Page 58 of HER: A Psychological Thriller

She says it’s just a matter of time before the police figure out all of the murders are related. She says every good story must come to an end. She says I am the weak link, and coincidently linked to them all. She says she knows that I wanted Ethan murdered. She says she handles these situations for lots of spouses. It’s an easy way to get organs and money, and who cares, because everyone wins.

We go over what to say if and when the police come to my door. She’s pissed I hadn’t told her about the divorce. She says the cops might point fingers if they suspect his death might not have been entirely self-inflicted. She says I know too much, and she shouldn’t have trusted me. This is why if I want to kill myself, she isn’t going to stop me. She says she loves me dearly and that she doesn’t want me to die. But the alternative, she says, is life in prison, and she would rather see me dead than locked up. She just couldn’t bear it.

Prison doesn’t make any sense. None of this makes any sense. I was a good person when Ann Banks walked into my life. Maybe I wasn’t sleeping much, and maybe I was overeating, and maybe I wasn’t taking care of myself. Maybe I was a bit of a mess. But I was comfortable in that mess. I knew I’d find a way out of the fog. Eventually. I knew Ethan would see the light at the end of the tunnel in one way or another. As they say, life happens when you’re busy making other plans, and I was sure I’d learned what they meant the day I first ran into Ann in the supermarket.

THEY SAY FIND what you love and let it kill you. Well, it works both ways. I finished off her Danish, and then I climbed the stairs to her bedroom. Eleven steps to the top. Six stab wounds. I had them all mapped out: one for each of the “accidents” I realized she was going to try and pin on me.

I didn’t even get close to her with the knife.

“You’re too chicken, Sadie,” she said, and she was right. Turns out, I hate blood and open flesh. Turns out, I am weak. “When people are in love, they get predictable.”

Ann knows this, so I know this.

That’s why Ann and Paul are awake, waiting for me. She said I should have listened. She warned me they have cameras everywhere.

Together the two of them chloroformed me, took me to my house, where Paul later asphyxiated me in my bathroom.

The local headlines read: Devastated wife of child molester hangs herself.

But that wasn’t even the half of it.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

HER

It’s possible to make a murder look like a suicide, and it’s possible to make a suicide look like murder. She was always going to be trouble. I knew it from the start. She isn’t the first to fall in love with my wife. She’s not the first to be obsessed. To get in the way. To not let go. Ann couldn’t see it. Not like I did. She didn’t want to tie that band around her neck and pull, pull, pull—so as usual, she left that part to me. She always leaves that part to me.

The problem is her heart. That’s what Ann wanted right from the get-go. She got it. Just not in the way I thought.

Nothing with her went according to plan. Not with my wife begging me not to kill her—or rather warning me not to do it. And especially not with her handyman showing up, preventing me from finishing the job.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

SADIE

Ann visits me in the hospital. I am shocked. Not only that she visits, but that I still have all of my organs, and they’re mostly in working order.

There’s damage to my larynx, which prevents me from speaking, and the injury to my left temporal lobe, given the asphyxiation, would probably affect my speech even if I could talk. The brain injury is supposed to affect my memory as well. But since I can’t speak, well—no one knows for sure. This is why she visits.

This is why I’m not planning to let the doctors know what I know. My memory is just fine.

Supposedly, the situation to my larynx is temporary, but Ann says even if it weren’t, there’s a solution. She says they’re making medical advances everyday. She says a transplant of the larynx is always a possibility.

When my room has emptied out, she tells me about everything I’ve missed. Amelia is a mess. A distraught teenage mess. Which is basically the worst kind. She thought she loved Ethan, Ann says. The way I thought I loved him.

Ann doesn’t know what to do with her, so she sent her on one of those vacations where they take unruly teenagers into nature to sort themselves out. She’ll be gone for twelve weeks. I’ve seen documentaries about those kind of trips. Didn’t look like much of a vacation if you ask me.

Neil is as stoic as ever. Ann says he’s growing more and more like his father every day. They plan to have him intern with Paul this summer. He’s ready, she says.

She also speaks of the plans she has for Chet. She says she knows the reason I tried to commit suicide is partly his fault. She doesn’t mention the death of my husband or the ensuing media coverage that is partly hers. It makes her look good to her fans that she visits me in the hospital. Forgiveness is a beautiful thing. It keeps her books flying off the shelves. She says Chet will be our secret. Forever and always. She says that nothing can ever come between us again.

I’m glad Ann visits, actually. She provides the motivation I need to mouth my first word since she choked them all out of me. No.

I can tell she’s surprised by my reaction. This is a problem, she says to me. She says there is a remedy for all problems, and that if I’m not careful I will be at one with Ethan, Darcy, Darryl, and Creepy Stan. That, or I could end up like Kelsey. She tells me things have

not turned out well for her.

When I look away and refuse to look at her—it’s all I can really do to save myself in this condition—she apologizes.