Pills, then. Liesel, always exceptionally resourceful, has shown up with a full bottle of Talacen. It is a painkiller, she says, to help control her migraines. Liesel industriously grinds up half of the pills into a pile of death. They save some in case they need more, later. In case it doesn’t work properly.
The plan is set, and breathtakingly simple. Vivian will drink tea laced with the Talacen. It won’t take much to make her stop breathing. Liesel will ransack the house and do something to Vivian’s body so it is clear she’s died in the commission of a burglary. Vivian doesn’t want to know what is coming. It is easier to think she is simply going to go to sleep. Liesel will leave for half an hour, then come to the house to “discover” Vivian’s body, murdered. She will call the police, and they will take the baby into protective custody until Zack can be informed. It won’t take more than a half a day for him to return from Gulf Shores. He’ll come home to the adorable young infant and get on with his life.
What a good friend Liesel is. Helping her plan this.
Only that’s not the way it happens at all.
*
“It’s time. Are you ready?”
Vivian nods. Kissing Violet one last time, she hands her sleeping infant to her best friend, who lays her in the crib.
Liesel places the cup in front of her. Pours the tea ceremoniously. It is Earl Grey, her favorite. The pain medicine is already ground up at the bottom, waiting.
Once the liquid is in, Liesel pours honey on top, lots of honey, to mask what they both assume will be a horribly bitter brew. She stirs it, adds more honey, then stirs it again.
“I should put some Scotch in, have a hot toddy. There’s a way to go.”
Liesel laughs absently. “Are you known for drinking?”
“Not really.”
“Then we better not. We don’t want to draw any attention away from what the scene is telling the police. We don’t want them asking questions.”
“How did you learn all of this?”
“I just have a logical mind. Are you ready?”
The baby squawks. She’s been so quiet for the past few hours. As if she doesn’t want to disturb her mother’s final moments.
“If the baby starts to cry...”
Liesel gets up and puts the pacifier back into the baby’s mouth.
“She’s probably hungry. We should feed her first. So she doesn’t wake up.”
Liesel puts her hand on Vivian’s. It’s cool, cold, really. Vivian shivers.
“I’ve fed her, and changed her. She’s going to be fine. It’s all going to be fine. I promise. I’m here for you. I’m here for her. I will make sure she is safe in Zack’s arms before I go home.”
“Okay.”
But Vivian’s hand will not raise the cup. The baby squeaks again, higher pitched this time. Vivian feels her breasts begin to leak in reply.
“I should feed her again.”
“That will taste ten times worse if it gets cold. I’ll get her a bottle as soon as you’re gone.”
Liesel’s eyes are strangely bright. Vivian puts the sheen down to unshed tears.
She starts to raise the cup, and Liesel smiles encouragingly.
“That’s it. It will all be over soon.”
The baby lets out a low howl. She sounds so confused, as if she knows what’s happening, and is begging Vivian to stop, to be with her, even if it’s only for a few weeks. Fear starts, and with it, regret.
Oh, God. I can’t do this. I can’t.
Vivian puts the cup down. “I have to—”
The knife catches her in the neck. Her head jerks to the side. She feels the warm spill of blood begin. She tries to talk, but words won’t come. Liesel fills the empty space between them. Her eyes are still bright, and there’s something in them Vivian hasn’t seen since the first day they met, and Liesel threatened to kill her.
“I knew you were going to freak out and bail on the plan. Would you just die already?”
Vivian sees the flash of silver this time, but she can’t move, it comes too quickly. The knife plunges into her stomach. It hurts. Dear God, it hurts. It burns. The pain is incredible.
Vivian collapses onto the kitchen floor. Panic fills her. What has Liesel done? This isn’t what they agreed on.
“Help.” Her breath won’t come, something is wrong, so wrong. “Me,” Vivian manages to get the second word out, starts to move. Liesel places a foot on her chest, between the two wounds.
Now Vivian can’t rise. She can’t do anything. She feels soaking wet and cold, so cold. The edges around her are blackening. The baby is crying lustily, and Vivian can’t do anything to help her because she’s dying. What a mistake she’s made.
And the last thing she hears before the world goes black is the singsong voice of her best friend in the entire world, her only true friend, as she says, “Thanks for the baby. I’ll take good care of her.”
92
DENVER WOMEN’S
CORRECTIONAL FACILITY
CURRENT DAY
“...So Vivian asked me to make sure it was clear someone attacked her. I didn’t like doing it, Zack. It broke my heart. I refused. She wanted to die by the blade—it was something she said to me a few times. It meant something to her, I’m not sure what. But there was no way I was going to stab her. I’d brought a bottle of painkillers, and I begged her, pleaded, that it would be so much easier to just drink something with them crushed up, and she’d go to sleep. She insisted the insurance company could rule that a suicide instead, that it had to be absolutely clear it was murder. She’d done all the research.” She shuddered. “I still couldn’t do it. I couldn’t. And she knew that. She pulled the knife across her own throat.”
Lauren is crying now.
“She started to bleed, and went down, but she wasn’t dying. She hadn’t cut deep enough, she was just drowning. There was nothing I could do. She kept pointing at her stomach, slapping it, so I jammed the knife in. It was over quickly after that.”
She wipes her eyes, pulls herself together.
“You have no idea how hard it was, Zack. I hated to do it. I hated every minute. She begged me to take Mindy, to make sure she was safe and cared for. She was afraid that without her at the helm, you’d give the baby up. You didn’t even know her, she was practically a stranger. She told me how distant you were those last few months. That you had been fighting. She was worried you might not want the baby after all of that. She begged me, begged me, to save the baby. To protect Mindy.”
This last bit is enough to shake Zack from his horrified stupor. He’s been listening in disbelief to Lauren talk. Her words make an obscene kind of sense. There had been a major insurance payout. Vivian had increased the policies on their life insurance as soon as she’d gotten pregnant, that he knew. What he didn’t know was how much she’d increased them, nor that she’d gone back when she was seven months pregnant and doubled hers. When she died, he got a payout of almost half a million dollars.
It was information he hadn’t shared with anyone. He’d put the money in a high yield interest-accruing bank account for Violet, should she ever be found. Statements came, but he never opened them. He assumed it was worth quite a bit now.
It all makes a sick kind of sense. Why Vivian wouldn’t tell him about her severe depression. Why there were no records of her seeing a psychiatrist. Why no one knew she’d been suffering.
She was trying to take care of him. Of them.
“It was only in the end that she agreed to take the antidepressants. I told her she had to. She didn’t want to hurt Mindy, even before she was born, but being off the meds dragged her into the abyss.
“You do see now, don’t you, Zack? All I’ve ever wanted to do is help you. First Vivian, then Mindy. Now you. I’m giving you the last piece of the puzzle because I am going to die in here. Either they’ll kill me, or I’ll grow old and gray, or someone will knife me in the shower, but however you cut it, I am a dead woman. And now it’s your turn to take care of our girl.”
Zack sets the phone down on the counter. He sits back in the chair and crosses his arms. Processes. Watches Lauren get antsy. There’s something more happening, but he doesn’t know what it is.
Finally, he picks up the phone again.
“I don’t believe for a moment my wife asked you to keep my daughter from me.”