Under My Skin

by Lisa Unger

  The story of what happened to us—the blackmail of an ultrawealthy hedge fund manager leading to the murder of a young woman, followed by the murder of the photographer who tried to find justice for her—has been headline fodder. Now it’s a crime feature in a major magazine.

  I’ve seen it online already. It’s a searing account, sparing no detail, including my breakdown, memory loss and my flight to save Layla from her abuser and the man responsible for the murder of my husband. On the page, it’s one thing—a sensational story with all the right elements of mayhem to be eagerly consumed.

  On my soul, on our lives, it’s a wound that is just now starting to, maybe, heal. Layla and I refused to be interviewed for the article, but the reporter got his information anyway.

  Layla still moves with a hitch in her step, has a scar under her eye from Mac’s last beating. She is no less beautiful. She’s amped up her kickboxing, hired a trainer to teach her self-defense. She, Slade and Izzy are all in twice-weekly therapy.

  “The cycle of abuse stops here,” Layla told me. “I brought it forward into my adult life. But Izzy and Slade aren’t taking it forward into their lives.”

  Mac, Tom Jager and Joe Knight are all dead. As for me, I try not to think about any of them. I work through my feelings of rage, betrayal, inconsolable sadness in therapy, in meditation and try to leave it there. There’s no evidence to tie Alvaro to Elena’s blackmail of Mac, the place where all this darkness started to leak into our lives. But I keep going back to our last meeting. He knew something—or maybe he just suspected. I don’t know how much. He won’t return my calls. And, right now, I don’t have any energy to chase.

  Occasionally, I dream about Mac, that same dream where I beat him with my fists and enjoy every minute of it. I usually wake up weeping. I don’t tell Layla that sometimes I miss him, the man I thought he was. He was funny and smart and could hold his liquor.

  Once upon a time, he was my friend, someone who laughed and cried with me. That he was someone else underneath the skin, somehow doesn’t mitigate the loss of who he was to me.

  After hot chocolate, we all walk out to Layla’s car. The air is growing warmer, has that fresh, clean scent of new beginnings. We say our goodbyes, embrace, exchange kisses. We are all broken, limping, but we are whole and healing. We’ll be okay. This time, it’s no lie.

  * * *

  When Noah comes back from his studio, I have let the room go dark except for the fire. There’s a chili simmering on the stove. I am deep in thought as I often am here, far away from the cacophony of the city, of all the powerful voices in my life. He leaves the lights off and comes to sit on the hearth, warming his hands after the cold walk home.

  “More snow tomorrow,” he says. “Spring’s not ready to come just yet.”

  I don’t answer, just point toward the magazine on the table. He picks it up and looks at it in the firelight, then back at me.

  “I’m sorry,” Noah says, leafing through the pages. “I am sorry for what happened to him, to you. I’m sorry for this.”

  He tosses the magazine on the table in disgust. It lands beside the snow globe I used to keep on my desk, the one Jack gave me with the little house and winter trees, snow falling all around. I lift it from its place and stare inside. I’m here, without him.

  I rise and Noah meets me in the middle of the room. His arms enfold me; his lips find mine. I lace my fingers through his hair, run them down his back to lift off his shirt and let it fall to the floor. Heat comes up between us fast and bright.

  His mouth on my neck, his breath in my ear, as he strips away my shirt. The firelight makes shadows on the wall. Darkness settles into the valleys of his face, pools in the dips of his body. After a few moments, there is only skin, only desire. All the dark players in my life recede from the stage, and it is only us.

  He lifts me and carries me to the couch, where he lays me down, running his hands along my arms, my legs. And then we are a tangle of flesh, wrapped around each other. Pain melting into pleasure, grief over the past releasing its grip on my heart, allowing space for more.

  “I don’t remember who I was before you,” Noah whispers. “I am someone new with you in my life.”

  I let the moment expand—the fire dying to embers, the room growing colder. Outside the wind howls and the branches scrape at the windows. There is no time but now, no one but us.

  What path were Jack and I on? That last night together, the one I have visited and revisited in my dreams, what would the next day have brought if he had not risen before me and gone for his run? What if I had not miscarried? What if I had stayed at the table and listened to him, rather than walk away? All these decisions and events, large and small, twists and turns in the path of our lives. Once a way is chosen, there is no way to know what might have happened on the other path.

  In the firelight, Noah rests his head on my bare belly, listening. I have just barely started to show, just the tiniest bump. I feel his joy, his anticipation. He has bought a stack of books, wants to get started on the nursery, is tracking my pregnancy with an app on his phone.

  “Today, he’s the size of a grape. Or she,” he announced that morning.

  “Who’s in there, do you think?” he asks now. “Who will it be?”

  “We have to wait to find out,” I say, running my hand along his shoulder.

  I know the miracle of children, vividly remember both of Layla’s pregnancies, attending the birthing classes with her when Mac couldn’t. The surprise of meeting Izzy, then Slade, who each arrived, clearly of Mac and Layla, but wholly their own selves, too. I can’t imagine who will arrive when our child is born.

  There are difficult times ahead; I know this. Days so dark, it will be a struggle to remember joyful ones. And there are joyful days ahead, as well, times so full of life and happiness that the possibility of dark days will be distant. But, for right now, there is only the warmth of our bodies, the depth of our new love, the child inside me.

  * * *

  Later Noah sleeps, his breath deep and even. It’s one of those nights when sleep won’t come and I accept that. Instead of railing against it, the night has become my time to write, to think. There are so few silent spaces in this modern world; I have learned to relish the gift of insomnia. Out the window I stare at the wide full moon that glows blue white over the trees, casting the world in silver.

  When I look down, I see him. The hooded man. He’s waiting.

  Quietly, I dress at the door, slip into the frigid night. On the porch, I strap on my snowshoes and crunch out into the moonlight. He turns and disappears into the darkness of the trees.

  The canopy above blocks the glow of the moon, but my eyes adjust quickly to the dim ambient light. The dark hulking form moves away, silent, nearly drifting and I follow.

  Distantly, behind me, I hear Noah’s voice, my name on the night air. I chase the hooded man into the dark, deeper into the woods, farther from the house.

  Then we’re in a clearing and the moonlight creates a blue-white day. I stand and wait.

  He drops his hood.

  Jack.

  How flawed we all are, how imperfect and yet how fiercely we can love each other. We can build lives, and care for each other. We can fail each other, break each other’s fragile hearts. We hold on so tightly to the stories we tell ourselves, to the dreams we have of our futures. And when the worst thing happens, we rage. We rail, and cling. We try to hold on, though it’s the one thing we can’t do.

  “I wish we had more time.”

  My voice is just a whisper in the wind and he is only light and shadow, the rays of a distant, long-dead star. He’s fading into the snow and trees, the sparkle of moonlight on ice.

  “Poppy.”

  Noah is behind me, full of breath and heat. I glance at him, and when I turn back, Jack’s gone. Noah comes closer, puts his hands on me, gentle.

  �
�Where are you going, Poppy?” he asks. He looks past me to the clearing, then back. “Are you all right?”

  “I am,” I say, and mean it.

  “Were you sleepwalking?”

  He’s flushed with the effort of following me through the snowy night, his breath coming out in white clouds, mingling with mine.

  “No,” I tell him. “I wasn’t.”

  I am present. I am awake. I am alive.

  * * * * *

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Everything begins and ends with my husband, Jeffrey, and our daughter, Ocean Rae. They are the foundation of my life, keeping me grounded, loved and loving, laughing, and fully in the moment. I’ve said many times that I’m most at home at the keyboard, lost in story. But that’s not true. I’m most at home with my beautiful, loving family in the happy sun-drenched world we create together.

  Thanks to my agent, Amy Berkower, for her calm, her wisdom and her steely navigation of the white water of the publishing world. Thanks also to Alice Martin and Abigail Barce for their intelligence, good humor and uncanny knack for taking care of business. Writers House is a stellar agency and I’m honored to be represented there.

  What a gift is a smart, insightful, funny and wise editor! Erika Imranyi is all those things and more. Many thanks to her for stellar editorial work, helping me find my way through a Tilt-A-Whirl story, and bringing me on board at the super exciting and high-energy Park Row Books. I’m thrilled to be among such a fantastic group of writers, supported by such an enthusiastic team. It takes a lot of people to bring a book into the world—many thanks to the talented and dedicated folks in the art, marketing, publicity and sales departments.

  Thanks to Jay Nolan, photojournalist extraordinaire, for taking some pretty amazing photos of—me! He made me look A LOT better than I do, all the while answering my million questions, offering his insights into his profession and giving me a little window into his world.

  I continue to be inspired by Carl Jung and his writings, most especially for this novel The Undiscovered Self: The Dilemma of the Individual in Modern Society. Further, I found tremendous inspiration in On Photography by Susan Sontag. Her insights into photography and its place in the modern world are profoundly relevant, and in many ways prescient, to our current experience where we photo-narrate, curate and document all the minutiae of our lives. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography by Roland Barthes is the essential study on subject, the role of the image and how the photograph affects us. Some other books that informed and inspired me during the writing of this novel: The Interpretation of Dreams: The Complete and Definitive Text by Sigmund Freud and Zen and the Brain: Toward an Understanding of Meditation and Consciousness by James H. Austin.

  I am blessed with a truly heroic network of family and friends. My parents, Joseph and Virginia Miscione, and brother, Joe, are tireless supporters, promoters and pals. My mom is one of my earliest and most important readers, along with forever friend Heather Mikesell. Erin Mitchell is reader, proofreader, promoter and buddy. Special thanks to the endless support, love and advice of my mentor and dear, dear friend Shaye Areheart.

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  ISBN: 9781489267443

  Title: UNDER MY SKIN

  First Australian Publication 2018

  Copyright © 2018 Lisa Unger

  All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher:

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