by Cate Holahan
“George’s friend said that the prosecutor’s office isn’t planning to press any charges against you. David was self-defense. People on the street below saw him, the fight for the gun. He would have pushed you over if you hadn’t . . .”
She trails off, not wanting to accuse me of murdering my husband. But that’s what I did. Charged or not. I know the truth. I killed them both.
“Anyway, since the cops had already charged David with Nick’s death, they’re considering that case closed too. David killed his boyfriend, probably to keep him from exposing their relationship before he was ready, and then tried to shut you up when you found out.” Chris looks up at the ceiling and blinks away a tear. “I’m so sorry, Liza.”
“Hey, there’s no reason for you to be sorry.”
“I shouldn’t have told you everything. You weren’t ready. It made you want to run to David and try to make things right with him, or something.” She twists her hair and then releases it. “He could have killed you.” Again, she looks at the tiled ceiling, trying not to cry. “Some friend I am.”
I grasp her hand. It feels cold compared to mine, which has been wrapped beneath the hospital blanket. “You are the best friend anyone could ever ask for. You’re my family.”
“Yeah.” She offers a little smirk. “Well, I guess I’ll have to stop bitching about George now since you clearly win in the asshole husband department. Like, hands down. No competition.”
She’s trying to make me laugh, to smile, but I can’t. I think it might be a long time before I feel anything.
“I was going to head to my apartment and get some food. A change of clothes.” She pulls at her pant legs, expanding them like a striped tent. She’s wearing the same pajama bottoms that she had on when I last saw her. I may be imagining it, but I see sand on the thighs. “Can I get you anything?”
What do I still have? My marriage is over. My husband is dead. I won’t ever have a baby. After what I did, I won’t ever have peace of mind.
I think of an aspirin bottle and how close I came as a teenager to cutting my life short. That’s not how I want my story to end. I am a fiction writer. I can imagine a new beginning for me. I have my freedom. I have my family. I have Chris. Trevor. And Beth. I’ll always have Beth.
“Would you bring my laptop?” I ask. “I have to finish a chapter.”
Chapter 19
The stroller mafia is out in full force on this sunny afternoon. I push my carriage toward the rows of Bugaboos, Stokkes, and City Selects lining the children’s playground area. Before I come within shouting distance, I veer onto the lawn with my carriage. I can’t run into anyone from my moms’ group right now. I must talk to Jake.
He’s sitting beneath the cherry tree where we ate sandwiches last spring, months before I’d given birth to Vicky—perhaps before he’d started cheating. The summer sun has turned the tree’s leaves bright green. In a few months, they will morph to burnished orange, and come spring, pale-pink petals will again cover the bark as they did during our picnic. The flowers will break free when the wind whips off the water and drift down in a tinted snow of petals. Vicky will get a kick out of that. I’ll have to tell Jake to make sure he takes her out and snaps pictures so I can see. If he won’t talk to me, I’ll ask my mother to do it. She won’t cut off contact with me, her only daughter, just because I’m in prison.
Victoria coos at me as I take her from the bassinet and sit down with her beside Jake. The Hudson River sparkles aquamarine in the sunshine. It’s a beautiful day to say good-bye to my daughter.
Jake believes I will start talking. Explain myself. I can sense his expectation in his gaze. But what can I say? He has the flip-flops. Somehow, he knows that they’re hers. Undoubtedly, Colleen’s DNA and mine are embedded in their rubber soles. True, a clever defense attorney might be able to blame the presence of my genetic material on an unwitting transfer from Jake. But I don’t see how anyone could convince a jury that there’s an innocent explanation as to how the shoes came into my possession.
I lift Vicky up and down, making her eyes flutter and mouth open with excitement, hoping that Jake takes his time calling in reinforcements. He’s probably already dialed his police buddies. Undoubtedly, the officers that appear to be lazily patrolling the lawn to make the moms feel secure in their million-dollar apartments are actually here to arrest me.
Jake rubs a hand over his head. “I bought Colleen those flip-flops off a street vendor. She was always complaining that her toes hurt by the end of the night from the high heels she wore. When I saw you shove them in the stroller, I thought they looked familiar, but I also thought that maybe I was imagining things because of my shock that Colleen had been murdered. Still, I followed you to see where you were going that you needed two pairs of shoes. When you tried to hide them in the diaper before throwing them away, I knew.”
Tears tumble down my cheeks. I keep focused on Vicky, trying to commit every detail of her little face to memory. I imagine how the nondescript features before me will grow into a combination of Jake’s face and my own. Surely she’ll come to visit sometimes. My mom will bring her.
“I know why you did it.” Jake’s voice is as raw as a skinned knee. “You were suffering postpartum depression. You probably followed me, saw us make love in her apartment through the window, and then went to confront her. She mocked you, right? And with the depression and sleep deprivation and all the emotion from the betrayal, you just grabbed something and started hitting her.”
Sadness rips through my arms, making it too difficult to keep bouncing my baby while supporting her neck with my fingertips. I hold Vicky close to my breasts and brush my palm on her fuzzy bald head, smell the sour milk on her neck. I must memorize the feel of her in my arms. This is what will carry me through whatever is to come.
Jake wraps his arm around my shoulders. “It’s not your fault.” His voice is barely more than a whisper. “It’s mine. I knew you weren’t well, and I pushed you past the breaking point. I am so, so sorry, baby. I am so sorry.”
The apology is a sign-off. I stiffen, expecting men to haul me to my feet momentarily. This is the end. I’m almost relieved. “They must be coming for me now, then.”
“They?”
I kiss Victoria’s head and pass her to her father. “I need you to be better, Jake. For Vicky’s sake.”
He holds her between his thick hands and brings his nose near her face. “I will. I promise. You’ll see. I’ll—”
I look at the cop pacing nearby. He seems to be watching us for a signal. “Is it that one?”
“What?”
“Is that the cop coming to arrest me?”
Jake takes a choppy breath. “No one is coming to arrest you. But they will one day soon. This is a cop murder, honey. The NYPD won’t let this lie. The best thing for us to do is to talk to a lawyer and prepare an insanity defense. If you turn yourself in, that will count for something. I think I can pull some strings to get the DA’s office to accept a plea of not guilty by reason of mental defect.”
For a moment, I think I’m filling in Jake’s open mouth with words that I want to hear. He can’t really be letting me off for murdering his girlfriend. “You didn’t call the police?”
He places Victoria in the crook of his elbow and grabs my hand with his free one. His blue eyes remind me of the sky today, clear and bright. I think back to the first time I saw those eyes in the courtroom, the way they lit up when he saw me. “I want us to be a family, baby. You were seeing a shrink for postpartum depression, so we have the record. I think we can win on mental grounds. You’ll have to do some time in a hospital, but you’ll get out.” He smiles weakly. “We can put this whole thing behind us.”
Jake and me and baby makes three. Is that really what he wants now? Can I want that again? “I don’t know.” I’m overwhelmed with emotion, crying so hard that I can barely breathe. “You don’t really want me anymore. This is to get me to turn myself in.”
“They’re going to find eviden
ce. You know it. This is the best way for us to be a family again.”
A moan gurgles from my throat. I cover my face with my hands, trying to control myself. In the darkness, I see what I did to Colleen. The picture will always be with me. “I can’t forgive myself.”
Jake hugs me to his side, still holding Vicky. “I forgive you.” Victoria yawns as she rests in her daddy’s arm. Jake smiles at her and sniffs. “We made a beautiful baby, didn’t we?”
I have no idea what she will look like grown up. Her blue eyes may not stay that way. Her round face will become more angular, square like Jake’s or maybe oval like mine. But she is beautiful. She is ours.
My husband stares at me. Tears stream from his big blue eyes, water slipping over the edge of a sparkling dam. “Come on, honey. Let’s go to talk to that lawyer.”
*
Jake hires Lauren Dayton, one of New York’s big-name criminal defense attorneys, to represent me. He’s faced her in court and swears that she’s the best. Within an hour she’s in our living room, arranging with the district attorney’s office for me to turn myself in.
Both Lauren and Jake escort me to the precinct while my mom stays with Victoria. Jake’s position secures my humane treatment. The police pretend that I’m a run-of-the-mill crazy murderer and not a cop killer. Though I am fingerprinted, made to change clothes, and checked, naked, for contraband, I am not roughed up or left to rot in a holding cell for hours with other criminally insane people.
When I am done being “processed,” I enter a musty-smelling room with gray carpet running up the sides and a table in the center. It’s cold in my thin orange jumpsuit. Lauren sits on one of two chairs beside a metal table. She smiles at me in an encouraging way, as though I’ve been through the worst of it.
I slump on the metal stool, feeling as though my life force oozed out of my body at some point during my transformation from wife to inmate. “Where’s Jake?” I sound desperate. I’ve never wanted to see my husband so badly. His determination to stand by me has reignited all the loving feelings that I ever had for him, burning through my apathy and hate. I love him. I need him. He and Victoria are my everything.
Lauren tilts her head and grins. “Jake is outside. I want to talk through my strategy with you first. You’re my client. Jake doesn’t need to hear everything we discuss.”
I straighten up on the stool. She knows something that she believes Jake shouldn’t. Has she spoken to Tyler?
“I’ve interviewed some fertility experts,” she says. “They will swear that the hormone withdrawals that you experienced after giving birth likely played a role in destabilizing your brain and made you unable to control your actions.”
I breathe. “That’s good, I guess.”
“We also have an expert on circadian rhythms who will testify that the sleep deprivation you were experiencing from nursing an infant all night might have also contributed to you becoming divorced from reality, kind of putting you in a dream state while you were talking to the deceased.”
I think back to Colleen’s hand, how it had resembled a spider crawling toward the gun. Was I half asleep when I murdered her? Was I incapable of stopping myself?
“The pipe makes what you did look premeditated, but I think the sleep expert will go a long way toward convincing a jury or judge that you picked it up without being fully aware of your intentions.”
She smiles at me. There’s something behind the expression. I nod for her to continue, still bracing myself.
“I also spoke with that shrink you were seeing.”
My stomach drops to my knees. She’ll either tell Jake that I revenge-cheated or it will come out in court. He won’t support me then. Right now, he feels as though he’s to blame for pushing his vulnerable wife over the edge. But if he feels that I was not weak and helpless, that I, in fact, was ready to leave him . . .
“Dr. Tyler Williams will swear under oath that you were suffering from a very severe type of postpartum depression that made it difficult for you to control your actions and emotions.”
“He said that?”
My lawyer smiles, a closed-mouth, knowing expression. There’s a glint in her eye. “He did. He also said that your postpartum depression was so severe that you may have also suffered from transference—thinking that you had romantic feelings for your doctor and that they were reciprocated. Given everything you were going through and your discovery of Jake’s cheating, it makes sense. He said you might believe that things happened between you that never did. You could have suffered delusions.”
I understand the subtext. Tyler is willing to testify that I was crazy when I killed Colleen as long as I don’t out him for having a romantic relationship with a patient. “I understand,” I say. “Any feelings that I had for him were really just me being desperate and delusional.”
She raps the metal table with her fingertips in approval and dips her head toward her briefcase. When she rises, she holds a manila folder, a pen, and a yellow legal pad. She places everything on the table and then pulls the notebook in front of her. She peels back the cover, picks up the pen, and taps the point against the first sheet. “Okay.” She inhales and then exhales audibly, as though we have a long night ahead of us. “Let’s go over our story from the beginning.”
Acknowledgments
Thank you to all the wonderful family and friends who have encouraged me to continue telling stories. You know who you are. I love you and write with you in mind. Thanks to my amazing agent, Paula Munier, who tells me like it is, and the fantastic team at Crooked Lane. Much thanks to the creative, supportive, and vibrant thriller writing community for your friendship. I am deeply indebted to my husband and daughters, all of whom deal with my distraction and everything that comes with my living between the real world and imaginary ones. You three are my heart. Thanks to the early readers who weighed in on this book before it went to print. Your fresh eyes made me see it better. Last but never least, thanks to the higher power that I’ll never believe is fiction.