and started walking back toward the door. “You asked how I was doing and I answered you. Am I happy? Hell no. But I’m not the type that’s going to do something stupid, Mom. When this passes, I’ll be fine. And it will pass. I know it will. But if it is going to pass, I can’t have you around.”
“Rose, it’s – ”
“No. Mom…you’re toxic to me. I know you’ve tried very hard to make things right between us – you’ve tried for several years now. But it’s not working and I don’t think it ever will considering recent events. So…please leave. Leave and stop calling.”
“But Rose, this is – ”
Rose broke into tears then, opening the door and screaming. “Mom, would you please just fucking leave?”
Rose then looked at the floor, stifling her sobs. Avery fought back her own as she obeyed her daughter’s wishes. She passed by her, painfully restraining herself from hugging her or giving some last argument. In the end, she simply walked through the door and out into the cold.
But the door slamming violently closed behind her was perhaps the coldest thing of all.
Avery was crying before she was able to start her car. By the time she was back on the road and headed for her new home, she was doing everything she could to hold in a series of chest-tightening sobs. As the tears ran down her face, she realized that she had cried more in the past four months or so than she had for the entire span of years beforehand. First there was Jack dying, then Ramirez. And now this.
Maybe Rose was right. Maybe she was toxic. Because when it came right down to it, the deaths of Jack and Ramirez were her fault. Her ambitious career had led the killer to those she loved the most and, as such, they had been targeted.
And that same career had pushed Rose away. Never mind the fact that the career in question was over. She’d retired soon after Ramirez’s funeral and although she knew that Connelly and O’Malley were leaving a back door open for her, it was an invitation she knew she’d never accept.
She pulled into her driveway, parked the car, and walked inside with tears still running down her face. The sad fact was that if she abandoned her career completely, her life would be empty. Her future husband had been killed, an ex-husband she had been on good terms with was gone, and now, the only survivor from her past, her daughter, wanted nothing to do with her.
And rather than fix it, what did you do? some smaller part of her asked. It almost sounded like Ramirez’s voice, pointing out how she was making matters worse. You left the city and retreated into the woods. Rather than face the pain and a life that had been upended, you ran away and spent a few days drinking yourself into oblivion. So what will you do now? Run away again? Or should you maybe fix it?
Back inside the cabin, though, she felt safer than she had while standing on Rose’s doorstep. It seemed to lessen the sting of having her daughter slam a door on her. Yes, it made her feel like a coward but she simply didn’t know how else to deal with it.
She’s right, Avery thought. I am toxic to her. Over the last few years, I’ve done nothing but make her life so much more difficult. It started when I put my career over her father and then just got worse when, no matter how hard I tried, the career won out over her, too. And here we are again, at odds even when the career is gone.
And it’s because she blames me for her father’s murder.
And she’s not exactly wrong about that.
She walked slowly over to the bed that she had yet to fully put together. Her personal safe was there, sitting among the headboard and the box springs. As she opened it, she thought of entering Jack’s living room and finding his body. She thought of Ramirez in the hospital, already seriously injured before he had been killed.
Her hands were dirty in all of that. And she’d never be able to clean them.
She reached into the safe and pulled out her Glock. It felt familiar in her hands, like an old friend.
The tears still came as she rested her back against the headboard. She looked to the gun, studying it. It or one just like it had been on her hip or at her back for nearly two decades, closer to her than any human had ever been. So it felt all too natural when she placed it to the soft flesh beneath her chin. Its touch was cold but assertive.
She let out a sob as she positioned it back at an angle, making sure the bullet would pass through at the best angle. Her finger found the trigger and trembled against it.
She wondered if she’d even hear the blast before she was gone and, if she did, if it would sound as loud as Rose slamming the door behind her.
Her finger curled around the trigger and she closed her eyes.
The doorbell rang, making her jump.
Her finger loosened and her entire body went limp. The Glock clattered to the floor.
Almost, she thought as her heart slammed mounds of adrenaline into her bloodstream. Another quarter of a second and my brains would be all over the wall.
She looked down at the Glock and swatted it away as if it were a poisonous snake. She buried her head in her hands and wiped the tears away.
You almost killed yourself, the voice that may or may not have been Ramirez said. Doesn’t that make you feel like a coward?
She pushed the thought away as she got to her feet and made her way to the front door. She had no idea who it could be. She dared to hope that it was Rose but she knew that would not be the case. Rose was very much like her mother in that regard – stubborn to a fault.
She opened the door and found no one. She did, however, see the rear of a UPS truck leaving her driveway. She looked down to the porch and saw a small box. She picked it up and read her own name and new address in very neat handwriting. The sender’s address showed no name, just a New York address.
She took it inside and opened it slowly. There was no weight to the box and when she opened it, she found balled up newspaper. She removed it all and found just one single thing waiting for her at the bottom.
It was a single sheet of paper, folded in half. She unfolded it, and when she read the message inside, her heart stopped for a moment.
And just like that, Avery no longer felt the need to kill herself.
She read the message over and over, trying to make sense of it. Her mind worked it over, seeking an answer. And with something like this to figure out, the mere thought of dying before it was solved was out of the question.
She sat on the couch and stared at it, reading it again and again.
who are you, avery?
Yours,
Howard
CHAPTER THREE
In the coming days, Avery kept touching the area beneath her chin where she had placed the barrel of the gun. It felt irritated, like a bug bite. Whenever she lay down for sleep and her neck extended when her head hit the pillow, that area felt exposed and vulnerable.
She was going to have to face the fact that she had gone to a very dark place. Even though she had ultimately been pulled away from it, she had gone there. It
