CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

JENN

March 11 Eight Days before Drowning

The boat was still parked on the concrete strip on the side of the house, and now the new truck was there. I continued to act as normally as I could around Rick, despite knowing that the countdown to how much time Ivy and I had left was officially ticking.

My research continued at a more frantic pace than before, which might have been why I wasn’t finding what I needed; I couldn’t think straight, nor could I be patient. About all I’d found: a few leads for where to get fake IDs. Needed, sure. Not nearly enough.

In the evening, I served Rick dinner with a smile. He ate his pot roast, clearly hungry, as I sliced homemade french bread, the satisfying crunch of the crust breaking under the pressure of the knife. After cutting two pieces, I began slathering them with butter and just said the words I’d been rehearsing all day.

“So when are you thinking of taking the boat on its maiden voyage? June?” I set one piece of buttered bread on his plate and held out the other. “Want two?”

“Sure. Thanks.” He raised one eyebrow. “I’m not waiting to take that beauty out. I’m going as soon as I can arrange a trip. Definitely this month.”

We were already a weekend and a half into March. “Really?” I said, trying to sound curious rather than freaked out. “Isn’t everything still frozen?” Mountainous lakes and reservoirs could have some ice even into June, depending on elevation.

He lifted his head and studied my face. I smiled innocently wider. He slowly reached out and took the second slice I was offering, never taking his gaze from my face. “Why would you think I’d put off using the boat?” His words were even and measured. My past self wouldn’t have worried whether I’d upset him, sparking a fight and, later, his silent treatment.

Current me knew that his tone and words meant something far more sinister. He was weighing me.

I took my seat, broke off a few small pieces of bread for Ivy in her high chair, and shrugged casually. “I mean, it is really cold still. We’ll probably get a few more nights of frost. It’s not even officially spring.” I chuckled lightly and lifted one shoulder in a shrug—then worried I was overdoing the nonchalant thing. “Figured this would be the time of year boats would be on sale. You know, before the summer rush. Like how snowblowers are most expensive right after the first snowfall?” I was rambling and sounding like an idiot. I needed to shut up before Rick suspected anything. “Thought a trip when it’s warm out would be more fun is all.”

“Oh,” he said, taking a bite of bread. He chewed for a second, then, with the bread in his cheek, said, “I didn’t buy it now because it was on sale. I bought it to celebrate making partner.”

“I know.” I smiled.

“Money’s not an issue.”

“I know that too,” I said sweetly, then laughed at myself. “Guess my penny-pinching years are showing again.” I took a bite of my dinner, and for a moment, the only sounds were utensils clanging on plates, Ivy squealing and kicking, and bread being chewed.

“I’m actually thinking of going this week,” Rick said suddenly.

I’d just swallowed a piece of meat, and it suddenly got stuck halfway down. I had to swallow again to free it.

“Sorry.” He twirled his spoon to gesture as if rolling time along. “I meant next week.”

I breathed out a shallow sigh of relief, hoping he wouldn’t notice.

“A week from Thursday. It’ll be an early weekend.”

Now I sat there frozen. He was taking the boat out a week from tomorrow. I had one week to escape with Ivy unless I could push out the trip, delay it.

I couldn’t feign a smile or say a cheerful word. I sat there like a stupid deer in the headlights. I wanted to yell at him, tell him that no way would I board that boat when it was on the water. That I knew he would only try to kill our daughter and me if I did.

“Th-Thursday,” I managed, barely.

“Right.” Rick’s eyes flashed with excitement, a sight that sent my stomach acid churning. “Don’t worry about work—I’ve got it covered. I have a meeting in the morning, but we can be on the road by noon and on the reservoir by, oh, four or so.”

My mouth was so dry. I grabbed my glass of water and downed half of it. “Won’t it be even colder in the evening?”

Rick grunted and took another bite of meat. “A bit. The sun won’t be as high, and there could be some wind, but we’ll be below deck until morning.” With his foot, he nudged mine under the table. “It’ll be cozy.”

Not yanking my foot away took all the control I could muster. I tried to flirt. “Not so cozy when we’ve got a baby along to interrupt things.” My tone probably didn’t sound as airy as I intended, but hopefully, my point would make him reconsider.

If he didn’t change the date, I might be screwed. If he was determined to drown us in the reservoir, he could easily force us into the truck and onto the boat—conscious or unconscious. Then he could certainly leave the valley—the state—and start over. By the time our bodies washed up, if they ever did, he’d be long gone.

But if I could prevent or at least postpone the boat trip . . .

I tried one more angle. “What can we even do on a boat this time of year? It’s too cold to swim. We wouldn’t be fishing—”

“We can totally fish.”

“Oh.” Now what? “Let’s wait just a few weeks until things warm up a bit more so we can all enjoy the trip,” I said. “The reservoir probably still has patches of ice. It would be a shame for your new boat to get scratched up.”

“It’ll have to get broken in eventually. A few scratches are inevitable,” Rick said in an offhand tone I couldn’t read—a fact that set my nerves on high alert. I’d become an expert at reading Rick’s emotions, but my radar was suddenly off. Was he simply stating a fact, or was his statement a threat? Was he thinking about his past wives fighting for their lives, scratching not a boat but him?

I cut my meat into pieces, needing to do something with my hands while I avoided Rick’s eye.

“It’s all planned,” he said. “The firm knows when I’ll be gone, you don’t have work, and I’ve checked the open dates for all the lakes and reservoirs in the area.”

When I said nothing and just kept cutting my meat into smaller pieces, Rick laughed. “Oh, come on. Be a good sport. You’re tough, right? Besides, the boat has a heater, and we can bring coats and blankets. We’ll be fine.” He reached across the table and rested his heavy hand on my forearm, pinning it against the table. “It’ll be fun. You’ll see.”

“Sure,” I said, the most blatant lie of my life. I had no intention of seeing how the trip would turn out. The very idea made my blood run cold.

Tuesday, March 16 Two Days before Drowning

Five days of trying to get Rick to cancel or postpone the boat trip, five days of failure. Each felt like my personal sword of Damocles, swinging back and forth like a pendulum as it lowered ever closer.

My point about the cold weather was shot down with “The forecast is expecting a record high for the reservoir at this time of year.”

“March isn’t typical boating season,” I said the next day, and he laughed.

“Right. We’ll have the place to ourselves,” he said.

The next day, I went more personal. “I don’t want to go,” I said while doing dinner dishes. “Ivy will be miserable. What if she falls down the stairs or gets into something that could hurt her? The boat isn’t exactly baby-friendly.”

“She’ll be fine,” he said, then grabbed the vodka bottle from the freezer.

I still wasn’t used to the fact that he didn’t have a chivalrous bone in his body. The guy I’d fallen in love with had pretended to. He’d had a sense of loyalty. He was kind and good.

He didn’t exist.

For the real Rick, behavior that looked like loyalty and kindness were useful only as means to an end. That’s how he got women to agree to marry him. I often felt like an idiot for not seeing the truth earlier, but the fact that I wasn’t the first to fall for his ruse told me that he was an expert in pretending to be the perfect guy—and targeting vulnerable women.

I headed to a strip mall a couple of cities away to buy some things for St. Patrick’s Day, which was the next day. For obvious reasons, I didn’t grow up with family traditions, and I’d been determined to create ones for my new little family. That included “small” holidays like St. Patrick’s Day.

As I searched for a store that carried lamb for classic Irish stew, I grew anxious over not finding the meat. I needed to make lamb stew. I had to, not only because that was a way to celebrate the holiday, and not only because I wanted to create traditions, but also because it was likely the last holiday of any kind that I’d celebrate with my family intact.

At the fourth store, I found some lamb and bought it, caring nothing for the jacked-up price tag. What did the grocery budget matter when Ivy and I wouldn’t be around to spend any of the money in it much longer? I still had no idea how we’d escape.

No local women’s shelters seemed safe enough—Rick could find us, I had no doubt, whether that was through lawyer connections or by chatting up a cop so they’d slip and reveal a location. I’d found a couple of possible leads, but they were out of state, and I needed to figure out how to get there, how to make contact, how to get money transferred somewhere so that Rick wouldn’t notice it was missing too soon and wouldn’t be able to track it, and so much more.

I needed time, and I was running out of it. There I was at the grocery store, desperately buying expensive lamb because it was something I could do for Ivy that day and distract myself from the fact that Thursday was the day after tomorrow.

From the grocery store, I went to a fabric and crafts one. Ivy sat in the cart, pretty steady now, and she loved the vantage. My original plan was to sew matching mom-and-me dresses covered in shamrocks. My sewing skills weren’t good enough to make two full dresses in a day, so I went so a much simpler route: decorating existing aprons. Whether they’d end up with ruffles, puff paint, sequins, or sew-on patches, I wouldn’t know until I looked around the store.

I pushed Ivy and the cart down one aisle and onto the next, really taking in the huge store and thinking of all the kinds of traditions and parties and fun times the products on the shelves could be used for. I passed a big cakedecorating section and imagined baking Ivy her first birthday cake—and wondered where we’d be then. Would I have a kitchen to myself? Be in a shelter? Or at the bottom of the reservoir after all?

Don’t think like that. Maybe I’ll make her wedding cake someday.

I passed an aisle with cross-stitch supplies, another with knitting and crochet tools, and beyond that, several aisles of yarn. The back corner was filled with painting stuff: oils, pastels, brushes, canvases.

I stopped along an aisle filled with picture frames, most with stock photos of fake families laughing and smiling. My throat closed up as I gazed at one little family—dad, mom, little girl.

Now that he’d made partner, Rick was planning to kill me and Ivy. That’s why he bought the boat. He might do it on Thursday as soon as we got the boat onto the reservoir. Or maybe it would be that night. Or the day after. He’d be able to force me and Ivy into the truck and onto the boat.

That’s exactly what he’d do if Ivy and I were still home. For now, it looked like we would be because I was no closer to finding a way to escape his reach than I had been when he admitted to having been widowed more than once.

I had nothing concrete for a plan of escape, and I wasn’t about to bet my daughter’s life on the possibility of leads panning out. I needed more time. I should have had more time—months, at least.

Reality crashed over me. Time was up for an escape. I’d failed to protect Ivy. If I didn’t have an airtight getaway plan already, what chance did I have to escape Rick’s reach? None. And neither did Ivy.

What could I do?

I pushed the cart onward and walked the perimeter of the store to think—and not cry.

If he got rid of me, that was one thing. Bad on its own. But worst of all, he’d kill Ivy. I wanted to think that he wasn’t capable of killing his own flesh and blood, but if, as I suspected, he’d killed his parents, he was absolutely capable of anything. He’d already killed Chloe’s baby, which probably would have been viable.

I could not allow that to happen.

Yet how could I prevent it, when I was dealing with someone smart enough and evil enough to get away with killing several times before?

I had two days. That wasn’t enough time to do anything. It wasn’t enough time for me to save us.

Rick would get away with murder. Again.

I blinked away tears and sniffed, hoping no one else in the store would see me crying, then kissed the top of Ivy’s head. “What are we going to do, baby girl?” I murmured into her sweet downy hair.

We left the store without crafting supplies. I had the lamb for stew, and I’d be making soda bread for dinner, the ingredients for which I already had at home. That would have to be enough to celebrate the holiday tomorrow.

I drove home with the car audio off, unable to listen to talk shows or music. I had to think. But all I could process was fear and worry. How could I make any kind of plan when I had adrenaline shooting through me?

I pulled into our driveway and pushed the button to open the garage door. As I waited for it to go up, I stared at the boat, each slick curve and angle. The propeller looked like an angry corkscrew capable of drilling through anything. I imagined the boat churning water, cruising under the sun.

He’d do it after nightfall. He’d toss our bodies overboard. It would later be deemed a tragic accident. I shuddered.

If he was to get drowning as the cause of death, then we’d have to be alive when he dumped us in the water. Images from the movie the other night returned to mind, of the actress frantic underwater. My stomach clenched with fear. Maybe I could beg Rick to drug me, so I wasn’t awake when my lungs felt ready to burst for want of oxygen. So that when the water finally filled them up, when I blacked out and finally died, I wouldn’t feel pain or panic.

I pictured myself begging to be drugged and begging for him to spare Ivy.

No. Ivy and I would not get on that boat, ever. Whatever it took, we’d stay off it. Let Rick plan whatever trip he wanted to. We had to remain on dry land, breathing oxygen. Alive.

Rick had killed and gotten away with it. This was a game he’d always won.

Somehow, this time had to be different.

I pulled into the garage and shut off the car. The drive had put Ivy to sleep, so I sat there for several minutes, thinking. Not panicking—I purposely shoved fear aside as best I could and just thought.

No matter what Rick did to me, was there a way I could make sure Ivy was safe?

If I failed and Rick killed us, could I somehow leave a trail so the police would know he did it—so he could never hurt anyone else ever again?

The kernel of a plan was starting to form in my mind. A completely crazy plan, something I never would have thought of without being thrust into an equally unthinkable position.

It might not work, but if it did . . .

I knew two things: first, I had to protect my daughter. And second, I’d do whatever it took to make that possible.