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Devin is everything to her and Gary. They can’t let Erica mess with that. Cheryl gets up and pours herself a glass of white wine.
Later that night, once Devin has gone to bed and Gary is finally home from a dinner meeting, Cheryl takes him down to the TV room in the basement and unloads all her fears. ‘I’m telling you, it was her!’ Cheryl says to her husband.
‘Keep your voice down,’ he tells her in a loud whisper.
‘I don’t think he can hear us down here,’ Cheryl says in a more normal voice.
‘This isn’t good,’ Gary says, looking worried. ‘I don’t trust her. I never have.’
Gary Manning has been very successful, partly because he’s smart and hardworking and partly because he can be quite ruthless – when he needs to be. He hadn’t liked it when this Erica Voss had come into their house and told them to pay her a hundred thousand dollars or she wouldn’t give them her baby. They could have told the agency what she was doing – but then she never would have let them have Devin. If it had been just him, he might have told her to get lost. He wanted the baby; on the other hand, he didn’t like being taken advantage of. But he’d taken one look at his wife, remembered everything she’d been through to get to this point, the years of frustration, anticipation and pain – there was no question, it was all much harder on her than it was on him – and he gave in, just like that, and offered to write the woman a cheque.
He’d been more worried than he cared to admit that she might back out of the deal after she got the money. He hadn’t liked it that she’d forced them to break the law – they would have no recourse if she double-crossed them. But he did it for Cheryl. And now … God, Devin is such a great kid, and they both love him to death. Devin is the best thing that ever happened to them. So he’s never regretted it, not one bit. Devin is theirs, he was meant to be theirs and he will always be theirs. So he doesn’t know what this woman thinks she’s going to do.
She has no legal rights to their son. And he doesn’t think she gives two figs about him or she would have shown up before now.
He tries to tell Cheryl that she doesn’t need to worry; Erica’s not interested in her son. But he’s plenty worried.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
WHEN PATRICK GETS home from work he finds Stephanie pacing the living room. Her hair is a mess, and she looks more distressed than he has ever seen her. ‘Was Erica here?’ he asks suddenly, with a sickening feeling.
She looks at him, her eyes a little wild. ‘No. Why?’
‘You look upset,’ he ventures.
‘Of course I’m upset!’
‘Have you been out today at all?’ he asks, looking around the untidy house, the coffee mug on the floor, the fussing babies that smell like they need a change.
She shakes her head. ‘No. I don’t want to run into her. I’m not going outside again in case she’s out there.’
Patrick’s heart sinks. This is all his fault. His wife is in terrible distress, not herself, and he’s to blame. Erica leaving that gift for the twins on their doorstep seems to have pushed her over the edge. ‘Stephanie, you have to calm down.’
‘How can I calm down?’ she asks, her voice rising. ‘Your ex-lover might be a psychopath and she’s trying to destroy us. I can’t leave the house because she might be waiting for me! I’m a prisoner in my own fucking house!’
She looks back at him wildly; he’s never seen her like this. She’s completely losing it. ‘Honey,’ he says, his voice breaking, ‘you just need to get some sleep.’
‘Yes, I need to get some sleep,’ she agrees. ‘But that’s not going to make all of this go away, is it?’
He looks back at her in alarm. He needs her on his side. He can’t do this alone.
Suddenly she says, ‘Patrick, why did you marry me?’
‘What? What are you talking about?’
She repeats tearfully, her voice anguished, ‘Why did you marry me?’
‘Because I love you. I fell in love with you the moment I saw you, you know that! This – this is – you’re just overtired, Steph, you’re not thinking straight.’
The twins begin to cry and the din is soon overwhelming. Uncharacteristically, Stephanie plants her hands firmly over both her ears as if she can’t stand it, tears spilling down her face. Patrick is appalled, utterly lost for a moment. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if she can’t cope. He can’t manage the babies on his own. He can’t manage any of this on his own.
He approaches her, tries to take her in his arms, but she thrusts him off and backs away.
‘Erica said something to me when she was here.’ But then she stops, as if checking herself.
‘What? What did she say?’ Patrick cries.
‘She said, If you did it before, you could do it again.’
Patrick feels a colossal rage surging in his chest. That bitch. That interfering, lying bitch. How dare she tell Stephanie lies and make his own wife doubt him? He swallows, almost choking on his fury. ‘Stephanie. I didn’t kill Lindsey on purpose. You must know that.’ She stares back at him, looking as if she’s about to collapse. ‘You can’t believe anything she says.’
‘I know,’ she says, sinking into the sofa and covering her face with her hands.
Later that night, while Stephanie is walking with a crying Emma in her arms, and Patrick carries Jackie in a different orbit, careful not to cross paths, she thinks back to what they said earlier that evening. She’d thrown at him, Why did you marry me? But what she hadn’t had the guts to say was, Did you marry me for my money? Because that’s the elephant in the room – the fact that neither of them has been willing to acknowledge. Only two months ago, Stephanie became the sole trustee of the trust that her parents left her when they died together in a car accident when she was a teenager. They’d left all their money to their only child, and she’d received all of it – worth over two million dollars – on her thirtieth birthday. No strings.
This has been preying on her mind, along with everything else. The seed of doubt has been planted by Erica, has taken root. Patrick had collected the insurance money on his first wife. Of course, that in itself doesn’t mean anything. But now, with all these unwelcome revelations …
She’s so tired it’s making her dizzy; she lurches on her feet. She feels fat and sloppy and unattractive, so full of doubts about herself. A mother who can’t even get her babies to go to sleep, as if she is defective somehow. She’s not sure of anything. She thought Patrick loved her. But might he have married her for her inheritance? They have no prenup. They both thought the idea was ridiculous – they were so in love, after all. But it’s a lot of money.
If she dies, according to the wills she and Patrick made after they were married, Patrick gets everything. And there’s the life insurance – a million dollars.
In these dark, strung-out, hopeless hours, it makes her think.
A few days pass quietly and Stephanie is beginning to hope that Erica has given up after all. They haven’t heard from her, not since she left her unwelcome ‘gift’ for the twins. Maybe everything will still be all right.
Stephanie is at home when there’s a knock at the door. She looks out the living-room window to see who it is. She’s afraid it might be Erica, just when she’s been thinking that she might be out of their lives. It’s the postman.
She opens the door. He hands her a registered letter.
‘Sign here, please.’
Stephanie signs, and takes the letter. She closes the door and sees from the envelope that it’s from the Coroner’s Office of Grant County, Colorado. She sinks back against the door and slides to the floor, feels the tightness in her chest beginning. She takes several deep breaths, her eyes closed, but the tightness doesn’t go away. Finally, she looks down at the envelope, trembling in her hands. It’s addressed to Patrick but she rips it open. Her eyes blur, but she forces them to focus.
There’s going to be an inquest into the death of Lindsey Kilgour.
‘Fuck!’ Patrick says when he comes home and sees the letter. He reads the whole thing through, swearing as he does, and then tosses it onto the kitchen table. ‘I can’t believe she’s going through with it!’
The twins begin to cry, loud and insistent. Patrick ignores them. ‘This is – this is fucking outrageous!’
He closes his eyes and exhales deeply. Suddenly he’s exhausted, as if he carries the weight of the entire world on his shoulders. He can’t keep this quiet any longer. ‘I’m going to have to tell Niall about this. I can’t hide the inquest from him. I’ll have to be off work and it’s probably going to be in the news.’ He opens his weary eyes and sees his wife’s frightened face. Patrick adds bitterly, ‘I wonder how he’ll feel when he realizes the kind of woman he’s been sleeping with?’
‘When will you tell him?’ Stephanie asks.
He runs a hand anxiously through his hair. ‘Tomorrow, at the end of the day.’
