The Accident

“I want a head start,” he said. “I take her with me, you give me half an hour, I’ll drop her off somewhere.”

“No,” I said. “But I’ll give you a head start if you let Kelly go. And if you answer one question for me.”

“What?”

“Sheila,” I said.

“What about her?”

“Why Sheila?”

Marcus screwed up his face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I don’t know how you did it, exactly, but I need to know why. Did she know? Did she know you were having an affair with Ann? Did she threaten to tell her mother? Is that why you did it?”

Fiona’s mouth opened. She was too stunned to speak at first, but finally, in a whisper, she said, “No.”

His eyes met hers. “Fiona, it’s all bullshit. Glen’s lying, that’s-”

“You killed Sheila? You killed my daughter?”

Marcus tightened his arm around Kelly’s neck. She coughed, put her hands on Marcus’s arm and tried to free herself, but she was no match for the strength in a grown man’s arm.

“Stand aside and let me leave,” he said.

“You can’t run,” I said. “The police will find you. Hurt Kelly and it’s only going to be worse for you. You’re not leaving here with her. It’s not happening.”

Kelly struggled some more, kept pulling on Marcus’s arm. I glanced again at Fiona. She was a lit firecracker with an inch of fuse left.

Marcus nodded. “Yes, yes I am. If you take even a step toward me, I’ll twist her head right off. I swear- Jesus! ”

Kelly had brought up her right leg, then driven her heel down into the top of Marcus’s foot with everything she had. When he screamed, his grip on Kelly slackened.

In that same moment, Fiona grabbed the wineglass on the coffee table and swung it against the table’s edge. She held on to the base of the glass, which was now a mass of glistening, jagged edges.

Kelly squirmed free and ran toward me.

Fiona lunged, thrusting the glass forward, a primal scream escaping from her throat. Even before she reached Marcus, there was blood spilling from her fingers where the broken glass had cut her. But she was oblivious to any pain of her own. She had only one thing on her mind, and that was to kill her husband.

I would have moved to intervene, but Kelly had thrown herself around me.

Marcus raised his arms to deflect Fiona, but she was possessed of a strength that was not her own. She kept coming at him, thrusting the shards of glass toward his neck.

Caught him, too. Blood began to spurt from his throat in several places. He made anguished gagging noises and clutched his hands to his throat. Blood dribbled through his fingers.

I screamed, “Fiona!” and pulled Kelly off me. I grabbed Fiona from behind as she continued to wave the broken glass in the air.

Marcus dropped to the carpet.

I looked at Kelly and said, firmly and without panic, “Hit the police button on the security system.”

She ran.

As Marcus continued to clutch his neck, trying to stanch the flow of blood, I said to Fiona, “It’s okay, it’s okay. You did it. You did it. You got him.”

Fiona began to weep, to wail, as I held her. She dropped the glass to the floor, turned, and wrapped her bloody arms around me.

“What have I done?” she wept. “What have I done?”

I knew she wasn’t talking about what she’d just done to Marcus. She was talking about having brought this man into her life and unleashing him on her family.

SIXTY

Seconds after Kelly hit the emergency button on the security system, their monitoring people phoned. I took the call and told them to send an ambulance as well as the police.

I’d barely hung up and the police were there. But they’d been dispatched as a result of Sally’s call to the police in Milford, who in turn got in touch with their counterparts in Darien.

The paramedics went to work quickly on Marcus and, to my amazement, managed to stabilize him. I figured he was a goner. The ambulance wailed as it tore out of the driveway.

Even while Marcus was still gurgling and writhing on the floor, I got Kelly out of the house. I didn’t want her to see any more of this than she already had. I picked her up and she wrapped her arms around my neck as I took her out the front door. I kept patting her back softly, moving slightly from side to side to soothe her. “It’s over,” I said to her.

Her mouth pressed close to my ear, she said, “He killed Emily’s mom.”

“That’s right,” I said.

“And Mom?”

“I don’t know, sweetheart, but it kind of looks like it.”

“Was he going to kill me?”

I wrapped my arms around her more tightly. “I would never have let him hurt you,” I said. Not mentioning that if I’d gotten there five minutes later, things might have worked out very differently.