Just Between Us

Heather swayed on the steps, and despite everything that had happened, my sympathy kicked in and I ran to catch her before she fell. “You shouldn’t have checked out of the hospital,” I said. “Are you still bleeding?”

Alison supported her on the other side, as Sarah grabbed her purse and opened the door and we half-walked, half-carried Heather into the house. “She needs water,” Alison said, and we took her into the kitchen and sat her down in a chair. I hurriedly filled a glass at the sink as Alison asked, “When was the last time you ate?”

“I don’t know.” Heather’s voice was barely audible, and when I carried the water to her I saw that she’d dropped her head onto her arms. Sarah rummaged through the pantry and passed a box of crackers to Alison.

“Here, eat something,” she said, breaking off a saltine and pressing it, none too gently, to Heather’s lips. She tried to turn her head away, but Alison wouldn’t let her, taking hold of Heather’s neck and attempting to force the food into her mouth. They struggled for a moment, and then Heather gave up, accepting the single cracker, chewing and swallowing as if it were something twice as large that had stuck in her throat. She took the glass with shaking hands and gulped, water splashing down her chin and onto her inside-out sweater. When Alison offered a second cracker, she didn’t protest, just put it in her mouth.

Sarah ate one, too, crunching loudly, and then she walked across to the wine fridge and I wasn’t surprised when she pulled out a bottle. A dark red merlot that seemed too reminiscent of blood as she poured it into glasses for us. My stomach felt uneasy, but I sipped it anyway, tasting that strange mixture of earth and oak and fruit left long on the vine. For a moment it was like it had been before, all of us drinking together in this kitchen where we’d hung out so many times, although Heather didn’t touch her glass. The illusion was shattered when Sarah set the bottle down hard on the island and said, “Did you get the money from Fortini? I want my money back.”

“He wasn’t there,” Heather said in a low voice. “I couldn’t find him.”

“All your bruises were from him, right?” Alison said. “There’s no point in lying anymore, Heather—we all know the truth. Just admit it—Viktor never abused you.”

For a long moment Heather said nothing, but then something changed, and I felt queasy as I watched her wide-eyed expression morph into a look both hard and jaded. “There are different types of abuse,” she said coldly. “Emotional and psychological, not just physical.”

“You shot an innocent man,” Sarah said. The stark truth of that was too much, and I bolted for the sink and retched, my stomach heaving and heaving as if I were expelling every terrible lie that I’d believed. I reached with a shaking hand for the faucet, cupping handfuls of water into my mouth and splashing it over my face.

“Innocent?” Heather spat the word, her voice rising, carrying over the running water. “Viktor wasn’t innocent. Do you have any idea what it’s like to live with someone like him—someone who makes you account for every nickel and dime? Someone who expects you to just be there all the time, to cook and clean and be a perfect, uncomplaining hausfrau for him to fuck the few times of year he feels like it? Nothing here was mine—his house, his son, his possessions, of which I was one. It was like being trapped in a golden prison.”

“And you got us to help you break out,” Alison said.

“Well, it was your idea.” Heather gave a bitter laugh. “I didn’t think this up on my own—it’s all down to you and your assumptions. But of course you would make assumptions, wouldn’t you?”

“Shut up,” Alison said, her voice a warning.

Heather laughed again, a horrible sound. “What, you don’t want them to know that poor little Alison sees abuse everywhere because her daddy killed her mommy?”





chapter forty-one





SARAH


Julie and I looked from Heather to Alison. “Your father killed your mother?” I asked. Alison’s face flushed and her gaze flitted to ours. She opened her mouth as if to refute this crazy statement, but nothing came out. Grabbing her wineglass instead, she took a long swallow. My mind reeled. It would explain a lot of things, like why Alison almost never talked about her parents or her childhood. I just thought she wasn’t close with them, although I knew she was close with her brother. I remembered the topic coming up in conversations over the years, usually around the holidays, when we’d talk about what everyone was doing for Thanksgiving, for instance, but I never stopped to question the fact that she only mentioned her brother or Michael’s family.

I felt a stab of guilt. She was my close friend and yet I’d never asked anything about her past, at least nothing beyond what she’d wanted to tell us. If it was true, if her father had killed her mother, then no wonder she didn’t want to talk about it. Was her father still alive? Was he in prison? I suddenly recalled being at her house one afternoon and seeing an envelope poking out of a pile of mail tossed on her kitchen counter, a dark line of text stamped across the bottom proclaiming PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS. And I’d said with a laugh, “What’s this? Do you have a prison pen pal?”

“No, never,” she’d said with a shudder, quickly scooping up the mail and sticking it in a drawer while asking what I’d like to drink. Out of sight and out of mind. And I’d let it go. I hadn’t asked any more questions because it was clear that she didn’t want to talk about it. Sometimes we’re too polite.

A phone rang, a sharp trill breaking the tense silence. “Whose phone is that?” I asked. The ringtone wasn’t familiar, but we did that thing you do automatically when you hear ringing, everybody pulling out their phones to check. Or at least three of us did. Heather just sat frozen in her seat. Alison pulled out Ray Fortini’s phone, but it wasn’t his either. The ringing continued. I followed the sound to Heather’s purse, which I’d dropped in the kitchen doorway as we came inside. I pulled out her iPhone, but I knew her ringtone and hers wasn’t the one ringing. The sound continued and I dug in her bag, pushing past a hairbrush and makeup, breath mints and an unopened pack of cigarettes.

“You have a second phone?” I said, pulling out another iPhone just as it stopped ringing. It looked virtually identical to the first one. I dropped it next to hers on the kitchen table. The look on Heather’s face said it all. We knew who the caller had been.

“He gave it to me—I didn’t want it,” Heather said, pleading. “Viktor was getting suspicious and then the police were snooping around—I couldn’t talk to Ray on my phone.”

“Do you still expect us to believe that you had nothing to do with the blackmail?” Alison said.

“I didn’t know about the blackmail, I didn’t. Look, check it if you don’t believe me. There’s nothing on it about the blackmail, I swear!” She picked up the phone, but as she glanced at the screen something seemed to occur to her, her face lightening as she thrust the phone at Alison, just like she had at the hospital. “He can’t be the blackmailer—look, this proves it! Ray called me from his phone. That’s his number. So that phone you have can’t be his!”

And just like at the hospital, Alison made no move to take it. “All that proves is that your lover also had a second phone.”

Heather opened her mouth to argue with that, but I stopped her before she could begin. “He had this phone,” I said, picking it off the island and waving it at her. “I stole this phone from him at The Crooked Halo tonight.”

Heather seemed to deflate at that, both her face and her arm falling, the phone dropping from her hand to clatter against the table.

Julie said, “So you’ve had this phone since before you killed your husband?”

“You don’t understand.”

“You’re right—we don’t,” Alison said, “but we’re starting to get the full picture. You called Ray Fortini the night you shot Viktor, right?”

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