What's Left Of Me (The Firebird Trilogy Book 2) (7 page)

“I understand she’s been having some health issues, so let me know when it’s convenient for her.”

“Sure. I will. Thanks.” They shook hands as Alex engaged in the mental and emotional preparations required to face her absence.

***

Ed introduced himself and Alex to the station receptionist, who summoned the lead investigator by phone. His attorney had been less than pleased that Alex had arrived with Anya, though he’d fed and changed her first to minimize potential disruptions. He hadn’t yet explained to Ed why Stephanie was unavailable to care for her during these crucial interviews and meetings. As far as he was concerned, Stephanie had renounced her rights to her the moment she walked out the door, so he wasn’t about to drop Anya off at the Whites’. He’d be lucky to see her again after that.

Detective Lane escorted them into an interrogation room and closed the door. “Have a seat, gentlemen.”

“I’m willing to take a polygraph,” Alex said. “Or whatever I need to do.”

“Slow down,” Ed muttered.

“Well, let’s have a chat first.” Lane gestured to two folding metal chairs on the opposite side of the table.

Alex sank into one, acutely aware of the cameras recording each word and movement. He straightened his sport jacket. His open collar felt like a garrote. Cops didn’t take kindly to foreigners, as far as he could tell.

“Is there a reason you brought your daughter with you?”

“My wife…wasn’t able to take care of her today. We don’t have a nanny yet.”

The fine line of Lane’s pursed lips transformed into a condescending smile. “Seems like something you’d take care of before your wife gave birth.”

They had made all the other arrangements beforehand, including starting a college fund. An abstract compared to hiring a nanny, which bound them to the idea that they wouldn’t lose Anya before she arrived. Neither of them had been quite prepared to leap into that commitment until they could actually hold her, touch her, confirming she was here to stay. Some ghosts were more intractable than others, though Anya had mostly chased away the baby-that-might-have-been. That inescapable conversation fortunately remained many years off, and was Stephanie’s to have with her. “We’ve both been very busy, and—”

“Is this going somewhere, Detective?” Ed snapped.

He shot Ed a cold glare before returning his attention to Alex. “You’re sweating, Aleksandr. Are you nervous?”

“My client suffers from anxiety comorbid with his bipolar disorder. Anxiety is not an admission of guilt.”

Lane cocked an eyebrow. Pen scratched against paper. “Tell me about the night in question.”

“I went out to the nightclub. I had a few drinks.”

“A few?”

“Before she came up to the bar. She bought at least two more rounds.” Alex held Anya close and gently bounced her on his thigh when she began to fuss.

“So you would say you were both intoxicated.”

“I would. She was aggressive, even when I told her to leave me alone. I woke up with her in my bed, but I know I didn’t—I mean, she made me coffee the next morning. Who does that if they’ve been raped?”

Lane scribbled something on his legal pad. “What happened after you brought her home?”

“That’s the thing. I don’t remember leaving the club, and that has never happened to me before.”

“Look.” Ed folded his hands on the table and leaned forward. “Any DNA evidence is long gone. Hospital records show that she never even went to the ER, let alone had a rape kit performed, despite what she claims. And last I checked, it’s not a crime to meet someone at a bar and take them home. So unless you have something other than a woman’s unsubstantiated allegation that a well-known athlete sexually assaulted her, I think we’re done here. She’s clearly fishing for attention, and she’s making you look like fools for pursuing this in the first place.”

Lane crossed his arms over his chest, his mouth pinched. “You’re free to go, Mr. Volynsky. I’m sure we’ll be in touch again soon.”

“Thanks,” Alex mumbled. He lifted Anya to his shoulder, supporting her bottom with one arm, then rose from the chair and grabbed her tote. Ed walked beside him through the station, slowing his pace to match Alex’s.

“You don’t have to answer any of his questions, you know.”

“Doesn’t that make me look guilty?”

“It makes you look like you know your rights and that this entire investigation is bullshit. Don’t let Lane intimidate you. I’ve dealt with him before.” Ed held the door open for him. “Go home, get some rest. You look like hell. I’ll give you a call in a day or two.”

Alex sagged a little with relief. He adjusted the tote, then shook Ed’s hand. “Thank you.”

***

Stephanie

Stephanie sat at the tiny, square kitchen table in a tiny, square studio apartment. Dust lined the moldings and the slats on the blinds, darkened the forgotten crevices on bookshelves and in the entertainment center. The white walls were dingy with age and disregard. Thick, acrid tension clung to the air and crawled into her throat, into her belly, curdling her insides.

“Um…can I get you something to drink?”

Shiny, dark hair poured over Courtney’s shoulders and down her back. Black liner emphasized her large brown eyes. More makeup than that was superfluous, and she knew it. Her clothes, while not tight fitting, revealed enviable curves in all the right places. Pretty, and young. She’d been barely legal with Alex.

“Why do you want the money?”

Courtney’s hard eyes adopted a haunted expression. “I don’t know how else to get it. It would take me decades to save enough. My mom is in hospice, and the medical bills—I mean, she lost the house, and now I’m in this shithole—” She swept her arm. She was biting her lip, but the tears came anyway. “I had to drop out of school, so I’ve got those loans too.”

“So you decided to blackmail my husband.”

“He’s the only person I know who has the money, and I had this video…It’s fine if you think I’m a slut. So does everyone else. I’m not a sick kid, so who gives a shit about me, right?”

“Let me see it,” Stephanie murmured.

Courtney wiped her eyes and cleared her throat. “Even I don’t want you to see it.”

“That bad? Was it…” Stephanie barely mustered the courage to ask. “Consensual?”

Courtney darted her gaze away. “Most of it.”

Oh, God.
Stephanie forced down her gorge.

“Everyone has secrets, you know? There’s a side of him he doesn’t want you to see.”

“It was two years ago.”

“How much do people really change? They say they do, but all they’ve done is put a coat of paint on a house with structural damage.”

“You know he’s bipolar. When he’s hypomanic, he takes risks. Mostly sexually.”

“Maybe. Or maybe it brought out a part of him that was there all along.”

No. Not the Alex I knew. Know.
“I want to see it.”

“You don’t.” Courtney sighed and set a laptop on the table, opened the lid, and clicked a few buttons. She turned it so it was facing Stephanie. “I’ll be outside.”

“Thank you.”

Courtney stepped into the hall. Stephanie stared at the dark, grainy image in the media player. She could make out two pale shapes that resembled human bodies.

She took a deep breath to steady her shaking hand, then tapped Play.

It was Alex all right. Despite the poor quality, his voice—and the body whose every ridge and scar she knew intimately—confirmed it. The old Alex, bigger, uninjured, and unaware of the havoc his neurochemicals were wreaking on his brain. She’d allowed for some foolish hope that both Courtney and Alex were mistaken, that they had mutually misremembered it. Each second that crawled by, she wished for the strength to stop watching, to give Courtney the money and piece their lives back together. There was no good reason to view this except to permanently warp her vision of the man she had sworn to protect from himself.

Ignorance was bliss. Knowledge was power. She could not have both.

Stephanie flinched at the crack of a hand across Courtney’s face. The phantom imprint of her father’s hand seared her flesh.

Tears raced down her cheeks. She scratched her fingernail on the touchpad. The morning in the hotel room. Pinning her to the bed, Alex’s hands sinking into her shoulders. Puncturing her with his cock. Bruises on her collarbone and pain so profound he’d required a new host in which to inject it before it destroyed him from the inside.

So hard to tell the difference between pleasure and pain. Gritted teeth, closed eyes, glottal moans. A hand closing over a throat.

All feeling had bled out of her limbs. Stephanie closed the laptop. She slowly rose from the table, then locked herself in the closet-sized bathroom so she could throw up. She splashed water on her face and rinsed her mouth before stepping into the shabby hallway where Courtney was sitting on the cheap, threadbare carpet with her back to the wall, playing a puzzle game on her phone.

“Oh.” She pushed herself up and stuffed her phone into her pocket. “Hey.”

“I’ll give you the money. Half of what you’re asking, though. That should be enough to cover everything. But it’s on the condition that you let me watch you permanently delete the video. I can help you with that if you don’t know how, but that’s the deal. The money for the video.”

This wasn’t for Alex, who in participating had accepted the potential for blowback. And he’d been right again. The video was a gift dropped in his accuser’s lap, and the end of his career even if the allegation disappeared tomorrow. This was for Anya, assurance that her father’s behavior could not humiliate her in the future.

“Yeah. That’s fair. Look, I’m sorry for—”

“It’s done. Now I just want it gone.” They walked back inside. Stephanie refused to sit when Courtney offered. The video was stuck on repeat in her mind as she’d feared, the Stop button broken, irreparable. Her rigid muscles throbbed. “But let me tell you something, Courtney. If I so much as hear your name again, you will regret it. I can dig up every skeleton you have. I will drag you through the mud if you fuck with my family again. Are we clear?”

Courtney’s eyes were wet, too bright. She licked her lips and clenched her hands in her lap. “Yes,” she said, her voice tremulous.

“Good. Now get rid of it.”

Chapter Seven

Stephanie

The phone call came the next morning:
We have your biopsy results. Can you come in to discuss them?

That led to only one conclusion, confirmed shortly after she arrived and which she now mulled over, driving toward the house as she cultivated the functional numbness required to continue working, to continue being Anya’s mother and not slip full bore into post-partum depression, that being the best-case scenario. Worst case, she was starting to wonder what was so bad about taking a page from Alex’s playbook and being done with it all.

Stage two bronchioloalveolar carcinoma. Lung cancer. A type less responsive to chemo and for which surgery was the recommended treatment, as if she hadn’t already been cut open a thousand times. They referred her to a thoracic surgeon to schedule it. One more affirmation that Alex had made a terrible mistake in marrying her, because the large family he, as an only child, longed for was beyond her capacity to give. Her lungs simply could not bear the stress of pregnancy again.

No tears or they’d never stop. She prayed Alex wasn’t home. He usually kept the Mercedes in the garage, so the empty driveway meant nothing. Stephanie spotted the housekeeper’s car parked across the street. She’d answer the door before Alex did.

Stephanie checked her face in the rearview. Bags under her heavy, bloodshot eyes, as dark as bruises. She got out of the car and with slouched shoulders lumbered up the walkway. Knock, or ring the doorbell? Even the simplest decisions had become crises of the highest order. She depressed the button once, and the doorbell chimed its two tones. Footsteps, faster than Alex’s. A small miracle. Their housekeeper, Daisy—
there’s a name you don’t hear anymore,
Stephanie had thought when they hired her,
except for certain dog breeds. Maybe a beagle
—answered the door.

“Ms. Hartwell!” The inevitable raising of the brows. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah. Tired. Is Alex home?”

“No, but I can—”

“No, no.” That meant he’d taken Anya, Stephanie’s entire purpose for being there in the first place. He trusted no one with her. “I came for Anya, but—”

“Oh, she’s asleep in the nursery. He said he couldn’t take her with him, and he didn’t want to leave her with me, but there was no one else…” Daisy wrung her hands. “I’m taking good care of her, I promise.”

“I believe you. How long ago did Alex leave?”

“Maybe ten minutes ago?”

“Okay.” Stephanie mounted the stairs. In the nursery, she gathered diapers, blankets, clothes, and other necessities and crammed them into Anya’s tote, then unfolded the padded travel bed and placed Anya in it. She shut out the image of the vintage Pooh, her own beloved treasure all these years, tucked into one corner of the crib to serve as Anya’s plush guardian, a symbol of her father’s steadfast love passed down to her. Stephanie slung the tote over her shoulder, hefted the travel bed by its handle with both hands, and hurried back downstairs as quickly as she could without disturbing her daughter. She shifted the bed to one hand so she could open the door.

“Ms. Hartwell—”

“I’m sorry I can’t explain,” she said over her shoulder. She scurried down the walk. Daisy was almost certainly dialing Alex already. Stephanie set the tote on the back seat floor, buckled Anya into the car seat, and scrambled into the driver’s side.
You’re really doing this.

In a life whose plot she had lost, nothing else made sense.

Her phone was jangling before she reached the Whites’ house. Alex. She silenced it, then collected Anya and the tote from the car and locked the guest room door behind her. Her phone lit up again.

Brandon. She pressed Accept.

“Hey, Steph. How are you?”

“I, uh…” Her lips were trembling. “Hey. I’ve been better.”

“Are you at work?”

“No. I had to take the day off. Doctor appointment.”

“Everything okay?”

“No. Not really. Nothing is okay.”
I walked out on my husband. Kidnapped our daughter. Oh, and lung cancer.
She bit her lip so hard she tasted blood. Her eyes glazed over with tears.

“Have coffee with me. Get away from it all for a little while, eh? I haven’t seen you in ages.”

The best idea she’d heard all week. Without a doubt, Alex would arrive at the Whites’ in a fury any moment now. “Yeah. I can do that.”

“Excellent. Caffe Aroma, half an hour?”

“Sounds good. Do you mind if I bring Anya?”

“Not at all. I’d love to meet her. See you soon.”

She bundled Anya into the travel bed, grabbed her tote, and rushed into the living room. Jacob had just come home from his workout, judging by the sports bag he was tossing into the foyer closet.

“Hey, Steph. Heading out?”

“Yeah. Coffee with a friend.”

“Nicole and I are going out to dinner tonight. You’re welcome to join…us.” His gaze fell on Anya. “Steph, what did you do?”

“I’ve had a bad day, Jake, and I need to go. I have a feeling you’re going to find out soon anyway. I’m sorry I dragged you into this. ”

“Steph—”

She didn’t bother closing the door. No time. Jacob stood in the doorway, calling to her as she secured Anya in the car seat.

She had almost made it around the bend when in the side mirror she caught sight of a black roadster barreling up the street and screeching to a halt in front of the Whites’ house.

Stephanie stepped on the gas.

***

Anya fell asleep in the travel bed two minutes after they reached the café. Stephanie’s tolerance for people who brought their shrieking offspring to coffee shops or gastropubs, what she deemed “adult” establishments, had always been low. She did not desire to join their ranks, not that Brandon minded. He kept cooing at Anya and touching her velveteen cheeks. He had no children, clearly not out of dislike for them, but Stephanie didn’t pressure him for further information.

“She’s beautiful.”

“Looks just like Alex.” The taste of his name on her tongue made her want a glass of wine or five. She settled for a filled chocolate cupcake and a latte.

“Has your eyes, though.”

Stephanie hazarded a glance at him, and what she saw there confounded her. She was starting to hate eye contact the way Alex used to, hated the way people’s inability to censor their innermost emotions placed an undue burden on the viewer to process and contextualize them. Right now, she could not cope with the gaze that was sticking to her, absorbing her.

“You either have something to say, or you’re about to puke.” Brandon’s knee bumped hers under the table.

“Possibly both.”

He sipped his mocha. “Maybe you do need to tell someone what’s going on, eh?”

She didn’t doubt that. Pressure was building in her like a magma chamber, ready to burst in a Plinian eruption obliterating everything around her until, depleted, she caved in on herself. No point in resurrecting the video, which was dead and buried despite the pictures scorched into her brain and the echoing ramifications. Those were hers and Alex’s to tackle.

“Long story short? Alex and I are living apart right now, and I was diagnosed with lung cancer.”

Brandon blinked. “Wait—what?”

“You’re the first person I’ve told.”

“Shit,” he sighed. He took several thoughtful swallows of coffee, then licked his lips. “Where are you as far as stages?”

“Stage two. Hasn’t spread so far.”

“And Aleksandr doesn’t know.”

“Not yet. Like I said…”

“Why?”

“Come on, Brandon. You’ve seen what’s been all over the internet.”

“It’s not just that. You guys have been through worse.”

She stared into her coffee.

“You should tell him this, don’t you think?”

“I still have to figure out whether I want to be sliced open.”

Brandon openly stared at her. He scratched his jaw. “You can’t be seriously debating this. Your daughter deserves a mother, eh?”

Stephanie’s chin wobbled. She really was a terrible mother. That she could consider choosing fear over Anya proved it. Her stomach cramped. A bubble of puke rose in her esophagus. If Alex had suffered anything like this, no wonder he’d have deemed any option viable as long as it guaranteed emotional relief.

“Oh, Steph, no.” Brandon closed his warm hand over hers on the table. “I’m sorry—”

“No, it’s fine. You’re right. I’m just a fucking mess.”

“Listen. Let me take you out. We haven’t hung out since last summer, and you need it.”

“I do,” she said with a clipped laugh.

“Then it’s settled.” Brandon scuffed his chair closer to the table. His eyes were wide, glowing, barely blinking. All too eager. He stood the most to gain if she and Alex couldn’t fix this. He had surely not forgotten her drunken attempt to seduce him last summer, and maybe he regretted walking away when he’d had the chance, nice guy or not. “You pick the night, I’ll pick the place.”

A smile tugged at her lips. She didn’t want to encourage him, but she had little else to look forward to. “All right. How could I say no?”

***

Alex

“She just walked in here and took her? And you let her?”

“She’s Anya’s mother, and I didn’t know you two were…”

Alex pounded his fists on the breakfast bar. First Courtney’s sudden, portentous silence, now this. He was always waiting for the other shoe to drop while everyone but him claimed ownership over his life. “
Proklyat'ye!
”

Daisy was hugging herself, her face ashen and her breath bursting in and out with an impending sob. This was his thanks for hiring some college kid trying to pay for school. She kept glancing into the great room.

“You want to leave? Then go! You’re fucking fired!” He jabbed a finger toward the door. “Get out of my house!”

She ran for it, bawling, but by then he was already on his phone. Stephanie’s number went to voicemail. He tried again with the same result.

Alex grabbed his cigarettes and lighter and stalked out to the garage.
In control, confident, caring.
But he was none of those things. Not in control, not confident the situation would become anything except uglier, and not caring what he must do to get his daughter back. That part scared him the most. He had strived so hard not to let anyone or anything dominate him to the point that hurting Stephanie again was a mere postscript to ridding himself of the pain.

But it was for Anya, and he understood now that nothing in this world rivaled a father’s love for his daughter.

Tell Stephanie that.

He jammed a cigarette into his mouth and lit up, then sped down the road to Jacob’s house.

Jacob opened the door and greeted him with a bright smile—bright except for the gap on the upper left side where he was missing a bicuspid. “Hey, Coach! You look better.”

You lying shit. I look like I’ve lost my mind.
“Where is my wife? And my daughter.”

He shifted from one foot to the other. “She said she was having coffee with a friend.”

“What about Anya?”

“Took her with her.”

“Do you know where?”

“No, she didn’t say. Sasha, look. Don’t go following her or whatever you’re thinking. Let things cool down—”

“Don’t tell me how to handle my marriage.”

Jacob held up his hands, palms out. “Hey, man. I’m just saying to give her some time.”

“How much is enough? You get to see her every day. I haven’t seen her in over a week, and now she’s stolen the only thing that matters to me.” Alex crossed his arms. His jaw muscle began to tick. “I have to go.” He charged down the walk and into the Mercedes, his shoulders strained and his neck aching. He’d drive to every coffee shop in town if he had to. And if he failed to uncover her, he would wait at the Whites’ house. Buffalo wasn’t big, and he had time.

Buffalo did have many coffee shops. But she hated chain coffee, which cut down the options considerably. No Tim Horton’s, no Dunkin’ Donuts, and absolutely no Starbucks. Alex cruised down the streets like some creep searching for a victim, the convertible top up to obscure him from pedestrians. He drove slowly west along wide, tree-lined avenues and scanned the sidewalks, the bistro tables set up outside. The vexatious idea that he was doomed to do everything wrong gnawed at him, a rat chewing its way out of the walls. The path forward through life seemed so certain and obvious to everyone else, who purposely communicated in a language beyond his comprehension.

Stephanie had believed in some glimmer of goodness visible only to her eyes, had thought she’d carved away enough of his defenses to construct something new from the scraps. Yet he was the same shambling monstrosity that could not help but crush anything decent. She had left for herself but because of him.