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You Don't Own Me by Mary Higgins Clark, Alafair Burke (17)

20

It was nearly five o’clock by the time Kendra and Laurie left Otto, but the spring sun was still bright, a welcome contrast from the dark Italian restaurant. Kendra was relieved when Laurie finally said goodbye as they reached Fifth Avenue. Laurie turned south and began walking toward Washington Square Park. As Kendra headed north toward home, she allowed the sunlight to warm her face and tried to calm the thoughts racing in her mind.

At first, everything had been going exactly as she had planned. Steven had tagged along to make sure Laurie knew that she had raised her concerns about Martin’s affair when he was still alive. He also made her sound like a good person—something no one else did anymore. Even Dennis had pitched in on the effort.

Even after Laurie started throwing questions at her, Kendra thought she had done a good job holding her own. She had prepared in advance, knowing that Laurie would be asking about the state of both her mind and her marriage, conflicts with the police, and cash withdrawals. If the conversation had ended there, she would have felt confident that she was on sure footing.

But then Laurie had sneaked in one final topic. When she asked Kendra about going to bars in search of company. Maybe it was simply a shot in the dark, a question prompted by Kendra’s rumored alcoholism. But she had a horrible sense of foreboding that Laurie was referring to the man Kendra still knew only as “Mike.”

She tasted coffee and gelato at the back of her throat from the mere thought of him.

She had sworn on her life—on her children’s lives—that she would do the television show without a single mention of his existence. Now what am I going to do? she thought.

She pulled out her cell phone, pulled up “Mike,” and hit enter. He answered after only half a ring. “You’re done with your meeting?” he asked.

She could tell he was on speakerphone, and she could hear the sounds of a car engine and horns in the background. He was in a car. She found herself looking up and down the street for signs of him.

“I just left.”

“And?”

He had insisted that she apprise him of every development with the television production, and she didn’t dare cross him. “It was a rehash of the old news reports. Nothing I couldn’t handle. She didn’t ask about you,” she added. Technically, the statement was true.

“When do you see her next?”

“I don’t know. She said they’d call me about the shooting schedule.”

“Remember, if you tell them about me, I tell them about you. You’ll go to prison for murder. Your children will be sent off with their grandparents, where they’ll be told every day that you killed their father. And that’s assuming they’re still safe and sound by the time you’re convicted.”

The threat to Bobby and Mindy, once again, was clear. She felt herself starting to shake. “Please, don’t hurt them.”

“Then don’t make me.”

She remembered telling Martin one time during a horrible fight that he should have come with a warning label: Cruelest Man Alive. But now she was dealing with someone even more vile than Martin. With a trembling voice, she said, “I won’t tell anyone. I swear.”

“It’s time for another meeting.”

The thought of it made her blood run cold. It wasn’t even the money at this point. She had become used to him using her as his personal cash machine. The man terrified her at a primal, cellular level. “When?” She heard the quiver in her voice.

“Not how it works. You know that. I’ll call you, and you will come. Bring the usual.”

The usual was nine thousand in cash. Her best guess was that he didn’t want a withdrawal of ten thousand dollars, which banks must report to the government, to trigger an inquiry. She heard the hum of his car engine accelerating, and then he was gone.

She pressed her eyes closed and took three deep breaths, trying to remain calm.

When she was telling Laurie about the disintegration of her marriage, she had used the word gaslight to describe Martin’s practice of telling people that she had lost her mind. But the point of the movie was that Ingrid Bergman actually began to doubt her own mind. Martin literally drove me insane, Kendra thought.

Did she really tell Steven about those malpractice lawsuits against Martin? She didn’t remember it. Just as she didn’t remember saying the horrible things she’d obviously blurted out at a dive bar, to a stranger who called himself Mike. What else did I manage to do in my blacked-out state? she wondered.

Even though Kendra wasn’t religious, she walked into the Episcopal church on 10th Street. They had just opened the doors for weeknight services, but Kendra wouldn’t be staying long. She went to the back row of the church and knelt in silent prayer, as she had so many times before, asking forgiveness for something she didn’t want to believe she might have done.

Will I ever know the truth? she wondered. Will I ever know if I had my husband killed?

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