Mother of All Secrets(72)

“Vanessa,” Kira said in a voice just above a whisper, “that’s awful about your son. Awful. But you realize that we aren’t responsible for what happened to you, right?”

“Yes, thanks, Kira, I get that.” Vanessa rolled her eyes. “But you’re all squandering what you have. Not appreciating it. Not making enough effort. And you should be ashamed of yourselves. Especially you, Isabel—girls need strong role models. And you’re the furthest thing from that, letting Connor just do whatever he wants to you and whoever else.”

“I didn’t let him—” Isabel began, but Vanessa held up a hand to silence her.

“So what is it you plan to do?” Selena was stone faced, just as she’d been when we first found Isabel in Montauk. My stomach dropped when I remembered how I’d ushered her into Isabel’s house tonight, assured her that it would be okay. If only I’d known how wrong I was.

“What do we plan to do, you mean. It’s still our plan, girls. You’re all in on it, whether you like it or not. Well, not you.” She looked at Isabel with sarcastic sympathy. Then she looked back at the rest of us. “The plan is that this”—she gestured toward Connor’s now-lifeless body—“will be a murder-suicide. Isabel killed Connor, then herself.”

After a ringing moment of silence in which every jaw but Vanessa’s (and Connor’s) hung open, Isabel finally spoke up. “What are you talking about?” she sobbed, trembling. “I’m not killing myself.”

“Okay, I’ll spell it out for you, sweetheart.” Vanessa slowed her speech as though addressing someone exceptionally unintelligent. “I am going to kill you and make it look like you killed Connor and then yourself. It would be the most believable thing in the world, given your now well-documented history with postpartum psychosis and exhaustion. It will look like you simply couldn’t handle it anymore. You snapped. You’ll be like a cautionary tale: Don’t let it get to this point!”

“Isabel is innocent, Vanessa.” I was surprised that my voice even worked. “You have a lot to be angry about, with your son, and what Connor did to your sister, but Isabel isn’t responsible for any of it. She was a victim, too.”

“Well, that’s where I have to disagree with you. Her complicity makes her responsible.”

“You’ll never get away with it,” Kira said, though she didn’t sound convinced herself.

Selena agreed: “Cops can always sniff out staged suicides. There are always clues.”

“Well,” Vanessa said, “lucky for all of us, between my medical degree and my experience staging suicides, I don’t think it’ll be a problem.”

Once again, we all settled back into gaping at her.

“I guess there’s no harm in telling you,” she said. “There are no secrets between us, at this point. I loved my sister dearly, but it became very clear to me that Allison was simply not up to the task of being Phoebe’s mom. She was always immature and impulsive—even her decision to keep the baby was so rash, so uninformed. Who does that? Especially after essentially getting assaulted? And who gets pregnant from one time, while on the pill? My sister, that’s who. Things always just happen to her. And then, what—she’s going to raise the baby on her own in her studio apartment?” Vanessa shook her head with exasperation and then looked at us like she expected us to agree. When we showed no reaction, she continued. “She was always like that, even as a kid. Making these reckless decisions that I had to help her undo after the fact. I couldn’t talk her out of keeping the baby, but it didn’t take long for her to prove me right—she fell apart quickly after Phoebe was born. She was hopeless at changing diapers, constantly falling asleep holding Phoebe. She could have rolled over and suffocated her! She had no idea how to soothe her. She couldn’t figure out a feeding schedule for anything. She barely left the house to take her for walks and fresh air. She just moped around all day. I had to do something.”

“So you killed your sister?” I couldn’t breathe as I spoke.

Vanessa bobbed her head from side to side, considering my question. “I don’t really look at it that way. I simply nudged her toward what she’d probably eventually have done herself anyway. She was heading down a dark path, trust me. I saved her some unnecessary pain by expediting the process for her—giving her some medications that, as it turns out, aren’t supposed to be mixed.” She shrugged as if it had all been an unfortunate accident.

“But look,” she continued, “I’m not a monster. I did it so that her daughter wouldn’t have to deal with the pain of having a weak, incompetent mother. In truth, I did it for Allison, because I knew deep down that she loved Phoebe and would want her to have the best life possible. And that’s with me, not with her.” Vanessa sighed. “It killed me to do it. It really did. I loved my sister. I mean, look at what I’m doing for her—killing the guy, the couple, who messed up her life. If that doesn’t prove sisterly love, I don’t know what does. And I’ll always miss her. But Phoebe deserved—deserves—a stronger mom than Allison.

“And this was a familiar road for me. I knew how this would end. Allison came by it honestly. Our mom died by suicide when we were young.” I remembered Vanessa mentioning her mom had passed away when she was young. She hadn’t said how, though, and I hadn’t asked. For the briefest moment, what I thought was grief clouded her eyes, but as quickly as it appeared, it was replaced by resentment, and she refocused herself. “Allison was too young to remember her, but I wasn’t. And it was easier for Allison that way. So I wanted to do the same for Phoebe. Because Allison was bound to follow in her footsteps, eventually. Allison’s always been like her.”