The old-school phone on the wall starts its keening. That shrill, wailing ring. And the glass falls from my hand. Its fragile skull cracks against the counter. Shatters onto the floor.
I feel caught. No one ever calls the house.
I shouldn’t answer, but I can’t stop myself. What if it’s Cleo?
“Hello?” I sound the way I used to. Pre-Ian. Curious and hopeful. And I stupidly wonder if his death broke some kind of curse, lifting the shroud of bitterness from my heart like a bride’s veil.
“Hello?” I say again, into the void.
“Ava Lawson.”
It’s not a question. And it’s not Cleo. Of course not. She wouldn’t have this number. It’s a man. A stranger. Worse, a stranger with the chilly calm of a reporter. I should hang up.
“Yes?” As if I’m not sure who I am. And after last night, how could I be?
“Your ex-husband is dead.”
How could a reporter have found me so fast? Not that I’ve been hiding, but . . .
“What?”
“You already knew that, didn’t you?”
I slam the phone into the cradle and stoop to gather the broken glass, breathing hard.
I don’t realize I’ve been cut until I see the rivulet of blood trailing from my finger down my wrist. A drop falls to the floor, fat and perfect against the linoleum.
I strip off my T-shirt—it’s done for anyway—and swathe my hand in it, holding both under the hot water until the bleeding stops. The cut is minor. Not what I expected. Just a thin slit in the flushed skin along the side of my index finger. It’s a wonder that much blood can come from a wound so small.
****
The fog is still thick when I walk the five blocks through downtown Carmel to my office. It’s wet and white and cold—magical, even. The closest thing to snow we’ll ever get here. And I feel safe in it, hidden somehow. Or maybe it’s the rest of the world that’s hidden. Whited-out. As hazy as a half-forgotten dream.
But Ian’s dead. There’s no forgetting that. My heart thrums to the rhythm of it. It’s in the sound of my heels clicking the stones on Ocean Avenue. It’s in the scream of a seagull diving toward the beach. And the break-neck crash of foamy waves on the rocks. His death music is in my head, a knell.
I know what I need to do. Exactly what Ian would do. What he always did. What I’d done before too, if I’m being honest.
Pretend I’d done nothing wrong.
Besides, most of Monterey County—most of the world—has no clue I used to be Ava Culpepper. I hadn’t even told Luke. He’d done the digging, figured it out on his own a few months after we’d started . . . well, whatever it is we were doing. I suppose that’s what I get for inviting a cop into my bed.
But really, what have I done? The question looms like the edge of a sheer cliff. And I refuse to look down below at the grisly remains. The splattered guts of my once decent self. The buzzard-picked bones of my morality.
I poke my head in the door at Seaside Sweets and wave at Marianne, same as I always do. It’s too early for tourists, and the shop is quiet. She beckons me inside and shoves a heart-shaped doughnut in my direction. “Got a bunch of these left. Jack always says day-old doughnuts are the best.”
On any other day, I’d make a silly cop joke, so I force a laugh. “He would know. I suppose thirty years of doughnut eating qualifies him as an expert.”
Marianne chuckles, nudging the doughnut closer. I shake my head, but she insists, and I don’t argue. Not because she’s a cop’s wife, tough as nails. And not because she’s raised two more of them—Cooper and Luke. But because this morning of all mornings, I need the path of least resistance.
“Take a few for Luke too.” She smiles at me the way Luke does, like she knows a secret. Possibly mine. Even so, it soothes me a little, seeing him in her. The rest of Luke’s face belongs to his father, Jack. Eyes sturdy and brown as the trunks of the cypress that line the coast. Marianne’s and Cooper’s, the quiet blue lapping at the shore.
“I doubt I’ll see him. He left early this morning.”
She takes a bite from a powdered heart, the sugar dusting her lips. “I know. Cooper was the first one on the scene. And Jack got the call too. Can you believe it? The Love Doctors. On Valentine’s Day. It’s just too . . . what’s the word? Ironic.”
I focus on chewing, the sticky sweetness coating my tongue like thrush. When my hands shake a little, I press them against the counter. I’d lie to Marianne—sugar rush—if she noticed. I’d tell her about her son and his irresistible box of chocolates. But she keeps talking, oblivious it seems. And all I can think is how quickly I slip back to lying, how willing I am.
“You’re a natural,” Ian had teased me after the first time, the first small lie. Then, he’d asked, “Should I be worried?”
Marianne takes another bite and washes it down with a swig of coffee. “Did you watch that Love Doctored show? I never understood all the hubbub. Sure, that guy—Culpepper—was good-looking. A little too good-looking, if you ask me. And then there was that whole business with the—”
I wave my hand, swatting at an invisible ghost. “Never saw it.”
“Well, you didn’t miss much. It’s sad though. The little girl and all. What was her name? Madeline?”
“Madison.” The name lodges in my chest, a barbed arrow. Just after she was born I’d seen her cherub face plastered on the pages of a celebrity gossip magazine, a precise merger of Ian and Kate. I’d envied her that—how she’d gotten the best of both of them. However little that was. Me, I only see my father in the mirror. And the darkness in his eyes that only got darker near the end. I wonder about Madison. What she’ll see, who she’ll see, twenty years from now in her own reflection. The eyes of dead parents gone before she learned to tie her own shoelaces.
My throat closes, and I snatch the bag Marianne packed for Luke, intending to make a break for the door before my act is exposed and I lose it entirely. Or worse, I don’t. I just go on pretending.
“Busy day?” Her gaze probes mine, asking the questions she withholds. No wonder Luke calls her the best detective in the family. Though his dad had won the Monterey County Excellence in Investigation Award five years running.
“I have a ten o’clock, but I’m not sure if she’ll show.” I smile through it. Easy-breezy. Like nothing. Just any old Wednesday before. Before karma came calling. Before I met Cleo. Before I did something unforgivable. Again.
Chapter
Three
Cleo is always late. But today is different—I’m different—and I expect her to be here, tapping her sneaker in the waiting room. Her face flushed after the five-mile bike ride from her campus apartment in Monterey and burning from the same combustible cocktail of guilt, fear, and exhilaration I’ve been nursing all morning.
But the two chairs in the waiting room are vacant. Above them, the photo of the lone cypress I’d taken with my first camera. My mother had it framed for me four years ago, when I’d come back here—tail between my legs—and rented this office. A lone cypress, myself. That was when she still remembered me. When she still remembered most things. Like the way to the house she could barely afford on the outskirts of Carmel, and how to make the perfect grilled cheese sandwich, and that my dad had left us in the worst way. She remembered Ian too, then. The real Ian. And what he’d done. Now, her moments of clarity are wasted, asking me about the oh-so-charming husband I no longer had.
It’s exactly ten when I fit the key into the lock on my office door. At 10:01, I fluff the pillows on the couch where Cleo had sat cross-legged every Wednesday for the last four months. By 10:03, I’m in my chair, and it’s my foot that’s tapping. What if she doesn’t come?
And just like that, I’m sure of it. She won’t come back. Not ever. Why would she?
Now, it’s 10:05, and there’s a new horror working its way through my brain. Cleo
is dead too. Sprawled next to Kate and Ian on the plush bedroom carpet, half her face gone—exploded—from a single bullet. One dead doe eye fixed on the ceiling. Just the one. The other, God knows where. I’ve seen it before—once—a bullet to the head. The memory clear and bright, enduring as a photograph. Someday, if I wind up like my mother, I hope it will be the first to go.
I lunge for the trash can in the corner, my no-rules breakfast burning my throat on its way back up. I heave until my stomach feels empty, except for the Hydra of course, its tentacled heads tying me in knots. And squeezing. Squeezing.
The knock on the door startles me, and for an agonizing second I think it’s the man from the phone with ice in his veins. He’s found me. And he knows. He knows everything. Everything.
“Doctor Lawson? It’s me. Am I too late?”
I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. Stash the wastebasket in the closet with a spritz of air freshener to hide the smell. Examine the bandage on my finger. Still intact. The clock above my desk reads 10:09. As close as Cleo has ever come to breaking the ten-minute rule. One minute more, and I’d have sent her home, billed her for a full session. Like a good little shrink maintaining the therapeutic frame. Too bad I’d blown the frame to bits myself months ago.
“Come in,” I hear myself say. But I stare at the knob as it turns, suddenly afraid of her—this wisp of a girl with hair like flame licking down her back—and what she’s done. What I might have pushed her to do.
“I’m so sorry.” Slipping her leather messenger bag from her shoulder, she flops onto the sofa, sighing and laughing at the same time. Then she kicks off her sneakers and pulls her socked feet beneath her like a child. And at twenty, isn’t she still in all the ways that count? “I overslept.”
I nod and force the corners of my mouth upward in a pleasant smile. But behind it, I’m reeling, stumbling backward like I’ve been kicked in the teeth. She could have said anything—I killed Ian. I killed your ex-husband and his uppity bitch wife. Even that. And it wouldn’t have stunned as completely as her casual dismissal.
I overslept. Seriously?
“And the fog is a real mess,” she adds, pinching the hem of her T-shirt between her fingers. The fabric clings to her chest, heavy with moisture. I pretend to look out the window, when really I’m riding another swell of nausea. I breathe through the crest of it, and it subsides.
“It’s surreal,” I say, still avoiding her face. “Like another world.” And I’m not sure if I’m talking about the fog or something else. The kind of world where old husbands and new wives turn up dead. Where young mistresses—murderesses?—oversleep.
“Totally. But it’s sort of romantic, don’t you think?”
And she’s so easygoing, so relaxed, I wonder if she’s mocking me. I examine her eyes then. Not the one bulging, dead eye of my imagination, of my memory. But two of them. Deep-set stones of amber. Not a shred of makeup, just a sheen of sweat, because she has nothing to hide. No red rims or dark circles under those lashes. She blinks, and I realize she’s waiting for me to answer. To say something. To therapize.
“Speaking of romance, how did your Valentine’s end up?” As far as questions go, it’s a litmus test—cruel but necessary. Perhaps a bit more directive than my usual approach, but hell, I think the circumstances allow it. Call for it, even.
She flips her hand as if to say, I’ve had better. “It didn’t go quite the way I planned.” A pause that extends for an eternity. “I hope you’re not disappointed in me.”
I lose my breath a little. “Disappointed?” I croak.
“Well, we’d talked about me confronting him. Or her. Finally having the courage, you know? Making him own up to his promises. But, I couldn’t do it. I spent the night binge-watching crazy chick flicks and eating my pain.” She shrugs, smirks. “Who knew it tasted like Rocky Road?”
With her sarcasm comes a new horror. One I hadn’t considered. She doesn’t know. I swallow it, a bitter pill. “What would it mean to you if I was disappointed?”
“I don’t know. That I failed somehow. I know I need to do it. Just lay down the law. Tell him I won’t go on this way. It’s her or me. But I’ve been afraid of the answer. Afraid of the end.”
The end. I know exactly what she means. The hard stop, the last page, the void after. Because everything ends eventually. One way or another. Love. Marriage. My father. Even Ian.
“Would that feel like a failure too? The end of your love affair?”
I watch the tears in her eyes rise like floodwater. She swipes a knuckle across her cheek, then reaches for a tissue. And I sit still, unflinching. Empty as a box waiting to be filled. It’s the one thing I’ve always been good at—holding a client’s pain—even though I loathe the expression, the touchy-feely way it sounds. When the reality of it is cradling a deformed creature, soothing it as it claws and howls.
“I hate crying,” she says finally. Her eyes bleary, the way I’d expected from the get-go. “And yes, Doctor Lawson, tears are the ultimate failure.”
I know she’s teasing me. But still. “Did someone teach you that? Your father?”
“Probably. Who else?”
“We always come back to this, Cleo. Success and failure. Winning and losing. Your dad and his demands. I wonder if that’s why you’re drawn to a man like The Professor. Married. Old enough to be your father and just as unavailable. One of your teachers, no less. I suppose it would mean winning the unwinnable. Getting the un-gettable. Wouldn’t it?”
She pauses, considering. I like that about her. She thinks before she answers. “It’s not about winning. Not with him. He’s so happy when we’re together. And so miserable with her. He certainly doesn’t trust her.”
“Did he say that?” I silently curse myself, snuff out a flicker of glee. What does it matter anymore?
“He doesn’t have to say it. I feel it. He trembles when we kiss. How could he stop wanting that? How could anyone?” She’s never sounded so breathy, so young. “Momentum. That’s what I’ve got on my side. And it’s a powerful force.”
“Indeed.” It aches to look at her. I see myself. I see Kate. What she’s talking about is hope, and it’s as fragile as a flower. As fickle as the wind. As dangerous as a blade. “But his wife has something too, don’t you think? Something just as powerful.”
Again, she puzzles for a moment, twisting her mouth. Wringing her hands. And I worry for her. Losing him will crush her, turn the petals of her heart to dust. I should know.
“What?” she whispers.
“Inertia.”
My cynical quip doesn’t hit her like I expect. Instead, she grins, raises one sly eyebrow. A neat trick. “I wasn’t going to show you. Not until I knew it was real, but . . .” She unhooks her feet from beneath her, slides her phone from her pocket, and leans forward across the chasm between us, a green text bubble glowing bright. “It’s from The Professor.”
I’m going to confront her. Tonight after dinner. And I’ll tell her everything.
“When?” I ask, almost to myself. But it’s right there: Tuesday, February 14, 2018, 7:08 p.m.
She snorts. “I’d shut my phone off. Go figure. Somewhere in the middle of Fatal Attraction, I’d guess.”
Chapter
Four
One hour until my next client, and I do what I’ve done so many times. I follow Cleo. With two questions banging around in my brain like rocks in a tin can, smacking hard enough to throw sparks.
The first: Ian, what did you do? What did you do?
And the second: Did you ever tremble when we kissed?
I stroll the cobblestone. Pretend to window shop. All the while, obliterating the therapeutic frame as I trail Cleo and her bicycle the few blocks through the fog, toward the water.
“I texted him back this morning and asked him to meet me,” she’d said, just before our fifty minutes were up. Typical Cleo, sneak
ing it in under the wire. “Down at the beach here.”
My skin had prickled. “Did you tell him you were in therapy?” With me? The unspoken question. Because even Ian, self-absorbed as he is—was—might’ve figured that one out. Me and her. Ex-wife meets new mistress. And then what?
“No. I’m afraid he’ll ask how it’s going. What I talk about. I told him I was seeing a friend in Carmel for breakfast. That it would be a good place to meet. But, he didn’t respond. Not yet anyway.” I’d felt relieved. Then stupid.
Ian is dead.
And I did nothing wrong, I remind myself again. Nothing that can be proven anyway. But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Ian had said that on the first episode of Love Doctored, trying to make himself sound smart. As in, don’t despair, Mrs. Painfully Insecure. Of course, your husband still loves you even if he can’t bear to say the words aloud. Absence of evidence . . . what a crock.
And of course, I’d watched it. I’d ogled it. Like a car wreck. Or a house fire. Or an episode of that naked wilderness show with its stark white, soft bodies scrambling through the mud and the underbrush. I couldn’t look away. There was something obscene about my ex-husband handing out love advice on national television, dispensing his special brand of hypocrisy the same way he doled out medication.
I stop short of the beach parking lot, inhaling the briny ocean air, and wait for Cleo to lock her bike on a rack. Messenger bag slung across her chest, she walks with purpose past the cars to the white sand. She pauses to strip off her sneakers and socks, then trudges down the hill and past the cypress where the sea is the same gray-blue as the sky, and the fog blurs the horizon—trees, cliffs, houses—like a charcoal drawing.
I open my own bag, take out my Nikon, and shadow her. The camera is the perfect excuse. The perfect cover. And with the superzoom lens that cost me four and a half sessions with Cleo, I can see her face as clearly as if she was still sitting on my sofa, without getting too close.
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