The Two Lila Bennetts

by Fenton, Liz

  “I never should have told you. I’m so very sorry. I got drunk, and it was the anniversary of his death, and it came out. I promise it wasn’t any more calculated than that.” She starts to sob. “Lila?”

  I don’t answer. Instead, I suck in a long breath and let it out slowly. I do this again and again.

  “Lila?” My mom says my name again, and her voice cracks.

  “It’s okay, Mom,” I say. Because what else can I do? She’s sorry she said it. I believe her. I’m certainly sorry she did it. But most of all, I’m sorry my dad gave her something to tell me. It’s like a bad game of dominoes. The choices he made forced them down, one by one. I think of Sam. Of my own poor choices. Have I cut bait in time? Before the dominoes were tipped? Can I step back into my own life without consequences? Only time will tell.

  “But it was your dad. He was your hero, and I ruined that. It’s one of my biggest regrets.”

  I swallow hard at her confession. I can see Dad in one of his polo shirts, watching from the sideline as I dribbled the ball through my opponents on the soccer field, erupting in cheers when I took the left-footed shot we’d worked on for weeks in the backyard to score the winning goal. And then I envision him in bed with a woman whose face I can’t see. I recoil almost as if the image is an actual picture in front of me.

  “What’s done is done,” I say. And I’m not sure if I’m talking about my dad or my own affair with Sam.

  “Can you forgive me?”

  “I already have,” I say.

  But you won’t be able to forget, the voice says.

  “Are you sure? I feel like you’re letting me off the hook too easily. Do we need to talk about this more? I can set up a time with my therapist for us.”

  “No, I’m fine,” I assure her. “I think I needed to understand why.”

  “But why did you ask me about it today, of all days?”

  “I’m trying to figure out why I do some of the things I do, and in order to do that, I think I needed to understand why you did what you did.”

  “I was selfish. Petty. That was why.” She pauses. “The thing is, Lila, in that moment, I didn’t want to be your mom with ideals who took the high road. I wanted to be your friend who confided something terrible that happened. Something that changed who I was. But that wasn’t fair.”

  I choke back the tears that rise in my throat and think of my own regrets. “You’re only human.”

  She sighs. “At some point we all seem to fail, don’t we?”

  I think of Ethan, Carrie, the ways I’ve failed them. “We sure do.”

  “I love you,” she says. “You know that, right?”

  “I know. I love you too.”

  “So can we talk about this case?” my mom says. “Is that the catalyst for all this self-introspection?”

  “It’s a lot of things,” I mutter. “Not only that.”

  “You aren’t happy? But you won.” I know she’s sitting up in her chair now, her reading glasses on top of her head, trying to figure me out. If I’m unhappy I won, maybe I’ll stop defending them. “Does this mean . . . ? Are you rethinking? All my friends in my Pilates class think he’s guilty.”

  “You already told me that. And no, Mom, I’m not rethinking. I’m overthinking. The victim’s sister was upset after court. She confronted me.”

  “Are you worried for your safety?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time.” She attempts a joke.

  I’ve received hate mail, hate email, threats, even had a stalker once, like Mom was referring to. Franklin would come to all my trials. Sit in on them like he cared about the case, but he would look only at me. And I got that tingling feeling up my neck that would make me turn, and then we’d lock eyes, and he’d nod his approval. I suppose he took that as a sign, because he started bringing me flowers. Cards. He wrote that he was in love with me. Then he showed up in person one night. I got a restraining order, and he went away. It was almost too easy.

  “You need sleep,” she says when I don’t respond.

  “Right,” I say as I pass the exit for La Cienega Boulevard.

  “You sure there’s nothing else going on?” Mom asks.

  I wish I could tell her. I haven’t confided in anyone. And it would feel good to get it out. But I can’t. There’s no one I can talk to. And maybe I deserve that—that I can’t tell Carrie, my best friend. It’s doubtful she would want to hear about my breakup with her husband.

  “I’ve got to go, Mom. I’m pulling up to the house,” I say instead of answering her. Although I’m still lying, because I’m miles from home. I hold my breath and hope she takes me at face value. I should really get a shirt made: NO MORE LYING.

  “Okay, well, I’m here if you need me,” she says, her voice unsure. She’s not ready to let this go. She wants to fix whatever is wrong. It’s both her greatest strength and biggest weakness.

  And she can’t fix this.

  I start to say goodbye, but she interrupts me.

  “Wait, before you go. Dinner tomorrow night? It’s the last Tuesday of the month. You and Ethan still coming down here?”

  “Yes,” I say, wondering about time. Lately it seems to drag, almost as if I’m living days two times over, yet those Tuesdays come so frequently. Guilt shoots through me because a part of me doesn’t feel like going. Wants to blow it off because of everything that’s going on. Worried she’ll want to dissect this conversation more. But I won’t cancel. I never do. My mom needs this. And I probably do too.

  “Bring some good wine. I think we deserve it!” she says, and laughs awkwardly.

  “Will do. Love you.”

  “Love you too.”

  “Bye,” we chime.

  Still a good twenty minutes from my house, I reach over to the passenger seat and run my finger over the notebook where I made the final tally mark. Wondering what exactly it means. Yes, it signifies that Sam and I are over. But it also represents an opportunity to start fresh. To make sure those dominoes don’t fall. To give my marriage the attention it deserves. But how? How do I go home to my husband and wipe away the sadness I feel over losing my boyfriend? Sure, Ethan will be happy to sit in bed with me and binge-eat a pint of Halo Top Mint Chip ice cream, but only one of us will know the real reason why.

  “I can do this,” I say to myself when I pull up to our house and click the garage door open. It creaks as it fights its way up. I park and open the door to the house, part of me hoping Ethan fell asleep on the couch so I can let my conflicting feelings simmer a little longer, but it’s unlikely. Maybe it’s better if he didn’t—if I’m forced to draw my attention to him. To see him and hear him and plug back into the life we share.

  I put my key in the lock and push the door open. I suppose my fresh start needs to begin right now.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  MONDAY

  CAPTURED

  If my count is accurate, Q has been gone for roughly 143 minutes.

  There is a dim light bulb screwed into a socket in the ceiling. It flickers from time to time, and I wonder when it will go out. When it does, I’ll be left in total darkness. My breathing quickens at the thought, and I try to steady myself. Q could walk in and shoot me in the head or slit my throat, and I’d never see it coming. My limbs are still trembling, partly from the coldness of the room and also from the fear that has grabbed me and refuses to let go. Every time I try to focus on hope, escape, a future, the panic that I won’t survive this wins out.

  I can’t shake Q’s unsettling demeanor. His taunting. The way he looked at me through the slits in his ski mask. What does he know that I don’t? What have I done that is so bad I’ve ended up here? I stare at the cuffs around my wrists until they become blurry. My chest feels like a clamp is tightening around it. I try to inhale a deep breath, but I can’t. I slide backward until I’m flush against the wall and farthest from the door where Q will enter. What will happen to me when he returns? Who has me here? Who wants me like this? Bound, freezing, sca
red out of my mind in a semi-lit concrete room? I think of Stephanie’s last words to me again. And not only her words, but the way in which she said them. How her eyes had gone cold, as if the life had been sucked out of her body. How the way she looked at me sent shock waves of worry through my chest. Had she already planned this—if Jeremiah were to go free, if her sister’s death was not avenged, she would make a call for Q to intercept me outside Bestia? Does she have the capacity to be who she thinks Jeremiah is—a murderer?

  Her sister is dead, and no one is in prison. Seems like a strong motive. Seems like that could stir up a lot of fucked-up feelings. I’ve been chloroformed, kidnapped, and held the Prisoner. Someone who would do that, that’s a person who’s really pissed off—and they want to see their own justice served, no matter the consequences. Stephanie fits the profile.

  Q scares the fuck out of me, but he could be an amateur. Maybe he didn’t think this through the way he should have. And if he was hired by Stephanie, there’s a chance she also doesn’t have the smarts to truly pull this off. She’s too emotional. Maybe she made mistakes. She was sloppy. She left a clue that will lead the police to this godforsaken place. And I will be free, like Jeremiah. I wonder where he is tonight—probably smoking a cigar, eating a steak, patting himself on the back. Was he ever really worried? Or was he confident all along that I would secure his freedom? It’s hard not to play back every interaction with him, every doubt or tickle in the back of my mind. Was Stephanie right? Did I help her sister’s killer go free? Did my desire to win blind me to the truth? Is that why I’m here now? I squeeze my eyes shut and will myself to think.

  Because if—and it’s a big if, I know—if I survive, it will only be because I’m smarter than Q. I’m smarter than whoever hired him.

  It was storming the day I first met Jeremiah. I remember because I was late as hell, cutting in and out of the traffic on the 110 Freeway, muttering under my breath as the clock ticked closer and closer to nine o’clock. I’d left Ethan tucked snugly under the covers, snoring as the rain pelted the large window in our bedroom that overlooked Santa Monica Boulevard. As usual, I’d tiptoed out of our bedroom holding my shoes in one hand and my cell phone in the other, telling myself that I was being kind by letting him sleep but secretly knowing I’d been avoiding dealing with what we’d become.

  Once at work I’d jogged from the elevator, breathing hard, and didn’t see Jeremiah rounding the corner near my office. I’d collided with him hard, sending my bag and all the files inside flying. I cringed. He bent over and began to collect them, handing them back to me in a neat pile.

  “You must be Lila,” he said, his steel-blue eyes shining, which I thought odd for a man being accused of murder. But from the research I’d done leading up to this meeting, I knew that he didn’t give much away. That the smile he flashed me was standard, no matter the circumstances. In fact, it was one of the reasons he had become a prime suspect—the police were bothered that he hadn’t ugly cried when he told them how he’d found Vivian facedown in their living room, clubbed in the back of the head with a large object that the forensics team could only speculate about because it had never been found. The house had been turned upside down, and all the electronics and her jewelry were missing, but whoever killed Vivian didn’t leave a single fingerprint or shoe marking or some good ol’ DNA. Unless it had been Jeremiah, whose fingerprints were, of course, everywhere. Because it was his house.

  The DA also didn’t like how Jeremiah had seemed too calm when he called 911, the prosecution putting the emergency dispatcher on the stand so it could be on record that she had been more distressed than Jeremiah that night.

  As I led him into my office that day, making a motion to Chase to hold my calls, I was evaluating him, as I do with all my new clients. Dirty-blond hair that fell below his eyebrows that he kept brushing out of the blue eyes I’d noticed earlier. The slim-fitting expensive suit of a guy who gets them custom made. The confident way he strode in and took a seat in the mahogany leather chair across from my desk. Assuming where he’d sit, where I’d sit, even though there was a couch and two chairs as well.

  “So you fired your other attorney?” I said after I sat down. I’d been following the case closely and had been surprised Jeremiah had hired him in the first place. I knew the lawyer well—arrogant and incompetent, a lovely combination.

  “He’s an idiot,” Jeremiah said. “He was going to get me sent to prison for the rest of my life!”

  I leaned toward him. “Do you deserve that?”

  He looked surprised I asked the question. “Are you asking me if I did it?”

  “No. That’s the one question I won’t be asking.”

  “Ms. Bennett. I did not kill my wife,” he said, his eyes locked on mine, unmoving.

  I held his gaze, studying his face for a tell, any tic that might reveal the truth within his soul. But there was nothing there. His eyes were blank, like a whiteboard that’s been wiped clean.

  “Tell me what happened,” I asked.

  “You know what happened,” he said, pointing at the files on my desk. “I have no doubt you know more about the case than I do at this point.”

  He was right. I probably did. But I wanted to hear it from him. I told him as much.

  He balked slightly but started from the beginning. At first he seemed rehearsed, but I noticed his eyes flicker and his shoulders tense as he described discovering Vivian when he’d arrived home from work, the world standing still as he realized he was too late—she was already dead, the blunt trauma to the back of her head killing her almost instantly, according to the autopsy report. A crime of passion, the prosecutor had argued in court. A quick way for an intruder to silence her, I’d rebutted.

  “Tell me how you were feeling when you made that 911 call,” I asked next.

  He shook his head and looked down. “I was in shock. To be honest, I barely remember it.”

  “Never say that—‘to be honest.’ That’s what dishonest people say,” I said abruptly.

  “Oh, okay. But I’m not. Being dishonest,” he said.

  I brushed over his proclamation. People made them all the time, and really it meant nothing. “We’re going to need to move quickly. File a motion for new counsel, and see if we can get the trial date moved back so we can be prepared.”

  “Does that mean you’ll take the case?” he asked, a hopeful lilt to his voice. I’d recently gotten a very prominent surgeon acquitted who’d been accused of murdering his business partner. My stock had been rising, and I was now at the point where I could pick and choose my cases, for the most part. There had already been an insane amount of press around this case, Jeremiah and Vivian’s seemingly perfect life picked apart by the vultures to keep the story alive, something that both appealed to and dissuaded me. If I took this case, I had to win. There was no other choice.

  The door creaks open, and Q fills the doorway, tearing me from the memory, his presence making my blood pressure spike and dissolving any other thoughts except survival.

  “Hey, Princess,” he says gruffly as he sets two bags on the floor. “Hope you aren’t gluten intolerant.” He chuckles at his joke as he pulls a burger from a grease-stained bag. My stomach rumbles. He hears the sound and looks over. “Oh, you think you’re getting this? No, no, no. This baby is mine.” He licks his lips, his face still covered by the mask, but I can still see the amusement in his eyes. “This is for you.” He pulls a baguette from another bag and rips off a small section. He sets it on the dirty floor, and I look away.

  How long has it been since I’ve eaten? There were some grapes during the champagne toast at the office. And I scooped up a handful of mint M&M’s from the dish on Chase’s desk before I headed to the parking garage to go home. How many hours have I been here? I have no idea how long I slept. I only know how many minutes it’s been since I woke. Probably three hundred—or five-ish hours. I’d estimate I’ve been here close to ten, maybe twelve. But it’s a guess, because there are no windows, no clocks,
absolutely no sense of time other than the one I’ve created by counting: one one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand.

  “Does the bread mean you’re going to take these off?” I ask, my eyes darting to the cuffs locked around my throbbing wrists. “So I can actually eat?”

  “Either that or I feed you.” He cocks his head. “But then again, we hardly know each other. Seems a bit intimate, wouldn’t you say?”

  It’s that look again—the way he surveys me. His eyes unblinking through the holes in his mask. His stare makes my heart beat faster. My mouth gets drier.

  “What’s wrong?” He crouches down in front of me. “Don’t like my joke?” He touches my chin with his finger, and I flinch. He keeps his finger there, and my pulse races faster. “You’re scared.”

  I shake my head. Feeling small. Weak.

  “Don’t lie to me, Lila.” He touches my chest over my hammering heart. It takes every ounce of my control to not move away from him. “Your heartbeat is giving you away. It’s going a mile a minute.”

  I don’t answer. I breathe slowly. In and out. In and out.

  “Fear is good,” he says when I don’t respond. “It will keep you on your toes.” He looks at my bound feet. “Well, you know what I mean.”

  I clench my jaw and inhale sharply through my nose. I cannot let him get to me. But as we lock eyes, it’s clear we both know it’s too late for that. I’m at his mercy whether I like it or not.

  “Before we eat, we’re going to hit the bathroom. Unless you don’t need to go?” He smirks.

  I flinch, wondering if when he says we, he means he’s going to watch. Or worse. I’ve been so fearful for my life, rape hadn’t crossed my mind. But it does now so forcefully, crashes over me like a tidal wave. My hands begin to shake hard against the cuffs that bind them. Would I fight it like a rabid animal, scratching and clawing my way free? Or would I sit still, choosing my life over my dignity? Q crouches down again and removes a knife from his back pocket. I look away from the sharp blade.