by A. J. Banner
I flipped back to the practice notes in messy cursive—he really had done it. He had forged my mother’s handwriting, the way it had been in her last days. But to what end? Her writing had changed over time, growing messier, and in the end, it had not seemed like her own. Perhaps because it had literally not been her own.
What if she had not written those entries about Kieran at all? What if Brandon had written them? He must have. He’d written in the journal, then he’d planted it under the cabinet in the cottage. He’d pretended to find it there, when he’d helped me clean up. The night I’d supposedly sleepwalked and messed up the cottage myself. But I couldn’t remember, probably because I hadn’t been there at all. He’d been in there, trying to reinforce what he wanted to be true. He wanted me to believe that Kieran had been a danger to my mother. Planting a seed of doubt in my mind about my own husband. Trying to steer me toward believing that Kieran could have hastened her death, that he could have wanted me dead, too.
Now I was all but certain I’d been mistaken about Kieran. Most likely, he had not been a danger to my mother. He was guilty of infidelity, but how much more, I no longer knew. Brandon had manipulated me. How much of my mother’s writing had been hers, and how much had been his? He’d written enough. He’d forged the words that had turned me against Kieran. My mind reeled, the horror digging into my bones. I’d wanted to kill Kieran with the Juliet—but Brandon might’ve been the one to do it. Either way, Kieran was not a murderer. Poor Kieran. I’m sorry—I’m so sorry for you. Why hadn’t I seen that Brandon was worse than Kieran? A philanderer, a doctor in debt, did not deserve to be murdered. Tears spilled from my eyes, and I found I was sobbing, trying to be silent, but the wind stole my anguish and carried it away.
The air congealed in the tent—I had to get out of there. It seemed I’d been crouched on the sleeping bag forever, but only a minute or two had passed. Brandon was still out there somewhere. Gripping the flashlight, I stumbled out into the cold air—and the light shone into Brandon’s face, his eyes half-lidded, his face pale, shiny with sweat.
“No!” I shouted, gasping. “Help! Someone!”
“What are you doing in here? Why are you shouting?” His voice came out high-pitched, his clothes clinging to him, soaked from the rain.
“I read your notes!” I shouted. “You wrote in my mother’s journal. You tried to turn me against my husband.”
His face twisted with anguish and desolation. He was shaking. “You don’t understand.”
“You set this up. You killed him. You wanted me to believe I did. You bastard!” I launched myself at him, shoved him with all my might. He stepped backward, lost his balance, and sat in the dirt, blinking, his reactions slow.
“Why?” I shouted. “Why did you kill him?”
“Elise . . . he was bad,” he said, slurring his words. “. . . deserved to die.”
“You’ve been camping out, watching me. What the hell is wrong with you? You’re a murderer! Go to hell!”
“Stop!” He got up and lumbered toward me, rising like a monster in a tempest. He lifted his fist into the air, a fist that could break my bones, crack right through my skull. I raised my arm to hold him off. He reached for me, grabbing at air. I slipped around him toward the circle of stones.
“I didn’t mean to,” he said, dropping his fist. “I did write in the journal. You needed to see how bad he was for you.”
The waves crashed—the wind raging, blowing a mist of cloud away from the moon. His features were once again illuminated, twisted and unrecognizable.
“Did you kill him with the poison?” I screamed. “You were in the shop! It was you all along! You read my mother’s journals. You knew everything!”
“He was . . . bad for you,” Brandon said. He raised his hands and pressed them to his temples. “My head.”
“He slept with Diane, but he didn’t kill my mother, did he? Did you have keys made to the cottage? Or did you break in? You were always good with locks.”
He looked up at me, his face contorted into a terrifying grimace. “I did everything for you!” he roared, lunging at me. “All for you. Don’t you see?” He grabbed me by the throat, swung me around, his eyes wide, the whites of them glowing in the moonlight. He frothed at the corners of his mouth.
I tried to cry out, but his fingers were crushing my neck. Spots danced in front of my eyes. Only a gurgling sound came out—I couldn’t breathe. My baby! I wanted to scream.
“I had to protect you,” he said. “I had to—”
I choked, pinpoints of light bursting through my vision as I gasped for air. This is how I’m going to die, I thought. My baby, too. The both of us.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Droplets of mist hung in the air, tossed in from the sea. My mother’s spirit fluttered in the darkness. How I missed her—but here she was. I could reach for her, fly away with her. Float up into the sky.
No, fight back, Elise! she yelled in my mind. You have to live, for your daughter!
For my daughter. The baby! She would be a girl. My mother knew. Of course she did. She knew everything, could see . . . everything. Now I could see her, too, my little girl with blonde hair flying in the breeze, running toward me. Laughing in a halo of sunlight.
With all my strength, I kneed Brandon in the groin. Once, twice. He abruptly let go of me, doubling over, groaning. I stumbled away but he caught up and grabbed my shirtsleeve, pulling, and I heard myself screaming.
“Listen to me,” he said, swaying, still partly doubled over.
“Stop, let go of me!” I wrenched away, but he hung on, my sleeve ripping. I reached down for a rock from the circle, and I swung it around with all my might, whacking him on the side of the head. He let out a strangled cry, half pain, half astonishment. He let go of my shirt, pressed his hand to his head. I couldn’t tell if he was bleeding.
A poker-hot pain spread through my lower back, knifed into my abdomen. I felt the hot dampness in my groin. I was bleeding now—I knew it. No, not my daughter. She needs to live. My mother hovered in the trees, there and then gone. Brandon was still standing, impossibly, unbelievably, still moving toward me. Blood ran down his temple, into his eye. Had I done that? Had I hurt him so badly? I looked at my hands in the moonlight, my fingers shaking so much I could not hold them steady. They were splattered with bits of blood. I tried to wipe them on my pants. “No, no, this isn’t happening.”
I turned away from him and ran. He lumbered along behind me, growing ever closer. I had to reach Chantal’s house, but I couldn’t find my way in the darkness. Don’t stop, breathe. Ignore the cold, the fear. My feet dragged, pain searing through my lungs. Thorns snagged my jeans, slowing me down, but I was almost there, faint squares of light blinking in the distant windows. Many turns, up and down, left and right—I no longer knew in which direction I ran.
I stumbled into the garden. My garden. I’d run the wrong way. Somehow, I’d circled back toward home. I could see the fennel stalks slashing against the sky, the house in the background. I was shivering, my teeth chattering as I raced through the lavender beds, silver-edged clouds shimmering in the sky. I couldn’t stop—her life depended on it, my baby’s life. But my legs buckled, the strength draining from my body. Fragmented images fell into my mind—the waves lapping at the yacht, the island emerging from the mist, the Juliet flowers pulsing like tiny, broken hearts.
Just a few more steps. A shadow loomed at the edge of my vision. Brandon was calling for me, right behind me now. I tumbled and fell into the grass, the garden all aglow. He collapsed beside me in a crumpled heap—his eyelashes fluttering, blood still trickling down his forehead. A silhouette approached me, a man speaking to me in a gentle, urgent tone. John Russell? I thought in confusion. But I hadn’t called him. My phone was gone, thrown somewhere on the ground in my coat. The voice wasn’t his—who was it? The man looked down at me, my rescuer, reaching out to take my hand. He asked me a question, but I couldn’t hear for the ringing in my ears. He lifted me, holding
me steady, pulled me to my feet.
“It’s me,” he said. “You’re safe now.”
“You’re not . . . real,” I said, my voice raspy. I thought he must be an apparition, a ghost like my mother.
“Yes, I am. I’m real.” He held my hand to his chest, so I could feel his heartbeat, feel that he was solid. This ghost, this angel standing against the light, was my husband, Kieran, still alive.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Chantal unfolded the local newspaper, Chinook Island Weekly, and read the article three times over while she sipped her coffee. She knew the reporter, Dana Parks, a young woman who freelanced as a stringer but also blogged, wrote travel essays, and moonlighted as a crime novelist. She’d done an admirable job, but she hadn’t captured the whole story. Her article skimmed the surface: Dr. Kieran Lund, a 40-year-old local physician feared dead when his inflatable dinghy floated out to sea, managed to row to shore . . . He had apparently fallen unconscious while out fishing . . .
Fishing? Kieran hadn’t said a word about fishing on his dinghy. And he’d fallen unconscious, really? Upon returning home, Dr. Lund engaged in an altercation with an intruder, 41-year-old Brandon McLeod, who had reportedly been stalking his ex-wife, Elise Watters, 36, who has been married to Kieran Lund for approximately one year . . .
Etcetera. Nothing about Kieran’s infidelity, but then, it hadn’t been relevant to his miraculous survival at sea. Diane had disappeared into rehab on the mainland, and she likely would not be back. Ms. Parks had interviewed Deputy Russell (“We arrived on the scene to find Mr. McLeod unconscious”) and Kieran (“We would appreciate space and time as we work through this—please respect my wife’s privacy. She’s emotional and needs to grieve.”). Chantal had been mentioned for helping Elise look for Kieran, but that was all.
In the article, there was no mention of the Juliet, which had disappeared from the garden—temporarily, Chantal was sure—and nothing about Brandon’s little campsite in the woods. Nothing about Elise apparently seeing Kieran “dead” in the garden. Nothing about Brandon hauling the body out onto the dinghy. Elise had confided in Chantal, and Deputy Russell knew what had happened. He and Chantal were good at keeping secrets from journalists, from any outsiders who might come nosing around. After all, Brandon was gone, and Kieran didn’t remember his ordeal. John Russell had admitted to Chantal once, when she’d been over to fix his computer, that he’d harbored a crush on Elise in high school. By the look on his face when he mentioned Elise, he had likely never gotten over her, but she was married, for now, and he was unlikely to get far with any woman if he didn’t lose the clip-on tie and start doing a better job laundering his shirts.
The day before, when Chantal had stopped by the Clary Sage, Elise had been helping customers find gifts, digestive bitters, tinctures for sore joints, insomnia, skin rashes. She had looked pale, dark rings beneath her eyes, but she needed to work, she’d said. If she didn’t try to return to a semblance of normal life, she would dissolve.
I’ve already dissolved, four years ago, Chantal almost said, but she had hugged Elise, had promised to be there for her, for the baby, whatever she decided to do about her marriage.
Chantal finished her coffee, laid the newspaper flat on the kitchen table, and looked out toward the blue Victorian, winking in and out of view through the trees. The whole complicated, sordid mess was over. But she couldn’t help the bereft feeling inside her, the sense that she had failed, that she was alone. Elise and Kieran, together again, heading to therapy, really?
Chantal got up, went upstairs to take a shower. She was still sweaty after her run.
No sign of a sleepwalking Elise this morning. This should be the end of it, Chantal thought to herself. Her efforts had all been for nothing. Or maybe not. Maybe her timing had just been wrong, and she needed to rethink her approach. She undressed in front of the dressing-table mirror, pulled on the sexy black G-string, the only thing she was wearing now, except for the shiny lipstick, which she had carefully applied in a thick coat before dabbing her mouth on a tissue. Then she stood in front of the mirror, practiced her repartee, running her hand down her belly. And then she picked up her phone, scrolled through her contacts, and made a call.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The psychotherapist’s office hid in the woods at the end of a narrow, winding lane. When I pulled up in my Honda, Kieran’s Jaguar was already parked next to the large log cabin. Our appointment was at noon, on Kieran’s lunch hour. I was five minutes early.
In the warm waiting room, Kieran stood with his hands in his pockets, looking out at the trees. He turned and smiled when he saw me, his face lighting up. I smiled back cautiously.
I could still hardly believe he was alive, here in the flesh. Sometimes I caught myself waking in the night, checking to make sure he was breathing. The doctors had found no trace of poison or any other toxins in his system, and no injuries except slight bruising from his fall in the garden and from Brandon transporting him onto the dinghy. He hadn’t ever been dead. He had only appeared that way. He was a medical mystery.
I took a seat and picked up a magazine, flipped through to keep myself occupied and at a distance from Kieran. I didn’t want to be here, but he had insisted. When I’d reacted to his smile with one of my own, I’d forgotten for that instant the trauma of discovering him in our bed with another woman. This happened now and then but lasted for only a moment or two. On the scale of transgressions, infidelity might fall far short of Brandon’s murderous obsession, but it was also far from nothing. Most days, Kieran’s hopes for getting past it struck me as wishful thinking, if not outright delusion.
For his part, Brandon would never have a chance to atone for his sins. That night in the garden a month earlier, he’d fallen but lumbered to his feet again. He’d faced Kieran, who had held him at bay until the medics had arrived a few minutes later. They had whisked all of us to the hospital on the mainland. Brandon didn’t leave it alive.
He suffered an aneurysm. Kieran and I were not to blame, the authorities said. It was clear we had acted in self-defense on our own property, that Brandon was a danger to us. The police had taken his writings, the photographs, the tent, his cell phone—everything—into evidence.
Would he have been charged with any crimes if he had survived? We would never know.
The trauma of the experience lingered in me, as did the guilt, because I felt responsible for Brandon’s death, no matter what the police said. But I tried to focus on hope, for my baby. She’d held on, a miracle. She was still here, growing, and I didn’t want my darkest emotions seeping into her. I wanted her to love life, to feel joy.
Kieran sat next to me and took my hand. He was determined to perform his own miracles, to regain my trust. He had shown me notes from my mother, proving that she had changed her mind about the supposedly lifesaving experimental treatment.
And so I had agreed to come here for the baby’s sake and perhaps out of a misplaced sense of responsibility. I had not killed Kieran, but I had wanted to, and I had been convinced of his guilt. We could only imagine the way Brandon had been watching us, deceiving us, taking his time. He’d been planning to make his move for a while. He must have mixed the Juliet powder in the shop, must have encountered Kieran in the kitchen alone.
Most likely, when he’d shown up at the door under some pretense, Kieran had offered him a cup of coffee. Perhaps they had chatted while waiting for me to wake upstairs. What had they discussed?
Kieran didn’t remember, and Brandon had carried his secrets to the grave. But I often imagined him slipping the Juliet powder into Kieran’s coffee during a moment of opportunity, when Kieran’s back had been turned, or perhaps when he’d gone upstairs to check on me. I pictured him coming back down, telling Brandon he didn’t want to wake me, that it was too early.
I tried not to imagine what had come next, Kieran falling to the ground, struggling to breathe as the Juliet seeped into his bloodstream. Brandon checking for breath, a pulse. He must’ve
thought he had the fatal dose figured, but he’d made a mistake. Then he’d gone to get a duffel bag from his truck, which he must’ve parked around the corner.
He must’ve been gone long enough for me to come downstairs and find Kieran in the garden, long enough for me to try to revive him, to grab my phone. Long enough for Brandon to consider whether he needed to knock me out so he could move the body.
But lucky for him, I’d fallen unconscious. How convenient for him, if not for me. And then he had hauled Kieran down to the docks, to the dinghy.
Now, as Kieran and I sat here in the waiting room, it all felt surreal. It surely always would. Yet here we were, on the other side of it, with our lives ahead of us, and the life of our child within me. What was there to do but face forward and see what could be done?
A door opened and an elegant woman in a turquoise pantsuit and black flats, her face angular, her black hair cut into a soft bob, came out and smiled at us, her hands clasped in front of her. Her previous client must’ve exited the back way, I thought. She led us into a warm, rosily lit room behind her—soft carpets, calming plants, plush furniture in muted colors. We introduced ourselves and Kieran and I sat awkwardly next to each other on the couch, Dr. Thacker in the armchair across from us. Tissues bloomed from floral-patterned boxes on tables around the room, ready to offer comfort. “How may I help you today?” she said.
Kieran looked down at his hands on his lap. “We need to repair our marriage,” he said, looking up at her.
I let out a sigh of relief. Good, let him do the talking.
We told her everything in a stream—about our marriage, Diane, Brandon, Kieran disappearing, turning up again. We brought her up to speed on every detail. She had also spoken to us briefly on the phone.