You Don't Want To Know

Chapter 26


“I think I’ve met you before,” Ava said the next afternoon in yet another session with Dr. McPherson. “I mean, before Wyatt hired you. At the time you went by Eve.” They were in the den, and Ava, rather than make a scene, had agreed to the session, more to get information rather than give it.

Rather than arguing, the therapist was nodding as she sat in a chair, her hands clasped at her knees. “We’ve been over this, remember? We discussed the fact that I met you at the party you hosted at Christmas, the night that Noah went missing.”

Ava’s heart stuttered. “When?”

“At the party. Then again when you were still recovering at St. Brendan’s,” Evelyn said so patiently it grated on Ava’s raw nerves. “That’s where your husband asked if I would agree to see you as a patient once you were released from the hospital. He knew I had an office in Anchorville.”

“I would have remembered,” she said, but a hint of a memory sizzled through her brain, something so quick and fleeting she couldn’t hold on to it.

The doctor’s smile was ingratiating. “You’re still blocking that night out, Ava. It’s coming back in bits and pieces, but there are still holes. I’m here to help you fill the gaps.”

“Okay, let’s start with the first one. You were introduced to me as Eve Stone.”

She nodded. “I had been married, but it didn’t work out. My divorce wasn’t quite final at Christmas, and I hadn’t officially gone back to my maiden name until a few months later.”

“You looked different.”

“Amazing what losing fifty pounds and lightening your hair can do.”

Was this right? Had she ever heard this story before? “And you came with . . . ?”

“Actually, your cousin Trent invited me.”

“Trent?” This didn’t sound right.

“We knew each other in college.”

“At U-Dub?” Ava asked, using the familiar name for the University of Washington in Seattle.

“Oregon. We were both psychology majors for a while.” An amused smile tugged at the corners of her lips, and for a second, Ava stared at her. Had she been wrong about this woman all along? She’d been insistent that she wasn’t involved with Wyatt and now . . . now Ava nearly believed her. “I went on to Washington for grad school,” the psychologist added.

“Trent didn’t.” That much was true, but Ava felt as if something was left unsaid, that there was still a piece that didn’t feel right.

Evelyn reached into a side pocket of the large bag she’d plopped onto the chair next to her. “I did a little soul-searching last night, and I really don’t think I can help you if you can’t trust me.” She pulled a business card from the pocket of her purse and slid it across the coffee table to Ava. “Here’s the name and number of Dr. Rollins. He’s in Seattle, of course, but I’ve worked with him and he’s familiar with the island and your family. He used to work at Sea Cliff when your uncle was running the hospital.”

The name was familiar, and the image of a large African American man came to mind. Smooth, mocha-colored skin, oversized glasses, white beard, and short-cropped hair, if he was the man Ava remembered on her few visits to the hospital. “That’s where I met him. At Sea Cliff. He still has patients in Anchorville and shares an office with a couple of other doctors. Dr. Rollins is in two days a week.”

Ava picked up the business card.

“It’s imperative that you trust your therapist,” Dr. McPherson said earnestly. “So that you don’t hold back. I would be glad to make the referral and consult with Dr. Rollins or whomever else you choose. I’ll do whatever it takes to make the transition more comfortable for everyone. Whatever you want.” Dr. McPherson almost seemed relieved. “I’m not sure anyone will be willing to come to the island, but you can suggest it.”

Ava glanced at the card with Dr. Alan G. Rollins’s name, number, address, and e-mail listed. “And Wyatt is okay with this?”

“I haven’t told him.” Her smile seemed sincere, though it all could be an act. “As you said, this is your life. I’m your doctor.”

“But he hired you. He claims he’s my guardian.”

Evelyn lifted a shoulder. “He could stand on ceremony, I suppose, but I don’t think he will.” Getting to her feet, she slung the strap of her bag over her shoulder. “He only wants what’s best for you, you know.”

“So he tells me.” Ava clutched the business card in her fist.

The therapist’s eyebrows pulled together, and she touched Ava lightly on the shoulder as she passed. “Let me know what you want to do,” she said, then walked quickly out of the room.

Ridiculously, Ava felt abandoned. Now that she could be free of the psychologist her husband had chosen for her, the woman she suspected of sleeping with him, Ava wasn’t so certain she wanted to let go.

Don’t second-guess yourself. You know what you saw!

“But maybe I was wrong,” she whispered, walking to the bookcase where a number of family pictures were displayed. Her gaze landed on a picture of Wyatt holding Noah on the beach, the wind ruffling Wyatt’s hair, Noah’s eyes squinted against the stiff ocean breeze. Ava’s heart squeezed as she picked up the photograph and traced the outline of her son’s face.

Sad, she replaced the picture and saw that it was next to a snapshot of Jewel-Anne astride the palomino mare with Sea Cliff rising on the hill in the distance. In the shot, Jewel-Anne was grinning from ear to ear, her body round in the saddle, a shadow of the person taking the picture falling in front of the horse. The photograph had been taken before the accident that had robbed her of the use of her legs, and back then, Jewel-Anne could actually grin. Heavy for her height, she’d been pretty, her face unmarred with the lines of unhappiness that had formed since the accident.

Setting the framed picture aside, Ava walked to the window overlooking the garden where the tracks of Jewel-Anne’s wheelchair were visible in the gravel and the ferns shivered in the wind. What if, as everyone believed, Ava truly was paranoid? She thought of her recent session with the therapist. What if Wyatt and Evelyn McPherson weren’t involved? What if Ava’s tormented mind had conjured up her husband’s infidelity?

A wife always knows.

Someone had told her that a long time ago.

But that someone may just have been wrong.





Later, in the rec room that smelled of furniture polish, Trent confirmed that Evelyn McPherson Stone had been his date at the Christmas party. “Come on, Ava, you remember me introducing you to her,” he said, racking the balls on the pool table.

She didn’t.

“In the kitchen. We came in through the back door and caught hell from Virginia for it.” He centered the triangular rack, the colorful balls spinning on the dark green felt. “You were hurrying through, too, looking for something—more glasses, I think? Anyway, Virginia was mean as a snake that night. She told you something about not being able to work this way.”

As he whipped the rack off the neatly positioned balls, Ava tried to bring back the memory. From the kitchen, she heard the sound of Virginia’s off-key humming. Vaguely, she recalled the cook’s rebuke and her unusual bad mood. At the time, Ava had attributed Virginia’s scowls to the fact that she had to work that night and her daughter had remarried Simon; Virginia hadn’t been happy about it.

Yes, Ava had hurried through the kitchen, nearly knocking into a waiter carrying a platter of hors d’oeuvres. He’d spun deftly away, not losing a single appetizer from his silver tray, but Virginia had been beside herself, struggling to keep her tongue inside her head.

“It all happened near the pantry and the back staircase,” he recounted. “I remember because Virginia was all bent out of shape and had shooed us out of the room so the caterers could work. Man, she was in one helluva mood.”

“That’s right,” Ava said as the image grew stronger. She remembered being distracted, looking for the extra wineglasses as Wyatt was about to make his annual holiday toast. Somehow they’d ended up three glasses short, and Ava had remembered the extra stemware boxed in the shelves near the pantry in a closet where they’d stored odds and ends, everything from extra keys to lightbulbs to holiday decorations.

In her search for the glasses, she had come across Trent and he’d been with a woman she’d never met before: Dr. McPherson. “You introduced her as Eve.”

“I know. I still call her that. It’s how we were introduced way back when at a party before a Ducks football game,” he said, referring to the University of Oregon athletic team. “We were tailgating, I think.”

Is that what he’d said at the party? It didn’t sound right, but she couldn’t completely remember, and now, as he leaned across the table, trying for what seemed an impossible shot, she recalled shaking the woman’s hand as they were introduced.

He flashed her a smile. “You’ll remember it all soon, right? It’s coming back to you.” He leaned over the table, snapped back his cue stick, and sent the ball spinning. Crack! The billiard balls spun to all sides of the table.

“I hope.”

“Be patient.”

“I think I have been.”

“Never your strong suit.”

She couldn’t argue that fact as he took the next shot, sending the cue ball into a cluster of other balls. The five spun into a corner pocket.

“It’s just that there are holes in my memory, and they don’t seem to be closing.”

“They are. Just not as fast as you want.”

She wasn’t so certain. “Ever since Noah disappeared . . .”

“Before that,” he said, eyeing the balls remaining on the table. “After Kelvin died.”

She held up a hand. “That’s not right.”

“Sure it is. That’s when you started having . . . mental issues.”

“Before the baby was kidnapped?” No. No. This was all wrong.

Trent’s head snapped up. “Not kidnapped, Ava. There was no ransom note.” He walked closer to her. “No one contacted the family after Noah went missing.”

“What do you think the word kidnapped means? Someone took Noah. Out of his bed!” Her heart was beginning to pound a little more wildly. “That happened.”

“He went missing. Yes. We don’t know how.”

“He was two years old. He couldn’t just get out of bed himself and . . . and what . . .” Her heart turned to ice as she imagined her child climbing out of his bed as he had at least once before and wandering around his room, walking into the hallway. “I don’t know what you mean,” she finished. But she did. Then another thought occurred to her. “You think that I had something to do with my child’s disappearance?”

He dropped his pool cue. “Of course not!” he said, rounding the corner of the table to give her a supportive hug. “I don’t believe for a second that you would knowingly do anything to hurt Noah.”

“Knowingly?” she whispered, appalled, her despair palpable. Did he really believe . . . She caught a glimpse of the scars on her wrists; that memory, too, was blurry and repressed. After her son’s disappearance, hadn’t the police zeroed in on her? Hadn’t Biggs thought she might be involved? Not only had she been the last person to admit to seeing her son, but also in most cases, she knew that family members were the first suspects. . . .

“That’s not what I meant.” Trent was irritated. “Don’t twist my words around, okay?” His quick anger flared for a second; then he sighed and shook his head. “Come on, Ava. Don’t do this.” He gave her another fierce hug, silently reminding her of their long-lasting bond, one that started in childhood.

Now, though, she felt his tension, sensed his hesitation, a lack of conviction. For the first time, she recognized a fissure in that once-solid connection, a crack in her relationship that she feared ran far deeper than she’d ever suspected.





Dern was getting in too deep.

That much was obvious to him as he strode across the wet grass to the stable. With the dog at his heels, he glanced at the looming house and wondered about Ava Church Garrison and wondered why she fascinated him so much.

A mistake.

He couldn’t get even remotely involved with her, and it wasn’t just because she was married. No, there were deeper reasons, the very essence of why he was here working for the damned woman.

Yet he was having trouble maintaining his distance from her, and he could tell himself over and over again that he’d followed her into town last night because it was part of his job, but that would be a lie, and he wasn’t into kidding himself. He was intrigued by her—more than he should be. She was troubled, haunted, but beneath those sad eyes and worried, full lips, he saw another person, a glimpse of the strong, vibrant woman she’d once been.

And that was the person he wanted to get to know, to draw out, the only human on this godforsaken island he felt remotely close to.

Wrong, Dern. Ava’s not an ally. She, too, is an enemy.

“Oh, hell.”

Remember why you’re here. Do not let her good looks or her act get to you. She’s not the victim here, and you know it.

As the dog sniffed around the grain bins, he let himself into a stall where he’d penned the palomino mare this morning. He’d seen her limping slightly earlier in the day and had checked out her right foreleg, finding nothing. Now, as she snorted her disapproval, he straddled the leg and looked at her hoof once more, checking that there were no cracks or bits of gravel or thorns in the frog or sole, that the hoof was intact. Gently, he prodded and searched, and the mare did no more than flick her ears. Nor did she show any discomfort as he examined her foreleg, finding nothing suspicious in the coronet, sesamoid, and pastern. All seemed sound, as did her knee and shoulder. “So what’s with you?” he asked, and she snorted as she turned her head to look at him, a pale blaze showing on her blond face.

He wasn’t a vet, but he’d been around horses all his life. He led this one from her stall to the field where she lifted her nose high into the air, let out a sharp whinny, and took off at a dead run for the rest of the herd. A blond streak, without the hint of a limp, she only slowed when she reached Jasper’s side.

“You think she was faking it?” Dern asked the dog as he watched for a few minutes and decided the mare was going to be all right. “We’ll keep an eye on her, what’d’ya say?”

Wagging his tail slowly, Rover cocked his head, as if in so doing he could fully understand.

“Don’t worry about it. Come on.” Whistling, he headed back to the stables where he intended to check on the tack and repair a broken hinge on one of the stalls.

Just so he looked like he was performing the job he was hired to do.

But that, too, was an act.

He, like everyone else on this damned rock, wasn’t what he claimed to be, and it was only a matter of time before someone figured it out.

Then all hell was sure to break loose.

He thought of Cheryl Reynolds, left in a pool of her own blood.

His jaw tightened.

Maybe hell had already arrived.