“Don’t bother—the road dead-ends up there,” Sarah said. “We’ll see them coming and going.”
When the rain slowed to a mist, Sarah stopped running the windshield wipers and turned off the car. “We don’t want to call attention to ourselves,” she said, but it got cold quickly without the engine on to run the heater. I burrowed into my down coat and pulled the hood up. Sarah kept popping her mouth above the top of her fully zipped jacket to take sips from a purple travel mug.
“Is that coffee?”
“Yep.”
She didn’t offer me a sip. Was it spiked? I wouldn’t ask. No need to provoke an argument, but maybe I’d insist on driving home. I hadn’t thought to bring coffee—or booze—but I took small sips from my water bottle and tried to avoid glancing at my phone. It’s amazing how dependent on these things we’ve become. No need for boredom when you’ve got an electronic device to distract you, except we weren’t allowed to be distracted.
“Do you think whoever it is will notice us sitting here?” Sarah said nervously. “What if they’re here right now, watching us?”
I craned my neck to look all around, but the place was deserted. We had only the dead for company.
Time really does slow to a crawl when you’re watching it—9:10, 9:20, 9:30. There was no sign of the blackmailer or Alison.
“Where is she?” I asked, yanking off my hood and looking around again, trying to see the roads above and below us.
Sarah took another swallow from her purple mug. “She’ll be here.”
The letter had said ten A.M. What if the blackmailer showed up and the money wasn’t there?
When it was 9:50 I pulled out my phone and called. It rang and rang before going to voice mail. “She’s not answering.” I hung up and dialed again.
“She’s probably driving,” Sarah said, but she pulled out her own phone, checking for messages.
“It’s almost ten,” I said when it bounced to voice mail the second time. “Where on earth are you?”
The next five minutes felt like fifty. Sarah called, as if Alison would have been more likely to pick up for her. Voice mail again.
“What are we going to do?” I said, tapping the dashboard. “We can’t just sit here.”
“Well, we can’t just leave.”
“Something must have happened. What if she had an accident? Oh my God—if she had an accident they could find the money.”
At that moment my phone pinged, interrupting my panic with a text from Alison: The police were at my house.
chapter twenty-six
HEATHER
Viktor is dead. I say that to myself multiple times a day. Viktor is dead and I don’t have to worry about him anymore. He can’t catch me off guard. I don’t have to watch out for his approach or race home to be on time to serve his dinner. I don’t have to hide. I should feel free in a way that I haven’t in years.
At night I spread out in the bed I shared with him, the bed where I’d done my best to avoid having sex with him, luxuriating in the fact that I no longer have to pretend to be asleep. That threat that hung over my life is gone. When I do sleep, it’s more deeply than I have in years.
Of course, the reality is that I am not really free, not now. The blackmail letter has seen to that. What are we going to do if they decide $20,000 isn’t enough? And the detectives have been sniffing around. I can sense their presence before they ring the bell, the way a cat is alert to that faint rustle in the weeds before she spots a rodent. I let them into the house every time and try to remain calm in the face of their roundabout questions. They don’t fool me—I know what they want.
“Did you and your husband ever argue?” the short one says to me, pen twitching in his stubby fingers. He has come alone this morning, perched on a stool at my kitchen island, reminding me of a troll with his round head and wild fringe of graying hair. There’s an oily stain on his cheap tie. I look away from it and up at his broad-featured face. I shrug.
“Of course. Sometimes. All couples argue sometimes.” I give him a slight smile. “Are you married, Detective Tedesco?”
He looks discomfited by the question, by this reversing of our positions, but he gives me a sharp nod.
I nod, too, as if we’re agreeing with each other. “I’m sure we all argue sometimes with the ones we love.”
“What makes you think you can win?” My hair pulled tight in his fist.
The detective slaps his notebook on the marble countertop, startling me. “What about?”
“Excuse me?”
“What did you and your husband argue about?”
“Oh, nothing important.” I wave my hand to show him it’s trivial. “To tell the truth, Detective, my husband worked too many hours to be home long enough for much of an argument about anything.”
“You talk only when I say you can talk.” Forcing me down on the bed, pushing my face into the mattress.
“Did you fight about not having enough time together?”
“Viktor disliked arguing,” I say, shifting on my stool and hoping the man doesn’t notice. “He thought it was pointless.”
Daniel runs into the room, a welcome interruption. He woke up with a fever, so I reluctantly let him skip school. Now I’m glad he’s home. “What do you need, sweetie?” I stand up to indicate that I’m busy, that I’ve had enough questions for one day. Tedesco reluctantly stands up, too, flipping his notebook closed and shoving it back in his pocket.
I’m glad Daniel is young enough to be spared all but the most basic questioning. He rarely saw his father, so it’s not surprising that he barely misses him.
Viktor’s mother is a different story. Her son is dead and she has moved from sadness to anger. She’s eager to talk to the detectives, to tell them all about me. About my friends. She is watching me; I’m conscious of her gaze following me when she thinks I’m not looking. She can’t know—her son couldn’t have told her. She lurks around the house trying to catch me in conversation, and her sister, Olga, is no better, although I think she’s primarily interested in the insurance payout. The only thing pulling my mother-in-law away from her single-minded focus on me and Daniel is her dog, an elderly poodle named Max, who requires regular walks and chews on the curtains or shits on her cream-colored carpet when he doesn’t get enough attention. I’ve always hated that dog, but now that he’s the only reason I get some time away from Anna, I’ve developed a certain fondness for him. Recently I even bought Anna some dog biscuits she could take to him, hoping that would prompt her to leave right away. She’d eyed the bag and me with her usual sour-faced suspicion. I had to bite my tongue to stop from saying that if I’d wanted to poison her dog I would have done it years ago.
The grocery store is virtually the only place I can go. The police are watching—I catch myself checking my rearview mirror for unmarked cars the few times I drive anywhere. Alison has warned me that the phones might be bugged, our calls recorded, so I can’t even text to ask how it’s going with the drop-off. I’m as much of a prisoner now as I was before. “You’re not going anywhere. You belong to me.”
chapter twenty-seven
ALISON
It was always so quiet in the house with Michael and the kids gone, but that morning the silence seemed deafening. I tried to do some work online, answering emails, checking to make sure that a project I delivered had been received. The ticking of the clock seemed unnaturally loud. I didn’t want to be late, but if I got to the cemetery too early, I’d have to drive around in circles.
I’d just taken my coat from the closet when the doorbell rang, a two-note peal that made me jump and seemed to echo in the quiet house. Fingers crossed it wasn’t a neighbor; I really didn’t have time to deal with anything else that morning. I pulled my jacket on and held my purse on my shoulder to make it clear that I didn’t have time for a chat as I opened the door. I peeped through the side window first, startled when I saw a strange man standing on my front steps.