You Don't Want To Know

Chapter 39


“You bought him. You bought him. You bought him . . .”

Reeling, Ava felt as if she’d been kicked in the gut.

The accusation that she’d actually purchased her child echoed in her brain as the floor a story beneath suddenly seemed to swirl seductively. Jewel-Anne sold Noah, but you bought him. You and Wyatt. You were a part of this hideous lie. You bought your own son and covered up the truth! You’re no better than Jewel-Anne!

“Where is he?” Ava demanded hoarsely. Leaning over her cousin, she pressed her weight into the younger woman. She wondered if they would fall . . . if it would matter.

Jewel-Anne screamed in sheer horror.

“Stop!” Wyatt ordered. He was running barefoot, his hair mussed, wearing only pajama bottoms. Upon them now, he yanked at Ava’s arm. “Christ, Ava. Don’t do this!”

Again Jewel-Anne screamed, and this time Ava snapped back to reality. She recognized the horror of the situation just as Wyatt jerked her away from the railing, pulling both Jewel-Anne and her to safety.

Ava started shaking uncontrollably. She could have easily lost her balance and pitched over the railing, killing them both. In her mind’s eye, she saw her broken body as well as her cousin’s, their arms and legs sprawled at impossible angles, their heads twisted on broken necks, her blood seeping into Jewel-Anne’s on the polished tile floor.

“Oh . . . dear . . . God . . .”

Jewel-Anne was crumpled in a heap on the floor of the balcony. Tears streamed down her chalky face. Scooting away from Ava, she glared up at her and spat, “You really are a freak show!” She could scarcely catch her breath as she pointed an accusing finger up at Ava. “You need to be locked up! Forever! You can’t go around assaulting people. I’m . . . I’m pressing charges! And don’t think I won’t! Assault or intent to kill or whatever!” Her face contorted with her hatred. “You should have died, you know. That night on the boat? It should have been you! Not Kelvin! You hear me? You!” Her finger jabbed the air as she sobbed wildly. “You should have died with your baby!”

Ava staggered back at the vitriol coming out of her cousin.

Slowly, eyes focused on Ava, Jewel-Anne used the bars of the stair rail to pull herself to her feet. When Wyatt tried to step in, Jewel-Anne, red-faced, sweating, tears and snot running down her face, turned her fury on him, too. “Leave me alone!” she yelled at him, but her gaze was fixed on Ava. “Next time you try to commit suicide, give me a call. I’ll be glad to help.”

“That’s enough!” Wyatt said sharply, but Jewel-Anne sneered up at him.

“You’re no better,” she charged, holding the rail with one hand and swiping at her face with the sleeve of her free arm. “The only reason you stick around is because of the money!” She looked from Wyatt to Ava. “You’re right—he’s having an affair. I heard him on the phone.”

“Shut up, Jewel!” Wyatt warned as Demetria, pushing Jewel-Anne’s wheelchair, reached them.

“Everyone just calm down,” Demetria ordered, grabbing Jewel-Anne and helping her into her chair.

But Ava wasn’t finished. “Who is he?” she demanded of her cousin. “Noah’s father. What’s his name?”

Jewel-Anne clamped her jaw shut.

“I can’t believe you were involved with anyone . . .”

“Of course you can’t,” Jewel-Anne said, sniffing loudly. “It’s incomprehensible to you that anyone would want me, isn’t it?”

“Who?” she asked Wyatt.

“She’s never said.”

“And you didn’t ask?”

“Of course he asked, but I’ll never tell!” Jewel-Anne’s smug superiority was beginning to manifest itself again. She smoothed her braid and said, “And you’ll never know.”

Ava turned to her husband and said in a dead voice, “It was Jewel-Anne. She’s the one who’s been gaslighting me. She recorded a baby crying and piped it into my room. I have proof: Her equipment is in the attic, and I caught her on video restarting it. That’s what I bought in Seattle, spy equipment. So I could flush her out!” Wyatt and Demetria stared at her as if she were stark, raving mad. “Look on Jewel-Anne’s laptop if you don’t believe me. On her desk. I downloaded the film onto a jump drive and played it for her. It’s still there. She’s been trying to make me look like I’m a lunatic.”

“You are a lunatic. I don’t have to help you,” Jewel-Anne rebuffed, then to Wyatt, “She set me up. Through some kind of trick photography or Photoshop magic, or whatever. Anyone can mess with computer graphics these days, you know. Ava showed me video that’s supposed to be me climbing up the back staircase. Oh, yeah. Like I could do that.” Even staring upward, Jewel-Anne managed to somehow look down her nose at Ava.

Wyatt turned to Ava. “I never heard the crying,” he said carefully, as if he were inclined to believe Jewel-Anne!

“It was somehow piped into my room and the nursery. And Jewel-Anne, she even said she heard it, just . . . just to throw me off track. For God’s sake, look on her computer! The images that I caught on tape, the unaltered film, is still there!” Giving herself a quick mental shake, Ava pulled herself together as much as she could, then stormed after Jewel-Anne and the nursemaid to her cousin’s room. Wyatt was on her heels, and though Jewel-Anne tried to shut down her computer, Wyatt stopped her from reaching the keyboard, and while she protested mightily, he watched the screen where Jewel-Anne was pulling herself upstairs.

“So you can walk,” he stated flatly, his gaze fastened to the image on the monitor. “And you did this thing? You tried to make Ava appear paranoid.”

“She is paranoid!” Jewel-Anne insisted. “And I cannot walk. Just . . . kind of balance myself.”

Demetria, her gaze glued to the computer, said softly, “We’re working on balance and strength, hopefully movement, with the physical therapist. But I had no idea . . .” She cocked her head toward her charge. “Jewel-Anne?”

There was no denying the tape. Trapped, Jewel-Anne glared hotly at Ava. “Okay. Yes!” she snapped, then climbed back into the bed with her bevy of scary-looking dolls.

“Why?” Wyatt demanded.

Ava said, “She blames me for Kelvin’s death and for not selling her the house and for her accident and for her having to give up the baby and everything. All of her misery, it’s my fault.”

“It is!” Jewel-Anne insisted, as if she truly believed her lies. “You’ve never understood how much I hurt inside. You act like I’m invisible.”

Wyatt whispered, “Jesus.”

“And you!” Jewel-Anne snarled at Wyatt as she yanked up the fluffy pink covers. “You were the one who wanted to keep the big lie going, weren’t you? Let her think that she gave birth to Noah! So don’t go all judgmental on me!”

“You’re deluded,” Ava said.

Jewel-Anne snorted a bitter little laugh. “Look who’s talking!”

“You left Noah’s wet shoes for me to find,” Ava charged. “You put that sick doll in its casket.” Fury burned through her veins. “You planted the key to that casket in my pocket and kept taunting me, wheeling out to Noah’s memory marker in the garden, trying to get me to figure out that something was buried there!”

“No, I—” Jewel-Anne started.

“You need to leave my house,” Ava cut her off, quaking inside.

“It’s my house, too!”

“We’ll buy you out,” Wyatt said suddenly.

“I’ll buy you out,” Ava corrected. Wyatt wasn’t an innocent in all of this; Jewel-Anne was right about that.

Jewel-Anne shook her head violently, then arranged the dolls around her. “I will never sell.”

“Then I’ll find another way,” Ava warned.

“You can’t,” Jewel-Anne said, certain she had the upper hand.

“Don’t push me,” Ava gritted.

Wyatt’s hand clamped over her arm, drawing her back. “I think that’s enough,” he said quietly.

She shook him off. “We’re not done here,” Ava insisted.

“How could she possibly dig a grave?” Wyatt asked.

“She had help,” Ava said. “She had to have had an accomplice.” Ava turned to her cousin. “Jacob. His reaction to digging up the doll was just an act.”

Jewel-Anne rolled wide eyes toward Demetria and said in a little-girl voice, “I’m really tired.”

“Fine! If you won’t tell the truth, I know someone who will!” Ava had come this far; she wasn’t going to stop now. She started for the door.

“Wait!” Wyatt called. “Ava, what do you think you’re doing?”

“Going to talk to Jacob!”

“But it’s—”

“Three in the morning. Yes.” He was right on her heels, but she didn’t care. As she’d said, her husband was a part of this, too, probably more than she could even imagine. And he wasn’t alone. Everyone who knew that Noah had been adopted was involved, all part of the ever-widening conspiracy against her. Not just Jacob. Members of the staff. Maybe Ian and Trent, even Zinnia in California could be a part of this. And where was Noah? Did any one of them know? Could he be hidden away somewhere?

Stop it! Pull yourself together! One thing at a time.

“You need to wait until you calm down,” Wyatt ordered as she dashed through the kitchen and out the back door to the porch. Just a step behind, he caught her elbow and propelled her backward, spinning her to face him. “Slow down, Ava. You can’t go off half-cocked, accusing people in the middle of the night.”

She couldn’t believe that she’d ever been in love with him. A damp wind rustled through the branches of the fir trees, chasing across the yard, smelling of earth and sea, causing her skin to prickle with the cold. “You should be demanding to know about your son. Our son. Why didn’t you tell me, Wyatt? Why?”

“Because Dr. McPherson thought it best if you worked it out on your own. She was certain your nightmares have as much to do with the child you lost as with Noah. Deep down in your subconscious, you knew about the miscarriage, and you couldn’t face it. You transferred it to your worries about Noah.”

“What kind of psychobabble is that?” She jerked her arm away from him and heard an owl hoot, as if in warning. “Thanks for the Psych 101 lesson, but I’m going to find my son!”

With that, she took off again, down the steps at a dead run. Mr. T, hiding near the stairs, hissed and slunk under the house while she hit the walkway and found the winding path leading to the exterior steps of Jacob’s studio. Down she hurried, then banged noisily on the door. “Jacob!” she yelled, ignoring Wyatt as he caught up with her. But then he grabbed her wrist before she could pound any further.

“Stop it!” he ordered.

“Let go of me!” she yelled back.

A muffled, “What the f*ck?” came from inside the apartment.

Ava said, “Jacob, open up!”

“Is there a fire or something?” He yanked open the door. His hair was mussed, his eyes red, and he was wearing only boxer shorts that showed off massively hairy legs. The scent of marijuana lingered in the air, and the entire studio was a cluttered mess of dirty clothes, empty pizza boxes, and glowing computer screens. His bed was mussed, the covers spilling onto the floor.

“What do you know about the recording equipment on the third floor?” Ava demanded.

“The what?” He scratched the stubble on his chin. “Are you f*ckin’ nuts?” He staggered back inside and Ava and Wyatt followed.

With an effort, Ava held on to her temper as she related the discovery of Jewel-Anne’s attempts at terrorizing her.

“No shit!” was Jacob’s response, sitting on the edge of the bed.

“You helped her,” Ava accused.

He shook his head. “Uh-uh. No way.”

“She couldn’t have done it herself,” Ava insisted. Wyatt seemed to want to say something but remained silent.

Jacob answered, “Well, yeah, you got that right. I don’t see how. Hell, it’s amazing she could even do what you say you caught on camera.” He seemed genuinely astounded and almost envious.

Ava declared, “You had to have helped her. You’re the techie around here.”

“I didn’t know anything about it.” He held up both hands and looked at Wyatt. “Seriously, man.”

Ava couldn’t believe it, but he seemed sincere. Either he was putting on an Oscar-worthy performance or he really wasn’t involved.

Wyatt said, “Come on, Ava, we’ll sort this all out in the morning.”

She turned on him. “Including how you made up fake names for the biological parents of our child? I called them, you know, put them through the hell of reliving their daughter’s death! What were they, clients of the firm?”

He didn’t respond but she could tell she’d hit the mark. The Johnsons must have come in for some legal advice, and that’s how Wyatt had learned about their daughter’s plight.

“Jewel-Anne’s right,” Jacob said to Wyatt. He hooked a thumb at Ava, “She is f*ckin’ nuts.”

Ava lifted her arms in disbelief, then left her cousin in his pigsty of a room. Outside, the darkness surrounded her with the breath of November rattling the trees. Could she have been so wrong about Jacob being involved? If not Jewel-Anne’s brother, then who? To Ava’s mind, there was no doubt that she’d had an accomplice. All she had to do was flush him out.

Or her. It could be a woman.

Wyatt was a couple of paces behind her. Feeling suffocated even being around him, she picked up her speed and jogged back to the house and the relative safety of her room.





Lyons hit him with the news the minute Snyder walked into his cubicle the next morning. “Guess what?” she asked, and was once again wearing a smile that caused her eyes to sparkle mischievously, like a child who could barely hold in a secret.

“What?”

“Guess who was pregnant during her sessions with the hypnotist?”

“Jewel-Anne Church?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Really?” he said, sitting down as she nodded, leaning against the frame of his cubicle. Her cell phone was in one hand, a small cassette in the other.

“Heard it on this little gem right here.”

“Who’s the baby’s daddy?”

“Unknown.”

“And where’s the baby?”

“Also unknown. Yet. I still have three more sessions to listen to, but I’ll keep you informed.”

“Do that,” he suggested, then added, “You know, I don’t know what this has to do with the case.”

“Neither do I. But I have a feeling there’s something.”

“Maybe you just like eavesdropping.”

“You have a better idea?”

He shrugged.

“Didn’t think so,” she said as his desk phone jangled. He picked up as she walked down the hall toward her own cubicle. He didn’t watch her leave, told himself he didn’t care what her butt looked like in the slim gray skirt she was wearing. Didn’t care at all.





For Ava, the next day was hellish. Jewel-Anne, playing the victim in all of this drama, spent most of her day in her room. Jacob, before and after he went to the mainland for school, threw her dark looks. Virginia kept muttering under her breath, “What goes around, comes around,” and Ian didn’t even try to hide the fact that he was so nervous he’d started smoking again. Trent, Ian, and Wyatt had all left early, right after breakfast; Ava had again watched them boat across the bay, much as they had the day before. Graciela had played dumb, doing her work almost mute, and whenever Ava crossed paths with Demetria, Jewel-Anne’s nurse sent her daggerlike glares meant to cut deep.

Oh, save me. Ava wasn’t taking on that guilt. She had enough to deal with as it was.

Khloe, often her champion, followed her upstairs to her bedroom after breakfast and said, “Couldn’t you have found a better way to confront Jewel-Anne? You can’t go threatening a girl in a wheelchair and almost throwing her over a second-story balcony.”

Ava had picked up her laptop, but now she set it back down. She’d started doing her preliminary search for an attorney, one that wasn’t associated with her husband, a lawyer who could help her become her own person again, break the guardianship and perhaps help her with divorce proceedings. She wanted to get back to her search, but not while Khloe was there.

“Just play it cool, okay?” Khloe advised.

“Jewel-Anne’s Noah’s mother and has been silently lording it over me for years. I don’t know how cool I can be.”

“You’re not helping your case by assaulting a handicapped girl.”

“I know, and Wyatt wants to send me back to St. Brendan’s. I certainly didn’t help matters.”

Khloe froze. “What?”

“He and Dr. McPherson think it would be best for me.”

“Didn’t you fire her?”

“Yes, well, technically I think she quit. It doesn’t matter. Wyatt rehired her. He can do that as my guardian.”

“You should fight that. The guardianship, I mean.”

“I am. I just have to find an attorney.” She scooped up the laptop again and sat down in a chair. “I thought catching Jewel-Anne on tape would vindicate me, that everyone would see that she was behind all my paranoia, but even that seems to have backfired.”

“It’s all too weird,” Khloe said. “I don’t even remember Jewel-Anne dating. Ever. So if she’s Noah’s mother, I mean like really his mother, who’s the father?”

“She wouldn’t say, and I’ve been wracking my brain and coming up empty.” Ava snorted. “Maybe there’s not enough gray matter up there to wrack.”

Khloe smothered a laugh. The truth was, Ava was just about out of ideas. She’d been trying to remember anyone Jewel-Anne could have slept with sometime over four years ago. She’d considered people who lived in Monroe: a male physical therapist, her own husband . . . maybe even Kelvin, though at the time he’d been engaged to Khloe, and Ava couldn’t imagine him cheating on Khloe for a fling with his first cousin. Would he really? Didn’t sound like Kelvin.

Khloe’s cell phone rang. Pulling it from her jeans pocket, she made a face. “Simon.” Rolling her large eyes, she whispered, “He’s been in one of his moods ever since his birthday. A real bear.”

“Why don’t you just leave him?”

“It’s not that easy,” she said as the phone rang a second time. “Ava, what if you found Noah and the news was just . . . awful?” Khloe posed.

“Noah’s alive. I just know it.”

“Okay, I’m just saying you should prepare yourself. Even if he is alive, you may never find him and you could end up looking for him, never knowing what happened to him, for the rest of your life. Is that what you want to do?”

“If I have to,” she said.

Khloe’s phone rang a third time and she turned to the door and said, “Guess I’d better answer it.”

For a few seconds after she left, Ava sat silently. Then she set down the laptop and climbed onto her bed. Khloe’s words had sunk deep. Her throat grew hot and swollen as she considered a life of not knowing what happened to her boy.

There was a chance Khloe and everyone else was right. What if the truth was worse than not knowing? Immediately, she scratched that thought. No. Nothing was worse than not knowing.

She glanced at the nightstand. Another day’s worth of medication was set out for her already. Someone—Khloe? Graciela? Wyatt?—had made certain it was ready. And the pills were seductive; they could take the edge off, help cocoon her from the pain.

“Damn it,” she whispered, and pulled her legs up as she lowered her cheek to her knees and let the tears run. She sobbed softly as she thought of Noah and the so obvious truth that she might never see him again. It broke her heart to think of him forever missing.

Again she glanced at the pills.

Her fists curled. She wouldn’t give up.

Never!

Climbing out of the bed, she again put on the ludicrous act of swallowing the pills before flushing them away. She had to start at the beginning. If Jewel-Anne was Noah’s mother, who the hell was his father? Could this mystery man be Jewel-Anne’s accomplice?

Ava set her jaw. She had to find out who Jewel-Anne’s secret lover was. Maybe that man was the key to finding Noah.