Every Vow You Break(61)
“I don’t know,” came Jill’s voice, quiet. Abigail thought she could hear her crying a little.
“Talk,” she said. “Tell me everything that happened. Who cares if they’re listening?”
“Okay,” Jill said, after a period that felt close to a minute.
“Okay.”
“Take your time,” Abigail said.
Jill started right away. She coughed, then said, “I didn’t tell you the whole story when we talked that night. I said that Porter was a nice guy, basically, but he isn’t. I mean, he was at first, but the more I got to know him, the more controlling he got, the more jealous. He told me that he didn’t want me to work anymore as an actress, and that after we got married he would forbid me from working. He said it would make him look bad, like he wasn’t able to provide enough money for the two of us, which was crazy because Porter’s incredibly rich. I said that it had nothing to do with money, that I really did love acting, and wanted to keep doing it. It just got worse and worse between us. We fought all the time, but I kept flying back to L.A. for acting auditions. Then I got a job in Vancouver, a web series that was only paying minimum daily rates, but I told Porter I wanted to do it and that we should break up. He agreed to let me take the job, but he wouldn’t agree to the breakup.
“I should have insisted, I know, but I just wanted to get away from him at that point, and the job in Vancouver was for three months. Anyway, in Vancouver I met this guy. He was a bartender, really good-looking, and I knew that at this point Porter and I were finished, so we got together, me and the bartender, just for one night. It turned out—and I know this sounds completely crazy—but it turned out that the guy, the bartender, had been hired by Porter to seduce me, that it was a kind of trap, or a test, and that he was reporting back to Porter.”
“Uh-huh,” Abigail said, wanting to hear the whole story, to keep Jill talking. Not wanting to compare notes yet.
“It was a nightmare, the whole thing. Porter flew out to Vancouver. Honestly, I thought he was going to kill me. This guy had told him everything, every detail of what we did, everything I said.”
“Who was he? This guy? Do you know his name?”
“He gave me a name. I don’t know if it was real or not. I never saw him again.”
“What did he look like?” Abigail asked, wondering if it was Eric Newman, but thinking that that didn’t make sense, that if it had been, then Jill would have noticed him on the island.
“He was beautiful. Hispanic. He looked like this guy from Quantico, that TV show. Aarón Díaz, you know him? The thing is, Porter knew this was my type, ’cause I’d told him once. He’d kept asking me, again and again, what actor I’d sleep with if I could, and I kept telling him no one, which was what I knew he wanted to hear, but he insisted, so I said Aarón Díaz just to shut him up. So I think he found this guy, maybe he was some kind of actor, who looked just like him, and set this trap for me. And the very next day this guy I’d slept with disappeared and Porter was in Vancouver and he kept me in my rental apartment for twenty-four hours, just yelling at me. I thought I was going to die—what I really thought was that Porter was going to murder me—but then he just left, and I didn’t see him or hear from him again until I got here, to this stupid island, and he was here, too.”
“And you thought he was stalking you?”
“Of course I did.”
“You told me, that night we talked about it, that it was random chance.”
“That’s what he told me. I didn’t believe him, but I hoped. I also did have an issue with Alec, that I’d lied to him about all sorts of things, including my past relationships, but now I think … I know it’s crazy … but I think Alec is part of it, too.”
“They’re all part of it, Jill,” Abigail said. “That’s why we’re here.
We’re here to be punished.”
“Oh God,” Jill said. Then: “Why? Why are they doing this?”
“What happened the night you were bleeding?” Abigail asked.
“That whole day was a nightmare. I was supposed to meet you and go swimming, remember?”
“Yeah.”
“I was getting ready to go, and Alec told me that I couldn’t. It was so out of character for him, the way he said it, and I was like, What do you mean? He said he was making my decisions for me from now on, and that he’d decided that I wasn’t going to leave the bunk that day. That I was going to spend all day there, naked, with him. He had this look on his face. It was slightly deranged, and I remember … I remember thinking that I’d made a terrible, terrible mistake marrying this man, and then I rationalized it, I guess. I told myself that what he was doing was kind of sexy. We were on our honeymoon and he was taking control, telling me he wanted me all day long, naked, just to himself. So I did it. We ordered all our meals to be delivered, and we had constant sex, and I kept telling myself how it would sound on paper, in a romance novel. It would sound great. Halfway through their honeymoon they spent the day inside, completely naked, only with each other. But it didn’t feel like that. It felt like he was keeping me there, like if suddenly I decided that I’d had enough and wanted to go outside for fresh air he wouldn’t let me, or that if I didn’t want to have sex again, he would force me to.”