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Stay or go? She can’t decide. Maybe over time the path will become clearer, more obvious.
She’d lain in bed last night awake until almost dawn, thinking how all her problems would be solved if he were to be killed in a car accident, perhaps hit by a drunk driver. But those things don’t just happen when you want them to. And it always seems to be good people who are taken too soon that way.
She’s trapped.
Stephanie remembers all this as she stands on Hanna’s doorstep, almost swaying with fatigue, and rings the doorbell. Hanna opens the door and invites her in. Stephanie settles the twins on the living-room floor, and Hanna retreats into the kitchen to make coffee. Stephanie can smell the muffins. She closes her eyes for a moment, fighting tears. She can remember when life was simple. She and Hanna getting together, talking about the babies – coffee and muffins and milestones. How did it all go so wrong? She hears Hanna coming back into the living room and opens her eyes, blinking away tears.
‘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 any more. It’s all good. And I’m dying for one of your muffins.’
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
NANCY GATHERS UP her handbag 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 blonde 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 sceptical 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 foetal 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 judgement 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 windscreen 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 centre 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 for ever. A young man, walking along the side of the highway in the rain on the edge of Westchester County, perhaps hitch-hiking, had been struck and killed instantly the night before. The car had fled the scene. There was no camera footage, there were 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 demeanour 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.
