Page 56 of What the Wife Knew

“They wanted you to be something. Not just take.”

“I am something.” Better than her. Superior in every way.

“How long did you work on Cooper to get him to do your bidding?”

My whole life. I hadn’t known what I was preparing for, but I was ready when the time came. “Do you like hearing yourself talk?”

“Everyone agreed your brother was the weaker of you two. Younger by one year and not as athletically or academically gifted. Following you around, trying to earn your approval.”

“He took a lot of shit at school. I protected him.” All true. Cooper was my job. Our parents coddled him, loosened the rules until they ceased to exist. I made Cooper a man.

She smiled. “You were the one with potential. You had lots of friends.”

“Are those bad things?”

“No, but killing your parents for their money is.”

The words sliced through years of carefully constructed ambivalence. After the shooting, I cried on cue for the cameras just like I’d practiced. I’d pulled off the unthinkable and was the only one left standing. I walked away with everything, putting the echoes of Dad’s snide lectures and Mom’s constant squealing about being a better person behind me. Cooper had been a loss but unavoidable collateral.

Faint regrets about being the sole survivor would well up now and then, mostly at the holidays, but even those moments proved fleeting. Being a national hero guaranteed an avalanche of invites over the years. Sporting events. Sitting with the First Lady at the State of the Union. So many admirers. With each new blessing and statement of gratitude for my quick thinking that day, the certainty that I’d forged the right path by becoming the only living Dougherty swelled.

Addison was the wild card now. Having her around as a daily reminder of all I tried to slough off could not happen. She was a threat to the future I’d picked, polished, and refined. If her scheming bought me a one-way ticket out of the marriage to Kathryn, then that might be worth the temporary hit to my reputation, but Addison’s use ended there.

I glanced around our dark corner of the room. No one watched or leaned in. The bar manager pretended we didn’t exist because I paid him not to notice us.

“One question,” she said.

She would never limit herself to one. She didn’t know when to stop.

“How hard was it to get Cooper to shoot your parents while they ate breakfast?”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Him

Five Months Earlier

Addison talked too much. I didn’t discuss my parents. Couldn’t think about them or family vacations or dinner conversations. I used my trauma cover story to shut down any questions and block out every memory from holiday celebrations to mundane afternoons.

Most people saw my practiced stark expression and their words sputtered out. They nodded or touched my shoulder in sympathy or used empty phrases to convey a sorrow they could not possibly fathom. A sorrow I’d stomped out of me.

In the beginning, I’d forced myself to replay every minute of that day, every gunshot, that kid who turned the corner at the wrong time and took a bullet, every echoing scream, all to mute the memories. Eventually, the visions clicked by like a series of events that happened to someone else. Detached and unreal, almost like an overwrought plot of a bad movie. I watched until the edges dulled and frayed. Until I forgot about that dead kid. Until I mentally walled off Cooper and my parents. Until I saw them as puppets dancing to my commands.

Addison cradled her glass between her hands. “Which one ofyou shot poor in-the-wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time Zach Bryant?”

Right. That was the dead kid’s name. A classmate of Cooper’s and not on my radar.

“Did Cooper do all the shooting?” she asked.

Two guns. Two sons. A rain of bullets. Simple. Neat.

But I stuck to the story I’d created. “I was at school when Cooper shot Mom and Dad in our house. I went in early that day.”

She nodded. “Over an hour early that morning. Then you made sure you were seen by your soccer coach and two other witnesses before slipping out of the building again. All before classes started.”

“None of this is true.” But it was and that pissed me off.

“You left the car your parents no longer believed you’d earned in the school parking lot to shore up your alibi, dodged security cameras, and ran home.” She smiled. “I bet you had to practice that a few times to get the timing right.”

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