The Elizas: A Novel(106)

I sink down onto a small leather couch and pull her down, too. My heart is pounding. She looks conflicted, but not confused. It’s like she knows what I’m going to ask.

“My aunt gave you that scarf, didn’t she?” I ask quietly.

Stella’s throat bobs. She tucks a piece of hair behind her ears. “Well . . .”

“Please tell me the truth. Tell me why.”

The wind presses against the big windows only a few feet away from us. I picture Posey pacing, wondering where I am.

Stella lowers her head. “I’ve been trying to tell you. I’ve showed up where I thought you’d be—I needed this off my chest. It was hard to find you. But then when I did, I chickened out.”

“What were you trying to tell me?”

She doesn’t seem to hear this question—her eyes are glazed, and she’s staring at the floor. “I tried to film a video of myself on your phone, thinking you’ll have it as a confession—but I still couldn’t do it! I was worried you’d wake up and see me and panic. I worried you’d take all of it the wrong way.”

I open my mouth, then close it again. My phone. The hospital. Had she made that video? She’d been in my room, handling my phone?

I don’t have time to process this because Stella straightens up and looks at me head-on. “Your aunt made me an offer. I was to spend a whole day at the spa under her name, and she’d give me an Hermès scarf and one thousand dollars in return. It was too good to be true. Of course I told her I’d do it. But then I found out what happened.” She pauses, her face crumpling. “That poor doctor did nothing to deserve it. I know why your aunt pushed her. There was talk in the hospital of what was going on. The doctor suspected, too.”

It takes a few seconds for me to process. In real life, Dr. Koder’s name is Dr. Richards—but I checked, and just like Dr. Koder, she suffered a paralyzing fall down a flight of stairs shortly after I left her care. If a doctor suspected Eleanor of poisoning me, of course Eleanor had to get rid of her. I’d wondered about this accident, wondered if Eleanor had had something to do with it, but I’d had no way to prove it until now.

“Eleanor made you go to the spa in her place so she could hurt the doctor,” I say slowly, putting the pieces together. “She used you to establish her alibi. Because you look like her. It was foolproof.”

Stella nods. “I only realized that afterward. I shouldn’t have been so stupid. I knew your aunt was bad news. And then the doctor didn’t remember what happened. She thought the fall was an accident. I threatened your aunt that I was going to tell on her, and guess what she said? I was at the spa all day, wasn’t I? My name is in the appointment book. People saw a woman who looked like me. But what about you? I was the one who didn’t have an alibi that day—I’d even taken the day off work to go to the spa. I worried I was the one who’d get in trouble—the doctor might remember a face, my face, because we looked so similar. Your aunt told me that I should quit my job at the hospital to be safe.”

“Oh my God,” I whisper. “So you’ve been following me, trying to tell me this?” All at once, it makes sense: with a quick glance, people could mistake this woman for me. We are the same build. Stella has more lines around her eyes, but they’re not very obvious. She takes care of her skin, her hair. It was Stella at the yoga studio, at Steadman’s store, maybe even lurking at my parents’ house. And then it hits me, like a thin, strong beam of light: “You were the person I spoke to at the bar in Palm Springs!”

Stella nods vehemently. “Yes. I needed to tell you. I followed you to the resort, thinking we could talk there. But at the bar, the moment you saw me, you panicked. You thought I was her—and that I was going to hurt you. So I ran, but it gave me even more of a reason to get through to you. You needed to know the truth.”

I narrow my eyes. “The truth about what? That my aunt pushed my doctor? That she was crazy?”

“No . . .” Stella stares down at her hands. She studies them as if trying to memorize every tendon, every wrinkle. I have no idea how much time passes. Two minutes? Ten?

“She called me again, years later,” she finally says. “Said she had something else she needed me to do. I told her no way—but she threatened me. Said she’d send the doctor an anonymous letter accusing me of attacking her on the stairs. Said she had pictures from a surveillance camera—she bribed some guy in management to get them. This was probably a lie, but who knows?

“I felt trapped, so I said yes. She said she wanted me to hide at a restaurant where she was having dinner, and when she got up to leave, I had to slip into her place, order one more drink, and sign the check.” Stella’s chest heaves in and out. “I had no choice. So I went. But then I saw that she was having dinner with a young girl. You. I became afraid that she was going to do something awful to you. You’re so young.”

My throat catches. Is she talking about that last dinner? I close my eyes and put myself in Dot’s place, remembering that small flicker of movement she’d sensed in the hallway just before going back to the table to switch the drinks. Had that been Stella? Had she been hiding, waiting?

“You saw us,” I said, trembling. “You saw what happened.”

Stella’s gaze is off to the left, on a generic print of a beach scene. “Yes. I didn’t take her place at the table, like she wanted me to. When you two left, I followed. And I listened. That woman is a monster. She deserved to die.” She whips around and looks at me head-on, her green eyes wide and unblinking. “And she did die, Eliza. She did. She’s gone. I saw her fall.”