“Meaning what?” Kira choked out.
“Meaning you’re to blame here, too, Isabel. I’m sorry, but you are. You claim you had no idea what he was really out there doing to women, but please—you knew who he was and what he was capable of. And if you really didn’t know, which I find hard to believe, it’s only because you didn’t want to. No one who’s halfway normal about sex keeps a list of conquests. Plus, Allison tried to tell you, and you practically hung up on her.”
“Vanessa, there was nothing I could have done! You know that. I was trapped.” Isabel’s blue eyes were wide with panic and confusion.
“You were a doormat. So complacent. So defeated and self-pitying. Until I came to your rescue, handed you an escape plan on a silver platter. Even then, you totally just let me do the heavy lifting, figuring out every detail. What kind of a daughter are you going to raise? The way I see it, people like you really don’t deserve to be mothers,” Vanessa mused.
“What the hell does that mean?” Isabel’s anger at Vanessa’s comment seemed to have eclipsed her fear, for the moment.
“None of you do, actually. I hate to agree with Connor on anything, but you’re all so pathetic. Do you not realize that? God, there’s nothing I hate more than a weak woman. You have these amazing gifts, these beautiful children—all of whom were conceived with no difficulty whatsoever, of course—and all you do is complain about how tired you are. How hard it is. Give me a break. Do you know how lucky you are? There are so many women who’d love to be mothers and can’t be, and they’d probably do a much better job of it than you, too, because they—we—wouldn’t take it for granted.”
We stared at her, each of us unable to say anything, unsure and terrified of where this was going.
She continued, her voice filled with a quiet anger. “Years ago, I miscarried a baby boy at twenty-eight weeks. I was devastated. I had to deliver him.” Her eyes got glassy and she looked to the ceiling. “I thought that holding my blue, lifeless little boy was the lowest moment of my life. But it turned out to be hours later, when they told me that my uterus was basically destroyed and that I’d never be able to have another child.” She shook off her tears and looked back at us again. “To add insult to all of it, my fiancé at the time wasn’t really into the idea of being with someone who couldn’t give him kids. Someone who reminded him only of sadness and loss. So that was the end of that, too.” She took a deep breath. “Do you know how frustrating it is to listen to you gripe about unpredictable naps and green poops and clueless husbands and pumping when I would give anything, anything, to have my baby boy with me today? To have a family? Do you know how infuriating it is that my sister got pregnant from one time with a stranger, while on the pill, and just, you know, on a lark, figured she’d be a mom? Do you know what that did to me?” My stomach dropped.
“Vanessa,” Kira said in a voice just above a whisper, “that’s awful about your son. Awful. But you realize that we aren’t responsible for what happened to you, right?”
“Yes, thanks, Kira, I get that.” Vanessa rolled her eyes. “But you’re all squandering what you have. Not appreciating it. Not making enough effort. And you should be ashamed of yourselves. Especially you, Isabel—girls need strong role models. And you’re the furthest thing from that, letting Connor just do whatever he wants to you and whoever else.”
“I didn’t let him—” Isabel began, but Vanessa held up a hand to silence her.
“So what is it you plan to do?” Selena was stone faced, just as she’d been when we first found Isabel in Montauk. My stomach dropped when I remembered how I’d ushered her into Isabel’s house tonight, assured her that it would be okay. If only I’d known how wrong I was.
“What do we plan to do, you mean. It’s still our plan, girls. You’re all in on it, whether you like it or not. Well, not you.” She looked at Isabel with sarcastic sympathy. Then she looked back at the rest of us. “The plan is that this”—she gestured toward Connor’s now-lifeless body—“will be a murder-suicide. Isabel killed Connor, then herself.”
After a ringing moment of silence in which every jaw but Vanessa’s （and Connor’s） hung open, Isabel finally spoke up. “What are you talking about?” she sobbed, trembling. “I’m not killing myself.”
“Okay, I’ll spell it out for you, sweetheart.” Vanessa slowed her speech as though addressing someone exceptionally unintelligent. “I am going to kill you and make it look like you killed Connor and then yourself. It would be the most believable thing in the world, given your now well-documented history with postpartum psychosis and exhaustion. It will look like you simply couldn’t handle it anymore. You snapped. You’ll be like a cautionary tale: Don’t let it get to this point!”