Chapter 13 - THE FIRST WIFE
Her name was Amanda Cole.
Mark married her nine years before he married me.
No divorce record existed.
Our marriage had never been legal.
Amanda disappeared eight years earlier.
Diane told everyone she left Mark after stealing from him.
In truth, Amanda had inherited a farmhouse from her father.
Blue Thread Holdings acquired it two weeks after she vanished.
Amanda’s driver’s license was not inside the sewing tin.
Diane kept something else.
Her wedding ring.
Police found it sewn inside the lining.
Price claimed Amanda died after resisting sedation.
Mark helped move her body.
He was twenty-six.
Old enough to know.
Young enough for Diane to convince him there was no way back.
The location of Amanda’s remains appeared in one of Diane’s recordings.
An abandoned well behind the transferred farmhouse.
Investigators recovered her body.
A fracture in her skull matched a fireplace tool found in Diane’s garage.
Mark initially denied involvement.
Then police showed him a photograph of the remains.
He collapsed.
He admitted he struck Amanda.
He claimed she attacked Diane first.
Diane’s hidden recording told another story.
Amanda had discovered the property fraud.
She threatened police.
Mark tried to stop her from leaving.
When she fought back, he hit her.
Afterward, Diane coached him through cleaning the room.
Her voice said, “This is what families do. We protect our own.”
That sentence had governed the house for years.
It was spoken whenever someone lied.
Whenever bruises were hidden.
Whenever Mark closed the basement door.
Whenever I was ordered to smile.
Family did not mean love in Diane’s home.
It meant conspiracy.
The murder charge destroyed Mark’s remaining defense.
He asked to see me once more.
This time, I agreed.
We sat separated by thick glass.
He looked smaller in jail clothing.
“I was going to help you,” he said.
“When?”
“I don’t know.”
“That is the problem.”
He pressed one hand against the glass.
“My mother made me afraid of everything.”
“And you made me afraid of breathing.”
Tears filled his eyes.
“I loved you.”
“No. You needed me.”
“That isn’t fair.”
“Neither was the basement.”
He looked down.
I asked whether he knew I was pregnant before Diane attacked me.
“Yes.”
“Did you plan to take my baby?”
His silence answered.
“Did you know about Thomas Bell?”
“Yes.”
“Did you know about the procedure?”
He began crying.
“Yes.”
The confession was being recorded.
He knew that.
Maybe some part of him wanted the lies to end.
“Why?” I asked.
He looked at me through the glass.
“Because Mom said once we had the money, she would finally leave us alone.”
I almost pitied him.
Then I remembered the quilting needle hovering above me while he protected the window from witnesses.
“She never planned to leave,” I said.
“I know that now.”
I stood.
“Natalie.”
I paused.
“Do you think our child would have loved me?”
May you like
I looked at the man who had agreed to steal her before she was born.
“She will never have to find out.”
