“I’m afraid, Michelle Mix, that your logic is flawed. But take heart,” Ken O’Connell said, “based on what I’ve learned through my personal research, you played only a reluctant role in the doctor’s evil scheme. I have no issue with you. However, I’m afraid that your husband was too involved for me to just ignore. Maybe he will die before I’ve decided exactly what I will do. If so, I will regret how long it took me to execute my plan. But knowing that, as you say, his guilt is what is killing him, I will take comfort in that belief.”
For Michelle, what had happened to the other doctors was nothing more than the way O’Connell chose to take out his anger and hatred. She didn’t feel guilty about what happened. She knew that once she told the truth that her only focus in life would be to protect Stanley and to make his final weeks of life filled with as much love and as little pain as was possible.
While she never heard from Ken O’Connell and had no concrete proof that he was somehow behind the murders, she knew in her heart that he was involved. She also knew that a man of Ken O’Connell’s resources would be able to know if her husband were still alive, and he probably could access those same resources to find where she and Stanley were hiding.
But Stanley wasn’t hiding. He had no idea why his wife packed the car with enough clothes for a week. He didn’t understand why she told him that they were going away for a surprise vacation. He knew that he had chemo treatments scheduled and going away would mean that those treatments would be missed. He began to think that Michelle had a conversation with one of his doctors and learned that the treatments were not working, and that putting him through the misery of additional treatments would serve no purpose. Stanley didn’t know that he was hiding at all but thought instead that his wife didn’t know how to tell him that he didn’t have much time left.
But he knew. He knew the second the diagnosis was given to him, and he knew without any doubt the second after the first CAT scan showed his cancer had spread. He knew that he chose the aggressive treatment option for Michelle’s sake. She had already lost one husband to a tragedy, and Stanley was willing to do whatever he could to delay her losing her second husband to another tragedy.
He had fallen in love with Michelle the second he saw her standing next to William Straus in that urine-smelling institution. He felt that he had to overcome his fears of getting hurt and had to let her know, somehow, how he felt about her. And when he learned that she felt the same for him, his life became complete.
He often wondered how it was possible that his being a willing participant in everything that happened with the O’Connell baby had resulted in delivering the greatest thing in his life. He never forget about what he and his fellow doctors did with that baby, though once Michelle had left Hilburn, they never talked about it. He felt that talking about the baby would somehow destroy everything good in his life. The memories of those days haunted him, but he vowed to himself to never mention Alexander Black ever again. Especially not to Michelle.
He hoped that somehow Michelle had very selective amnesia and had forgotten that it was he who had delivered the heartless baby to Hilburn. He feared that if he mentioned those first days to her, that her amnesia might evaporate, and she would realize what a monster of a person she had married.
He kept everything buried deep inside, and though the memories often tried to escape, he was resolute in his convictions to keep what he had been a part of hidden.
The only time that Alexander Black was mentioned after Michelle left Hilburn was the night after he told her that he had cancer.
“Maybe my disease is my punishment,” he told her.
When Ralph Fox called Michelle and told her about the murders, she didn’t react the way Ralph probably expected her to react. The fact that people she knew had been murdered and that her husband’s name was on a list of probable victims just increased her determination to keep Stanley safe. She knew that ignoring the repeated calls from Ralph Fox and from the number her caller ID told her was coming from the New York State Police, was probably making them suspicious about Stanley and her. Yet she didn’t care what anyone thought.
When she read about Mark Rinaldo and Henry Zudak being found dead, she didn’t care. They were distant memories for her, and while they were close with Stanley, he didn’t need to know that they had been murdered. He didn’t need to know anything that was going on around him.
Each morning since receiving that first call from Ralph Fox, Michelle would replace the battery in her phone, certain to leave it in for only the time it took to check for messages. Then the battery was pulled so that no one could trace where she and Stanley were. She paid for the resort room and every purchase she made using cash,
Leave no clues.
She thought about contacting Ken O’Connell and pleading with him to leave her husband alone.
“He doesn’t have much time left,” she would tell him. “Killing him won’t give you any feeling of revenge. He’s dying because of what he did to your son. Isn’t that enough?”
But she never called. Calling wouldn’t stop anything. Her husband was going to die. Soon. And there was nothing she could do about it except choose the cause of his death.
She thought for a fleeting moment that perhaps Alexander Black killing her husband would allow him to avoid the pain that would certainly be coming. But that thought was banished. Though she knew she couldn’t prevent his cancer from killing him, Michelle knew that she could prevent Stanley from being murdered.
And that was exactly what she intended to prevent.
As she heard him stir in the bedroom, she wiped her eyes clean of the few tears that had formed, adjusted her hair and clothes, and prepared the smile that would greet her husband to this new day.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“If he didn’t get on the plane, then his wife is in on whatever it is he’s been doing,” Derek said, still shocked.