The Consequences Read Online Free PDF Page B

six weeks—and every day I’d ask him how things had gone at work, and every day he’d spin me a tissue of lies. One lie leading to another leading to another . . .”
    Stephanie closed her eyes. Her own affair was built upon a series of half-truths, each one tugging her farther and farther into an intricate web. She hadn’t fully realized until today just how deep and twisted that web was, just how limiting her relationship with Robert had been. A smile curled the corners of her lips: It had even made her mother think she was a lesbian!
    â€œMaybe it was pride that prevented him from telling you that he’d lost his job,” she suggested cautiously.
    â€œMaybe. But he told me that he’d been let go because they were cutting numbers. That was a lie—another one. He was fired for claiming overtime that he hadn’t done. I only found that out today. Once I realized that, I knew I couldn’t live with him anymore.”
    â€œWhy?” Stephanie wondered.
    â€œBecause I knew I could never trust him again. Once you catch your man lying to you about one thing, you know he’ll lie to you about others. I didn’t want to live with that mistrust.”
    â€œWhat will you do?”
    â€œGo home for Christmas. Talk to a lawyer in the New Year.”
    â€œAll because he lied to you?”
    â€œOnce the trust goes, what’s left?”
    Stephanie nodded. What was left? She suddenly felt bitterly sorry for Kathy Walker.

CHAPTER 6

    C onversation had dried up.
    Stephanie drifted in and out of troubled sleep, and Joan concentrated desperately on holding the old van on the road. It started snowing: huge silent flakes that quickly coated everything in a festive blanket. But both women knew how dangerous the snowfall could be. There was a very real danger that they could get caught on the highway and be forced to spend Christmas in a sleazy motel or, worse still, become trapped on one of the minor roads and run the risk of freezing to death in the car.
    Stephanie wondered how Robert would react if he read about it in the newspapers. How would he feel? Relief that “the Stephanie Burroughs problem” had gone away? Would he feel even vaguely guilty that it was his fault she was driving through a snowstorm on Christmas Eve in a gasping van that sounded like it was about to conk out at any moment? However, since he rarely read a newspaper and she doubted that the deaths of two women in a snowstorm would make the Boston Herald, he’d probably never know.
    Maybe she could haunt him.
    The heater in the van suddenly decided to work and now pumped over-hot and vaguely acrid air into the van. The combination of the heat and exhaustion drove Stephanie into a light, uncomfortable doze in which ominous thoughts of Robert and Kathy were never far away.
    The crunch of gravel and grit under the tires brought her awake. They had turned off the freeway and onto a narrow country blacktop. As she struggled to straighten and sit up, Joan said, “Nearly there.”
    Stephanie rubbed her sleeve against the side window and peered out into the night. It had snowed here recently, and the world had lost all shape and definition. The streets were deserted, but in the majority of the Craftsman and bungalow houses, set well back from the road, she could see a Christmas tree winking in the gloom. Some of the houses had been decorated with thousands—tens of thousands—of lights, but most of the lights had been turned off now, and the displays of Santas and reindeer, snowmen, and Christmas trees seemed rather forlorn.
    It was close to midnight as they turned onto Lake Mendota Drive where a single house was ablaze with sparkling lights. Stephanie craned forward to look. This was the home of their childhood. The wan lights of the van washed across the front of the pale yellow house. An enormous Christmas tree dominated the living room’s bay window, and Stephanie knew it would be