Touch & Go (Tessa Leoni, #2)(120)

I wanted to feel satisfied. Vindicated as an appalled mother, a betrayed friend. All those times I’d had him over to my house. And, yes, somewhere along the way, it had become clear he harbored a schoolboy’s crush on me. Certainly, right after I learned of Justin’s affair, Chris starting hanging around the house more, clearly willing to be a shoulder to cry on.

But I hadn’t leaned on him. I’d turned to painkillers instead.

I showered my way through my outrage. Washing my hair again and again and again. Lathering up, rinsing down, repeat, repeat, repeat. It was late, after 2:00 A.M. I should finish up, go to bed. I applied deep conditioner, then scoured my skin with the same ruthless diligence I’d just spent on my hair.

I wanted to think the worst of our experience was behind us, but I already understood from this evening’s ordeal that the grillings from various law enforcement agencies had only just begun. In the morning, they’d be back. More questions, maybe even a request for a formal statement regarding Ashlyn’s relationship with Chris. Maybe they’d require a medical exam. Maybe I should think about hiring a lawyer.

What were your rights when you were a victim of a kidnapping and other violent crimes? What kind of counsel was involved in prosecuting a grown man for sleeping with your teenage daughter? What if Ashlyn wouldn’t press charges, or answer questions? Should I demand it of her, or would it only traumatize her further?

Then, in the middle of the shower, rinsing the conditioner from my hair, it hit me:

My husband was dead. I was alone. For now, for always, there would be no partner to ask these kinds of questions. Ashlyn’s best interests sat solely on my shoulders.

My husband was dead.

I was now a single parent.

Justin…the knife protruding from his bloody chest.

I went down. Dropped to my hands and knees on the tiled floor, the water beating at my back while I panted, gasping for breath.

Moments in a marriage. All those times when I know I saw my husband. All those times I wanted to believe he saw me. The first time we made love. The priest, declaring us man and wife. Him, holding a squalling newborn in his arms. And Justin, dying before my eyes.

He’d looked at me. He’d known, maybe even felt the serrated blade already sliding between his ribs. He’d known he was dying. And he had not looked at me with anger and blame, only regret.

I would miss us, he’d said. He would grant me a divorce if I wanted it, but he would miss our family.

Was I crying? It was hard to be sure, with the shower spray pouring down my neck, around my face.

I would have to plan a funeral, I thought, but how did you plan a funeral with no body? Wait for the police to find it, I guess. Wait for that sheriff’s detective and his deputies to return my husband to me. And Ashlyn. She would want to say good-bye to her father. She would need closure, just as I had needed it thirty years ago.

And that thought stung me all over again. That for all my planning and sacrifice, in the end I hadn’t spared my child my deepest pain. She’d lost her father, just as I’d lost mine. Now I would play the role of my mother, trying to hold it all together. Meaning wading through finances that sounded like they were already strained.

What if we lost the house, what if we moved into tenement housing, what if Ashlyn never got to go to college, but became collateral damage of her father’s poor planning, just like I had been?

I couldn’t breathe. I was gasping, and yet no air would come into my lungs. I had survived three days in an abandoned prison, only to succumb in my own shower.

Then, in the back of my mind…hydrocodone. My orange-bottled pills. Maybe still downstairs in my purse in the center island. But if not, I had other stashes, a woman who knew how to keep her secrets. Half a dozen pills tucked in the back of the silverware drawer, ten more in my jewelry travel bag, four or five in the bottom of a crystal vase in the china closet. Close to two dozen emergency pills.

I stood up. I tasted oranges and I didn’t care. I was going to get out of this shower. I was going to head downstairs, raid the first hidden supply. Just this once, of course. After the past few days, I’d earned this.

I rinsed my hair.

I shouldn’t do it. I’d promised Justin I’d be strong for our daughter. He’d pressed me in the cell, probably already suspecting something would go wrong with the ransom exchange, needing the reassurance that I could raise our child without him.

Just two pills, I thought. Enough to take the edge off. My whole body ached and I needed the rest. I would be a better parent if I got some rest.

I wondered if this was how my mother had felt, the look on her face every time she’d gazed at a pack of cigarettes. Knowing she shouldn’t. But feeling the weight of the world upon her shoulders, the burden of single parenthood. She worked so hard. She deserved at least a little treat.

Justin had died for me.

Shouldn’t I be able to give up Vicodin for him?

I turned off the water.

One pill. Just…one. To help manage my own withdrawal. The sensible thing to do.

I should.

I shouldn’t.

I would.

I wouldn’t.

I opened the shower door, reaching for a towel.

And found a man standing in my bathroom instead.


IT TOOK ME A MOMENT. Maybe a full minute, while I stood in the glass enclosure, water dripping from my naked body. Then he leered at me, and that did it. The eyes were the wrong color—deep brown instead of crazy blue. And the checkerboard hair had been shaved, replaced by a smooth skull. Finally, his clothes, from commando black to European upscale.