Page 123
ROB JACOBSON IS STANDING at one of the main bedroom’s floor-to-ceiling windows, back in his own house in Sagaponack, looking out across the backyard and the dunes to the Atlantic.
As always, Rob Jacobson doesn’t so much appreciate the view as he does that it is his view.
“Well,” Claire Jacobson says from the bed behind him, “that was even rougher than I remember, mister. You even left some bruises.”
“Not the first time,” he says without turning, seeing the waves begin to build in the distance. “And they’ve always healed in the past, haven’t they?”
“Come back to bed,” she says. “Says a glutton for punishment.”
“Not what I was hearing a few minutes ago.”
He continues to stare at the water. Jane was always telling him how the ocean filled her with a sense of peace. But Rob just doesn’t get it.
“Well,” she says, “you won again, didn’t you?”
“I always win,” he says.
He opens the French doors to let in the breeze.
It’s back to being all mine, he gloats.
Knowing him, he’s already thinking about going out tonight, hitting a couple of the kids’ bars, having some fun. Meeting someone new.
“Eric still won’t see me,” she says. “I keep trying. But that lawyer you hired, McGoey, keeps giving me the same message.”
“To leave him alone,” Rob Jacobson says. “The way he says we always did. When I did get in to see him at the jail, for about a minute, I thought he might want to talk. But only long enough so he could tell me to fuck off to my face.”
“But you’re going to pay McGoey’s fee anyway?” Claire asks.
“What can I tell you, honey,” he says. “I know from experience what it’s like to hate your father that much.”
He turns finally and walks back toward the bed. She has covered herself up with a sheet. She really is very attractive, and still has some body on her, for a woman her age.
“I still hate you sometimes,” she says. “But I have missed you.”
“Have you?” he says. “Because my friend Sonny Blum shared some photos with me the other day.”
He reaches over and picks up his phone from where he left it, on the nightstand on what he still considers his side of the goddamn bed.
He scrolls through photos until he comes to the ones of Claire in bed with Robby Sassoon.
Rob Jacobson hands his wife the phone.
“How much did you miss me, exactly?” he asks.
Before she can even reply, he slaps her hard across her face, knocking her to the side and nearly all the way out of the bed.
Claire Jacobson screams then, right before he slaps her again, harder this time.
Then he is climbing on top of her.
But she fights him as he tries to pin her arms, and manages to roll out from underneath him, pushing herself back toward the ornate headboard that has made it all the way out here from the town house in Manhattan.
He crawls toward her, but not quickly enough, because then Claire Jacobson is reaching under her pillow and coming up with the gun she keeps there.
He laughs, even with the gun pointed straight at him.
“Really?” he says, but stopping where he is. “Who the fuck in this family isn’t a shooter?”
“Really,” Claire says, and then shoots him in the middle of the chest, and then again, and keeps firing until the gun is empty and the shock is gone from his face.
And the smirk, at long last.
She calmly watches as his body slides off the bed to the floor.
Then she is the one reaching for her own phone, on the nightstand closest to her.
The number is on speed dial.
Jane Smith picks up on the first ring.
“I just killed Rob,” Claire Jacobson says. “I’m going to need a lawyer.”
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 45
- Page 46
- Page 47
- Page 48
- Page 49
- Page 50
- Page 51
- Page 52
- Page 53
- Page 54
- Page 55
- Page 56
- Page 57
- Page 58
- Page 59
- Page 60
- Page 61
- Page 62
- Page 63
- Page 64
- Page 65
- Page 66
- Page 67
- Page 68
- Page 69
- Page 70
- Page 71
- Page 72
- Page 73
- Page 74
- Page 75
- Page 76
- Page 77
- Page 78
- Page 79
- Page 80
- Page 81
- Page 82
- Page 83
- Page 84
- Page 85
- Page 86
- Page 87
- Page 88
- Page 89
- Page 90
- Page 91
- Page 92
- Page 93
- Page 94
- Page 95
- Page 96
- Page 97
- Page 98
- Page 99
- Page 100
- Page 101
- Page 102
- Page 103
- Page 104
- Page 105
- Page 106
- Page 107
- Page 108
- Page 109
- Page 110
- Page 111
- Page 112
- Page 113
- Page 114
- Page 115
- Page 116
- Page 117
- Page 118
- Page 119
- Page 120
- Page 121
- Page 122
- Page 123 (Reading here)