The End of Her: A Novel

by Shari Lapena

  “No. I lost touch with her after—afterward.”

  Patrick pauses, closes his eyes. This is difficult. “I’m sorry I just left and never kept in touch—”

  “No apology necessary,” Greg says in a lower voice. “It was a hellish time. I don’t know how you survived it.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Why are you asking about Erica?” Greg says.

  Patrick hesitates and then says, “She’s been here, in New York. In Aylesford.”

  “Really?” Greg sounds taken aback. “Why?”

  Patrick takes a deep breath. He can’t seem to find the words, and the silence grows.

  Greg says, “She was a bit hard on you at the funeral.”

  “It was my fault,” Patrick says. “It was an accident, but I’m to blame. I—I should have known better.” His mouth is dry; he can barely get the words out. “Anyway, she’s here now, saying some crazy things.”

  “What kind of things?”

  He exhales heavily. “She’s saying that we were having an affair, that I wanted Lindsey out of the way so that I could be with her. She’s saying that I killed Lindsey on purpose.” He pauses. “Like I said, crazy.”

  “That’s pretty crazy,” Greg agrees slowly, sounding shocked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Christ.”

  “I know. I think she might be losing it. She seems . . . different.”

  “I don’t know, I haven’t seen her since then. She moved away and we didn’t stay in touch.” He pauses and adds, “Shit, Patrick. Of course it was an accident. They found it was an accident and I’ve always believed it was an accident.”

  Patrick is relieved to hear him say it.

  There’s a long pause before Greg speaks again, and when he does, he sounds awkward. “I don’t think for a minute that you deliberately did anything to your wife, Patrick. But—”

  “But what?”

  “Erica, before she left, she said she was pregnant. And she said it was yours.”

  17

  Patrick feels his heart start to pound. He wants so much for this not to be true. He can hear the question in Greg’s voice—he wants to know if the child was Patrick’s. Perhaps he’s wanted to know this for years. Patrick asks, “Do you know for sure she was pregnant?”

  Greg is quiet for a moment, then sighs and says, “I’m not sure of anything. She said I was the only one she was confiding in. She might have been lying; I have no idea. But I know at the time I believed that she was pregnant. She left soon after that. I have no idea where she went.”

  “She’s trying to blackmail me, Greg. She’s been stalking my wife and babies. I think she’s unbalanced. I’m—I’m afraid she might be dangerous.”

  “Jesus. Maybe you should go to the police.”

  He can tell Greg wants to know if he slept with Erica. He takes a deep breath, exhales, and says, “I did sleep with Erica a couple of times. We were drunk. You know what she was like. But it didn’t mean anything. Certainly not to me.”

  There’s silence at the other end of the line. Then Greg says, “Okay. I wasn’t sure.”

  “But the rest of it—she’s delusional. It was just a couple of one-night stands. I loved Lindsey. I would never deliberately hurt her.” He swallows noisily.

  “I know.”

  “Somehow she’s found out that my wife inherited money. She wants us to pay her or she says she’ll go to the police in Creemore and tell them I had a motive to kill Lindsey. It’s absurd!” He finds himself running his hand through his hair. “Do you—do you think she can even do that?”

  “I don’t know. But I think you might need some professional help, my friend,” Greg says uneasily.

  * * *

  • • •

  PATRICK HAS HEARD nothing from Erica since he saw her on Friday at the Skyway park. Her silence makes him nervous. He knows she hasn’t gone away; she’s biding her time. Waiting for the fear to get to him; waiting to see what he’ll do, what kind of influence he might have with his wife.

  When the twins go down for their nap on Sunday afternoon, Patrick tucks Stephanie into their bed and tells her that he’s going into the office for a bit, to catch up on some work. Then he gets into his car, but instead of turning toward downtown, to his office, he takes the highway to Newburgh. He’s already looked up Erica’s address—he found it on her job application.

  He doesn’t know exactly what he has in mind. He’s so overtired and stressed that he can’t think clearly. He just feels that he must do something. He has to turn the tables somehow, but how? He must get Erica to stop this—this madness.

  When he arrives in Newburgh it doesn’t take him long to locate the apartment building. It’s a five-story building on a residential street. He wants to confront her on her own ground, to see how she likes it. He’s been too passive; it’s time to shake things up. He needs to frighten her.

  He realizes that she might not be home. He hopes she is; he’s spoiling for a fight. He indulges himself for a moment—imagines knocking on her door, her surprise at seeing him, and then pushing his way in. He imagines himself on her balcony, bending her back over the edge, until she’s afraid for her life. Maybe that’s all it would take. She seems willing enough to think him capable of murder.

  But then he remembers her apartment number, 107—she must be on the ground floor. He enters the building and looks at the buzzers. He wants to catch her off guard at her door if he can. A woman walks toward him from the elevators; she opens the door and he slips in behind her. He locates Erica’s apartment and knocks firmly on her door, hoping she’ll answer. No such luck—she’s not home. He clenches his jaw in frustration. But she’s on the ground floor—he can at least look in her windows, see if there’s any sign of a nine-year-old boy. He goes back outside, circling around to the back of the building. It’s fairly private. Unit 107 has a patio on the ground floor, with sliding glass doors. He creeps up to the glass and looks inside.

  The place doesn’t look very lived in. He sees a pale blue sofa, a coffee table with some newspapers on it, and not much else; it’s barely furnished. There’s a galley kitchen beyond the empty dining room—a pendant light hanging over where a dining table should be—and a hall off to the right. He’s guessing it’s a one-bedroom. There’s no sign of a child. He breathes a sigh of relief. She must have taken a photo of some random kid about the right age who looks like him. Is there any length she won’t go to?

  But he does see something he recognizes—his wife’s missing purse, on the floor beside the sofa.

  His heart almost stops. But before he can fully process the fact that Erica has been inside his house, he sees the door to the apartment open. Patrick steps back out of sight, but then peers carefully around the edge of the sliding-glass door. Erica has entered the room, and there’s someone behind her. For a second the other person is blocked from view by Erica, but she steps away and Patrick gets another shock as he recognizes Niall. Niall closes the door behind him and then sweeps Erica into an embrace. In disbelief, Patrick watches Erica and Niall kiss hungrily and peel off their clothes on their way to the bedroom.

  What the fuck is Niall doing with Erica?

  * * *

  • • •

  STEPHANIE WATCHES HER HUSBAND, her stomach in knots. Patrick’s upset. His hair is a mess, as if he’s repeatedly run his hands through it, and his movements are rushed and jerky. He’s pacing the kitchen while the babies sit in their high chairs babbling and smashing their spoons against their trays. He’s just told her that he went to Erica’s apartment and saw Stephanie’s missing purse on the floor through the window.

  She’s thinking, He didn’t go to the office at all. “Why is she doing this?” Stephanie asks, her voice shrill. This horrible woman has been inside her house. She’s stolen her purse, her ID. She feels a terrible anxiety coursing through her. People can steal your ID and use
it to destroy your life. She’s at the mercy of this maniac, and it’s her husband’s fault.

  Patrick looks at her warily. “There’s something else you should know.”

  She regards him with dread.

  “She’s sleeping with Niall.”

  She looks back at him, speechless with disbelief.

  “I saw them in her apartment. They started kissing and then went off to the bedroom.” He says, “I know how she operates. She seduces people. She seduced me and she’s obviously seducing Niall.”

  “Why, though?” Stephanie exclaims. “Why would she sleep with Niall?”

  “For the same reason she came inside our house and took your purse—to intimidate us! To make me worry about what she might tell Niall. To show her power over me. That’s why she’s been watching you, showing up at the park.”

  Stephanie shudders. It’s only now beginning to dawn on her exactly who they’re dealing with. Maybe she’s planning on blackmailing Niall, too—maybe she’ll threaten to tell his wife that he’s cheating on her. Stephanie knows that Niall cheated before; Nancy had told her. It almost broke up their marriage.

  Patrick continues pacing. Stephanie stares back at him, her mind racing. They refused to pay her. Maybe they’ve made a mistake. The thought makes the world go all sideways on her. She needs Patrick to stay still for a minute so she can think. But her mind is numb.

  She looks at her husband, still pacing across the kitchen, not even seeing her or the twins. Her anger erupts. “You never should have slept with her.”

  He stops then. “I know that!” He looks at her desperately. “But it meant nothing, Stephanie. She’s revising everything in her head, telling it differently from how it really happened. That’s what’s so scary—I don’t know what she’ll make up next!”

  Stephanie asks bluntly, “Other than the fact that you slept with her a couple of times, she doesn’t have anything else, does she?”

  Patrick looks at her and there’s something in his face that she doesn’t like. A mixture of shame and fear. A pleading look comes over him and she knows he’s about to confess to something awful. She wants to turn away, flee from the room. She doesn’t want to hear anymore. She’s sick of all of this and suddenly almost hates him for bringing it all down on their heads. They have two precious little girls to think of—how will all this affect their future?

  “She says . . .” Patrick starts, but his voice falters and he can’t seem to finish the thought.

  “She says what?” Stephanie demands, her voice strident. One of the babies begins to cry, and the other immediately joins in.

  “I think she’s lying, but—after she saw you at the park, she asked me to meet her, and she said she had a child, and that it’s mine.”

  Her heart sinks like a stone. Oh, God. She slumps in her chair, puts her hands to her face.

  “Don’t look like that,” Patrick says, his voice pleading.

  She barely hears him; everything seems to fade away into the background, even the twins’ noises, and all she can hear is the pounding of her own heart, thudding in her ears. A child. If this woman had a child by him, it changes everything. Finally she looks up at her husband. She realizes with a sickening feeling that he’s even more frightened than she is.

  “Stephanie, it probably isn’t true,” he says. “That’s—that’s why I went to her apartment—and there was no sign of a child at all. She must be lying.” When she doesn’t say anything, he says, “I have to find out for sure. There must be a way.”

  “Yes, there must be a way,” she says coldly. “You must be able to find out if she had a child. Hire someone if you have to.”

  He hesitates and says, “She also told me how much money she wants to make her go away.”

  “How much?” Stephanie asks.

  “Two hundred thousand dollars,” he says, his eyes flicking to hers and away again.

  She can tell, reading him, that he thinks that’s a reasonable amount, considering what Erica’s threatening to do, and considering what they have in the bank. She has it in her power to solve this problem for him, for them. But she knows that if they pay her once, she’ll just come back for more.

  “Over my dead body,” she says.

  18

  On Monday morning, Patrick hears the door at reception open and cocks an ear. Niall has just come in. All last night Patrick hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Niall sleeping with Erica in her apartment. What had she said to him when her head was next to his on the pillow?

  Patrick tries to tamp down his concern, but it’s hard to stop worrying about the two of them together. Fear paralyzes him. Erica had waltzed into this firm on a pretense, had pretended not to know him. And Patrick had pretended not to know her. He doesn’t want to admit now that he does. How would he explain it? He can’t warn Niall about her—about the kind of woman he’s getting involved with. How can he confront Niall about Erica without admitting he was peeking in Erica’s window yesterday? He can’t. He can’t say anything.

  But Erica knows things about him, things he’d rather his business partner not know.

  He hears Niall coming down the hall, and then Niall’s cheerful face appears at his door.

  “Good morning,” Niall says.

  “Good morning.”

  “Are you okay?” Niall asks, looking at him more closely. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “I’m fine, just—tired.”

  * * *

  • • •

  STEPHANIE PUTS THE TWINS down for their afternoon nap and starts tidying up the house. She’s deeply exhausted—she’s been stumbling through her routine tasks, her eyes are burning, and her body aches all over—but her mind is racing, flitting from thought to thought, unable to settle on anything. She knows she should lie down herself, but how can she sleep with all this running through her mind?

  Can she really trust Patrick to tell her everything? Should she talk to Erica herself? Patrick has warned her to stay away from Erica, told her that she’s dangerous. But the doubts have started to creep in. . . . What if Patrick just wants to keep Stephanie from talking to Erica? From hearing her side of the story? Everything she’s heard so far has been mediated through Patrick.

  Maybe Erica will turn up again. If she does, Stephanie decides, she won’t run away. She will ask questions. Maybe even try to get Erica to see reason.

  She finds herself in their bedroom, but instead of lying down, she glances restlessly around the darkened room.

  She turns on the overhead light and starts searching through her husband’s dresser. She doesn’t even know why she’s looking—there’s nothing there; she puts away his clothing in these drawers all the time. She looks anyway. When she’s done with his dresser, she goes through his side of their closet, feeling disloyal and wondering why she’s wasting her time. She searches through shoeboxes on the floor. He keeps his handgun, a Glock 19 9mm, in a safe on the top shelf. She knows the combination. She opens the safe and looks inside. Nothing in there but the gun and a few rounds of ammunition. There’s nothing else in the closet but clothes.

  Next, she tries his office at the end of the hall. Patrick’s old computer is on the desk. She has her own laptop and so does he; he never uses this one anymore. Is there anything about his old life on this computer? It doesn’t matter, she has no idea how to get into it. It’s a mystery why he even keeps it. She pauses and thinks.

  Why does he keep it?

  Maybe there is something there. She turns it on, tries a few combinations related to her name and the twins’ names and birth dates, but nothing works. Sighing, she turns it off again and searches through his filing cabinets. There’s absolutely nothing there pertaining to his earlier life with his first wife.

  She’s reaching around inside his filing cabinets, about to give up, when she feels something stuck to the underside of a drawer. She touches it
tentatively—it seems like a small key, covered by tape. She tears at the tape gently, careful not to rip it.

  She pulls it out and looks down at it. She’s right: it’s a small, silver key, covered with masking tape. It can’t be the key for the filing cabinets, because they aren’t lockable. She studies it closely. There’s nothing on it except a number: 224. She has no idea what it’s for. But if it didn’t come with the filing cabinets, what is it doing there? The only conclusion is that Patrick must have put it there, where she wouldn’t find it.

  It doesn’t look like any of the other keys they have in the house. She wonders if it’s for a lockbox, or a safe. If it is, it isn’t in the house or she’d know about it, unless he’d hidden it somewhere. She hurries down the stairs, after looking in on the twins briefly. She probably has about another hour before they wake up. She tears the basement apart looking for anything that looks lockable, but finds nothing, not even in the crawl space.

  She finally comes to the uncomfortable conclusion that whatever the key fits, it isn’t here. And then it hits her. Of course. It’s a key to a safety deposit box.

  And she doesn’t know anything about it. He’s hidden it from her.

  * * *

  • • •

  STEPHANIE IS CONFLICTED when Patrick returns from work that evening. She’s worried about him—he’s pale and tense—but she’s angry and suspicious. Why did he hide that key from her? Why has he hidden the fact that he has a safety deposit box from her? Should she broach it with him?

  She’d wrestled with it the rest of the afternoon. She thought of holding the key up under his nose and saying, “What’s this, Patrick?” and dragging the truth out of him. What else is he keeping from her?

  If she’d been able to, she would have gone to the bank and looked in the box herself. But she knew he’d be home soon. Finally, she’d retaped the key to the same spot on the underside of the drawer of the filing cabinet.