by Lisa Jackson
“Okay, okay, I was involved with someone at the office,” he declared. “There! Are you happy now?”
“Of course I’m not happy,” she’d said, tears hot in her eyes, her chin thrust forward. She would not break down, though, not shed one more tear of grief for a marriage that had probably been long dead. “What’s her name?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Like hell!” It galled her that he would protect this other woman, this stranger who dared insert herself into another woman’s marriage!
“She’s already gone, okay? Couldn’t take the guilt. It ruined her marriage, too, so she left the firm and took a job across the country.” One of his fists balled in frustration, and Ava wondered if he would raise it to her, threaten her.
“Who is she, Wyatt?” Ava had pressed, unable to let it go.
“Why the fuck do you care?” He stormed out of the room and into the foyer, where he’d grabbed his coat and briefcase and walked out the door. With a window-rattling thud, it slammed behind him. Through the window, she watched as he marched down the hill to the boathouse, his coattails billowing behind him.
“Bastard,” she’d muttered, then reminded herself that he was the father of her only child. Noah, it seemed, would be raised in a family that was splintered, something she’d hoped to avoid.
Wyatt had already moved out of their bedroom, and after this fight, she knew he would stay away. As it was, in the next few months, he’d spend more time off the island than on.
He’d sworn the affair was over. “It’s history, okay? Forget it,” he’d advised a month or so later.
Ava hadn’t believed him, but she did contact a friend who worked in Wyatt’s office, and Norm, a junior partner in the firm, confirmed the story. “I thought about telling you,” Norm admitted over the phone, “but I was between a rock and a hard spot with you two. Truthfully, I didn’t see what good it would do to let you know what was going on. It would’ve just hurt everyone.”
“So you let him dupe me,” Ava had charged.
“I did it to protect you, Ava. It wasn’t about Beth, but hey, it doesn’t matter now. It’s over.”
“Of course it matters!” she’d said, angry tears streaming from her eyes. She’d hung up and felt miserable all over again. Torn between rage and pain, she had to know more, to dig until every little bit of dirt was turned over, until all of her curiosity was satisfied and she could move forward again.
Norm had said the woman’s first name. Beth. A slipup? Or purposely said? Didn’t matter. It was a start. Obsessed, Ava hired a private detective who within three days had confirmed that a Bethany A. Wells had moved from Seattle to Boston less than two months earlier. A divorce with the woman’s husband was pending. And in the past few weeks, according to the PI, Wyatt hadn’t been in contact with her. The affair had ended when she’d moved.
It hadn’t mattered; the ending of the affair was too little, too late in Ava’s opinion. Infidelity was infidelity. She’d started divorce proceedings against Wyatt and then . . . and then . . . Oh, God, Noah had been taken from them, and everything else, including her husband’s betrayal, had seemed unimportant as she had lost her grip with reality.
Now that same cold feeling of utter abandonment returned as she thought of Wyatt’s latest fling. What was it her mother had always said? “Once a cheater, always a cheater.”
Though he denied his current affair, she knew in her heart that he’d found someone else to be “half in love with.” This time, though, she wasn’t devastated. This time she was relieved. Evelyn McPherson could have him.
She dropped her phone into her purse and looked out the window again. Sure enough, she saw the running lights of a boat crossing the bay, growing closer. Her guts twisted as she took another sip of the latte. Somehow, she’d get through the meal, she told herself as she started to return the keys to her purse, then stopped, one of the keys catching her attention. It was different from the others, not a house key but a car key. Turning it over in her fingers, she saw that it was meant for a Mercedes.
Her father had always driven Fords, her mother a variety of domestic cars, her grandmother only Cadillacs. The only member of the family who’d ever owned a Mercedes had been Uncle Crispin. This was his set of keys, then. Huh. The Mercedes was long gone; he’d sold it just after losing his job at the hospital. . . .
Oh, crap!
The ring of keys had to be to all the locks at Sea Cliff! Her uncle had left them at the house? Along with a set for the car he’d sold ages ago?
A forgotten set, or more likely a lost set.
Ava straightened, feeling she was on to something now. And her memory was starting to return. Good. Through the window, she watched her husband dock the boat, and she stuffed the keys into a hidden pocket of her purse. Then she finished her latte and met Wyatt at the door of the coffee shop.
His hair was windblown, his face ruddy, his smile seemingly sincere as he brushed a kiss across her cheek. Somehow she managed to force a smile as he motioned to her two large shopping bags. “Wow. Looks like you cleaned out the store,” he joked. “Let me carry these.”
He reached for the sacks, and it was all she could do to let go and whisper, “Thanks,” while silently praying that he not try to peer inside.
“What’d you get?”
“Lots of things—shoes, a purse, a couple of pairs of jeans . . .” God, it was difficult making small talk.
They walked through a cool mist to a fish house located on the waterfront, a couple of blocks from the marina.
Once they’d been seated in a corner booth, near a hissing gas fireplace, a waiter took their drink orders, then left menus and a basket of warm bread. A few other couples were scattered at nearby tables and booths, the conversation and clink of silverware audible.
Wyatt, ever attentive, again asked Ava about her day while she felt her damned bags nearly glowed in bright neon: spy equipment inside!
“It was nice to get out of the house,” she said once they’d ordered. That much wasn’t a lie. “The weather was great, so we didn’t get wet dashing from store to store.”
“Downtown?”
“Mmm.” She nodded, reaching for her water glass just so she didn’t have to look into his eyes as she repeated the story she’d created earlier in the day. “Tanya’s great at bargain hunting, so she knew just where to go. And, oh, they were having a major sale at Nordstrom. Tanya was in heaven.”
“How is Tanya, by the way?” The waiter brought Wyatt a glass of wine and Ava the club soda she’d ordered to keep up the pretense that she was still taking her prescribed meds and thus avoiding alcohol.
“Crazy as ever.” To hide her case of nerves, Ava unwrapped the bread and buttered a slice. “She talked nonstop about her kids and remodeling the shop, which she hopes to do next year. I got the blow-by-blow of dance recitals and soccer matches for Bella and Brent—cute kids, of course.”
Somehow she ate the slice of bread and nattered on about nothing and finally asked, “What about you?” just as the waiter returned with their meals, steak and prawns for Wyatt and a salmon pasta salad that Ava had ordered and couldn’t imagine forcing down.
“I’ve been away from the house most of the day,” he said. “I’ll be out early tomorrow. Into the office and then depositions for the next couple of days.”
“Anything interesting?” She wanted to keep the conversation focused on him.
“Nothing I can talk about,” he said between bites of steak, and their small talk dwindled. Ava picked at her salad, forcing down bites as Wyatt dug in with the same gusto he’d had for as long as she’d known him. The silence stretched thin as they ate. The couple at the next table finished and left, and eventually, he’d had his fill and pushed his plate aside. “I think we should talk.”
“About?” Every one of her muscles grew taut. Her heart began to drum. Where was this going? Was he planning to bring up her fights with Jewel-Anne again? Or something even worse?
“Us.”
>
Her heart was really pounding now. “What about us?”
“There is none. We aren’t us any longer.” He looked down at his hands before meeting her eyes. “You feel it, too, Ava. I know you do.”
She didn’t respond. Didn’t know how to handle this kind of honesty from him.
“We’re barely civil to each other. Neither one of us trusts the other. We don’t make time for the other person.” His face tightened with frustration. “Oh, hell, I’m as much to blame as you are.”
“So . . . what’re you saying?” she asked. “You want to start over? Split up?”
“I want you to get well, Ava. I know you haven’t been taking your medication, and now you’re trying to get rid of Dr. McPherson under some ridiculous pretense that she and I are involved.”
Oh, God, she wasn’t ready for this. Not when she was about to finally set her own plan in motion.
“You want to have this discussion now? Here?”
“I just want to clear the air. First of all, I’m not having a damned affair with your psychologist or anyone else! That’s all in your mind. And you keep coming up with wild scenarios in which you see Noah when you and I both know he’s gone. Forever.”
She gasped. “I thought you said we’d find him. . . .”
He leaned closer over the table and lowered his voice. “I just want you to get better and I don’t think you can unless you go back to St. Brendan’s.”
“What?” He wanted to commit her again?
“Look, if you don’t want to go there, we’ll find another hospital in Seattle or San Francisco or, oh, hell, I don’t care where!” He stared at her as if he’d never seen her before. “You’re sick, Ava. You need help.”
So there it was. His cards, all out on the table. “Why do you want me to leave so much?”
“I just told you.”
“You might not believe this, Wyatt, but I am getting better. I’m starting to remember. Everything. Bit by bit. And it’s not because of medications that make me feel like a zombie or a shrink who thinks she’s in love with you.”
“I said I’m not—”
“Stop! Just stop, okay?” she insisted, her temper snapping. “I said I’m starting to remember!” She watched as his eyes narrowed a bit. She knew she should control her tongue, but she couldn’t. Not now. Not when she was starting to feel like her old self again. “One of the things that I recall a little too vividly is that this affair isn’t your first, Wyatt.”
He remained calm. Didn’t argue. But the tic near one eye gave his emotions away.
“I thought the reason I’d started divorce proceedings before was because I couldn’t get my life on track after Noah disappeared, but it was more, wasn’t it? You were having an affair with someone . . . someone in your office. Just before we lost our son and then everything went to hell.”
“That was over a long time ago. I came clean about being involved with a woman in the office.”
“Beth Wells. I remember.” If he was surprised, he hid it admirably. “So I recognize the signs. It’s happening again, Wyatt. You’re right. We’ve lost that emotional connection we once had, but it’s been gone a long, long time.”
“Have you ever, for one minute, considered that we’ve drifted apart because of you? Your obsession about Noah pulled you away from me, not the other way around.”
“Not true.”
His jaw clenched hard, the tic working double time. “The only way you’re ever going to get well is if you go back to a hospital. I fought the idea. Hoped that you could, with a doctor’s help, come back to me. But that’s not happening. I made a mistake by letting you come home, and as your guardian, I’m going to see that you go somewhere and get the treatment you need. I’ve already talked to Dr. McPherson about it, and she agrees that you need more help than she can give.”
Ava was on her feet, knocking a butter knife to the floor, toppling the rest of her drink. “My guardian? Seriously. I don’t need you or anyone else to decide my fate,” she gritted out. “You can’t send me anywhere, Wyatt. I’ll petition the court. I’ll . . . I’ll prove that I’m sane, that I can take care of myself!”
“Can you? What if Dern hadn’t fished you out of the bay? What if he hadn’t shown up when you were riding on the ridge?”
“Who told you that?” she demanded.
“Who do you think I asked to keep an eye on you?”
“What?” A new sense of betrayal burned through her. She couldn’t believe it. She’d started to trust Dern, to think of him as one of the few people at the house who was her ally! He was working with Wyatt? “You hired Austin Dern to spy on me?”
He glanced up at her as he fished in his pants for his wallet. “That surprises you?” An amused smile played upon his lips, and he looked suddenly cruel as he recognized how shattered she was. “Oh, no, it’s more than that, isn’t it?” he tossed out, his voice filled with sarcasm. “You have the nerve to play the victim, to accuse me of screwing around on you when you think you’re in love with a man you barely know—”
“I’m not—”
“Oh, come on. It’s obvious to everyone.”
Don’t believe him. It was just a lucky guess.
But true?
Wyatt must’ve read the emotion on her face. “So tell me, Ava, how sane is that? Fantasizing about the ranch hand? Coupled with everything else you’ve done lately, you’ve got some twisted, convoluted paranoia that everyone you’ve known for years is out to get you, but you can fall in love and trust a stranger?” His face was bland, the tic disappearing as the enormity of what he was saying sunk in. He’d planned this all along. Every last little detail, even hiring Austin Dern.
“You bastard.” She scooped up her bags and started out of the restaurant.
“Wait! Ava!” He was fumbling with his credit cards while trying to catch the waiter’s attention.
Shouldering open the glass doors, she tried to grab hold of the strings of her rapidly fraying grip on reality as the brittle-cold night slapped her in the face. The thought that Wyatt planned to have her committed was devastating, but she should have expected it. Damn it all to hell! She’d never find Noah if she was locked away, forced on medication, under complete observation. Even if she convinced the psychiatrists on staff that she was sane, it would take weeks . . . oh, God, oh, God, oh, God.
Don’t let it happen! Pull yourself together! You can do this, Ava. You have to. Your son needs you! Half running along the sidewalk, panic chasing her down, she headed for the marina.
She nearly ran into a teenager skateboarding in the opposite direction. In a thick jacket and watch cap, he was texting and smoking. “Hey! Watch it! Shit!” His cigarette fell from his lips, and adeptly he picked it up. He cruised by, one shoulder connecting with hers.
“Oh!” Her feet slid on the slick sidewalk and she fell. Bam! Her left knee cracked hard on the concrete.
Pain jarred up her leg and she lost her grip on one of the sacks. It skidded toward the street.
The teenager rounded a corner, didn’t even look over his shoulder.
“Ava!” Wyatt’s voice.
She wasn’t going to listen to him a second longer. Their sham of a marriage was over, and they both knew it. Struggling to get upright, she grabbed hold of a parking meter and pulled herself to her feet, then yanked up her bag. The handle snapped off and the sack with all its contents hit the wet ground hard.
Damn. The camera was inside. All of this plotting, the effort, the lies, and now . . .
Angry at herself, she picked up the bag and held it tight to her body, the other sack swinging from her fingers as she started walking again.
“Ava! Wait up!” Wyatt yelled from somewhere behind her. She ignored him. This day had turned into a disaster of epic proportions. “Hey,” he said as he caught up with her at the marina. “I’m sorry.”
“Get away from me.”
“I shouldn’t have gotten so angry.” He reached for the crook of her elbow, but she yanked her arm a
way, juggling the broken bag and feeling a dull ache in the knee that had hit the sidewalk.
“I said I’m sorry,” he repeated, sounding injured.
“I heard you.”
“I’m trying to apologize here!”
When he touched her again, she whirled on him and said slowly, in very distinct words, “I want a divorce. Not someday. Not in the future. Now. I’m calling a lawyer in the morning.” Fury consumed her. “Don’t bother coming back to the island.”
“Ava . . .”
His patronizing tone was the last straw. She strode past him toward the bay where the black expanse of water stretched into the frigid night. Murky and roiling, the waters were as uncertain and cold as her own future. She shuddered involuntarily because she sensed, just beneath the dark surface, the truth was rising, fangs sharpened, jaws open.
But at least now she knew where she stood with her husband.
CHAPTER 34
Boot heels sinking in the soggy yard, Dern walked around the perimeter of the behemoth of a house. The dog was with him, sniffing tree trunks and lifting his leg but never wandering off far.
During the day, Neptune’s Gate was inviting, its architecture reminiscent of an earlier era of sailing ships and horses and the dawn of electricity and indoor plumbing. But at night, it loomed dark and foreboding, like one of those sinister-appearing castles in an old vampire movie. No amount of outdoor lighting could soften the sharp angles and ominous appearance of the place.
He was certain that the window he’d viewed from Lester Reece’s room at Sea Cliff was part of Jewel-Anne’s suite. Unsure of the configuration of her rooms, he figured he’d find a way inside and take note of her bedroom view. As for the widow’s walk and third-story windows tucked under the eaves, he’d create some maintenance excuse to work his way upstairs so that he could check the sight line to Sea Cliff.
It’s nothing, he told himself again, and once more, as he walked toward the gardening shed, he couldn’t convince himself.