Unfaithful: An unputdownable and absolutely gripping psychological thriller

by Natalie Barelli

  I hang up, and call June.

  Pick up! Pickuppickuppickup…

  “Hi! I’m sorry I can’t take your call right now, but please leave a message!”

  “June.” My voice is high-pitched with panic. “It’s me. Listen to me very carefully. If Luis comes over to your house, do not answer the door, do you understand? Pretend you’re not there. If you’re home, go out now, as soon as you get this. Go anywhere, go to the mall. Stay out. But under no circumstances should you let him inside your house.”

  I hang up and dial again. I do it twice more. I tell myself it doesn’t mean anything that she’s not picking up. June doesn’t know what to think of me right now. I bet she hates me. She’s convinced I killed Isabelle, and maybe even tried to pin it on her. She believes I’m insane and I’m dangerous. Of course she’s not taking my call.

  I call Luis’s dad. He answers on the first ring, his voice raspy by decades of smoking.

  “Anna, you okay? I heard—”

  “Rob. Is Luis there?”

  “Luis? No, why? Should he be? I thought Carla and Matti were staying till tomorrow.”

  “Listen, Rob. If Luis comes over, don’t let him leave till I get there, all right? Tell him to wait for me. I’ll be there shortly.”

  “Is everything all right?”

  “Yes. Everything is fine. I’ll see you soon. Call me if Luis gets there before me.”

  But I will go to June’s house first, and if she’s not home I’m going to leave her a note. That’s what I’ll do. I’ll tell her in writing. And if she is there but won’t let me in, I’ll scream it in the window.

  Then I’ll go and get my kids. That’s what I’ll do.

  I drive so fast I almost have an accident, twice. At June’s, I abandon the car across the road and run to her house. I slam on the door with both hands. Open the door! But she’s not there. I turn to rush back to my car, find a piece of paper to write on, when I catch something in the window. It’s the blinds. They’ve moved, I’m sure of it. Just an inch, like someone is peering through the slats. I slap the glass with the palm of my hand. “June! I know you’re in there! I have to talk to you!”

  I’m frantically searching for a rock at my feet, something to throw, when the blinds suddenly fly up in one quick rush, and I scream.

  Luis’s face stares back at me.

  “You shouldn’t have come, babe.”

  He has opened the front door and pulled me inside.

  “Oh my god.” June is tied up in the corner, a scarf tied around her mouth. Her eyes are red, wild with terror. I rush to help her but Luis has wrapped an arm around my shoulders and he’s pulling me back.

  “You shouldn’t have come. I told you not to come here, Anna. Didn’t I say? Don’t go to June? Wait for me at home? Didn’t I say that?”

  “You have to let her go! She has nothing to do with anything!”

  “She shouldn’t have tried to track down your mother!” he shouts, pointing at her. “And that’s on her, okay?” He turns around and grabs his hair with his fists, pacing the room. “I have to take care of it now. I’m taking care of it.”

  I’m crying so much I can barely speak. “Who are you? What did you do, Luis? Did you really do all those things? Did you really hurt all these people?”

  He looks into my eyes for a long time, then his face slowly crumbles with misery. “Don’t look at me like that. Of all people, Anna, you’re the only one who would understand.”

  He drops to his knees and holds on to my jacket, his face upturned, pleading.

  “What are you doing here, Luis?”

  “I’ve come to take care of June,” he says quietly. “You have to trust me, Anna. Everything will be fine. I promise.”

  “No. Please don’t hurt her. I’m begging you! You have to let her go.”

  He pulls me down so that we’re both on our knees. He takes my hands in his. “Come on, babe. You understand, don’t you? Of course you do. Because you’re dark, like me. We’re the same, you and me.”

  “No, Luis, we’re not.”

  “We’re going to be okay. I’ll take care of this, then we’ll get the kids and we’ll go away. The four of us, okay? We’ll go wherever you like.”

  “What did you do to Isabelle, Luis?”

  “I made a mistake. I told you that. I should never have done it. I could never be with someone like Isabelle. Women like that, they’re too bright, too shiny, too perfect. It was just a fling, that’s all, but she wanted more—she wanted to have a baby and how could I leave you?”

  “We have to go to the police, now.”

  “No! We don’t have to do that! I’ll take care of everything, I promise. You understand, don’t you?” He grips my hands tightly and pulls me closer to him. “You’re made of dark waters, like me.” And he says it again: “We’re the same, you and me.”

  “No, Luis, we’re not. We’re not the same.”

  “No one loves me like you do,” he says. “You’re obsessed with me, see? And I’m obsessed with you.” And I think back to all the times he said it. You’re obsessed with me. And I thought it was pure, true love, and all the time it was something so much darker than that.

  “You and me, we would do anything for each other. We’d kill for each other. I’ve always known that about you. But Isabelle, she wanted to break us. I made a mistake, I admit that. But I couldn’t let her do that to us. You see that, babe, don’t you?”

  “Why did you go there that night?” I ask.

  “Because she called me after you left. And she said she told you about the baby, and I was free now, to be with her. But I didn’t want to be with her, Anna! I didn’t want the baby. So I turned on the light in my shed and put some music on and locked the door so that when you came home, you’d think I was in there. Then I went to her house and I tried to talk to her, I really did, but she wouldn’t listen. And she was going to tell Patrick, and Perry at the gallery, and everyone she knew that she was having my baby, and I couldn’t do that to us, babe. You see that, don’t you?”

  I dislodge one hand and wipe my cheeks. He grabs it again.

  “Did you push her down the stairs?”

  “She was so mad, she threw the ring I gave her at my face and she was going to tell everybody, and I pretended I was sorry, I pretended to kiss her and I said, ‘Let’s go upstairs, let’s go to bed,’ and then…” He raises his shoulder slightly. “She fell,” he says, simply.

  “Luis, no. Oh God.” I feel sick. And I don’t want to ask my next question—I don’t want to, but I know I have to. “What about Monica?”

  “That was an accident. I swear to god. I wanted to go with you to that party, remember that party?”

  “Of course I remember that party.”

  “I knew she’d taken back a piece of cake from the cafeteria that day,” he continues. “She always did that. Remember how she always did that? She’d keep it in a tin, with flowers on it, remember that? And pick at it while she finished her assignment.”

  “Yes, I remember,” I say.

  “I crushed some peanuts together into crumbs then I told her to meet me somewhere, that I had a present for her, so she’d be out of the room. I went in there and sprinkled it over the piece of cake and took her Epipen. I rushed back to where she was waiting, and gave her a drawing pad, remember how she used to draw all the time? She thought we were going to meet later at the party, but I’d already fallen in love with you, you see? I just wanted it to be you and me. I thought she would be sick and go to bed. I didn’t know she would die, I swear to god I didn’t know.”

  I drop my head in my hands but he grabs them again, holds on to them so tightly he’s crushing them. “You understand, don’t you?” June makes a sound in the corner, like a moan.

  “And—and my m-mother?”

  He lets go of my hands and grabs a fistful of his hair. “Your mother, she was nasty, you know that. She said to me there was something not right about me, and she found out some things about me, some things I did that
landed me in detention when I was a kid, but I wasn’t like that anymore, not since I met you, and I told her that, but she wanted to tell you, she wanted to break us up, Anna. And I…”

  He doesn’t say anymore, just looks around wildly, rubbing his face, pulling at his hair.

  “After she died, I panicked. I didn’t know how to tell you. I pretended she was still alive. The police said it was an accident anyway, and you two weren’t speaking at the time. And you never liked her, she was horrible. But then when Carla was born you wanted to reconcile and I… I just kept pretending! I pretended she’d moved away, I picked a place as far away from us as I could, and I bought a PO box in her name, and I really thought you’d give up, but you didn’t, and you invited her to Christmas and birthdays and I’d send flowers and send emails and you’d call her and leave messages but she’d never call back, just send you emails, and it just got out of hand.”

  “But you sent the flowers in my name, not yours.” I cry. “Why? Did you rent the box in my name too?”

  He takes my face in his hands.

  “I thought if anyone found out, it would be easier to explain that way, see?” He looks at me, pleading. “I’d had enough of all the lies, of sending flowers, of pretending your mother was alive. I was going to send you a letter, from her, to say she never wanted anything to do with us, that she was moving away and not to contact her again. I made The Nest for us, Anna! I put all that stuff in it, your mother’s things, the Epipen, some other things you wouldn’t know about... I wanted to get rid of these things and start again. But I couldn’t just burn them, I had to do something more, something transformative, a new beginning. That’s why I had to make something big out of it, something for us. That’s why I took Isabelle’s ring and put it in. And then I was going to sell it, it would sit somewhere, in a gallery, and only I’d know, and it would be like a song, to us. Do you see?”

  I’m shaking my head, crying so much I can’t speak.

  “We don’t need to tell anyone anything, Anna. No one needs to know. Not about your mother, not about Isabelle, not about Monica.”

  “Oh god, Luis. Yes, they do.” I wipe my nose with the back of my hand. “They will know about Isabelle, they’ll figure it out, and there’s June…”

  “Don’t worry about June, babe. I’ll take care of June.”

  “You have to let her go! I’ll tell everyone what you did if you hurt her—you have to let her go, Luis!” I’ve turned around and I’m on my knees, scrambling to get to my feet but he grabs my ankle and I fall, hitting my head against the corner of the coffee table. He’s yelling for me to stop. He’s shouting: Where are you going? What are you doing? He wants me to listen, but I can’t listen anymore, and I’m screaming and kicking him and there’s a second when he lets go and yelps in pain and there’s a door next to the fireplace and I’ve lunged through it and slammed it shut after me and I lean against it, panting.

  It’s June’s bedroom.

  “What are you doing? Babe? Don’t make me do this! Anna?”

  He’s kicking the door and I’m screaming for him to stop and suddenly he’s on top of me and he pulls my hair and slams the side of my head on the floor and I’m clawing for something, anything and with one hand I’ve grabbed the leg of the bedside table and I’ve pulled it so hard the lamp has come crashing down and Luis is swearing, and I can’t reach the lamp and I claw at the drawer of the table, grappling blindly, and then I feel it.

  Small, hard, metallic.

  June’s gun.

  I’ve kicked him hard in the face and he holds his nose, his face scrunched up in pain and I’m on my feet, my arms outstretched, my hands shaking so hard I don’t know how long I can hold it.

  Luis drops his arms to his sides. His nose is bleeding. He shakes his head slowly. “No. Don’t.” Then suddenly his hands are on my face and there’s a noise, so fast, so sharp, it rips through the air and, just as quickly, silence. Except for a high-pitched sound, like a whistle. Luis smiles so sweetly and his eyes fill with tears and when he mouths the words, I love you, it’s pure and real and he looks down at the blood on his chest and I scream but I can’t hear myself, just the high-pitched noise, and when he falls I fall with him and hold him tight, and I say it to him, over and over, I’m obsessed with you.

  Forty-One

  I stand at the window gazing at the trees filled with brilliant white blooms. They’re all over campus, blossoming in unison, tall and dense, wide and round at the bottom and pointy at the top, which has always struck me as poetic, since they’re ornamental pears, and they really are shaped a bit like the fruit they bear.

  “Hey.”

  I turn around. June has walked in with a plate of cookies. I laugh.

  “A selection of your favorites,” she says, setting it down on the desk. We hug even though I saw her this morning. I stay with her in her new place whenever I’ve needed to return for the investigation.

  I grab a cookie and sit down at my desk. Which is not really my desk anymore, although no one has filled this office yet.

  “It’s so quiet around here,” I say.

  “I know, spring break, no students. Don’t you love it?”

  “I sure do.” It’s the first time I’ve been back to Locke Weidman since Luis died, so I’m grateful there are very few students around. I don’t think I could handle the stares, although I’m getting a lot better at that.

  “How is Roberto?” she asks. I smile. She’s the only who calls him that and I think he secretly loves it.

  I smile. “Rob’s wonderful. He’s been taking the kids fishing a lot.”

  “They’ll love that,” she says.

  I will never forget—and I’ve said this so much lately—the day Luis’s father, Rob, came to get me outside the court house. We had just found out so many things about Luis. That he had been forging my signature for years. That he signed for my inheritance, that he forged a power of attorney to act on my behalf so he could sell my mother’s house once enough years had passed, and he kept the money, too. He never spent it. All this time it’s been sitting in a term deposit account which he had opened, also in my name.

  But there was one thing I never knew, which was that when Luis was young he set fire to a man, and killed him. No one knows the circumstances exactly, and he was charged with involuntary manslaughter. Because of his age, he went to juvenile detention for eight months. Somehow, my mother found out and tried to tell me. But everything I believed about that still stands: it may have been the truth, but the only reason she wanted me to know was to hurt me. To push me to end the relationship because she just didn’t like to see me happy. It would have made no difference if she’d told me. I would have believed with all my heart whatever Luis did back then had been involuntary.

  But that day on the lawn outside the court house, Rob broke down and sobbed on my shoulder because he’d never told me about it. But we both thought he was good and kind, I said. You didn’t know either, what he was capable of. You thought he’d made a mistake, you didn’t want it to tarnish the rest of his life. I would have done the same for my kids.

  But he put a hand over his eyes, and asked if I was going to forbid him from seeing his grandchildren now. “They all I have left,” he said.

  “So come and live with us,” I replied. “They adore you. You’re on your own now. Apart from me, you’re the only family they have left. You’re the only family I have left.”

  And he sobbed again on my shoulder, for a long time, but with relief, and some joy too, I think.

  I’ve resigned from Locke Weidman, sold our house, and we’ve moved to Martha’s Vineyard, to a small but charming rented house. The money I got from the sale of our house is not enough to buy something over here and, until earlier this week, I didn’t know if I’d ever get the money in the term deposit account. I’m not sure I want it, anyway. And I certainly won’t be receiving the prize money. The Forrester Foundation has kindly allowed me more time to give them my notebooks, but I’d already decided to refu
se the prize. I wanted to wait until the district attorney concluded his investigation to tell them formally, and explain that it was Alex who solved it, with a little help from me, and that the prize should be awarded to him posthumously. Maybe his parents will use it to create a scholarship in his memory, especially now that the medical examiner has officially ruled his death was suicide.

  This came about because of his ex-girlfriend, a young woman called Lauren who used to go out with him when they were together at NYU. She’d broken it off but he had refused to accept it. After two years of behavior that bordered on stalking, he had emailed her to say he wanted to show her something, and after that, he promised he would no longer harass her. It was the last thing he was asking of her.

  I don’t know the exact details of all this but, suffice to say, she flew over to visit him—without telling her parents, who would have forbidden it. When she arrived at the apartment, the door was not quite closed. He wasn’t there. She walked in, waited, and she left. The consensus was that he had hoped she would understand he had killed himself because of her, and he wanted her to know.

  Did I leave the door open? I must have. Because when I saw her picture I knew she was the young woman I’d passed on the stairs that day. Not because of her face—I never looked at her—but because of her ring. A class ring in the colors of NYU, silver and purple.

  I don’t know what he wanted to show her and I don’t think he was going to kill himself. But some days I think maybe he was, and other days I think he was not well and he didn’t know what he was doing.

  But even without all that, it’s a big letter to write, and my head just wasn’t in it so I waited until the district attorney’s decision, which has been made, as of last Monday. The DA decided on the evidence that there was no need to take the case to the grand jury, so, I’m free. I will write that letter today, make things right, and after I’ve packed the rest of my things from this office, I’m going home to my kids.