Freida McFadden

I want to make one thing clear. I killed him. I’m not going to claim it was the butler or a one-armed man. I did it. I killed my husband. All I can say in my defense is I had a good reason.

I’m so incredibly proud of that book. It’s a conglomeration of the personal accounts of several patients who have survived intense fear-inducing incidents, and my expert analysis of those accounts, as well as advice to readers who may have experienced something similar. This book will really help people. It’s my crowning achievement.

Liars offer too much information, babbling on with excessive detail to convince themselves or others of what they are saying. Machines have been built to recognize these patterns and identify them. However, even the best lie detector has a twenty-five percent rate of error. I am far more accurate than that.

Something I didn’t realize about Douglas before I first met him is that he is a hopeless nerd. He doesn’t even try to hide it. All he wants is to watch superhero movies and veg out on the sofa with his laptop perched on his legs, eating Nutella out of the jar. The only way he got to be the CEO of Coinstock is because he’s a crazy genius who invented a piece of technology that ended up being used by every bank in the country.

In 2007, an acclaimed violinist named Josh Bell, who had recently sold out a concert with average ticket prices of a hundred dollars each, posed as a street musician. He stood in a subway station in Washington, DC wearing jeans and a baseball cap, where he played the exact same music as at his concert, on a handcrafted violin worth more than three and a half million dollars. “Hardly anyone even stopped to listen,” Dr. Kindred explains to the lecture hall filled with students. “In fact, when children would occasionally stop, their parents would grab them and usher them on their way. This man played a sold-out concert in Boston, and on that day, only about fifty people stopped long enough to put a dollar in his violin case.

I’ve noticed that, especially for a lawyer, Brock is very trusting. Anyone else probably would have interrogated me about my past, but he isn’t like that. It’s a relief that I don’t have to tell him everything, but sometimes I wish he would press me. Because I’m tired of keeping all the secrets from him.

Step Eight: Find a Replacement

I can’t pick just anyone. First of all, she has to be beautiful. More beautiful than I am, which shouldn’t be hard since I’ve deliberately let myself go the last few years. She has to be younger than me—young enough to give Andy the children he so badly wants. She has to look good in white. He loves that color. And most of all, she has to be desperate. Then I meet Wilhelmina Calloway. She’s everything I wanted.

After a month of living in your car, you realize the importance of some of the little things in life. A toilet. A sink. Being able to straighten your legs out while you’re sleeping. I miss that last one most of all.

Isolation is not necessarily dangerous.

People dislike when things don’t meet their expectations.

It was my mother’s idea. She always says happiness doesn’t result from what we get, but from what we give.

I believe that any human being is capable of terrible things if you push them hard enough.

I suppose anyone can have beautiful skin in a painting.

How are you? The three most useless words in the universe of communication. Nobody who asks that question wants to know the answer. And nobody who answers ever tells the truth.

My mother always said not to leave the house in shoes you can’t walk a mile in.

Et c'est là qu'un malaise m'envahit. La nuit dernière, je n'ai cessé de me répéter que 'était un accident. Que c'était forcément un accident. Mais tout à coup, je n'en suis plus si sûre. Car enfin, comment peut-on enfermer sa petite amie dans une chambre par accident et ne s'en rendre compte que des heures plus tard?

Elle acquiesce et me heurte l'épaule quand nous nous croisons. Mon coeur bat la chamade. Je ne parviens pas à chasser le sentiment que j'ai commis une terrible erreur en attirant sur moi la colère de Nina Winchester.

Ça va me prendre des heures pour remettre cet endroit dans un état convenable. Peut-être des jours. Mais pas de problème, ça me démangeait de faire un bon travail, honnête et dur. Et j’aime bien qu’elle ait besoin de moi. Si je peux me rendre indispensable, elle aura plus de mal à me virer si elle découvre – ou quand elle découvrira – la vérité.

Elle a eu une « intuition » me concernant, alors elle n’a pas pris la peine de faire des recherches. Maintenant, il me reste à faire en sorte de ne pas lui donner de raisons d’être déçue. Je dois être l’employée modèle.

De l’autre côté de la cour, je n’avais remarqué que sa taille – il est grand, au moins une tête de plus que moi, avec des biceps de la taille de mes cuisses –, mais de près, je me rends compte qu’il est aussi plutôt sexy. Il a l’air d’avoir la trentaine, d’épais cheveux noir de jais, humides à cause de l’effort, la peau mate et un physique robuste, au bon sens du terme. Mais le plus frappant, ce sont ses yeux, très noirs – si noirs que je ne peux pas distinguer la pupille de l’iris.