The End of Her - Shari Lapena Page 0,88

besides the obvious surprise – nervousness, maybe, or dismay.

‘Yes,’ Patrick says smoothly. ‘They dropped the charges yesterday. I came home last night. I’ve been completely cleared,’ he says, ‘just as we expected.’

Stephanie’s stomach clenches a little, at how he explains it. I’ve been completely cleared. That’s what he will be telling everybody. But that’s not really true, is it? They just won’t ever be able to prove he did it. Hanna glances at her, standing behind him, as if to silently get her take on it. Stephanie steps forward. ‘Do you want to come in for coffee?’

Hanna shakes her head. ‘No, I don’t have time. Ben is watching Teddy for a minute before he goes to work. I just popped over to invite you and the girls for a playdate this morning. Maybe ten-ish? I’m going to make muffins.’

‘Sure, I’d love to,’ Stephanie says, summoning a smile. She’s eager to get out of the house. Away from Patrick, if only for a couple of hours. She can’t think straight around him. She feels she must be constantly watching, evaluating. It’s exhausting to have no downtime. She has to act normal, but she doesn’t even know what that is any more. There is no normal, not here. She needs to be with someone she can relax around, even for a short time.

She and Patrick had spent last night in the marital bed, her back to him, his body curved around her, his arm draped over her. She’d hated it. He’d quickly fallen asleep, but she’d remained awake for a long time. As soon as he started to snore, she removed his arm from around her waist, and inched further away from him on her side of the bed.

Erica finds out the way she seems to find out everything – from her news feed. She’s having a late breakfast in her apartment when she sees the story on her phone. The charges against Patrick have been dropped. No explanation is given.

She calls the Sheriff’s Office in Creemore. It’s barely 8 a.m. in Colorado. She’s in luck; the sheriff is in. She waits impatiently to be patched through.

Finally, he comes on the line. ‘I was wondering if I was going to hear from you,’ Sheriff Bastedo says.

He explains that they don’t have sufficient evidence to proceed. Then her blood runs cold as he tells her that they’ve uncovered her past as a small-time drug dealer. She thought that was dead and buried. That nobody knew.

‘None of that is true,’ she protests.

‘Right.’

She hangs up the phone without another word. Then she storms around her apartment, furious at the turn of events. She grabs the cushions from the sofa and throws them across the room. She’s so enraged that she overturns her coffee table and everything on it. Books, magazines, a dish of sweets go flying. Then she collapses onto the sofa, tries to calm down.

It doesn’t really matter whether Patrick goes to trial or not. It would have been nice to see him squirm. But financially speaking, it makes no difference. The Mannings still won’t want her hanging around their son, telling him the truth. They’ll still pay her. And keep paying her.

Stephanie is on her way out to Hanna’s place with the twins when Patrick stops her in the doorway for a goodbye kiss. She lets him kiss her on the mouth, even though his touch is distasteful to her. She can’t help it – she thinks of him kissing Erica. She tries not to show her revulsion. She doesn’t want to let him know how she feels, what she’s been thinking. She needs more time.

Just because Erica is a liar doesn’t necessarily mean she’s lying about Patrick. And she’s not satisfied by his explanation about the polygraph. She does now know, however, that he fucked Erica many, many times and lied to her about it. And that he perjured himself.

If she left him, she doesn’t know how he’d react. He’s seemed more possessive since he came home, always trying to touch her. Maybe she didn’t notice it before because it didn’t bother her. Maybe it’s just that he missed her in jail. Or maybe he can sense that she’s pulling away from him. If she tried to leave him, how would it end?

Would he be violent?

He would certainly be angry. She doesn’t know what he would do. If she left him and tried to take the twins – and her money – with her … She doesn’t really know what he’s capable