In the Deep

by White, Loreth Anne

  Like the orange Subaru outside my apartment.

  The way he isolated me, brought me here, far away from everything I knew . . . the way he terrorized me with the fishing trip even though he knew all about my past and my mental vulnerabilities.

  “It’s like he was one Martin before he got the funding for the Agnes Marina project, and a completely different Martin after. He no longer needs to be nice. I think he . . . tricked me into this, but the weird thing is I was the one who proposed to him. I was the one who suggested we go into a business partnership with my father’s money. He even protested and argued against it, but I insisted. I wanted to help him finance everything. I wanted to move out here away from my family and friends. I wanted to help with the Agnes development. I gave him everything, Willow. Voluntarily. It was all my idea. I asked for it all. It’s my fault.”

  She studied me in silence. Waves boomed. Rain ticked against the windows.

  “You’re really sure about this?”

  I nodded. “I’m so . . . ashamed that I might have let this happen.”

  She edged forward on her seat and clasped her hands together. “Ellie, some people can be deviously clever that way. Con artistry says more about ourselves and how we see the world than it says about the con artist. The genius of a trickster lies in figuring out precisely what it is we want or need most to hear, and then that’s how they present themselves to us—as a vehicle for delivering our deepest desire. They show up in the guise they’re needed when they’re most needed.”

  I considered how Martin had just shown up in my life on that chill January night. In my path on the way to the bathroom. How he seemed to say all the right things about life and children and art and parents that made me believe he was the answer to everything that I’d been looking for right at that moment. I’d lived in the public eye, thanks to my father. Stuff had been written about me, especially after Chloe drowned, especially after I went off the rails. It was all still probably accessible in online archives. I’d even been arguing loudly with my father in the Mallard Lounge that night, everyone listening. With a simple Google search anyone could have learned some very personal things about me. I felt sick.

  “We want to believe what a con artist tells us, Ellie,” she said softly. “They manipulate our reality. And if this is truly what you think it is, a long con, the kind that takes weeks, months, or even years to unfold, it requires manipulation of reality at a far higher level, and it plays with our most basic core beliefs about ourselves.”

  I fiddled with a thread on my capri pants. “You seem to know an awful lot about this.”

  “I had a patient once. A smart—very smart—woman, a widow who’d been sucked in by someone on an online dating site. It’s sadly not uncommon. People use sites like that to troll for victims. They can learn a lot about them; then they use that information to lure their prey and suck them dry.”

  I glanced up. Her words made me think of that funnel-web spider with its trip lines and silk lair.

  “I could be wrong, still.”

  “Yes. I hope you are, Ellie.”

  “My friend Dana warned me. My dad warned me. Yet I was convinced they were all just bitter because I’d finally found something good, something I believed I deserved. A decent man. A second chance.”

  “Is he physically abusive—is he a bully? Does he have a mean streak?”

  I looked out the window. I couldn’t voice it.

  Quietly she rephrased her question: “Did he hurt you, Ellie?”

  I touched the silk scarf around my neck that hid my terrible bruises, and I realized too late that my involuntary movement had given me away.

  “Maybe I deserved it,” I said very quietly. “I abused him verbally, too. I cut him with a knife. And . . . and I wanted to cut him, Willow. I wanted to hurt him, kill him, even.”

  She absorbed this for a moment. “Ellie,” she said quietly, “no one ever deserves to be struck. Abuse is not your fault, no matter your internal thoughts. Violence is not acceptable.”

  I sat silent.

  “How badly did he hurt you?”

  “It won’t happen again.”

  “Why?”

  Because I won’t fuck up again. I won’t get drunk again. I won’t take pills again. “I won’t let it.”

  “You need to go to the police.”

  “I . . . I will. If he does it again, I will.”

  The intensity in her eyes turned hot, and I sensed the shift in her energy. She looked like a tightly coiled spring ready to explode. It made me uneasy. I hated confrontation. She was going to insist on bringing in the law, and I wanted to be careful and make sure I was ready and in a place where he couldn’t get to me if and when I did.

  “I will,” I said again. “But not here, not now. I want to go to the police back home. I want to file for divorce from home. Where he can’t hurt me. And I need to be off the meds. I need your help, Willow. Will you help me get off the lorazepam? I need to taper. I flushed most of the meds down the toilet, but I kept just enough for a week or two. I want you to keep the pills for me and give me only enough for each day, should I need them.”

  She stared at me. I could see her brain racing.

  “And this is why you think he won’t hurt you again—because you’ll be clean?”

  “He’ll see that I’m trying. I’ll tell him. I’ll show him.”

  “Ellie, if you think he’s drugging you—how’s that going to help?”

  I leaned forward. “Because if I’m not drinking, and not taking meds, and then if I do have another episode, I’ll go straight to a doctor and have my blood tested.” I paused. “I will have evidence of what is in my system. It could be the proof I need that Martin is drugging me.”

  “So you think your abuse of substances is making it easier for him to mess with you.”

  “He could be using it to veil whatever he’s doing to me.”

  “Once a guy hits you, it’s—”

  “No.” I raised my hand. “I need a clear head in order to properly assess my situation. I want to be one hundred percent certain I’m not imagining all this stuff out of some drug-induced paranoia. And if I go to the police here, Martin will use my public episodes to explain away my ‘mad’ accusations. I can see it—he’ll say any bruises on me are because I fell when I was drunk. Everyone at the boat launch saw a drunk, Willow. They saw the blood. They saw the rage in my face. He told the doctors at the hospital his drugged wife cut him. People saw me at the Puggo—even you saw me there. The cops will believe his story over my story. They will side with him.”

  She eyed me, nodded slowly. “Do you want to tell me how the pills started?”

  I told her. Everything. From how I’d lost Chloe to what grief had done to me and how I’d struggled to cope with that, right up to how I’d come to be institutionalized. She listened patiently while the rain fell.

  “See?” I said. “I have a history—drug abuse, mental illness, violence, memory loss. He can use all that against me if I lodge a complaint or file a charge. Doug sure did when he filed for divorce. Martin could even have me locked up again, maybe even get power of attorney because we’re in business together and he’d need my signature on things. He’d have full access to all my funds.”

  A look of doubt creased her brow. “You don’t think that’s a stretch?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know anything for certain right now.”

  She watched me, her face tightening into something that looked like anger. I felt it, too, coming off her in waves. I feared that now I’d armed Willow with information against a man who’d assaulted me, she’d take actions on her own initiative—actions I wouldn’t be able to stop. Things would avalanche out of my control. She swore softly, got up abruptly, and put a kettle on. “Have you spoken to anyone, Ellie—called a friend? Family? Told anyone else?”

  “This morning I called my friend Dana.”

  She glanced up. “In Canada?”

  I nodded. “Right after I flushed the pills. My ca
ll went to voice mail. She won’t return it.”

  “Why not?” She poured hot water over tea leaves in china cups. Her bracelets chinked. I envied her grace, her beauty.

  “We fell out. It was over Martin.”

  “So Dana really didn’t like him?” She carried the teacups over.

  “Hadn’t actually met him, but—” I glanced at the crystal ball on the buffet, the tarot cards on the coffee table, the Himalayan rock salt lamp on the bookshelf, the tiny wind chimes in the kitchen, and said, “Dana claimed Martin had a bad influence on my aura. She said it was dark after I’d been with him.”

  Her brow ticked up. She half smiled, raised her cup from the saucer, and sipped.

  “Did you ever feel Martin had a bad aura?” I asked.

  “I’ve never tried to read Martin. Don’t really know him other than from the Puggo and from hearing the local enviro group go on about him and his project—your project.” She paused. “You know, El, from what you’ve told me, I think that you were barely recovering from grief and PTSD when you met Martin—not that one ever fully ‘recovers’ from these things, but rather finds a new kind of normal. And now you’ve had a setback. You should talk to someone. A professional.”

  “I’m talking to you. You said you were a therapist.”

  “I’m not practicing. I don’t have a current license. I stopped years ago in favor of life coaching and these so-called woo-woo pursuits.” She tilted her chin toward the tarot cards.

  “Why?”

  “Why the tarot and tea leaves and coaching instead of therapy? It’s more fun. As a coach I get to make healthy clients even better. I work with the conscious mind. I work with goals and specific timelines within which to achieve those goals. As a psychotherapist I worked with pathology, illness—I worked with the unconscious. I worked with open-ended outcomes, seeking to understand the why as a primary aim. The list goes on. For me coaching has also been more . . . lucrative.” She smiled. “And a lot more flexible with my online business component. I can travel. Do it long distance from anywhere in the world.” She tipped her cup toward me, and her smile deepened into a grin. “Some of my fiercest competition comes from Roma fortune-tellers in Bulgaria.”

  I laughed. We finished the tea, and as Willow cleared the cups, I said, “So will you help me?”

  She hesitated. “What was the trigger, Ellie? What caused Martin to suddenly snap and hurt you—was it just the issue with the hooks on the boat, and getting drunk?”

  I studied her for a moment, then said quietly, “That was the other thing I wanted to ask you about. I need a PI.”

  Surprise flickered across her face.

  “I believe Martin is having an affair. I accused him, and that’s when he struck me.”

  Her mouth opened. She blinked. “What?”

  I cleared my throat. “He’s sleeping with someone behind my back, in my own house. I need to look up a private investigator. I want someone to follow either him or his mistress. I need photographic evidence of them together. If he can arm himself with my mental history, I need to arm myself as well. With anything I can find.”

  She’d gone dead still.

  “Willow?”

  “With . . . Who do you suspect he’s sleeping with?”

  I hesitated. “You . . . promise you’re not going to go and say anything to anyone? Not yet.”

  “I promise.”

  “Rabz. I think it’s Rabz.”

  THEN

  ELLIE

  When I left Willow’s house, it had stopped raining and I had a plan.

  I’d given her the bulk of my drugs, and I’d committed to quitting drinking. Willow would be like my sponsor. She’d keep my secret. For now. Because I knew that if this went sideways, she was the kind of woman who’d go straight to the cops and demand action.

  She’d also said she’d find me a PI and I could pay the investigator in cash via her. It would help keep it a secret from Martin.

  Our conversation replayed in my mind as I walked down her driveway toward the gate.

  “Are you sure you want to help me like this, Willow?”

  She got up and went to stand in front of the big view windows. She stood there a long while, in silence, her arms folded tightly across her stomach, as if gathering herself. She finally turned to face me.

  “I knew someone like Martin once,” she said. “Some guy who was violent with my mum. He moved in after my dad went to prison and he beat her, sometimes senseless.” She rubbed her mouth. “He supplied her with drugs, too. Some bad stuff. I was seven when she died from an overdose—so I know what you’re talking about, Ellie, when you say that was what happened to your mom.”

  I tensed.

  She inhaled deeply. “I was about to go into the system when my father got out and ‘liberated’ me. We lived on the streets, hustling. He taught me things. Other street people taught me, too. Mostly how to survive. Then he died homeless. I fought out of that bad childhood, El. I went into counseling, and I guess the crusader in me wanted to become a therapist myself, and to never let this happen to anyone else. Or to be there to help them if it did.”

  I suddenly felt my own problems pale in comparison. I felt foolish. I felt my privilege. I stared at her. We never really did know people, did we, when we saw them passing by on a street?

  She gave a rueful smile. “I like to think I do it all for him, and for my mom. Mostly it’s for me.”

  My eyes burned. “I am so sorry. I—”

  She raised her hand, stopping me. And gave a smile. “Just let me help, okay? I need you to get away from Martin, so it’s for me, too. You can pay me back one day by paying it forward.”

  I reached her garden gate beneath an arch overhung with jasmine. The smell of the flowers damp from the warm rain was fecund. Heady and full with promise. Suddenly I had hope. I had a friend.

  I opened the gate. It creaked. I stopped and turned to look back at her house. Willow stood framed by an upstairs window. She had a phone to her ear. She smiled and waved.

  I waved back.

  Then I stepped onto the sidewalk and saw the brown car at the end of the road.

  I paused and watched as the car pulled out and drove away. Yes, I thought. I wanted answers. I was going to get a PI and find out what was happening.

  No more passive Ellie.

  THEN

  ELLIE

  Over one year ago, November 14. Jarrawarra Bay, New South Wales.

  It was midday. Two weeks since my visit with Willow. Unseasonably hot. From my bedroom window I could see heat shimmering off the road—even the birds seemed to have fallen silent. My T-shirt stuck to my back as I opened Martin’s closet. I had the fan going in the bedroom, all the windows open wide. Tense, I moved carefully, quickly, trying to put everything back exactly as I’d found it. Otherwise he’d notice.

  I was off the meds, off the drink. I was doing everything a “good wife” should do. Making dinners. Getting exercise, sleep. Looking my best.

  I’d organized my studio, hung up my photographs and art, and was focusing on my work. When I’d struggled with withdrawal symptoms, I’d called Willow. We’d gone for long beach walks on those occasions. Or out for coffee at the Muffin Shop. Never the Puggo. Both Martin and I were avoiding the Puggo, even though Martin insisted there was nothing between him and Rabz. I’d told him I believed him, lulled him into a false sense of security. Meanwhile, Willow had found me a PI. I was having Martin followed.

  For his part my husband had done a complete 180 and couldn’t be nicer. It was as though all the bad things had never happened. Almost.

  I pulled open his underwear drawer and felt around at the back.

  Martin had unlocked his office and invited me to look at the company spreadsheets. He was right—the presales were going gangbusters. The environmental report was solidly in our favor. The shire council had given the first phase a third reading. The rest of the red tape was sorting itself out. Yet he’d relocked his office after showing me out.

&nbs
p; And it remained locked while he went up to work at Agnes every day.

  He still didn’t trust me. Not fully.

  Then five days ago he’d suddenly announced he had to go to Sydney for two weeks. Some emergency with the banks and meetings with an ad agency. He’d left two hours later, rushing to catch the small plane from Moruya. I’d spent the last two days searching for an office key without fear he might walk in.

  There had to be a spare key somewhere. Or perhaps he’d taken the only one with him?

  I opened another drawer and fingered around the back.

  Yesterday I’d hunted everywhere downstairs. Today I’d continued the search upstairs. I opened his sock drawer next. One by one I checked inside his neat balls of socks. Then I felt around the back of the drawer. My fingers touched metal. My heart quickened. I stretched in deeper and closed my hand around something. I’d found it.

  His keys.

  I fished them out. Three keys on the ring. I stared at them, sweat prickling over my brow. It wasn’t wrong for me to go into his office. It was wrong that he locked his space off from me—an equal shareholder in our company.

  I hurried downstairs.

  Outside the office door I stopped and calmed myself. No pills. Just deep breaths. He was not due back for another week. I had plenty of time to do this. Nevertheless I still glanced quickly around the room, a residual memory lingering—the echo of a sense of being watched. I could see nothing out of the ordinary.

  I unlocked the door, pushed it open. Entered.

  It was stifling inside. All the windows were closed. I clicked on the fan. It thrummed to noisy life. I put the setting on high. Wind ruffled edges of papers on his desk. His office was as neat as his closets. I fingered the keys in my hand, thinking.

  When he’d shown me in here I’d noticed he kept keys for the filing cabinet in a locked drawer beneath the desk. I slotted the smallest key into the lock of the desk drawer. It clicked over smoothly. Guilt pinged through me, followed by a bite of determination. I opened the drawer.

  THE WATCHER