Intrusion: A Novel (21 page)

She swallowed hard; her throat hurt. The sea remained black, rough, fathomless, a possibility that still beckoned.

“It was quite clear to me that evening at Malibu,” Sarah said softly. “You were so very unhappy. And who can blame you? So much to bear these last few months. The loss of a child, the disappointment over the adoption. Scott’s terrible neglect and indifference. Too much.”

Kat stepped back from the window, moved away from the black nightscape of seething water and swaying trees. She turned into the room, studied the beautiful face of the woman she had known since adolescence and who now regarded her with an expression of gentle sympathy.

“I don’t have to leave, you know,” Sarah said. “If you’d prefer that I stay.”

A warning bell sounded in Kat’s head. There was something smug and strange in Sarah’s voice. A kind of triumph. As if she had won. As if she had achieved something.

“Stay here?”

“Yes. Stay with you. I can walk with you to the cliff path. Or, if you decide to take the pills, I can wait with you here until it’s over.”

Kat felt as if an icy breeze touched the surface of her skin.

“Sarah, honestly—”

“Or not,” Sarah said quickly. “If you don’t want that, I can make sure that Mrs. Evans finds you. She’s very capable. She’ll know what to do. Whom to notify. Nobody will know I was here.”

Kat turned back to the window, unable to look at Sarah.

“I really don’t want to discuss—” she began.

But Sarah wasn’t listening.

“It’s absurd, isn’t it?” she said. “How my life is littered with suicides? Do you think I exude some kind of pheromone? A chemical that makes people reach for the razor, or the liquid morphine, hurl themselves off cliffs? Well, who knows. People hurt themselves, don’t they? Sweet Joanna, smashed onto the rocks like a broken Barbie. Foolish, drunken Sven, tumbling down the stairs, talking the entire time.”

It took a moment for the words to register fully with Kat.

“You were there, then, when Sven fell?”

“Hardly matters now, Kat, does it? My concern, right now, is you.”

Shaken, Kat said nothing. Her breath seemed to be caught in her throat. The atmosphere in the cottage was so heavy and oppressive, as if the air had been cut off, as if the oxygen were slowly vanishing from the room. She wanted to get away. But she did not want a confrontation. She moved from the window, her head down, avoiding Sarah’s eyes.

“I’m tired, Sarah,” she said. “I think I’ll just go to bed.”

“So early? Okay. Fine. But listen, I’ll be here, you know, if you need me tonight.”

Once in the bedroom, Kat closed the door carefully. Her hands were trembling as, silently, she tugged the suitcase onto the bed. She opened it slowly, holding her breath. She could be packed in minutes, could leave in the early hours when Sarah was asleep. She lifted the items from the bedside table, placed them gingerly in the case. The closet door creaked as she opened it, and she stood rigidly still, listening, before reaching inside it, taking out one item at a time so that the hangers did not clash together.

She had placed some of the sweaters into the case when she heard a click behind her. Sarah stood in the doorway, her face stiff.

“What are you doing?”

“Looking for something.”

“The pills? They’re in the pocket. Inside.”

Kat, trying to hide the tremor in her hands, pushed the suitcase away and reached for her nightgown, as if preparing for bed.

“It’s okay. I’m just going to bed.”

“Of course. It’s only that—well, you looked so distressed.”

She leaned against the doorjamb, studied Kat carefully, eyes narrow.

“You’re not packing, are you, Caitlin?” she asked finally.

When Kat did not reply, she moved closer.

“You were meant to stay here,” Sarah said, her voice rising. “Isolated. Alone. Like I was.”

Meant to stay.

A moment of stunned disbelief, and then, like a window thrown open, a blast of icy air, Kat saw clearly and understood. Sarah had destroyed many lives since she gained access to her husband’s funds and companies. She was not finished yet.

Kat gripped the sides of the suitcase to steady herself and turned to look at Sarah, a slow fear growing in her gut.

“How long have you been planning this?”

Sarah laughed. A startling sound in the claustrophobic bedroom. Her amusement seemed real, the laugh unforced.

“Oh, I can easily answer that. Since the morning I saw your picture.”

“My—?”

“In the newspaper. It was quite a shock. I’d just met the lawyers, been given full access to Sam’s funds. I was exhilarated that day. I walked around my Ojai house. I imagined the renovation. I imagined the scores I could settle. Then, I took a little break. Coffee and the newspaper. And there you were. A photograph of Scott receiving some lawyer’s award. A charity function. You were wearing black, too. So odd, don’t you think, both of us wearing black that day?”

“And I became one of your scores to settle?” Kat asked, trying to keep her voice level.

“Not at first. No. You looked so sad. That young gangster was there on the podium with Scott, and you were seated behind them, next to James. You looked so small. So alone and lost. Just as you looked when I first saw you at St. Theresa’s. I researched you, of course. Learned all about Scott and the death of your son. I have people who can find out everything.”

Kat recalled the expensive flowers at the grave. Sarah. Of course.
And that’s how she knew about Chloe,
she thought.
She knew about her even before I did.

“It was so easy to arrange a meeting,” Sarah continued. “I was looking forward to it, actually. I thought I could forgive you.”

She paused to study Kat’s stricken face.

“Thought I could,” she repeated slowly.

“But—?”

“There you were in that glitzy Palm Springs ballroom and not lost at all. Not alone. Your handsome husband at your side. Your rottweiler sister there, too. And everyone saying,
What a devoted couple. So loving. So very close.
I’d already been damned for ruining the love of your life. You can see how the irony of it was hard to resist.”

She shook her head, musing, thinking back.

“But Scott—stubborn, difficult. He leapt away if I as much as touched his arm. It was really quite amusing. So then I thought, well, perhaps with the right circumstances he and Glenda might
 . . .
But then you came to me for help. A solution! Simple one, too.”

Kat took a slow breath.

“So the adoption—that was just a game you were playing?”

“What do you think?”

“We would never have been approved, would we?”

“Not by that agency. Not by any agency, probably.”

“So you lied about it to me, said something different to Scott, simply to create a rift between us?”

Sarah shrugged.

“It worked rather well, didn’t it?”

“And the Stanford student? All fabrication?”

“No. Not entirely. I have access to the applications. I read them occasionally, out of curiosity. She’s real. And she was perfect. She even looked a bit like you. Did you notice that? But no, not possible for you.”

Kat recalled her growing hope when Sarah told her that adoption was possible, the elation she felt when she saw the picture of the Stanford girl on her computer screen.

“Don’t you understand how cruel that was?” Kat asked quietly. “To mislead me like that?”

“Cruel?” Sarah repeated. “For God’s sake. No crueler then you were to me. You deserved it, Caitlin.”

Kat, mouth dry, turned away. She needed to get out. Get out fast. To the station, to a hotel, anywhere. Quickly, she began to pack the suitcase as Sarah watched like a cat from the doorway. Aware of Sarah’s eyes on her, Kat felt gauche and clumsy as she folded underwear, reached into the closet for pants and sweaters.

She had gathered together the toiletries on the dresser and then, remembering that a cab could take a long time this late in the evening, picked up the phone and asked the operator for the number of a cab company, when Sarah leaped forward and snatched the phone from her hand, unplugging it from the wall.

“No, Caitlin,” Sarah said.

Kat took a small step backward. Sarah’s whole body was poised, tense like a spring. Her eyes were focused on Kat’s face with a frightening intensity.

“I don’t think so,” Sarah said. “No telephone calls. No taxicabs. You stay here. Alone. Unhappy. Isolated, just as I was. You have all you need. The pills in your case. The clifftop just a stroll away.”

“You can’t stop me leaving.”

“Really?”

Sarah stepped forward, gripped Kat’s wrist tightly in a wrenching motion. She stood so close that Kat could smell the gardenia shampoo in her hair.

“You have nowhere to go,” Sarah said. “There’s nothing left for you in Los Angeles. No good friend. Your little pal is happy in my company in France. You have no husband. Your marriage is over. Poor Scott. Finished. Disgraced. How will he like that, do you think? The embarrassment. The awful shame of it. Such a successful career. Over.”

“Scott?” Kat asked, fear for her husband swamping her. “What have you done to Scott?”

As she said his name in the electric tension of that room, Kat had a clear picture of her husband entering the kitchen after work each day: the way he loosened his tie, the way his hair would spike upward. His smile.

Kat pulled herself free. A bracelet of red remained on her skin where Sarah’s fingers had circled her wrist. As she reached for the last item to pack, her makeup bag, Sarah took the small floral bag out of her hand and dropped it to the floor.

“You won’t need that, Caitlin.”

Heart pounding, Kat watched as Sarah moved to the suitcase.

“You will need these.”

Sarah reached inside the suitcase for the two bottles of pills, placed them, with a sweeping flourish, on the dresser. That done, she tossed items out of the suitcase, scattering them around the room. As she lifted the picture frame, tangled in clothing, she looked hard at Kat. Then, she hurled it to the floor. The sound of glass breaking, splintering, echoed through the small cottage.

Kat gasped, bent to lift the shattered photograph. She pulled out the picture of her son, pushed it into her purse before she began to pick up the broken glass from the floor near her bare feet.

“Handsome lad, wasn’t he?” Sarah said.

Kat looked up. Sarah regarded her with a small smile, the green eyes cold as stone.

Kat felt as if a twig snapped in her head; her ears felt full of rushing sounds. The anger she had battened down—at the driver of the truck, the woman in the SUV, at Scott for burying his own grief in work—now focused on one target: Sarah. She felt a soaring, spiraling loss of control and stood, a long shard of glass in her hand.

“What the fuck do you want, Sarah?” she whispered. “What?”

Sarah took a step backward.

“You should be careful with—”

“Tell me. You just want to hurt people. Is that it? Is that your plan?”

“Don’t—”

Kat moved closer, holding tight to the curving glass.

“You didn’t need to destroy Scott, Sarah. Or me. We were already destroyed. Can’t you understand that?”

“I—”

“You want blood? Is that it? Is that what you want?”

She saw Sarah flinch. Kat, trembling visibly, stepped forward.

“You want another bloody suicide? Is that it? You want to watch?”

Kat gripped the shard of glass, turned her other arm to expose the soft inside flesh, then looked directly at Sarah.

“Watch!”

In one fast movement, she slashed downward.

“See!”

The flesh paled, then reddened. The severed skin opened and began to bleed. Blood ran down her arm, and Kat took a sharp inward breath at the throbbing pain. Sarah cried out, pressed back against the wall, her face chalk white.

Kat moved fast then. Grabbing only her purse, she pushed past Sarah and out of the bedroom. She heard Sarah’s scream.

As she pulled at the front door, a cold wind blew into her face, whistled through the cottage. The trees were bowed in the wind, the sea a black, turbulent mass on the horizon. She could hear the sucking sound, loud and ugly, of the stones in the surf.

She ran down the path, her bare feet slipping and sliding on the stones. As she reached the country lane, she heard Sarah’s angry voice behind her. It sounded close. Kat, struggling to ignore the insistent pain, pressing her arm against her body in an effort to stop the bleeding, tried to run faster. She did not dare cross to the cliff path with Sarah so close behind, and she felt the fear rising, choking her. Kat heard then, over the sound of the wind, over the sound of Sarah’s voice, a car engine, and saw, at the edge of her vision, headlights. A car coming down from the big house.

If she could just dart across. Move fast. Sarah would be distracted by the car, would have to pause, wait for it to pass. Kat took a jagged breath, counted one, two—She ran. On the other side of the road, she whipped around to see if Sarah had stopped. At the same moment, she heard the screech of brakes, the snapping of breaking branches in the roadside shrubs. Kat caught one glimpse of Sarah’s face before the vehicle hit. So focused on Kat, so intent on catching up with her, Sarah had not realized how close the black compact car was. Her face showed no fear, no caution. Only a cold, determined rage.

As the car screamed to a halt across the lane, its lights illuminated the figure now crumpled on the ground. Sarah lay perfectly still. Blood pooled behind her head, almost black in the slanted beam of the headlights. Her body had landed at an odd angle, one knee bent outward in an impossible position. The peach towel was still draped around her neck.

Shouts and footsteps were immediately audible from the main house. A heavyset man with a smooth shaved head ran down the hill, pulling a cell phone from his pocket. Kat heard him calling for police, for an ambulance.

Kat, shivering violently, moved forward, pausing as a woman climbed out of the black car. An older woman with a wide, pale face, gray hair pulled back into a knot on her neck, walked stiffly toward Sarah. Kat heard her low moan as she knelt on the road. She looked up and saw Kat. The two women stared at each other. Then, the sharp shock of recognition. Mrs. Evans, eyes narrowing, mouth a thin, hard line, waved her hand in a contemptuous gesture—
Get back, move away
—before she turned again, keening softly, to Sarah. Kat stood frozen, felt time stretch and stall, as they waited for endless minutes for the ambulance they all knew would be too late.