The Wife Stalker(72)

“So I should just give her the benefit of the doubt and wait until something horrible happens? I don’t think so.”

I could see sympathy in her eyes as she looked at me. “You’ve told me yourself that the accidents were investigated, and that Piper was cleared. She’s done nothing to give you cause to worry as far as the children are concerned. Yes, Stelli had that accident at the playground, but children fall every day. I really think you need to begin to focus on yourself and your own well-being. It might do you some good to take a step back just for a few days.”

I was incredulous. “You must be joking.” I stood up from the chair, the blood rushing through my veins like a raging river. I felt like I was being gaslighted. I had seen the looks on the faces of all the people in Piper’s past, had seen the havoc she had wreaked. How was I the one being told to stay away?

I left without saying anything else. This would be my last session with Celeste.





47

Piper




Piper knew before she even looked at the date that it was Ethan’s birthday. She always got a weird feeling in her stomach and woke up knowing something was bothering her, and then she’d remember. She supposed it didn’t matter how many years had passed—the feelings of guilt and regret would always bubble up when she thought of him.

Their lives together had started with such romance and excitement. She and Ethan had run away at eighteen, driving cross-country in the Jeep he’d gotten as a high school graduation present. They’d left with twenty-five hundred dollars between the two of them—his trust fund wouldn’t mature for three more years.

Piper had been suffocating under the viselike control of her high-achieving parents. She’d had to be in all honors and advanced placement classes. They didn’t care that that meant she was up past midnight every night studying, and then up at six to be at school by seven every morning. She played a sport in every season, was in debate club and model UN. She had no free time, and that’s exactly how they liked it. When they sat around the dinner table, they’d grill her about her coursework. She felt like they were automatons, devoid of emotion, only there to account for her movements. By the time she graduated, she knew she had to go far away. She’d been accepted to all seven universities she’d applied to, but her parents had insisted she choose Virginia Tech.

Ethan’s home life was vastly different from hers, but no happier. His father had struck gold when he’d invested heavily in Microsoft and was able to retire early, buy a huge sailboat, and stay home and manage his investments. By the time Ethan was old enough to be somewhat self-sufficient, his parents decided to recapture their lost youth and cram in all the fun they’d missed. Instead of family dinners, he’d come home to a fifty on the table with a note telling him to order in and look after his younger brother. Don and Trish Sherwood spent most of their evenings at the Annapolis Yacht Club and were often too hungover in the mornings to get the boys up for school. Ethan said it was like living in a frat house. The two of them used to joke that if they could somehow merge their sets of parents, they might end up with one decent pair.

They made a plan to leave together on the Fourth of July, their own Independence Day. Piper’s parents would be ensconced on the Naval Academy grounds watching the fireworks, and Ethan’s parents would be anchored in the Severn River, partying as they took in the show in the sky overhead. She had left a note for her parents telling them that they should not look for her, that she was going to start her own life. As they sped away from Maryland, she’d kept a tight hold on her cell phone, expecting them to call and insist she come home. But they never did. It was as though she’d ceased to exist for them. After a week with no attempt on their part to contact her, no call to Ethan’s parents or to any of her friends, she decided they were dead to her forever. At least Ethan’s parents had wished him luck on his “adventure” and showed a modicum of interest in his life by giving him a check for two thousand dollars to get him started.

It had taken them ten days to reach Los Angeles, and they’d been awestruck when they arrived. It was a bustling mix of high-end stores, gorgeous and fashionable men and women, scruffy vagabonds, and snarling traffic. Crazy exciting, but not quite the shining, palm-tree-lined paradise Piper had expected. She kept her eyes peeled all the time at first, looking for a celebrity at every corner, but that instinct wore off after they’d lived there awhile.

Ethan’s friend Wally let them stay on his pull-out couch in West Hollywood. Piper got a job waitressing, while Ethan began work on his screenplay, and after a couple of months, they’d saved up enough to get a small studio apartment of their own. They reveled in their freedom, staying up late, drinking wine, smoking pot, and spending hours in front of the television—all the things she’d never been allowed to do at home. For the first time in her life, she felt free and happy. They decided to get married, and she was eager to shed her last name and the last vestiges of the family she’d been born into. Wally and his girlfriend, Carina, were their witnesses on the beach that night, as another friend officiated, and then they drove to Santa Monica for the weekend to honeymoon. They stayed in bed the whole time, making love and making plans for their bright futures.

Three years passed. Ethan finished his screenplay and tried to sell it, becoming more and more depressed with each rejection. Piper was getting disillusioned as well, losing out at every audition and wondering if she was going to spend the rest of her life waiting on other people. They began to argue, mostly over money. Piper told him it was time for him to get a real job. He called her a dream killer. But she was just being practical: it wasn’t going to happen for either of them, and she’d already decided that she was going to go back to school in the fall. He needed to grow up.