“Then Phoebe stepped in and told me to get out,” Jake continues, looking at no one again, his voice roughening. “She’d been taking Mom’s side, but Mom only rounded on her again. Then it all just . . .” He trails off.
Vicki rubs her face with a trembling hand, streaking her eye makeup. “I was so out of my mind. It didn’t matter anymore that I had been counting on her for help. That ship had sailed. All I could see was this woman who had made a fool out of me, taken my son, ruined me like her father had ruined my mother. She was Daniel Noble all over again. The rage was overwhelming.” She takes a deep breath, as if to compose herself. “She tried to get away. I chased after her. And then sh-she slipped. I think there must have been something wet on the floor.”
“Spilled coffee,” Wyatt grates out, eyes closed.
“She fell hard,” Vicki continues. “Her head hit the corner of that heavy granite countertop. The crack was so loud. It happened so fast. I didn’t realize it at first, but when I really looked I saw she was hurt . . . bad.”
“Okay, I think I’ve heard enough,” Wyatt says. His skin looks like wet paper, like he’s about to throw up.
But Nadia isn’t done yet, because as close as Vicki has gotten, she still hasn’t finished the story. “It happened so fast that you then grabbed a knife and plunged it into her chest to finish the job?”
“What?” Jake leaps up as if burned, his face blazing.
Vicki looks at her son, wide-eyed and tear-streaked. “It didn’t—”
“That’s why you ran me out of there? You said you didn’t want me to see how bad it really was . . . and so I left. Like a coward. I’ll never forgive myself, but I was so scared, and I didn’t want to fight with you anymore. And you came home a few minutes later and told me she’d fallen, that there was nothing we could do for her.”
“She did! There wasn’t!” Vicki cries.
“And you swore me to secrecy. Told me if I said anything about this, it would ruin everything for me. You said I needed to move on, act like we’d never even met the Millers.”
Vicki shakes her head. “I was protecting you, Jake.”
Wyatt gives Nadia a brief glance. He hasn’t looked this grim since he discovered Phoebe’s dead body, but there’s something else in his eyes. He turns to Vicki. “Stop denying what you did. You got this far into the story, so just finish it. I was ready to believe everything you said until you left out one crucial detail. You stabbed her.”
She shakes her head. “No, I didn’t.”
“You did,” he insists.
Vicki collapses to her chair and starts rocking back and forth, racked with shuddering sobs. “That’s not how it happened. Jake, you have to believe me!”
“Stop lying!” Wyatt snaps.
“We found Phoebe’s butcher knife in Jake’s room, Vicki,” Nadia chimes in. “Did you plant it there? Why would you do something like that?” Was it some vindictive twist to frame her own son if anyone happened to go searching? Or had she been hoping Jake would find it? Nadia can’t imagine a mother performing such a power play on her son, but Vicki had one hell of a vendetta going all the way back to her childhood, and it had warped her mind.
“That’s impossible,” Vicki chokes out.
“Jesus Christ, Vicki!” Ron shouts, shaken from his previous stupor with this new revelation, his face slack with fresh horror. “What are they saying?”
Jake rocks back on his heels and grabs his chair for support. He’s clearly on the ropes, like the breeze from a weak punch might knock him out. “Mom, tell me that isn’t true . . .”
She shakes her head almost convulsively. “No, Jake . . . please just listen to me.”
Wyatt continues, and it’s as though all the pent-up grief, anger, and fear are spilling out of him all at once. He’s an unstoppable force, a laser focused on Vicki. “Look, obviously you don’t want your son to think even less of you than he already does. You want him to think it was an accident, and that’s at least partially true. She slipped, fell, and hit her head. I buy that, even if it still doesn’t paint you in the best light, since you’re the reason she fell and you did nothing to help her.
“But I’m not going to let you worm your way around the rest. Phoebe and I had reached the end of our marriage, but I was still her husband and I loved her. I stared into her lifeless eyes that morning and I told her so. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life. But you know what really sucks about all this? You didn’t only kill my wife and the woman your son loved. You also killed her sister.” He thrusts a finger at Nadia. She nearly jerks in her chair with the force of it. Everyone but Vicki turns their eyes on her.
“Phoebe died before she ever got to learn she had a sibling. Nadia had been working up the nerve for weeks just to introduce herself when all this happened.” He looks at Vicki again. “And for what, exactly? This selfish bullshit that you could have solved in a million better ways. Nothing you mention as justification will ever make up for what you did. Blame Daniel for what happened to your mother, sure. I even get that you feel entitled to monetary compensation, though it’s pretty fucking unforgivable that you’ve stooped so low as to blackmail us now that you can’t bleed Phoebe for money.”
She shakes her head, her eyes wide and glassy. “No. You’re trying to twist this and turn my family against me.”
“You did that on your own, Vicki. If you can’t admit the truth to me or to her sister, at least try for your son, whose only sin in this whole thing was falling for the wrong woman and then choosing unwise ways to clean up the mess you made.” He’s leaning in now, pointing a finger at Vicki.
Despite everything Vicki has done, Nadia can’t help but feel a trickle of uneasiness watching Wyatt push this broken woman. She wants to cut in, pull him back, tell him they got the truth they were after, but Jake speaks first.
“I can’t even look at you anymore. I’m still leaving after this. But not for Stanford. Not anywhere you can find me. I can never forgive you for this.”
“Jake,” she murmurs through her tears. “Please don’t say that. I can’t lose you too.” She looks at Ron, pleading, “Don’t let him do this.”
Ron clears his throat, shifts his eyes between his wife and his son, and then lowers his head. “I won’t stop you, son.”
Jake’s shoulders square more, his frown deepening as he regards his mother. “I know I was about to run away, and that she hurt you. But it wasn’t all her fault. She tried to break things off, a couple times, but I convinced her not to. She was ready to leave town alone, but I begged her to take me with her, because I couldn’t stand being here anymore. You were so miserable, but you tried to act like everything was normal, and that was worse than the truth. I could have told you I was leaving, but I knew you would have fought the hardest to make me stay. And I was right. You fought so hard you killed her.” His voice breaks. “I know it wouldn’t have been easy, but at least she’d still be alive if you’d just let us go.”
Vicki’s swaying in her chair like she can barely hold herself upright anymore. With the truth finally out, and her son turned against her, the fight seems to have gone out of her. “You’re right. I should have let you go then. I’ve lost you anyway.” Her voice sounds oddly flat now. She raises her head to look at her son. Nadia can’t recall ever seeing such a shattered face. “Jake . . . honey, I’m so sorry.” She grabs the gun. Both Jake and Ron scream in tandem. The report is deafening and a second later, Vicki is on the floor.
It happened so fast.
* * *
—
AFTER NADIA STOPS her own mind from flailing, she manages to regroup them long enough to get their stories straight before they call the police. The simpler the story, the easier it will be for them to remember it: the Millers came over to have a few drinks with their new friends the Napiers when Vicki, with no prior warning, pulled out a gun and killed herself. Before they make the
call, Nadia tells Jake to retrieve her stolen cell phone. It takes a bit to motivate him through his shellshock, with his mother bleeding out on the floor, but when Nadia tells him they could all go to jail, he moves. After verifying that the incriminating pictures are no longer on Jake’s phone, she asks him if the pictures were backed up anywhere. He shakes his head. Having no choice but to believe him at this point, she makes the call.
Moments after the police and paramedics arrive, they discover Vicki is still breathing.
CHAPTER 25
THEY SIT IN the hospital lounge with Jake most of the night, waiting to hear whether Vicki pulled through surgery. Even though they aren’t at Northwestern Memorial, Ron can’t put aside his need to be a doctor. He’s spent the hours pacing the halls on his phone and consulting with the staff, likely bordering on harassing them. Anything to avoid sitting still.
Thanks to small doses of Xanax administered by his father throughout the night, Jake is in a bit of a haze but lucid enough for conversation. “Phoebe was really your sister?” he asks her long after Nadia thought he’d dozed off.
She nods. “Half sister, anyway.”
He’s silent for a few more minutes, then he says, “You’re still going to pretend to be her, right?”
His question touches at the heart of the conflict that’s been raging in Nadia since she took over Phoebe’s identity. “I don’t see that I have much choice. At least on paper. Not unless we want the world at large to know she’s dead. And that would create a lot more problems.”
“Would make more problems for you too, about that Bachmann guy.”
She nods. The Xanax hasn’t spaced him out completely. “Being Phoebe serves many purposes.”
“I like that the world thinks she’s still alive. Makes me feel kind of like she is too.” A peaceful grin spreads across his face, but after a moment it falters. “Where did you guys, um, put her?”
“I think the fewer the people who know that answer, the safer she’ll be,” Nadia says.
He seems satisfied with that.
After a long lull, Nadia asks if he knew anything about the connection between Vicki’s mother and Daniel. He shakes his head. “I never even saw that picture of Grandma and him until recently, and I still didn’t make the connection. The only story I got about Grandma growing up was that she had a heart attack and suffered brain damage. I see her once or twice a year at most. It’s always been really upsetting for Mom to go out there. Now I might get to know firsthand how she feels. You know, if she doesn’t, um, die.” His voice cracks, and he takes a swig of his bottled water.
“It’s all so damn . . . sad,” Nadia says. It’s a small, common word but it’s the only one that fits. Fucking Daniel. His work destroying multiple generations of lives will forever remain legendary, even if only a select few know the extent of the damage.
“Mom always had a hot temper. I’ve seen her get depressed a lot too. But I never thought she’d try to kill herself.” He sniffs. “I feel like I pushed her. I shouldn’t have said those things.”
“Don’t do that,” Wyatt interjects. He’s been very quiet since they got here. “She wouldn’t want you to carry that burden.” He sips at his vending machine coffee. It’s probably his sixth cup of the night.
Jake nods. “I never thought she’d kill someone else, either.”
“Pressure forces people into a lot of unlikely shapes,” Wyatt replies. Nadia would bet he’s tossed that line at a lot of his therapy clients over the years.
“I think I can forgive her, though,” Jake says. “If she pulls through this, that’s the first thing I’m going to tell her. It’s going to be hard, but I can’t leave her now.”
“Forgiveness is definitely a process,” Wyatt says. “Don’t feel bad if it doesn’t come to you right away.”
Jake looks at him. “I don’t expect you to forgive me. If Phoebe and I hadn’t . . . she’d still be alive.”
Wyatt shakes his head. “We can pass this buck around all day, kid. I played my own part in it.”
Nadia is relieved to hear him acknowledge something that’s been on her mind, particularly since Vicki grabbed that gun. Whether he meant to, Wyatt helped push the woman to the brink. Recalling the sheer forcefulness of his words makes Nadia uneasy. Then again, she’s not so innocent herself. She thinks of her own attempt at blackmail, a detail that feels like another snowflake in a blizzard of circumstance at this point.
“My mom made a choice,” Jake says with a sigh. “I guess we all made our choices.”
“Yes. A lot of shitty ones,” Nadia mutters.
A middle-aged man in scrubs, presumably a doctor, walks into the waiting room, accompanied by Ron, who looks especially grim. They wave Jake over. “I have a bad feeling,” he says, getting up. “Thank you for sitting with me, though.”
Nadia and Wyatt watch him go. He seems to be shrinking back down into a small child with every step. As the surgeon speaks, Ron puts his arm around his son’s sagging shoulders and they both bow their heads. Nadia doesn’t need to hear the words to know Vicki didn’t make it.
* * *
—
THEY’RE STANDING AT the curb in front of the house, a small suitcase for each of them at their feet. Only the necessities. They can buy whatever else they need when they get there. While she’s planning to add a considerable amount of black to Phoebe’s new wardrobe, she’ll also make sure to keep a bit of pink in there too.
They aren’t saying much. Part of it is exhaustion, but mostly she thinks it’s nerves. They’re taking a big step right now, jumping into the wider unknown, but after returning from the hospital and milling around aimlessly for the next couple of days, waiting for the relief that this was all over to finally come, they realized they had no choice. The house would never be right. The walls held too many reminders of what happened inside them, and the view across the street was sullied too. So they got to work making the sorts of arrangements people make when they’re going on a vacation of indefinite length. Cutting the power, emptying the fridge, covering the furniture, stopping the mail.
But the most important of those arrangements is about to commence as they watch the truck with the flatbed trailer pull slowly up the driveway, toward the open garage door. The driver was informed ahead of time about the precious cargo he would be picking up, but when he steps out of the cab and gets a full look at the Ferrari, his mouth still falls open in awe, and he wipes his brow.
“Now, that is a sight to behold,” he says. “You mind if I take a picture?”
Wyatt shrugs. “It’s not ours anymore, but I won’t tell if you don’t.”
It didn’t take long for Nadia to source a private collector for the car, especially given its rarity and the fame and notoriety of its original owner. A big part of her would still love nothing more than to firebomb it with a Molotov cocktail or drive it into Lake Michigan, just out of pure spite, but she and Wyatt agreed there were more immediate needs for the kinds of proceeds a sale would bring. Most of it will be going toward starting a fund for any of Daniel Noble’s accusers who need legal resources and mental health support. The move is likely to make a few waves once it goes public, but Nadia, in total Phoebe fashion, plans to shun the press if they come calling.
A small but generous portion of the sale will also be going to the Napiers. It took a lot of convincing for Ron, who wanted even less to do with the Noble money now than before, but Nadia finally got through to him by reminding him that Vicki only wanted to help her mother, and that the money was coming from selling off Daniel’s most prized possession to a complete stranger, something the man would have hated. When Nadia spoke to Jake on the phone this morning, he seemed quietly optimistic. “Dad and I were thinking of going overseas.”
She thought of Ron’s medical malpractice issues and hoped he might decide to leave the profession behind for good now that money would be less of a concern. “So definit
ely no Stanford, then?”
“That feels like someone else’s dream.”
She wouldn’t argue with that. “Just try to do something good with your life.”
“I will. As long as you do something good with hers.”
“I promise.”
As the driver makes all the necessary connections to secure the car to the trailer, Wyatt says, “We should probably learn some Italian on the flight. There are some good phone apps for that kind of stuff now.”
“Three words should cover most of my needs over there: ‘pizza,’ ‘gelato,’ and ‘espresso.’”
“Amen to that.”
The question she’s been wanting to ask has been sitting in her mouth all day, growing larger and more restless. Time to spit it out. “Do you plan on staying in Rome long?”
“What are you really asking me?”
God, why is this so hard? Part of it is she’s never learned how to properly navigate any relationship, especially ones that have any hope of being romantic. The other part is the tiny seedling of doubt still nestled firmly in the back of her mind that she’s been unable to identify since the showdown in the Napiers’ dining room. “In the beginning, we talked about leaving, moving on separately once things were squared away or we trusted each other. I just wondered if that’s what you had in mind still.”
She can feel his eyes on her and forces herself to glance up at him. He’s smiling. “I was kind of hoping you’d want to stick around a little longer,” he says.
She shrugs. “I mean, if that’s what you want.”
“What do you want?”
“I want to take it one day at a time,” she says. “Maybe even just one moment at a time.” I want to make sure I’m right to trust you—to trust this.
“I like that,” he says. “I wanted to show you something, by the way.” He pulls out his phone, opens the folder containing the photos, and deletes the ones that had nearly caused them a lot of trouble. “I think it’s past time to get rid of those. What do you think?”
The Other Mrs. Miller Page 27