“Oh God, Marisol,” Connie said. “But how do you know all this?”
“Because Vera told me.”
Josie said, “Vera went to you instead of the police?”
“Why?” Gretchen asked.
“Kurt was my husband,” Marisol said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Vera was my friend.”
“But you hadn’t seen Vera in sixteen years,” Josie said. “By all accounts, Vera had never even met Kurt. It’s not like he was there when you were having your parties. Vera had no loyalty to him. She didn’t even have any reason to be afraid of him as long as she got out of the house without him realizing she had been there.”
“He was a very powerful man,” Marisol said.
“No,” Gretchen put in. “Not that powerful. Vera was an eyewitness. All she had to do was get to a nearby phone and call the police. They would have caught him burying Beverly’s body under the basement.”
Josie said, “Vera came to you because of something else.”
Connie looked from Marisol to Josie and Gretchen and back. “What are they talking about, Mar?”
“Shut up,” Marisol snarled.
Josie kept going. “The only reason I can think of why Vera would come to you—after sixteen years—instead of the police, is because you both had something to hide. You were dependent on one another to hide it. You’d both be in big trouble if it came out.”
“If what came out?” Connie asked, eyes darting back and forth.
Josie met Marisol’s eyes. “You were Beverly’s mother, not Vera.”
Marisol sucked in a breath.
Connie flinched. “Is that true, Marisol? You had a baby?”
Marisol’s face twisted in an ugly scowl. “Shut up!” She looked at Josie. “You can’t prove that.”
Josie shrugged. “I could if you submitted to a DNA test.”
Connie said, “How did you—how could you possibly know that?”
“Marisol was in rehab while Vera was pregnant. In fact, she sent her a card apologizing for not being there. She said she was in rehab in Colorado for a year. Plenty of time to have a baby. Vera went on bedrest very early in her pregnancy and yet, no one knows who helped take care of her during that time. She told everyone that she’d gone to her brother’s in Georgia but in fact, records show that she gave birth at Geisinger.”
Gretchen said, “Also, Vera and her brother had been estranged for years. She’d never go to him, and she didn’t. No. I think Marisol came here, back to Pennsylvania, before it was too late for her to travel, and she and Vera holed up in the Hempstead house until she went into labor.”
Josie said, “Mrs. Dutton, how did you manage to get Vera’s name on the birth certificate?”
Marisol didn’t speak. Connie said, “Mar? Did you do this? You did all this?”
Glaring at her friend, Marisol said, “I’m not some idiot, Connie. I know you think I am, but I pulled this off for all these years, didn’t I?” She looked at Josie and Gretchen. “I took Vera’s driver’s license and pretended to be her. That was the first time she doctored a driver’s license. She put my picture on her license. No one knew either of us at Geisinger. No one asked questions. A few days later, I went back to Colorado. I had been living in an apartment there by then. My husband had no idea. Nor did he care.”
“He never knew you were pregnant,” Josie said. “You didn’t want him to know because you were having Silas Murphy’s baby.”
Connie let out a strangled cry. “You had his baby? Mar? Is that true?”
Ignoring Connie, Marisol gave a bitter laugh. “Yes, it’s every husband’s dream for his wife to give birth to a drug dealer’s baby. Of course I couldn’t bring that baby home, and I couldn’t go through with… not having it.”
“Did you ask Vera to take the baby or did she offer?” Josie asked.
“I don’t know anymore,” Marisol said. “It’s all a blur. Vera wanted a baby desperately and my husband did not want children at all.”
Connie’s hands fell to her waist. The dog’s leash slipped from her wrist, but she made no move to pick it up. She couldn’t take her eyes off Marisol.
Gretchen asked, “Why not leave him?”
“Besides the fact that he would have actually killed me? Because I would have been broke. The money? It was all his. He brought it to the marriage, and he made more and more and more money. We had a prenuptial agreement. I had to be faithful and childless for twenty years before I’d be entitled to any marital property.”
“Is that even legal?” Josie asked.
Connie’s dog trotted off into the trees, sniffing around, its leash trailing behind it. Tears fell from Connie’s eyes as she listened to her friend pour out decades-old secrets.
“I don’t know,” Marisol answered. “Why don’t you ask eighteen-year-old Marisol? She was a smart girl. A girl who met a guy at a restaurant where she was waitressing, signed whatever he asked her to sign, stayed home like a good little wifey, cooking and remodeling while he went off looking for the next eighteen-year-old girl to satisfy his urges. Who sat in that big old house alone year after year while he traveled the world, sometimes for months at a time. Who got hit when she complained about it. The girl who thought all of that was just fantastic could probably tell you if that prenuptial agreement she didn’t even read until she was twenty-five was legal.”
“I’m sorry,” Josie said.
Tears glistened in Marisol’s eyes. “Vera was my friend. I know it sounds stupid, but she was a good friend to me. We cooked up this plan. We were stupid and young, and I was scared shitless. But I knew that if we pulled it off, Vera would take good care of the baby, and she did. She was a wonderful mother. Much better than I would have been. At least until Beverly got a little older and started to act out.”
“Vera got frustrated and called you,” Josie said. “She wanted you to take Beverly.”
Connie took a step closer to Marisol, staring into her friend’s face as though she were a complete stranger. “You did all of this?” she asked incredulously.
Ignoring her, Marisol sniffed and addressed Josie. “I don’t know if she was serious about that or if she was just venting but yeah. I told her there was no way. We couldn’t undo what we’d done. We couldn’t just come clean. I offered her more money. I was able to funnel money to her for years until Beverly pushed her down the steps. Kurt gave me an allowance for spa treatments, clothes, getting my hair done, stuff like that. I cut back on a lot of things and gave the cash to Vera. Then she got hooked on pills and there was never enough money for her. She wouldn’t leave me alone and then Kurt—fucking pervert Kurt—met Beverly across the street from that old theater. She worked at some pizza place or something.”
“It was an ice cream shop,” Josie said.
Marisol rolled her eyes. “Whatever. That was his MO though. He’d go to these shitty eating spots where college girls would be working and he’d pick them up, have a little fun with them and move on. Except Beverly wasn’t a college kid.”
“She looked like one,” Josie said.