The End of Her - Shari Lapena Page 0,87
what happens next.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
STEPHANIE LOOKS INTO the eyes of her husband and asks herself if she is looking into the eyes of a killer. His words seem meaningless to her. He keeps telling her he’s told her everything – he’s said that all along – but there’s always more. What more can there be after this? Will he stand over her with a knife in his hand some night and say, just before he slits her throat, Oh yes, one more thing, I stuffed that exhaust pipe full of snow myself, and waited for her to die?
She feels a shudder go through her body. She grips the edge of the sofa to ground herself. She finds herself unable to speak.
‘Stephanie, say something, please,’ he begs, his voice breaking.
‘I don’t know,’ she says finally, woodenly. ‘I don’t know what to say.’ But she’s thinking about how easy it is for him to lie. He lied to her, he lied on the stand – he committed perjury, and even that doesn’t seem to have made much of an impression on him. She looks up at him. ‘You’ve been lying to me all along,’ she says finally, her voice becoming more animated. ‘Why should I believe you now? How do you expect me to feel?’
That actually seems to surprise him. Why should it surprise him? Did he think she would believe him? Just because Erica has been shown to be a liar, it doesn’t make him any less of a liar. They’re like two peas in a pod, Stephanie thinks. Two of a kind. Maybe they deserve each other. Maybe they were meant to be together.
‘You have every right to be upset,’ Patrick says.
‘Upset!’ she cries. Then she lowers her voice. ‘I’m a little more than upset, Patrick.’ She wonders how far she can push him, this possibly murdering husband of hers. Wonders how far she dare go, to test him. To find out for sure. To see how angry he can get. Will he push her down the stairs? Maybe she should find out, she thinks recklessly. It’s so important for her to know. To know what really happened all those years ago in the snow. She feels closer now to Lindsey than to anyone else – closer to his dead first wife than to her own husband. She’s been manipulated by both of them – Patrick and Erica – all along.
‘Is there more going on here than I’m getting, Patrick?’ she asks suddenly.
‘What?’ he asks. ‘What are you talking about?’
She feels physically and emotionally exhausted, too confused to think clearly. Everyone is after money. Her money. Are they after her money together? Her thoughts fall over one another in paranoid succession. Are Patrick and Erica still in love? Or maybe they’re incapable of real love, capable only of self-interest, two psychopaths, in this together. No – they can’t be working together. The idea is insane. She must pull herself together, stop this. She must deal with what’s right in front of her, not imagine the unimaginable.
‘What’s wrong?’ Patrick says urgently.
‘Nothing. Everything.’
He sits down beside her again, cautiously pulls her to him. ‘It’s going to be okay, Stephanie.’
She lets him pull her into his chest, wrap his arms around her. He holds her for a long time. She can feel his heart beating. She can feel his lips kissing the top of her head. He probably thinks that she’ll forgive him. But she’s not going to forgive him. She’s trying to find a way out.
The next morning Stephanie is in the kitchen with Patrick and the twins, having breakfast, pretending that everything is normal even though it isn’t, not for her. She can’t imagine things ever being normal again. Patrick seems to think they might be. Stephanie is pouring herself another cup of coffee when the doorbell rings. She looks up from the coffee maker, looks through the vestibule to the front door and sees the distorted shape through the rippled glass. She thinks it might be Erica. Her heart skips a beat.
‘I’ll get it,’ Patrick says, and pushes his chair back. She fights a spell of dizziness, as the twins babble in their high chairs, oblivious.
Stephanie watches the door open, fighting panic, then sees Hanna’s familiar face, gaping now in shock.
‘Patrick!’ Hanna says.
Stephanie recovers and hurries to the doorway. ‘Hi, Hanna,’ she says quickly. Hanna must guess that she won’t necessarily be happy about Patrick’s return.
‘You’re back,’ Hanna says to Patrick, trying to recover her footing.
Stephanie detects something in Hanna’s voice