Then there were these two. Stella and Hanna. They risked a fall to their deaths on treacherous stairs and the reality that the attacker might have been waiting downstairs for them in favor of getting to me.
Decision made.
“Victoria texted me that day. She was upset about Aubrey and Patrick and not making sense.” I glanced at Hanna. “And she contacted you.”
“No. Patrick texted me. Admittedly, it was a cryptic text about needing help. I told the police it was a follow-up on a work thing but that’s not why Patrick asked me to come over.” Hanna winced. “I walked in the door and heard you and Victoria fighting.”
“About Patrick.” Him and so much more. A reality that haunted me to this day.
“Is that when Victoria discovered the affair?” Stella asked.
“She figured it out the night before but didn’t tell me until I got to the house. A surprise attack of sorts, which I, of course, deserved.” I held a mug of tea. The heat seeped into my palms but didn’t calm me. The conversation had a ball of panic clogging my throat. “She’d found the engraved bracelet Patrick gave me. I’d worn it a few days earlier. Must have dropped it next to their bed.”
Stella winced. “Ouch.”
“I never left my house with it, but Patrick had invited me over and Victoria was out...” I waved a hand in the air, as if I couldbat away my terrible decision-making. “She knew what the bracelet and the inscription meant.”
“She confronted you?”
Leave it to Hanna to jump right to the point.
“Yes and she really did text you,” I said, delivering the information I now believed Hanna never knew. “She used his phone to lure you there. She said the two of us could fight it out.”
Hanna jerked back. “What’s theitin that sentence?”
“Over which one of you got to be with Patrick?” Stella asked. “That’s weird.”
They still didn’t get it. “No. Victoria meant we could fight over which one of us was going to take the blame for killing Patrick.”
A beat of heated silence filled the room.
I was never here. There’s a library fundraiser this afternoon. That’s where my car is. Where everyone will believe I was when this happened.
I could hear the screech of Victoria’s voice as if she were standing in front of me.“She was wild and not making sense. She weaved all these irrational thoughts together. Mumbled one minute about how she would need someone to be a witness for her at the fundraiser, then raved about Patrick’s behavior and his being a terrible father the next. She repeated Noah’s name and said she couldn’t find him. She screamed about Aubrey.”
I took a breath because I needed a break. Hanna and Stella stared at me, their concern obvious.
“She said it was our fault. Yours and mine, Hanna. I didn’t have any idea what touched off the madness until I saw him.”
His body. Unmoving. So brilliant and alive with energy and purpose in life. So normal and unimpressive in death.
“Patrick was already dead when I got to the house. I didn’t know it at first, but I found him.” The pain crept out of the shadowy corner where I’d stomped it into submission and locked it up. Step by step, growing bigger, looming like a wild, angry beast.
“I heard you and Victoria fighting. Not the words, exactly. More like I heard the anger.” Hanna winced. “Then you walked into the entry, where I was standing, and I saw your hands.”
“The blood.” I put the mug down, then picked it right back up again. “When I realized Victoria was holding the bracelet my first instinct was to bolt. I pivoted to get away from her. Ran into the kitchen and almost tripped over his...” So stiff. So quiet while chaos fired off around him. “Patrick.”
You stupid bitch. You left the jewelry on purpose. You wanted me to know. Well, now I know.
“I... dropped to the floor. I... I... touched him, hoping he somehow survived losing all that blood. I couldn’t breathe or think. I had to get out of there, but I’d gotten spun around.” The same sensation of being trapped, gasping without enough air, hit me now. “Victoria’s voice...”
You did this. You. You ruined everything. And Aubrey...
The look of pity on Hanna’s face stopped me. I glanced away. Couldn’t see it. I didn’t deserve her compassion.
“I got the whole way to the front door before I saw the blood smeared all over my hands and on my shirt. The terror in your eyes.” I fought back the tears, then and now. In between, I’d cried so many times. I could no longer separate the devastation of losing him from the breath-stealing pain of losing myself.
A broken heart. A destroyed friendship. A kick to my sanity.
