempt. He’s not hiding it anymore. “Oh, like you’re so virtuous, Emily. You know what I did? You want to know? I called Frank Mills. After your accident with the fucking deer. You were passed out at the hospital and I went through your phone, and I saw your texts with him. I told him to back off. And not just because of the whole Bishop situation. But because I knew.”

  “You knew what?”

  “I knew how you felt about him.”

  “Are you kidding me? Frank Mills was a cop. He was there for me during a difficult time.”

  “You’re telling me nothing happened? All these years? You just keep in contact with some random cop from your past? Come on.”

  “He’s a friend.”

  Paul snorts and shakes his head, incredulous.

  I want to tell Paul the real reason that this all unfolded the way it did. That, though Michael was following a plan made with his mother, he diverged from it. He followed his own course.

  Why?

  Because he fell in love with our daughter.

  As sick as Paul is, I want to tell him this because it’s about our daughter. I want to tell him that while Joni may have sided with Michael and Laura against us, Michael sided with Joni against Laura. He wouldn’t have actually hurt me, or Sean, because he came to love Joni. Initially, she surely gravitated to Michael the way she’s gravitated to other young men in the past. But then the two of them fell in love. And her love changed Michael, changed the course of everything.

  It’s normal to want to share the glory and joy in your children, even with an ex-partner. But I don’t.

  And I’m not telling him about Sean, either.

  Sean, who has been awake for over two weeks now. Sean, who remembered the sailing accident and cleared Michael of any wrongdoing.

  Sean, my son, who is now gone again, just a couple of days since he fully recuperated. Gone, since I confessed everything to him. Gone back west, considering whether he’ll ever be able to forgive me for what I’ve done.

  “Where are you going?” Paul asks. He seems to gauge the distance I’ve opened up between us.

  “Nowhere,” I say.

  We stand, watching each other in the twilight. The lake laps against the docks and makes those hollow sounds in the boathouse. The crickets sing in the high grasses and ragweed. Bugs dart through the air.

  No, there’s nothing more to say.

  It happens quickly, then. Even in the scant light, I can see Paul’s features change again, going from that look of incredulity to a smoother, eyes-wide look of revelation.

  He’s just worked it all through. That’s what’s happening. He’s decided on the reason I’ve stood here with him, talking. Why I asked him about David Bishop.

  And the fact that he admitted to killing him.

  Paul lunges for me, and he’s fast as a snake. He grabs my shirt and rips it open, popping the buttons, revealing the wireless microphone taped to my chest.

  For
a moment, everything seems to stop. Paul stares at the small device, then at me. After that, he checks his surroundings. He’s expecting the cavalry, but there is none. Like Paul said, he’s been watching the house. I don’t know my husband as well as I should, but that was something I banked on — if the police were here waiting, Paul would never have shown. This was the only way. And once I glimpsed him in the woods three days ago, the time had come.

  The next thing I know, Paul has a hammer. It was tucked into the back of his pants. Now he holds it in a fist, and he stares at me.

  “What did you do?”

  “I loved you,” I tell him.

  His face is ghostly, an apparition. But I can see the anguish that ripples over his features before they harden into mindless hate. Paul raises the hammer, ready to drop it on my skull.

  Instead of running, I just stand there. I close my eyes.

  I deserve this.

  The sound of footsteps sends my eyelids flying open. Paul is still standing in front of me, but he’s just turning his head to the side. Michael comes lunging out from beside the garage. His face is a blur of wide eyes and gnashed teeth.

  The hammer goes flying as Michael slams into Paul, tackling him to the ground. A moment later, the two men are grunting and fighting and rolling in the gravel. I step farther back, just as Joni comes running out of the house. She stops beside me. She screams: “Michael!”

  Michael manages to get on top of Paul. He straddles Paul at the waist. Paul grabs for Michael’s throat, but the younger man is quicker, stronger. He bats Paul’s hands away, then lands a punch on his cheek. Another on his mouth. And another. And another.

  Paul killed his father. This is the payback that’s fifteen years in coming.

  “Michael!” Joni runs for him. I grab at her but miss.

  She reaches Michael and grabs his shoulders. His head whips around to her and he stares up, murder in his eyes. His fist hangs in the air, blood on the knuckles. Paul is a beaten mess beneath him.

  Michael sees Joni. Really sees her. Lowers his fist. His eyes and mouth soften. He lets her help him off Paul and gain his feet.

  They stand there, the two of them, looking at each other. Then Michael glances at Paul one last time. He spits at him.