As if reading his mind, the attorney says, ‘We’ll call your wife with the good news.’

Stephanie sits on the living-room sofa, stunned. She’s just spoken to Patrick on the phone. He’s on his way home. She can’t believe it. She thought he was in jail, that he was facing a murder trial. Now they’ve let him go, dropped the charges. He’ll be home later tonight.

She thought she’d have more time to figure things out. She doesn’t know what to think, what to do.

Erica is a liar. Stephanie knows for certain that she lied at the inquest about the blackmail.

Her husband is a liar. That’s what the lie detector said.

Who is she supposed to believe? She wants to be rid of both of them. She thinks uneasily about Patrick. She hasn’t seen him since he failed the polygraph. When trust goes, how quickly love disappears and self-preservation takes over.

She could leave him. She could leave now, take the twins and be gone before he gets back, and not tell him where she’s gone. She sits, trembling, on the sofa, thinking it through. She doesn’t have much time, and the pressure makes it hard to think. If she ran away, he would find her eventually. And he would have the law on his side – she doesn’t have the right to take his daughters away from him and run. In the eyes of the law, he is an innocent man. With rights to his children.

She thinks of the twins, her heart in her throat. Her little birds. She feels a dread creep over her. If it’s true that he murdered his first wife – and his unborn child – if he was capable of that … If she tried to take the girls and leave him – would he kill little Jackie and Emma? Would he kill her? Her head begins to spin and she feels overcome with nausea. Lately she’s been thinking a lot about the man in the news who smothered his two children with pillows and stabbed his wife to death … It’s something she has to consider.

Was Patrick violent before they married? Did he push his first wife down the stairs? Had she and Patrick been living a lie together before all this happened – and all along he’s been someone capable of murder? Parents – usually fathers – have been known to kill their children to get back at their estranged spouse. And then they kill their spouse. No one ever seems to see it coming. And he might have already done it once.

And he’s coming home tonight.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

PATRICK FUMBLES WITH the key in the door. She’s left the porch light on for him. It’s late, after eleven. He’s had a long trip home – he’d rented a car at LaGuardia rather than have Stephanie wake the twins and drive all the way to the airport to get him. He’s had plenty of time to think. The earlier elation – Lange had driven him directly to the airport in Denver, and they’d celebrated with a drink in the bar, before Patrick boarded the flight home – has subsided as he thinks about what’s to come.

But at least it’s all over. For good. Nothing can change that now. Erica can’t do anything to him. They don’t have enough to proceed to trial and Erica has been completely discredited besides. She’s a liar and a criminal. He’s free – of her, and of the past.

He has to convince Stephanie that everything is going to be all right from now on, that they can start over, and that none of this has to hurt them. They’re free! He’s been exonerated – it will be in the news that charges against him have been dropped. He’d had no idea about Erica dealing drugs back then. He’d hardly known her really – except in the most carnal of ways. He will rise above it all, start over. He’ll start his own firm – show Niall what he can do. Niall will be sorry he dropped him. And he’ll show Stephanie that she has reason to be proud of him.

But now he must talk to Stephanie, to explain. He tries not to feel irked by her apparent doubts – even though it was perfectly clear to Stephanie that Erica lied at the inquest.

He can explain about the lie detector test. He knows that Stephanie stopped believing him in the attorney’s office that day. He can still see it – her reaction when she realized he’d failed the test. It had played over and over in his mind, while he was in jail. She thought then that he’d deliberately killed his own wife. She probably thinks so still, even though they’ve let him go. He must change her mind. He hopes that she will forgive him and they can move on. She loved him once, and it wasn’t so long ago. They have the twins to think of. They have a life to build together.

He opens the door. There’s a faint light coming from the living room. The twins must be asleep upstairs. He places his keys on the side table, takes off his coat, hangs it up and walks slowly through to the living room. His wife is waiting for him, sitting on the sofa in the semi-darkness, and when she looks at him, she doesn’t move. She doesn’t run to him and throw her arms around him. He hadn’t really been expecting her to, but he feels disappointed anyway.

He stands still as they stare at each other. He doesn’t like the expression on her face. She looks wary, almost as if she’s frightened of him. Is this how he should be greeted, after being exonerated? After all he’s been through? He’s never given Stephanie any cause to be frightened of him. His attorney had been happy for him. His lawyer knows polygraphs are meaningless. She should be happy too. She’s his wife – she should give him some credit, or at least the benefit of the doubt.

‘Stephanie,’ he says, his voice breaking. He steps further into the room. ‘I’m here. It’s okay. Everything is going to be all right now. It’s all over. She can’t do anything to us any more.’ His wife stares at him, eyes wide. He must make her listen, understand. He takes another step forward. ‘Erica is a liar,’ he says, his voice becoming more forceful. ‘You know that. She wanted money, she wanted to hurt me, that’s all. They let me go because they have no case. They know she made it all up. She’s not credible and she can’t be trusted.’

‘What happened?’ she asks, her voice raw.

He explains. ‘They found out she stole drugs from the drugstore where she worked and sold them. They have proof. Witnesses.’ He sees the shock on her face at the news; she clearly wasn’t expecting this. ‘She’d do anything for money,’ he adds bitterly. ‘She doesn’t care who she hurts.’

She remains silent, as if she can’t grasp what he’s saying.

‘It’s good news, Stephanie,’ he says, trying not to feel too disappointed by her reaction.

‘You failed the polygraph, Patrick,’ Stephanie says at last. ‘What was I supposed to think?’

He feels a surge of annoyance. How many times has he gone over this? He moves over to her now, sits down beside her. ‘I know. And I can explain about that.’ He brushes the hair away from her face in a familiar gesture and she actually moves away from his touch. His heart sinks. He pulls away from her a little, gives her some space.

‘No one was more shocked than me when I didn’t pass the polygraph,’ he says. He looks at her and waits until she lifts her eyes and returns his gaze. ‘But innocent people fail polygraphs all the time.’ He pauses and then continues. ‘Maybe I failed it because I was nervous … because I lied to you about something else, Stephanie, about the extent of the affair with Erica.’ He closes his eyes for a moment so that he doesn’t have to look at her face, but then opens them again, to gauge her reaction. ‘I told you I only slept with her twice, when in truth, it was more than that.’ She looks like she’s going to be sick. He presses on, feeling as if he’s poised on the edge of an abyss. Everything depends on whether she believes him now. ‘I didn’t want to lose you – you and the twins are everything to me. I know I’m not a murderer, but I thought if you knew how often I’d slept with Erica, you would leave me, and that you might not believe me about the rest. And once I told you I’d only slept with her a couple of times, then I had to say the same thing at the inquest.’

Unnerved by the way she’s looking at him, he gets up suddenly and starts pacing back and forth in front of the sofa, the way he has so often since Erica came back into his life. ‘Then they wanted to do the polygraph, and I was terrified. I was so nervous. I think that’s why I failed the test.’ He turns to her, desperation in his voice. ‘But it wasn’t like she said. We weren’t in love. It was always just sex, that’s all. I was twenty-three. My wife was pregnant – we weren’t sleeping together any more. It’s inexcusable, I know. But there is no way in hell I would deliberately kill Lindsey. Not for Erica, not for anything. I’m not a murderer! The idea would be laughable if it weren’t so damn terrifying!’

She looks up at him, appalled. ‘You lied at the inquest,’ she says. ‘You perjured yourself.’

He nods. ‘I know, but it’s over now. They’ll never know.’ And they won’t, he thinks, unless she tells them.