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“Liam—”
“Sorry. Really, it’s none of my business who you’re sleeping with.” Hunching forward, he put his elbows on his knees. “Why did you want to see me? I mean, after all this time.” He shrugged. “Why now?”
Kenna was thankful he’d posed the question, ten shades of relief flowing through her. She may not have had the courage to pluck the DVD from her bag otherwise.
She extended the disc to him over the coffee table and, though his eyes narrowed with suspicion, he accepted it.
“Where did you get this?”
“I can’t tell you.” But in saying that, Kenna had told him everything.
“Hetook this? Holy shit.” Liam slumped in his chair, asking more quietly, “Was he the son of a bitch who slashed my tires?”
She nodded though it felt mechanical.
“I’m pretty sure.”
“Why would he do that? That’s insane.”
“He wanted me. You were …” she licked her lips, “in his way.”
Was it so simple? It felt easier to believe it.
The bell tinkled above the shop’s door and in walked a woman wearing platform sneakers. Several streaks of magenta highlighted her inky mop of hair. The sweater she wore had a wide neck and it revealed a further flash of skin as she bent to kiss Liam’s cheek.
A moth was tattooed just below her collarbone.
Kenna had studied the Polaroids so many times, the names and faces were ingrained in her memory and that tattoo was unmistakable. She said the name without thinking.
“Ivy.”
The woman straightened as her lips contorted into an uncertain smile. “That’s me.”
Liam opened his mouth to introduce them but she beat him to it.
“I’m Kenna. I’m a friend of Dayton’s.”
Ivy’s smile vanished. “Don’t say that fucker’s name. And I don’t know who you are, but you better not ever speak to me again.”
* * *
Kenna pulled into her parking spot at her apartment complex, the wheel of her mind still spinning after the terse interaction with Liam and Ivy.
Just two days before, she’d found the explicit footage of Jasmine and then Ivy happened to be Liam’s new love interest. She jerked the keys out of the ignition and closed her eyes, siphoning a breath.
It was as if the Polaroid girls were trying to find her, gravitating to her like she was an electromagnetic field. The current host for all their suffering. Yet she couldn’t help but feel she’d brought on these lively hauntings.
She had been suspicious of Dr. Merino.
She had opened the box.
She had invited the women into her life.
Getting out of the station wagon, she started to step onto the walkway but her foot hovered above the pavement. Frozen midstep. Liza clunked down the steps, a large box bundled in her arms.
“Do you need help with that?”
Her roommate shifted the box and glanced at her, moving past her while muttering, “Shit.”
