by Kate White
“Unless what?”
“Unless I was . . . confused.” I touch my fingers to my temple. In my mind’s eye I see myself walking up the side path to the conservatory in my trench coat, my heart thrumming in my ears.
“How do you mean?”
“Maybe . . . You said you wanted me to do my session here that week. Could I have misunderstood and come here on Tuesday instead? Or convinced myself it was Wednesday? Is that why I called Sasha—to try to figure out what I did wrong?”
“Is that what you think, Ally?”
“I—I don’t know.” I drop my hand and run my gaze around the room, hoping it will offer an answer. My eyes settle on the dark wood coffee table. There’s a slim pewter tray with a glass and a pitcher of water, and next to the tray, a box of tissues.
As I stare at the tissues, my whole body begins to vibrate, as if someone is shaking me lightly from behind. An image begins to form in my mind—vague, blurred around the edges.
“I see myself,” I blurt out. “I’m standing here. Here in this room. I . . . grabbed some of the tissues because . . . there was blood. And . . .”
I scrunch my face, trying to keep the memory from escaping.
“And what, Ally?”
“I was here. It was the wrong day. I—” A small wave of panic crests in my core and begins to ripple through my arms and legs. I struggle for air.
“Breathe, Ally,” Erling says, but there’s a weird edge to her voice. “Breathe.”
The image in my mind expands, amoeba-like. Now I see a woman lying faceup on the rug, eyes opened and glazed, blood pooled around her head. I’m dabbing at the wound with the tissues.
“There was a body on the floor!” I exclaim.
“That’s right,” Erling says, her voice eerily calm. “The body of a woman. I’d murdered her that day.”
32
My heart slams again my chest, and I feel my mouth slacken in astonishment.
“I didn’t plan to tell you, actually,” Erling says, not letting go of my eyes. “Oh, I was going to have to deal with this awkward situation you and I have found ourselves in, but there was no reason for you to know the gory details. But now you’ve gone and remembered.”
I stare, frozen in place.
“Who was she?”
“If you must know—and I suppose there’s no harm in telling you at this point—she was a woman I knew years ago. Someone I’d . . . I’d had a fling with. Someone I was actually besotted with to be perfectly honest. Stupidly so.”
“But wh—?”
“Why kill her? Our affair had been a dreadful mistake. She was a patient of mine, and after a while, I came to my senses. I met a man after that, married him, moved away. Got divorced. But she tracked me down. I teach a class on Tuesday mornings, and she was waiting outside the house when I returned around eleven. I knew right away that this was going to be about me paying the piper. She wanted money, lots of it, or she was going to expose me—and she had the paper trail to prove things. I would have lost my license. My teaching job.
“As I hope you’ve seen, Ally, I love what I do and I’m good at it. I couldn’t let her destroy it so I stepped out of the room to get us coffee and returned with a gun I keep. And then I shot her.”
I’m speechless, words stuck in my head, but I sense the muscles of my face contorting.
“I can see you’re horrified,” Erling says. “But there’s no reason to be. She was a dreadful human being—narcissistic, borderline personality. In lay terms, she’d be called a grifter.”
“Did I see it?” I manage. My voice is barely a whisper.
“The murder? No, no. Unbeknownst to me, you must have arrived when I’d gone off to make certain arrangements. I’m sure it was as you guessed a moment ago. When I called Tuesday to ask if you’d mind coming the next day to Larchmont, you sounded very unsettled from the fight with Hugh; perhaps you’d already started to dissociate. You obviously took the train here that day rather than Wednesday. In my haste, I left the side door unlocked, and when I didn’t answer the buzzer, you obviously let yourself in, wondering where I was.
“And even if you hadn’t started to dissociate, Ally, that experience—finding a dead body for the second time in your life—must have triggered it.”
“How did you figure it out—that I’d been here?”
“There were a couple of red flags that gave me pause. Your mention of the call you made trying to figure when our appointment was. The unknown person’s blood on the tissues, of course. And then this.”
She reaches into the deep pocket of her cardigan and extracts an iPhone. As my gaze settles on the blue rubber case, I realize it’s mine.
“I found it peeking out from under the couch the day after Diane was here, the battery dead, and assumed it was an extra of hers that had fallen out of her pocket when she tried to get away.” She curls her lips in a terrifying smile. “It made sense at the moment. A grifter carrying two phones. But as soon as you said you’d lost yours, I realized what had happened.”
I’m frozen in place still, gripped by fear, but my gaze flicks to the outside door and back. Inside my shoes, I curl my toes, forcing a small part of me to move.
“So you killed Mulroney, too?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so. He called me. You must have mentioned my name to him, and he’d followed a trail of bread crumbs indicating that you’d taken the train from Grand Central on Tuesday. He hadn’t pieced it all together yet, but he was getting closer, and I was concerned the information he did have might jog your memory. I told him I had something about you I felt obligated to share, something that might help him crack the case, and arranged to meet him in the parking lot. I knew what that spot was known for, of course. I’ve had patients who’ve cruised there.”
My brain summons an image of Mulroney against my will. So street-smart, but clearly with his guard down, a bullet going through his head.
“What about me?” I ask.
“About you, Ally? Are you wondering if I was the one who pushed you that night? Yes, that was me. I’m not much of a street fighter, am I?”
“But what about now? What are you going to do?”
It’s such a stupid question. Because I can already see the answer, an abyss that’s as deep and dense as a black hole.
“You must know that I don’t want to hurt you. I’ve liked working with you. And I’ve liked helping you. But I’m not going to let you or anyone else take my life and my freedom from me.”
“I wouldn’t, though,” I say, feebly. I lower my head a little, and let my eyes dart toward the door again, measuring the distance to it. To escape, I would need to rush past her, race to the door, unlock it, attempt to fight her off with my hands. It seems impossible, but I have to try.
“Of course you would,” she says with a wry smile.
I take as deep a breath as possible, hoping she can’t see my chest rise and fall. There’s another door, I realize, one closer to me that leads to the rest of the house. I press my hands hard into the sofa, preparing to spring forward.
Another smile from her. I sense she’s noticed my preparation. She sets my phone on the side table next to her and reaches into the space between the chair and the cushion. When she slides her hand out, I see she’s holding a small black gun.
My stomach roils. “But they’ll catch you,” I say. “They’ll trace the gun.”
“It’s from the black market, actually. Some of my patients are seriously troubled, and I felt I needed protection—but it’s nearly impossible to obtain a firearm legally in New York State.”
“The Uber,” I say desperately. “It’s evidence that I came here.”
She chuckles. “When the Uber arrives to pick you up, I’ll put on your coat and a hat of mine and be driven into the city. Later, I’ll take the train back here to tidy up. That’s basically how it worked with Diane, though she’d come by car. I wore her coat and her very fancy sunglasses and I stopped for gas and later abandoned the vehicle. Then I had all the ti
me in the world to clean up. I took her body upstate, to a landfill near where I used to live. I haven’t seen a word about her being missing. I assume no one cares she’s gone.”
As hard as it is, I force a smile.
“Ah, that’s very clever,” I say. “You outgrifted the grifter.”
Erling raises an eyebrow. “I should appreciate the compliment, Ally, but I know you’re simply trying to buy yourself time.”
She’s going to shoot me any second now. And dump my body in the landfill. I manage another breath and think of my father and brothers, of Hugh, too, still my husband. Would they ever be able to find out what had happened to me? Or would they think I’d disassociated again and fallen off the face of the earth?
As I picture Roger, an image fights its way into my head. My brother standing with the oar.
I open my mouth as if to speak again, as if there is something I must say. But instead, I reach fast for the glass water pitcher. And once I grab hold of it, I fling it at her head.
She yelps and then screams, as the glass shatters against her skull and the water sprays everywhere.
I propel myself from the couch and rush to the closest door, flinging it open. I’m in the living room now. I can barely see because the curtains are drawn in here, too, but I tear through the room toward the front of the house, banging into pieces of furniture. Behind me I can hear Erling scrambling.
“Stop!” she screams.
I reach the front hallway, see the door to my left, but I can tell Erling’s not far behind me.
Before I take another step, a noise shatters the air, a crack followed by the sound of splintering wood. She’s fired the gun at me.
I can’t reach the door in time. I lower my head and plunge straight ahead into the dining room and scan it desperately. I spot two hammered metal candlesticks on a sideboard, grab one fast in my fist, and shove open the door to the kitchen.
It’s nearly dark in this room, too, the louvered blinds lowered. Holding my breath, I duck behind the door, leaving it open.
“Ally,” Erling calls. She’s in the dining room now, I can tell. “You’re coming unglued again. Let me help you. Where—?”
She’s only inches away now. I raise the candlestick.
As she charges into the room, I bring it down on her head with all the force I can muster. She drops to the floor facedown, the gun in her hand. Blood spreads from the right side of her head, like a flower blooming.
I turn and race back through the dining room, through the foyer, and out the front door.
And then I run, down the middle of the street. Miraculously a car turns the corner and heads this way. I wave my arms frantically, begging for the driver to stop.
33
A noise startles me and I jump a little in my seat. I realize after a beat that it’s only Gabby, turning the key in the lock on her front door. She’s home from work now. It’s probably going to be a while before I stop being skittish.
A couple of seconds later, Gabby saunters into the living room, carrying a couple of Whole Food bags.
“Hey,” she says in greeting. “You doing okay?”
“Much better,” I say from the couch. “I actually worked on my book a little bit today.”
“How was the new therapist?”
“I liked her—and she comes highly recommended by Dr. Agarwal, the shrink who treated me in the ER. Only time will tell if she wants to blow my brains out, too.”
“Very funny.”
“It’s probably a good sign I can laugh about it.”
“Totally. You like salmon, right? I picked up a couple of fillets for dinner. Let me pop them in the oven.”
As she heads into the kitchen, I sink back into the couch in her lovely living room, an enchanting mix of modern and boho decor. I’ve been ensconced here for the past couple of days—since Sunday night. After I’d bolted from Erling’s, I managed to flag down the car I saw turning onto her street and convince the driver to take me to the local police station. On the way, I’d called Jay Williams, who drove to Westchester immediately.
As I told my story in the police interview room that evening, shaken and exhausted, I wondered frantically about Erling. Had she taken off? Or would she try to completely spin the story, claiming that I was a deranged patient who had attacked her during a session, forcing her to try to shoot at me in self-defense?
But Williams apparently vouched for me, filling the cops in from his end and encouraging them to speak to the White Plains police about Kurt’s murder. On our drive back into the city, Jay said that the gun Erling pulled was probably the same weapon she’d used to kill Mulroney, and the police would figure that out soon enough. Plus, when they searched her house, they would surely find traces of blood and DNA from the former patient and lover who became her victim.
It got better. While we were on the highway, Williams heard through a contact in the Westchester police force that Erling had been apprehended.
As shaken as the experience left me, I feel oddly okay now. Mentally stable. Fairly in control again. I haven’t managed yet to dig up every answer I need, but I’ve gotten my hands on the one with the most value to me: what had sent my mind spiraling away from my body one October afternoon.
I’ve tried since I’ve been at Gabby’s to stay on top of my work. No podcast this week—I ended up bumping it after all, calling Derek and informing him that Sasha wasn’t ready to handle the show on her own. Next, I called Sasha and told her if she ever went behind my back again, it would be her final day as my intern. Let the chips fall where they may.
I’ve filled Roger in since I’ve been here. Hugh, too. And Damien. I still don’t know if his “interest” in me was sincere, but he took the time and seemed to care. I figured I owed him an update.
Gabby reemerges a minute later, carrying a bottle of chardonnay and two wineglasses. She sets the glasses on the table, uncorks the wine, and pours.
“Are you going to keep working with the private eye?” she asks.
“Yeah, he’s still trying to figure out where I was Wednesday night and very early Thursday, though of course I have the facts that matter most. You were right all along, Gabby. I had witnessed something terrible.”
“Does that mean the fight with Hugh never played a role in your disassociation?”
“Not directly at least, though I was obviously pretty upset and discombobulated afterwards. It seems I must have turned my phone off when I was at Le Pain Tuesday, probably because I didn’t want to see any more calls from him coming in.”
“I assume you went by train to Erling’s. But do you think you took the train back to the city after finding the body?”
“Williams is looking into it, but probably. When you dissociate, you can still function normally, and I probably wasn’t totally unglued by then. I mean, I called WorkSpace, so I still knew who I was, plus I showed up there later. But I was probably in bad shape already. I left my purse in my drawer, almost as if I was leaving myself behind.”
Gabby nods and takes a long sip of wine. “Erling must have been totally freaked when she started to piece the truth together.”
“Absolutely. And in hindsight I realize that once she began having suspicions, she made sure she was in close contact with me. I think she even said little things to rattle me. She insisted I should have a lawyer with me if I spoke to the police again. That made me so tense at the time. And sometimes I just felt stressed being in her presence, but didn’t understand why.”
“Ugh, I’m so sorry for everything you went through. Will this affect how much you can trust the new therapist?”
“I don’t think so. This one’s very different, and she’s a psychiatrist, too, so the approach won’t be the same. She even wants me to try medication, something to help prevent a relapse. I feel okay right now, but I don’t want to take any chances. If the case in New Jersey goes to trial, I’ll certainly have to testify.”
Gabby jumps up, ducks into the kitchen again, and returns shortly with a bowl of
hummus and little squares of toasted pita bread.
“And what about Hugh?” she asks, plopping back into her chair.
“I told him I would meet him at the apartment for dinner tomorrow night. I can’t put it off any longer.”
I grab a pita square and scoop up hummus with it. This is the first time since Sunday that I’ve had even a hint of an appetite.
“Are you going to try to work things out with him?”
“I’m not sure. We’ll talk tomorrow. And then, I guess, I’ll take it from there.”
I’m actually pretty sure what I’m going to do, but it doesn’t feel fair to admit it to Gabby before I tell Hugh. He’s still my husband.
“Well, just so you know, you’re welcome here any time.”
“Thanks, Gab. It’s been so good to spend time with you again.” A thought suddenly occurs to me. “Hey, by the way I never found the gift you dropped off for me on Sunday.”
Gabby flops back onto the cushion, raking her hair with her hands. “Oh boy,” she says with a sigh. “There never was a gift.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’d gone to your apartment to talk to Hugh.”
“Talk to Hugh about what?” I say, feeling a ripple of worry.
“The fact that I didn’t believe he was telling you the whole story about the fight you guys had. Maybe it was from being in some kind of delirious state when I was sick, but it seemed strange to me that Hugh would think you’d taken off without any word simply because of a heated discussion over kids. That’s not your style—so I suspected there was more to it than that. And I told him so.”
It takes me a moment to process this.
“And what did he say?”
“He said that anything involving your marriage was between him and you. End of discussion. I had no idea you were coming home that day, and when I ran into you, I told you the first thing that came into my mind, which of course you’d figure out soon enough was a lie. . . . I hope you don’t think I stepped out of line, Ally. It was only a theory at that point, and I didn’t want to bring it up to you and upset you unnecessarily if it wasn’t true.”