The Book Doctor: A Psychological Thriller

by Britney King

  My most important task for the day taken care of, my mind quickly shifted to less pressing matters. To Nick’s wife at home, and his baby, a son just eight weeks old. I wondered what she’ll say when the officers appear at her door. Will she fall to her knees? Or can she manage to keep it together?

  Even if it was the former, she’ll do okay in the end. They both will.

  Maybe I’ll pop by later, just to have a look. I’ll lean over his crib and whisper a very important lesson, one I hope will stick with him: You have to give a person what they need, not what they think they want. I know this better than anyone.

  Chapter Six

  Hunched over my computer, with my beverage of choice next to me, I settle in for the long haul. Tonight I have one mission and one mission only: to seek out everything there is to know about Liam Martin.

  He’s practically still an adolescent, so it shouldn’t be too hard to dig up the kind of info I need online. I probably should have done this already, especially before allowing him into my home. But I am not that young, nor green. If I have learned anything, I have learned it’s best not to cloud first impressions with things you already know.

  Eve stirs in bed. The movement on the monitor catches my eye, the familiar sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach slumping my shoulders. It could be a long night. Depending.

  Picking up the tumbler of Gentleman Jack, I swirl it around the glass. I take just a sip or two at first, but once she’s out of bed, I down the entire thing.

  She hates being down there alone, but it’s safer for her to sleep downstairs. Like most lessons in my life, that one came too late and the hard way.

  I am a writer and still I cannot come up with the words to describe what it’s like to have your wife, your life partner, no longer able to sleep next to you. To describe the feeling is like trying to find a word in a foreign language. It’s strange and hard to grasp. Perhaps it’s similar to how the French don’t say I miss you: they say: tu me manques, which translates to you are missing from me.

  The situation is what it is. I know it’s safer. God, do I know. But what’s safe is rarely easy. This part of her illness—the mania—and the terrors didn’t come as quickly as the rest of it. And even then her episodes usually came forth in the light, so much so that by bedtime she was exhausted and slept well. But like most things, it didn’t last.

  I suggested moving. Eve wouldn’t hear of it. This house, with its long corridors and wood-paneled walls, does not lend itself to comfort at night. It, too, seems to have a story to tell. At night, it whispers tales of the past, things we don’t dare talk about in the light.

  The first time Eve woke in the dark, springing to life like a feral cat, I ended up with a twisted ankle and a broken wrist. Suddenly I was not only a stranger, but an enemy. And still I didn’t learn. It wasn’t until the concussion that I packed her things and moved her downstairs. I’d figured she would protest, but she didn’t— not even when I had to install the padlock on the door to keep her from wandering off in the middle of the night.

  In that way, the Eve of today is nothing like the girl I met all those years ago.

  I first laid eyes on her in English, freshman year of college. She wasn’t my type at all. She was attractive, sure. But she had dark hair, whereas I prefer blondes. She was short, with the body of a gymnast, and I always imagined I’d end up with a tall, curvy type. Also, her neck was strangely long. It’s an odd thing to notice about a person, but it stuck out. That’s what caught my eye initially. This and she was different from the other girls. She arrived early to class and sat near the front. She took copious notes and exited the seminar with her head down, as though she were in a hurry to get somewhere.

  We didn’t have any other classes together, but I sat close to her whenever and wherever I could, sometimes in the library, sometimes in the dining hall. Whenever possible, I aimed for both. I admired the way her eyes crinkled at the corners when she smiled, the way she put her pencil between her teeth when she was deep in concentration. Eve may have been different, but she wasn’t a loner, not like me. And I liked that. She was gregarious and charming, and she was also serious. I could sense that she swung high to low. I think a part of me needed a little of that in my life.

  Toward the middle of our freshman year, as the ground began to thaw and winter slowly began to give over to spring, something shifted. It started with stories of a serial rapist. Tales began to spread around campus, and depending on who told the story, there was either a masked man exposing himself to young coeds or an even more sinister predator lurking about. A monster was grabbing young women from behind, pulling them into the bushes and doing the unthinkable.

  Of course, no one actually knew anyone that this had happened to. Nonetheless, the fear around campus was palpable. Spreading like a virus, life began to change. Soon, male students were asked to accompany female students after dark. Life around campus began to look a little different.

  For me, things changed for the better. This is how I actually came to know Eve. I waited for her in the library, which meant I was often the one tasked with walking her back to her dorm. She seemed annoyed by the fact that circumstances required a chaperone. But given that none of her friends hung around long into the night, nor did that pesky boyfriend of hers, she was stuck with me, and I could tell she did her best to hide her annoyance.

  To my credit, I didn’t try to talk to her on these walks. I did better. I listened. Sometimes, when it was just the two of us left in the library, and she was ready to pack it up and call it a night, I would make her wait, telling her I needed to get in a few more pages. “What are you concentrating so hard on over here?” she asked once, striding up to the table where I was seated.

  Grabbing the paper from my hand, a devious smile spread across her face. I tried to take it back, even as her eyes deftly scanned the page. She was quick. She dodged me and ran, making it halfway across the library before I caught up with her. She wasn’t laughing when I grabbed her wrist and then the paper. “What is this?”

  She looked fragile, frightened maybe, at the very least caught off guard. “It’s nothing.”

  Her brow knitted. “It’s not nothing.”

  “It’s my first novel.”

  “Hmmm.”

  I reached for it, but she held on. “Give it back.”

  “Say please.”

  “Please.”

  Her eyes flickered with a hint of mischief and something else. Something I couldn’t yet name. “Get on your knees.”

  “I’m afraid we don’t know each other well enough for that.”

  She waited for me to say more. When I stepped forward, my frame towering over her, she reluctantly handed the paper back. “You’re strange.”

  I assumed it wasn’t a compliment, so I said nothing. I turned and walked back to my seat.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me what I think?”

  “No.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “Well, fine then. I’ll tell you anyway.”

  “That much I assumed.”

  Perching herself on the edge of the table in front of me, she said, “It needs work.”

  I didn’t look up at her. I couldn’t.

  “But it’s not bad. It’s actually really good.”

  “Good to know.” I stared at the ink blurred on the page. She always did make me feel a little like a leaf in a hurricane.

  “You know what else?”

  This time I couldn’t help it. My eyes met hers. “You’re different.”

  You don’t say. “You have no idea.”

  A wry smile spread across her face. “I like how cocky you are without even trying.”

  “You don’t know me that well,” I replied, like an invitation.

  “You said it’s your first novel. And that, George Dawson, tells me everything I need to know.”

  Three nights later, Eve and her boyfriend were studying two tables over from mine. Every once in awhile she’d glance up and look over in my dire
ction. Usually I pretended not to notice. But not then. I watched her like a challenge.

  Until her boyfriend looked up, nodded my way, and made a comment that caused their entire table to erupt in laughter.

  Not long after, I packed it up.

  There were few things I hated more than seeing them together, and I knew the only direction it could go from there was one none of us wanted. For whatever reason—but most likely because if you imagine the worst specimen of a man possible, he would be it—he left her there in the library alone.

  Eve set out, heading west toward her dorm at 12:18 a.m. By 12:23 a.m. she was attacked from behind. Her attacker drug her twelve feet until he reached a dumpster. He threw her to the ground, pinned her down, and held a knife to her throat.

  She fought like hell. Meanwhile, he had trouble with the buttons on her jeans and, frustrated, he stabbed her three times. Twice in the abdomen. Eve would have bled out had she not army-crawled twenty-two feet to the courtyard before passing out. By the time she was discovered at 2:27 a.m. she’d lost three-fourths of the blood in her body.

  I wasn’t sure if I should go and see her in the hospital. I only knew that I couldn’t not go. When I arrived, her round face was the only thing visible through the sliver of glass on her door. She looked pale and tired. Like the light had gone out in her eyes. Nothing like the girl who had challenged me, holding part of my novel behind her back just a few nights before. Her parents were with her, and I could see her father pacing the floor. The boyfriend was there too.

  My feet suddenly felt cemented to the floor. I could kill him for not staying. For putting her through this. For nearly getting her killed. I decided not to go in. I was only going to stay for a moment, there outside her door, just long enough to see that she was really okay. But then a nurse opened the door, and there I was, looking like a fool with my nose practically pressed to the glass.

  Eve’s eyes met mine, and she smiled faintly. I couldn’t speak. I just stood there with a bouquet of flowers in my hand, the most expensive I could find even though I couldn’t afford them. Back then, I had no idea flowers could even cost that much. But I didn’t care. I’ve never been good with words where she is concerned. It was easier to say what I felt without them.

  “You didn’t have to come.”

  The air in the room shifted before it felt as though it had been sucked out altogether.

  The nurse smiled, scooted out the door, and seemed to take any remaining oxygen with her. Eve’s father looked worried as he sized me up. He looked as though every plan he’d ever had for his daughter had just flown out the window. Her mother said, “Who’s this?”

  “George,” Eve said. She glanced over at her father. “He’s my study buddy.”

  “The one who usually walks her home,” the boyfriend said.

  I balled my fists and dug my nails into my palms. I rehearsed the breathing techniques I’d read about. I counted to ten once, and then back down again. Anything to avoid punching him in the face.

  I laid the flowers at Eve’s side and then shuffled backward toward the door. No one said anything after that. Not until her mother suggested that she and Eve’s father make a coffee run. Then it was just the three of us —and my rage—in the room.

  “I’m sorry this happened,” I said to Eve.

  “At least they caught the bastard,” the boyfriend mumbled.

  “I can’t have children,” Eve said, looking from me to Chase or Chance or whatever his name was.

  “That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “It’s okay,” she told me as she fisted the hospital blanket, eventually knotting it around her fingers until her knuckles turned white. “It’s good to get your back up against the wall from time to time.”

  I didn’t know the full extent of what that meant back then, which was probably for the best. Time has its own way of breaking us in.

  Chapter Seven

  Liam Martin comes back the next day and the next day and the next. We don’t get much work done. Not at first. For the most part, he sits on the couch and stares at his phone while I sit at my desk, pretending to type something worth reading. What I’m actually doing is expanding upon my knowledge, continuing to learn everything I can about the man sitting across from me. He dresses funny, that much I can see. In his custom tweed suits and shiny shoes, his nice hair and stoic demeanor, he has the air of old money.

  With the power of Google, I quickly become a keyboard warrior, moving onto other things that aren’t as obvious. So far, I’ve learned about the other novels he’s worked on, and the other authors he’s worked with. Even if he only offered up a minimal contribution, he’s good. No one is denying that.

  Once I’ve ingested the easy stuff, I move on. Currently, I’m learning about his education, the awards he won in junior high, his stint on the debate team, as well as his starting position on the rugby team. An all-American, upper middle-class childhood by all accounts. Classic and rather boring, sadly.

  This routine, my endless searches, and his endless phone scrolling, it goes on for the better part of our first week together. A writer must obsess over all manner of things. Eventually though, he grows impatient. I’m impressed, I’ll admit. I don’t think I’d have been so cordial or as quiet given the same set of circumstances. But then, he’s too young to know. Life goes by stunningly quick.

  One day as I’m scanning through the last novel he ghost wrote, he clears his throat. “At what point can I expect that you’ll show me what you’re working on?”

  “I have yet to decide.”

  “I see.” He makes a clucking sound with his tongue. “In that case, can I at least trouble you for a bit of advice?”

  “I can assure you, I’m the least qualified person to be handing out advice.”

  “Yeah, well—I’m desperate enough that that’s okay.”

  “So you haven’t heard…”

  His brow furrows. “What?”

  “The cheapest commodity on earth is advice.”

  “Please.”

  Suddenly, his manners make him look as desperate as he says he is. I scoot away from my desk and fold my arms, crossing them over my chest. “All right then, shoot.”

  He places his phone beside him and rearranges himself on the sofa, as though contemplating what it is he wants to say. “You’re married, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “I need you to help me understand women.”

  A belly laugh escapes. This is the most humorous and ignorant thing I’ve heard in a long time—and believe me, I’ve heard some things. “Women cannot be understood.”

  Placing his elbows on his knees, he leans forward and rests his face in his hands. “If that’s true, I’m fucked.”

  “Aren’t we all?”

  After digging the heels of his palms into his eyes, he eventually glances up at me. “She got engaged,” he says. “To someone else.”

  “I wouldn’t worry too much.”

  His brow raises. This isn’t what he expected me to say. “And why is that?”

  “Half of all marriages fail.”

  The next day I’m late getting back from my afternoon walk. After closing the gate behind me, I stop to snap a rose from the adjacent bush, a little gift for Eve. I’m headed toward the back door when something shiny in the bay window catches my eye. When I take a closer look, I’m surprised to see Eve seated at the kitchen table, her head thrown back in laughter, the familiar curve of her neck expanding out forever. She looks different, happy even. Like I’ve traveled back in time. At first, I think my eyes must be deceiving me. Eve hasn’t left her bedroom in seven weeks. Cupping my hands against the glass, I peer in. Across from her is Liam. He’s speaking animatedly, gesturing wildly with his hands. Whatever he is saying, Eve is held rapt by it.

  Joni is at the sink pretending to scrub the tea kettle. I knock on the window and wave, but she’s the only one who takes notice. The two of us exchange a glance.

  Later, over dinner, Eve asks me
to explain everything. It’s a good sign. She wants the gaps in her memory filled in.

  I simplify the situation, we discuss the book, the new deadline, and finally, the man who was sent to see that it happens. “So, he’s like a book doctor, then,” she says with a grin, and I can’t recall the last time I’ve seen her so alive, so girlish. This comes with it, her illness, the intense highs and the very low lows. As she sticks a fork full of pasta in her mouth, I try to gauge where we are on the spectrum. You never know. One minute she might be cleaning all of the baseboards in the house with a cotton swab, and the next unable to get out of bed to brush her teeth.

  She can go weeks without even looking at me.

  “He’s here to help me finish the book, yes,” I tell her gently. It’s important to tread carefully, not to cast anything her way that could be misconstrued. Nothing that could lead to feelings of guilt.

  But Eve is smart. “It’s been bad, I know.” She slurps a wayward piece of spaghetti. “I’m sorry.”

  “You have nothing to be sorry for,” I say, but it’s one of those small lies in a marriage, the kind you’re not sure why you bother keeping up with.

  “I like him,” she confesses. I knew that, of course. But it doesn’t make it any less surprising to hear. Eve is not easily won over. Not even on an upswing. “He’s interesting. He’s been a lot of places. He’s seen a lot.”

  “Has he?”

  She laughs and then leans forward, placing her hand on my thigh. It’s more habit than anything, but it stirs something in me. It has been awhile. “You don’t know?”

  “Know what?”

  She peers at me through narrowed eyes, her expression equally serious and playful. She looks at me knowingly. It scares me sometimes how much you can understand the person you’re sharing a life with and also not. “You haven’t even bothered to get to know him.”