Over Her Dead Body(68)
After telling the whole sordid tale to the police, I would have to do something equally fraught—go to Ashley’s to tell her that no, she was not imminently getting $10 million, and yes, we were a family of psychopaths. If, after hearing the truth about us, she didn’t punch me in the face, that would be a miracle. I didn’t believe in miracles, so I wore a dark blue shirt in anticipation of my nose exploding when she slammed her fist into it. Under normal circumstances I would have texted her to set a time to stop by. I also would have brought flowers, or coffee, or fresh-baked scones from the bakery down the street. Nathan 2.0 was a gentleman. Of course, after what Louisa had just done to this poor woman, there was no point in launching Nathan 2.0—he was dead on arrival. So no text, no flowers, no scones.
As I slugged back a cup of coffee, I grappled with whether it was time to tell Charlie the truth about having slept with his wife—not just how it happened, but why. Because I understood now. Up until recently, I’d blamed the altitude, the whiskey, the weather, everything and everyone but myself. I was trapped, I’d told myself. She got me drunk and threw herself at me. But I was beginning to think the truth was much more repugnant. Marcela wasn’t just any married woman, she was my cousin’s wife—my cousin with the charmed existence, who got his house and car paid for without having to work a day in his life. There was a reason I hadn’t skied on that ski trip: I didn’t know how. When I was a kid, my parents couldn’t afford lift tickets and private lessons with a fancy instructor from France. While Charlie was off skiing in Chamonix, I was in my backyard playing handball by myself. While my cousin was enjoying a tropical honeymoon (Barbados, I think?), I was slogging through law school, amassing thousands of dollars of student debt. I’m not proud that I’d let his wife seduce me, but I’d be lying if I said I couldn’t understand why Louisa wanted revenge against her spoiled son. Because on some level, perhaps I’d wanted it, too.
I walked out of the condo I’d financed with no help, got in the fancy European sedan I’d leased because I couldn’t afford to buy one, and pulled onto busy Manhattan Beach Boulevard. A light rain was falling, which would add another thirty minutes to my already-hellish commute. I was used to morning traffic, because, like all working stiffs, I didn’t have a sugar momma or a vanity career like playing in a band. I knew it wasn’t my cousin’s fault that he’d won the birth lottery, but that didn’t make me any less envious. I had a million excuses why I’d done what I’d done. But excuses—even valid ones—didn’t make me any less of a jerk.
Maybe Louisa was a crazy-ass bitch to pull a prank that made us all question our sanity and self-worth. Or maybe she’d given us all exactly what we deserved.
CHAPTER 58
* * *
WINNIE
It wasn’t the first time I’d woken up in my bra and underwear not knowing who had taken my clothes off and put me to bed, but—for the first time in my ten-year addiction—I understood it was a symptom of a much bigger problem.
I wasn’t hungover—it took a lot more than half a glass of Jack to ring my bell. But though I’d slept as soundly as a hibernating grizzly, I didn’t feel Irish Spring fresh, either. I had mastered the art of waking up just miserable enough to justify starting the day with a hair of the dog. Unfortunately, I’d drained my bottle before that trip to the graveyard, so I forced myself to get out of bed without one.
It was nearly ten o’clock, but the sky was still dull gray. It would have been nice to have some sunshine to coax the darkness out of my blackened heart, but a cleansing rain would have to do.
I got up and showered, then went down to the kitchen to forage for something to wipe the blur out of my vision. My head was pounding, and my throat was as dry as a burlap sack. I would have given a limb (or at least a digit?) for a stinging shot of tequila, but French roast with an ibuprofen chaser was a reasonable placeholder, and I was grateful to find a steaming pot and a full bottle of Advil waiting for me on the counter.
“Thanks for making coffee,” I said to my brother as he poked his head into the kitchen to check on me. “And for the strip-down.” I raised my cup in a symbolic hats off.
“You OK?” he asked kindly.
“Well, I’m upright,” I offered.
“You gave me a bit of a scare,” he said.
“Graveyards are scary,” I replied. This exchange had the potential to devolve into a Hallmark moment, so I quickly changed gears. “We going zombie hunting today?” Now that we knew Mom was alive and destined to continue fucking with our collective well-being, I figured we should try to find her before she popped out from under a rock like a demonic jack-in-the-box and scared us all half to death.
“I think we’ll let the police do that,” my brother said.
“So we’re calling them?”
“I promised Nathan we’d wait until he got here, but yeah. I don’t think we can put it off any longer.” And then I remembered: Nathan had asked us to hold off calling the police, just in case we peered into Mom’s coffin to see that his new girlfriend had slashed her face off. Which arguably might have been preferable.
“You tell Marcela?” I asked. I wondered what his wife made of this whole debacle; I imagined she was rather frantic.
“She’s on her way.”