Three years ago, that’s all I wanted, but it’s not true now. It was a hollow victory. And even if he’d never gone back to Ava, it wouldn’t have lasted. I know that.
I’d give anything to erase every moment with Glenn. Why can’t I just be ordinary, reliable Lizzie? All this happened before I even knew Andrew. It’s not like I cheated on him, but I still have to tell him something. The news can’t be the only version of my story he hears.
“Lizzie?” Emma is standing in the doorway, her face sticky and pink. Maybe Andrew will put this off. We can’t fight in front of Emma.
He says, “Go wash up, sweetie. You’re covered in doughnut.” I can hear the strain in his voice, how it’s pitched higher than usual.
I turn to follow Emma, but he says, “You stay here. Just shut the bathroom door. Emma doesn’t need your help.”
I freeze, stricken. That’s how easy it would be. One word from him and I’d be out of Emma’s life forever.
As she turns the water on, he asks, “Did you arrange to meet him yesterday?” All the lightness I saw in his face last night is gone. His mouth is a tense line, his eyes are narrowed.
“No! I just saw him at the police station. We were all there.” My insides are liquid with fear and my words are coming out with too much force.
“This picture wasn’t taken at the police station.” He holds up his phone like an accusation, and I see the same picture there, Glenn and me. We’re on the internet, on the news blogs and social media sites. The whole world knows what a monster I am, how Glenn and I are clearly having an affair and plotted together to murder a beloved author.
And Andrew believes it too.
Unless I can change his mind. “He was worried about Ava, and—”
“And you were what … comforting him?” Andrew raises an eyebrow, and his mouth twists in disgust.
If Andrew really thinks I am involved with Glenn, if he doesn’t trust me to be faithful, what can I do? There’s no way for me to crawl back from this. My face is hot, burning. “No, that’s not what happened. I went to Ava’s house—”
“To meet him?”
“No, I broke in!”
“You … what?” His mouth opens in shock.
“I broke in, okay? I lied to you about who I was to get away from Ava, and I broke in to find her. I thought she’d done it to herself. You don’t know my sister. She’s—”
“You lied and lied and lied.” Andrew stands, his hands balled into fists by his sides.
“Not about you!” My voice is way too loud. Distantly I realize the water isn’t running in the bathroom anymore. I love him, totally and completely, but he doesn’t see it. “I love you. I’ve been a good wife, a good mother.”
He turns his back on me, shaking his head. But it’s true. I cleaned the house and fed them home-cooked meals and was perfect. I did everything right for two whole years. And now it counts for nothing?
The bathroom door swings open, and Emma stands there, her face and hands dripping, her eyes bewildered. She’s never heard us argue. “You’re yelling,” she says, like she can’t believe it.
Andrew turns to face us like he’s facing a firing squad. He never knew Zoe, always angry and mouthy and spoiling for a fight. I was always so damn grateful for his love that I never disagreed with anything he said. He can’t just throw that away.
I sink to my knees beside Emma and pull her close to me. She still smells like sugar. “Daddy doesn’t know how much I love you,” I say loud enough for Andrew to hear. “I love you and Daddy more than the moon and stars.”
This is a familiar game, and she pulls back to look me in the eyes. “I love you and Daddy more than the sun and sky.”
Then she turns her trusting face to Andrew.
He closes his eyes as if he can’t even look at us. Good. He needs to feel it, the full weight of our family. “This isn’t fair, Zoe.”
“Don’t call me that.” I kiss Emma’s head. “My name is Lizzie.”
On some level, Emma must know she’s being used, because she pulls away from me and runs to Andrew, leaving me kneeling by myself. “Say it, Daddy. Say it.”
He bends and scoops her up, whispering into her hair, “I love you more than yesterday, today, and tomorrow.”
Not “you and Mommy.” Not even “you and Lizzie.” He’s left me out, and the omission is a knife in my heart. It takes all my strength to stand up. I love him, totally and completely. And it feels like I’ve lost him.
“Let’s go home,” I say quickly. “We’ll just leave. The police will find Ava; nobody needs me here. We’ll go home and everything will be—”
“No.” Andrew’s voice is soft but firm. He sets Emma down, but he doesn’t walk over to me. “No. I need some time to think.”
I hesitate, looking at Emma nestled close against him. I can’t tell him everything, but I can’t seem like I’m holding anything back. “I don’t even know him now. It was three years ago. Three years. Back then you were married—” I break off. I don’t want to bring up Andrew’s first wife, the one who died when Emma was born. I’ve kept all her china, her furniture and linens, because I was so grateful I got to keep her family. But I knew I didn’t deserve them.
“I know.” A shadow crosses Andrew’s face. Is he thinking about what my mother said, about how I found him when he was grieving? Emma swings around his legs like an orbiting planet.
“Let me come home, please.” That last word is a whispered plea. I can’t cry, not here in front of Emma; I can’t lose myself in this panic and grief.
Andrew hates causing pain. Even if he’s angry at me, even if he doesn’t love me anymore, he doesn’t want to hurt me. But I almost wish he would. If he shouted at me, really lost his temper, I would forgive him. But he’s so controlled, almost like he hates me.
He shoos Emma toward the bed and flips the channel to a cartoon. Then he’s finally standing right in front of me, his eyes searching my face. “You can’t lie to me anymore. Not now. Not ever.”
Hope rushes through me, and I try to temper the desperation in my voice. “I won’t, I swear. And I didn’t do this. I didn’t do anything to Ava. Once we get home …”
But he shakes his head once. No. “I’ll take Emma home, but you stay here. You can go back to your parents’ house or I’ll extend the hotel reservation. At least until the investigation is over.” He pauses, then takes a deep breath. “I need that time to think things over.”
His words are a shot to my gut. I can’t process the impact; I just feel it sucking all the air from my lungs. Time to think. Think about a time before he knew me, a life after me. I gasp, unable to speak. I’m drowning.
My hands reach out for him, but he’s already turning away. He pulls the suitcase onto the bed beside Emma. Slowly he scoops up her discarded pajamas from the floor, folding and tucking them into place.
Then the hotel phone rings.
Andrew picks it up cautiously. “Yes? Yes, this is he.”
I reach for my bag, but my fingers refuse to grasp the strap. My body is not my own. If I can get away, I can think of a way to make him love me again. But every cell of my body yearns to stay.
Then my husband says, “She’s right here.” Something in the formal way he’s speaking cuts right through me. It’s the police. He must be talking to the police, and they want to confirm my whereabouts before they drag me off to jail.
I have to leave. I have to go somewhere, anywhere away from here.
The door is closing behind me when I hear Emma call, “Lizzie?”
If I turn back, I won’t be strong enough to leave.
My vision is blurry with tears as I run down the hall, but there’s a group waiting for the elevator. I can’t handle being with all those strangers, not when I’m falling apart.
I veer down another hallway and lean against the wall beside a fire extinguisher. Closing my eyes, I take a breath and let it fill all the emptiness inside me. But instead of calming me down, it illuminates the magnitude of my loss. Ever
y memory of Emma’s face, every echo of Andrew saying “think things over,” ignites pain throughout my body.
I know what the police have. The emails, plus the prior relationship with Glenn, plus the incident. The last time I saw Ava. She must have told Glenn. No wonder they think I’m guilty. It will all come out and everyone will hate me. I’ll be handcuffed and convicted. I’ll never be free again.
My breath hitches, like I’m having an asthma attack. What if they find Ava and it’s too late? There’s not a single thought that can calm this storm. Losing Andrew and Emma hurts too much to think about, but I can’t take refuge in my hatred of Ava. She really might be in danger, someone might have taken her, and I’m scared for her, surprisingly. But there’s no time to worry about my sister, because the police are coming for me and I have to run.
But I have no idea where to go. Just away from the police.
I duck into a stairwell and take the stairs at top speed. Panic makes me careless and I stumble, banging my shoulder against the wall. It barely registers.
There’s a gray exit door and I bolt through it. I’m at one side of the hotel by a dumpster. The parking lot is small, not busy. As far as I can see, there’s the divided highway, other parking lots, tall buildings and hotels, and a few little islands of landscaping. Nowhere to blend in. Nowhere to hide.
I hear distant shouting, and I don’t stop to see if it’s the police or hotel staff or reporters. Running at an angle, I dart across the little alley that separates one hotel from another. There’s a group of people boarding a shuttle bus, and on instinct I beeline for them.
My future has tunneled down to a single point: get on that bus. I have no idea where I’ll go after this. Every place I can think of—Texas, my parents’ house, that hotel room—is closed to me. After I met Andrew, I hoped I’d never be this alone again.
I keep my head down, let my hair swing over my face, and join the group, waiting my turn to climb aboard. I could be a tourist, a student, a wife. The driver doesn’t ask for identification. I’m just another hotel guest going from point A to point B.
I don’t sit by the window. There’s an empty seat next to a woman in a pantsuit, and I collapse on it just before she can set her laptop bag down. I’m trembling. Sweat dampens my hairline. I catch a glimpse of two police cars outside the hotel as we pass. I was right, but there’s no triumph in it, only terror. Leaning back to obscure my face, I hope I’m not considered armed and dangerous. Just a flight risk.
It doesn’t matter where we’re headed. The airport, the historic district, the Metro. It doesn’t even matter how long it takes. Andrew and Emma will be getting into a car, heading back to the airport. They’re moving farther and farther away from me. Maybe if I can solve this mystery, maybe if I can find Ava, I can follow them.
I just need time to think and plan. But memory is swamping all my thoughts. The look on Andrew’s face when he realized I’d lied again. The last time I saw Ava. The reason the police think I’m guilty.
I shut my eyes, but still I see Ava staring at me, blood running down her face.
* * *
It was the end of summer, and the air was so thick I wasn’t sure I could breathe. I had driven my crappy hatchback the seven hours from Providence past New York and Philadelphia. At the time, Ava was living in Maryland, right on the border. She had a fairy-tale cottage in a little town. The whole thing was so charming and sweet, it made me sick.
The end of a love affair is never easy, especially because Glenn wasn’t the love of my life. But I’d thought we had something separate from Ava. That we could have found each other without her. The dedication in her book had exposed that lie. We were together because each of us was at odds with her. He’d slept with me to get back at her. I’d slept with him to prove I was better than her. We were with each other, but it was always about my sister.
I scratched his chest and nipped his shoulder, constantly demanding his attention, trying to exorcise the ghost of her memory. But when we were lying together afterward, my head on his arm, his eyes were closed. I couldn’t help wondering if he was still, always, only thinking about her.
For a full week after Glenn disappeared, I woke up angry and went to bed angry. My jaw clenched until my muscles were taut with pain. My stomach was too knotted for food, my nerves too wired for sleep.
At the bookstore I saw an entire window filled with Ava’s new book. It was displayed on the wall of best sellers. Glossy, shiny, menacingly bright letters. And inside every book the same message.
When I passed the dump display with the blown-up picture of Ava herself, I couldn’t hold back my poisonous rage. I grabbed the flimsy cardboard edge of her cute choppy haircut and yanked the whole thing to one side. Books scattered as the honeycomb shelf came away from its base. I put a foot on Ava’s black leather jacket and pulled her cardboard head from her shoulders.
I didn’t stay to find out I was fired.
I left my adviser, left school, dropped everything. I didn’t pay my rent or my utilities or pick up my paycheck. I didn’t give two weeks’ notice anywhere. My anger was driving me and I let it gather my things and hit the road.
Done. Gone. Over.
I didn’t know I was going to her house, I swear. I didn’t have a plan. I almost never do, at first. But when I passed into Delaware, I knew where I was heading. Ava had been living here since her divorce from Beckett. I’d been to the house only once with my parents, but my clenched hands turned the wheel as if on automatic. I hated Ava. I hated her and I was going to hurt her like she’d hurt me.
There had been plenty of chances to turn around. When I think about it now, even when I’m angry, part of me wishes I could change the story. There were so many moments I could have chosen a different path.
There. When I drove past the English Department without a good-bye to my graduate studies. I should have stopped and gone inside to breathe the heavy smell of paper and hear the rolling laugh of Peggy, our office manager. I should have gone into the main office and asked what she was reading. She would have given me a sticky toffee and told me about the professor who’d called her at two AM with a printing problem. I could have let Ava go and finished my degree.
But I was spoiling for a fight, so I went to find one.
I could have stopped there. When I pulled off for gas at a Jersey Turnpike service plaza. There was a woman with a golden retriever whose wide doggy smile could have diffused me. I should have knelt in front of that dog and stroked his ears and kissed his silky head. I should have remembered that Glenn wasn’t the only good thing in the world and I was worthy of more love than he could give.
But instead I replaced the pump and pulled away, anger and gasoline fumes burning my lungs.
Even there, as I pulled into Ava’s subdivision. It’s not too late, I want to tell myself. But it was too late. Years too late. The sun had set an hour ago, but in this neighborhood front walks were lined with lights and front porches glowed.
And in front of Ava’s house, Glenn’s car.
I felt the sight like a physical punch to the gut. He had left me for Ava exactly a week ago. Before I knew it, my seat belt was off, my door was open, and I was standing on the pavement. My heart felt like a rotting boil. I don’t remember walking to the front door, but I do remember the path was lined with the same four-by-four blocks of natural stone that circled the tree in the front yard. They looked like little cobblestones; I’ll never forget that.
I rang the bell. I banged and shouted. But no one answered.
There were lights on inside. I pressed my face against the window next to the door, trying to see. The polished entryway was empty, but I could detect movement farther back. I grabbed a stone block from the line edging the front path. The cold weight felt good in my hand.
I hurled the stone through her front window. The crash sounded exactly the way I felt. I grabbed another and hurled it through the window on the other side of the front door.
Now I could hear voices in the back of
the house. I scooped up two more, one in each hand.
Come out, Ava.
My fingers clenched the rough stone. More than throwing it, I pushed it. I put everything I had behind that throw. Sent it as high and as far as I could, all the way into the house.
The rock was falling, just losing its momentum, as Ava came out of the kitchen.
And it hit her in the head. She staggered back against the wall, her eyes wide and shocked.
But I was frozen in place. Staring at my bloodied sister through a halo of broken glass.
Behind her, I could hear Glenn’s voice. “The police are on their way.”
I couldn’t let him catch me here, couldn’t stand watching his eyes turn cold and disdainful.
Then I saw myself as he would, as Ava must. Disheveled hair, wild expression, rock in hand. And I couldn’t stand the picture I made.
I dropped the stone and ran.
CHAPTER
24
AVA
RUTHLESS SELF-LOATHING FLOODS my body along with my choking fear for Beckett. I’ve been left alone with Cristina, who is obsessed with my mother—she’s always addressed me instead of him, always looked at me first, and she seems to think Beckett is expendable. Now he’s in the belly of the beast and I can’t do a damned thing to help him.
I spent so much time despising him, but all my reasons are insubstantial chaff scattered in the gale force of my regret. He was weak, he wasn’t the right husband for me, but he doesn’t deserve to be here, afraid and in pain. If he’d never met me, his story could have been so different. Maybe he would have married some nice woman, taken pride in his writing, been happy. If he hadn’t met me, he wouldn’t be here—I feel the truth of that even without all the facts. I wanted him dead, I hated him, but now I realize how little it all mattered. If he dies here, I deserve blame.
Meanwhile, Cristina is realigning the medical equipment, pulling out a few more empty vials, and replacing the needle on the syringe. It must be my turn for the checkup. Absolutely not.
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