Patricia Highsmith Novel Novels & Stories

A few lines had been deliberately scratched out. Patricia leaned closer. She could still make out fragments. Daniel knows... ...cannot trust... ...if they find her... She turned another page. Nothing. Another. Nothing. Then one sentence appeared at the bottom. There are things a mother must carry alone. Patricia closed the notebook. She couldn't continue. Not yet. She pressed it against her chest. For the first time, the mystery surrounding Grace felt less like something buried in history and more like something that had been happening around Patricia before she was even old enough to understand it.

The entries grew more specific as Patricia worked through them chronologically, references to Diane's hiring, to the careful timing of the affair's exposure, to conversations with Whitmore about the proxy clause structure, each passage stripping away another layer of the sympathetic, manipulated victim her own attorney had spent the trial's opening carefully constructing. I found myself, listening to entry after entry, feeling the full scope of what we'd survived finally take proper shape, no longer scattered fragments pieced together across months of investigation, but a single, continuous record of exactly how deliberately our lives had been targeted, year after year, long before either of

Eric after all was just a normal hot blooded man, he needed some action. “Oh! Why are you dressed so revealingly are you trying to seduce my husband?” Eric’s reverie was broken by Patricia’s taunt at Rita. Patricia had noticed the way Eric’s eyes had trailed over Rita’s body. Her heart was filled with jealousy and resentment so she decided to humiliate Rita. “Excuse me? What the fuck are you talking about?” Rita hissed. She had never been a pushover and neither would she sit back and watch the boyfriend snatcher walk all over her.

I let a snake into my house! The noble lady even wondered why her husband had cheated on her like that. She was old and ugly, so he was logically lusting after a younger face. Patricia gave him just that. The noble lady used up all the power she could muster to throw Patricia out of the house, but failed. Patricia killed her. She’d killed her for insulting her. Maybe because she’d done this before, this second crime came easier to her. “I’m sure this has all been planned by the Queen” Patricia said.

“My name is Patricia Coleman.” I frowned. I thought it was Lydia. Her mouth curved slightly. “You might know me as Pat.” Everything inside me froze. Pat. The one who had been coming after Massimo. The one who almost got him killed. The woman in the photograph. The ghost he chased at the gala. It had been her the entire time. “Why did you do all that?” I asked. She looked at me calmly. “Because I wanted to.”

(Raymond’s POV) I had come up to this floor looking for my little girl, Julie. She had run off when I was greeting James, the assistant to Smithfield’s president. While searching for her upstairs, I bumped into someone I never thought I’d see again. Patricia. The same woman I had dreamt about every night. The same woman who haunted my thoughts every time I closed my eyes. She looked stunning. Elegantly beautiful. So different from the last time I saw her. I had only met her once, but no matter how much she had changed, I would always recognize her. Her eyes were too unforgettable. Too pretty to ever mistake for someone else.

Patricia added, pouting in feigned sympathy. "What did you do, Pat?" Marcella asked, intrigued. She shrugged innocently and smiled. "Did what any good citizen would do—gathered evidence against her and handed it over to the police. The next day, the prison became her new home. Now, onto the second one," Patricia paused, taking a meatball into her mouth and chewing it slowly before continuing. "She was really pretty, damn pretty, but I killed her." Patricia sighed sadly, her eyes fixed on her food as she toyed with it using her fork.

The filing system on his laptop that he hadn't known needed a filing system until she created one and he realized he had been looking for things for years without finding them. He learned that she cried at documentaries about animals and would deny it immediately afterward. He learned not to mention it. They learned each other. Properly. Slowly. Without anything ancient pressing against the walls. It was the best thing Evelyn had ever done. Clara's chapter was finished by the end of the first month. Then the chapter about the woman whose name she had found in a local newspaper archive from 1956. Patricia. A schoolteacher from Birmingham who had bought Harrow Hill as a summer property and had

I squeezed his hand gently, giving him a look that said stay still. He froze, his wide eyes watching me anxiously. When I turned to face the two women, Patricia Allen’s memories made them recognizable almost immediately. Sarah and Karen, Patricia Allen’s neighbors and so-called “friends.” Women who spent their days gossiping and spreading rumors about everyone in the building and pretending it was advice. The former Patricia had always tried to impress them and had always listened to their “advice” on how to train children. Advice that the two women didn’t even follow themselves.

Yeah, he'd learned to practice patience, but dealing with the police while they questioned Betty had just about driven him to the edge of reason. He opened the car door for her, holding her elbow as she climbed in. Daylight had waned, and the parking garage was dimly lit, the sound of other hospital visitors echoing through the cement structures. Betty listened for other things. Furtive footballs on the pavement. The click of a gun safety being released. The slide of fabric or the soft huff is a breath. Someone had tried to kill Dan just a few weeks ago, and there was no reason to believe that person would be content to let him live. The road went quiet as he stepped around the car. The soun