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His expression told me he didn’t follow.
“It’s a long story
…”
“We have time.” He took my hand and led me to the bed. “Tell me every little thing,” he said, and so I did.
I tell him that it didn’t hurt that Max was an easy target. The method might have been a little extreme. Thankfully, I’ve never lacked imagination. When I initially discovered that my husband had been chatting with a woman on Beacon, I did my research. I found out her name, where she worked, who she was married to. Anything you can imagine, it was at my fingertips. Most of it she’d offered up herself in conversation with my husband.
There are a lot of things I withhold from James. Sometimes you skim the surface with the truth and hope that it suffices. Once news of Nina’s murder broke, it sort of had to. We were busy: Busy doing damage control. Busy seducing the press and the police. I learned a lot over the course of those months. I hope my husband did too.
Lesson one: Don’t ask. Don’t tell. First, I went to the hospital. I volunteered. This took a total of sixteen hours of my time. More than I would have liked, but the end result was worth it, so who’s to say whether it was worth it? With my husband busy seducing another woman, it’s not like I didn’t have extra time on my hands.
It was easy, really. I chatted up the other volunteers, along with a few of the nurses. This isn’t a direct lesson, just a side note: Pretending you have an interest in someone you don’t can take you a long way. People love to talk about themselves. They can’t help it. Which is how eventually the staff told me what I needed to know. They told me which patients had family, and they told me about the sad cases, those that didn’t. “Dad” turned out to be one of those. I began volunteering to sit with him, and when the time came for him to be discharged, you’d better believe I planted the notion of Caring Hands in his damaged brain. He had dementia. It wasn’t hard. How else was I supposed to get close to Max Hastings in a way that wouldn’t leave him suspicious? In a way that would get under his skin. I learned Max’s history. His likes and dislikes. Hell, I even learned how and when he lost his virginity. Then I took it a step further. I inserted myself into the story. If it hadn’t been that one, it would have been another. It’s only important that it be significant. It was easy to insert myself into Max’s life, to pretend we had history, because all he could think about was fucking me. My fake dad didn’t—or rather couldn’t— argue about it not being true. Therefore the rule of familiarity allowed me to enter his life and plot my scheme.
My husband never questioned me on any of it. Why? Because my husband isn’t the only one good at keeping secrets. He doesn’t really know me; he only knows what I’ve told him. When my sick father made a sudden reappearance in my life, he didn’t think to question any of it because I’d only ever fed him what I wanted him to know.
Lesson two: history always repeats itself. My husband has a history of finding himself with dead women on his hands. That meant I had to be prepared. Lesson two, part two: befriend the fall guy. Just in case.
The truth is, I never expected to like Max Hastings. But I did. His wife—the one who was fucking my husband, infiltrating my business, and my life—well, she was another story. I knew I had to be patient. So I endured Max’s stupid, methodical, misogynistic sex games over the course of all of those months. I never complained. Not even once.
Lesson three: nothing is free. All relationships are transactional in nature. Max thought he could take what he wanted from me and give little in return. He never cared to have a future with me. He never even thought about it. I know because I asked. He was willing to take what he could get, because I was willing to give it. All of that aggression…did he not understand that like attracts like? Did he not think that I might be harboring a little rage of my own? And did he not think that it might be turned around and be redirected right back at him?
There’s a saying about casualties of war—that’s what Max was. He married a woman who tried to take something that wasn’t hers to take. Granted, my husband was probably just going to kill her, if I didn’t beat him to the punch. And if I had been wrong, if he really had loved her? What then? With our business about to sell, with so much at stake, I couldn’t take any chances. We needed a quick resolution. Max was the catalyst to that. He was the fuel that ignited the fire. I only had to get close to him, come up with a story that suggested he was capable of murder, which happened inadvertently in my deposition when I explained Max’s role in my fake father’s care. Of course, I mentioned that we had discussed physician-assisted suicide. But we weren’t serious about it. At least I wasn’t. And, of course he had thought it would help to double-dose my father’s pain medication prior to his death. Max said he wanted me to get some rest. He said, that way, we would all get some rest.
Oh, and those bite marks? They were kindling. I knew James would find out eventually. I’d hoped she’d be the one to tell him. I mean… how else was she going to disappear? Everyone knows it’s always the husband.
Thankfully, people are often wrong. I was lucky. The press assumed a man loved me enough to kill for me. They were right in that sense—just not entirely. In the end, only three people really know what happened in Room 553. Max Hastings, it turned out, wasn’t one of them.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Laurel Dunaway
Journal Entry
The little girl’s real father died in a boating accident, but not the way most people think. For years, he would come into the little girl’s room to seek comfort—and not the way daddies are supposed to. Maybe this was why the mommy did what she did all those years ago. Maybe she was trying to save the girl and herself too. Maybe some secrets are too big to hold onto. Maybe you have to bury them before they bury you.
Maybe the little girl had to learn this for herself.
I visited Max’s daughter today at her new school. It wasn’t an easy endeavor, by any stretch of the imagination. But as they say, where there’s a will there’s a way.
It’s a shame that Nina ended up getting what she wanted in the manner she did. I remember how down Max looked when he mentioned it. I don’t have many regrets, but the fact that I hadn’t offered him more in that moment is one of them.
I think he’d be glad to know it’s a good place. My visit was short, but I told her that her dad had sent me and that he wanted her to know he loved her very much. I told her he would be coming to get her just as soon as he could. I don’t know if that’s true; Max and I haven’t spoken, but it was the least I could do. She cocked her head and blinked her eyes. I don’t know if she heard me. She only said, “Promise.” I’d like to think that she understood.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Laurel Dunaway
Journal Entry
The first thoughts to properly stick were about the timing. Specifically, had it been enough? Could I get away with it? Could I be really and truly free? The second was the taste of bile rising in my throat. I could feel it. This is it. Finally, my life was really and truly about to begin again.
He’s going to die, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. This is where it ends. James would brush it off, if I were to tell him how truly terrifying this all felt. If I were to tell him— which I can’t—he would tell me I was overacting. But then, how could he know that? It’s hard to say until you get to the end, and we weren’t there yet.
In my mind, it wasn’t an exaggeration. It was real. It’s always real. I picture his funeral. I imagine his casket, me draping myself over it, acting like a proper widow. A monument to a man I once really loved. God, please make it quick.
The mind works in mysterious ways under extreme duress. In the haze of being woken from sleep, the pieces of the puzzle rarely fit. It’s always the same, and yet, it never is. My heart races. The back of my neck feels clammy. The sickly feeling, deep down in the pit of my stomach, made itself known. Even though I’ve been waiting for precisely this moment, I still have all the normal reactions. Some things you just can’t shake.
