The New Husband(103)

Nina passed through episodes of more heartache and abuse. Allison fell short of Simon’s expectations time and time again. The beatings did not end.

I’m a week out of the hospital. I can walk fine. The leg will heal. Everyone believed Simon, like I knew they would. I’m clumsy enough to have fallen down the stairs. If only they knew. But I can’t tell my friends. I can’t tell anyone because I’m afraid. He’ll kill me if I try to leave him. I know he will. I should kill him first. I should stab him in his sleep, a knife right through his cold, beating heart. But you can’t do it, can you, Allison? Because you are weak and pathetic, just like he says you are.



Allison even repeated something in her diary that made Nina shiver with grim reminders of the last words Simon had spoken to her:

Like Simon says, there is a right way and wrong way to be, for everything and everyone.



As Nina neared the final entries, things seemed to take a turn for the better. That’s when Allison got pregnant.

I can’t believe it. I’m going to be a mother. Maybe this will change everything. Maybe a baby is all that we’ve been missing. God, I pray that’s so. Please. Please make it so. I’m so excited but nervous, too. I can’t wait to tell Simon. He’ll be overjoyed.



And from what Nina read, he was overjoyed, at least for a time. But Simon could not control his nature. He’d yell and scream when the house was in disorder. He’d badger and berate, but at least the beatings seemed to stop. There were no entries detailing any physical abuse during her pregnancy. But there were plenty of allusions to emotional isolation and loneliness.

Now he’s telling me I have to quit my job. He says the stress is bad for the baby. I don’t know what to believe anymore, but I still gave them my notice.

A group of people from the bar got together for a good-bye party and gave me some money so I could buy things for the baby because I wasn’t having a baby shower. Simon said those were bad luck. I wouldn’t give the money to Simon to put in the account, so he hit me in the stomach. He hit the baby! That decided it. I’m going to get a job, a secret job that pays me very well. But it has to be something I can do without him finding out, so I can’t go back to the bar. All I need is just enough money to get away, and then I’ll start my new life with a new name.

I’m so done being afraid. I’m going to get money and then I’m going to leave him for good.

The baby changes everything.



That was the final entry. Those were Allison’s last words.





CHAPTER 57


Nina’s heart sank. She looked at Allison’s picture again, hoping, praying she got away. But perhaps not. Maybe Simon had found out she was going to leave him. Had he killed her? What happened to the baby? The diary answered none of those questions.

Closing the small book, Nina rose from the bed as a gnawing fear took root. She knew better than most how difficult it could be to leave an abusive relationship. But even with all her training, she had fallen into a similar trap. Now she’d done it again, staying inside Simon’s orbit, in his home, far longer than prudent.

School was still in session, she had that going for her, and the alarm had been disabled so Simon would have no reason to suspect anything amiss. Then again, he might have noticed his keys missing, and that could trigger him to check the house.

Her mounting anxiety went full bloom as she processed the dire reality of the situation. Nina understood it now: she was the carbon copy replacement of Allison, who’d left Simon heartbroken, or was dead and buried by his hand. Simon had used Nina to try to overcome the deep-rooted sense of rejection he had harbored ever since Allison had taken with her Simon’s child and vanished, never to be seen or heard from again.

How long had he lusted for me? Nina wondered. Probably from that first day when they had met at the D.A.R.E. meeting almost seven years ago. The timeline gave her new insight into a terrifying possibility: When had Emma died? Soon after that meeting? Nina calculated the dates in her head. Yes, it was around that time, she decided. It was possible—even probable, given what she’d learned—that when Simon met Nina he decided to substitute one version of Allison—Emma—with a near-perfect replica. There was no doubt in Nina’s mind that a side-by-side comparison of a recent picture of herself and one of Allison Fitch as a forty-something-year-old woman, would look as close to identical as different DNA would allow. Nina now saw herself as Simon saw her: his chance to fix the past, to bring Allison back to him.

Maybe Simon had killed Emma because two near look-a-likes would have been confusing for him. Or perhaps he had wanted Emma’s money and a fresh start. Nina couldn’t say.

Hard as it was, she tried to put herself in Simon’s twisted brain. With Emma out of the picture, what had he done next? He’d bided his time, hadn’t he? Like a patient hunter lying in wait, planning his attack, for years, perhaps. Thinking, always thinking, how he could ingratiate himself with Nina, waiting for that perfect opportunity to strike. And then the opportunity presented itself when Glen disappeared, leaving her and the children vulnerable, giving Simon the chance he needed to make his move.

My God, she thought. Heaven help me.

The onslaught of revelations left Nina dazed, so instead of making a hasty exit as she’d intended, she wandered down the hall in something of a trance, leaving the diary on top of the comforter where she had found it, making sure to smooth out the indentation of her body. She briefly contemplated taking the book, to use it as irrefutable evidence of what Simon really was, but didn’t want him coming after her to get it back. Simon Fitch was more dangerous than she’d ever imagined, and now she not only feared for her life, but for the lives of her children as well.