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‘Bullshit! Then why wait all this time? You only came to me now because you want money. Everyone will see that.’
She shakes her head. ‘I was young, and stupid, and afraid after what happened. Afraid they might think I was a part of it. You know what we’d been doing. I’d just learned I was carrying your child. I was even afraid of what you might do to me, because I knew what you’d done. And I knew you were clever – I mean, you got away with murder.’
She seems to almost believe her own lies. He finds himself clenching his hands and forces them open. He’d love to wring her neck.
She continues. ‘So I moved away and had the baby. But now I’m older, and not so stupid. I’ve had time to think. I have leverage, and I mean to use it. And I’m not afraid of you any more.’
‘No?’ he says. ‘Maybe you should be.’ He didn’t mean to threaten her, it just slipped out.
She looks at him as if taking his measure. ‘Yes, maybe I should be,’ she agrees.
‘So is that what this is all about? You want child support? Why didn’t you just fucking say so? We could have worked something out. You don’t need to make all this up about what happened to Lindsey.’
‘I’m not making anything up,’ she says. ‘I’m just telling the truth.’
‘You are so full of shit,’ he says acidly.
‘I think the authorities would appreciate having all the facts, don’t you?’
They stare at each other for a moment. He has to set her straight. ‘I told you – we’re not going to pay you anything. Stephanie knows everything. She knows I would never hurt anyone, and she’s very tight with her money.’ He takes a deep breath, exhales. ‘Look,’ he says, trying to sound reasonable, which is difficult, because he is completely enraged. ‘A child is different. If it’s mine, and you can prove it, I’ll pay the appropriate support. Out of my own earnings.’
She glances at him. ‘Are you going to tell your wife about our son?’
He cringes at the words our son. He bites back his immediate response. ‘I tell Stephanie everything.’
She snorts derisively; he lets it go.
‘I don’t understand why you’re doing this,’ he says desperately. ‘I didn’t kill Lindsey on purpose. And even if I wanted to pay you, I couldn’t get you any money – not without Stephanie knowing, and she’d never agree.’
‘You have to find a way. I want two hundred thousand dollars. In cash.’
He gapes at her in disbelief. ‘That’s not going to happen.’ He shakes his head. ‘For the last time – I didn’t murder her – it was an accident!’ He’s hissing at her now, spit flying.
She waits for him to calm down and then says coolly, ‘If your wife was dead, you’d have lots of money.’
He stares at her, aghast, as the silence lengthens. He lowers his voice and says, ‘Surely you’re not suggesting I murder my wife?’
‘You did it before,’ she says coldly. ‘Don’t pretend you haven’t thought about it.’
‘You’re out of your mind,’ he says. He clenches his hands tightly again. ‘You’re a fucking psychopath!’
‘Takes one to know one,’ she says, rendering him speechless. He stares at her in horror. After a moment she says, in a reasonable voice, ‘If she were to meet with a fatal accident, it would make things easier – for both of us.’
Patrick continues to stare at her, his eyes unblinking. Finally he says, his voice trembling with rage and fear, ‘You stay away from her or I’ll go to the police.’
‘No, you won’t.’
Silence stretches out between them as the awfulness of his situation sinks in.
‘You got the insurance money,’ she says eventually. ‘What, you didn’t think I knew about that? Two hundred thousand dollars,’ she says. ‘That was quite a bit of money, nine years ago, for someone in his early twenties. Enough for a fresh start, back in New York. Enough to get started in business, maybe.’
‘You absolute bitch,’ he whispers, his face contorting with emotion.
‘The authorities will be interested in that, I think, don’t you? And they’ll be interested in us.’
‘How do you know about the insurance?’ he spits at her angrily.
Instead of answering, she says, ‘Tell me, who insures a young wife for that amount of money?’
He protests, furiously. ‘We were expecting a baby. My dad was in insurance. He always said a young family should have life insurance.’
‘Right.’
He tries to calm himself, regain control. ‘Look, if you’re telling the truth about this kid, I’ll figure something out.’ He gives her a hard look and says, ‘But stay away from my wife.’
She doesn’t answer. She gets up off the bench, turns her back on him and walks away.
He watches her go, a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. He realizes that he’s between a rock and a hard place, and Erica has put him there.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE TWINS ARE still down for their nap, and Stephanie lies in bed in the darkened room. Even though she’s bone-tired, she doesn’t fall asleep. Her mind is racing. She sees the photographs in her mind’s eye – the car almost buried in snow; the smiling, dark-haired young woman; her husband’s younger, anguished self. All of this happened a long time ago, but it’s all new to her. It’s been there, on the internet, all this time. It’s been in her husband’s mind – I still think about it, about what happened, every day – and she hadn’t known. It makes her wonder what else she hasn’t known about him.
She’d never pressed him on the subject of the death of his first wife. She knew there had been an accident – he’d told her that she’d died in a car accident – but nothing more. She sensed that he didn’t want to talk about it and she let it be. He would tell her when he was ready.
He’d never told her he’d cheated on his first wife. Why would he? She knows so little about his life before. What had that marriage been like? Should she ask him? She has become very curious now about this earlier marriage. Does it presage anything? Will he be unfaithful to her?
She thinks about Erica in the park that morning – how attractive she was, how lovely she must have been when Patrick slept with her. Suddenly she wishes she’d known that the woman talking to her near the sandpit was Erica, her husband’s one-time lover. She might have asked her questions. This woman knows things about her husband that she doesn’t know.
She’s angry at Patrick for bringing this on them. He never should have cheated on his first wife. Then they wouldn’t be in this awful position. Who knows what lies Erica will tell? In today’s climate, people seem willing to believe just about anything – the more outrageous the lie the more gullible people seem to be.
She turns over in bed, feeling ill. The media would love a story like this. An extramarital affair, a possible murder disguised as an accident, blackmail … they’d never be left alone. Even after it was proven, again, to be an accident, the taint would remain. Everyone would know that her husband had cheated on his first wife, and how his first wife had died. Their daughters would grow up being the daughters of that man, the one made infamous in the news.
She’s going to have a hard time forgiving her husband for sleeping with another woman while he was married to his first wife. She has never felt resentment towards her husband before – she’s never had reason. She knows that resentment can poison, even destroy, a marriage. She doesn’t want that to happen to her. She tells herself that it was a long time ago. He’s not going to cheat on her; he wouldn’t dare. After all, she’s the one with the money.
Niall closes the door to his office and pulls out his cell phone to call Erica. It’s been two days since their tryst at the hotel together, and he can’t get her out of his mind. He’s eager to see her again.
‘Hello, Niall,’ Erica says.
Just hearing her sexy voice gives him a jolt of pleasure. He smiles into the phone. ‘I need to see you,’ he says, his voice low. ‘But – somewhere more private.’
‘You could come to my place, if you don’t mind the drive,’ she suggests.
‘I don’t mind at all,’ he says, and takes down her address. They arrange a time for after work that day and then he disconnects, takes a deep breath and calls his wife. ‘Hi, honey,’ he says.
‘Hi, what’s up?’
‘I’m really sorry, but I’ve got to visit a job site after work – problems to deal with.’
‘Oh.’ He can hear the disappointment in her voice. It’s Friday, the one night she can usually count on him coming home from work at a reasonable hour. ‘How late will you be?’ Nancy asks.
‘I’m not sure – a couple of hours probably. Depends on how it goes.’
When Patrick arrives home from work that evening, distressed and exhausted, his wife meets him with anxious eyes, one baby in the playpen, one in her arms.
