“Of course, no one in this neighborhood will care what happens to you. And when you are found having OD’d on Ambien, well, will anyone really be surprised?”
My thoughts are muddy and confused, but I need to come up with a plan, and fast. We continue up the stairs until we are in the master bathroom. My knees buckle, and I drop to the cold, tiled floor. She’s a blur in front of me, but I must stay conscious. I must keep her talking.
“You were pregnant,” I say, rolling the words out over my fat tongue.
Daisy winces. “Rory. That was his name. Rory.”
She bends down and pulls my shoes and socks off my feet.
“Rory,” I say.
“Yes. Rory.” She is pulling off my pants but pauses. “I lost him when I was more than seven months along. Paul had been fired from Overton, but you know all about that. We had to find him a new job, on top of moving out of our house. Those are two of the biggest stressors in life, did you know that?” She looks at me, unblinking, as if she expects an answer, and when she doesn’t get one, she kicks one of my legs. I can barely feel it. I wonder if I can muster the strength to tackle her and knock that gun out of her hand.
“Another woman might have acted differently. Divorced Paul. But I loved him so much.” Her voice breaks. “I did what I had to do for my family. Rory needed a father.”
She stands up and leans over the tub. Soon I hear the rushing sound of water pouring out of the spigot.
“When you told me Mark and Cole would be gone for the whole weekend, it felt a little too soon for all this. But once Dustin started sniffing around, I had no choice but to act. I got worried, but when I found out he sent you over to Susan’s, that was priceless. I knew hopping on her Wi-Fi would be a hoot.” She turns back to me and beams. “This is good. Once you’re unconscious, I’ll post your suicide note. I’ve already written it—you accept responsibility for everything. Maybe I’ll post it on Facebook, or maybe I’ll just leave it in your email drafts. I wish you could see it, Allie. It’s a doozy.”
“Rory,” I repeat with great effort. “How did you lose him?”
Daisy frowns. “I never talk about that. No one ever asks. Leah has known me for six years, and she’s never asked. Some friend, huh? I listen to her drone on and on about Dustin and Ava, and she doesn’t even know Rory’s name.”
“I want to know.” The words come out slurred, barely intelligible, but it elicits a smile from her.
“All right. I’ll tell you.” She sits on the edge of the large tub, laying the gun beside her. It’s only a few feet away. Almost within reach.
“I knew something was wrong the whole day. I had cramping that grew into sharp pains. We had just moved into our new place and were still unpacking. We were starting over, trying to put the whole Overton nightmare behind us. Paul had a new job at a boarding school in Massachusetts. It was all going to work out.”
She leans forward and dips her hand in the water. “Bit too hot. Don’t want to scald you, do we?” Daisy twists one of the knobs and straightens up. “Where was I? Oh yes. I began bleeding. We went to the hospital. We wanted Rory so much. We needed him. Whenever I thought about what you had done to Paul, to us, I made myself focus on Rory and on how wonderful our life was going to be.”
She clucks her tongue and shuts off the tap. The only sound in the room now is the rain beating against the skylight. I’m supposed to be at Artie Zucker’s by now. I wonder if he will send someone to look for me.
“Placenta accreta,” Daisy says. “Have you ever heard that term? I was in so much pain. Little Rory was stillborn via emergency C-section. When I woke up, they told me I had undergone an emergency hysterectomy.”
She sniffs and wipes at her eyes.
“That’s right. I didn’t just lose this tiny human who had been living inside me. I lost my womb. I had joined this website for expectant mothers that sent an email every month about how your baby was developing. Even after Rory died, the emails kept coming. Oh, now your baby is two months old and might be able to coo. That sort of thing.”
“So sorry,” I manage to say. I’m losing steam, my energy seeping out of me. I flex my right fingers. If Daisy becomes distracted enough in her reminiscing, then I can make a grab for the gun. It’s all I can come up with.
“You can imagine how painful that was. You’re probably thinking: Daisy, why didn’t you unsubscribe? Why did you put yourself through this every month?”
I look up into her large blue eyes. They are glassy and unfocused.
“But I couldn’t cancel those emails. That would have been like denying Rory had ever existed. Paul suffered, too. He felt so guilty. He blamed himself for Rory dying, but it wasn’t his fault. You know that better than anyone.”
I want to keep her talking. I know she wants to. “My sister,” I say. “Reverse mortgage.”
“Her? She deserved what she got, too. Back then, she wanted more money. The house wasn’t enough for that greedy little bitch. She wanted fifty grand, too. Cash. She came to our new place and said she wouldn’t leave until we gave it to her.”
I try to speak, to tell her I had no idea, but all I can do at this point is part my lips. No sound comes out.
“We didn’t have that kind of money, but she didn’t believe me. We didn’t know what to do. Go to the police in our new town? Tell them what? About Overton? We were trying to start over.”
Daisy glares at me.
“Your sister went to the dean of students at Paul’s new school. She showed them the pictures. Paul was fired, of course. We had to move in with his mother outside Boston. He couldn’t get a teaching job. And we lived with the fear that you or your sister or your mother might come calling. He began drinking. You know the rest, don’t you? He died in a car crash. Some people said it was suicide. I was left alone. Widowed at twenty-nine. In debt. No child, no parents, no husband, no womb.” She closes her eyes for a moment.
It’s my chance.
I can’t die.
I can’t leave Cole alone to fend for himself. I lunge at the gun, my hand closing in on the cool metal. Before I can raise the gun, she is on top of me, pinning my body to the hard tile floor. Her fingers claw at mine, trying to pry the gun free. I breathe in her familiar, sickly sweet perfume as she falls on top of me, our bodies tangling like sea kelp. The gun falls from my hand and clatters across the bathroom floor. I cannot see it. I hear gasping, unsure if it is coming from me or her. I don’t let go. I hold on to her for dear life.
Her hands tighten around my throat and begin to squeeze. The room dims. Gasping for breath, I bring my knee up and connect with something soft. It’s enough to loosen her grip on my throat. Choking, I roll to my side. A moment opens, maybe the last one. A low-level rage fuels the fibers of my muscles. I feel around until I’ve grabbed a fistful of her hair. With one last burst of strength, I wrench Daisy’s head back and smash her skull against the side of the porcelain tub as hard as I can.
The world goes black.
56
A nurse is fussing with an IV bag that snakes cool liquid into my arm. The room is dark, save for the bright lights of the monitor beside me.
“You’re awake.”
I turn to see Mark sitting in a chair by my bedside. He leans over me and plants a kiss on my forehead. “Thank god you’re okay.”
When I try to speak, my tongue sticks to my parched mouth. He hands me a plastic cup filled with ice chips. The nurse takes my temperature. “Doing okay?” she asks.
I crunch on some ice. “Fine.”
“Temperature’s normal. That’s good.”
“Can she go home later today?” Mark asks.
“You’ll have to ask the doctor. He’ll be by on rounds in a few hours.”
After she leaves and the door clicks shut, Mark takes my hand and squeezes it hard. “I’m so sorry, Allie. I had no idea.”
“What happened? How did I end up here? The last thing I remember is being in the bathroom. Where’s Daisy?”
“Slow down
. Daisy’s been arrested. Remember the private detective? Jon Block? When you didn’t show up at the meeting with Artie Zucker, we called him. Apparently, he had a tracking device on your car. He’s the one who found you and called the police.” Mark lets out a low whistle and shakes his head. “I can’t believe it. All this time, we trusted her. Why would she do this? Do you have any idea?”
I grimace. “I do. I’ll tell you everything. Just not now, okay?”
He nods. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you. Or that I doubted you.”
“It’s okay. I’m just happy you’re here. Where’s Cole?”
“He’s fine.” Mark takes a deep breath. “He’s still with Caitlin on the Eastern Shore. They’re coming back tomorrow. Allie, I would never have … The whole Bridgeways thing, I just—”
“It’s all right. Really. It’s over, right? And Dustin?” I think of him lying in our kitchen, our fire poker next to his head. I brace myself for the worst.
“Poor kid.” He winces. “He’s in surgery now, but there’s a good chance he’ll pull through.”
A wave of guilt washes over me. Dustin got hurt because of me. “It’s my fault.”
“No. Don’t say that. None of this was your fault.”
Tears fill my eyes. I don’t deserve his forgiveness. “I want to tell you everything, Mark, all of it.”
“Shhh. Tell me later. You need to rest now.”
I lie back, exhaustion overtaking me. Unanswered questions pop into my head, but I don’t have the energy to chase them down. As if reading my mind, Mark says, “Just go back to sleep. I’m here now.”
* * *
“Bad luck?” Detective Katz asks and shrugs. It’s the next afternoon, and he’s sitting in my living room, his long legs stretched out in front of one of those chintz chairs while Detective Lopez stands silently by the window. I am on the sofa, curled up with a blanket over me, hands wrapped around a cup of tea.
“Apparently,” Katz continues, “Daisy Gordon—or Margaret Cooper, if you will—had lived here without incident for twelve years. Until you moved in, that is.”
“And Rob Avery?” Mark asks from where he is standing at the mantel. “He was just collateral damage?”
“We’re not entirely sure,” Katz says. “Looks like there may have been some bad blood between those two about a real estate deal. We’ll know more as we investigate further.”
The mood is entirely different than the last time the two detectives were here, interrogating me. Detective Lopez is the one playing second fiddle, while Detective Katz peppers me gently with questions. They offered no official apology. In fact, they’ve made no mention of having been entirely on the wrong track. But I guess the fact that they believe me and that Daisy Gordon is in jail should be enough.
“I don’t understand how she did everything,” I say. “I mean, she’s not exactly a computer genius.”
“Apparently, she hired some kid from Florida,” Detective Lopez says from her spot at the window. We all turn to face her. “We’re still piecing it together, but he’s the one that created the fake Tinder and Facebook accounts. She fed him the information, including the photos, and he did the dirty work.”
“Will he be charged, too?”
Detective Katz shrugs. “It’s complicated. He’s a minor, and we’re hoping he’ll cooperate in the investigation. But we can’t say for sure. A lot of it depends on how helpful he is, like whether he can help the authorities recover the money from the reverse mortgage.”
I take a long sip of my peppermint tea. I’m still astounded at the myriad ways Daisy Gordon, or Margaret Cooper, attempted to destroy my life. Mark heard from a neighbor that Dustin made it through surgery and is expected to fully recover. He’ll be in the hospital a few more days; I plan to visit him tomorrow when I go to see Sharon. The doctor said my mother will be all right, but they’re keeping her for a few more days until her liver tests come back normal. The police told Mark that surveillance video captured Daisy visiting my mother at Morningside House, not once but several times. Turns out Sharon was not imagining that some woman was out to get her.
I have a feeling it will take a long time to sort it all out.
“Is that all, Detectives?” Mark asks. “I think my wife has been through enough. She needs to rest.”
Detective Katz stands up. “That’s all for now. Of course, we’ll need you to come down to the station for an official statement sometime in the next few days.”
Detective Lopez glances at me as she walks by, no sign of remorse on her stoic face. I hear Mark open the front door and exchange a few words with them, although I can’t make out what they are saying. I am still groggy; it feels like I am recovering from the flu. The doctor said it would take another twenty-four hours for that much Ambien to leave my system. Cole comes running in and jumps on the couch. He bounces up and down.
“Whoa,” I say, putting down my tea on the table in front of me. “Easy there.”
“Can we curl up in your bed and watch Aristocrats?”
“You mean The Aristocats? That sounds good.” I can make out low, murmuring voices coming from the foyer. Is Mark still talking to the detectives?
“Can I microwave popcorn?” Cole asks. “I know how to do it. You put the bag in and just press Start.”
I almost get up to help, but I’m too tired. “Go ahead.”
He runs off into the kitchen just as Mark enters the living room, holding a small woven basket with a checkered cloth over it.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“Just a little something from Heather. She wants you to know she’s sorry she thought you were a criminal.”
I can’t help but laugh.
“She figured, what better way to say that than with blueberry chia seed muffins?” He pulls back the napkin and takes a whiff. “They smell good. Want one?”
I narrow my eyes. “You know, I think I’m gonna pass on accepting food from our neighbors. At least for a while.”
SIX MONTHS LATER
Margaret “Daisy” Gordon, née Cooper, pled guilty to an assortment of charges from murder to mortgage fraud and was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after twenty years.
I know this from the Google alerts I received at my new apartment in the heart of the Left Bank, almost four thousand blessed miles from Bethesda. In addition, Krystle sent me links to every story on the internet about the case until I asked her to stop.
Once it was clear that she was in no legal danger and that Sharon would recover completely from the poisoning, Krystle stepped into the spotlight as the representative of our family. She milked every bit out of her role as dear sister and dutiful daughter, and she managed to spin the media interest into a role on a YouTube reality show. A reality show on cable TV can’t be far behind.
At least she has agreed to step in as Sharon’s caretaker while we are in France. Sharon seems to be holding steady, adjusting to the memory ward. I check in with her caretakers via Skype weekly, which annoys Krystle, but we’ve agreed to pretend it’s because I am a micromanager.
On a late afternoon in April, I am sitting by the window at Le Rousseau, a café around the corner from our apartment on the rue du Cherche-Midi. I’m sipping a café au lait, in violation of the French norm of not taking milk in your coffee after noon.
I search through the images on my digital camera that I’ve taken today. It’s impossible not to be inspired wandering through this city. I started today’s stroll in the Marais on the Right Bank, then explored the Latin Quarter and the area around the Quai d’Orléans, and later discovered a quiet street filled with pastel-painted doors hidden in the shadow of the Tour Montparnasse.
For all the pain that my experience with Paul brought me, he was the one who taught me about the concept of the decisive moment in photography, when the camera captures elements in life coming together perfectly for a fleeting instant.
And I’m grateful to him for that. Because in the end, our memories are really our mind’
s collection of such decisive moments. When Mark first kissed me. When Cole was placed in my arms after his birth. When I found the strength to slam Daisy’s skull on the edge of that tub.
Sometimes I do this, sit by myself at a café and watch Parisians walk by, trying to make sense of everything that happened last fall.
Reporters swarmed the Eastbrook neighborhood right afterward. REAL HOUSEWIVES TAKES A DEADLY TURN, reads a typical headline. We had to pull Cole from school, move into a hotel. In tears one night, I joked to Mark that I wished we could move to another country, and a few days later, he told me his firm was looking to fill a position in its Paris office. We left before Christmas.
From a safe distance, I’ve watched Dustin, his now-shaved head lending him the look of a baby vulture, become a media sensation. He made a compelling figure, showing off the angry red scar that ran along the back of his head from ear to ear, a result of surgeons cutting through his skull to ease the swelling on his brain. Last I heard, he had held several ask-me-anything sessions on Reddit.
I learned from the police that Daisy had installed spyware on my computer via an attachment to an email from Periscope Realty back in August. It could have been embedded in any one of the numerous documents Daisy sent me when we bought the house.
I’d clicked on them all, completely trusting.
I finish my coffee and unwrap the small square of chocolate that accompanies it, a French café tradition I love. I no longer ask myself, what if we had moved to a different suburb or even just a different neighborhood in Bethesda? What are the odds that we would move into Margaret Cooper’s neighborhood and that she would be our Realtor?
I’m sure she asked herself the same thing when I showed up in her office.
I used to go over all our interactions, wondering if I’d missed some sign. But there’s no point in thinking like that. What’s done is done.
I’ve emailed Leah several times. She returned one message, right after we moved here. She said she didn’t blame me for what happened to Dustin. Her email was full of exclamation points and forced holiday cheer. She enclosed a picture of the book club—a grinning Heather, Janelle, and Pam, in addition to herself. They were planning to read a novel called Resilience for the month of December. Janelle’s pick; it’s about the Holocaust.
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