The End of Her

by Shari Lapena

There’s a pair of four-month-old twins with a really nice mom—Stephanie—directly across the street whom Hanna’s become friends with. This woman looks to be alone—no husband or kids in tow.

In today’s climate, people seem willing to believe just about anything—the more outrageous the lie the more gullible people seem to be.

“She said, If you did it before, you could do it again.”

If she dies, according to the wills she and Patrick made after they were married, Patrick gets everything. And there’s the life insurance—a million dollars.

It makes her wonder if love is just an illusion, one that disappears when reality gets too dark.

The fucking polygraph. She shouldn’t have been there. Still, he expected to pass it. It had been a terrible blow when he hadn’t.

“You’re going to listen to me. You’re going to tell Gary that I want another hundred thousand dollars, or Devin will soon find out things that I don’t think you want him to know. You can’t watch him every minute of every day. I’ll call you back in a few days. In the meantime, get the money together.” She adds, “When Patrick goes to trial, I really don’t want to tell them I actually know where my son is, and put you through the whole paternity testing thing. It would be so hard on Devin to learn the truth that way.”

Even if he gets away with it, it doesn’t mean he didn’t do it.

She’s finally admitted it to herself. She doesn’t believe her husband is innocent.

When trust goes, how quickly love disappears and self-preservation takes over.

He probably thinks that she’ll forgive him. But she’s not going to forgive him. She’s trying to find a way out.

She’s so frightened that Erica will find out what she and Niall have been hiding for the last six years.

You didn’t give me enough time. I needed to be sure I wouldn’t get caught. Now, thanks to you, I can never get rid of Stephanie—and it’s all your fault—going to the fucking police! You’ve screwed us both.”

By the time he decided it would be a much better idea to get rid of Erica—the source of all his problems—she’d already gone to the coroner. He’d always planned to get rid of Stephanie someday, somehow—but Erica had forced his hand.

She doesn’t love him anymore. She’s not willing to spend the rest of her life with him, and to share her inheritance with her cheating, lying husband who murdered his first wife. She’s not willing to live in fear, waiting for him to kill her and the twins someday. He already got away with it once.

She doesn’t want to hear his apologies, his explanations all over again. It’s too late for that. What do they say? By the time most couples make it to marriage counseling, usually one of them has already decided it’s over.

She remembers to angle the gun slightly upward in her hand and then in one fast movement she steps forward and pushes the muzzle firmly against the right side of his head and pulls the trigger.

Erica says, “I just came to say well done.”

She remembers how she’d tried to run down Erica with her car that night. After Erica left the gift for the twins and Patrick had been so unnerved by it—she

If only Erica Voss were dead, all his problems would be solved.

Authorities have determined the identity of a woman whose body was pulled from the Hudson River early this morning. The deceased woman is 31-year-old Erica Voss, of Newburgh, New York.