by Kate White
As the ambulance zooms through the night, I can’t help but imagine Claire, headed for the same hospital four days ago. And I think of my own mom, too, feeling the corners of my eyes well with tears. I need to call her tomorrow. Need to pull her into my life more.
Once we reach the ER, I’m evaluated quickly by a triage nurse and then examined by a warm, thirtysomething PA whose name tag says Amir Mohabbat and who orders a CAT scan of my head and cervical spine. I’m lucky to get both done quickly, and neither scan shows any serious damage. I’m praying Gabe will be waiting in the exam area when I return, but there’s no sign of him. Though up until this moment, I’ve kept my emotions at bay, they surge now, a churning mix of fear, disgust, anger, and grief.
Once my tests are completed, Amir injects me with Novocain so he can irrigate the wound and suture it. He makes small talk with me about my career, asking with a wink if I think he could ever get work as an extra. I manage to grunt out a few five-word answers. Finally, just as he’s finishing, the curtain parts, and I cry out with relief to see Gabe standing there, his clothes still a little soggy.
“Honey, please tell me you’re okay,” he says, his voice breaking.
I nod and glance at Amir.
“She’s going to be fine,” he says. “There’s a nasty gash that I’ve just sewn up. Minor concussion. Nothing to stop her from doing Oscar-caliber work this year. She needs to keep the wound clean, take Tylenol for pain, and return if there’s vomiting, blurred vision, or if the pain really intensifies.”
I thank him for all his efforts.
“Can I take her home?” Gabe asks him.
“Let’s give it another twenty minutes so we can observe her a little longer. Then she’s free to go,” he says and ducks out of the exam room.
“Does it hurt a lot?” Gabe asks.
“Only when I think.”
“Ha. Good one . . . . God, I’ve been sick with worry about you.”
“Gabe, if you hadn’t come when you did, she would have bashed my head in.”
“But it looked like you were managing to fight her off.”
“Only briefly—with the dog leash. Ha, I’ve never been so grateful for that course I took on stage fighting and how to work with found objects . . . . What about you? They don’t suspect you of anything, do they?”
“No, since my story matched yours. And Wendy seemed totally unhinged, screaming at the police and saying she was going to have their jobs. Poor Blake. The police arrested her and took her away.”
I tap a hand against my forehead, as if it will help me pull my thoughts together. “Why did the troopers show up in the yard, do you know?”
“Keira called one of the detectives who’d given her his card. She noticed the back door open, realized you and Wendy were both gone, and worried that something might be wrong.”
Finally, Keira’s natural anxiety has been put to good use.
“And the troopers came just like that?”
“Apparently, they were part of the search today and knew someone had already been murdered on the property.”
“And how did you get home, anyway? I thought you were with your dad. Wait, how is your dad?”
“My father’s fine. He had a panic attack. I guess this has all been too much for him. They wanted to keep him a while longer for observation, but Blake was worried about Wendy and felt he should get back earlier, so I left with him. To be honest, I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about what you said—about Hannah possibly being a danger. The storm was so bad at one point, Blake ended up pulling off the road for a little while, and it was in an area with no cell service.”
“I’m just so lucky you came when you did. Like I said, she would have killed me.”
He shakes his head. “I know. But why?” he asks. “What possible reason could there be?”
“I wish I knew. I’ve been going over it again and again in my mind and I don’t have a clue.”
28
Gabe and I don’t arrive home until close to one in the morning, but we’re not surprised to see the house ablaze with lights. Marcus had texted Gabe to say that everyone would be waiting up for us in the living room. Everyone but Wendy, that is. According to Marcus, she’s being held without bail.
I’m totally spent by now, and though the Tylenol has eased the pain a bit, my head feels like it’s been wedged between two boulders. Still, I know I need to greet the family. They’re desperate for answers.
Even from the hall I can see how distraught everyone is. As we enter the living room, Keira, Marcus, Nick, and Blake all jump up, begging to know how I’m doing, and form a loose circle around Gabe and me. Ash, looking pale and exhausted, remains seated, though, and Hannah hangs back, clearly shaken, her face even redder than before.
“Summer, what in god’s name is going on?” Blake pleads. “I’ve been going out of my mind.” His hair is standing on end, as if he’s been raking his fingers through it for hours.
“Blake, I’m so sorry,” I say, though I know that nothing I tell him will offer any consolation. “Wendy followed me out of the house and struck me as hard as she could. And she would have killed me if Gabe hadn’t come along.”
“But it wasn’t her,” he says. “She saw someone else strike you and she was coming to your rescue. She told me. We have to make the police understand that.”
“Blake, I saw her with my own two eyes.”
“But it was dark,” Ash interjects from the armchair. “Can’t you be mistaken?”
“I saw her, too,” Gabe says. “As I came running down the rise, she had her arm raised, ready to hit again.”
“But what earthly reason would she have to hurt you?” Blake says, his voice flushed with anguish.
“I have no idea, I really don’t. But she clearly wanted me dead. She was using some kind of tool, like a hammer.” As I say the last word, my mind fixes on a thought I had while lurching back to the house with the trooper. “And I think she killed Jillian, too.”
The room fills with gasps. I see Gabe’s mouth drop open in shock.
“No, no.” Blake throws up his arms. “That’s even crazier. My wife is not a murderer. And she barely knew Jillian.”
“Yes, why?” Ash demands. “Why would she have any reason to kill Jillian? This isn’t making any sense at all.”
I shake my head, which only makes the throbbing worse. “I don’t know. But she was going to try to make my death look like a failed sexual assault, too. So we’d all think the predator had come back.”
The room goes utterly silent, and I rack my brain for answers once again, but come up empty.
“I think I know why.” To my shock I realize it’s Hannah speaking. She’s still standing outside the circle, and as if choreographed, we all pivot to face her.
“What?” Nick says.
Hannah bites her lip hard, then takes a deep breath. “Because Wendy thought it was me down there by the stream. I was wearing the same coat as Jillian that day.”
So maybe it’s true, that the wrong woman was killed. But that doesn’t explain why Wendy would have wanted Hannah dead.
“My god,” Blake shouts, now angry as well as befuddled. “This is starting to sound like theater of the absurd. What could her motive possibly have been?”
Another bite of her lip. It’s not for effect, I realize. She’s totally rattled.
“Because . . . because of something I overheard,” she says. “I’d gone outdoors Saturday night to sneak a cigarette by the side of the house, the side near the carriage house, and I heard Claire and Wendy talking on the patio.” She looks at Blake. “Uh, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Wendy’s been having an affair with some guy she met in Palm Beach and Claire knew because she saw them together there a few months ago. After you told everyone about the baby that night, I guess she decided to corner Wendy. She said that if she didn’t come clean with you, she would. She’d make sure there was a DNA test because she thought the baby might not be yours.”
Blake lets o
ut a wail that could shatter the windows, and Gabe and Marcus rush to him. I stay where I am, pleading with my brain to work faster. It was a confrontation between Claire and Wendy that Henry overheard. Not Claire and Hannah. And it was Wendy who was threatened by the knowledge that Claire possessed, not Hannah.
Nick steps closer to Hannah, his eyes narrowed.
“How did Wendy know you’d overheard?” he says.
“I . . . I told her.”
“Why?”
“I was just trying, you know, to help her—because I felt so sorry for her. I said I’d keep it to myself, and she promised to have my back when no one else could be bothered. I had no idea she’d try to kill me, for god’s sake.”
She’s clearly floundering, out of her depth on this one.
“Jesus, Hannah,” Nick says. “Wendy betrayed my brother. You didn’t think I should know?”
“I didn’t want to interfere. It didn’t seem like any of my business.”
“None of your business?” Nick yells, his face reddening. “Aren’t I your damn business?”
Her expression morphs from flustered to wounded, and she turns on her heels and flees the room.
I take off, too, pursuing her down the wide front hall and then along the corridor that runs past the den. When I catch up to her, she’s almost at the side door leading from the house, and she stops abruptly, clearly realizing she has to either venture out into the darkness or talk to me.
“What the hell do you want?” she demands angrily.
“Tell me what you know about foxgloves.”
She purses her pillowy lips, bare now of her usual lipstick and gloss. I can see her sense of superiority surging back. “Seriously? You’re asking me about flowers at a time like this?”
“Yes, now. If you know what’s good for you.”
“Okay, okay. I know they’re poisonous. Claire told me when she gave me a tour.”
“But you pretended you didn’t know that when I spoke to you in the carriage house.”
“I was just messing with you. You’ve been a total bitch to me from day one, and you know it.”
“Did you pick foxgloves from the garden by the cottage on the morning Claire died?”
“What? No.”
“Prove it.”
“I wasn’t out flower picking. Ask Nick. Or ask Marcus. He had me meet him outside that morning so I could hear how furious he was about me marrying his brother, and then when I was done listening to him spew, I played tennis with Nick and hung by the pool.”
Then who . . . ?
My god. I’ve had it all wrong. It was Wendy who was threatened by Claire. And it must have been Wendy who picked the foxgloves and made the tea. Wendy who poisoned Claire.
If I’m remembering right, Blake went for a drive that morning, so Wendy had the carriage house kitchen to herself. That would have allowed her time to cut the flowers, dry the leaves in the oven there, and make the tea without being seen. And she would have had the house kitchen to herself, as well, in order to make the substitution. She was the one who told me Bonnie wouldn’t be in until late.
And the book. The one on poisons. Wendy had been standing near that shelf when I’d run into her in the study.
But one thing doesn’t add up. Why would she place a foxglove in my drawer? Why would she try to provoke me when she had no reason to believe I was onto her? And then it hits me.
“You put the foxglove in my drawer, didn’t you?” I say to Hannah.
She lifts a shoulder, as if in agreement, and I swear to god, she stifles a grin. “If you don’t mind, I need to get to my room and pack my bag,” she says. “This family is nutso. Someone tried to murder me, and no one gives a shit.”
“Why, Hannah? Why did you leave the foxglove?”
“Okay, I was messing with you again. You snuck into my room, for god’s sake. Was I just supposed to let that go?”
I press my hands to my head, as my thoughts come together like the pins in a lock lining up.
“If you didn’t pick the flowers near the cottage, where did you find them?” I ask.
“This is ridiculous. Why are we still talking about it?”
“Tell me.”
“If you must know, from behind the carriage house. I happened to notice some of them there one day.”
“Did you ever see Wendy picking any from that spot?”
“Wendy? You think her first plan was to poison me?”
“Not you, no. I need to know. Did you ever see her with any? In the kitchen of the carriage house, maybe?”
“No. I—”
“What?”
“I didn’t see her, but she saw me with the ones I picked.”
I jerk back in surprise. “Did she say anything?”
“No. But she looked at me kind of weird. And I told her not to worry, that I didn’t have anything wicked in mind.”
That’s why Wendy wanted Hannah dead. Not because of the conversation she’d overheard. She probably trusted Hannah to keep her lips zipped about it because Hannah needed her. But she’d misunderstood Hannah’s comment about the foxgloves. She must have taken it as a taunt, that Hannah had somehow figured out she was a murderer.
And when she thought she saw Hannah walking alone yesterday morning, she set out after her.
29
FOUR MONTHS LATER
The second we pull into the driveway of the house on Durham Road, it’s as if a switch has been flicked to make my heart start beating faster. I’m not sure exactly why. This isn’t the first time I’ve been back since July. Gabe and I have driven out here a few times, though we haven’t brought Henry yet.
Maybe it’s due to the sudden, unexpected downpour. The raindrops pelting against the roof of the car, summoning me right back to that horrible night last summer.
“You positive you don’t mind staying in the cottage?” Gabe asks. “The heating system isn’t state of the art.”
“No, I’ll be fine. I packed flannel PJs.”
What I don’t tell him is that I’ll feel safer and more at ease in the cottage. The big, rambling quality of the main house, which I always found so appealing, so enchanting, now makes me jumpy. When I’m in one of those rooms these days, I’m always looking over my shoulder, thinking I’ve heard unexplainable footsteps or a door opening somewhere it shouldn’t.
After quickly unloading the car, Gabe and I do a mad dash along the path to the cottage, our duffel bags bouncing against our legs as we run. Ash told us he’d be lying down after lunch so we’ll see him closer to dinnertime.
Someone, perhaps Bonnie, has clearly turned on the heat in anticipation of our arrival, and we find that the cottage is actually fairly toasty. Clean and tidy, too. While Gabe carries our bags upstairs, I switch on lamps on the ground floor, fill the teakettle with water, and open the fireplace flue.
By the time Gabe returns, a few flames are already licking up the sides of the logs I’ve lit. I finish making tea, and we both drop onto the sofa with our mugs. There’s a pleasant November-y scent to the room, coming from both the woodsmoke and the bowl of fresh pine cones that’s been placed on the coffee table. Watching the fire with Gabe has a calming effect on me, slowing my pulse.
And yet . . . I can’t imagine ever feeling truly at ease out here again, even in the cottage.
It’s not that I have any reason to be scared. Wendy’s in jail and awaiting trial, and she can’t lay a hand on us. From all accounts, the police have a solid case against her for Jillian’s murder. Paul Mizel—who needless to say is no longer representing her—heard through back channels that the police searched the dumpsters behind the medical center where Wendy had her sonogram and ended up finding the murder weapon in one of them. A mini pickax. Online, it’s described as a tool that helps gardeners break up hardened surface soil, but it’s capable of puncturing someone’s skull. Wendy must have grabbed it in a hurry from the potting shed when she spotted who she thought was Hannah making her way across the lawn. Then, the next night, she returned to
the shed for the tool she used on me, which I’ve since learned was some kind of small hoe, sharp enough to do serious damage. If she’d managed to strike me several times in the head, she definitely could have killed me.
They also apparently found traces of Jillian’s blood and DNA in Wendy’s big designer tote, the one I saw her clutching in the living room the day of the murder. Obviously, she won’t be seeing how much she can get for it through TheRealReal.com.
Proving that she killed Claire is going to be tougher. The police did test Claire’s body for digitalis and the results showed that toxic amounts of it were present in her system. But unless Wendy confesses—and so far she’s denied everything—we’ll never know for certain if she was responsible. We may have to take consolation from the fact that she’ll surely spend decades in prison for Jillian’s murder.
Even now, with the benefit of hindsight, I’m still staggered by what Wendy was capable of. After it became clear that it was her, not Hannah, who killed Claire, I didn’t understand why she felt so desperate to keep her affair under wraps. If she was so unhappy with Blake, why not simply leave him?
But what we learned later from Blake—who from a DNA test proved he wasn’t the father of the baby—is that the man Wendy was cheating with is a twenty-nine-year-old associate of one of her clients, and he makes about fifty grand a year. Though Wendy would have done well enough in a divorce settlement, she obviously knew things would pale for her going forward. She wouldn’t be able to count on Blake’s income, and a prenup limited her from receiving any money the senior Keatons would leave upon their deaths.
And perhaps most significantly, the investment money Ash had offered her was being paid out over years, and any future funding for her prized gallery would clearly evaporate when the marriage did.
“Wendy liked me well enough to stay in the marriage and raise someone else’s kid with me,” a shattered Blake told Gabe. “But what she actually loved was her gallery and her lifestyle. That’s what she couldn’t stand losing.”