She took a fast step toward Angie. Angie braced in shock. The woman’s pale, red-rimmed eyes blared into hers, but her voice came out in a thin whisper. “You’re just as much a bitch as she was, you know that? Looking for the worst in people, raking muck out of the past, thinking that we arecapableof something so heinous as pushing a client to her death. I know what you’re thinking; I can see it in your eyes. You’re thinking: Could this meek and mild little Shelley Tollet do it? Did she kill the bitch in heat who fucked her husband?”
She spat a harsh little laugh. “Guess you’ll never know, will you? You won’t get to read what she did with my husband, either, because I ripped out those pages before giving the journal to you. You can have that book, but you can’t have those pages. And don’t come looking for them because right now they’re burning to ashes in the hearth inside.” She marched back to the door and yanked it open. Face blotchy, eyes wild and glassy, she turned to face Angie. “Now fuck off the hell outta here.”
She slammed the door shut. Angie heard the dead bolt thunk across.
Stunned, she looked down at the book in her hands. She turned to a random page.
Sweet is revenge, especially to women. It’s an emotion that outlasts all others.
That night, tucked into her motel room bed, light burning well into the cold darkness, rain pattering against the windows while snow fell at higher elevations, Angie read through Jasmine Gulati’s journal. This purple padded book had been a gift on Jasmine’s twenty-fifth birthday, July 1994. The year she died. She’d spent that birthday in hedonistic bliss with Dr.Douglas J.Hart, her then professor, mentor, and academic advisor. Doug Hart and Jasmine Gulati had on that day already been sleeping together for eight months.
Angie read further.
Doug was shocked at first when I told him we were going to have a baby. I don’t think I intended at that point, or perhaps ever, in keeping it. But I wanted to see his face, feel my power over him. Over his wife. Over his daughter. Over his family, his career, his entire life. It was intoxicating, that look of fear on his face, an emotion that escaped before he managed to control his features and hide it. I near climaxed with the delicious delirium of it.
He called me two days later and took me out to a little cabin, quiet and remote, in Sooke. Right on the sea. There he cooked me prawns in garlic, which I love, and he gave me the diamond ring. Marry me, Jazzie, he said.
Angie turned the page.
I’d won! I guess I’d wanted to see how serious he was. And I’d won. We fucked. This way and that. He was rough. Didn’t care about the fact I was pregnant, or he liked it that I was, and it turned him on. He was hard as a rock, harder than ever. Took me from behind like a wild dog. I screamed when I came that day. Never came like that before. It was amazing. We lay there after. Naked. Panting. Bathed in sweat. In a puddle of moonlight.
Then he rolled over onto his side and said, “Why don’t we wait, Jaz?”
“To get married?” I said.
“No, no, to have children.”
And that’s when he said I should get rid of it.
Angie turned to the next page.
I told him I’d consider it. That’s when I saw he was really scared. I really did hold all the control now. Over his marriage. His daughter’s relationship with him. His work. His promotion to dean of the faculty. He’d told me it was in the works. I knew then I could break Dr.Douglas J. Hart. Or I could allow him to become dean of my faculty ... It was my choice.
What I also saw in his fear was that perhaps he never truly intended to leave his wife for me. He was fearful that I and some baby would wreck his marriage, his carefully built house of cards. It made this little bonfire of doubt burn inside me. Yet ... he had given me the ring. I confronted him with this. He claimed I was wrong. It was just a matter of timing. If we waited until after I finished my studies and until after he was appointed dean, the fact I was his student would no longer be an issue. This, he said, was why it would be best to terminate this particular pregnancy, for there would be others, he said, if I wanted.
Angie flipped faster, scanning through the rest of the pages, which were full with details of sexual encounters with Doug and with younger men. Observations about women and sex. About her friends. About Rachel Hart. About her own mother and father. About her grandmother, the judge.
Angie stopped when she came to a page that was blank apart from one simple notation:
Appointment, Women’s Clinic. Abortion. Sophie coming with. Mia is so pissed over this. It’s fucked up our relationship.
There were no more entries until one that detailed packing and travel arrangements for Rachel Hart’s river trip, where Jasmine wrote about how she planned to wear her engagement ring as a symbol of secret power over Rachel Hart, the woman who would be filming her, the woman whose husband she was having an affair with. The arrogant woman who would be divorced.
The rest of the pages were just ragged stubs where Shelley had ripped them out.
Angie sat back against the pillows, Jessie Carmanagh’s voice resonating through her brain.
Last I saw of that diary, the Hart kid was reading it in the bushes ... Only surprised me that the kid hadn’t taken it sooner the way Jasmine was tempting her with it.
Poor Eden Hart. If the kid had indeed sneaked a peek, she’d have seen all these salacious details about her own father—whom she clearly adored—having sex with his student. Jasmine. Who was fishing with both Eden and her betrayed mother.
Yet Eden had denied reading it. From those photos on her wall in her office, her father still held pride of place in her heart. So maybe Jessie Carmanagh had been lying, or he’d been mistaken, or maybe Eden had been able to spend only a few seconds with the journal and had not grasped the extent of what lay between these pages.
Angie flung back her covers and began to throw her belongings into her bags. She wanted to be ready to leave at first light.
She needed to confront Rachel and Dr.Douglas J.Hart.
CHAPTER 39
