The Wife Stalker

by Liv Constantine

  Suddenly, someone was lifting her up and she heard sirens and voices as she was loaded into a big vehicle with flashing lights.

  “Stelli,” she croaked, as the ambulance doors closed.

  “Your little boy is fine,” the EMT said to her. “You saved his life.”

  Piper closed her eyes in relief. “Thank God,” she said. “Thank God.”

  The next time she opened her eyes, Leo was in a chair next to her bed—a hospital bed, she realized, as she looked around the room. The pain in her shoulder brought everything into sharper focus.

  “You’re awake,” he said, leaning forward to take her hand. “How do you feel?”

  “Some pain. What happened? Where are the children? Is Stelli all right?”

  “Stelli’s fine. He and Evie are with the Mortons, friends who live about a mile down the road from the house. The kids will be more comfortable there.”

  She swallowed, her mouth dry. “Water?”

  Leo picked up a lidded cup and brought the straw to her lips.

  She drank greedily and then rested her head back on the pillow, exhausted by the effort. “Joanna?”

  “She tried to kill Stelli. Almost killed you. The police have her now.” His voice sounded raw.

  “She never stopped following us, did she? She knew we’d be at the house in Maine,” Piper said.

  “Rebecca told her we were going there. She—”

  “What? Rebecca was talking to her about us?” Piper asked before Leo could finish.

  “I called her a little while ago, to let her know what happened. Apparently, Joanna had gotten in touch with her, feeding her lies about you. Rebecca thought the children might be in danger, so she told Joanna about the trip. Joanna had told her about Ethan’s death and then the accident with Mia and Matthew.”

  Piper shook her head, disbelieving. “All this time Joanna thought I was a murderer?”

  Leo took her hand again. “She convinced Rebecca of it, too. Ava got to Joanna and clearly convinced her.” He took her hand again. “I’m furious that Rebecca called Joanna. I told her to pack her things and leave.”

  “That’s probably for the best.”

  “She should have come to me. We could have avoided all of this.” He shook his head.

  She sighed, thinking about Joanna again. “I knew Joanna had problems, but I never imagined she could go as far as she did.”

  “It’s my fault. I never realized how unbalanced she was. All the years she was at the firm, she was invaluable to me. She was the perfect assistant.” His eyes clouded over. “I should have seen what was happening. She was just such a help after Olivia died, offering to get the kids from school, packing their lunches, cooking their meals. All I could think about was my wife and how much I missed her. I let it go too far by allowing Joanna to stay in the guest wing and spend weekends with the kids and me. Nothing ever went on between us, trust me. That was the last thing on my mind,” he was quick to add.

  “Joanna thought that because you let her stay at the house and help with the children that she was meant to be your wife?”

  “I guess so. But I knew something was off when she started acting like it was her house—rearranging the kitchen, questioning me about my plans, looking at my emails. I guess because she was living at the house until Rebecca could come back she started to feel like it was her house. I wrote it off as her being pushy. She ran everything at the office, so I thought she was just trying to help . . . or at least I told myself that. I was grieving, and I needed the support. But then she got so weird and angry that I was seeing you. Stupid me, I assumed it was because she was worried about the kids and felt it was too soon after Olivia’s death. When she told me that she loved me, I felt guilty. I told her I didn’t feel the same way, but I had to handle her with kid gloves. I mean, how would it look? My assistant staying over at my house.”

  “I never understood how she got so intertwined in your life in the first place.”

  He leaned back in his chair and ran a hand through his hair. “It started when Olivia’s depression escalated, and Joanna became her confessor. Olivia confided to Joanna that she believed she was a bad mother, that her depression made it impossible for her to care for the children the way she should. I see now that Joanna saw it as her mission after Olivia died to become the mother she thought they needed. I knew the night she came downstairs in Olivia’s red dress that she was taking things too far.” He shook his head. “When Joanna left to take care of her mother, it seemed like the problem had been solved—she would go home and I would ease her out of our lives slowly. It was so stupid of me.”

  “You were trying to be kind, and the children loved her. You couldn’t have known that she’d escalate things the way she did.”

  He stared past Piper, unblinking. “No. I’m a criminal lawyer. I should have seen it. All I saw was a lonely woman professing her love. I thought she’d get over it with time.”

  “Stop beating yourself up, Leo. There’s no telling what caused her to snap the way she did. We’re safe now. And together. That’s all that matters.” She paused. “Why didn’t Olivia get some professional help?”

  “She should have, but she insisted she could fight it by herself. The despair would take over one minute, and the next she’d be on a manic high. I never knew who she would be when I got home. She wanted to prove that she was strong enough to do it on her own, with no medication, no help with the children . . . but obviously, it was too much for her.” His face sagged. “I should have insisted.”

  “Leo, you can’t force someone to get help. You couldn’t have known that she would take her life.” Piper looked at him, her expression grave. “One day, when they’re much older, we’re going to have to tell the children the truth about her suicide.”

  He stood up suddenly and started pacing, his face tormented. “Piper, we were wrong. Evie said so. She remembered.”

  “Remembered what?”

  “The weekend she died, Olivia had taken Evie to the Maine house for some mother-daughter time. The day after they got there, the police found her body at the bottom of the cliff, and discovered a note in the bedroom. I didn’t even have time to be sad, I was just so furious that she would do something like that, especially to let Evie wake up and see that she was gone.”

  Piper was confused. He’d confided this to her when they had begun dating—why was he going over it again? “I’m sorry that this has brought all of that back to the surface. I was only trying to help you through it by having us come here.”

  He shook his head. “No, you don’t understand. Evie remembers seeing Joanna that night. She woke up to angry voices in the house, saw figures out on the cliff. She saw Joanna . . . push her mother. She buried the memory and thought it had been a dream. That’s why she kept having that nightmare.”

  Piper was horrified. “Joanna killed Olivia? And Evie saw?”

  “And then Joanna let me think Olivia had killed herself. Joanna must have forged the note . . .” He had started pacing the length of the hospital room. “After working for me for so many years, she could write my and Olivia’s signatures in her sleep.”

  Piper leaned back, drained. “I’m so sorry.”

  “The only good thing is that I know now that Olivia didn’t intentionally leave us.”

  “That is good. The children will still need help, though, making sense of . . . all this.”

  He nodded. “I know.”

  She took his hand. “We’ll help them through this. We’ll all help each other through this.”

  “We have time,” he said.

  Yes, fortunately, they had a lifetime to figure it out. Her eyes fluttered shut. For now, she needed to sleep.

  54

  Joanna

  I haven’t touched the greasy meat loaf congealing on the tray that the guard brought an hour ago. All I could manage to get down was the lime-green Jell-O. If this is the way the food is going to be in jail, I suppose I will finally lose that extra twenty pounds. They want to charg
e me with Olivia’s murder, and my lawyer has advised me to plead insanity, explaining that it was the best way for me to avoid a prison sentence. But I was only helping Olivia. She came into the office one day to have lunch with Leo, but he’d been called into court and forgotten to tell her. She looked so downtrodden, I was reminded of my mother—the woman who’d kept me from my dreams, from having a life of my own. I knew what having a mother like that did to a child.

  I asked if she’d like to go to lunch with me instead, and she said yes, her face hopeful, as though she’d been thrown a life preserver. She poured her heart out to me that day, admitted that she’d been struggling with depression since Stelli had been born. At first, they thought it was postpartum, but it wasn’t lifting. She was still depressed two years after Stelli’s birth. She’d have her good spells, but then the black days would come—days when she could barely drag herself out of bed. She worried about what it was doing to the children. I tried to help her, to get her to see a therapist, but she refused. She thought she could handle it on her own.

  Over the next few months, we became closer, and I checked in on her frequently. Sometimes, when Leo worked late, I’d go over and make dinner for the kids and spend a little time with them while I encouraged her to get up, to take a walk, to do anything. She confided that she’d thought about suicide, that she’d wondered if her family would be better off without her. She begged me not to say a word to Leo, but I worried that it was only a matter of time before she took her own life.

  And then that Friday last year, when Leo told me that she and Evie had gone to Maine for the weekend, I panicked. What if she was going to kill Evie and herself? I had to protect that sweet little girl. If Olivia wasn’t going to help herself, it was time that I did.

  I got to the house late, after eleven, and Evie was asleep. Olivia looked surprised to see me, but she welcomed me in and we went into the kitchen to talk. She said she thought the getaway would help, but she still felt dead inside. I begged her to get help, but she said she’d get through it. We started to argue and moved outside to the deck. We thought Evie was still asleep, but she must have heard us when we were still in the house and then sneaked outside to listen. I told Olivia that she wasn’t being a good mother, that if she loved the kids and Leo, she’d go see someone, get medication. She started yelling at me then. Saying I had no right to talk to her that way. She said I was the help, not her friend. I screamed back at her, telling her about how my mother’s illness and depression had ruined my childhood, and that she was going to do the same to her own kids. Her eyes blazed with an intensity bordering on insanity, and she ran away from me then, toward the cliffs.

  She turned back to me and yelled: “Maybe I’ll just jump. End it all now. Then I won’t be around to ruin my children’s lives.” In her eyes was a dare, and I knew then that she needed my help. She wanted to do it. She just didn’t have the nerve. So I took a few strides forward and pushed her, watching as she fell like a rag doll, not making a sound, until she hit the jagged rocks below. That was the moment I became their mother, and when Leo got over his grieving, I would be his wife. I wouldn’t stay in bed all day or shirk my responsibilities. I would take care of them like they deserved.

  I went back to the house, peeked in on a sleeping Evie, and then composed the note that Leo found. Writing as Olivia, I tried to make him understand that I had left to make his life better, and that I didn’t want the children to lose the Maine house—they loved it there. I implored Leo not to sell it.

  Everything would have all been fine if Piper had just stayed away.

  You may think I’m crazy. I’m not. I know that Evie and Stelli weren’t born to me, that they’re not my biological children. But they are mine, spiritually—no one else could understand so well what they went through. I was always meant to be their mother, and they were always meant to be my children. Their birth mother hadn’t been able to live up to her responsibilities. But I could. I had to. When Olivia died, it was crystal clear that Leo and the children had always been my destiny.

  I helped him pick up the pieces after Olivia was gone. I was happy to do it. Looking back, I can see I should have given him more time to realize what I already knew—that we were destined to be together. He was still grieving Olivia, and I moved too fast.

  Not physically, of course. I knew that we had to wait before making love until he was completely over Olivia and could come to me wholeheartedly. But I didn’t think he’d mind if I rearranged the kitchen and some of the furniture. Olivia was not organized, and things needed to be more efficient. I organized the house for him, helped with the kids’ rooms. And the children loved me, and I loved them. Then he started talking about boundaries. Said I was getting too involved. I did my best to respect his boundaries, knowing that eventually they’d disappear. But then he met Piper.

  He got upset whenever I mentioned her, and eventually he told me it was best if I resigned, offering me two years’ severance and a $250,000 lump sum. I took his money because I needed it. Of course, I realized only later that he must have been afraid I’d sue him for sexual harassment, since he’d allowed me to stay at his house. After the police accused me of child abuse when I’d only been trying to keep Stelli safe, Leo got a restraining order against me.

  I always knew that Piper’s intention was to hurt them, and I still think she will. Maybe she took a bullet for Stelli, but it was all for show. She’ll never be their mother. I’ll wait for as long as it takes.

  My mother called to tell me she’d come see me in jail, but I told her not to bother. The only good thing about being here is that I don’t have to feel guilty about not taking care of her anymore. No more cooking and cleaning up after her, trying to cheer her up. I had lived in her dreary, cramped house all my life, but now I wouldn’t end up like that pitiful woman in the obituary I read, the one who took care of her mother until she died. Despite the fact that I was in a locked cell, I felt free for the first time in years.

  The last person I had to settle the score with was Celeste. She’d be happy to know that I was no longer obsessing about Piper. But she wouldn’t be happy to hear the rest of what I had to say. I’d heard from my attorney that Celeste’s license had been suspended and her office temporarily closed. I asked him to arrange for her to visit me. At first, she refused; then I told him to tell her that I knew who had leaked her files on her Facebook page, and suddenly she was ready to meet.

  She would be here any minute. Finally, the guard opened the door and she walked in. Her appearance was shocking. She was disheveled, her face pale and devoid of makeup, and she had dark circles under her eyes.

  “Hello, Celeste.” My voice was cold.

  She sat across from me and shook her head. “What have you done?”

  “I’m sure you’re up to speed on why I’m here. Maybe if you’d been a better therapist . . .”

  “I don’t mean that. What do you know about my computer being hacked?”

  “You’re really not that quick, are you?”

  “Look, Joanna, I don’t want to play games here. I only came because your lawyer said you know what happened.”

  I had to be careful what I said, but I’d prepared for this. I leaned back in my chair. “Well, first of all, you should be careful about opening attachments. You’re so fond of emailing your patients, but I guess you didn’t know that theoretically someone could add a little Trojan horse to one of the documents they send you and clone your whole computer. Not that I’m saying that anyone did that. But someone could.”

  Her mouth dropped open. “All that confidential information was posted to my Facebook page. I’m going to lose my license, and I’m being sued.”

  “What a shame. Although I must say, you’re a pretty shitty therapist, so it’s no loss to the mental health community.”

  “You’re crazy. I don’t know why I didn’t see it—how I didn’t. You lied to me. You told me that Leo was your ex-husband, that Evie and Stelli were your children. You were never even married. I
should have recognized that you’re delusional.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m not delusional. I always knew he wasn’t my husband, you idiot. Of course I lied to you. But they are my children. Olivia gave them to me.” Now I was getting angry. I had to focus and get back to why I had wanted to see her. I leaned in closer. “Remember when I told you that my father had replaced me with another daughter?”

  She looked confused.

  “Putting the pieces together yet? Did you ever wonder why your stepfather was gone so much? Why he didn’t live with you full-time until you were a teenager?”

  A spark of recognition appeared in her eyes. “No . . . I don’t . . .”

  “Because he left my family for you and your whore of a mother.”

  Celeste looked at me in shock. “My father is your father? I . . . I didn’t know. He traveled for work.”

  “He was my father first. But he wanted to spare you and your mother the embarrassing truth of our existence. He didn’t give a shit about us. You wanted to know why I never told him how I felt—because he didn’t want me to be a part of his family, your family.” I laughed. “Couldn’t let your mom know he’d been cheating on his wife for years with her. Even though she had you out of wedlock, for some reason he thinks she’s a saint.”

  “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know, Joanna.” She sounded like therapist Celeste for a minute.

  “Yeah, well, too late for ‘sorry.’ He paid for your college and your graduate degree. That money was supposed to be for my education. I’d be a lawyer now if it weren’t for you. I guess now neither of us has the profession she wants.”

  “You came to me purely for revenge?”