Chapter 23 Working The Plan

I walked back up the slight hill toward the house, willing myself not to shatter.Not now.Not yet.There was too much to do, too much riding on my ability to remain calm and detached.I couldn't allow myself to think of anything other than the plan. I needed to be detached and methodical, just as Liam had instructed me.

I practiced my deep breathing exercises as I crossed the deck to the patio door, pausing for a moment before stepping into the house.I forced myself to cross the threshold, knowing that if I looked back toward the dock, I might weaken.I reminded myself of every horrible thing David had done to me, to my mother, to Randall...to our unborn child.

I didn't know for certain whether the pills he had been drugging me with had played a role in my miscarriage, and probably never would. I did know, however, that the stress he caused me with his gaslighting and manipulation had not helped.I did know that the worry and the fear as I lay in the back of the ambulance was made worse by the fact that I couldn't reach my husband. I did know that I almost bled out that night, and my husband hadn't been with me because he'd been fucking some random woman at a hotel. I did know that he showed more emotion the next day when talking to Scott about some stupid bet he'd lost, than he did at the knowledge that I'd almost died.

Those brutal reminders to myself strengthened my resolve to see this through.I had a role to play, and it was showtime.I glanced at the clock on the microwave display, realizing that I had precisely seventeen minutes left before I would be late leaving the house.I felt my anxiety ratchet up a bit again and took one last moment to breathe deeply and center myself. As I walked upstairs to our bedroom, I ran through my mental checklist of things I needed to do before I left.

Entering our attached bathroom, I checked my appearance one last time. I was pale, and I had dark circles under my eyes.The dark circles were nothing new.I hadn't slept well in months.I finished applying my eye makeup, having been afraid of smearing my mascara if I'd cried during my goodbye to David.I ran my hand through my hair to fluff it a bit, then grabbed my shoes and hurried back downstairs.

I saw my phone on the table and tossed it in my purse before carrying it out to the car. As I opened the garage door, I realized I'd almost forgotten to throw a load of towels into the washer.I hurried back inside to do that, then sighed in relief as I backed out of the garage.I was only two minutes later than I'd planned.So far, so good.

On the way to pick up Sherry, I continued running through the plan over and over in my mind. As I pulled to a stop in Sherry's driveway, I pulled my phone from my purse and sent a quick text to David's phone with a reminder to switch the towels to the dryer when he got done on the lake. Liam sent back a reply in seconds, and I smiled as Sherry got in the car and buckled her seat belt. Good, he had David's phone as planned, and we had just established that David was still alive at least twenty minutes after I'd left the house.

Now, if I could just get through the day without throat-punching Vanessa. I had a few things planned to piss her off, including a stop at the lingerie store.If she thought David's trick of ripping off panties during sex was reserved exclusively for her, she was sadly mistaken.

He had stumbled on that particular move during our first few months together.I'd gone out of town with my mother for a weekend, and we'd spent our two days apart sexting.By the time I'd returned that Monday, he had been horny as hell and had gotten a little carried away. He'd ripped my panties on accident, and we'd both loved it.It had become our thing, on nights when we were wild for each other.We had rarely been intimate in the past few months, and not at all since I'd discovered that first video, but I was going to tell her differently.After all, if he'd been lying to me, it shouldn't be hard to make her think he'd been lying to her as well.

I could barely restrain my laughter when she choked on her drink over my first verbal strike.Asking for her opinion on the color of the teddy I bought a little while later was particularly inspired, I thought.I could have kissed Sherry when she'd asked if we had any plans for our upcoming anniversary.I gleefully shared the story of our St. Bart's honeymoon, which was entirely true. I had booked the same villa again, also true, but I had done it as a cover story.Oh, I planned to go to St. Bart's again, but I would be going alone.It would be the final fuck-you to David's memory.

By the time we finished our afternoon at the spa, I was feeling on top of the world and Vanessa was a wreck. When she asked to be dropped off at her place because she wasn't feeling well, I couldn't resist one last dig.

"Oh, of course, you poor thing.I knew you didn't look good today," I claimed, my voice dripping with sympathy. I resisted the urge to cackle, before I offered to have David bring her some dinner.It's a good thing she'd declined. She would have been waiting a while for that to happen. Kind of hard to do anything when you're at the bottom of a lake.

My nerves increased as Sherry and I drove toward my house.I hated lying to my best friend.I hated making her and Chris part of this ruse.I hated, absolutely hated, that I would cause them distress.But I was selfish right now. I needed them to help establish credibility for this next step of the plan. And truthfully, I needed their support, even if they didn't realize they were giving it.

I forced myself to detach emotionally and played my role to perfection.I expressed irritation that David hadn't moved the laundry.I complained that he wasn't ready for company, as he knew Chris and Sherry were coming. I played along in the guise of the frustrated wife, calling and texting my husband with no response.Once Chris arrived, I knew it was time to kick the "search party" into high gear.

I had planned to be the one to go down to the dock first, thinking that might ease the shock a little, but Chris beat me to it.

When he said that we needed to call the police, I had a moment of panic, thinking maybe he saw David's body in the water.Liam had told me that bodies didn't float back to the surface for a couple of days in most instances, but what if he'd been wrong?

I felt awful when I realized how upset Chris was.He was pale, and his hand was shaking as he hung up after calling the police.I had a brief moment where I realized that I felt far more guilt over upsetting Chris and Sherry than I did over having David killed.I managed to shut down my emotions before I could follow that train of thought.I would have to unpack that particular piece of evil baggage later, when I was alone. I felt the numbness creeping over me and took a second to mentally review the rest of the plan.

"Keep your answers simple.Don't offer additional information.If you don't know what to say, just shut down and tell them you need a moment. If they demand an answer and all else fails, just break down and cry.They will think it is normal, and you'll have a minute to think things through and give them an answer."

Liam's advice rang in my ears.He'd coached me for days leading up to this, running through every possible scenario.We had talked through what to do if we had to deviate from part of the plan, and how to get back on track.

I was fine when the police arrived and kept my cool as the search team leader explained that they were preparing to recover a body, rather than rescuing a person in trouble.I hit a slight bump when Scott arrived.Instead of the cocky asshole I'd known for years, and the crude sonofabitch I'd seen on numerous videos recently, he was sincere, sympathetic and worried sick about his brother. That threw me for a bit of a loop, and I had to mentally regroup.

When the official word came that they had recovered and identified David's body, I was overwhelmed.I went from being numb and feeling absolutely nothing to being knocked down by wave after wave of guilt, and grief, and pain.My body and my mind were overwhelmed, and I fainted.When I came to, I tried desperately to find that black void of nothingness again. I needed that, needed to remain in control of my thoughts and actions.Emotions would make me sloppy - that had been another one of Liam's bits of advice.

I managed to keep a tight lid on my feelings until I went up to our bedroom to pack a bag so that I could go stay with Sherry and Chris.I caught a faint scent of David's cologne in our bathroom, and it brought me to my knees.My stomach lurched, and I barely made it to the toilet before I got sick everywhere. I needed to get out of this house.

I tried to calm myself on the drive to their place, and finally fell into an exhausted sleep in the wee hours of the morning. Interacting with my friends the next morning was hard. My guilt was riding me, and their concern and support was just making me feel worse.

I met with the funeral director, making the arrangements automatically.I'd been surprised that Scott wanted to give the eulogy, but I had agreed. It would be interesting to see what he had to say about his brother.

That's when I got the bright idea to ask Vanessa to sing at the service. I remembered going out with a group from their office and ending up at a karaoke bar.She did have a nice voice, but he had seemed oddly entranced by her performance.Now, of course, I knew why.The song she sang that night was called "Pacify Her", the lyrics telling a story from the point of view of a mistress to her lover. What a fucking bitch.

The next day, I relished the call to her.The pain and devastation in her voice was a balm to my soul, oddly enough.That was the reaction I wanted.That heartache that I'd experienced watching those videos, that was what I wanted to hear in her voice.Her shock at my request for her to sing made me smile. She sounded so very awkward and uncomfortable at the thought.

I survived the first round of police interviews by following Liam's advice.My nerves and anxiety kicked in as Detective Horton got a bit hostile with his initial line of questioning. Chris unknowingly helped, jumping in like a bulldog to protect me from questions that he felt were intrusive or insensitive.

As I was speaking with the detective, especially with Chris and Sherry listening, I was careful with my word choices. It was silly, but I didn't want to compound my sins with more outright lies, especially to my friends.

"Were you aware..." or "Did you know..." he would ask, and I would carefully respond with "No, I wasn't aware" or "No, I didn't know", leaving the rest of my thoughts unspoken."No, I wasn't aware ...until a few weeks ago." or "No, I didn't know ...until I saw the video last month."

I assured him that the man I loved wouldn't have had an affair, and that wasn't a lie. The man I loved wouldn't have done that.The man he had apparently become was as very different matter.I didn't know that the hell that man would do.

With each new "discovery" the police presented me, I was reminded of his betrayals and the pain and heartache would hit me all over again, exactly as I'd felt the first time around.That helped me play the part of the grieving, disillusioned widow, shocked at finding out the kind of man her husband really was.

In truth, the only discovery of theirs that shocked me was the $57,000.00 bank transfer the night they found David's body.I hadn't thought that even Scott would sink that low.While a dive team was searching for his dead brother, he was sneaking into our home office to make one final money grab before his gravy train derailed.

Reading the text transcripts was brutal. David never let his phone out of his sight, and I hadn't risked discovery by trying to sneak a peek at it that morning.His texts with Vanessa made me sick.

He had tried to get me to have sex with him earlier that evening, groping me and grinding his erection against me until he was dry humping me on the couch before giving up and going upstairs.Vanessa would have been surprised to know that the hard-on he so proudly displayed in his little jerk off video had been caused by his desire for me twenty minutes earlier.

I knew that Liam had planned to try to text a little with Vanessa in the first half hour or so, but I was surprised to see that she had actually started it just a few minutes before I left.Based on the timing, she was complaining about spending the day with me and wanting diamonds for her trouble, right around the time I was telling David that I would see him in Hell.

Liam had done an excellent job with his side of the texts.He had studied David's interactions with Vanessa on the videos and had patterned his sleazy responses to her accordingly. It was clear that she had no idea that it wasn't David she was texting with.

I loved that he made it a point to tell her he was heading out on the boat, and then had stopped responding.It played perfectly with the partially untied mooring rope, and the idea that he'd slipped and hit his head while trying to launch the boat.I couldn't wait to hear from Liam exactly how it had all happened.

I thought I would be able to handle watching the videos again. After all, I had seen them all so many times.It was still hard though, but as I remembered my reactions from the first time around it made it easier to project those same emotions in front of the police.

By the day of the funeral, I was almost giddy with the idea of seeing Scott and Vanessa get what was coming to them.I simply couldn't resist the idea of referring to Vanessa as a wretch, given the lyrics of the song.The memory of the looks on their faces would entertain me for years to come, I was sure.I just wished I could have been there when they learned about the addition of the attempted murder charges they were facing.Their confusion would have been delightful as they'd tried to figure out what happened, followed by each of them suspecting that the other had turned on them and framed them for the whole thing.

Oh, to have been a fly on the wall for that scene would have been the cherry on top of this entire shit sundae.