“A bottle of sleeping pills?” Sam gasps. “You… you poisoned her? Abby…”
“It’s for the best,” she says. “Don’t you see? She’s all wrong for you. It would be so easy to let her go…”
“Jesus Christ…”
“You know this is the right thing to do, Sam. You don’t have to feel guilty anymore. I’ve done the hardest part.”
And now my ankles are free. Except it doesn’t help me as much as you would think. I’m wedged in this tiny little space, I’m half-asleep from a bottle of sleeping pills, so I’m not sure how I’m supposed to leap out and overpower anyone. I don’t think I can.
“Monica.” Sam’s voice is calm but I know him well enough to hear the underlying panic. “We’ve got to get Abby to a hospital. I swear, we’ll figure out a way to help you with… well, everything. But please, Monica. Don’t…” And now his voice breaks. “Please let me take her to a hospital.”
“God.” Monica’s voice is filled with disgust. “You’re pathetic. Even when something a million times better is staring you in the face, you don’t want it. My mother was totally wrong about you.” She snorts. “Well, too bad it doesn’t matter. It’s too late for her. For both of you.”
In the entire time I’ve known Sam, I’ve never seen him throw a punch. Correction: we’ve never been in a situation where him throwing a punch would make even remote sense. He’s not some drunk who gets into bar fights. Yes, he’s in good physical condition thanks to that insurance-lowering gym membership, but he doesn’t go around punching people.
But I manage to sit up just in time to see him lunge at Monica.
As he’s doing it, the gun goes off, the shot echoing through the apartment. Wow, that’s loud. I don’t know if she got him or not, but he’s got his left hand on her right wrist, and she’s screaming. It takes him a few seconds, but between his much greater strength and her abdominal girth, she falls to the floor.
But she’s still got the damn gun.
I manage to sit up, but it takes every ounce of my strength. I feel like I’m moving through molasses. I don’t know how I’ll be able to do anything at all to help Sam. And what’s more, now that I’m standing, I can make out the blood on the floor. Actually, quite a lot of blood. And now I can see the crimson seeping through Sam’s shirt.
And that’s when I see the door to our walk-in closet crack open.
Gertie.
I watch in horror as she ventures out and sees all the blood on the floor. She probably has no idea it’s all Sam’s. I see the panic growing on her face. She’s going to try to get Sam off Monica. If she gets involved, it will be two against one. And Monica still has the gun in a death grip in her right hand.
I don’t care if I have only one ounce of strength left in my body. I can’t let Gertie and Monica win. I’ve got to stop this.
Move, Abby. Move!
My body obeys. Reluctantly at first, but then I’m propelling myself across the room, at Gertie. I feel like I don’t even entirely have control over my arms and legs anymore, but against all odds, they’re doing what I want them to do. I lunge at Gertie, knocking her against the wall. And just before I do, my eye lock with Monica’s for a split second, and she lifts the gun in her hand…
The sound of gunfire echoes through the room for the second time. My heart pounds as the same crimson on Sam’s shirt leaks from a hole in Gertie’s left temple. Gertie’s lips form a shocked O, two seconds before she collapses to the ground.
“Mom!” Monica screams.
Sam, startled by the gunshot, somehow allows Monica to scramble out from under him. We both watch in silence as Monica rushes to Gertie’s side, as fast as she can, given the load she’s carrying. She bends down beside her mother, the tears forming in her eyes. “Mommy…”
Sam looks shell-shocked—he’s as pale as I’ve ever seen him. He lifts his left hand to touch his forehead, and he’s shaking badly. His shirt sleeve is drenched in blood. “Holy shit,” he breathes.
“Sam,” I manage.
My head spins seconds before I collapse like a rag doll against the floor. I’m so out of it that I don’t even realize it’s happening until I’m on the floor. I can’t keep my eyes open much longer.
“Abby?” He drags himself across the room to me in a half-crawl. He grabs my clammy hand in his. “You’re awake.”
“Yes,” I manage. “Barely.”
“Hang in there,” he says, “we’re going to get you to the hospital.” He brushes a few sweaty strands of hair from my face. He looks white as a sheet—I wonder how much blood he’s lost. “I promise. I just need to go in the living room and get my phone. Okay?”
“Don’t leave me alone,” I whisper.
“It’ll be for only half a minute. I’ll be right back.”
“No,” Monica’s voice interrupts us. “You won’t.”
I use every last bit of strength to lift my eyes to look at Monica. She’s glaring at us, her eyes moist and red-rimmed. The gun—she still has the gun. I forgot all about it. I can’t keep track anymore. I’m so tired. I’m so, so tired…
“She’s dead,” she hisses at us. “My mother is dead.”
“You’re the one who shot her,” Sam points out.
“I was aiming for her.” Monica’s eyes are like daggers as she lifts the gun in the air. “And this time, I won’t miss.”
Sam’s eyes widen when he sees what she’s doing. Honestly, I don’t know how I ever doubted his loyalty to me, because the first thing he does is hurl himself in front of me, so if Monica does fire a bullet, it will have to go through him first. I want to tell him not to sacrifice himself for me, but I can’t. My eyes are drifting shut—words would be far too much effort for me.
“You’ll have to kill me first,” he says to her.
“Don’t be stupid, Sam.”
He doesn’t say a word, but I feel his hand squeeze mine.
“That’s really what you’re choosing?” she says incredulously. “Her?”
“That’s right,” he says. “I’m choosing Abby.”
My hero.
I’m going to die knowing how much my husband loves me. That’s worth something.
My eyelids are too heavy to keep open. I hear the click of a gun being cocked. And then the explosion of gunfire for the third time.
Chapter 41
I wake up in a white room.
At first, I think it’s possible I’ve died and I’m in heaven. But no, heaven wouldn’t look like this. There wouldn’t be so many cracks on the ceiling in heaven. There wouldn’t be a clanging air conditioner next to my bed in heaven. And I probably wouldn’t have an IV in my arm either.
I’m thinking I might be in a hospital.
I struggle to swallow, but it’s hard with my throat so parched. The last thing I remember is the gunshot. Monica had the gun and she pulled the trigger. She shot at Sam.
Oh no…
He’s got to be dead. She shot him point blank.
Except if Monica killed Sam, how did I get to the hospital? She sure wouldn’t have called for an ambulance.
I hear a groan and look to my right, which sets off a throbbing pain in my temple. There’s a blue recliner next to the bed, and lying inside it, covered in a light blanket, is my sleeping husband. He mumbles something in his sleep and shifts, trying to get comfortable.
He’s alive.
Oh my God, he’s alive. And he’s not on life support either. He’s doing well enough that he’s sleeping in my hospital room.
“Sam,” I whisper. He stirs but doesn’t open his eyes. “Sam!”
This time his brown eyes fly open. He sits up in the recliner, a smile creeping across his face. “You’re awake.”
“Yeah.” I nod. “I’m awake.”
He reaches over and takes my hand. His is warm and comforting, which makes me self-conscious about how clammy mine feels. “Thank God you’re okay. I’m was so worried, Abby…”
I rub my eyes with the arm that doesn’t have an IV. “What
happened?”
“What do you remember?”
I look at his left arm, which seems more or less intact. “You got shot.”
“Oh, that?” He pulls his hand from mine to rub at his arm. He winces. “It was a superficial wound. They bandaged it up in the ER. I’m fine.”
“But Monica…” I bite my lip. “She was pointing the gun at you. She was going to shoot you again.”
Sam lets out a long sigh and drops his head. “She didn’t shoot me. She…”
I frown at him. “What?”
“She shot herself.”
My mouth falls open. “She shot herself?”
He looks down at his hands. “I thought she was going to shoot me. I thought she was going to kill me. I figured that was it. But then… she turned the gun on herself. Put it below her chin and pulled the trigger. I guess when she realized her mother was dead, she just… I don’t know… lost it.”
In spite of everything Gertie did to me, I feel a jab of sorrow over her death. She was my assistant for years—I knew her only as a sweet older woman. I have to believe that couldn’t have all been an act. I’ll miss her smile and her cookies.
I’m not so sure Gertie’s death was the reason Monica shot herself though. I saw the look on her face when Sam tried to protect me. She was heartbroken over her mother, but that wasn’t what pushed her over the edge. She shot herself because she knew I had won.
“I just need you to know,” he says quietly, “nothing ever happened between me and Monica. Nothing. I never touched her. I swear to you.”
“I believe you.”
His shoulders sag. “You do?”
“Of course I do.”
He rakes a hand through his hair. “Well, you’re the only one then. The police looked at me like I was a piece of shit, your mother threatened to take me “for everything I’ve got,” whatever that means because I’ve got nothing, and Monica’s stepmother actually slapped me in the face. Apparently, nobody thinks it’s plausible that I wouldn’t have slept with her.” He shakes his head. “Is it really so crazy that I wouldn’t want to cheat on my wife?”
I manage a smile. “Apparently, yes.”
“She really set me up. Told everyone I was her boyfriend or her husband. I had no clue—I feel like a moron for letting it happen.”
“Well,” I say, “she was pretty good at manipulating people. You were the one who didn’t want to go through with the whole thing in the first place. I was the one who talked you into it.”
“I know, but…”
I reach out for him, and he grabs my hand in his again. “I heard everything you said to Monica in our bedroom. I know you weren’t sleeping with her. And…” I swallow, feeling an ache in my dry throat. “I know you jumped in front of me to stop her from shooting me.”
He ducks his head down as he squeezes my fingers. “You’re my whole life, Abby. If anything ever happened to you…”
“Yeah,” I say. “I know what you mean.” The thought of losing Sam was what propelled me forward to hurl myself in front of Gertie back in our bedroom.
He shifts in his seat. “And I’m sorry I didn’t believe you about the drugs. I should have known you’d never do anything like that.”
I nod, although the sting is still there. I wish he had believed me.
“I never thought you killed Denise,” he says. “Honestly. I didn’t know what the hell was going on, but I didn’t believe that.” He shakes his head. “You know, Monica was the one who told me to buy that letter opener for you. I ran into her when I was picking you up at the office and asked her for anniversary gift ideas. I can’t believe she was planning it even then…”
“She and Gertie were planning it for years…”
When I think of it, I feel sick. All those years when I thought Gertie was a sweet old woman who was doing her best, all she was doing was targeting a husband for her daughter. She knew early on that Sam and I were having fertility problems, and she knew how badly I wanted a baby. She planned to get me out of the way, then have my money and my husband for her daughter.
And then a thought occurs to me. My brain was so foggy when I woke up, I didn’t even think of it. “Sam, the baby…” I feel like I’m choking. “Is the baby… dead?”
A ghost of a smile touches his lips. “No, they managed to deliver him safely. He’s in the neonatal ICU. Doing okay.”
“Oh.”
I exhale, thinking of our tiny baby, hooked up to monitors in an incubator. I dreamed of that baby for so long. I already love him a little bit, even though I’ve never even seen him. But after what Monica did to us…
“It’s okay,” Sam says suddenly.
“What’s okay?”
His brown eyes are sad. “If you don’t want him. I get it.”
“Sam…”
“No, really,” he says. “After everything that happened, I’d understand if… well, you know. Anyway, we’ll work something out.”
I try to sit up in bed, but my head throbs. I lie back down again, knowing I’m going to be chained to this bed for at least another day. “Do you want him?”
“Of course I do.”
Of course he does.
He’s quiet for a moment. When he speaks again, his voice has a tinge of excitement: “Do you want to see a picture?”
I nod.
Sam whips out his cell phone and it takes him seconds to bring the image up on the screen. He holds his phone up for me, and I squint at the newborn baby on the screen.
He’s tiny. Painfully tiny and helpless and adorable, like the newborn I always dreamed of. He’s got oxygen prongs in his tiny nose and he’s wearing a little white hat and sweater that are really small, yet still impossibly big on him. I can make out five perfect little fingers on his left hand.
“He looks like you,” I say to Sam.
I always thought it was ridiculous when people said babies look like adults. All babies look like little old men. (Yet the converse isn’t true—old men don’t look like babies.) But actually, this baby really does look like Sam. Something about his nose and his lips.
“I thought so too.” He grins at me. “They let me hold him this morning. Just for a minute, but it was…”
He turns his head away. He’s trying not to get too excited. The mother of this child tried to murder us both, after all. But really, there’s only one right thing to do.
“I want him too,” I say.
Sam’s eyes light up. “Yeah?”
“Of course I do. He’s adorable, he’s beautiful, and he looks like you.”
I don’t say the last thing I’m thinking: And he doesn’t have a mother.
“As soon as you’re feeling better,” Sam says, “you have to come with me to see him. Okay?”
I can’t suppress a smile. “Okay.”
“Also…” He winks at me. “We have to come up with a name.”
Right. We get to choose a name for this baby that is now ours—we will be taking him home. Something that seemed like an impossible dream only days earlier.
“I’m so happy we finally have our child,” I sigh.
He nods. “I know what you mean.”
“This is what we wanted for so long.”
“Yeah…”
“It’s just… it’s hard to know we’re only getting him because his mother is dead.”
Sam is quiet. He has an odd expression on his face that’s making me uneasy.
“What?” I finally say.
He rubs at the back of his neck. “I never said Monica was dead.”
Epilogue
One Year Later
David is learning to walk.
I know—I didn’t want him to be named David. But Sam really pushed for the name—it was his father’s name, after all. Sam doesn’t talk about how much he missed his father after his heart attack took him away from their family, but it meant a lot to him to name his son after the man. And the name is also meant partially to honor Denise, who made me the woman I am today.
And now David is one year old, pulling up on the coffee table, and taking those first cautious steps into the abyss of our living room. He’s cautious and serious—just like his dad. He’s also sweet like his dad. In so many ways, David is a clone of Sam.
I adore him. I love him more than I thought it would be possible to love another human being. I loved my parents and Sam, of course, but this is different. I spend hours marveling at his perfect little hands. When I hug him, I feel like I can’t squeeze him tightly enough. When I have difficulty sleeping at night, all I have to do is go into his bedroom and peer down at his sweet little sleeping face, listen to his deep, even breathing, and all the tension drains from my body.
He has changed my life.
Sam comes into the living room with a plastic container of baby food. After all the complaining I did about how awful baby food tasted, Sam decided he was going to cook his own. And believe it or not, even though Sam couldn’t cook adult food to save his life, the little meals he puts together for David are absolutely delicious. Even I think so. It’s like he’s got a talent. I told him he needs to start his own company, but he says he’s going to stick to math.
David loves the food too. As soon as he spots the container, his chubby little cheeks stretch into a smile. That smile tugs at me every time.
Sam ruffles David’s hair affectionately before lifting him into his high chair. That’s something David’s got that isn’t like either of us—blond hair. Sam claims he was blond as a kid, but I’ve seen pictures and he’s lying. His hair was a lighter shade of brown than it is now, but he’s not towheaded the way David is. That hair is all Monica.
Thanks to my son, there isn’t one day that goes by when I don’t think of that woman. There isn’t a day when I don’t search his face for traces of her features. I will never stop watching his behavior, wondering if he’ll end up crazy like she was.
I was lucky in that when the police searched Monica’s apartment after she shot herself, they found plenty of evidence linking her and her mother to the murder of Denise Holt. They also found out she’d been stealing money from the company—something I worry would have been attributed to me, if things had gone differently on that fateful day. This is surely why they wanted to wrap things up neatly by making it look like I killed myself—she knew if she were ever under investigation, the truth would come out.
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