The End of Her

In a brief prologue set in January 2009, Lindsey Kilgour, eight months pregnant, waits restlessly in her small apartment in Creemore, Colorado. She and her husband, Patrick Kilgour, are preparing to drive through heavy snow to visit her family. Patrick goes outside to shovel the car free and warm it up while Lindsey watches from the window, eager to escape her isolation.

The story shifts to August 2018 in Aylesford, New York. Hanna Bright, a neighbor on Danbury Drive, notices a woman viewing a house for sale on their street. The woman asks about the neighborhood, mentioning a husband, but Hanna notices she wears no wedding ring. Across the street, Stephanie Kilgour is struggling with four-month-old twin girls, Emma and Jackie, who have severe colic. The relentless sleeplessness is destroying her ability to function. One afternoon she dozes on the sofa and wakes to find a frying pan of oil ablaze on the stove; she smothers the fire but cannot remember placing the pan on the burner.

Patrick, equally exhausted and faltering at work, spots a woman interviewing for a temporary position at his architectural firm: Erica Voss, someone from his life in Colorado more than nine years earlier. Deeply shaken, he leaves work early without telling Stephanie. Erica soon contacts him and they meet for drinks. She reveals she moved to nearby Newburgh and looked him up deliberately. At a second meeting, she drops all pretense: She tells Patrick she believes he deliberately killed Lindsey and demands $200,000, threatening to report her suspicions to Colorado authorities. She has researched his finances and knows Stephanie inherited a large sum. Patrick refuses to pay.

That evening, Patrick confesses to Stephanie. He explains that Lindsey died from carbon monoxide poisoning after getting into the running car while he shoveled snow; the exhaust pipe was blocked. He reveals for the first time that Lindsey was eight months pregnant. He also admits that Erica was Lindsey's best friend and that he slept with her during that marriage. Stephanie is devastated by the infidelity but calls Lindsey's death a terrible accident. She refuses to pay Erica, insisting payment would only invite further demands.

A parallel storyline introduces Cheryl and Gary Manning of Denver and their almost-nine-year-old adopted son, Devin. His birth mother was Erica, who during the adoption extorted $100,000 in cash beyond legal expenses, threatening to keep the baby. Cheryl now suspects Erica has resurfaced near their home, watching Devin.

Erica escalates her campaign against the Kilgours. She approaches Stephanie in a park while texting Patrick a photo of his wife and twins. She seduces Patrick's business partner, Niall Foote, and breaks into the Kilgour home, stealing Stephanie's handbag. Patrick confirms the theft by peering through Erica's apartment windows, where he also sees Niall arriving. Meanwhile, Niall's wife, Nancy Foote, grows suspicious and begins tracking her husband's car. Erica tells Patrick she had a baby after Lindsey's death and claims it is his. She demands $200,000 and suggests that Stephanie's death would benefit them both.

Stephanie, increasingly suspicious, discovers a hidden key in Patrick's home office and traces it to a safety deposit box containing Lindsey's death certificate, insurance payout documents, and a marriage certificate showing Lindsey was three months pregnant at the wedding. Erica later visits Stephanie directly and tells her that she and Patrick met almost daily, that Patrick wanted to be free of Lindsey, and that after Lindsey's death he gave Erica a look of triumph. She warns that a man who killed once could kill again.

One night, someone tries to run Erica down on a dark road near the hospital where she works. She assumes Patrick is responsible and flies to Colorado, where she meets Sheriff Lorne Bastedo. After reviewing the thin original file, Bastedo and longtime coroner George Yancik agree the investigation was inadequate and call a coroner's inquest, a formal proceeding to reexamine Lindsey's death. While in Denver, Erica visits the Mannings and demands $100,000, threatening to expose Devin's adoption.

The inquest notice rattles everyone. Nancy is terrified for a separate reason: Six years earlier, Niall struck and killed a pedestrian while driving drunk, and Nancy's father, a judge, advised them to stay silent. At the inquest in Creemore, the former sheriff admits he never asked Patrick about insurance or his marriage. Erica testifies she saw triumph in Patrick's eyes after Lindsey died; under cross-examination she cannot prove the affair's extent. When Patrick's attorney, Robert Lange, accuses her of blackmail, Erica reverses the claim, saying Patrick offered her cash to stay quiet. A surprise witness, an emergency room doctor, then testifies that Lindsey came to the ER in November 2008 with extensive bruising after falling down stairs, an incident Patrick never disclosed. The jury returns a verdict of "undetermined."

The district attorney authorizes a polygraph. Lange arranges a private test first: Patrick fails. Stephanie has a panic attack and flies home while Patrick proceeds to the Sheriff's Office, where, upon declining the police polygraph, he is arrested for murder. However, Bastedo's investigation uncovers that Erica stole oxycodone from a Creemore drugstore and dealt it illegally. Her criminal history destroys her credibility, and the charges are dropped.

Patrick returns home and admits he perjured himself at the inquest; the affair with Erica was far more extensive than he claimed. Later, the full truth emerges: Patrick deliberately pushed Lindsey down the stairs in November 2008, hoping to kill her. When she survived, he conceived the exhaust pipe plan. He had always intended to kill Stephanie for her inheritance; during a recent family picnic he planned to drive into a lake with the family, but Stephanie thwarted this by insisting on driving. After the charges are dropped, he visits Erica and furiously tells her she should have given him more time, confirming he is a murderer.

Stephanie independently concludes that Patrick killed Lindsey and decides she cannot safely leave him. She visits a divorce attorney to create a paper trail, then tells Hanna she plans to divorce Patrick, planting the idea that he is depressed and has said the family would be better off without him. She loads his Glock 19 while wearing latex gloves, preserving only his fingerprints. One evening, she coaxes Patrick into drinking whisky, retrieves the gun, and shoots him in the head. She stages the scene, flushes the gloves, showers, and calls 911. The medical examiner rules the death a suicide.

It is also revealed that Stephanie, not Patrick, tried to run Erica down on the dark road, acting impulsively to scare her away from the police. The attempt backfired, sending Erica straight to the coroner.

Days after the funeral, Erica visits Stephanie and says, "If you killed him, you have my blessing," adding that Patrick was not the suicidal type (329). Stephanie denies everything but is sick with fear, realizing Erica will try to blackmail her next. Multiple characters converge on the same wish: The Mannings, still being extorted, privately think their problems would vanish if Erica were dead; Nancy and Niall fear Erica will uncover their hit-and-run; Stephanie knows she must neutralize the threat. In a brief epilogue, a newspaper article dated November 9, 2018, reports that the body of 31-year-old Erica Voss has been recovered from the Hudson River. The cause of death has not been determined, and the identity of her killer is left ambiguous.