Page 48 of The Therapist

THIRTY-FIVE

Mike

He wants to sleep but he can’t seem to let go. He can’t allow himself to fully relax. His children are with a stranger. They must be so scared. Have they let them share a room, a bed even? They’re so little.

With some effort, he grabs his phone from the side table, opens it and checks for messages.

He and Lana had a plan but he wasn’t supposed to fall over and hit his head.

The sound the gun made shocked him, causing him to stumble back.

It sounds different up close and he can’t help thinking it was a stupid idea to go through with the whole thing.

He should have made sure the garden was clean, everything cleared up.

But he hadn’t expected to have to go into the garden.

He hasn’t been thinking straight since his call with Lana, since the call he made after he got the message: There’s something you need to know about your wife.

Please contact me. He couldn’t believe it was Lana who answered the phone, and he was going to hang up but she said, ‘You need to listen, listen to what I have to say.’ And then there were a lot of things he couldn’t believe but that actually made perfect sense.

The cookie jar was on his mind the whole time. Sandy had planned it all so carefully.

In the many hours since then, he has spent the time going over every moment of his relationship with Sandy.

How long had she been planning on using him for life insurance money?

What kind of a human being had he married?

How had he not seen through to the core of who she was from the beginning?

And more importantly, how can he ever trust himself again?

In truth, he and Lana had no idea how it would unfold. They suspected but they didn’t know what was going to happen. The scream from the garden was clever and it turned the whole thing on its head.

‘Ben has given me the gun for a reason,’ Lana told him on the phone. ‘He wants me to hurt you. They want you out of the way. But if I can get Ben to your house, maybe we can get him to confess.’

The phone call comes back to him in snatches because he was in shock, because it was so hard to take it all in.

It had all been a set-up.

‘How long have they been together?’ he asked Lana.

‘How long ago did she have her first therapy appointment?’

‘Months,’ he replied and shock was replaced by other emotions – humiliation and anger, fury actually – and he knew that if Sandy had been standing in front of him, he would have lashed out, would have finally given back what he had been getting for years.

‘I need you to focus here, Mike,’ she said, dragging him back into what felt like the worst conversation he had ever had in his life as she explained what the private detective she had spoken to had found out.

The idea of a two-million-dollar life insurance policy was almost laughable. How had she been paying for it without him knowing?

‘We need to tell the police,’ he said. ‘I’ll call them now.’

‘Maybe, but Detective Franks said he heard from Sandy so they are unlikely to believe you or me.’

‘They couldn’t have heard from her. She left her phone here.’

‘Oh…oh,’ she said and he could feel her mind turning.

‘I haven’t hurt her, you know that, you know that’s the truth.’

‘I do,’ she replied quickly, ‘I do, yes, and so we need to find a way to make sure they get caught.’ Relief rippled through him. She knew he wasn’t the liar.

‘Call Ben,’ he said, ‘and then let me know what he suggests. Tell him you’re coming over to talk to me. But I need you to know that my kids have to be safe. I can go along with a little ruse but I can’t put my kids in danger.’

‘Of course not. I have a child and I wouldn’t let that happen. I’ll tell you what he says after I speak to him. If we confront him together, maybe we can get him to confess. I will be recording everything.’

Once they both had a vague understanding of what Ben and Sandy had planned, they were able to figure out what to do.

The life insurance policy was nowhere in the house that he could see.

Sandy must have it with her. Two million dollars, a huge amount and separate to the small policies they took out on both of them.

When did she take it out? She is, essentially, in charge of all their finances and he knows that over the past few months he has signed papers to redo their mortgage so they get a lower rate, but is that what he signed?

And now he thinks about the parts of himself that he has suppressed, pushed down, shoved away.

He never wanted to be his father, never wanted the anger to explode onto other people, certain that if he just didn’t allow it out into the world, he would be a better husband and father.

He hadn’t counted on Sandy as a wife. He hadn’t counted on her assuming he was weak and stupid because he let her express her anger.

He’s an idiot.

Round and round the thoughts go and that’s the one that sticks in his head, that keeps repeating. He’s an idiot.

When he hears the door swing open, he’s relieved because maybe he can ask the nurse for a sleeping pill although they are unlikely to provide that to someone with a concussion. Maybe a cup of tea will help.

‘Hey, do you have something to help me sleep?’ he asks, blinking as she shines a small torch in his eyes.

Instead of the calm voice of a nurse, he hears a snigger, the sound of someone who is trying to cover up a laugh.

And Sandy’s scent fills the room, the scent he smelled in the bedroom.

Because she had been back to call the police, to get her phone and speak to Detective Franks and get him to back off so she could go ahead with the plan.

So brazen, so sure of herself. She just waltzed back in and called the detective and then waltzed back out again, not caring about her suffering children who missed her.

She had also, somehow, sent Lana a text saying she was scared Mike was going to kill her.

And she probably sent it while he was there with the kids.

Sandy and Ben hadn’t wanted the police anywhere near this situation until it was over.

He starts to struggle to sit up but before he can even move, a pillow covers his face.

He kicks his legs and tries to scream, knowing that he should be able to push her off easily but he can’t get the pillow to move away from his face.

As his hand goes up to lash out, the pillow is pushed down harder and he realises that it’s obviously not only Sandy holding the pillow but rather a man whose strength matches his, especially since he is hurt.

He tries to scream, to hit, to move, anything, but he can’t seem to shift the pillow.

‘He shouldn’t be this strong,’ he hears a man’s voice say. ‘She didn’t actually shoot him. Shit.’

It’s harder to breathe, harder to think as adrenalin and panic swirl around his body. Deep gasping makes his chest hurt. His body feels weaker, less able to move, to fight but he keeps trying.

The pillow is pressed down harder; his ability to take a breath diminishes to almost nothing.

Who will take care of the kids? Will she take care of them? Does she love them at all? What will children raised by such a woman be like?

He can’t fight at all anymore.

Lying still to conserve the last seconds of his own life, he sees his mother’s hand, stroking his head, sees Lila’s defiant chin, Felix’s blue eyes. His heart pounds, his head vibrating with pain.

‘Someone’s coming,’ he thinks he hears the man say.

And then he hears Sandy. ‘Wait, where are you going? Don’t leave me here, don’t leave me,’ she whispers, even as her hands struggle to push the pillow down.

Sandy is not as strong by herself and the force of the pillow releases slightly so he starts to fight again, but he’s been deprived of oxygen for too long and he can’t seem to find the strength to fight her off.

‘Come back, come back,’ she whimpers as she struggles to hold the pillow, and Mike feels a surge of adrenalin run through him as he tries one last time to get the pillow off his face.

But he’s still so weak. Now there is light everywhere and his last thoughts are of Felix and Lila.