by Fenton, Liz
I’ve lived in denial for a long time about what happened with Janelle. What I did to Janelle.
But as Q stares at me now, it’s obvious he knows the truth. And I know as I think back on that night in 2006, I’m going to have to see it as it really happened. Not as I have chosen to remember it all these years.
The visual makes my stomach recoil—Professor Callahan’s steel bed frame, his sleet-gray comforter rumpled at the foot, his black thick-rimmed eyeglasses on the bedside table. He said he was going to take a shower, and the second the water turned on, I yanked my jeans up over my hips, pulled my sweatshirt over my head, and forced my feet into my boots. I wanted to be anywhere but there. I cracked the bathroom door, the steam hitting me in the face. I looked away, not wanting to see him naked again. “I have to go—early test tomorrow,” I lied, not wanting him to resent me for running out. “Okay,” he called back, oblivious.
On my way out of his condo, I glanced toward his study and saw the piece of paper on his desk. It was a referral letter written for Janelle—but I already knew that. I’d seen it when I’d first arrived and asked to use the bathroom, then ducked into his office while he poured the wine.
It’s why I slept with him.
Survival of the fittest, I told myself at the time. When I walked back into his kitchen, downed my glass of wine, and asked him where the bedroom was, he raised his eyebrows, but it was clear it was what he wanted. Why else would he have invited me to his apartment that night? Not to look at the rare book collection, as he’d claimed and I’d pretended to believe. Sure, I had been attracted to him—I hadn’t missed how his chiseled chest barreled out from his fitted button-downs and his ice-blue eyes danced behind his wire-rimmed glasses as he lectured. And I had flirted shamelessly too. Yet I still felt a hesitation as I walked through his faded green apartment door, the dirty linoleum floor and cluttered counters making me feel uneasy. But when curiosity got the better of me and I saw Janelle’s name in the letter on his cheap plywood desk, the way Callahan had showered her with accolades, I felt a sudden renewal of interest. A desire for him to pick me. To write those things about me. To succeed, at any cost.
Nausea overcame me as I rushed out of his condo and to my car. I told myself if he called my name in class the next day, our mediocre roll in the hay would be worth it. And if he didn’t, well, then I supposed I would have learned my lesson.
The next day I managed to avoid both the professor and Janelle, sneaking into the lecture hall right before class began and slipping into the back row, typically where the students who don’t want to get called on plant themselves. I sank down in my seat and tried to disappear, the double shame of my indiscretion and the fear of discovering that I did, in fact, get the internship making my limbs feel heavy. Because of that, I almost didn’t notice when Professor Callahan called my name. In fact, he had to say it a second time, his voice booming over the applause. “Lila,” he bellowed from the podium. “Stand up and take a bow! You’ve earned it!”
I stumbled slightly as I launched myself upright, the realization sinking in that my plan had worked as intended. That only yesterday, before I slipped under his sleet-gray comforter, the internship had been Janelle’s. Before the slightly drunken striptease I’d performed that led to the semienjoyable sex in his bare-walled two-bedroom apartment. Now it was mine. I finally let my eyes find Janelle, and she smiled, but it didn’t quite reach the corners of her eyes. It was as if we both knew that I was a fraud.
“So, I’ll ask you again, does Janelle know what you did?” Q is focused on me, waiting for the answer he already knows.
I shrug, my cheeks warming in embarrassment. But deep down in the darkest parts of my gut, I’ve always wondered if she put two and two together. My guilt drove me away from her slowly at first and then all at once when I stepped foot in the lobby of the law firm I’d sold a part of my soul to work at. I told myself it was because of the long hours I had to put in that I didn’t return her calls, her offers to meet for a quick coffee, to catch up. She wanted to see how the internship was going. The one I had stolen from her. Then she took a job up north, and I was incredibly relieved. As I soared at the law firm, I reasoned that although I came here unfairly, I earned my place. Maybe I was the best choice all along, my intervention with Professor Callahan a tiny nudge in what should have been the right direction.
Denial, my friend once more.
“You don’t know if your ex-friend is aware that you literally screwed her out of a job?”
“How do you know?”
“Ah, ah, ah.” Q holds up his finger like a teacher giving a warning. “I already told you I’m not going to answer that. And you keep forgetting I ask the questions, remember? You were near the top of your class at Loyola, but you’re a terrible student here.”
I sigh, exhausted by Q and his emotional mind-fucking.
Q takes his backpack off and removes a sheet of paper and a pen. Then he pulls out one of those lap desks and sets it on my thighs.
I rack my brains to figure out who knows about this. Professor Callahan, obviously. But he would never tell anyone. He had a reputation for sleeping with students, one that he didn’t ever want confirmed. Who else? Ethan. I’d confessed it on our fourth date, almost as a test, needing to know if he could love someone who was capable of that. He’d brushed it off, as people do when they are falling in love and willing to accept almost anything.
Does Sam know? It’s possible that he put it together. They were colleagues. Maybe Callahan told him in the way of locker-room talk. Have I mentioned it to Carrie? There were a lot of drunken nights over the course of our friendship—ones where we confessed things to each other. Of course I did most of the conscience cleansing, Carrie’s mistakes hardly rising to the level of mine. I can’t recall having told her, but it’s a possibility. And it’s also a likelihood that if I did tell her, then she told Sam. I often confide things to Ethan that friends told me, expecting him to keep the secret. And as far as I know, he always has. Has Sam failed to keep mine? Is he the reason Q took me captive? But then why would Carrie care about that enough to have me kidnapped? Unless she also found out about Sam . . .
“So as you can see”—Q starts talking again, snapping me to attention—“I’ve got some supplies here. You’re probably wondering why I have them.” He waves the pen and paper in front of me. “They are for you.”
Me? Oh, you shouldn’t have.
“I’m going to need you to write a letter.” He pauses, tapping the pen against the lap desk. “To Janelle.”
He waits for me to react, but I don’t. Not outwardly anyway. Inwardly I’m cringing.
“Confessing what you did.”
“No,” I hear myself say.
“What?” Q’s voice is sharp.
“I said no.” I look up at him, and our eyes meet. My heart is thumping as I hold his gaze.
Q inches closer to me, and I frantically push myself backward but hit the wall after only a few inches. There’s nowhere to go.
Q lurches forward and is face-to-face with me in mere seconds. “You know you can’t get away from me,” he says so quietly it’s almost as if his words are part of his breath.
A cold chill shoots through me as I see him reach inside his jacket. He pulls out a knife. I see the blade first. It’s sharp and thick. It looks like my mom’s chef’s knife, the one she uses to chop the onions finely, the crisp blade cutting through the layers so efficiently her eyes don’t sting. He puts it to my neck, and I start to shake. It’s cold and hard against my skin. “Remember the artery I mentioned? I can slice it right now. You want to die? How much is your goddamned pride worth, Lila?” His breath is hot against my cheek. He doesn’t move the knife.
I stay as still as I possibly can, because if I move, I’m sure the blade will slide through my skin. My heart is beating so hard it feels like it’s going to explode. I see my mom’s face. The one person who has always loved me unconditionally despite my many flaws. The one who will be the most dev
astated if my life is cut short.
“I don’t want to die,” I say quietly, my chin quivering.
He jerks the knife away from my neck, and I gasp for a breath. He swirls it in the air, and then I feel it slicing through the skin of my arm. It happens so quickly, I almost wonder if it really did. I look down, and blood starts gushing from the laceration. I scream out in pain. The wound is burning.
“You ready to write now?” Q asks.
I nod, crying. The cut stings so badly I have to bite my lip to keep from screaming again. My distress is acute as I realize this is a man who is willing to inflict great pain to get what he wants.
This is not a game, and I’m not in control.
He slides the knife into his sheath and pulls out the gun. He unlocks my cuffs, keeping the pistol trained on me as he hands me the pen and paper. “Get writing, Princess.”
I nod again, tears flowing from the corners of my eyes. Blood flowing from the gash in my arm.
Dear Janelle, I write with shaky hands.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
WEDNESDAY
FREE
I force a smile as Steve Greenwood makes himself comfortable in the deep cushions of the couch in my office.
He’s fifteen minutes late, his gaze lingering on my bruised face for a few beats before he asks if I got into a bar fight. Before I have time to explain that I was attacked by a masked man, he quips, “I sure hope you won.”
Charming.
“Let’s get started,” I say through clenched teeth, ignoring his joke and launching into a recap of the private investigator’s report, breaking the news that he’s found nothing so far to corroborate Greenwood’s allegations.
“Impossible!” Greenwood says, pounding his meaty hand on my desk.
“Can you please not hit my furniture?” I ask.
He throws up his arms as if shocked by my response. “Sorry,” he says, clearly not sorry at all.
“He’s going to stay on her,” I offer. “If there’s something to be found, he will find it. But we are in a time crunch since you switched counsel so close to the preliminary hearing. We are doing the best we can.”
I open the file and start asking Greenwood a few questions that came to mind as I reviewed the case earlier this morning. We also discuss his expectations for distribution of assets and custody.
“Zero alimony. That’s nonnegotiable,” he commands. I nod but say nothing, so he takes this as a sign to continue. “I want the house, the cars. Full custody. She can see them after she goes through rehab.”
“Anything else?” I ask.
“That should do it,” he responds, my sarcasm lost on him. “She cheated on me, and you know what that means? She gets nothing!”
I release a slow breath and refrain from asking him if he is aware of the divorce laws in California. This is a no-fault state. If I could get my hands on footage of her riding her book club boyfriend, it would make no difference except to shame her, I suppose. But the drinking, that’s a different story. If we can prove that she’s reckless with the children as a result of her alcohol consumption, it could affect custody and the ensuing child support and possibly alimony. But the children would have to be involved. They’d have to talk to a guardian ad litem, answering questions about what she was doing. If she was doing it. They are only kindergarteners, far too young to be put in the middle of something like this. But when I mention this to Greenwood, he doesn’t skip a beat.
“It’s not a problem,” he says. His conviction and willingness to bring his children into the mix makes me wonder if maybe he is telling the truth about her, and she simply put on a good show for my investigator. Otherwise, what kind of person would do that?
I pause for a moment as I consider my next inquiry. I need to be delicate, but it’s something that has been bothering me. “Let’s discuss the disturbance at your house last fall.”
“That wasn’t a disturbance,” Greenwood asserts quickly. Too quickly.
“The police that showed up at your house begged to differ.”
“It was a misunderstanding,” he says, his voice suddenly eerily calm. His eyes trained on mine. “There was no report filed.”
“Right. I couldn’t find one, just the record that the 911 call was made,” I say. Chase had sweet-talked his spy down at the station into confirming it existed. I make a notation to ask Detective Sully to see if he could pull the recording. He’s still failed to return my calls and texts from yesterday. He’s never taken that long to get back to me in the ten years I’ve known him.
“Lynn was drunk, as usual, and went nuts. She was going crazy on me, on the boys. When I tried to calm her down, she said I was trying to kill her and called the police. When they showed up and saw how belligerent she was, they wanted to take her in, especially when she tried to push one of them, but she fell before she made contact. But I convinced them to let her stay with me and sleep it off.”
“And how did you do that?”
He smirks. “I’m very persuasive when I want to be.”
“Meaning?”
Greenwood breaks into a grin. “Let’s move on, Lila. There’s nothing there. I was a husband, trying to protect his wife, even if she didn’t deserve it. What can I say? I’m a good guy.”
I return his smile and nod but have to swallow the bile in the back of my throat. This is going to be the longest two hours of my life.
I sit and stare out my window long after he leaves, his potent cologne still lingering, reminding me of the way I felt while he was here—like I was missing something. I have a hard time believing his not pressing charges was out of the goodness of his heart. There must have been something in it for him. More than saving face with his snobby Pacific Palisades neighbors. But what?
I’m so absorbed in my thoughts that I don’t hear Sam enter my office, his deep voice startling me. I literally jump out of my seat, the memory of the attack from last night coming back in full force. I’m okay in the busy moments—Greenwood had been an effective distraction; I’ll give him that. When I’m working I can almost forget the way it felt when the assailant pulled my hair back and grabbed me by the neck. But whenever I stop, the fear I felt then comes slithering back.
Sam puts his hands up. “Sorry. I come in peace.”
I bring my hand to my chest and breathe deeply until I feel my heart rate slow again. “You scared me.”
“Chase isn’t at his desk. I knocked, and when you didn’t answer, I assumed you weren’t in here. I was coming in to leave you a note,” Sam explains, his eyes soft. Possibly apologetic. “I heard about what happened last night. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“I didn’t think you cared anymore,” I say. “You made that pretty clear yesterday in your office.”
“Come on, Lila.” He closes the door to my office. “It’s not that simple, and you know it.”
“Really? It seems pretty simple to me. I break up with you; you destroy my career.”
“Come on now. I know you can handle whatever is thrown your way. Take it as a compliment.” Sam laughs nervously and shoves his hands in his pockets. I’ve seen him do it before in court and later dubbed it his “aw shucks” move when he needs to win the jury over. They never fail to eat it up.
But me, I know better.
He walks to my side of the desk and touches the lump on my forehead. I flinch and can’t quite decide if it’s because of the pain or his proximity. Maybe both. “Let me help you,” he says, his face so close I can smell the spearmint gum he’s chewing. “It doesn’t have to be like this.”
I close my eyes and lean my head on his shoulder, the mental and physical exhaustion from the night before finally hitting me. I won’t deny that it feels amazing to lay my cheek against the soft wool of his suit jacket, to have his arms encircle me tightly. I feel safe.
“I miss you,” he whispers into my hair. And that makes it much harder. Because I miss him too. But that doesn’t change the fact that we can’t be together.
I lif
t my head and push him away gently. “I can’t, Sam.”
His eyes grow hard. “It makes no sense, Lila. Six months it’s all good, and now it’s not. What’s changed?”
I search his face. Has Carrie told him about the baby? How could that not change things for him? For all of us? “Me. I’ve changed. I can’t do this to Carrie. Not anymore,” I confess. The pregnancy has snapped me out of whatever trance I’ve been in—shattered any illusion or justification that what we were doing isn’t wrong on every single level.
Sam’s expression is tight. “That’s never stopped you before.”
I bristle. “Maybe I want to be better.”
“Not possible, Bennett.” Sam shakes his head. “You are who you are. You take what you want, no matter the consequences. Since when do you care who gets hurt?”
I walk over and open my door. “Bye, Sam.”
He stands eye-to-eye with me. “You’re making a huge mistake.”
“Maybe. But it’s mine to make.”
He turns on his heel and walks down the hallway without looking back. He’s made his choice. And I’ve made mine.
Hopefully we’ll both survive them.
Chase finally reappears a few minutes later with a green juice and a Locomoco bowl from Gwench Juice Bar, so I decide to forgive him for not screening Sam from barging in earlier. “It was terrible,” I say as I recount the conversation with Sam, and Chase hands me two Advils. “He hates me more now,” I add and think of the way Sam’s mouth clenched on his last words to me. You don’t cross a man like him and get away with it unscathed.
“Hold on,” I say to myself as a thought comes to me, and I walk back to my desk, grabbing the notes from my meeting with Greenwood.
“What?” Chase asks.
I play back the conversation with Greenwood in my head. “When Greenwood was here, he insisted that he made that disturbance go away because he’d been trying to protect Lynn.”
“Right,” Chase says, confused.
“But that incident was what, less than six months ago? Why would he be willing to protect her then and destroy her now?”