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“Oh,” Bethany says. “About Kelsey’s birthday.” She looks in the rearview mirror and then lowers her voice. “I’ve taken care of planning the party.” She pats my thigh. The wounded one. “You have enough on your plate.”
* * *
Recovery is not allit’s cracked up to be. For the first few weeks, I wonder what the point of me pulling through was. It feels like a cruel, sick joke that I’m still alive, and I spend most of my days wondering why I bothered.
The cold sweats are horrible. The insomnia drives me mad. I have no appetite, so a home health aide comes daily, at least at first, and gives me nutrition through a tube in my stomach. They were able to sew my tongue back on and it takes several weeks before I can speak properly. And even then, in my mind, I no longer sound like myself.
The kids stayed over the first night, along with Max. Nadia stayed over for a few nights the first week. Then I was on my own.
Thankfully, Bethany brings the kids for regular visits. Nadia spends a large part of her day in my home office, working to keep the company afloat. Mostly, she’s working insurance fraud cases, which she loves to hate. But thanks to the press the Kemp case gave us, we’ve been flush with business. Almost dying in order to solve a case, as it turns out, is a fairly good endorsement. Solving several additional murder cases in the process doesn’t hurt either.
I’m glad for the work, even if it’s my assistant taking the reins for the time being. It gives me something to look forward to in the future. For now, it’s the people in my life that are keeping me alive.
Sometimes in moments of weakness, I open Beacon on my phone and read through old messages Ali sent. I look for her on the app, for a profile that sounds like something she would come up with, but she disappeared. I heard from Camille that Ali is staying in Boston, closing out her dead husband’s affairs, which was difficult for Ali considering Edward Kemp’s serial killer status, but Camille is happy. She finally received the green light for the insurance payout on her father, now that Edward Kemp has been named in his murder.
“I had my suspicions,” Camille told me over the phone when she delivered the news. “My stepsister always hated my father. I didn’t think she’d kill him, which is why I didn’t mention her. Better to keep her name out of my mouth. I should have known better though. I’d put nothing past her. Whatever the case, she covered her tracks well. She married a sociopath.”
“Rumor has it your father molested her.”
“I begged my father not to marry her mother. Begged! I knew it was going to be a disaster from the start. Ali was always running around half-naked. She was always flaunting herself, parading around like a slut, from the first time I met her. But Daddy never would have touched her. Not unless Ali wanted it. Which, knowing her, she probably did.”
I don’t say anything. Because there isn’t anythingtosay. It’s funny how two people can see the same story very differently. Anything I might say wouldn’t matter, anyway. Camille got what she wanted. She seems like the type of woman who always does.
Ali got her freedom.
* * *
“Here,”Bethany says, tossing a piece of paper onto my lap. I let it flutter to the floor.
“Where are the kids?” I ask, looking toward the front window.
“I sent them for the mail. We need to talk.”
I pick up the paper. It’s a flyer.
“You look like shit,” Bethany says as I stare at the words printed on the page.
I meet her eye and then crinkle the flyer into a ball and shoot it into the wastepaper basket across the room.
I miss.
She points at the crumbled paper on the floor. “You need that.”
“That,” I say. “Is the last thing I need.”
“You have eight weeks,” she tells me. “Eight weeks to pull yourself together.”
“We’re divorced. It’s a little late for ultimatums.”
“Stop being a pussy, Ethan.” She lays Kelsey’s backpack on the couch beside me. “You’ll need to help Kelsey with her math.”
“Sure.”
She glares at me for a long time. I listen for the kids, telepathically willing them to hurry. Bethany sighs. “Do it for them,” she says, her eyes flitting toward the door when Kelsey and Nick come barreling through. “Do it for all of us who have to see you like this.”
“I’m not doing it.”
“Man up, okay.”
