Liv Constantine - The Last Mrs. Parrish

“Say it,” he commanded.

“Jackson—”

He squeezed harder. “Say it.”

I closed my eyes and forced the words out. “I want you. Make love to me.”

“Beg me.”

“I want you now. Please.” I knew he wanted me to say more, but that was all I could force out.

“You don’t sound very convincing. Show me.”

I pushed the covers back and lifted my nightgown off. Straddling him the way he liked, I positioned myself so that my breasts were in his face.

“You’re such a whore.” He thrust into me with no regard to my readiness. I gripped the sheets and made my mind blank until he finished.

The next day, as usual, there was a gift. This time it was a watch — a Vacheron Constantin worth upward of fifty grand. I didn’t need it, but of course I’d wear it, especially around his business associates and at the club, so everyone could see how generous my husband was. I knew how it would go. He would be charming for the next few weeks: compliment me, take me out to dinner, act solicitous. In truth, it was almost worse than his derision. At least when he was debasing me, I could feel justified in my hatred. But when he went for days on end masquerading as the compassionate man I fell in love with, it was confusing, even when I knew it was all an act.

He checked in with me every morning to go over what I had planned for the day. That morning I had decided to skip my Pilates class and get a massage and facial instead. He called me at ten, like he did every day.

“Good morning, Daphne. I’ve e-mailed you an article on the new exhibit at the Guggenheim. Make sure you take a look. I’d like to discuss it tonight.”

“Okay.”

“On your way to the gym?”

“Yes, see you later,” I lied. I wasn’t in a mood for a lecture on the importance of exercise.

Later that night, I was having a glass of wine in the sunroom and reading the damn Guggenheim article while the girls were being bathed. As soon as I saw his face, I knew something was wrong.

“Hello.” I made my voice bright.

He was holding a drink. “What are you doing?”

I lifted my iPad. “Reading the article you sent.”

“How was Pilates?”

“Fine. How was your day?”

He sat down across from me on the sofa and shook his head. “Not great. One of my managers lied to me.”

I looked up from the screen. “Oh?”

“Yeah. And about something really stupid. I asked him if he’d made a phone call, and he said yes.” He took a long swallow from his glass of bourbon. “Thing is, he hadn’t. All he had to do was tell me, say he’d planned to later.” He shrugged. “It would have been no big deal. But he lied.”

My heart fluttered, and I picked up my wineglass, taking a sip. “Maybe he was afraid you’d be angry.”

“Well, that’s the thing. Now I am. Really pissed, actually. Insulted too. He must think I’m an idiot. I hate being lied to. I’ll put up with a lot of things, but lying, I can’t abide it.”

Unless he was the one doing the lying, of course. I gave him a neutral look. “I get it. You don’t like liars.” Now who was treating someone like an idiot? I knew there was no manager, that it was his passive-aggressive way of confronting me. But I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. I did wonder how he knew I’d skipped my class. “So what did you do?”

He walked over to me, sat down, put his hand on my knee. “What do you think I should do?”

I slid away from him. He inched closer.

“I don’t know, Jackson. Do whatever you think is right.”

He pursed his lips, started to say something else, then sprang up from the sofa.

“Enough of this bullshit. Why did you lie to me today?”

“About what?”

“Going to the gym. You were at the spa from eleven to two.”

I frowned at him. “How do you know that? Are you having me followed?”

“No.”

“Then how?”

He gave me a vicious smile. “Maybe people are following you. Maybe cameras are watching you. You just never know.”

My throat started to close up. I couldn’t catch my breath, and I gripped the side of the sofa as I tried to stop the room from spinning. He said nothing, merely watched with an amused expression. When I finally found my voice, the only word that came out was “Why?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

When I didn’t answer, he went on.

“Because I can’t trust you. And I was justified. You lied to me. I won’t be made a fool of.”

“I should have told you, I was just tired today. I’m sorry. You can trust me.”

“I’ll bestow trust on you when you deserve it. When you stop lying.”

“Someone must have really hurt you in the past, made a fool out of you,” I said in a sympathetic tone, knowing it would get under his skin.

Anger flashed in his eyes. “No one made a fool out of me, and no one ever will.” He grabbed my glass of wine, walked over to the wet bar, and poured the remains in the sink. “I think you’ve consumed enough calories — especially considering you were too lazy to exercise today. Why don’t you go and change for dinner? I’ll see you then.”

After he left, I poured myself a new glass and thought about this latest revelation. I bet he was spying on me in other ways too. I couldn’t let my guard down at all. Maybe he’d bugged the phone or put cameras in the house. It was time for action on my part, and I needed a plan. He controlled all of the money. I was given a cash allowance for incidentals but had to give him receipts for everything I spent. All the rest of the bills went to his office. He gave me no discretionary spending — just one more way he tried to keep me under his thumb. He didn’t know that I’d accumulated my own secret stash.

I’d set up an e-mail account and cloud credentials under a fake name on one of the laptops in the office and hid the computer in a closet underneath brochures and flyers — somewhere he’d never think to look. I sold some of my designer purses and clothing on eBay and had the money wired into an account he knew nothing about. I had everything go to a post office box I’d set up in Milton, New York, a thirty-minute ride from the house. It was slow going, but over the past five years, I’d put together a decent enough emergency fund. To date, I’d saved close to $30,000. I also bought a pack of burner cells that I kept at the office. I didn’t know yet what I was going to do with all of it, only that I’d need it one day. Jackson thought he had every angle covered, but, unlike him, I was unfettered by delusions of grandeur. I had to believe that somehow they would be his undoing.

Christmas used to be my favorite holiday. I sang in our church choir every Christmas Eve, and Julie was always front and center, cheering me on. Then we’d go back to the inn and have dinner, happy to be the ones waited on for a change. We could give one gift early and save the rest for Christmas Day. The last Christmas that I spent with Julie, she’d been fidgety all through dinner, as though she was bursting with some secret she couldn’t wait to share. I gave her my gift — a pair of gold ball earrings that I’d scrimped and saved for with my tips at the inn. When it was her turn, she handed me a small box, her eyes bright with excitement.

I tore open the paper and lifted the lid. I gasped. “No, Julie. This is your favorite.”

She smiled and took the heart pendant from the box, holding it toward me to put on. “I want you to have it.”

She’d been so much weaker lately. I think she knew, or at least accepted, before we did that her time was running out.

I held back tears and grasped the thin chain in my hand. “I’ll never take it off.” And I didn’t. Until after I married him, and I knew that if I didn’t hide it away, he’d take it from me too. It was safely nestled under the cardboard bottom of one of the many velvet jewelry boxes that contained his gifts to me.