by Cat Mann
Chapter 20
Gauntlet
“C'mon, Max. This is good stuff. Give it a little try. Just one bite. Mama said you'd like it … and it’s your daddy’s favorite!”
“Hey, Ma.” Coming in from the garage, I found my mother in a face-off with Max, seated and scowling in his booster chair on the other side of the island.
“Hi, Sweetie!” She leaned toward me and I kissed her cheek hello.
“What’s the matter with Max?” My chin lifted in my son's direction. He was slouched in his seat wearing just swim trunks and a pout. His little arms were folded across his damp chest and his eyes were focused on the floor. Eating the spinach pie plated on the counter in front of him was not looking likely.
“Ava just pulled him out of the pool for an early dinner. He wanted a hot dog. She gave him spinach pie.”
Kissing his damp, chlorine-smelling hair, I stole a bite of his spinach pie and then moved towards the refrigerator. Pulling a cold hot dog from a pack, I stabbed it a few quick times with a fork and then heated it in the microwave on a chintzy paper plate. With a big glob of mustard, I sat the plate in front of Max and traded him the hot dog for the spinach.
“Yes!” He fist-bumped the air.
“Ava said no more hot dogs!”
“Ava’s not the boss.”
“Ha!”
She laughed at me and I turned towards her in all seriousness. “Mom, are you sure you didn’t recognize the man who was in our home?”
Her lips dropped from a carefree smile to a deep, worried frown. “Ari, I see his face every time I close my eyes and I promise you, I don’t know him. If I did, you know I would tell you. It kills me that I can’t help you.”
“You said you thought the woman was familiar. What did you mean by that?”
“I don’t know … she was just sort of … familiar … in a distant kind of way. Like maybe, I had seen her at the grocery store once or something. But, Ari, I didn’t see her face, it was just her hair and maybe the shape of her body. It was just a feeling I had. I’m sorry.”
If I told my mother our intruder had had the key and the code to our home and had probably been watching Ava all morning, stalking her, just waiting for her to leave the house, my mother would break down. And my state of mind couldn't handle her level of worry along with my own.
I squeezed my mother’s shoulder and a small black figure popped up in the window.
“Hey, Max?”
He looked up at me from his hotdog with mustard smearing his lips.
“Someone is here to say hi to you.”
His brow furrowed just like Ava’s does. I am always amazed at how very similar Max and Ava are to one another.
I pointed to his tiny black cat, whose yellow eyes gleamed in at us from the sunporch.
“Eeee!” He squealed and shot out of his seat like a rocket, out the door and straight at the kitty, who happily rubbed against him and covered Max’s still damp skin with lots of itchy allergen infested cat hair.
“A cat, Ari?” My mom tsked and put her fists to her hips.
“It’s a stray.”
“You can’t keep a cat.”
“Last time I checked, this is my house. I can do whatever I want here.”
“Last time I checked, you were allergic.”
“Mmm … deathly. I called Ava’s doctor, he prescribed some good allergy medicine for me and the cat can stay on the sun porch.”
“The sun porch?” Her nose wrinkled in disapproval.
“What wrong with that? That room is bigger than some houses! It’s a kingdom to that cat. It’ll be safe there and fed and warm and overly loved. And it really makes Max happy.”
“You mean it makes Ava happy.”
My brow rose in question.
“She called me crying the other day over that silly cat.”
“She didn’t.”
“Ari.” My mom gave me an indulgent smile. “Ava comes to me for everything … We’re friends.”
“Friends? You two complain about each other all the time!”
“We are also women … ”
“Right. Where is she anyway?”
“Upstairs. She’s getting ready for tonight.”
I walked away to grab the garment bags I had hung in the back hallway and returned, shaking them at my mother to get her attention. “Listen, Max’s suit is here along with the shoes. You need to have him in L.A. by seven. Call Lirik after you get there and then I can meet you backstage.”
“We'll get him there on time, I promise.”
“Make sure you get him in the bathtub after he’s done with that cat, please. He needs to brush his teeth, make sure you comb his hair, he’ll try to be sneaky out of the bath, you really gotta grab him to dress him. And pack him some pajamas for the ride home.”
“Max isn’t my first encounter with a child, Ari. I think I can handle a few hours with my grandson.”
“Right…”
Since Ava, Max, Margaux and I were all walking down the runway together at the end of the show, Max was required to be at the function. It was something we normally wouldn’t bring him to. Late hours, loud music and crowded spaces aren’t suitable for three year olds, in our opinion. My mom and dad had volunteered to watch Max for the evening and bring him to the show in time for him to walk with us and then they would take him home again and get him in his bed at a semi-reasonable hour.
After shoveling the rest of Max’s spinach pie into my mouth, I left the kitchen and headed to our bedroom. Ava stood at the bathroom sink wearing only my worn-out gray hooded sweatshirt. Thanks to her bump, the sweatshirt was short enough that when she lifted her arm to apply her makeup, the fabric slid up the back of her leg, revealing the smooth curve of her naked bottom. Unnoticed, I watched her from the doorway as she leaned over the sink and carefully rubbed on moisturizer and dabbed the soft skin under her eyes with white cream. She does this thing with her mouth when she puts on her eye makeup. Her lips part in a sexy way and she blinks slowly and carefully.
“You’re beautiful. You know?”
“Thank you.”
“May I come in?”
“Mmm. I’m almost done.”
I took a seat on the counter top and observed her as she continued to do her makeup. Her skin was pearly and glowing and her hair flowed down her back in long, soft pin curls.
“Detective Bryant called me this afternoon.”
She blinked up in the mirror to look at me.
“Ava, he said that you did set the alarm that morning.”
Her hands shook with a slight tremble and she tossed her eyeliner back in a drawer.
“You set the alarm at eight and ten minutes later, a key was used to unlock our door and the code was entered to disable the alarm. So, I am going to ask you this one more time. What are you keeping from me? Who did this and what do they want from you?”
“You still think this is me? That I am keeping something from you?”
“Oh, I know it’s you.”
“Ari, no … I’m not keeping anything from you. I know that I deserve some of your distrust. I know that I messed up before and selfishly kept secrets from you. I wounded us, Ari, I know that. I left a tiny mark on our marriage. I wedged a small gap between us. Because of those mistakes, you will always have a flicker of doubt with me. And I am so sorry. When I kept The Kakos from you, when I hid the scary parts of my past, it wasn’t because I wanted to do you harm, I kept my secrets because I thought I was saving you. I thought I was protecting you. I was wrong, I hurt you and I hurt us. I learned my lesson Ari, I won’t do that again.”
“You’re keeping something, Ava.”
She blinked at me again and her eyes turned angry. “Well, I think you're the one with the secret. What was Julia doing here this morning?”
My gaze shot past the doorway, into the room to the open window.
“Julia? Just … talking. She walked up the beach and came to say hi. I honestly don’t kno
w what her deal is. I’ve got nothing to do with her shit. This issue is between us, Julia's not involved. You gotta come clean, Baby. I’m not going to allow you to keep me in the dark the way you did last year with No. 7. I won’t let that happen this time. You are going to tell me what you know.”
Ava applied a shiny, nude gloss to her rosebud lips, crammed the lid back on the tube and tossed it in her messy drawer. “You’re unbelievable.”
She left the bathroom to change and I followed her. “We are going to talk tonight. We need to get to the bottom of all this.”
“Yes. We do. And we are going to start off with who you are, Ari.”
Ava had made a threat and I was angry.