“You made sure you didn’t have children?” I guessed.
“That was the simplest part. A little pill each morning,” said Jennifer with a faint smile. “Stephen never found out, at least not until a few weeks ago. And by then, what did it matter? I’m too old to have children now.”
A few weeks ago? Was this what had precipitated the murder? “Then why did you marry him in the first place?”
Jennifer was quiet for a long moment. “Why do you think?” she asked.
“Money,” I guessed out loud.
“Well, if that was so, it wasn’t as if he had anything to complain about in the deal,” she said, grimacing. Was she another wife who had denied Stephen her bed eventually?
“But surely you could have made money on your own,” I said.
She looked at the door jamb, pressed her finger into a bit of wood hanging out of it, and then held it out to me to see the splinter there. “Of course. But I’m not like other people. I learned that early on in life. I didn’t want friends or relationships. I never cared about feelings or security, whatever it is that makes other people do what they do.”
She studied the splinter, but didn’t take it out. It must hurt, and it was strange to see her so curious about her own physical pain, without ever reacting to it. “Stephen’s proposition of marriage gave me a chance to live here.” She gestured widely to take in the expanse of the compound. “I’ve been able to have quiet almost all the time. And in addition to that, no one bothers me to go on dates or to spend time doing things I’m not interested in.”
I stared at her and wondered if she was what a psychologist would call a sociopath. I’d read about them in books and I’d always felt sick at their lack of sympathy for others. But I’d met Jennifer several times now and never guessed this about her. She really seemed to feel nothing, at least not in any normal sense.
“It went much better with Stephen than I ever imagined. Once I understood him, he was easy to manage. He had his ego, but if I stroked it with a few words, or let him stroke me a few times a month”—she glanced sideways at me at this, but showed no embarrassment—“that was all it took. And he didn’t ask twice about all the money I was investing for him, never looked carefully at my yearly reports. He trusted me, if you can believe it. Me.” She shrugged and smiled again, that cold, wide smile. It reminded me of what Joanna had said about Jennifer having a murderer’s heart.
My stomach clenched and I wondered if I was in danger. I could see no real reason for Jennifer to want to kill Stephen, since she had so clearly thought she was getting the better end of the bargain between them. But if there was any person on this compound I was truly afraid of now, it was Jennifer. Was it possible she had just decided to kill Stephen to see how it would feel?
“You knew Stephen was thinking of changing his will,” I said, sure she had. She knew everything. Rebecca might be the mother of the compound, but Jennifer was the queen.
She shrugged, unashamed. “He was old friends with a lawyer from college. He asked me to make an appointment with him to change the will. As if I was his secretary.”
The appointment with an old friend that she’d messaged him about, I thought. It was with a lawyer about the will. “Why did he want to change it?”
“He said he’d decided that he was going to put Aaron in charge of distributing funds if he died, and that each of the children who was verified to be his would get an equal portion.”
I thought for a moment. “But what about Talitha? What about Grace?”
“What about me?” She met my eyes and I thought again of how cold she was. She didn’t seem to care about the children’s welfare at all, only her own.
“Was this to punish Sarah?” I asked. Cutting Talitha out of the will would have been a blow to Sarah, surely.
“Well, Stephen had discovered the truth about Sarah and Rebecca.” She spoke so casually, though she watched me to see my reaction.
“What truth?” I asked, trying to hide the lurch in my stomach. Rebecca and Sarah. There had always been something wrong in their relationship, something too fraught, too emotional, and I’d known it. Rebecca had admitted as much to me last night when she’d told me about destroying Sarah’s paintings.
“You never thought about how they look so much alike?” she asked.
“They’re sisters. A lot of sisters look alike,” I said, still pushing away what Jennifer was hinting at. It was too much. I’d liked Rebecca and I had done so much to help her cover up Stephen’s murder because I connected to her as a mother, but what kind of mother could allow what Jennifer was suggesting?
“Did you never think about the age difference between Sarah and Rebecca? Fifteen years,” Jennifer went on.