Stephanie has kept her inheritance very quiet. How would this woman know? ‘Wouldn’t she have to have some grounds?’ Stephanie protests. He’s silent for a long time. He’s still not looking at her. ‘She doesn’t have any grounds, does she?’
‘Of course not, but … she says she does.’
‘What?’ She feels like she can hardly breathe.
‘It’s too ridiculous.’
‘Tell me.’
He shakes his head, as if at the absurdity of it all. ‘She says she’ll tell them that I wanted to get Lindsey out of the way.’ Now he looks terribly uncomfortable. He glances at her uneasily.
‘Why would she tell them that, Patrick?’ Stephanie is feeling sick to her stomach.
He swallows. ‘She says she’ll tell them I was in love with her, which is absolute bullshit. I know it and she knows it. But she’ll tell any kind of lie if she gets something out of it.’ He looks at her desperately. ‘I really think she might be a sociopath, Stephanie. She has no scruples, no conscience at all. Who knows what she’ll say, what she’ll make up? It’s obvious she just wants money, but when she talks, it’s like she believes her own lies. She’s a hell of an actress.’
Stephanie’s mouth is dry. She tries to swallow. ‘How did you know her?’
‘She was Lindsey’s best friend,’ Patrick says.
‘And how well did you know her?’
He looks her in the eyes and says, ‘I was young, just a kid, really, and very stupid. I don’t want you to think …’ He hesitates.
‘Think what?’ She’s nervous now, afraid of what he’s going to tell her. She thinks she knows. He doesn’t answer her. She says sharply, ‘Did you sleep with this woman?’ His silence is all the answer she needs. ‘Oh my God.’ She gets up off the sofa and stands in front of him, looking down at him, aghast. ‘You slept with your wife’s best friend and now she says you were in love with her. Were you? Were you in love with her?’ Her voice is accusing.
In the swing, Jackie begins to cry. Almost instantly, Emma joins in. They don’t like hearing their mother speak this way.
‘I slept with her a couple of times,’ Patrick admits. ‘That’s all it was. We were drunk. We were kids. It meant nothing. Nothing! And now she thinks she can use that against me, because she needs money.’ He stands up, too, running a hand wildly through his hair. ‘She never said anything before. Because she knew it meant nothing. She knew it was an accident! She knew I was devastated by what happened.’ He reaches out to her, pleading. ‘You have to believe me, Stephanie. I would never cheat on you, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’m a different person now.’
But her thoughts are reeling. He cheated on his first wife. She can hardly believe it. It was almost ten years ago, she thinks, but do people ever really change? She says, with absolute conviction, her voice cold, ‘If you ever cheat on me, I’ll leave you and take the twins with me.’
He looks at her in surprise, as if taken aback at her tone. ‘Okay. I know that. I will never be unfaithful to you, I swear. I never have been and I never will. Let’s not even go there, because that’s not going to happen. What we have to deal with now is – this situation.’
She takes a deep breath. It’s hard to think straight because both babies are crying. They’ve had to raise their voices to be heard over the din. She walks over to the swings and turns on the timers again to set the babies back in motion. That calms them for a bit. Then she paces around the living room, suddenly filled with a nervous, restless energy, her exhaustion gone. She turns to him. ‘What are we going to do? If she goes to the police with her lies, that would be—’ She can’t even imagine what it would be like. ‘She’s accusing you of – murder!’ Stephanie says, her voice strained. ‘Think of what that would do to us, what it would do to us personally, to your reputation—’
‘It would be in Colorado, not here,’ Patrick says, his voice tense. ‘Worst case is I’d have to go back to Colorado and give my side of the story, which I’ve already done. They believed me then. They won’t believe her and they won’t reopen it. I don’t think anyone here would find out.’
‘I think that’s naive, Patrick,’ Stephanie says.
His face darkens. ‘Fuck.’ He begins to pace as well. ‘She can’t be allowed to get away with this! It’s all lies!’
‘Should we talk to an attorney about this?’
Patrick shakes his head. ‘Not yet. Maybe she’ll give up when we don’t pay her.’
Stephanie thinks for a minute, her breathing fast and shallow. ‘You said you think she might be a sociopath. Do you really think so?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘If she’s crazy, no one’s going to listen to her.’
He exhales deeply. ‘But she doesn’t seem crazy. She comes across as completely normal, but I know she’s lying,’ he says. He adds tentatively, ‘I don’t know – maybe we should pay her something, just to make her go away.’
‘No way,’ Stephanie counters. ‘If we pay her once, she’ll ask again. She’ll be after us for money for the rest of our lives. She’ll drain us dry.’ They have to stand up to her, come what may. She feels ill at the prospect of what’s ahead. ‘We’re not going to use my parents’ hard-earned money to pay off some woman who’s trying to blackmail you over something that you didn’t do. Think about it, Patrick! This is insane. I can’t believe you’d even consider paying her anything.’
‘No, you’re right,’ Patrick says, nodding.
‘Maybe I should talk to her,’ Stephanie says suddenly.
Patrick looks taken aback. ‘Why?’
‘To show her that I believe you, that I’m standing by you. That might take the wind out of her sails. Maybe I can reason with her,’ Stephanie says.
He shakes his head. ‘No! There’s no reasoning with her. I don’t want her anywhere near you, or the twins. She’s toxic – and possibly dangerous.’ He adds, ‘I mean, who in their right mind would make up something like this?’
CHAPTER TEN
NANCY FOOTE HAS put her son to bed and is now gathering up the day’s laundry to pop in the machine overnight. She picks up the shirt her husband wore that day – he’s thrown it on the bed, he never bothers to put anything in the laundry hamper – and a faint smell of perfume wafts from it. She freezes.
No. He wouldn’t. Not after last time.
In disbelief, she brings the shirt to her nose and sniffs. A woman’s perfume – floral and exotic, very faint. She tells herself that it doesn’t necessarily mean what she thinks it means. Maybe someone at the office was doused in scent today …
But Nancy can’t stand being lied to, and she won’t lie to herself either. She hasn’t smelled anything like this on her husband or his clothes since she forced him to break off his affair with Anne O’Dowd.
She sinks down onto their bed, her heart racing with the fear of betrayal. She hasn’t trusted him since she caught him cheating. She’s been keeping an eye on him, slipping her hands into his trousers and jacket pockets at night, looking for signs – a receipt, a cocktail napkin, a note … but there’s been nothing. She doesn’t know the passcode to his phone, unfortunately.