What? What is Maggie talking about? Victoria isn’t crazy. Adam is crazy. Victoria was the victim in all this. Maggie is the one who’s got it all wrong.
“What do you mean?” I ask carefully.
“Oh God,” Maggie moans. “I shouldn’t tell you this, but… well, where do I begin? She was always starting these horrible fights with him. She would scream at him at the top of her lungs. I saw her throw a freaking toaster in his head and it made a dent in the kitchen wall. Can you believe that?”
I picture the dent in the wall of the kitchen downstairs. But no. Adam
did that. When he threw a plate at the wall. “She… she did?”
“Yes!” I can picture Maggie’s wide eyes. “She was intensely jealous of the cook, Irina Brunner. Half the fights they had were over her. She would call Irina a whore and accuse him of sleeping with her. I don’t know if they were sleeping together or not—I don’t think so—but she would be jealous of any woman he spoke to. I tried to dress as dowdy as possible and just stay out of her way, because I didn’t want to arouse any jealousy on her part.”
“But…” I think back to more details from the diary. “She couldn’t have been that crazy. I mean, she worked as a nurse practitioner in a busy emergency room.”
“Yeah. Until they fired her.” “They… fired her?”
“It’s something I used to hear the two of them fighting about. She blamed him for losing her job, but it’s pretty clear they let her go because she was so nuts. And she couldn’t get anyone else to hire her because of what happened there. Apparently, she was really unprofessional and used to have temper tantrums where she would throw things.”
Oh my God, could that be true? No. Maggie has to be mistaken… “And the worst part…” I hear Maggie’s voice waver. “One day, she
brought home a gun. Like, an actual gun. With bullets and everything. Adam was so freaked out. He was begging her to get rid of it, but she kept
saying they needed it for protection.” She pauses. “I’m hoping after her accident, he got that gun away from her.”
He did. And I just gave it back.
“And then there was this one night when they were having a particularly brutal fight,” she says, “and Irina didn’t come in the next day to work even though she was supposed to. A few days later, the police showed up asking about her. It was so scary.”
“What…” My voice can’t seem to get out the next words. I have to swallow before I can speak again. “What are you saying?”
Maggie’s voice is hushed. “I swear to God, Sylvia, I think Victoria might have killed Irina.”
No. No no no…
“I was going to go to the police myself and tell them what I knew,” she says softly. “But then Victoria was in that accident and… well, there was no point after that. I figured we’d probably never find out what really happened to Irina.”
My head is buzzing. My breaths are coming quickly, and I hug my knees to my chest. “Maggie, I gotta go.”
“Are you okay, Sylvia? You sound funny.” “I gotta go. Now.”
Without waiting for a response, I hang up the phone. My fingers are tingling and I feel like I’m about to have a panic attack. With shaking hands, I type into the search engine of my phone:
Irina Brunner. Long Island. Disappearance.
Immediately, a bunch of hits come up. It’s true. It’s all true. Back in February, twenty-two-year-old Irina Brunner disappeared without a trace.
Mack wasn’t the one who disappeared. It was Irina. Who knows if Mack even existed. Probably not. He was probably all a figment of her wild imagination.
And I just gave Victoria back the gun that killed Irina. And stopped giving her the antipsychotics that had been part of her daily medication regimen.
I’ve got to get that gun back. Before something terrible happens.
