****
11:55 p.m. Santa Monica
She slept in fits. In stops and starts. The briefest moments of reprieve before she’d jolt awake again. And now, it neared midnight. The dawn of another day.
When they’d arrived home, Ava headed straight for her computer, hitting refresh on the internet news page until the story had broken.
“Former BXA Executive Dies in Fiery Crash on Mulholland Drive”
It hadn’t felt real—still didn’t—even looking at it right there in bold typeface. Derealization, Ian would’ve said if he’d been speaking. But his eyes had seemed as far away as her own. She hadn’t bothered with a shower. Just fallen into bed, heavy, like her limbs couldn’t hold her any longer.
Ian lay awake too. Though he said nothing, it comforted her to know he couldn’t simply drift off to dream after what he’d done. What they’d done. Together.
In the glow of the sickled moon, she studied the singed hair on her right arm. It would grow back. Strange, she thought. How unmarked she appeared. How the body recovered while the soul only got sicker.
Ian reached for her then, called her name. To know he wasn’t alone. Or to tell her all the things he’d kept secret, an entire world it seemed. Or to ask for a sip of water from the bottle she kept on the nightstand. But Ava would never know. Because she lay still as death. Mouth shut, eyes closed. A different kind of dead than Wallace but dead all the same.
Chapter
Eighteen
Wednesday
February 22, 2018
Dan Jarvis has his very own set of back-row girls. I should know because I’m sitting among them in his 10 a.m. Monday/Wednesday/Friday Intro to Cognitive Psych class, listening to their whispers and giggles as he prints next week’s reading assignment on the whiteboard. Here, in his element, Dr. Jarvis only vaguely resembles the slightly broken man from the vigil. But I’m exactly the same. A nervous wreck.
I’d spent the morning pondering the mystery of the spare key. Only four suspects, all of them Donovans. And searching for the missing knife. Emptied the silverware drawer, dug through the pantry. Even muscled the refrigerator back from the wall, thinking it might have slipped behind somehow. But the slot in the cherrywood block remained open, regarding me like an unblinking eye. Until I had to flee from its constant gaze.
I feel the gentle nudge of an elbow at my side and lean in to the oddly pleasant aroma of scented lotion and Doritos, the bright-red bag gaping open on the desk next to mine. “I heard that once a semester he does a class on the beach and teaches us all how to surf. You know, learning about learning by . . . learning.” She giggles at her own cleverness. “Can you imagine him in a wet suit?”
Stumped, I offer a conspiratorial smile, hoping that will appease her.
“Smokin’ hot.” She pops another chip into her mouth as she makes her pronouncement, and I laugh against my better judgment.
Watching Dr. Jarvis’s broad surfer shoulders stretch the fabric of his button-down, I understand her enthusiasm. And apparently so do most of the student body. He’d ranked just behind Ian on the MCC “Hot Prof” website I’d visited last night. Their two photographs side by side, captioned: We’d lie on their couches anytime. Both had received five eye-roll-worthy chili peppers. Meaning her assessment was entirely accurate.
Dr. Jarvis releases the class with a wave and a see ya later, and the herd begins to stir. To file toward the exits. As the room empties, my anxiety grows to fill it. What questions I’ll dare to ask. And what answers I can possibly expect to receive from a man I’ve already lied to.
Next to me, Doritos girl stands and empties the crumbs into her waiting mouth, orange powder dusting her lips. Embarrassed for her, I look away until her crunching subsides.
“I haven’t seen you before,” she says, washing it all down with a swig of Diet Coke and securing her backpack over one shoulder. “Did Jarvis let you add the class late? I heard he’s a real stickler about that.”
I shrug. Because sometimes less is more. And sometimes less is easier. “Do you know why he was on leave last semester?” I ask.
She glances over her shoulder to the front of the classroom where Dr. Jarvis is fielding questions from a few eager beavers. When she turns back to me, her eyes are alight with devilish glee. “Rumor one is Dirty Dan had a sex addiction. Apparently, he got caught looking at porn during office hours or something . . .”
Sounds like Ian’s handiwork. “And two?”
“Prostate cancer.”
I grimace at her. The MCC rumor mill must be brutal. “I need to ask him a question about the syllabus,” I say as we part ways at the stairs.
“Syllabus. Sure. That’s what they all say.”
****
The empty lecture hall unnerves me. The way my voice echoes even when I whisper. And I do whisper it: “I’m not Jennifer Davis. I’m Ian Culpepper’s ex-wife. Ava Lawson.” I feel small but spotlighted—center stage in front of the whiteboard, with Dr. Jarvis staring at me as if I’m the strangest, most pathetic creature he’s ever seen.
My father’s watch ticks off an eternity’s worth of seconds, each one as hard-earned as a mark on the wall of a prison cell. Until he speaks, finally.
“How may I help you?”
“I’m not sure if you can. Or if you’ll want to. But I’m trying to figure out what happened. With Ian and Kate. Closure, you know?” I try to sound sincere. Like closure is something I actually believe in. Not a myth as fantastical as a unicorn. As elusive as the Loch Ness Monster. “And at the vigil you said you’d worked with Kate a bit, and I . . .”
“I wasn’t sleeping with her, if that’s what you heard. Is that what Ian told you?”
I blink back at him, stunned. “No. I didn’t really talk to Ian much. Our divorce was—” My mind tosses out words—contentious, bitter, ugly—and I reject them all. “Brutal.”
“Knowing Ian, that’s not a surprise. He treated Kate poorly. Honestly, I think he was jealous of her. She really was a gifted writer, and we were working on a chapter together for Ian’s next book. After we’d finished the first draft, he went off the deep end, accusing me of seducing her. I swore to him nothing happened. Kate did too. But he took me off the project and axed the chapter. He made life quite difficult for me here.”
My stomach flip-flops, and I feel a little light-headed, regretting my meager coffee and half-a-bagel breakfast. Now the Hydra’s gnawing on my insides. “How so?”
“Well, let’s just say someone made it look like I subscribed to two hundred hard-core porn websites in one evening—from my work email. And that I forwarded some explicit pictures to my teaching assistant. I had to beg to keep my job. I had to promise to go to therapy. And I’m still on probation with the dean.”
“Nobody did revenge like Ian,” I say, hanging my head, almost begrudgingly. “Nobody.”
Dr. Jarvis sighs as he packs his satchel with papers to be graded, notes to be read, lessons to be planned. And I nearly laugh out loud at the small tin of surfboard wax tucked into the side pocket. Sex Wax, it’s called. Of course it is.
“I guess you found your Cleo,” he says. “I saw her in the paper.” I nod as my cheeks warm, grateful that he avoids my eyes. “It’s always the guilty doing the accusing, isn’t it? I only wish Ian was still alive to take the fall.”
I watch his hands, palms cracked from too much sun and saltwater, squeeze the leather strap at his shoulder without mercy. He’s not sorry Ian’s dead. And I add his name to the list, right below my own.
“So what was your chapter about?” I ask.
With an ironic twist of his mouth, he leafs through his bag and shows me a stack of typewritten pages marked with red ink in a scratchy scrawl I recognize as Ian’s. “Cognitive distortion in romantic relationships. The idea that our drive for closeness and our need for being loved by another are so strong, they can actually al
ter our thinking. We see what we want to see. Hear what we want to hear. Believe what we want to believe.”
A shadow passes across my heart, graying everything. “Sounds fascinating.”
“Take it,” he says. “I’ve been carrying it around way too long.” And I know exactly what he means.
****
Do you take the blame when your partner is angry, abusive, unfaithful, or neglectful? Do you ask yourself what you’ve done wrong? What you’ve failed to do right? You may be using cognitive distortion as a means of coping with the ugly truth: Your partner is angry. He is abusive. He just doesn’t care.
I wonder if Kate wrote those words—the paragraph I read again and again—as I surveil the rental house on Cortez Road, where Maddie is tucked away under Sheila’s watchful eye. I’d seen them pull in an hour ago, Maddie silent as a war-weary soldier, dragging a princess backpack behind her like a tiny pink body. Sheila chatting enough for the both of them. Smiling too. As if it was just any other day. And not this day. The day after Maddie had seen her dead-eyed parents packed into boxes and lowered into the cold, dark ground.
When Maddie emerges from the house, I catch my breath and hunker down in my seat. She pushes a powder-blue tricycle, silver foil streamers fluttering from the handlebars.
Through the crack in my window, I hear Sheila call to her from the front door. “Don’t go past the mailbox!”
Maddie gives no sign of acknowledgment. She doesn’t even look back. After the door closes, she mounts the tricycle and pedals down the sidewalk, the spitting image of Ian. Focused, determined, and stubborn as a mule. And when she blows by the mailbox and then the neighbor’s house, there’s no doubt whose blood runs thickest through her veins. However teensy they may be.
“Are you ready to try for a baby?” I remember the first time Ian had asked me, sitting on a bench at the boardwalk eating funnel cake. And I’d suddenly felt the urge to run. “A little Ian?” he’d teased. That didn’t scare me. Him, I could manage. But the alternative carved out a pit of dread inside me. Because whatever had been wrong with my father was in me—one dark, corrupted cell, biding its time. Growing. And surely, a little Ava would be infected too. Her rosy-red heart would turn sick and blackened as a poison apple.
Maddie zips past two more houses, her spindly knees working like typewriter keys, and I think I know where she’s going.
Sheila will look out the window, open the door. Any moment now. And come screaming down the sidewalk like a three-alarm fire. The way she had at the funeral.
Even so, I crack the car door and run after those three spinning wheels.
“Maddie!” I hiss her name like the snake I am. And she freezes, a baby bird tumbled from the nest, hoping not to be eaten.
The tricycle rolls to a stop, and I crouch to her level, shocked again by the pure blue sky in her eyes. “Do you remember me?”
She nods blankly and points up ahead. I see it too, just over the hill. The rooftop of 151 Cortez Road. Maddie’s used-to-be home.
Questions form on my tongue and wait to be given life. Impossible questions. Did she even once peek out from the safe burrow of the downstairs closet? And who did she see there prowling the halls like a wolf? Did she tiptoe upstairs?
God, I hope not.
Mostly, I want to tell her I’m sorry. So, so sorry.
“Is that where you’re going?”
Another nod. And both our heads spin backward to the sound of Sheila’s voice calling for her, the edge of panic growing sharper each time. Maddie’s eyes widen.
“Did you leave something there?”
I come closer, hoping for a word whispered. Just one, expelled with her breath. A word that will smell like apple juice and graham crackers. A word I will covet and decipher like a code. But when it comes, it’s a shock of blood on white sheets. A shotgun blast in an empty field at daybreak. It’s clear and bright as a church bell. And reverent too, as if the word itself has the power to make everything right again.
“Chocolates.”
And then she pedals away from me. Until she’s nothing but Kate’s golden hair whipping in the wind.
When you leave a marriage, you may think you’ll have a brand-new life. The only problem: you’re still in it.
—Ian Culpepper, Love CPR
Valentine’s Day
Four Years Earlier
“Don’t be so histrionic,” Ian scolded Ava the moment the door shut behind Marty Emerson, the new Director of Programming at BXA and Wallace Bergman’s flip side. Young and slick and very heterosexual. Which explained why he’d just told them buxom-blonde Kate Pope would replace Ava in the pilot. “He’s just trying to make the show a success. Isn’t that what you want?”
“What about our marriage, Ian?”
“What about it? This has nothing to do with you and me.”
“Oh really? So your suggesting your hot twenty-something graduate student as your co-host means nothing?”
Ava watched Ian’s face for signs. Signs of what she already knew to be true. “Kate’s got spunk, Aves.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“But seriously. She reminds me of you way back when.”
Back before you. Ava didn’t say it though. There are some lines she still wouldn’t cross. Unlike Ian, who’d crossed a football field’s worth in one night. Taking Kate to dinner after class last week, laughing with her on the sidewalk out front. Ava had seen it all from the park across the street. Watched it teary-eyed through the lens of the brand-new Nikon her mom had given her at Christmas.
Ian gathered his notes from the meeting with Marty, tucked them into his satchel. “Besides, I don’t make the decisions. Marty’s in charge.”
“Of course he is.” More of Ian’s rhetoric. Because Ava had been there when Ian threatened Marty last spring—“Love Doctored is my show. My idea. Hasn’t BXA had enough bad publicity? You don’t want to be known as the network who let Bawdy Bergman get away with copyright infringement, do you”?
Never mind that the show had been Ava’s idea.
“You’ll still be involved behind the scenes. The concept. The guests. Hell, even the music. Whatever you want. But we can’t ignore the results of the focus group. And they decided Kate is more relatable.”
Ava sneered at the thought of her. Fake blonde hair, fake tan, fake boobs. And an ego to rival Ian’s. “Inflatable, you mean? Plastic and full of hot air.”
Ian shook his head like she disgusted him. A look that said there was no coming back from this. Not from Kate or the show but from what they’d done. Because she’d seen him at his worst—the rotten core of the onion—and he would never forgive her for that. “Don’t be mean, Aves. It doesn’t suit you.”
Tears stung her eyes, but she fought them off. “I have a few patients this afternoon. I guess I’ll see you tonight.”
Ian fumbled with his phone, didn’t glance up. “Kate and I are having dinner with Marty at The Chateau at eight, so I might be—”
“On Valentine’s Day?”
He shrugged. “I thought we always agreed it’s just a stupid manufactured holiday. And this is important. We have a lot to discuss. Production starts in a couple of weeks.”
It’s our stupid manufactured holiday. “Sure. Whatever you need to do.”
****
Kate and I. Ava couldn’t get that out of her head. Especially when she realized Kate must have already known. About the dinner. About the show. Which meant Ava’s agreement with it all was either assumed or irrelevant. Neither boded well, but one boded the worst—her marriage, flatlining on the table. Too far gone, too long dead to resuscitate.
After her last patient of the day, Ava booked it home to change into the highest heels and the slinkiest dress she owned. The kind of camouflage she’d need tonight. She slipped her secret weapon—her A-bomb—into a clutch and hailed a taxi to West Hol
lywood.
The forty-five minute cab ride dragged as she scrolled through Kate’s Facebook page—who has 1,125 friends?—taking long, deep breaths to fight off waves of motion sickness. Or the inevitable nausea that comes when you register how stunning your replacement will look on your husband’s arm.
Solemn, she stepped out of the cab and in front of The Chateau Marmont, the castle on the hill where everybody comes to see and be seen. Where everybody dons a mask and plays a part.
Fitting it would happen here, she thought. Like the end of a bad B movie. Slumber Party Massacre. Or Redneck Zombies. They’d call it Showdown at the Marmont, starring Kate Pope and Ava Culpepper. At least she could still claim his name. For now.
Ava stood blinking at the entrance to the bar, disoriented. Bathed in blood. That’s how the place struck her. Red tassel lamps. Red lights. Red accent paint. The stench of smoke and vodka and regret. And on the ceiling, hundreds of silk butterflies, wings awash in red. She shivered.
With his back to her, a man in a pink Fedora, angry flames rising from his arms. When she blinked again, the man vanished. In his spot, a curvy Lady Gaga lookalike with magenta hair and a tattoo sleeve.
Not this again. Not tonight.
Wallace had been showing up uninvited all year. In the self-checkout line at the grocery store. At the movies, shoveling popcorn with those desperate hands. On a bench at the pier, feeding the seagulls. And in her office waiting room, baring teeth blackened by ash when he’d smiled. That one had done it. She’d fled the office and called Ian. “Meds might do you some good, Aves. Something to take the edge off.”
That enraged her. Because she didn’t want to file the edge. She wanted to know he felt it too. Remorse. The vicious cut of it. The way it slipped into the flesh between your ribs, angled up for the heart. And, when you least expected it, twisted.
Well after eight, Ava downed the rest of her martini, ducked into the bathroom, and checked her face in the mirror. She blotted the shine on her forehead. Reapplied a come hither shade of lipstick. Not that it really mattered. But Ian had given her a part—the vengeful bitch—and she wanted to look it. To act it too. If it came to that. So she concealed the A-bomb in her palm, ready for deployment.
Doctors of Darkness Boxed Set Page 87