It’s sinking in. She’s rid herself of him and all his baggage. He can’t ruin her life any more. And she’s still here, she and the twins. She still has the house, her money. Everything is going to be fine, as long as she keeps her nerve.
The police officer who has been in the kitchen approaches. He sits down in an armchair across from her, and leans in.
‘I’m so sorry for your loss,’ he says. He looks weary, and he seems to mean it.
She looks at him and swallows. Her focus is coming back. She’s starting to recover from the shock of what she’s done.
‘Can you tell us what happened here tonight?’ he asks.
She takes a deep breath. Clutches the tissues in her hands that the woman officer beside her provided her with at some point. ‘I was in the shower.’ She pulls the robe more tightly around herself, as if embarrassed that she is naked underneath. Her hair is still damp and tangled down her back – it has soaked through her robe, and she’s cold. ‘Patrick was drinking in the kitchen when I went upstairs. I was just finishing my shower when I heard the shot. I ran down to the kitchen and – I found him—’ She breaks down, sobbing, and it’s heartfelt, it really is. She’s been through so much, lost so much.
‘Take your time,’ the officer says, and waits patiently.
Finally she pulls herself together and tells them, ‘He’s been under a lot of stress lately.’ She stops. They probably aren’t aware yet of who Patrick is.
‘What kind of stress?’
She says, her voice bleak, ‘I told him, tonight, after supper, that I was going to divorce him.’ And then she tells them everything, who he is, and the same lies she told Hanna and her attorney about his state of mind. When she finishes, the man is watching her as if he, too, is overwhelmed by their troubles. Finally he asks, ‘Do you know where the gun came from?’
‘It’s probably his gun,’ she whispers. ‘He keeps it in a safe upstairs in our bedroom closet.’
‘Can you show us?’
She gets up off the sofa and leads them upstairs to the bedroom. She points at the closet – the door is open, and on the shelf, on Patrick’s side, is the safe, wide open, the way she left it. They look at it.
When they go back downstairs, the body is being removed from the kitchen on a gurney, in a zipped body bag.
The officer glances at the empty baby swings, looks at her then and says, ‘Have you checked on the children, ma’am?’
And suddenly she’s so deep in her own lies, her fantasies, her fears and justifications that she panics about the twins. She feels her face go white. She races up the stairs to the nursery and flings open the door and turns on the light. The twins are there, in their cribs, untouched. Of course they are. The officer is standing close behind her, his breath coming rapidly; she can feel it warm against her neck.
‘They’re fine,’ he says, clearly relieved.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
ON THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 1, the medical examiner determines that Patrick Kilgour’s death was suicide. It’s in all the news. Along with a recap of the death of Lindsey, the inquest, the arrest – everything. It’s all fresh in the public mind again, on everyone’s tongue. But that’s fine, Stephanie thinks; everyone believes he killed himself. Soon it will die out for good. It will all die with him.
Stephanie hadn’t really expected there to be any question, but nonetheless, the relief she feels at the official determination is profound. It’s over. She can move on. Still, since she did it, she feels shaky, unmoored, not herself. Her mind is not quite right. She could never have predicted any of this. It’s all bound to have an effect, she tells herself, staring catatonically at the twins. It will take some getting used to.
The evening it happened, the police were in the house most of the night. The kitchen was off-limits. They suggested she go stay with family, but she had no family to stay with. Hanna, like most of the neighbours, had been drawn out onto the street by the flashing lights and emergency vehicles. They finally allowed Hanna into the house. Hanna insisted she gather up the twins and come home with her, and Stephanie was glad to have somewhere to go.
Once they were finished, by the next day, the special cleaners came in and did