The Book Doctor: A Psychological Thriller

by Britney King

  This is truly an Eve thing to say. As though all of our problems could be solved, if only I could play nice and make friends. Lifting my whiskey, I take a swig. “He’s here for work. I’m afraid we haven’t had a lot of time for chit-chat.”

  “George,” she says, a hint of warning in her voice. “Please.”

  “What?” I place the glass on the table and then hold my hands up, palms facing her.

  “Please don’t let your pride fuck this up.”

  The following afternoon, once again, I find Eve at the kitchen table, Liam sitting across from her. He hasn’t mentioned yesterday’s conversation, nor did I ask. Stretching on my tiptoes, I crane my neck, straining to hear what they are laughing about. I must lean the wrong way too quickly because the movement causes me to pull something in my neck. I curse myself for installing double-paned windows, for aging, for allowing him here in the first place. He says something to Eve and she smiles. I can see it in her eyes. She is smitten.

  That night over dinner, Eve is different. Not low, but not high, either, and I can tell we’re thinking the same thing, wondering how long this is going to last. This morning, she put on makeup and curled her hair. The last time she did that was 486 days ago. I checked. It’s hard to look at her. Not because I don’t want to, but on account of my neck.

  Joni left a bag of frozen peas out for me, to go along with my dinner. I press them against my forehead.

  “How’s the book coming?” Eve asks, carefully picking at her dinner salad.

  I stand and shuffle around the table, taking my peas and my dinner plate to the seat opposite of her. This way I can make eye contact. “It’s getting there.”

  Her eyelids lower, her thick, dark lashes on display. Eve does not like to be lied to. “Why won’t you let him help? Isn’t that what he’s here for?”

  “He is helping, clearly.”

  “George.”

  “What?”

  “Answer the question.”

  “I did…” Stabbing at a piece of ribeye, I stuff it in my mouth. “Did he say that?” I ask, in between chews. “That I wasn’t letting him help?”

  “He didn’t have to.”

  “Well, see…” I say, letting the fork fall onto the plate. “Then how can you know?”

  “I know because he’s bored out of his mind, George. And he’s in love.”

  “So?” Sometimes Eve tries to combine two ideas that make no sense.

  Now she’s glaring at me like I’m the crazy one. “So. Don’t you remember what it’s like?”

  Reaching for my spoon, I practically shove a pile of mashed potatoes into my mouth. “Hmmm.”

  “To be in love, George. Remember?”

  Eve expects everyone around her to see what she sees. This will be no different. “What are you trying to say?”

  “I’m trying to say—I’ve asked him to move in.”

  I drop the spoon and look her dead in the eye, neck pain be damned. “You what?”

  “I offered him the cottage.”

  “Eve. You—”

  “It’s not like anyone’s using it. He’s trying to help you.” She sighs heavily. “Can’t you see?”

  Lifting my drink to my lips, I avert my gaze. “Who said I needed help?”

  “It’s obvious,” she says, taking the glass from my hand.

  “To who? To you?” I don’t mean it to be a dig, but the liquor runs warm through my veins, and I know how Eve feels about a one-sided fight.

  She takes my chin in her hand and forces me to look at her. “To everyone.”

  Two days later, on a Monday, a breezy, early summer day, Liam Martin shows up with his belongings and moves into the cottage, 862 steps from our front door. Eve was right. It hasn’t been used in awhile. She spent the better part of the weekend cleaning it out. I spent the better part of the weekend avoiding her, suddenly feeling very motivated to get this book finished and turned in.

  To further complicate matters, she moved her belongings from downstairs back to our bedroom. “It’ll be fine,” she told me when I questioned her. “You’ll see.”

  I didn’t want to see. I knew how seeing usually turned out.

  “Wait until you see what I’ve done with the cottage. You’re going to love it!”

  I wanted to tell her I liked it before, that it was fine as it was. But I said nothing. The cottage is mine. I had it built not long after we bought the house. Eve never much cared for it. In those days, we had more help, and I needed somewhere quiet to write, as the boys were young.

  I think of Liam, how he is roughly the age that our oldest would have been, and I wonder if this is why Eve is so fascinated with him.

  Liam didn’t ask me if it was okay, his moving in, but I know my wife. She can be very persuasive when she wants to be.

  After Joni let him in and he climbed the steps to the office, taking them two by two, he greeted me with, “Howdy neighbor.”

  “Funny.”

  “Don’t worry, old man. We’ll get a lot more done this way.” He grinned proudly. “Just think—I’ll be out of your hair before you know it.”

  I have no idea if he was trying to force my hand, or if for him it was mere convenience. I only know that the move was very, very clever.

  Chapter Eight

  I’m finishing up my normal afternoon walk, six miles, three one way and three back, when I spot him. I’m just about to round the hill when my heart sinks. The boy is a complication I don’t need, not today. Tyson…or is it Jason? It’s Jason, I think. Something like that.

  I can’t recall.

  He’s dirty today, as he often is, but he smiles when he sees me. Not a surprised kind of smile. He isn’t shocked to see me, the way I am to see him. His smile is the familiar kind.

  There’s a farm up the road—a term to be used loosely—where the boy and his family live. By family, I mean there’s a mom, and what you could call a dad, and maybe four or five kids. Hard to say, seeing as I try not to get too close.

  He’s perched on a guardrail, just off the two-lane road, staring in my direction. The closer I get, the worse it looks. His nose is runny, his cheeks are flushed, and his mess of black hair is sweaty and matted to his head. His shoes are worn through and on the wrong feet. It’s unusually warm out today. Nevertheless, he’s happier to see me than I am to see him. He has yet to learn what I know about life.

  My mother’s words ring in my ears. Just remember, George, she used to say, not everyone has had the same good fortune you’ve had.

  “Hello,” I tell him, with a slight wave. “Why dontcha come over here…back away from the road.”

  He looks at me almost shyly and then nods, like this is the most sensible thing he’s heard all day. Sadly, it probably is.

  His shirt is damp with sweat. His shorts are two sizes too small. He holds his tiny hand up toward the sun, toward me. He’s eager to show off something he has found. A dandelion, I see. Satisfied by the expression on my face, he blows hard, giggling as the seeds scatter in the wind.

  “Come on,” I say. “Better get you home.” He’s walked further today than I’ve seen before, and this is concerning.

  “How’s your mom?” I ask, knowing he’s too young to give me a proper answer. I’m guessing he’s around three, so he can speak words. But from what I can tell, he isn’t yet speaking in proper sentences. His mother is a CNA at the local nursing home, and also a waitress at the diner, and his father is a friend of the bottle.

  There isn’t a lot going on out here, which means word travels fast among the locals. And word has it the kid’s dad is in and out of jail, mostly for domestic abuse. But also quite often for petty theft.

  “Here,” I say, picking him up. I sling him over my shoulders the way he likes. “Let’s get there before the sun goes down, huh?”

  As usual, I drop the boy at the gate. Only once, the first time, did I walk him up to the door.

  I don’t know what I had expected, but I don’t think it was to come nose to nose with the barr
el of a shotgun.

  Today is only different in that his father sits on a broken-down couch, on his broken-down porch, that’s barely attached to his broken-down house. He’s sipping a bottle of beer, a cigarette hanging from his lips, a shotgun slung across his lap. His eyes are trained on me, waiting, wishing—hoping?—I’ll cross the fence line. The boy releases my hand and starts off toward his father before turning back with a crooked smile and a salute. I wonder if his old man taught him that? Probably the only positive behavior he’s taught him.

  I watch him walk up onto the bowed and rotting porch and skip past his father through a half-hung screen door. I wonder if I’ll see him tomorrow. I wonder what will become of him. I wonder if he’ll ever make it out of here. I’d like to think so. I’d like to believe that he has a fair shot.

  His father trains the gun on me and fake fires, letting the barrel float up toward the sky. He laughs maniacally, slapping his hand on his thigh, as dust flies from his filthy pants.

  The boy comes out onto the porch and stares at his dad. He laughs in echo, just because it seems like the right thing to do. It’s a beautiful sort of madness, thinking…or rather believing…that anything will ever change.

  Chapter Nine

  Eve straightens my bowtie. “You know I hate these things.”

  “It’s good for you,” she says, rolling her eyes. “You need to get out of here every now and again.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  “Don’t pout, love.” She pulls tautly on my collar, adjusting the tie’s position, temporarily cutting off my oxygen supply. “It doesn’t suit you.”

  Tilting her head in one direction and then another, she checks her work. “I want you to go and have fun.”

  “There’s nothing about this that I find fun.”

  “Oh, come on.” Taking me by the shoulders, she turns me so that I face the mirror. “You’re getting an award, not going to a funeral. Would it really kill you to show a little appreciation?”

  “It might.”

  “It’s dinner, George. A fancy dinner. I’m sure you’ll manage.”

  “I’d manage better if you’d come along.”

  “I’m sorry. But I’m not feeling—”

  “Your head. I know. You’ve said it a thousand times.”

  “You don’t have to sound so bitter. When’s the last time you had a migraine?”

  I glance down at my watch. “About ninety minutes from now.”

  She swats at me and I duck. “I swear you act like you’re eighty-nine, not fifty-nine.”

  “Black tie events make me feel eighty-nine.”

  “Just go. Act gracious. Don’t complain. Then come home,” she tells me with a smile. “I promise to make it worth your while.”

  The car picks me up at six sharp. I’ve asked Liam along, God knows why, except for the fact that apparently Eve is God, because she suggested it.

  I couldn’t exactly say no, seeing that she said it right in front of him, and he was also invited by the Writer’s Guild.

  So here we are sharing the town car the coordinators sent. Here we are acting like proper friends. I guess this is why he takes the liberty to test my limits.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you about the boys.”

  Staring out the window, it never ceases to amaze me how much things can change when you aren’t looking. “The who?”

  “Your children.”

  The landscape fades into a mirage, blurred together and out of focus. My throat goes dry. Not just out of shock but also because it’s been so long since those words were used in the same sentence. “I don’t think that’s any of your business.”

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “You’re right. I understand. It must be very difficult to talk about.”

  “You could never understand.” I feel an anger rising in me, a sense of injustice that I haven’t felt in quite some time.

  “You’re not the first person to know grief, George. And I hate to break it to you, but you won’t be the last.”

  I don’t answer. He’s looking for a fight, and I’m not interested in competing in a suffering contest.

  “It’s just—” he presses. “I think maybe it would help your writing.”

  I imagine taking my elbow and smashing him in the face.

  But then I realize that it wasn’t just my imagination, because suddenly his nose is pouring blood and it’s running down the front of his tux. “It’s okay,” he says after awhile. “I probably deserved that.”

  Resting my forehead against the window, I do my best to push the memories to the furthest corners of my mind.

  “Eve has been telling me stories. It’s been really good for her.”

  “Are you really telling me what you think is good for my wife?”

  “You’re living in a prison, George. And pretty soon its walls are going to come tumbling down around you.”

  “And you know all about that too, I presume.”

  “You’d be surprised by the things I know.”

  I suspect he isn’t wrong about that, but there’s no sense in admitting it, so I don’t say anything.

  “You were very successful once,” he remarks, deftly changing the subject, pulling something out of my wife’s bag of tricks. “I’d like that for you again. And I know, without a doubt, she wants that too. I think you owe it to her. And to your children.”

  I turn to him, years of pent-up rage bubbling to the surface. “You’re just a punk kid who hides behind other people’s work. What would you know about what anybody deserves?”

  He offers an infuriating smile. “Believe me, I know enough.”

  The nerve of that smug little bastard. I couldn’t get out of that car fast enough. I was afraid if the drive lasted any longer I would have killed him. Sitting in silence in a confined space, plotting a person’s death, mustering restraint you’re not sure you have, is no small feat.

  My first stop was the bar. I couldn’t wait to have a drink. I don’t remember most of the event. I only remember Liam and his goddamned popularity. Certainly, I had underestimated him. He knew everyone worth knowing and then some. By the time we took our seats, I knew that if one more person told me how lucky I was to be working with such talent, I was liable to cause a scene.

  I’ve never murdered a person before, not in real life, and it’s probably best not to start now, considering my advanced age.

  When they call my name for the award, it takes me a second to get out of my seat, only I can’t blame that on being over the hill but rather nearly under the table.

  I manage to make it up to the stage unscathed despite the fact that I’ve had too many drinks to count. I’m pretty sure I don’t even slur my words throughout the entirety of my acceptance speech. Also no small feat considering that I hadn’t even rehearsed it.

  I don’t recall exactly what I said, except that I give some utterly charming story of how I pulled my neck pursuing a long list of honey-do’s and how it’s all in a day’s work. Ah, the life of a writer.

  The whole thing is entirely a waste of time, but everyone’s either too drunk or too bored or too ready for it to be over with, and I get a very gratifying round of applause and cheering.

  I’m standing at the bar afterward, feeling pretty good, thinking about everyone I’ve ever encountered in life. Like the waiter at the diner who was the first to learn I got a book deal. Where is he now?

  Like the flight attendant who brought me a drink without my asking the first time I got a scathing review. What’s she up to?

  Or the lady in the airport terminal who received some very bad news by text, and everyone around her, we all stared at our shoes out of respect.

  Like the publicist who I always carried a torch for, who was there when I learned I’d hit the New York Times list for the first time. She ordered champagne and told an apathetic waitress, “We’re celebrating!”

  Or the father I passed kneeling in the hallway of the labor and delivery wing, who would not be wheeling his wife and chil
d out of the hospital. Did he remarry? Did he have another? Could he imagine I still think about him twenty-three years later?

  It’s almost too much, thinking about it now, thinking about how many significant life moments we share with people we will probably never see again. Whether we like it or not, we’re all walking through life carrying snippets of each other’s stories woven neatly in the fabric of who we have become.

  “George Dawson.”

  I’ve just taken hold of my drink when I feel a hand on my forearm. I turn to see a striking blonde standing at my heel.

  “Guilty,” I say, which sounds every bit as obnoxious as it is.

  “I wanted to congratulate you in person.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’m a big fan. Well, my father was a big fan.” She laughs nervously, and I find it surprising that someone so beautiful could ever feel such a thing. But then, I know women. “So I guess, in a way, that makes me a big fan too.”

  “Does it?”

  “I’ve read a few of your more recent works. Although, I have to confess it’s been awhile.”

  The bartender stares at us both as though there’s nothing he hasn’t heard. She leans over me. “Can I get a glass of champagne?”

  The man fills a flute to the brim. The woman glances at the glass and then back at me. “Actually, make that two.”

  “You look familiar,” I say, which is maybe the whiskey talking or maybe a little truth. It’s hard to say.

  The truth is she looks like Jessica Rabbit. A little overdone. But gorgeous nonetheless.

  “People say I look like Heidi Klum.”

  I don’t see it. “Ah, yes. That’s it.”

  “I have a room upstairs…”

  “I have a car waiting to take me home.”

  Her smile fades. “I see.”

  “It was nice to meet you—” I realize I haven’t caught her name.

  “Leslie.”

  “Nice to meet you—Leslie.”