She was crying when she left. Sam wanted to, wished he could, but the deadness inside him squelched any tears, any emotion he had left.
He went to the front window and watched her drive off in a blue Honda hearse that was carrying away their marriage. He looked down the street and saw that the black Jeep was back, parked a half a block away. His grief turned to groundless fury in a blinding flash. The next time he was cognizant of his surroundings, he was standing on the front porch with his Colt Anaconda in his hand. His second blackout of the day. Jesus Christ.
Shaking, he shoved the gun in the waistband of his jeans and looked down the street. The Jeep was gone, along with any recollection of what had happened between the time Yuki had driven off until now. Whenever now was. He was afraid to look at his watch.
Chapter Fifteen
MELODY WAS TRYING TO KEEP HERSELF busy, doing laundry, cleaning the apartment, making hummus and a fruit salad to have on hand. But no matter how much she moved or how fast, her nerves continued to fray, and every strange sound made her heart flail.
She kept checking her phone every few minutes, but Ryan hadn’t sent a text since What roses? and hadn’t responded to her answer: The roses you left in my bedroom. He hadn’t been on social media, hadn’t called either; so eventually she’d called him—several times—but his phone went straight to voicemail.
She wanted to nurture her anger, but fear had slithered into her mind like a dark, poisonous snake. Jealousy was Ryan’s trigger, and now he knew she had a secret admirer. He wasn’t responding because he was going to confront her in person, accuse her of having somebody on the side. He might be on his way over right now.
Sam had been right about him, but she hadn’t let herself see it because abuse had been so normal in her life since Netta’s death. The abused sought out abusers, it was right there in all of her psychology textbooks.
Even more frightening was the fact that someone other than Ryan had crawled through her window to leave her a special gift, and she had no idea who or why. But maybe Teddy was right and it had something to do with the black Jeep. And Sam knew something about that, although she couldn’t imagine how. She called him, but his phone went to voicemail, too, leaving that same empty hollowness of isolation she’d felt earlier. She wanted to seek out Teddy’s company, maybe even his advice, but he’d left to go surfing. It was just her, hummus, fruit salad, and a gun, which was on the kitchen counter next to her phone.
She didn’t drink during the day, never during the day, and never before a shift, but she found herself sitting on the sofa, clutching her phone and gun, gulping down a Sierra Nevada. Booze and firearms, a fantastic combination.
The soft, soothing buzz of the first beer sent her to the fridge for another, and when she’d finished that she ran to the bathroom to pee, thinking about all the mistakes she’d made in her life and how would she stop making them?
She suddenly hated herself for clinging desperately to the idea of Ryan as a knight in shining armor; to the kindness of Sam, who had much bigger things to worry about than a fucked up coworker; and to the consideration and protectiveness of Teddy. Any man who showed her compassion instead of horror became a crutch for her, which made her weak and pathetic, a revolting emotional vampire who was never going to entirely climb out of the darkness unless she learned to handle the past demons on her own. No time like the present to take charge. Kick ass. Take names. Call the cops.
She considered that option for a moment. It wasn’t a bad one—she could file a report, get her fears on the record in case Ryan or the black Jeep guy killed her or she ended up in a position to have to kill them in self-defense. But the idea quickly fizzled away when she imagined how the conversation might go.
A stranger broke into my apartment and left two dozen roses in my bedroom and I want him arrested. My boyfriend didn’t leave them, but now he knows I have a secret admirer and I’m afraid he might kill me because it turns out he’s jealous and violent. Oh yeah, and I think there’s a black Jeep following me. No, I’ve never seen it, but I heard about it from two people, a stoner surfer who thinks he can communicate with plants and waves and a really nice guy who’s suffering from serious PTSD and has hallucinations sometimes. Booze on my breath? I had a couple beers because I was so stressed out … yes, I do have a record because I used to be an addict, but I’m over all that now, a good and productive citizen, honest.
Good luck with that.
Chapter Sixteen
DR. FROLICH WAS HANDSOME IN THE way old movies and books characterized “women of a certain age,” as if there was a point in life when you were no longer worthy of feminine adjectives. She’d let her hair go gray and kept it wrapped in a messy bun at the nape of her neck. She wore a suit, but it was wildly colorful and deconstructed and nothing she’d bought off a rack anywhere.
She reminded Sam of his maternal grandmother, a long-time Berkeley resident who had been the very embodiment of that mien while she was still alive—a trust funder-turned-hippie bent on pissing off her parents in retaliation for their wealth, which she’d considered unethical or something to that effect. Everything she’d ever worn had been purchased at some art fair, and everything that had passed her lips or her guest’s lips was organic and green and often liquefied, which Sam blamed for his aversion to things like kale salad. The green hadn’t saved her from breast cancer, but he didn’t fault her for trying. DNA was cooked into you from conception, and lucky cats, shamrocks, and vegetable smoothies were symbolic forces against the omnipotency of both genetics and fate. Dr. Frolich was busy at her computer when he walked into her office, probably entering notes on her previous patient’s chart, but Sam preferred to imagine she was surreptitiously shopping online for outré clothing between appointments. She looked up and seemed genuinely happy to see him. “Hi, Sam. I’m pleased to see you looking exceedingly healthy today.”
“Fresh air and exercise.”
“Where did you find fresh air in LA?”
Sam smiled at her joke in spite of the monumentally shitty day he was having.
“How are you?”
“Honestly? I’ve been a lot better.”
Her bright blue eyes disappeared in an elaborate mesh of crow’s feet that advertised her scorn for cosmetic surgical intervention. “Sit down.” She gestured to the cozy seating arrangement by a window that looked out on busy Wilshire Boulevard. There were a couple leather chairs, the requisite sofa, and a coffee table with a box of tissues, handy for mopping up the consequences of any crying jags.
A vase of white calla lilies adorned a credenza filled with psych textbooks, some that Dr. Frolich herself had written. He scanned the spines of her work, which bore grim titles like Deep into the Dark: Methodology in Treating Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and The Long Road to Trauma Healing.
She gathered a notebook and pen and sat across from him, her face very serious now. “Tell me what’s happening, Sam.”
This was the moment that always confounded him. Where did you start? At the beginning? At the end? Somewhere in the middle? “Yukiko stopped by today,” he finally said. “Unexpectedly.”
“How did that go?”
“It was good for a while. Except she brought kale salad.”