Chapter 97
Venetia
Thursday
Venetia’s heart had begun to race as soon as she saw the Instagram post on Thursday evening.
She stared at her phone, blood rushing to her ears.
There she was, Susan O’Donnell, smiling brightly for the camera.
No more than a few hours since Venetia had taken her baby and lain it out in the garden.
No more than a week since Aimee’s death.
A group shot of a family meal. Not a care in the world.
Her baby in her arms. Her family flocked around her. Her sister’s words in the caption:
So blessed to have my sisters in my life.
I don’t know where I’d be without this lot.
Not pictured, Greta, who is here most of the rest of the time.
Pictured: Susan, my favorite younger sister, the baby of the family.
Love is…people you care about most in the world, gathered together to eat and laugh.
Rage bubbled up inside Venetia. Aimee was dead, and this was what Susan and Leesa were doing.
Jesus Christ. They didn’t care. They didn’t care one bit about Aimee, about Venetia, about Aimee’s unborn baby.
Susan O’Donnell had broken Venetia’s life, shattered it to unmendable pieces, and she didn’t care.
The high she’d experienced earlier, leaving Susan’s baby on the lawn, had gone now. Dissolved by grief and a call with a funeral director, and now this. This happy-family photo.
Felipe had arrived at her shoulder, reading then wincing at the Instagram post. He followed her when she grabbed her car keys, asking her where she was going, begging her to stay put, to calm down. Calm down. What person alive has ever responded well to calm down?
As she pulled on her boots, he pleaded some more.
Claimed she was getting obsessed, that she’d end up back on heroin.
That stopped her for a moment. A half-formed idea struck and she ran upstairs to the shoebox in her wardrobe, the one Felipe didn’t know she had.
With a syringe in her pocket, she ran back downstairs and grabbed her jacket from the hall closet.
“Please, Venetia,” Felipe tried one more time.
“This is my problem, Felipe!” she hissed. “It has nothing to do with you!”
“It does. Apart from the fact that I care about you, I’m implicated. I was there. And I…helped.”
“You didn’t. You stood there with your hands over your eyes.”
“I…I helped cover up.”
“What?”
A sigh. “I’m the reason they think it was just the weight from the barbell that was used, why they’re not looking for the murder weapon and won’t find your DNA.”
“What did you do?”
“It was when you left in the car for Oakpark. Before I could think too much, I unscrewed the bar from the weight. I know you wiped it, but it wasn’t enough. They’d have found something. Skin particles, I don’t know.”
“But where is it?”
“I went into their en suite and climbed up to the skylight window and I rolled the bar down to the gutter at the bottom of the roof. It’s still there. Maybe someday someone will find it, but not yet.”
“Christ.” Felipe was the last person she’d expect to get involved with hiding evidence. “But won’t your DNA be on it now too? Fingerprints? When they eventually do find it, I mean?”
“I put a pair of Rory’s socks over my hands and I brought those home with me. But I don’t know if they’ll ever find it.”
“Jesus…”
As she processed this, Felipe moved to take a position in front of their hall door, arms folded, a determined expression on his face.
She shook her head and stepped forward, but he stood his ground, physically blocking her from leaving.
Her hackles rose. He was as bad as Rory.
Trying to control her, like Rory had tried to control Aimee.
Had successfully controlled Aimee. Had killed Aimee.
Was Felipe going to do the same? This new version of Felipe, this person who would hide evidence and cover up crimes and stand in her way?
She’d never let that happen. She’d get there first if she had to.
He looked so resolute, standing there, dead set on stopping her.
What had she ever seen in him, she wondered?
His kindness, said a distant voice in her head.
His evenness. His stability. She waved it away.
He was an obstacle. A man trying to control her.
“Venetia, if you go now, it’s over between us. I can’t keep going like this, I can’t keep protecting you, trying to help you, when you won’t help yourself.”
“Then I guess it’s over.” She said it so quietly, then, like lightning, almost enjoying the shock in his eyes as she did it, she grabbed his right arm with both her hands and with all her strength she yanked him away from the door.
He stumbled, falling sideways against the living-room door, landing on the floor.
Venetia had pulled the front door open and run to her car.
She was blazing down Stradbrook Road before he’d even picked himself up off the floor.
And now she’s standing in Susan’s kitchen. With Susan’s baby in her hands.