His rage burned.
“But how do you know?” I asked. “You yourself have said that Elizabeth was unpredictable. How do you know that she ever confronted him about his abuse and threatened to cut ties with him? How do you know that Noah killed her? The police never came up with any evidence like that, did they?”
“No. The police had their suspicions about Noah, but never enough to make a substantial case against him. You ask me how I know. I can only answer from my experience with Noah Madaster all those years, and my experience of Elizabeth. I’ve done any number of stupid things in my life, Anna, but I’m not a stupid man.”
“No,” I said, panting slightly, trying to catch my skittering, flickering thoughts. I was completely confused at that moment, but I completely agreed with that. Evan was the opposite of stupid. He was patient, hard, and ruthless.
I, of all people, had come to know that firsthand.
“I believe that Noah killed Elizabeth when they had that last confrontation, because I know Noah. He would believe it was his only course of action if she insisted upon cutting all ties with him. It would be the only thing he could do, being the narcissist that he is, and given those circumstances. In Noah’s eyes, it would have been like Frankenstein realizing the monster had become something he hadn’t expected, that it had evolved into something uncontrollable. Once the monster took on a life of its own, once it obtained a will of its own… it had to be killed at all costs. Elizabeth’s only use was in being precisely what Madaster wanted her to be. And once that was finished, once she demonstrated a will of her own, and wouldn’t back down from it? That was the end. He terminated her very unhappy life.”
I didn’t want to believe him. But the story had a raw, tragic note to it that struck a cord somewhere deep inside me. It had the terrible, clear tone of the truth.
In that moment, I had never seen Elizabeth so clearly, and it was a painful image. I had envied her, once. I had hated her for her seemingly effortless, powerful influence over everyone in her sphere. I had feared what I’d believed to be her ghost in my nightmares.
Now I pitied her. It was somehow worse than my envy.
“My point is,” Evan continued, his recitation of the facts striking me as merciless in that moment, even though he was only doing what I’d demanded. “Even though I believe Noah murdered Elizabeth, I also knew from all those years of experience that he would insist until his dying day that he adored and loved her above anything else.
“I confronted him with my suspicions before I left Les Jumeaux seven years ago, and that’s exactly what he did. He insisted no one on this planet came near to loving Elizabeth like he did. But in typical Noah-fashion, which is in a sly, elusive way, he admitted to me that he had been responsible for her disappearance.”
“What did he say?”
“He agreed with me that he’d never seen his daughter in so much pain as she’d been in recently. He accused me of her unhappiness, for stirring her up, for confusing her about what she wanted. And then he said that his love for her was greater than mine, because if he’d ever seen her so unhappy, he would certainly have done anything to stop it.”
“Even kill her?”
“She was his absolute obsession, the reason he rose from bed in the morning, the ultimate motivation for every decision and action that he ever made. Including snuffing out her existence.”
For a few moments, an uneasy, poisonous silence settled. But then Evan continued.
“A couple years ago, I first heard about Noah’s accident and the resulting spinal cord injury. I learned that he’d become a virtual captive in the tower at the South Twin, a prisoner in his own body, as you put it once. I started to realize that possibly the only way I could ever expose him for the rapist, abuser, manipulator, and murderer that he was, was to make him somehow admit his sins himself.”
“And that’s when your plan took shape. You’d find someone who looked like Elizabeth. They say we all have a doppelganger in this world. At this point in history, everyone is putting their photo out there somewhere. You had the whole world to access, given the Internet. You just had to have the time and resources to find that face. Once found, you would bring the double to Les Jumeaux and parade her in front of Noah. With his damaged body, and more than likely damaged mind, Noah would be forced to look at the image of his daughter day in and day out, the one that you say was his ultimate obsession… the child he loved above all else. The daughter he murdered.”
Realization struck. I gasped like I’d been hit in the solar plexus. My throat swelled.
“That’s why you situated me up on the overlook, first thing. It was so that Noah would see me painting every day. See you kissing me… touching me. You did it all just out of his reach. You did it all to drive him mad, to force his confession.”
“I stopped visiting you up there. At first, I thought it might drive the knife deeper if he was forced to see us together, but then I couldn’t make myself to do it. More and more, I hated the idea of him watching you, even though it’s what I originally planned as a means to force him into some kind of action… some admission or revelation. My feelings for you kept evolving and deepening, and I started to doubt myself more and more. I never believed he could actually harm you, made helpless as he was by his injury. But I knew just seeing you could potentially do a great deal of damage to his psyche. Enough so that it might break him. Expose him.
“But I began to have a change of heart about that. I didn’t want him to even see you. It came to strike me as deeply wrong… possibly dangerous, even, from a distance, like those electrical transformers that cause cancer with constant exposure. I’d sit in my office and worry about you up there on the overlook. I knew it wasn’t rational, my worry, but I couldn’t seem to shake it. That’s why I suggested you move to a different spot to paint, a place where he couldn’t watch you anymore. And when I said I’d leave if you chose it, I meant it, Anna.”
“I’m so lucky, to have you thinking of my welfare.”
He winced at my sarcasm.
“I deserve that. I know. But believe me when I say that I never planned to put you in harm’s way. I always wanted you to be happy. I told myself that while I knowingly used you for my own purposes, I would make your life better for it in the end. I wouldn’t have done this if I weren’t confident I could give you what you wanted, after this business was finished. By the time we married, I didn’t want you to leave me. Far from it. I dreaded the idea. I hoped, maybe stupidly so, that once we spent more time together, you’d realize my feelings were true.
“But if you left me—something I tried to resign myself to, difficult as it was—at least I would have left you the financial resources to give you freedom. I knew how much you wanted the time and opportunity to paint.”
“I didn’t come to Les Jumeaux to paint. And I never wanted your damn money. God, I believed you,” I said, freshly terrified by the words.
“You should have believed me. You believed that I loved you because I did. I do. I think I loved you without knowing it since the first time we met… before, even, when I looked at your paintings. I defended myself against that feeling, of course, given my plan. The realization of how much you meant to me, the full extent of my feelings, didn’t hit me until we came here, though. Until the threat of Noah was so near. I am completely and hopelessly in love with you, Anna. I wouldn’t have married you, otherwise. I didn’t need to, in my original plan… before we even met. I just needed to get you here.”
“A clueless double of Elizabeth. You were confident you could seduce somebody so stupid. That was the easy part,” I bit out, fury spiking through the thick emotional fog that had settled from hearing this tragedy. I saw him open his mouth to defend himself. “Just finish, Evan. Finish telling me about your little story of revenge.”
He took a moment to gather himself. I waited, impatient now, increasingly desperate for this to be over.