The End of Her - Shari Lapena Page 0,44

these years.’

Stephanie turns back and stares at her, waiting. There’s something more. There’s always something more.

‘I’ve been keeping an eye on Patrick all this time. I knew he’d remarried. When I saw that he’d married again, I looked into you.’

‘You looked into me? Why?’

‘Because some men use wives like ATMs,’ Erica says. ‘And I saw that you were going to inherit quite a lot of money.’

‘How did you know that?’ Stephanie asks. She’s wondered about this for a while.

‘Because wills that are probated are public information. I looked into your parents, saw that they’d been wealthy, that they’d died in a car accident. I looked at your parents’ wills. And I saw that they left you a trust, and that you would come into the money when you turned thirty.’ She adds pointedly, ‘Which was only a couple of months ago.’

Stephanie looks back at her, shocked. She had no idea that kind of information was public. She thought nobody knew about her trust but her lawyers – and her husband.

‘Tell me, did Patrick know about that when he married you?’

Stephanie remains silent.

‘You have life insurance, too? Let me guess – something you got when you were pregnant?’

Stephanie doesn’t answer; she doesn’t have to. The coldness in her heart spreads outward to reach all of her extremities. She wonders if Erica already knows her life is insured for a million dollars.

‘So you see,’ Erica says, after a long pause, ‘regardless of what happens, I’ve done you a favour.’

Stephanie slumps in her wicker chair on the porch, shaken. She remembers the fire, the frying pan left on the stove. She still doesn’t remember putting the pan on the stove. Then she pulls herself together and reminds herself who she’s dealing with. ‘Let’s not forget why you’re really doing this,’ Stephanie says coldly. ‘You looked into our financial situation, saw that we had money and tried to blackmail us.’

Erica nods. ‘Yes, well, I never said I was perfect.’

‘I think you should leave.’

‘Fine.’ She stands up. ‘But remember, just because I tried to blackmail you doesn’t make it any less true that Patrick murdered his first wife.’

She looks down at Stephanie, flicks a careless glance at the twins in their buggy, and says, ‘Be careful. After all, if he did it once, he could do it again.’

Stephanie says emphatically, ‘Patrick would never hurt me. Or Jackie or Emmie.’

Erica says, ‘I wouldn’t be so sure.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

AS SOON AS Erica is out of sight, Stephanie brings the twins inside and lets herself fall apart. She rocks on the sofa, her face in her hands, sobbing. After a while, she pulls herself together, washes her swollen face and resumes phoning the banks. Her heart almost stops when the woman at Hudson Valley Credit Union – the second to last one on her list – says, ‘No, your husband hasn’t been in to the safety deposit box today.’

She regrets having to waste the twins’ naptime – she should be sleeping herself – but she quickly bundles them up and puts them and the double buggy in the car.

When she arrives at the bank, she wheels the twins up to one of the clerks at the counter. She takes the safety deposit key out of her pocket. ‘I’d like access to my safety deposit box, please,’ she says, showing her the key.

‘Can I see some identification?’ the woman asks.

Stephanie produces her driver’s licence and holds her breath.

‘This way.’

She leads Stephanie down a corridor – fortunately it’s wide enough to accommodate the buggy – and unlocks a barred door that opens into a long, narrow room lined with numbered metal safety deposit boxes. Stephanie leaves the twins in the hall and keeps an eye on them. ‘What’s the number on your key?’ the clerk asks, pulling a card file.

‘Two twenty-four.’

The woman flips through the file and pulls out a card, asking Stephanie to sign. The clerk fingers her way down a row and finds the box. She inserts her key and asks for Stephanie’s key, which she hands over. The clerk withdraws the box from the wall and leads Stephanie to an empty, private room with a table and chair. Stephanie follows her into the room with the buggy.

The clerk puts the box gently on the table. ‘There’s a buzzer there on the wall when you’re finished, and I’ll come back,’ she says.

‘Thank you,’ Stephanie says, waiting until the woman has pulled the door shut behind her. The twins are fast asleep.

She sits down and looks at the box for