CHAPTER
THIRTY-NINE
For the second time in my life, I stand in a white dress at the end of a narrow swath of blue, waiting for Richard to approach.
The elevator doors close behind him. But he is motionless.
I feel the intensity of his gaze all the way down at my end of the hallway. I’ve been deliberately stoking his anger for days, coaxing it from the place where he struggles to keep it buried. It is the opposite of how I taught myself to behave during my marriage.
“Are you surprised, sweetheart? It’s me, Nellie.”
It is precisely two o’clock. Emma is a dozen yards from where I stand, in her living room, with Maureen. Neither of them knows I am here; I snuck into the building an hour ago by trailing a deliveryman through the door. I knew exactly when the uniformed man carrying the long rectangular box would arrive. It was I who placed the order for a dozen white roses to be sent to Emma this afternoon.
“I thought you were out of town,” he says.
“I changed my mind. I wanted to have another chat with your fiancée.”
My hands are touching a few different objects in my pockets. Which I pull out first will depend on Richard’s reaction. Richard takes a step onto the carpet runner. It is almost impossible for me to avoid shrinking back. Despite the summer heat, his dark suit, white shirt, and gold silk tie appear creaseless and elegant. He isn’t unhinged yet, not the way I need him to be.
“Really? And what do you intend to say to her?” His voice is dangerously quiet.
“I’m going to start with this.” I pull out a piece of paper. “It’s your Visa bill showing you never ordered the Raveneau.” He’s too far away to see the fine print and realize it’s actually one of my own statements.
I need to press on before he demands to see the proof. I smile at Richard, though my stomach is churning. “I’m also going to explain to Emma that you are tracking her through her phone.” I keep my voice as low and steady as his. “Just like you did to me.”
I can almost feel his body clench. “You’ve gone over the edge, Vanessa.” Another measured step. “This is my fiancée you’re messing with. After everything I went through with you, you’re trying to ruin this now?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I gauge the distance to Emma’s apartment door. I tense my body in preparation.
“You lied about Duke. I know what you did with him, and I’m going to tell Emma.” This isn’t true—I never found out what happened to my beloved dog, although I truly don’t think Richard actually harmed him—but it hits its target. I see Richard’s face compress in rage.
“And you lied about the sperm analysis, too.” My mouth is so dry it’s difficult to form the words. I take a step backward, toward Emma’s door. “Thank God you couldn’t get me pregnant. You don’t deserve to have a child. I took photos after you hurt me. I collected evidence. You didn’t think I was smart enough, did you?”
I’ve carefully chosen words I know will incite my ex-husband.
They are working.
“Emma is going to leave you when I tell her everything.” I can no longer keep my voice from shaking. But the truth it contains is undeniable. “Just like the woman before me left you.” I take a deep breath and deliver my closing lines. “I wanted to leave you, too. I was never your sweet Nellie. I didn’t want to stay married to you, Richard.”
He explodes in fury.
This I expected.
But I miscalculated how quickly he would lose all control, how fast he would be.
He is upon me before I have taken more than a few running steps toward Emma’s door.
Richard’s hands tighten around my throat, cutting off my supply of oxygen.
I thought I’d have time to scream. To bang on the door and summon Emma and Maureen, so they could witness Richard’s transformation. Richard would never be able to explain this violence away; it would be the physical proof that couldn’t be found in a notebook or a filing cabinet or a storage unit. This was the other insurance policy I needed to save us all—me, Emma, and the women in Richard’s future.
I was also counting on Richard to halt his attack when Maureen and Emma appeared—or that, at least, they would be able to stop him. Now there is no reason for him to deny himself his need to extinguish me.
My windpipe feels as if it is being crushed into the back of my neck. The pain is agonizing. My knees buckle.
My left arm helplessly stretches out toward Emma’s door, though I know it’s futile. She is twirling in her wedding gown for her future sister-in-law. Completely unaware of what is happening on the other side of her living room wall.
Richard’s assault is nearly silent; a gurgling noise wrenches free from my throat, but it is not loud enough to reach her or anyone else who may be home on this floor.
He thrusts me back against the wall. His hot breath brushes my cheeks. I see the scar above his eye, a silvery crescent, as he leans closer.
I am engulfed by dizziness.
I fumble for the pepper spray in my pocket, but as I pull it out, Richard bangs my head against the wall and I lose my grip on it. It tumbles to the carpet.
My vision recedes; it is being hemmed in by black borders. I frantically kick at his shins, but he is unaffected by my blows.
My lungs are burning. I am desperate for air.
His eyes blaze into mine. I claw at his body and my hand hits something hard in his suit jacket pocket. I wrench it free.
Save us.
I summon the last of my strength and smash the object against his face.
Richard releases a cry.
A splash of bright red blood erupts from the wound by his temple.
My limbs grow heavy and my body begins to relax. A calmness I haven’t felt in years—perhaps ever—overtakes me. My knees give way.
I am fading into the blackness when the pressure abruptly disappears. I collapse and draw in a ragged breath. I cough violently, then I retch.
“Vanessa,” a woman calls from what seems a great distance away.
I am splayed on the carpet, one of my legs bent beneath me, but I feel as if I am floating.
“Vanessa!”
Emma. All I can do is roll my head to one side, bringing broken pieces of porcelain into view. I see jagged pieces of china figurines—a serenely smiling blond bride and her handsome groom. It was our cake topper.
And beside them is Richard on his knees, his expression blank, a rivulet of blood streaming down his face and staining his white shirt.
I suck in a painful breath, then another. All of the menace has leached out of my ex-husband. His hair has fallen forward into his eyes. He is immobile.
Fresh oxygen returns a little strength to my body, though my throat feels so swollen and tender I can’t swallow. I manage to edge backward and pull myself into a sitting position, slumping against the hallway wall.
Emma hurries to my side. She is barefoot and, like me, clad in a white sheath. Her wedding gown. “I heard someone yell—I came out to see—but then . . . What happened?”
I can’t speak. I can only suck in shallow, greedy breaths.
I see her eyes drift down to my neck. “I’m calling an ambulance.”
Richard doesn’t react to any of this, not even to the gasp of surprise Maureen gives as she suddenly appears in the doorway.
“What is going on?” Maureen stares at me—the woman she dismissed as unstable, as her brother’s cast-off wife. Then she looks at Richard, the man she helped raise and loves unconditionally. She goes to him. She reaches out and touches his back. “Richard?”
He raises a hand to his forehead, then stares at the streak of red on his palm. He seems oddly distant, as if he’s in shock.
I hate the sight of blood. That was one of the first things he’d ever said to me. I suddenly realize that in all of the ways Richard hurt me, he never once made me bleed.
Maureen hurries into the apartment and returns with a wad of paper towels. She kneels next to him and presses the towels to his wound. “What’s going on?” Her words grow sharper. “Vanessa, why are you here? What did you do to him?”
“He hurt me.” My voice is hoarse and every syllable feels as if one of the shards of porcelain is rubbing against the inside of my throat.
I need to finally say these words.
I grimace as I make my voice louder. “He choked me. He nearly killed me. Just like he used to hurt me when we were married.”
Maureen gasps. “He wouldn’t—no, not—”
Then she falls silent. She is still shaking her head, but her shoulders sag and her face collapses. I am certain that even though she hasn’t yet seen the fingerprint-shaped marks that I know are blooming on my neck, she believes me.
Maureen straightens up. She pulls the paper towels away from Richard’s face and examines his injury. When she speaks again, her tone is brisk, yet caring.
“It isn’t so bad. I don’t think you need stitches.”
Richard doesn’t react to this, either.
“I’ll take care of everything, Richard.” Maureen gathers up the shattered pieces of porcelain. She cups them in one hand, then wraps her arms around her brother and tilts her head close to his. I can just barely make out her whispered words: “I always took care of you, Richard. I never let anything bad happen to you. You don’t have to worry. I’m here. I’m going to fix everything.”
Her utterances are bewildering. But what shocks me most is the strange emotion infusing them. Maureen doesn’t sound angry or sad or confused.
Her voice is filled with something I can’t identify at first, because it is so out of place.
I finally realize what it is: satisfaction.