Phoebe handed him a glass of wine and then placed one on her side of the bed.
She imagined her family at the cemetery, standing before two caskets. The idea of death seemed selfish and punishing. She should stay to care for her children and granddaughters. Then Phoebe pictured all the hate now pointed at Jake aimed only at her. Rage already shot toward her as though she had nibbled on Kobe beef sautéed with babies’ tears. If she took the pills, she could sleep. If there were some sort of heaven—an afterlife—God would see her heart and her deeds.
She’d been blind, she’d been stupid—but she’d not been greedy. She’d spent the money, but she’d never known of Jake’s crimes.
Reincarnation might exist. She could start over. Come back as someone with an honest husband. A kind husband. Children who didn’t have to spend their lives trying to win a monster’s approval.
Phoebe wasn’t a religious woman, but shouldn’t she have prepared somehow? Made peace?
Leaving the kids would be a final act of selfishness. They’d asked her to come with them, but she stayed with Jake. Now she’d never be able to go to them. They’d hate her forever.
She couldn’t do it.
“How many pills do you think it will take?” Jake looked at her as though she were some sort of suicide expert. He probably thought she’d Googled the question. Phoebe took care of everything in the home. Why not include researching how to die?
Of course, she had looked for the information and knew how many pills would kill them, but going through with this would be a deserter’s way out. Any attempt to argue with Jake required a wrestler’s strength—far better to use a sorcerer’s wisdom.
“Four.”
“Four?” he said. “So few?”
“These are the highest-strength pills.” They weren’t. They were only five milligrams each. “I’ll only need to take three.”
“You’re sure that will be enough for us?” he asked.
“With the wine, definitely.” Dying with that dose was near impossible. “Absolutely.”
“Right. Down the hatch.” Jake counted out four pills and swallowed them with his Chardonnay.
What if she told him to take more and only pretended to swallow hers?
“Your turn.” He watched her as though she might cheat him in some way. “The kids will manage. Don’t worry. If we’re gone, they won’t have to deal with all this. We’re doing them a favor.”
His silence was all she wanted. Phoebe swallowed three pills at once.
“I love you, baby,” he said. “Always. From the first time I saw you.”
“I know, Jake.” She should say it back, to be kind, to be human. “Me too.”
CHAPTER 31
Phoebe
Phoebe woke to the sound of Jake retching. Seconds later, nausea overcame her.
After throwing off the covers, she stumbled to the other bathroom and dropped to her knees in time for her stomach to explode into the toilet and not on the floor. Half-digested pills spewed out in a brown froth.
Emptied, she curled up on the thick white bath mat. Her head pounded hard enough that she worried she might be having a stroke. Jake groaned from the master bathroom. She wondered if she should call 911.
Headlines appeared instantly in her mind. “Pierces Rushed to Mount Sinai: Pills & Alcohol Thought to Blame.” The Post would be less gracious, more likely coming up with “Jake and Phoebe’s Grim Reaper Investment Fails” or “Jake and Phoebe: Too Mean to Die.”
Would the kids rush to the hospital? If she called them right this moment, decency would force them to come. Immediately, the thought of using this pathetic faux suicide attempt to bring Kate and Noah back to her disgusted her. She curled her fingers to keep from reaching for the bathroom phone and calling her daughter.
She tried to get up to go to Jake but couldn’t. Finally, she heard him stagger to the bedroom and fall onto the bed. He’d gathered enough strength to do that—but not enough to come see whether she survived. Perhaps her husband wanted her dead, preventing him from witnessing her shame about him.
She reached up, slid a towel off the bar and pulled it on top of her, shivering until something resembling sleep came.
? ? ?
Christmas Eve seemed two years ago, but, in fact, only one long, crawling week had passed since the night of pills, and here they were on the couch, watching the Dustin Hoffman comedy Tootsie as 2008 clicked to 2009.
Obsessions with her and Jake doubled with each news cycle. Pundits and full-of-themselves essayists hammered the same questions: Did Phoebe Pierce know her life was built on fraud? Did Phoebe Pierce partner with her husband in hustling billions from investors? Friends and enemies debated for the world’s curiosity about whether love and loyalty blinded her to his crimes, or if she chose to live in denial. People she hadn’t seen since high school crawled out of the alleys to disclose Phoebe lore and photos.
Missing her children became sharper; shards of glass ripping at her.
She allowed herself to imagine, for one second, where they would all be in normal times. New Year’s Eve, they went back to Greenwich—loving the feeling of being cozy in the house as the ocean frothed outside. The worse the weather, the more they loved it.
Kate and Noah and their spouses usually ate New Year’s Eve dinner out while she and Jake stayed home with the girls. They built forts and slept in the pillowed fortifications. The two of them let the grandkids stay up late, all of them cuddled on the giant living room couches watching video after video curated by Jake. One of his joys had been planning the night’s entertainment. He spent hours reading reviews, his face screwed up in concentration as he decided between one family film and another.
Jake hit pause to stop Tootsie and squeezed her knee. “How about a snack?”
“What do you want?” She concentrated on Dustin Hoffman, frozen in the act of applying lipstick.
“What do we have?” His hand weighed five hundred pounds.
“Sorry, my X-ray vision is on the fritz,” she said.
“Hey, you do the shopping, you cook the food. Makes sense you keep stock of what we have, right? Do you need to make this a federal case? Could I have something to eat?”
“Open the cabinets. Acquaint yourself. I’m not hungry.”
“So this is where we’re going?” He frowned at her. “You’re turning on me?”
“You want me to wait on you?”
He wrapped his hand around her forearm. “Waiting on me? That’s what it is to you?”
She shook him off. “Stop.”
“Now I can’t touch you? It’s been pretty obvious you don’t want that.”
“Sex? We’re talking about sex now? Should I make sandwiches and then go down on you?”
“Would it be such a sin?” He pressed his lips together in disgust, the wounding expression designed to shame her into service.
He picked up the plates on the coffee table. Funny how Jake “helped” only when he wanted to hurt her. Was she supposed to be embarrassed that he was doing her supposed job?