by Dianne Dixon
Morgan saw how easy Ava was in the way she moved, perfectly comfortable in her own skin. Morgan envied that. And immediately wanted to get rid of Ava. “It’s nice you’re available to be hired on such short notice, but—”
“There is no hiring here. No money involved.” Ava’s tone was mild. “Ali is my dear friend. A sister of my soul.”
Hearing Ava refer to Ali as a sister grated on Morgan and turned her bitchy. She wanted to put Ava in her place. “All I can tell you is…I’m sure they plan to pay you…like any other worker. I’ll remind Matt to write you a check.” Morgan gestured toward the entryway to the dining room. “By the way, where is my brother-in-law?”
The expression in Ava’s eyes had changed, but her tone remained agreeable. “Your sister’s husband is upstairs. In the room that will be his study. The workmen are installing the cable for his television and computers. There have been people here all day…movers, locksmiths, electricians. Do you want me to tell him you are also here?”
Ava’s refusal to be rattled was only hardening Morgan’s determination to win. “I have a few things from the apartment in my car. Towels and the vacuum cleaner, some other stuff. Why don’t you…” Morgan was about to tell Ava to run out and fetch the items but changed her mind. It would only prolong Ava’s time in Ali’s house.
“You know what? While I get everything and put it away, why don’t you finish up in here? Then you can leave, Ava. My sister wants it to be just us in the house this evening. Just family.”
Even as the words came out of her mouth, Morgan was ashamed—her arms crossed, her fingernails digging into the crooks of her elbows.
She was acting like a scared little shrew. She wanted to be something so much better.
• • •
While Morgan took the vacuum cleaner from the trunk of her car, along with other items from the apartment, and put them away in Ali’s house, Ava quietly departed.
When Morgan came back into the kitchen, the phone was ringing. She reached for it, inadvertently hitting the speaker button. The call was in the process of going to voice mail—Jessica saying, “Ali, I’ve been calling all day. Why aren’t you answering? Anyway, just want to tell you I had a blast last night at your housewarming. Wish I hadn’t left early. Logan’s flight ended up getting totally canceled. He was stuck in San Francisco all night. I never did get laid.”
Morgan reached for the receiver, intending to answer the call, while Jessica was chirping, “You know my number. Use it. I want to come help unpack and decorate.” By the time Morgan picked up the phone, Jessica was gone. Morgan was relieved. She didn’t like interacting with women like Jessica; they were always moving too fast. Morgan could never find a way to keep up.
After deleting the message, she made a word-for-word note of Jessica’s call, planning to use it as an excuse to go upstairs and talk to Ali. But before she could do it, Matt walked into the room.
He looked exhausted. He passed Morgan without speaking to her, going directly to the refrigerator and opening it. The only thing inside was a serving tray containing a slender bottle of mineral water, a dish of lemon slices, a chilled bowl of the signature pear-ginger soup from JOY, and a lightly dressed jicama salad. There was also creamy rice pudding, sprinkled with cinnamon and spooned into a delicately enameled yellow cup.
Matt picked up the tray. As the refrigerator door swung shut, he said, “Ava brought this from the restaurant for Ali. I’m going to take it up to her now. She hasn’t eaten all day.”
Morgan was about to say “But I brought pizza” and could hear how silly it would sound. Pizza wasn’t exactly in the same food league as the offerings on the tray Matt was holding. But Morgan needed to include herself, to regain her footing in Ali’s life.
“Wait! Bring the tray over here.” She grabbed the pizza box, snatched two paper plates from the kitchen counter, and put them on the table. “We’ll all eat together. There’s no reason Ali can’t come downstairs to enjoy her fancy gourmet treat. You and I can share the pizza.” Morgan hurried across the kitchen telling Matt, “I’ll run upstairs and get my sister.”
He stopped her. “Leave Ali alone, Morgan. She isn’t feeling well. She needs to rest.”
Morgan felt criticized, rejected—and it hurt. “Why the big need for rest? Ali was perfectly fine yesterday. Throwing a party and texting old boyfriends. How come today, out of nowhere, she’s too weak to sit at a dinner table? Or even pick up the phone when it rings?”
Matt wasn’t listening. He was already leaving the room. “Ali has the flu, Morgan. She came down with it late last night. We appreciate everything you’ve done. Now it’s time for you to go.” The look on Matt’s face said he wasn’t interested in any further discussion.
Watching him climb the stairs, Morgan was nursing a hurt that was killing her. Without coming out and saying it, Matt had told her the same thing she’d just told Ava: You’re not wanted in this house.
Morgan was scared. And outraged.
She listened to Matt’s footsteps crossing the hallway on the second floor, going into and out of the master bedroom. When she heard him enter his study and close the door, she ran for the stairs. To plead with Ali to take her back. Love her. And make her safe again.
• • •
The pizza receipt landed on the floor at the foot of the bed. It wasn’t what Morgan had intended. She’d opened the door in such a rush that the receipt had gone flying out of her hand. As if she’d thrown it at Ali. When what she wanted to do was simply show it to Ali—show her that Ava wasn’t the only one who had thought about taking care of dinner.
The receipt ended up a few feet from the chair where Ali was sitting. She looked down at it. “What’s that?”
The tone in Ali’s voice was strange, empty. Morgan ran across the room, bending down and grabbing the crumpled slip of paper, telling Ali, “It’s nothing. It’s a receipt for the pizza I bought. For your dinner, but—”
“Not now, Morgan.” Ali’s voice had abruptly turned ice-cold. It startled Morgan, kept her silent.
The chair Ali was in was close to the window. The tray Matt had taken from the refrigerator was on a nearby table, the water glass half-empty, the food untouched. Behind Ali, the wall was a delicate robin’s-egg blue. The furniture and bedding that surrounded her were brand-new. White and pillowy. Like mounds of freshly whipped cream. Against that backdrop, Ali’s ankle-length nightgown—long-sleeved, high-necked, and dolomite gray—looked like a storm cloud, in the blue and white of a summer sky. The gown’s somber cut and color only emphasized how deathly pale Ali was.
Still crouched on the floor, clutching the receipt, Morgan was thinking about this morning, when Matt called with the story about Ali having the flu. And suddenly she knew it was a lie. Whatever was wrong with Ali had nothing to do with a cough or a fever. “Tell me,” Morgan said. “I want to know.”
Again, an ice-cold response. “Go away. I’ll pay you for the pizza later.”
“I didn’t come up here for pizza money. And I’m not going anywhere till you tell me what’s wrong.” There was only one emotion in Morgan now—heartfelt concern for her sister.
Ali’s reply was a growl. “Get out.” She sounded like she’d been scalded—all softness burned away. All the tenderness gone.
It was a moment of pure terror for Morgan. And the terror came out as a fear-filled rant. “You’re telling me to get out? After all the grunt work I did for you today, that’s what you have the nerve to say? How dare you? You treat strangers, and their babies, like they live here, like they’re members of your family. And you tell me to get out?”
Ali looked away, expressionless.
What Morgan was seeing was tearing her apart. Ali had moved on. Moved up. Into a big house and a new marriage and a friendship with someone who was “a sister of her soul.” Ali had escaped into a new world, had left Morgan locked out, abandoned.
Choking on t
ears, Morgan shouted, “Fuck you while you sit up here in the guest room of your own house like some kind of visiting queen. Go to hell, Ali. You’re nothing but a spoiled, selfish bitch!”
While those words were being said, Matt ran into the room, crossing it in a blur—grabbing Morgan and throwing her out into the hallway.
She hit the wall, bounced off it, and fell to the floor. It took her a while to catch her breath. When she went back into the bedroom, her arms were crossed. Her fingernails, deep in the crooks of her elbows, were drawing blood.
Morgan looked at Ali. Then at Matt. “I hope whatever’s wrong with my sister is something awful. You two deserve it.”
Matt
Matt listened to Morgan’s footsteps echoing down the stairs.
The glare Ali was giving him was murderous. “Don’t…ever again…even think of laying a hand on my sister.”
The hostility in Ali startled Matt. He didn’t try to touch her, didn’t even look at her as he said, “I was trying to protect you. Protect my family. It’s what I’m supposed to do.”
His voice was a whisper. One part of Matt was there in the room with Ali, while another part of him had traveled back into the brutality of his past, bringing tears to his eyes. He quickly wiped the tears away, hoping Ali hadn’t seen them.
If she had, she was ignoring them. She’d walked away from Matt, crossing to the bed and sitting on its edge. He didn’t quite know what to do. It took him a long time to decide to go and sit next to her. As soon as he did, Ali stood up and went to the other side of the room.
“We need to talk about what happened to you,” he said.
Ali touched the place where her attacker’s horseshoe belt buckle had bruised her hip. “What do you want me to say?”
Matt shook his head, not sure how to answer.
From downstairs, there was the sound of the kitchen door banging shut—and Morgan’s car leaving the driveway, tires screaming.
Matt could hear the baffled sorrow in Ali’s voice as she asked, “Do you know what I figured out while I was sitting in here today, thinking about my rape?”
“No.” He’d cringed when Ali said the word rape.
“Just because I don’t want anyone else to know what happened to me,” Ali said, “doesn’t mean I don’t know what happened. I was raped. And you know what I figured out about that?” Ali’s words were slow and detached. “You should’ve fixed the lock. And you should’ve been in the apartment with me. Instead, you were busy taking care of one of your coworkers…giving her a ride home because she had too much to drink.” Unblinking, Ali looked directly at Matt. “What happened to me was your fault.”
A fragment of memory raced into Matt’s mind—a horrible secret he’d never forgotten. He’d jammed a girl who trusted him into a boxlike space that smelled of garbage and piss. Then, later, there had been that angry voice warning him, “You’re a fuckup and a lightweight. No woman will ever feel safe with you.”
Matt lowered his head. Not wanting Ali to see in his eyes the memories of the other things, awful things, that were also his fault.
Three hundred twenty-three miles from 76 Paradise Lane,
two days later, a week before Christmas.
Fury.
Droplets of crimson-red blood on a blanket of snow.
And the letter L.
Matt
The knocking had started again. A soft female voice was saying, “Are you in there? They want you at the run-through. You need to get down to the stage right away.”
Matt ignored the woman on the other side of the door and stared at the framed photograph on his desktop—the picture of Ali, taken in Newport, minutes after he’d proposed to her. The backdrop was the night sky. The lighting was the iridescence from a dozen glowing sparklers. Ali. Showing off her engagement ring and blowing a kiss to the camera.
After Matt had driven Ali to her restaurant a little while ago, he had come directly here, to his office. A room where every wall was lined with shelves crowded with books. There was only one exception—at the back of the room, on an inaccessible bottom shelf, there was a solitary row of scripts from his television show. That half-hidden row of scripts was the sole indication that Matt’s office was on a Hollywood production lot, not a college campus.
From the moment he sat down at his desk, he’d been blank, numb. The worry over Ali’s rape and all the things he’d done wrong were keeping Matt deaf and blind to what was going on around him. Ringing phones. Emails accumulating on his computer. And those persistent knocks on his door.
The knocking stopped, and for a few seconds the office was silent. Then. Out of the blue. A thundering boom. Somebody on the other side of the door had banged a fist against it.
The door flew open, and Aidan stormed into the room. Frowning at the bookish decor. “Professor, I’ve come to remind you…we have a television show to run. Get your high-class ass in gear.”
Matt didn’t say a word. He didn’t have the strength.
Aidan dropped onto the sofa, lit a cigarette. “Right, then. Let’s discuss what I’m assuming is your disappointment in our less-than-illustrious show.” He put his feet up on the coffee table in front of the sofa. Casually directing the cigarette smoke, and his words, toward the ceiling. “The stories are crap. The dialogue is crap. That’s because most of the writing is supervised by a co-executive producer who’s a world-class creator of crap. An individual neither of us would wipe our literary boots on. However—”
There had been another knock at the door, a timid one.
And Aidan shouted, “For fuck’s sake, you little rabbit, just open the bloody thing and say what you’ve come to say.”
The door inched open. The person peeking into the room was barely five feet tall. Very slender. With a captivating smile, eyes that were piercing green, and hair that was curly and strawberry blond. She looked like a remarkably attractive elf.
This was the same woman who had knocked earlier to say that Matt was wanted downstairs. And now, as she caught sight of him, she seemed flustered, at a loss for words.
Aidan laughed. “Open your little rosebud mouth, Danielle, and tell us what the hell you want.”
Danielle was looking at Matt as she said, “The run-through for this week’s show… They need you downstairs.” She glanced at Aidan. “Both of you.”
As she left, her focus was on Matt. The look she gave him was full of concern. It was evident that she was worried about him.
Matt didn’t care.
Blowing smoke rings and watching them float toward the ceiling, Aidan said, “What I need you to remember is that the crap on our show is extremely popular crap. Crap that’s about to make a lot of people rich, including you.”
For the first time since he entered the room, Aidan looked directly at Matt, and he seemed shocked. “Bloody hell. What’s going on? You look like a man who’s fallen into his own grave.” Aidan rapidly stubbed out his cigarette.
“It’s Ali,” Matt said.
At the mention of Ali’s name, Aidan leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands tightly clasped. “What about Ali?”
“I can’t give you the details. I promised her I wouldn’t.”
“Why would she specifically not want me to know?”
“She doesn’t want anyone to know.” Matt’s jaw was tight. A muscle in his cheek was quivering.
Aidan glanced away, looking uncomfortable.
“The thing that happened, happened four days ago. She says she’ll never forgive me, Aidan. Says she expects me to pay for it for the rest of my life.”
Aidan’s body language was tense, his tone cautious. “So we’re talking about something you did to her?”
“Let’s just say I made it possible.”
“In what way?” Aidan lit another cigarette, a slight tremor in his hands.
Matt came around the desk to a chair dire
ctly across from Aidan. “It’s like this…like a good-looking woman walking down a sidewalk in a tight, red dress. And a guy behind the wheel of an SUV takes his eyes off the road, for a split second, to look at her. And in that split second, a kid chases a ball into the street and the guy runs him over. The guy in the SUV did the damage. But the woman in the red dress made it easy for him to do it.” Matt took a shuddering breath and said, “I made it easy for unforgivable damage to be done to my wife.”
For a long beat, Aidan appeared to be struggling with what he wanted to say. Then he told Matt, “If you contributed to whatever it was that hurt Ali, maybe you do owe her…for a while. But if what happened wasn’t a thing you planned, or a thing you wanted, at some point it’s only right she calls the debt settled and lets you be free of it.”
“I don’t deserve to be free of it.” Matt wasn’t thinking only about Ali’s rape; he was thinking about the other crimes, the ones he’d worked so hard to hide.
He was thinking about those steely fingers closing around his throat, trying to strangle him—the deadly fight in that Manhattan hotel room.
Aidan, meanwhile, was doing a one-handed shuffle of his lighter and cigarette pack. His movements, fluid and distracted, like a preoccupied gambler palming poker chips. “It sounds as if the only thing that really happened was you made a mistake. That’s what human beings do. Isn’t it?”
“It’s bigger than that,” Matt said. “Some debts can’t ever be forgiven. They don’t deserve to be.”
“Your theory is complete rubbish.” Aidan pocketed his cigarette pack and lighter. “Not being able to forgive is the only thing that’s unforgivable.” He waited for Matt to say something. Matt stayed quiet. Aidan stood up, ready to leave. “I’m hoping, for all our sakes, Ali’s a better human being than you’re giving her credit for.”
Then, as Aidan walked out of the room, he told Matt, “Get yourself downstairs. We have work to do.”
Matt didn’t move. He was paralyzed by guilt. And by the disturbing worry that, soon, the secrets he’d tried so hard to keep buried were going to catch up with him.
