Convince Me is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 by Nina Sadowsky
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
BALLANTINE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Sadowsky, Nina, author.
Title: Convince me : a novel / Nina Sadowsky.
Description: New York : Ballantine Books, [2020] |
Identifiers: LCCN 2020006142 (print) | LCCN 2020006143 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525619901 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780525619918 (ebook)
Subjects: GSAFD: Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3619.A353 C66 2020 (print) | LCC PS3619.A353 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020006142
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020006143
Ebook ISBN 9780525619918
randomhousebooks.com
Title-page image: © iStockphoto.com
Book design by Dana Leigh Blanchette, adapted for ebook
Cover design: Scott Biel and Ella Laytham
Cover image: © Marta Bevacqua / Trevillion Images
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter One: Annie
Chapter Two: Will
Chapter Three: Carol
Chapter Four: Annie
Chapter Five: Will
Chapter Six: Carol
Chapter Seven: Annie
Chapter Eight: Will
Chapter Nine: Carol
Chapter Ten: Annie
Chapter Eleven: Will
Chapter Twelve: Carol
Chapter Thirteen: Annie
Chapter Fourteen: Will
Chapter Fifteen: Carol
Chapter Sixteen: Annie
Chapter Seventeen: Will
Chapter Eighteen: Carol
Chapter Nineteen: Annie
Chapter Twenty: Will
Chapter Twenty-one: Carol
Chapter Twenty-two: Annie
Chapter Twenty-three: Will
Chapter Twenty-four: Carol
Chapter Twenty-five: Annie
Chapter Twenty-six: Will
Chapter Twenty-seven: Carol
Chapter Twenty-eight: Annie
Chapter Twenty-nine: Will
Chapter Thirty: Carol
Chapter Thirty-one: Annie
Chapter Thirty-two: Will
Chapter Thirty-three: Carol
Chapter Thirty-four: Annie
Chapter Thirty-five: Will
Chapter Thirty-six: Carol
Chapter Thirty-seven: Annie
Chapter Thirty-eight: Will
Chapter Thirty-nine: Carol
Chapter Forty: Annie
Chapter Forty-one: Will
Chapter Forty-two: Carol
Chapter Forty-three: Annie
Chapter Forty-four: Will
Chapter Forty-five: Carol
Chapter Forty-six: Annie
Chapter Forty-seven: Will
Chapter Forty-eight: Carol
The Final Chapter: Annie
Dedication
Acknowledgments
By Nina Sadowsky
About the Author
CHAPTER ONE
ANNIE
I nearly died the day we met.
It was February, just over three years ago. I was in Mammoth for a ski trip with my best friend, Bella. On day one, Bella wiped out on her second run. The next morning, nursing a sore wrist and lump on her head, she said she wanted to take it easy.
When I came back to our condo from the slopes midday to check on her, she informed me she was hitching a ride back to L.A. with another friend. I couldn’t really be angry. She felt like shit and wanted to go home. She volunteered to pay for her half of the rental and told me I should stay, ski, and mingle as she toted her suitcase out the door with her good hand.
I stayed. I skied. I didn’t mingle; I was protecting my battered heart. A man about whom I’d been foolish enough to entertain “happily ever after” fantasies had proved to be a serial cheater. This bruising realization, just as we had neared our first anniversary, had led to Bella’s suggestion of a few days in Mammoth—a girls’ trip, now a solo retreat.
I tried to embrace it. I skied hard. Came back to the condo. Braved the cold to make it out to the hot tub on the deck. Cooked and consumed huge bowls of pasta mixed with decadent, chunky lumps of butter and generous sprinkles of Parmesan cheese. I passed out early, exhausted, and slept deeply.
The day I was to drive back to Los Angeles, snow dumped on Mammoth. Big, fat lazy flakes.
I’m a California girl. First in line to get my learner’s permit the day I turned fifteen and a half. So even though I’d been a (self-styled) demon of the road for twelve years, driving on snow was not in my particular wheelhouse.
Wary of the weather, I got an early start, loading my little Acura, wiping a crust of snow off the windshield, climbing into the car, and blasting the defrosters.
I pulled out cautiously. I found out later that the temperature had dropped into single digits the night before; a thick sheet of ice lay beneath the freshly falling wet snow. As soon as I accelerated, my car slid and skidded, the wheels churning uselessly for purchase. Frantically, I tried to remember what to do in a skid. Turn into it? Away from it?
Panicked, I stomped on the brake. The car fishtailed and spun. As the world twirled before my eyes, I heard a piercing noise and realized I was screaming. After what felt like an endless free fall, the front end of my car slammed broadside into a parked pickup truck with a horrific crash and the whine of metal greeting metal.
The airbag exploded. My head snapped back and then forward. My vision blurred. I blinked and wiped my eyes. My hand came away bloody.
But I was alive. I sat there dazed for a moment, or maybe it was an hour.
A face appeared through the splintered windshield. A man’s face, kind and open, classically handsome, twisted in concern. He opened my car door and leaned in.
“I’m Justin Childs,” he introduced himself. “And it looks like you might need a hand.”
He’s dead now, this man I came to know and love and marry.
I’m a widow.
At the tender age of thirty-one.
That fact, cold, hard, and inescapable, seems distant and absurd, like a tragedy from someone else’s life, not mine.
This wasn’t supposed to happen to me.
My life before Justin’s death wasn’t perfect. I had my fair amount of shit, like anyone else, but I was aware that I enjoyed a lot of relative privilege.
I’m white. I was blessed with appealing looks. I was raised in a solidly middle-class family. I’m well educated. My bio dad took off when I was a baby, and, sure, maybe that left a wound, but my mom remarried and my stepdad, Santi, adopted me when I was a little k
id and I love him like a father. I have perspective is the point. I’ve enjoyed advantages my entire life, and I’m smart enough to recognize how lucky I am.
How lucky I was.
I’m conscious of the drone of the funeral service around me, of the thick lump clogging my throat, the constricting itch of my jet-black pantyhose, the press of fellow mourners around me. Yet I’m also completely isolated, floating above my husband’s funeral as if suspended in a bubble, watching, observing.
I’m seated in the front row, of course. The place of “honor.” On my right is Justin’s brittle bird of a mother, Carol. On my left is Bella, my oldest friend. She wraps a gentle arm around my shoulders, as if she senses me floating away and is trying to tether me to earth.
To Bella’s left are Jahnvi and Sunil; Sunil worked with Justin and the four of us went out together many times. Jahnvi has been particularly kind during this nightmare, parking her kids at her mother’s and coming by to make sure I’ve eaten (usually I haven’t) and to see that I’ve “rested” (not for days).
In fact, every single employee from Justin’s company, Convincer Media, is here, and they’re all genuinely wrecked. Justin was their beloved leader, and they were following him to startup glory. They idolized him, or at least the success he promised them.
The pastor asks us to rise. As I do, I catch a glimpse of Will’s rigid profile at the far end of the row. I know Will must be suffering as much as I am; Justin was his best friend and his business partner, and the three of us were a little family.
What are we now, with Justin gone?
A primal longing for my mother floods me. Mommy. I’m a grown woman, but Justin’s death has rendered me a helpless child.
She’s on her way back to L.A. with my stepfather, Santiago. They were in Hong Kong the day Justin’s body was found, the third stop on a luxurious four-city tour that Justin had gifted them for their twenty-fifth anniversary. The trip was a dream come true for my mom, and I was as delighted as she was when Justin surprised them. The vacation was so specific to Mom, who had always dreamed of going to Asia. It was so extravagant, so thoughtful. So very Justin.
One travel snafu after another has left them stranded in Dallas, with no chance of getting here before tomorrow. Another reason I have to hold it together. I need my mom to promise that it will all be okay.
Even though I know that’s bullshit. Nothing will be okay. Not ever again.
My husband lies stiff and dead in the mahogany coffin in front of me. The police say it was most likely an accident; that Justin was under the influence of Valium, of all things, when his car shot over a tight curve on Mulholland Drive and plummeted down a mountainside. The former I don’t believe; the latter I know is ridiculous. Justin had vices, but Valium wasn’t among them.
None of it seems quite real. Could he have been taking pills without me knowing? His younger brother died from an overdose and Justin was rigidly anti-drug, so if he was, he would have hidden it. Still, I can’t quite see it.
Did he take the pills by mistake? If so, what did he think they were? Or did someone else drug him? Could someone have wanted to hurt Justin? But who? And why?
Or did the police just get it wrong?
Questions churn through my brain, but none of them have easy answers.
For days now, people have been commenting on my stoicism. How well I’m handling everything. As we sit through this service, however, I can tell that those selfsame people are starting to wonder. I must seem cold, emotionless. I just haven’t been able to cry yet.
I’m afraid if I start I’ll never stop. My heart is broken.
This, what I thought was the defining love affair of my life, has ended in devastating grief, a word which now consumes me.
grief [grēf]
noun, deep mental anguish, as from bereavement
synonyms: heartache, angst, pain, misery, woe
* * *
—
My very first love affair was with words. Their heft and power. Their origins and shaded meanings. Their ability to tell a story, promote an agenda, evoke a sentiment, capture a moment, steal a heart. I love the way even the simplest, most everyday words can have so many interpretations and associations, can be shaped by context or perspective. Writing has always been my sustenance.
I haven’t written a single word since Justin died.
I pull my attention from this funeral home, from the rows of mourners and the pastor intoning a prayer, from Justin’s mother weeping to my right, from my hands twisting in my black-clad lap. I sink back into the memory of the first time I met him: joyously, brilliantly, exceptionally alive.
Shock blurred the details of what happened after Justin introduced himself through my shattered windshield, although the story was told and honed so many times during the course of our relationship that it’s now polished to a gleaming patina.
Justin called 911. Afraid to move me, he climbed into the car and sat next to me, asking questions, first about my well-being and then about myself. By the time the paramedics arrived he had me laughing, his inquiries ranging from my preferred type of soup to my favorite SpongeBob character.
When Justin asked if there was anyone I wanted him to call, I shook my head no. Why worry my mom and Santi in L.A.? Or anyone else for that matter. Everyone I might call was hours away. And I was fine, basically. Fine-ish, anyway.
He rode with me to the hospital, and told the admissions staff he was my brother so that they let him stay with me in the ER’s curtained exam area. Justin kept up his cheerful patter as a nurse cleaned the bloody wound on my head, only drawing silent when the doctor came in to examine me.
In the end, it was nothing more than a mild concussion. Bruises from the restraint of the seatbelt and the airbag. Cuts on my face and head, largely superficial despite the quantity of blood. I glanced down at my blood-soaked clothes and my stomach curdled.
“Head wounds tend to bleed more than you’d expect,” the doctor kindly reassured me.
I was lucky, that’s what everyone said. A girl like me, I’m supposed to be lucky.
As the pastor asks us to stand, I touch two soft fingertips to the jagged scar that runs through my right eyebrow, an uneven white line that bisects my dark brow and gives me an unintentionally alternative look. It occurs to me that while I’ve stood and sat on command, I’ve not heard a word of this service.
Oh well. This is all mostly for the benefit of Justin’s mother, Carol, anyway. It bears no connection to my private grief. I let her take over the planning of the service without thinking twice, relieved to let that burden go.
* * *
—
I was released from the hospital with instructions to take it easy. Justin took control, collecting my discharge paperwork and then sitting with me until I felt steady enough to leave. He called a cab to take us back to the scene of the accident, but my car had been towed away along with the pickup it had struck.
“All my stuff’s in there,” I choked out. I felt irrationally panicky about having to stay in my bloody clothes.
I let Justin bundle me into his Jeep, which was parked nearby, and drive me to his hotel. He escorted me into the hotel shop and purchased a set of clean clothes for me. Waited for me outside the ladies’ room while I changed and bundled my blood-stiffened clothes into the plastic shopping bag.
I stared at my face in the bathroom mirror. Bandaged and swollen, I looked like a distorted cubist version of myself. My knees buckled and I grabbed the edge of the sink for support. I splashed cold water on my face. Smoothed my hair and dabbed at dried blood with handfuls of wet paper towels. Licked my dry lips.
This is as good as it’s going to get. I took a deep breath and tottered out of the bathroom.
Justin led me into the hotel’s cozy bar: roaring fireplace, welcoming couches in cracked leather, mellow golden lighting. He tucked a p
illow behind my head and a soft knitted throw around my legs. He ordered a brandy for himself and a hot chocolate for me, all the while enveloping me in a soothing, charming waterfall of words.
It didn’t occur to me to ask why this complete stranger was being so solicitous. I’m one of the lucky ones; I was used to the world treating me kindly. Or at least I was back then. Clearly, my luck has shifted.
He told me he was also up from L.A., where he now lived, but was originally from New York. He had been in Mammoth with friends, like me, but decided to stay an extra couple of days after they went back. I told him about Bella. He made a joke about injuring myself to make Bella feel guilty for leaving. I asked what he was going to do to make his friends feel guilty. He looked deeply into my eyes and said he wasn’t going to make them feel guilty, but he was sure as hell they were going to be jealous.
My face went hot. His intensity. I forgot I was battered and bruised. He made me feel beautiful, special, extraordinary.
I feel my face flush again here in the funeral parlor as I remember the moment.
Maybe that’s why I can’t cry, why I’ve stonewalled myself into denial. If I start to grieve, I will inevitably move through all of grief’s agonizing stages, on through to acceptance. And I don’t want to accept it. I don’t want to move on.
CHAPTER TWO
WILL
Just say yes.
How many times did I hear those words from Justin’s lips? He had a way of drawing you into whatever scheme he cooked up, no matter how crazy, with his unquenchable energy and infectious optimism.
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