“Hey, Dad.”
Luke stands up and leaves me, fast-walking to the bedroom and talking in his cop voice. His dutiful son voice. My body stiffens in his absence. I hold my breath and listen.
“Yep. We’re on the way.” And seconds later, “She will. She’s fine.”
His serious tone starts my heart pounding, and I feel sick. I regard the pink Seaside Sweets box for what it really is. My requested last meal as a free woman.
When Luke returns, he looks right at me, earnestly, the way a choir boy does, and says my name. “I have to take you into the station.”
“Am I under arrest?”
He nods. “I asked Dad if we could do it this way. And he trusts me. He trusts you. If you agree to cooperate, I won’t cuff you. We can walk out together.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then Dad sends in the cavalry.”
Resigned, I get up and go to him. “Can you tell me why?”
“All I know is they found money in Ricky Sherman’s hotel room he said was from you. That it was your idea to blackmail Ian with some photos you took and that you’d gotten the money on Valentine’s Day. That’s extortion, Ava.”
“I didn’t kill him or Kate though. I had nothing to do with—”
“It’s probably better if you don’t say anything, okay?”
I walk to the hall closet with a lump in my throat. Reach in for my jacket. And freeze.
There it is.
A knife.
But not my missing chef’s knife. This knife matches the others. From Ian and Kate’s set. Its black handle protrudes from an old sweater pocket.
Doubt, sly and insidious, seeps into the cracks in my mind, widening them.
Did I do it? Am I crazy?
I feel Luke behind me, his eyes on my back. I have to do something, say something. Get rid of it somehow. I slip my jacket from the hanger, trying to reach for it. But Luke takes me by the arm and guides me toward the door. And the space between me and the knife widens until there’s nothing I can do but leave it.
All I can think of is the suicide forest. How I’d stepped over Wallace Bergman’s body and now I had to pay. “Do you believe me?” I ask, searching for reassurance.
His touch is tender but firm. A lot like his answer. “I want to. I really want to.”
Chapter
Twenty
It’s like the worst sort of dream. Where you want to scream—you need to scream—but your body makes no sound. I know that feeling. I’ve worn it like a second skin. And now too, with the voices making their demands through the windows of Luke’s truck, the knife I’d left behind for the cops to find, I want to wail with every bit of breath in my body. But I can’t.
“Ava!”
“Over here!”
“Were you sleeping with Ian?”
“Did you kill him?”
Luke has one hand on the wheel and the other on the seat, my fingers clenched tight to his wrist. As we lurch forward, a camera lens bangs the window, and I jump back like I’ve been shot. I squeeze my eyes shut.
“Just tell me when it’s over. When they’re gone.”
I finally feel the road rumble beneath us, faster and faster, and he whispers, “It’s okay. They’re gone now.”
In the rearview mirror, I see them swarming, lenses trained on the truck. But Luke floors it until they’re only shadow people. And then nothing at all but a bad memory.
“Do you think I’ll get bail?”
“Possibly. Depending on the full extent of the charges.”
I’m afraid to ask what he means by that, so I keep quiet. Until the questions in my head unspool like thread, and worries pour from an unstitched wound. I have to say something just to stop the bleeding.
“Luke?”
“Yes?” Oh God, he already knows. Not what I’ll ask, but that I’ll ask. I’ll demand something of him. Something that’s too much to give.
“If the judge doesn’t grant bail, I could be in jail for a while. And I won’t be able to see my mom or explain to her . . .” It sounds ridiculous. Like I’m grasping at straws. Which I am. “Cliffside is on the way to the station. Do you think we could—?”
“Are you seriously asking me that?”
I shrug, sheepish. Embarrassed at my own audaciousness. But I’m not willing to take it back. So I push further. Too far. “You can come in with me. I’m sorry I never invited—”
He smacks his hand against the dash. “Don’t. Don’t make this about me.”
I sink back against the seat and turn toward the window, let my head rest against the cool glass. Ian once told me working with couples taught him one thing. In every relationship, one person inevitably loves the other more—the success of the relationship lies in the magnitude of the difference. Watching Luke take the turn to Cliffside, my heart breaks with the thought of it.
****
Nurse Ellerby pales when she sees me, but she’s good at pretending normalcy. She’d have to be in a place like this. Where people wake up in different cities, different decades. In bodies that haven’t aged. “Ava. It’s been a while.”
I nod at her, sadly. “This is my friend, Luke.”
“Nice to see you again, Officer Donovan,” she says, giving him a once over, waggling her eyebrows at me. “Luke stopped by on Tuesday to take a look at the log book. It wasn’t him who signed it. I’d never forget a face like that.” Her conspiratorial wink is further confirmation someone is screwing with me. And that Luke never lies. Which only makes me feel worse for having doubted him.
“We’re just stopping in for a quick visit. How is she?”
“You picked a good day. Her first lucid one in a while.”
“I’m glad. Because . . .” I glance at Luke, and he sighs. “I may not be back here for a while.”
Nurse Ellerby pats the hand I’ve placed on the counter. “Alright. Well, we’ll remind her you’ll be back soon.” Soon. What a soul-crushing word, with its promises, its hopeful little sound.
Luke follows me down the hall, past Wheelchair Row and the wailing woman. Today, she’s quiet. Like she knows something I don’t. We stop at the shadow box. “Should I give you some time alone?” he asks.
“Come in with me.” I tug on his arm when he hangs back. “I want you to.”
My mother sits on the sofa, flipping through the channels with the remote. She’s wearing real pants today and one of her old favorite shirts. Her eyes catch the light from the window and shine when she smiles at me. “Hi, sweetie. I’ve missed you. And who’s this?”
“Luke Donovan. You’ve seen him before. A while back. He’s a police officer like his dad, Jack.” Luke waves shyly. Like the seven-year-old boy he’d been when they’d first met.
“Oh. I suppose he does look familiar.” She reaches for his hand, squeezes it. “A kind face. And one of the brave men in blue. Just like my Jerry. God rest his soul. I’m sure Ava told you he took his own life.”
I stagger back. Like it’s all brand new. She never remembers that.
“The job can be hard on all of us,” Luke says, and I feel his palm on my back, steadying me. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
I join my mother on the sofa, the vinyl warm from the sun. “Luke and I can’t stay long. But I wanted to tell you—”
“Oh! Him.” She points to the television. Breaking News scrolls at the bottom in police light colors—blue and red—and Chief Morrow stands at a podium, flanked by officers. In the corner of the screen, a picture of Ian and Kate on their wedding day. And I struggle to keep my breathing even. What else does my mother remember? And how will I explain the things she doesn’t?
I wait for her to say it. Isn’t that your asshole ex-husband? The one who ripped your heart from your chest and spit on it. Crushed it beneath his boot like a cockroach.
“Who, Mom? Who?
”
Luke’s eyes widen, and I shrug at him. Let’s just get this over with.
Or . . . Isn’t that the handsome and amazing Love Doctor? The one with that show I remember to watch even when I forget your name.
Instead, she stands up and walks to the set, squinting her eyes. Lays her hand on the screen and points to one of the men flanking Chief Morrow. I only realize then it’s Cooper.
“This young man here. What a sweetheart. I told him I had a beautiful daughter he should date. What was his name? Cory? Connor, maybe.”
“Cooper?” Luke asks, and she nods so fast I worry she’ll get whiplash. “What was he doing here?”
The question is meant for me, but my mother giggles and scurries to her bedside drawer, eager to show us. She reaches inside and holds up a handful of hearts, wrapped in red foil, embossed with seashells. “He brought me chocolate.”
Some experts might say a divorce is like a death. But I say it’s more like a murder. The thing you created together is dead. And nobody’s hands are clean.
—Ian Culpepper, Love CPR
Valentine’s Day
Three Years Earlier
Ava ran ten miles that Saturday morning, fueled by coffee and contempt. Her mother called her cell twice before she hoofed it back to the house, to ask her if she’d seen it. If she was okay.
Yes, Mom. I’m fine. And she was. Fine. More worried about her mother’s forgetfulness than Ian and Kate’s vomit-worthy spread in People magazine—“Love Doctors’ Lessons: How to Make Love Last.”
Lesson one. Don’t screw a back-row girl right under your wife’s nose. And two, don’t get her knocked up before the ink dries on your divorce papers. Three, don’t ask her to sign an NDA like you’re the goddamned King of England. Like she’d sell your secrets to the highest bidder, like she’d stoop that low.
Ava had studied every page of the article without reading a single word of Ian’s sanctimonious BS. Instead, she’d zeroed in on the photos. On Kate. Her eyes, the delicate blue of a robin’s egg. She’d been certain she would find it there. A harbinger of trouble. Sadness behind the smile. But Kate radiated pure light. And Ian gloated, smug as ever, with one-year-old Madison swaddled between them like a tiny trophy.
She’d brought the magazine to work yesterday and shredded every page of it, satisfied as the cut ribbons spooled into the trash can. But she’d bought another on her way home, sure she’d missed something. And that nagging feeling hadn’t gone away. Ten miles and three hills later.
Still breathless, she pulled up a stool to her kitchen counter and opened the magazine again. Page fifty. Right between Taylor Swift and an ad for diet pills. A drop of her sweat landed smack on the first line.
“I haven’t always been lucky in love,” Culpepper said. “But Kate’s my four-leaf clover.”
She couldn’t take anymore. Her stomach knotted; her chest ached. Still, she kept reading. Self-flagellation, her mom had called it. Like when Ava had insisted they watch the first episode of Love Doctored. Ava had wanted to remind her mother of all the times she’d done the same—bended under her husband’s will, kowtowed to his moods, suffered in silence. And gone back for more. Where do you think I got it from? twitched on the tip of her tongue, but she’d left it there.
“We’ve both had our share of heartache like everybody else. That’s love lesson number one. Don’t give up on your happily ever after.”
Sweat stung Ava’s eyes, blurring Ian’s drivel. Even so, the absence was undeniable. No mention of her. A failed marriage. Of Julie. A dead wife. And inside Ava, a sudden fire erupted, shooting sparks. She flung the magazine across the room. It struck the wall hard and landed with an unceremonious swish.
She scrolled through the saved contacts in her phone until she found it. The number she’d looked up years ago, post-valen-pocalypse. The number she’d never dialed.
Until now.
Each ring thrummed through her body, winding her up tight as a chain, until she could hardly bear it.
“Hello?” The man sounded nice enough. Tired. But friendly. Not at all how she’d imagined his voice from his picture—Headmaster Avery—on the Eastmont Prep School website.
“Is this Marcus Avery? Julie’s dad?”
She squirmed in the silence, afraid he might hang up.
“Yes. But Julie’s been—”
“I know.” She couldn’t bear to make him say it. Julie’s been dead for years now. “This may sound strange. But, I was married to Ian Culpepper. And I was hoping you could tell me about Julie. About what happened to her.”
More silence. And she shouted down into the well of it, “I’m not a reporter,” practically expecting an echo. “I wanted to call the first time I had doubts about him. When Chuck Whitlock told me Julie had left Ian right before she—”
“Chuck?”
“Yes. He told me he knew her from New Beginnings.”
“Julie liked Chuck. He was a good friend to her.”
Ava heard the scratch of Ian’s key down the side of that Prius. She spoke fast to drown it out. “He told me Ian was pretty distraught about Julie leaving.”
“Ian was distraught about being left. And Julie had her own issues. She’d battled depression since her teens. We were thrilled when she met Ian. He was older, and he seemed stable, charming. I’m sure you know. But it’s all an act. Underneath, he’s a mixed-up person. Or he was anyway.”
“Still is,” Ava said, feeling a strange sense of comfort in this twisted kinship.
“Two mixed-up people make a real mess of a marriage. Julie would threaten to leave. Ian would threaten to kill himself. Or her. Or the both of them. And when Julie started to get really sick, Ian got possessive of her. He wanted us out of her treatment so he could make all the decisions. And he’d started to prescribe her meds. As wrong as that was, we allowed it, because that’s what Julie wanted.”
Marcus sighed the sigh of a man scooped hollow. So emptied the wind could blow right through him.
“Then there was the research trial. Ian was insistent on it. Even though Julie never responded well to SSRIs. The first few days she got so agitated, she scratched her arms till they bled. But he told her to tough it out. That it would get better. She stopped cold turkey and left him. We still don’t know what happened that night.”
“Was there an investigation?”
“They ruled it a suicide. She accelerated into a brick wall in a parking garage. She wasn’t wearing her seat belt. But I know Ian’s at fault, as surely as if he’d had his goddamned foot on the gas.”
****
“Is it me or does she look a little constipated?”
Ava frowned at her mother, feigning disapproval, as the closing credits rolled on: Love Doctored, at a special night and time. “Mom. Seriously. Have a little sympathy. Kate has a giant stick up her ass. And Ian for a husband. You’d probably look constipated too.”
Chuckling, Ava shut off the TV and unwrapped another chocolate heart her mother had brought for her. Not one to let her self-flagellate alone, she’d come bearing gifts. Two expensive bottles of wine from The Seventeenth Mile and a pink box from Seaside Sweets. They’d already downed one bottle and uncorked the next. And the pink box was half empty, wrappers littering Ava’s coffee table. Evidence of their gluttony.
“They’re good, aren’t they?” her mother asked, popping a whole piece in her mouth. “And with those darling little shells on the wrappers. I can’t believe you’ve never been there. Marianne’s shop is just a few steps from your office.”
“I stole her husband’s badge, Mom. I doubt I’m high on her list.”
“Oh honey. You were what, fifteen? I’m sure she’s forgiven you by now. Besides, she’s got a cute son. That cop.”
Ava’s mother wiggled her eyebrows while she chewed.
“First of all, I’m not interested. Second, I’d need to st
art running two-a-days to burn off those calories. And third, I’m not interested. Cooper is off limits. Even if he wasn’t a total jerk, I did that eval on him last month, remember?”
As if that mattered. As if her ethical standards were above reproach. She shouldn’t have taken the case at all. Given that they’d gone to school together. And he’d bought her that beer at Mickey’s. And she was most definitely biased. But she’d needed the work. After she’d used Ian’s money—his payoff, she called it—to buy a fixer-upper near the beach and pay one year’s rent upfront on her office, there wasn’t much left. And in truth, she’d been curious to look under the hood of Cooper Donovan.
“Not Cooper. Her other son . . . oh, what’s his name?”
“Luke? Are you kidding? He’s practically a baby.”
Her mom flopped back against the couch, laughing. “He looked pretty grown up when I ran into him at the shop yesterday. You know it’s just a few steps from your office.”
Ava doused a pang of worry with another sip of wine. “You just said that.”
“Oh. Well, I didn’t think you heard me.”
One of her usual excuses. “You’ve been a little forgetful lately, don’t you think?”
“When you get to be my age, a little forgetful is allowed. Some would say it’s an accomplishment. Now, stop worrying and have some more chocolate. You could stand to gain a few pounds.”
Ava rolled her eyes, but she didn’t argue. She leaned over to her mom, put her head on her shoulder. “Thanks for being my valentine.”
She saw her mother’s chest rise sharply and then fall, and her own started to ache again. “I’m sorry about Ian,” her mother said. “I hope it wasn’t my fault.”
“What do you mean, your fault?”
Her mother touched the watch on Ava’s wrist, the one that belonged to the ghost of man who sat between them. “That you married someone like your father. You didn’t have the best model of a marriage. I should’ve stood up to your dad more. I knew those pills were no good for him. Maybe if I had, he wouldn’t . . .”
Doctors of Darkness Boxed Set Page 89
