The Wife Stalker(82)

He leaned back in his chair and ran a hand through his hair. “It started when Olivia’s depression escalated, and Joanna became her confessor. Olivia confided to Joanna that she believed she was a bad mother, that her depression made it impossible for her to care for the children the way she should. I see now that Joanna saw it as her mission after Olivia died to become the mother she thought they needed. I knew the night she came downstairs in Olivia’s red dress that she was taking things too far.” He shook his head. “When Joanna left to take care of her mother, it seemed like the problem had been solved—she would go home and I would ease her out of our lives slowly. It was so stupid of me.”

“You were trying to be kind, and the children loved her. You couldn’t have known that she’d escalate things the way she did.”

He stared past Piper, unblinking. “No. I’m a criminal lawyer. I should have seen it. All I saw was a lonely woman professing her love. I thought she’d get over it with time.”

“Stop beating yourself up, Leo. There’s no telling what caused her to snap the way she did. We’re safe now. And together. That’s all that matters.” She paused. “Why didn’t Olivia get some professional help?”

“She should have, but she insisted she could fight it by herself. The despair would take over one minute, and the next she’d be on a manic high. I never knew who she would be when I got home. She wanted to prove that she was strong enough to do it on her own, with no medication, no help with the children . . . but obviously, it was too much for her.” His face sagged. “I should have insisted.”

“Leo, you can’t force someone to get help. You couldn’t have known that she would take her life.” Piper looked at him, her expression grave. “One day, when they’re much older, we’re going to have to tell the children the truth about her suicide.”

He stood up suddenly and started pacing, his face tormented. “Piper, we were wrong. Evie said so. She remembered.”

“Remembered what?”

“The weekend she died, Olivia had taken Evie to the Maine house for some mother-daughter time. The day after they got there, the police found her body at the bottom of the cliff, and discovered a note in the bedroom. I didn’t even have time to be sad, I was just so furious that she would do something like that, especially to let Evie wake up and see that she was gone.”

Piper was confused. He’d confided this to her when they had begun dating—why was he going over it again? “I’m sorry that this has brought all of that back to the surface. I was only trying to help you through it by having us come here.”

He shook his head. “No, you don’t understand. Evie remembers seeing Joanna that night. She woke up to angry voices in the house, saw figures out on the cliff. She saw Joanna . . . push her mother. She buried the memory and thought it had been a dream. That’s why she kept having that nightmare.”

Piper was horrified. “Joanna killed Olivia? And Evie saw?”

“And then Joanna let me think Olivia had killed herself. Joanna must have forged the note . . .” He had started pacing the length of the hospital room. “After working for me for so many years, she could write my and Olivia’s signatures in her sleep.”

Piper leaned back, drained. “I’m so sorry.”

“The only good thing is that I know now that Olivia didn’t intentionally leave us.”

“That is good. The children will still need help, though, making sense of . . . all this.”

He nodded. “I know.”

She took his hand. “We’ll help them through this. We’ll all help each other through this.”

“We have time,” he said.

Yes, fortunately, they had a lifetime to figure it out. Her eyes fluttered shut. For now, she needed to sleep.





54

Joanna




I haven’t touched the greasy meat loaf congealing on the tray that the guard brought an hour ago. All I could manage to get down was the lime-green Jell-O. If this is the way the food is going to be in jail, I suppose I will finally lose that extra twenty pounds. They want to charge me with Olivia’s murder, and my lawyer has advised me to plead insanity, explaining that it was the best way for me to avoid a prison sentence. But I was only helping Olivia. She came into the office one day to have lunch with Leo, but he’d been called into court and forgotten to tell her. She looked so downtrodden, I was reminded of my mother—the woman who’d kept me from my dreams, from having a life of my own. I knew what having a mother like that did to a child.

I asked if she’d like to go to lunch with me instead, and she said yes, her face hopeful, as though she’d been thrown a life preserver. She poured her heart out to me that day, admitted that she’d been struggling with depression since Stelli had been born. At first, they thought it was postpartum, but it wasn’t lifting. She was still depressed two years after Stelli’s birth. She’d have her good spells, but then the black days would come—days when she could barely drag herself out of bed. She worried about what it was doing to the children. I tried to help her, to get her to see a therapist, but she refused. She thought she could handle it on her own.

Over the next few months, we became closer, and I checked in on her frequently. Sometimes, when Leo worked late, I’d go over and make dinner for the kids and spend a little time with them while I encouraged her to get up, to take a walk, to do anything. She confided that she’d thought about suicide, that she’d wondered if her family would be better off without her. She begged me not to say a word to Leo, but I worried that it was only a matter of time before she took her own life.