I was the one who should have been in shock. The man I had lived with and fallen in love with—or almost fallen in love with—was a monster.
Now all the complicated and confusing things that Sean had done turned out to have simple and clear explanations. He’d wanted me on his side so he could enlist me as a character witness in the event that Emily resurfaced and wanted to tell the truth. You can never know anyone. People keep secrets. I’d let myself forget that all-important fact.
I trusted Emily. I believed her. I was so sorry for what she had been through. But she and I would survive. We and our beautiful sons would get through this and make a wonderful life for our kids and not dwell on the past. Together we would move on.
“All right,” she said. “Show time! Let’s go meet our friend Mr. Prager and have this delicate conversation.”
Emily paid the bill in cash, and we went outside. It was damp and chilly but bracing. Emily put on her gloves and a woolen hat that covered the top half of her face. As we crossed the parking lot, I felt as if we were two powerful cartoon characters—superheroines, superfriends—on our way to get justice, to speak the truth, to explain ourselves to a man investigating my friend for a crime she didn’t commit.
I recognized the car from across the lot, the car that had parked near our house. I felt strange and self-conscious as we approached it, almost as if I was performing. But for whom?
Mr. Prager was in the passenger seat.
“Look,” I said. “He’s sleeping.”
“He’s not sleeping,” said Emily.
“What do you mean?” I said.
“He’s dead,” she said. “Our friend is not waking up.”
“How do you know?” I said, a slight nausea creeping up on me.
“I killed him,” she said.
“This isn’t happening,” I said.
Nothing made any sense. If Emily was innocent, as she’d said in the bar, why had she killed him? All we had to do was talk to him. Explain things.
“Technically, it is happening,” she said. “This is as real as it gets.”
“Why?” I said.
“Because I couldn’t risk it. Because I didn’t think he would believe me. Because I was pretty sure that he wouldn’t believe me. I had one conversation with him, and I knew. Because I didn’t want to go to jail. Because I didn’t want to lose Nicky. What happens to him if Sean and I go to jail, Stephanie? Did you think that Nicky would be yours if Sean and I got sent away?”
I couldn’t look at her. How did she know that the thought had crossed my mind?
“Are those enough reasons for you, Stephanie? Or do you need more?”
I didn’t want to look, but I couldn’t stop myself from peering into the car. There was no blood, no indication of violence. Even though I knew he was dead, Mr. Prager really did look as if he was asleep.
“How did you do it?”
“In my other life,” she said, “I got quite good with a hypodermic. I always knew where to get one, and I knew what to put in it. And I’m proud to say I still do. Our man OD’d. Who knew that Mr. Insurance Geek had a costly and unpleasant drug habit?”
There was an unsettling note in Emily’s voice—almost as if she was boasting. I thought of Miles, of Davis, of the life I loved. I was putting all that at risk. Implicating myself in a crime. A serious crime. A murder.
But what were my choices? Either I could run back to the hotel and turn Emily in, or I could get in my car and drive off. Or I could wait to see what happened. Or I could trust her, no matter what. I knew that I wasn’t thinking clearly, that I could hardly think at all. I was in no shape to make a major life decision. But I opted for believing in my friend, for taking things one step at a time and seeing what happened next.
Emily moved so that she was standing between me and the car, blocking my view of the dead Mr. Prager. That was considerate of her, I thought.
She said, “This is where I really need your help. A simple favor, okay?”
“Okay,” I whispered.
“We’re going for a little drive. You’re going to follow me in your car. And I’m going to drive Mr. Prager in his car to a secluded pull-off I found, just up the way, on a back road that has hardly any traffic. Not too far. When you see me turn off the road and head up a slight ridge—I’m going to be driving very fast so it looks as if Mr. Prager was driving and lost control and veered off the road—you need to stop and park. Park directly over my tire tracks. In case anyone drives by, which probably no one will, they won’t notice the tracks veering off the road and think something is wrong.”
Emily’s breathing had sped up, and she looked flushed, excited. If I saw her from a distance and didn’t know what she was talking about, I’d think, What a happy woman!
She said, “I’ll have stopped on top of the ridge. On the other side is a steep cliff. A chasm, really. The incline goes more or less straight down. No residents for miles around. No chance of collateral damage, no one watching us when we push Mr. Prager’s car over the ridge. Best case, explosion, flames, everything incinerated, burnt clean. Just enough forensic evidence to ID Mr. Prager. Worst case, the car sits there until someone finds it on the other side of the ridge. Which reminds me . . . please tell me you brought Sean’s hairbrush.”
I pulled the brush out of my bag and gave it to Emily. The feel and sight of Sean’s hair gave me first the shivers, then the creeps.
“I almost forgot,” Emily said. “What kind of criminal mastermind am I?”
She plucked a few hairs from the brush and scattered them around the car interior.
“Worst, worst case, someone finds the car. Runs the forensics. And guess what? It was Sean. Motive. Opportunity. Hair.”
I said, “I don’t know . . . I have to get home in time to pick up the boys after school.” What a ridiculous excuse. How lame and weak I sounded.
“Guaranteed,” Emily said. “You’ll be amazed how little time this takes. How little time and effort.”
It was so horrible that it was almost fun. I once heard someone talk about “the second kind of fun.” Something so terrible that it’s fun. Driving behind my friend with a dead man in her passenger seat just did not seem real. It seemed like a horror movie that I was being tricked into believing was real life.
Luckily, the road was empty. In any case, no one passing us would have noticed anything suspicious. Emily must have tipped Mr. Prager over so that it looked, from the outside, as if she were alone in the car. If only she were! If only what had just happened could still turn out to be a bad dream.
I kept checking the clock. Reality was knowing when I had to get the boys at school. But it was still confusing. How could the responsible mom who was never a minute late to get her child be the same person who was helping her friend cover up a murder?
Suddenly, Emily pulled off the road and went bouncing up the rise. I stopped my car and parked on the shoulder. As I began to climb up the hill, I saw Emily getting out of the driver’s seat of Mr. Prager’s car.
This was the worst thing I’d ever done. By far. Looking back, my affair with Chris and having Chris’s child and deceiving Davis into thinking that Miles was his and sleeping with my dead best friend’s husband—that was nothing compared to this. That was child’s play. And the weird thing was: it felt so liberating. As if I were being absolved for all the bad things I’d done by doing something so much worse. And doing it with someone else—my friend! I was so not alone!
The hill got steeper. How had Emily driven Mr. Prager’s old car all the way up the hill without getting stuck? Had she practiced somewhere else? Sheer strength of will, I guessed. I was panting slightly, taking in oxygen; the wind was blowing through my hair. I felt such a sense of excitement, of adventure. Of happiness.
I had never felt so alive.
Emily was waving me on. “Hurry up,” she said.
She hugged me when I reached the top. “Thelma and Louise,” she said.