“Not to you. Not to me. But to him?” Eleanor sighed. “To him, it wasn’t about the cabin. It was about the insult. You dared to keep something for yourself, something he felt he was entitled to. You dared not to trust him completely. And that was something he could not forgive.”
Susan was silent, thinking about her words. They held a terrible logic. She remembered the look on Mark’s face every time she mentioned the cabin was in her name. How he’d said through clenched teeth, “Do what you want. It’s your money.” The sheer hatred in his eyes in those moments. She had thought it was just hurt pride. It turned out to be the rage of a proprietor who’d had something he considered his taken from him.
“What do I do now?” she asked. “How do I move on? I have nothing left. My whole life was a lie.”
Eleanor took her hands.
“That’s not true, dear. You have the most important thing left—yourself. You’re alive and well. And you have so many years ahead of you, so many possibilities. Yes, it will be hard. Yes, you’ll have to start over. But you will get through this. I see a strength in you, a real strength. You just forgot about it over the last twenty years, but it never went away.”
Susan managed a weak smile.
“You really think so?”
“I know so. Forty years in surgery, remember? I learned to see who gives up and who fights. You’re a fighter.”
That night, for the first time in a long time, Susan slept soundly. Maybe it was exhaustion, or the herbal tea Eleanor had made her before bed. Or maybe it was simply being near someone who wished her no harm. For the first time in months, she felt safe.
A phone call woke her in the morning. It was the detective, informing her that Mark had given a full confession. He told them everything: how he’d planned the crash, researched the brake system, chosen the day and the route. How he was going to get off at the fourth stop and wait in a safe place for news of the disaster. How he’d planted the evidence in his wife’s bag to direct suspicion toward her if anything went wrong.
“He claims he didn’t want to kill the other passengers,” the detective’s voice was dry and professional. “He says he was only thinking of you. That the others were just… collateral damage.”
Susan felt sick. “Collateral damage.” Twenty-five people—the young mother and her child, the old man with the cane, the workers in their jackets—they were all just collateral damage to Mark. Insignificant, disposable, random victims of his plan.
“What will happen to him?” she asked, though she barely cared.
“Attempted murder of two or more persons by a method dangerous to the public. He’s looking at fifteen years to life. Given his full confession and the fact that no one was ultimately harmed, he’ll likely get fifteen to twenty.”
Fifteen to twenty years. Susan tried to imagine that span of time. She was forty-five now. When he got out, if he got out, she’d be in her sixties. A lifetime.
“We’ll need you to come in one more time,” the detective continued. “For some follow-up questions and to identify some items. Also, you can file for divorce. Given the circumstances, it will be an expedited process.”
Divorce. Of course. She had to get a divorce. She had to sever all ties with the man who wanted to kill her. It was so obvious, so logical, yet the word itself—”divorce”—sounded strange, unreal. Twenty years of marriage, ending just like that, with a single word.
Comments are closed.