The End of Her

by Shari Lapena

  “Coffee will be ready in a jiffy,” Hanna says, then looks at her more closely. “Tell me what’s going on,” she says.

  Stephanie doesn’t know what to say. This is something she thought about last night too. What to say to Hanna. Does she pretend everything is okay? Or can she be honest with her? She’s not ready for that. Finally she forces a smile and says, “Everything is fine.” She explains why they dropped the charges. She tells her about Erica, her criminal past.

  Hanna looks back at her, concerned. She’s not fooled. “But what do you think?” she asks finally.

  Stephanie swallows. “He cheated on his first wife. I know that. I’ve managed to forgive him for that—I think. But Erica is clearly a liar. She was telling nothing but lies about the accident. Everybody knows that now. It was just a terrible, tragic accident.” She pauses, then adds, “But Patrick knows that if he ever cheats on me, I’ll leave him.”

  Hanna continues to look at her uneasily, but Stephanie smiles back at her. “I don’t think I have anything to worry about anymore. It’s all good. And I’m dying for one of your muffins.”

  49

  Nancy gathers up her purse and a jacket and leaves the house for her exercise class. She’s opening her car door when she sees a woman approaching her from a car parked across the street. She immediately recognizes Erica and feels her insides turn to jelly. Why is she here? Nancy wants to get into her car and speed off, but she suddenly can’t move. Instead, she watches Erica come swiftly up her driveway, the wind blowing her blond hair around. How could a woman who looks so angelic be so hideous?

  “Hello, Nancy,” Erica says.

  “What the hell do you want?” Nancy asks nervously.

  “Your husband isn’t returning my calls.”

  “Of course he isn’t. I told you that he’d drop you the minute I told him I knew. He never wants to see you again. He doesn’t want to lose me.”

  Erica gives her a skeptical look, which infuriates Nancy. She now knows what this woman is made of—she hadn’t known before, when she confronted her at her own apartment—and she’s terrified. She just wants her out of their lives. How can she get rid of her?

  “If you’re so sure, then why are you so nervous?” Erica needles her.

  “I’m not.”

  “What are you afraid of?” Erica asks slowly. “What are you hiding?”

  “Nothing,” Nancy says too quickly. She recovers herself and says, “Why is it so hard to believe that a man might want to end a stupid affair and stay married?”

  “Tell him to call me,” Erica says.

  “Just get the hell out of our lives!” Nancy shouts.

  Erica smiles and says, “Just have him call me, will you?” She turns on her heel and walks back to her car. Nancy watches her drive away, and then, shaking visibly, slams her car door and heads back into the house.

  She locks the door behind her and collapses onto the couch, curling into a fetal position. Fear and dread envelop her. She’s so frightened that Erica will find out what she and Niall have been hiding for the last six years. She doesn’t want to think about it but guilt and fear pull her into the past.

  It happened on a rainy night in late November. She and Niall had decided to go to dinner at a restaurant in Westchester County, a little over an hour’s drive from Aylesford. It had been a celebratory affair, because Niall had had an excellent write-up in an architectural magazine—and they’d had a lot of wine with dinner.

  “Are you okay to drive?” Nancy asked as they got their coats.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” Niall said. And he seemed fine. He certainly didn’t seem drunk. But then, she’d been drinking, too, and perhaps her judgment had been impaired.

  Soon after they started off it began raining heavily. Niall was hunched forward over the steering wheel, peering into the night. The car was warm. The sound of the wipers sweeping noisily and methodically across the windshield was hypnotic, lulling Nancy to sleep.

  Suddenly a loud thud shook her violently awake. She felt the car swerve and then right itself back into the center of the lane. “What was that?” she cried. She looked over at her husband, who seemed to be in a daze.

  “I don’t know. Maybe I hit something. I didn’t see anything.”

  He kept going, his knuckles tight on the steering wheel. It was on the tip of her tongue to suggest they stop, but she didn’t. She persuaded herself it was nothing. And once they’d driven on for a few seconds, it became impossible to go back.

  “It was probably just a rabbit,” Niall said, after a minute. But they both knew a rabbit wouldn’t have sounded like that.

  They arrived home and didn’t mention it again. They fell into bed and slept in.

  Nancy got up the next morning and picked up the newspaper from outside the front door. She saw a small story at the bottom of the front page, and her life changed forever. A young man, walking along the side of the highway in the rain on the edge of Westchester County, perhaps hitchhiking, had been struck and killed instantly the night before. The car had fled the scene. There was no camera footage, no witnesses. The police were appealing for anyone with information.

  Nancy read the article twice, an awful certainty overtaking her. She went into the kitchen and approached the door to the attached garage with dread. It took her several minutes to build up the courage to open it. She thought about getting Niall, but she wanted to see it for herself first. In the garage, she bent down, freezing in her nightie and bare feet, and studied their car. There was some damage to the passenger side front bumper, but it wasn’t too noticeable.

  She rushed upstairs then and shook Niall awake, thrusting the newspaper in his face. “Could we have done this?” she asked in fear. She watched him read the article, saw the same horror overtake him.

  He looked up at her, clearly shaken. He shook his head back and forth. “I don’t know. I thought it was nothing.”

  “But the location—that’s just about where we were when you hit something,” she persisted.

  “So what do you want me to do?” Niall said, turning to her.

  “I don’t know.”

  “The harm’s done,” Niall said in a shaky voice. “A man is dead. If I hit him—my God.” He got out of bed and started pacing the bedroom. “I was probably over the limit. I fled the scene. I’ll probably go to prison.”

  “No, no, no,” Nancy cried, tears running down her face. “I’ll call my father. He’ll know what to do.”

  “No,” Niall said. “Keep him out of this.”

  “He can help us, Niall! He’s a judge. He’ll know what to do.”

  “He’ll want me to turn myself in,” Niall protested.

  “Only if that’s what’s best. I’m calling him.”

  Niall sat by helplessly, his head in his hands, as Nancy called her father. She told him only that it was an emergency. He showed up less than an hour later, without her mother, as she requested.

  “What is it?” he asked in his direct way. “What’s the matter?”

  They told him everything. Showed him the newspaper account. The judge’s demeanor darkened. “How could you drive when you’d been drinking?” he said to Niall in disgust. “How could you leave the scene? What were you thinking?”

  “Dad, you have to help us,” Nancy pleaded. She could see the conflict behind her father’s eyes. He was wrestling with what to do. They all knew Niall should turn himself in. But what she really wanted from her father was his permission not to. To help them with that. She waited.

  “Let me see the car.”

  They trudged out to the garage, and he looked at it for a long while without speaking. “You’d think there’d be more damage if you hit a person,” he said finally.

  Nancy let her breath out at last. “Maybe someone else hit him.”

  The judge turned around and went back into the house, his head down. Onc
e he was back in an armchair in the living room he said, “I can’t tell you what to do. The only way to be sure is to turn yourselves in,” the judge said, looking directly at Niall, “and let them look at the car.” He added, “The waiter at the restaurant would be able to say how much you’d had to drink. You’d probably be looking at jail time.”

  Nancy began to weep again.

  The judge waited a long moment before he spoke again. “I can also tell you that the solve rate for hit-and-runs is laughably low.” He added, “There’s no footage, no witnesses.” He was silent for another long moment and then finally said, clearly unhappy, “Whatever you decide, I won’t say anything.”

  Nancy shot a look at Niall. What would he want to do? She wished her father would be clearer about what they should do.

  “What do we do about the car?” Niall asked at last.

  “Nothing,” the judge said wearily. “Don’t take it to a shop to get it fixed. It doesn’t really need it, and they’ll be watching for that. No one’s going to notice anything about your car.”

  And no one had. For a long time Nancy woke every day hoping that they would catch who’d done it, and that it would be someone else, with a badly damaged car—proof positive that it wasn’t them. But it didn’t work out that way. The case quickly disappeared from the news.

  Now, Nancy, curled up on the sofa with her knees to her chest, has to resist the urge to telephone her father.

  50

  Patrick takes some satisfaction in the shocked look on the receptionist’s face when he walks into the office. “Patrick!” she says.

  “Hey, Kerri,” he says with a triumphant smile. “Is Niall around?”

  Niall must have heard him because he strides into the reception area.

  “Patrick!” he repeats, sounding just as taken aback as their receptionist.

  It’s an awkward moment. The last time they spoke, Patrick had been anticipating arrest, and Niall had told him he was dissolving the partnership; it had been acrimonious. Niall still looks very much on his guard. Fuck him, Patrick thinks. Why can’t he be happy for him? Does he have any real friends at all? “I have good news. The charges have been dropped. I’ve been completely exonerated, just as I expected,” he says.

  “That’s terrific! Really good news!” Niall says, clearly relieved, but with less enthusiasm than Patrick would have liked.

  “Do you have a minute?” Patrick asks.

  “Of course, come into my office.”

  Patrick follows the other man and sits down in the chair he used to sit in, almost daily, for four years. He reflects for a minute that this time yesterday he was still in jail, thinking he might die in there. How quickly things can change, for better or for worse.

  “So, tell me what happened,” Niall says, sitting back in his chair.

  “They had no evidence. None at all. And once they did some actual investigating, they found out that Erica Voss is a criminal and a liar.” He explains what they learned about Erica’s past. Patrick shakes his head. “She told all those lies; she could have put me in prison for life.”

  Niall has gone awfully pale. “Wow,” he says. He asks, “Can they charge her with something?”

  “I don’t know,” Patrick says. “But I’m free and clear of her. I’m ready to come back to work—no distractions.” Niall looks uncomfortable. “What?” Patrick asks, confused. “I’ve been cleared, Niall. Completely. They realized they never should have arrested me at all. They even told me as much,” he lies.

  “I think there’s been a misunderstanding,” Niall begins.

  “What do you mean, a misunderstanding?”

  “We already agreed to dissolve the partnership, Patrick. You’re getting paid out.”

  “But that was before. Everything’s different now,” Patrick protests. “You can’t still want to dissolve the partnership!” But that’s exactly what Niall wants to do, Patrick realizes, adrenaline shooting through his system.

  Niall flushes. “Don’t get me wrong, Patrick. I’m so glad—so happy and relieved for you—that this has worked out. That woman should rot in hell for what she did to you. But—the optics aren’t good. I mean, you’re all that people in this town have been talking about. It’s—quite a scandal.”

  “And now they’ll be talking about how they had to let me go. I didn’t do it, Niall!”

  “I know, and I’m sorry. But to be absolutely honest, I had been thinking about making a change before that. You’d been slipping for months, Patrick, you know that, you can’t deny it.”

  “That was because of the twins! I hadn’t had any sleep in months! They had colic, but they’re over it now. Everything’s back to normal. I can come back to work and give a hundred percent. A hundred and ten!”

  “I’m sorry to tell you this,” Niall says, averting his eyes briefly, “but I’ve already found another partner.”

  Patrick glares back at Niall in disbelief. “You son of a bitch.”

  “No need to get nasty, Patrick,” Niall says, bristling.

  Patrick wants to punch his former partner—former friend—in the face. So this is how it ends—four years of building a business together. He realizes he has nothing to lose now. He says, his voice accusatory, “You’ve been sleeping with her yourself, admit it.” Niall’s face pales further and he suddenly looks very distressed. “Made you feel good about yourself, did it?” Patrick says. “Let me give you a word of advice—stay away from her. She’s dangerous—you have no idea.”

  Niall says, his voice trembling, “I didn’t know what she was doing to you. Nancy found out about it and I broke it off. And then, when you told me about the inquest—and Erica’s role in it—I was sickened by it all. Nancy had already threatened to leave me. I wanted to distance myself from both of you.” He sinks in his chair in shame.

  “You fucking coward,” Patrick says. He tamps down his rage. He decides to take the high road. He’ll make it on his own. He gets up and leaves, refusing to look at Kerri as he passes by reception, slamming the door on his way out.

  51

  An uneasy couple of days go by in the house on Danbury Drive. Patrick behaves affectionately toward Stephanie and the twins, pretending that everything is the same as it was before. But for Stephanie, nothing is the same.

  Stephanie has been unable to make a decision. It’s as if she’s paralyzed, so she takes the path of least resistance, which is to do nothing. She focuses on the twins—feeding, bathing, dressing, changing. She takes them on outings, reads them stories, plays counting games with their toes.

  It’s like she’s suffering from some kind of internal collapse that has sucked out all her energy. Or maybe it’s just that she’s finding it so hard to sleep. She’s back to her old habits, wandering around the darkened house at night, brooding, staring at the sleeping babies, thinking the worst of people, imagining things. Awful things.

  It’s time for her to cut her losses and leave him. But she’s afraid. She’s afraid for the twins, mostly. The twins need a strong mother. She must survive, whatever happens, and take care of her babies. She must protect them. She’s tormented by images of her and her babies dying in a house fire. She thinks about the pan on the stove. She doesn’t know who put it there. It might have been her. It might not.

  Patrick breaks into her morbid thoughts. “I’m going out for a bit,” he says.

  She’s so caught up in her own thoughts that she barely even acknowledges him.

  * * *

  • • •

  ERICA HAS JUST LEFT her apartment and is on her way to her car when her cell phone buzzes. She looks down at it and sees who’s calling. It’s Patrick. She hesitates, and then accepts the call.

  “Erica,” he says in a low voice.

  He’s breathing heavily, as if he’s walking quickly. Her heart speeds up and, involuntarily, she looks over her shoulder and around the parking lot outs
ide of her apartment. He’s not here. No, wait. Her heart spikes. She sees him, across the lot, walking toward her. She tries to keep her voice steady, put her old confidence into it. “What are you doing here?” As he gets closer, she disconnects and drops her cell phone into her purse. He comes closer still, until his face is mere inches from hers. It’s the first time they’ve laid eyes on each other since the inquest.

  “Why the hell did you go to the coroner?” Patrick hisses at her furiously. “I thought we had an understanding.”

  She looks back at him in surprise. “So did I—until you double-crossed me. What did you expect?”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  He’s staring at her. She can smell him—slightly sweaty, so familiar. She sticks her face right up to his and hisses back, “Someone tried to run me down. Don’t pretend it wasn’t you.” She puts all her fury into her voice. “You were supposed to kill her, not me.” She’s breathing heavily now. She spits out, “Of course I went to the police—it was the only way to protect myself.”

  His face twists with rage and agitation. “Bullshit! I didn’t try to run you down! Just stop with the fucking lies, can’t you? You didn’t give me enough time. I needed to be sure I wouldn’t get caught. Now, thanks to you, I can never get rid of Stephanie—and it’s all your fault—going to the fucking police! You’ve screwed us both.”

  She says bitterly, “No—you’ve screwed us both. I hope you have a miserable life with your stuck-up, controlling wife. If she even keeps you.” She shrugs past him, gets into her car, and drives away.

  * * *

  • • •

  PATRICK STRIDES ANGRILY BACK to his own car. As he drives back to Aylesford, his mind returns to the turmoil of those days after Erica had given him a stark choice: kill his wife, or she’d go to the authorities. He’d been almost paralyzed by his situation, unable to think at all because of sleep deprivation and fear. He was living in a fog of indecision.