“With a gun?”
I start to deny it. How could he know? The gun is solid and cold against my back. Hidden.
“I’m a cop. Did you forget? And anyway, I saw it when you reached for your purse. The concealed-carry purse I gave you, by the way.” My heart thumps in the silence of Luke’s deliberate pause. “The Christmas gift you’ve never used. Until tonight.”
I sigh and let my shoulders droop. “With what happened to Ian and Kate, I just . . . I don’t know. I guess I’m a little rattled. I was scared to come up here alone. I should’ve called you.”
It’s true enough. And I add the last bit to really sell it. Because all I want—all I need—is for Luke to wrap his arm around me and walk with me through the door. Walk away.
“Coop told me you went by the station this morning. But I didn’t hear from you all day. I was worried about you. I went by the house, but you weren’t there.”
I shrug and take a casual step forward, wishing I could grab him by the hand and pull him behind me. “I got your texts, but I didn’t know what to say. I don’t want you to feel caught in the middle.”
He frowns. “That’s why I told you to go in. Answer their questions. Cooperate. If you’ve got nothing to hide, then neither do I.”
The Hydra twitches and writhes. And I take another step. “Let’s talk about it at home,” I say, knowing he’ll warm to that. Me calling my home his. Isn’t that all he wants?
Luke goes first. Through the door. Down the steps. And I follow, each step a relief. When we’re outside, he turns to me, his face as unreadable as his father’s. “You can talk to me, Ava. You know that, right?”
And I nod at him. I let him hold me for a moment in the middle of the empty street, the fog rolling in around us, before he crosses to his truck on the other side. But I can’t even enjoy how good it feels when he pulls me flush against him. Because I’m still waiting for him to walk away.
Away from the office. Away from the desk drawer. Away from that ordinary paper bag. And most of all, away from the bloody knife inside it.
Marriage is not for sissies. But then, neither is divorce.
—Ian Culpepper, Love CPR
Valentine’s Day
Eight Years Earlier
“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” Ava asked, studying her mother’s face for the answer. The eyes always tell it truer than the lips. Something Prick Whitlock, as Ian had started calling him, got right. She’d seen it in her patients. And now, in her mother too. Because when she smiled at Ava, the corners of her eyes were weighted with worry.
“Honey, it’s your special day. If you’re okay, I’m okay.”
Ava didn’t know if she was okay or not. She wanted somebody to tell her how to be. Somebody other than Ian. Which seemed wrong to think on her wedding day. “You know I never wanted a big wedding.”
“I know.”
“And I don’t care about frilly dresses or flower arrangements or registries.”
“I know that too.” Her mother patted her hand with such tenderness she wanted to cry. Of course, she wouldn’t, though. “I sense a but coming.”
“Well, I guess I never pictured myself getting married in a dress I bought at The Limited.” She looked over her shoulder at the grand old building behind them. It was stately. Regal for sure, but so formal. “In the same building where I could record a property deed.”
Saturday, 9:00 a.m. The anti-Valentine’s wedding they’d been fortunate to book with City Hall officially closed for business. The result of a last-minute favor Ian called in to Judge Clemmons, who he’d counseled through a messy divorce. That seemed to Ava a bad omen and to Ian a lucky break. She’d insisted on one tradition at least, that they’d spend the night apart.
“Did you tell your fiancé how you feel? I’m sure he wants to make you happy.”
“Yes. But I think he already feels bad enough. I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. He’s right. For him, it’s hugely anticlimactic. He’s been through the whole fancy-schmancy wedding deal before.”
And Ava should know. She’d seen all the photos. Sometimes, after Ian left for work, she pulled out the album he’d stashed at the back of his underwear drawer. He and Julie, married in the spring. A traditional ceremony at Shakespeare’s Garden in Golden Gate Park. Reception to follow at the Julia Morgan Ballroom. The iconic San Francisco wedding.
“Plus, he got invited to speak at that conference in Paris this weekend, and we thought it would make the perfect honeymoon.”
“It sounds logical,” her mother said, winking at her. Prick Whitlock would’ve said her heart wasn’t in it. But what did he know? He’d been fired for stealing office supplies a week after Ian keyed his car. And Ava was a licensed psychologist now. So there. “Weddings are overrated anyway. Your father and I always wished we’d eloped.”
That settled it. Her mom was only trying to make her feel better. Because she never mentioned Dad unprovoked. And in a flash, Ava went back there. To the bedroom. To the suicide note she’d stuffed in her sock before the cops got there. The things her father had confessed. Ian would never leave her like that. To clean up his mess. Or live with it. To be forced to make that kind of decision alone.
She said what was expected of her. “I wish Dad could’ve been here.”
“He would’ve said you’re the most beautiful bride there ever was. Even in a dress from The Limited.”
Ava didn’t argue, though she couldn’t remember a single compliment from her father. And when she’d asked him once if she looked pretty, he’d told her not to be so vain. She understood it now, how unhappy he must’ve been, but it still throbbed like a toothache when she thought of it.
“I do have this going for me,” she said, waving her left hand with its perfectly round diamond. Two and a half—holy cow!—carats she couldn’t stop staring at. Mainly because they proved something: she belonged to someone—already she felt better—but not just anyone.
Him.
Ian charged up the sidewalk. Right on time. Electric blue eyes and a megawatt smile. All meant for her.
Her mother whistled, and Ava laughed. My husband, she thought, anxious to earn the right to say it out loud. Three syllables of total validation.
“And him,” her mother added. “Don’t you let him get away. He’s a keeper.”
“I know, Mom. You’ve already mentioned that.”
****
Mrs. Culpepper could barely zip her suitcase. Mrs. Culpepper had packed too much. That’s how Ava thought of herself now. A Mrs. Even though she was actually a doctor, and the name change wasn’t exactly official yet.
Ian, fresh from a shower, brushed his teeth at the sink, and she caught his eye in the mirror. “I can’t quite believe it. We’re married.”
He half-laughed, his mouth foaming with toothpaste. “Indeed. You’re stuck with me, Lawson.”
“You mean Culpepper.”
“Only if you want to change it. You can still keep your name, you know. I wouldn’t be offended.”
She stood behind him, pulling his damp body close to her own. His bare back warmed her cheek, and she closed her eyes. For the briefest moment, she felt inexplicably sad.
“I wish your parents could’ve been there,” she whispered against his skin, hopeful he’d finally open up about them, now that they were bound by a sacred promise and a legal contract. All she knew, she’d learned from Google. Marty Culpepper had been an investment banker at Goldman Sachs. His third wife, Carrie, his secretary. They’d gone over a bridge in the back of a taxi cab straight into the freezing Hudson the year Ian started at Princeton.
“That makes one of us. I already told you. My parents were . . .”
“Were what? And no, you didn’t tell me.”
His heavy sigh meant she’d push no further. “They weren’t like Frances Lawson. You’re so lucky, Ava. She’s
the mom I wish I’d had.”
Ava traipsed back to her overflowing suitcase, feeling like a scolded child.
“Hey, will this fit in your bag?” Ian offered up his toiletry kit with an oblivious grin, momentarily disappearing her melancholy.
“As long as you promise to carry it.”
She knelt beside her bag, rummaging to make space. The suede high heels would have to go.
“This too,” he said, tossing her a small bottle with a bright blue label. Take one tablet by mouth once daily. The pills rattled around, tiny bones, unnerving her.
“Adderall? What’s this for?”
“Shouldn’t you know that, Doctor?”
A flare of anger sparked inside her. She hoped Ian didn’t see it. Not today. Their first day as husband and wife. “I know what it’s prescribed for. But why do you have it?”
“The same reason half of America has it. I need to focus for the conference. There’s going to be some real heavy hitters there and my speech has got to be sharp if I ever want to sell my book to an agent. Plus, I’ll be staving off a major case of jet lag.”
Ava rolled her eyes, playful and jokey. But inside, she regarded him like a stranger. With suspicion. Like he’d changed the rules of the game without her knowing. “I thought we felt the same about that kind of thing.”
“We do. But I am a psychiatrist, Ava. I prescribe medication. I can’t be a total hypocrite.”
“You don’t have Attention Deficit—”
“Look. If it’s such a big deal, I’ll flush it right now. Give it to me.”
He snatched at her bag just as she clutched it to her, the towel around his waist loosening. Falling to the carpet in a heap. Shocked, she gaped up at him.
“Now look what you’ve done, Mrs. Culpepper.”
So, she did.
THE DOWNTOWN STAR
“Secrets Exposed: Murdered Love Doctor Caught Red-Handed with Mistress!”
See the exclusive photos from a fairytale marriage gone bad.
Ian and Kate Culpepper appeared to have it all. A loving marriage. A beautiful daughter. Two advanced degrees between them. And a household name they created—The Love Doctors—which spawned a television show and several best-selling self-help books.
Sadly, the Love Doctors’ fairytale ending turned to a nightmare this Valentine’s Day, when the couple was discovered brutally stabbed to death in their posh Pebble Beach home. Now, shocking new evidence has revealed trouble was already brewing behind the scenes of their picture-perfect union.
In stunning photos obtained exclusively by The Downtown Star, Ian Culpepper can be seen cavorting with an unnamed and much younger female. In one photo (seen below), the dashingly handsome Culpepper pulls the red-haired beauty in for a sultry kiss in the shadowy alley behind a restaurant. Another photo (also seen below) appears to show Culpepper and his mistress in a compromising position in the backseat of his car.
Culpepper was no stranger to controversy. When interviewed on The View last year, he skirted around long-standing rumors of a second marriage he kept secret from fans, telling the hosts, “Honestly, I don’t remember anybody before Kate. It’s a timeless love. As if we’ve been together all our lives.” Culpepper has always been tight-lipped about his first marriage to Julie Avery, which ended with her death in 2006.
But Ian Culpepper wasn’t the only Love Doctor who had fallen out of love. An inside source tells The Downtown Star that police discovered a secret love note stashed in Kate’s belongings, penned by the blonde bombshell herself, that spoke of her plan to leave Culpepper in the days leading up to the slaying.
A source close to the couple adds, “Even the most ordinary marriage has its secrets. And Ian and Kate, as extraordinary as they were, had more than their fair share.”
Chapter
Eleven
Saturday
February 18, 2018
I keep my eyes shut and pretend to be asleep. Maybe if I lay here long enough, the world will right itself again. The bloody knife will disappear. In its place, the memory card reincarnated. Maddie will speak. Ricky Sherman will vanish. And Ian and Kate will bolt upright, healed, alongside my father. It comes to me, then, that my three months of purposeful silence was exactly like this. A suspended state. A protest. A vicious, vicious hope.
Luke slipped out of bed an hour ago. I’d felt the tug of the sheets, the brush of his lips across my forehead. But he didn’t leave. He’d never do that. Especially not on a Saturday, when he has the day off. I hear him in the kitchen, cooking me breakfast. The smell of eggs and strong coffee lures me back to this world, however wrong it may be.
I know Luke is making his case. He’s always making his case. Even after we’d come back here last night, in the middle of his stern lecture about my recklessness. Going to the office, alone and so late, with a gun and a killer on the loose. He’d still managed to work it in. Of course, he had. “You might feel safer if we lived together.”
I dress quickly, quietly, in my running clothes, already forming the story I’ll tell him. An excuse to get out of here and back to the office. To do something about the knife. The knife with blood on it. Blood that surely belongs to the man I used to love and the woman who took my place. The knife that someone planted in my office. Someone who wants me to look as guilty as I already feel.
“Fuck.” Choir boy Luke doesn’t use that word. Not unless he means it. And the hush after he says it is worse. He’s been shocked.
I crack the door and peer down the hallway and into the kitchen, where Luke is stanchioned behind the counter, gawking at his phone. He tosses it aside and runs a nervous hand through his hair. Then, he catches me looking. Offers my name up as softly as a prayer.
“Is everything alright?” But in the pit of my stomach, the Hydra answers for him, shakes its many heads.
My feet carry me toward Luke, even as the rest of me wills myself away. Back to the bed. Under the covers. To the in-between world, where I can pretend to be okay.
“Just some pictures of Ian and a woman on one of those gossip sites. I don’t think you should look.”
“Why?” What I really mean is how—and who?
“It’ll only upset you, bring back memories. They’re probably photoshopped anyway. Not even real.” He reaches for his phone just as I do and holds it away from me, gripping it with two hands. As if I’d wrestle him for it.
“Fine.” I turn around and storm back to the bedroom, snatching my own phone off the table in the hallway.
Luke calls to me. “Ava, don’t.” A half-hearted objection. But I slam the door behind me, knowing he won’t follow.
The photos—my photos—are the lead story on all the internet news sites. Smack-dab between a Kardashian breakup and the Academy Awards buzz. “Murdered Love Doctor Caught Cheating.” I’ve gone viral—in the worst way—against my will.
No matter what I’d promised Ricky, I’d never intended to release the pictures. To expose the link between Cleo and me, the choke chain that binds us. Soon enough the cops will catch the scent and follow it straight to my doorstep. And what will I say then, with all my lies laid bare? I used to be ethical. Once upon a time. Before I broke the one rule that really mattered: First, do no harm.
I scroll past the banner-sized photograph at the top of my screen, the one they’ve all latched on to. The one I’m most least proud of. Captured at dusk through the back window of Ian’s Mercedes, his cheek, tan and peppered with stubble, melds into Cleo’s. Their mouths joined like strange creatures intent on devouring each other. I’d huddled in my own back seat for an hour to get it, with a baseball cap shadowing my face. But I would’ve waited for days. A revenant intent on revenge.
I cringe when I spot Ian’s line, half-buried at the bottom of the first article I open. “Honestly, I don’t remember anybody before Kate.” His casual dismissal of me. Of us. I’d heard it before,
of course. Spoken in his public voice, words as bright and shiny as a newly minted penny. And worth about as much. Hell, I’d taken off work to watch that piece on The View. But to see it in print is something else entirely. A bloodletting. Each word is a cut. Each cut deeper than the last.
“Is it safe to come in now?” Luke asks, knocking softly. He cracks the door and puts his hand out, tempting me with a cup of coffee. Like I’m a caged animal who still requires taming. “A peace offering.”
“Fine,” I groan. “If you have to. But only because you brought coffee.”
The door swings wide, and I steel myself. Prepare to face the rest of him, his cop stare. But it’s just Luke, with his kind eyes and bare feet. “I warned you not to look.”
“You were right. But it’s worse than I thought. I know this woman.” I take the mug between my hands and scald my tongue with a bitter sip.
“What do you mean you know her?” Luke sits on the edge of the bed, but he leaves a space between us. Because my need for closeness is unpredictable. Because I’m unpredictable. Because I want him to hold me. But I need him to leave. “You’ve seen her before?”
I have no choice but to say it. Whatever this is, I have to get ahead of it. “She’s a patient of mine.”
“A therapy patient? Seriously, Ava. Is that even allowed?”
I remember the first day when Cleo had arrived at the office, lugging her bike up the stairs, her face flushed with the effort. The muscles in her forearms taut as rope. “I had no idea she was involved with him.”
“So you didn’t know about the affair?”
The first ten minutes, Cleo had worked up to it. The big reveal. Then: “I’m sleeping with a married man.” And I’d wondered if God was punishing me again. Reminding me of all I’d done wrong with Ian. Of all the wrong we’d both done. I’d deserved Kate, hadn’t I?
“Not exactly. She called him The Professor. I knew he was married, but she never mentioned him by name. She was careful about it.” Until she’d slipped three sessions in and uttered Kate, and I’d thought God had given me a gift. A reward for my suffering. A tool. A weapon. If only I could figure how to use it.
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