Page 81 of The Wife Stalker

“Leo, you can’t force someone to get help. You couldn’t have known that she would take her life.” Piper looked at him, herexpression 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.”

“Thatisgood. 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

Ihaven’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 overand 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.

And then that Friday last year, when Leo told me that she and Evie had gone to Maine for the weekend, I panicked. What if she was going to kill Evie and herself? I had to protect that sweet little girl. If Olivia wasn’t going to help herself, it was time that I did.

I got to the house late, after eleven, and Evie was asleep. Olivia looked surprised to see me, but she welcomed me in and we went into the kitchen to talk. She said she thought the getaway would help, but she still felt dead inside. I begged her to get help, but she said she’d get through it. We started to argue and moved outside to the deck. We thought Evie was still asleep, but she must have heard us when we were still in the house and then sneaked outside to listen. I told Olivia that she wasn’t being a good mother, that if she loved the kids and Leo, she’d go see someone, get medication. She started yelling at me then. Saying I had no right to talk to her that way. She said I was the help, not her friend. I screamed back at her, telling her about how my mother’s illness and depression had ruined my childhood, and that she was going to do the same to her own kids. Her eyes blazed with an intensity bordering on insanity, and she ran away from me then, toward the cliffs.

She turned back to me and yelled: “Maybe I’ll just jump. End it all now. Then I won’t be around to ruin my children’s lives.” In her eyes was a dare, and I knew then that she needed my help. She wanted to do it. She just didn’t have the nerve. So I took a few strides forward and pushed her, watching as she fell like arag doll, not making a sound, until she hit the jagged rocks below. That was the moment I became their mother, and when Leo got over his grieving, I would be his wife. I wouldn’t stay in bed all day or shirk my responsibilities. I would take care of them like they deserved.

I went back to the house, peeked in on a sleeping Evie, and then composed the note that Leo found. Writing as Olivia, I tried to make him understand that I had left to make his life better, and that I didn’t want the children to lose the Maine house—they loved it there. I implored Leo not to sell it.

Everything would have all been fine if Piper had just stayed away.

You may think I’m crazy. I’m not. I know that Evie and Stelli weren’t born to me, that they’re not my biological children. But they are mine, spiritually—no one else could understand so well what they went through. I was always meant to be their mother, and they were always meant to be my children. Their birth mother hadn’t been able to live up to her responsibilities. But I could. I had to. When Olivia died, it was crystal clear that Leo and the children had always been my destiny.

I helped him pick up the pieces after Olivia was gone. I was happy to do it. Looking back, I can see I should have given him more time to realize what I already knew—that we were destined to be together. He was still grieving Olivia, and I moved too fast.

Not physically, of course. I knew that we had to wait before making love until he was completely over Olivia and could come to me wholeheartedly. But I didn’t think he’d mind if I rearranged the kitchen and some of the furniture. Olivia was not organized, and things needed to be more efficient. I organized the house for him, helped with the kids’ rooms. And the children loved me, and I loved them. Then he started talking about boundaries. Said Iwas getting too involved. I did my best to respect his boundaries, knowing that eventually they’d disappear. But then he met Piper.

He got upset whenever I mentioned her, and eventually he told me it was best if I resigned, offering me two years’ severance and a $250,000 lump sum. I took his money because I needed it. Of course, I realized only later that he must have been afraid I’d sue him for sexual harassment, since he’d allowed me to stay at his house. After the police accused me of child abuse when I’d only been trying to keep Stelli safe, Leo got a restraining order against me.

I always knew that Piper’s intention was to hurt them, and I still think she will. Maybe she took a bullet for Stelli, but it was all for show. She’ll never be their mother. I’ll wait for as long as it takes.

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