Danielle Steel - Matters of the Heart

“I don’t want you to be his next victim,” Robert said in a sobering tone. She already was in many ways, but he was seriously afraid that if she crossed him in some serious way, or became useless to him, Finn might kill her, drive her to suicide, or cause an accident to happen.

“Neither do I. That’s why I called you,” Hope said in a heartbroken voice.

“You know, what you saw in the beginning, when he was so wonderful to you, is called ‘mirroring,’ when a sociopath will ‘mirror’ back to you everything you need and want and want them to be. And then later, much later, the truth of who they are comes out,” Robert told her. “What do you think you want to do, Hope?” he asked her then gently. He felt deeply sorry for her, and understood better than most people how hard it was to face this kind of thing and take action.

“I don’t know what I want to do,” she admitted. “I know that sounds crazy. It was so wonderful for nine months, and suddenly all this awful stuff is happening. No one had ever been as nice to me, or as loving. I just want it to go back to the way it was in the beginning.” But she was trying to raise the Titanic , and she was beginning to see it. She just didn’t want to believe it. Not yet. She wanted Finn to prove all of it wrong. She wished she’d never gotten the report and still believed the dream. She wanted to but didn’t. But she felt she had to go back and see for sure. Anyone listening to her would have thought she was insane, except Robert Bartlett. She had been lucky to find him.

“That’s not going to happen, Hope,” he said gently. “The man you saw in the beginning and fell in love with doesn’t exist. The real one is a monster, without a heart or a conscience. I could be wrong, of course, and he could just be a very troubled guy, but I think we both know what we’re seeing. That man in the beginning was an act he put on for you. That act is over. This is the third act, where the villain goes in for the kill.” It was the theme of everything Finn wrote. “You can go back and take another look to be sure, no one can stop you, but you could be putting yourself at risk. Maybe great risk. If you do go back, you’ve got to be ready to get out fast, and run like hell if you smell danger. You can’t stick around to negotiate with him. I don’t usually tell people this, but I’ve been there. I was married to an Irish girl, the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen, and the sweetest. I believed every word she told me, and her story sounds a lot like Finn’s. She had a miserable childhood, her parents were both drunks, and she wound up in foster homes where people did awful things to her. She had the face of an angel and the heart of a devil. I defended her on manslaughter charges a few years after I got out of law school. I had absolutely no doubt of her innocence then. She killed her boyfriend and claimed he tried to rape her, and there was evidence to support it. I believed her. I got her off, but today I wouldn’t tell you the same thing. Eventually, she left me, took every penny I had, broke my heart, and took our kids with her. I married her right after I defended her.

“Eventually she tried to kill me. She came back during the night and stabbed me, and tried to make it look like an intruder, but I knew it wasn’t. I knew it was her. And I still went back to her two more times, trying to make it work, ignoring everything I knew. I loved her, I was addicted to her, and all I wanted to do was save our marriage and keep my kids. She eventually kidnapped them to Ireland seven years ago, and by some miracle they needed someone to head up the Dublin office at the time, so I jumped at it, to be close to my kids. I couldn’t force her to come back to the States. She’s very clever, and thank God, my kids are okay. The youngest one just left for college in the States two months ago, and I’m going back to the New York office this spring. Nuala has married two men since me, both for money, and one of them died two years ago, from a medication he was violently allergic to, which she administered to him, and convinced the judge at the inquest that she didn’t. She inherited all his money. And she’s going to do it to the man she’s currently married to or some other guy one of these days. She has absolutely no conscience. She belongs in prison, but I don’t know if she’ll ever get there. She is so profoundly disturbed that she is willing to cross any line and has a deep need to get back at the world for what was done to her. No one is safe from her.

“So I know what you’re dealing with here, and I think I know how you feel. It took me years to understand that the good Nuala was only an act she put on for me, but it was so goddamn convincing that I always believed her, no matter what lies she told me or what awful things she did. The kids eventually moved in with me, which didn’t bother her. People like that don’t make terrific parents. Their children are either accessories to their crimes, or their victims. She doesn’t even see my girls now, and I don’t think she cares. She’s busy spending her late husband’s money, the guy she killed by giving him the wrong antibiotic out of the medicine chest. It stopped his heart cold as she knew it would, and she waited an hour to call the paramedics because she ‘was so upset’ and claimed she was sound asleep and didn’t hear him dying. And they believed her. No one has ever cried as hard as she did at the investigation. She was inconsolable. She married her defense attorney, again, and one of these days, she’ll do the same thing to him or someone else. But every man she’s ever left, except the dead ones, have mourned her. And so did I.

“It took me years to get over her, give up on her, and not give a damn anymore. Until then, I went back a hundred times for more. So, I get it. If you still need to turn the boat around, no matter what the evidence, no one can stop you. You have what you saw for nine months, and felt for him, and then you have that investigator’s report and what everyone who knows him, and has experienced him, said. But if you go back, Hope, be smart. With people like that, when he turns on you, all you have time to do is run. That’s the best advice I can give you. If you go back to him for another round, wear your track shoes, listen closely, trust your instincts, and if something happens that worries you or scares the shit out of you, trust yourself and get the hell out. Fast. Don’t wait to pack a suitcase.” It was the best advice he could have given her, based on his own experience, and she was stunned. It was a terrifying story. But so was Finn’s.

“He’s all I have now,” she said sadly, “and he was so good to me for all those months. Paul was the only family member I had left, and now he’s gone, and so’s my daughter.” She was crying as she spoke.

“That’s the way these people work. They prey on the naïve, the innocent, the lonely, the vulnerable, and the solitary. They can’t work their voodoo in a group with people watching them. They always isolate their victims, like he has you, and they pick them well. He knew that all you had was your ex-husband, who wasn’t around anymore and was very sick. So he got you over to Ireland, where you have no family, no friends, no one to look out for you. You’re his ideal victim. Just be aware of it when you come back. When are you coming?” He didn’t ask her if but when. He knew she would. He had done the same thing, and he could tell she wasn’t ready to let go yet. She needed another dose of Finn to shock her, because the evidence of the good Finn, and the memory of it, was so strong. It was a perfect example of cognitive dissonance, two sets of evidence in direct conflict with each other, all the love they lavished on people at first, and from time to time later, and the brutal, unconscionable cruelty when they took off the mask, and then put it back on again, and confused their victims even further, and tried to convince them they were insane. Many sociopaths caused suicides as a result, when perfectly sane victims couldn’t figure out what was happening to them, and got pushed over the edge. He didn’t want that happening to Hope. His only goal now was to be there for her, keep her alive, and help her get out when she was ready, which he could tell she wasn’t yet. He knew only too well that only someone who had been there would understand. And he had been.