Page 95 of The Wife

“Get in,” I said, pointing to the white SUV. “Let’s go party.”

Charlie put the cloth over her face, the same way he had when he had taken me a year earlier. It was the second worst thing I have ever done.

You might think that killing Kerry is the worst thing I’ve done, but it’s not. Even so, I force myself to tamp down the what-ifs about that night, too.

What if I had never read my husband’s e-mail? I wouldn’t have seen those photographs just minutes before he came home to report the “good news” that Kerry’s lawyer was open to settling.

Or what if I had recognized Tom Fisher as he left Kerry’s house? If I had realized who he was, I might have known that something was off with Kerry’s story. I would have come to my senses and gone home.

Instead, I watched him drive away, and then I knocked on her door. I wanted to hear the truth about my husband, once and for all, straight from the source. She almost didn’t let me in, but I told her that I had seen the pictures of her wrists. During the entire ordeal—the police visits, the arrest, the arraignment, the lawsuit—no one had ever told me the details of the alleged assault. It wasn’t until I read that e-mail from Olivia that I knew, or thought I knew, the truth.

“He did the same thing to me,” I said. “I believe you.”

When she let me inside, I asked her to tell me exactly what had happened.

She was holding a glass of red wine. It was so bizarre standing there in her living room—two women on either side of her coffee table, with nothing in common except what Jason had done to us.

And then she laughed at me.

“You’re even crazier than Jason said you were.”

“I came here to be on your side, Kerry. I read the police reports.” I thought I was being noble.

“You really don’t get it, do you? He tied me up because I asked him to, and more than once, and Ilovedevery second of it. We don’t all have your hang-ups.”

I felt my mouth moving, but no words came out.

“Oh my god. Catch up, honey.” She snapped her fingers for emphasis. “I know your whole story. And I know it’s why he’ll never leave you. Jason loved me. No—helovesme. But he loves his persona more. And he can’t be the good guy—Mr. Save-the-Planet, next mayor of New York—if he leaves his Little Miss Perfect with the tragic backstory.”

“You’re—a monster. Why would you tell me all this?” For all she knew, I could have been recording her. I could testify to every word. “You admitted that you’re lying. I’m calling the DA.”

She grabbed my arm. “No, you’re not. You do that, and I’ll tell everyone what I know. You’re that girl from the house in Pittsburgh. Who’s the monster, Angela? Me, or the woman who makes a man stay with her out of sympathy? You wouldn’t even let him adopt Spencer, so he has no choice. He’s stuck with you. If he leaves, he loses his kid. I know all about you—”

The glass egg was heavy, at least fifteen pounds. I heard her skull crack the first time I hit her. She fell to the floor and was struggling to push herself upright. I hit her one more time and then another, until she stopped moving.

What if I had waited for her to finish the sentence? Maybe if I had heard her out, I would have realized that Jason only told Kerry about me, not that Spencer wasn’t mine. But the sound of my son’s name in her mouth made me certain she knew the whole story.

Or what if I had told my mother less about what really happened that night? I could have simply called her from that gas-station pay phone, told her I was in trouble, and given her the address. She had proven over and over again—first when I went missing, and then when I was found and ever since—that she would run through fire to protect me. And that is probably why I had trusted her, as always, with the entire truth.

She was at the house in a little more than an hour. Just like my instincts had kicked in the next day when Detective Duncan was on our stoop, I saw every piece of a plan. Cleaning the floor. Wiping down everything I touched. Getting rid of the glass egg.

The only thing I panicked about was the dog. I used a dish towel as a makeshift glove to fill his bowls, assuming that Kerry’s absence would be noticed when she didn’t show up to work the next day. I decided that if two days passed, I would make an anonymous call from a city pay phone to check on her. The funny thing is, I don’t think I even saw her as a real person until I looked at that dog and wondered how he was going to feel when he realized his best friend wasn’t coming back.

Mom would drive Kerry’s body all the way to the East End. If anyone ever suspected me, I’d have an alibi of sorts: Spencer’s phone call, plus the movie streamed as soon as I got home three and a half hours later. When that detective showed up at my door asking about Jason, I said he was home with me so both of us were accounted for.

It was a good plan, but apparently not good enough for Mom, who added her own touch by retrieving Jason’s gum from the car and dropping it in the sand only three feet from Kerry’s body on Ocean Beach.

It was already clear that Olivia Randall was planning to argue that Tom Fisher had framed Jason for the murder. It wouldn’t be hard to find witnesses to testify that Jason was constantly chewing that stupid gum, leaving it like bread crumbs to mark his whereabouts. Kerry’s own lawyer would testify that her client had been demanding huge amounts of money from both Jason and Fisher. Combined with the documents FSS had managed to get from Oasis about their Africa dealings, it would be easy to prove that Fisher had at least as much to lose as Jason.

Colin was sticking to his alibi testimony, and he’d be a good witness. Literally, all the state had was motive and a piece of gum. Olivia Randall would soak the courtroom with “reasonable doubt.” As my son had said when he first heard Rachel Sutton’s name: Jason wouldn’t end up in prison; we were rich.

Do you hate me yet?

Maybe not. Technically, I was an accomplice to Trisha’s kidnapping, which makes me—as a legal matter—just as guilty as Charlie Franklin. But I was also his victim. He threatened to kill me if I didn’t find him another girl. I had gotten boring.

There was a reason I chose her. From what she had told me, I figured her home life wasn’t much better than what we could manage at Charlie’s house together.

Even so, the first month was awful. He left me alone while she suffered the brunt of his attention. After that, it sort of evened out. When Charlie was at work, Trisha and I had each other. It was actually tolerable.

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